Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

He's working on it ... when he's not snowboarding

Lots of people are working on it. They have been for decades. It is entirely possible they never get one. Some of the theoretical particles like gravitons will be nearly impossible to detect (the energy required to detect just one is ludicrous).

Eric, I've come to rescue you buddy, time to exit here and get back to the OWS thread (aka terra firma). I can't stand to watch them beat you about. C'mon, get your stuff. Yes, bring your charts too. Let's go.

A little more on Pluto, regarding my point that astrologers knew what Pluto was like before Charon was discovered, just by observing its effects and meanings in horoscopes. For example, in Fritz Brunhubner's textbook on Pluto, written as early as 1934, and published by AFA in 1966, he described Pluto as "a polarity" which has "a double face" with "contrasts (which) combine." (p.13).

Originally Posted by Justin '77

A thought experiment for you, to demonstrate what you are missing.

Put a thing on a scale (on earth). Observe the weight that it experiences, due to gravity.

Now raise the scale up, quickly, then stop; all the while, continuing to watch the weight of the item. You will see that first, it increases due to the additional acceleration you are imposing on it beyond that being imposed by the act of sitting stationary against the earth. Then you will see a corresponding decrease in the weight of it, as you slow, then stop accelerating.

Mass does not have weight. Mass experiences weight. Weight is not a property of mass; rather it is the effect of an acceleration of that mass.

But high school physics teaches that it "has" weight. Of course high school physics is not the last word. I agree that weight is not a property of mass; that's part of what I was saying. But it is part of the usual definition.

Inertia causes the scale to move down as you quickly lift it up. Astronauts feel pressure when they are blasting off into space.
But I don't think the earth is holding me, or resisting my escape, because it is moving.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Some atoms move past each other easily, sure. That's called a gas. Liquids have a slightly harder time. With solids it generally won't happen at all. Some particles can move between atoms rather easily like electrons, but then electrons are not atoms themselves and are affected by physics differently. As you can fix a location for atoms I assume you mean that certain particles (like electrons for instance) cannot be observed in a fixed location.

Yes I meant at a subatomic level.

Matter is something like our experience of density or opacity; most easily experienced with what exists in a solid condition (the condition formerly known as the "earth element" among the 4 alchemical elements).

...string theory is a theory, yes. That in and of itself though doesn't prove that planets predict the future or that people have "souls" or that the universe is alive. These are all things that are believed by some people but not proven scientifically. Note that science accepts these sort of beliefs may or may not be true but that you would need to prove them scientifically (belief is not enough). Were you to write a proof regarding astrology (show that it works and more importantly why it works) and present it in a manner that can be reproduced with repeated accuracy in experiments by scientists, then you will have proven astrology to be more than a superstition.

Indeed scientists love new information. Unfortunately you present only superstition.

I don't agree with your approach to reality, that anything not proven in science experiments is a superstition. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. That is your entire problem copperfield, and is why you are a cynic and misanthrope-- your exceptionally narrow view of reality. Scientists "love" new information, provided it fits under their narrow definition of the term. What is undeniable, however, is that science itself rests on a foundation of fuzzy undefined concepts which only philosophy can clarify, and which most scientists ignore and assume. One thing that definitely can't be proven is your very existence, copperfield; it is nothing if not a miracle. Look within and observe it.

Astrology does not work according to mechanical cause and effect. It is not a physical science. I don't know if it can ever be "proven" in your terms. It is based on the hermetic principle, which is also demonstrated by fractiles and holograms. String and quantum theories open the door to astrology's possible truth; I think you are correct that this is all they do. The best I know so far is that astrological patterns and predictions can be shown to be correct to a greater degree than chance expectation. What can account, for example, that astrologers knew what Pluto was like before it was fully even observed? That may not be absolute "proof" of astrology, but it is evidence that astrologers experienced something corresponding to Pluto in their work.

In the future, who knows? When we know more about strings, if we ever do, it might prove the hermetic principle already demonstrated by holograms and fractiles, and the direct connection between all things in the universe, or even the kind of connection between planets and humans that astrology asserts.

Meanwhile, no philosopher worth his or her salt believes that "seeing is believing," as you seem to assume on faith. The eye itself is a physical object, itself implying that something else must observe it; so is the brain. So what sees what is seen? Our senses are inherently limited in their perception, and so are their tools. If gravitrons can't be "seen," that says more about the inadequacy of our methods of knowing, than it does about the gravitrons. We can't even observe subatomic particles except in terms of probabilities; why assume something immeasurably smaller could ever be observed? Observation itself is limited, and dependent on the observer. There is no possible reality without consciousness. Other methods of knowing besides seeing will be inevitably necessary. String theory is mathematics and philosophy, and those are the only means we have to explore it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Literally, of course I know that things weigh differently in different places. That of course depends on how much gravity is there.

So how could it be different? The definition of mass is how much it weighs, and how much "volume" it occupies. Neither one of these definitions have any real content. There was no other "high school physics" definition other than the one I gave.

You guys should give it up. There is no matter or mass; it's an outdated concept (in fact it always was, as of about 500 BC). It is merely an illusion of the senses.

Mass is an inherent characteristic of matter as resistance to force. It is not weight, a consequence of gravitation upon mass; it exists independent of gravitation.

Originally Posted by TeddyR

Eric, I've come to rescue you buddy, time to exit here and get back to the OWS thread (aka terra firma). I can't stand to watch them beat you about. C'mon, get your stuff. Yes, bring your charts too. Let's go.

Au contrare, Teddy buddy. This is my home turf. Stay tuned, and get educated about the limits of your philosophy.

Considering Mr. Lisi, maybe you'd better grab your board, and stay here.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Mass is an inherent characteristic of matter as resistance to force. It is not weight, a consequence of gravitation upon mass; it exists independent of gravitation.

You thus define "matter" as (in part) "mass", which is "resistance."

If "Mass is an inherent characteristic of matter," what other characteristics does matter have?

Since matter is interchangeable with energy, that says nothing except that energy resists other energy. The resistance, in other words, is a kind of energy. What else would resistance be? Matter is not lacking in energy; it is made of energy, especially the strong force. It holds enormous energy within it, locked in a dense and compressed condition.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

He's working on it ... when he's not snowboarding

one cool dude

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But it is; that is its purpose.

You don't properly understand astrology; most skeptics don't. Planets do not "determine our actions;" I never said that they did, and few astrologers say so. It is a different way of looking at the cosmos than the usual Western mechanistic model. It is not determinist. You also don't understand that it doesn't claim to make predictions any more specific than S&H do; just many more of them, depending on the astrologer of course. I think my predictions are specific enough to be meaningful. My 9-11 prediction was; you just won't acknowledge it. Noone predicted we the USA would go to a holy war in the Summer of 2001, except me and I think a few other astrologers. The USA does not go to war every Summer, and not in a holy war. That was not a vague prediction. We'll see who makes more hits; but meanwhile notice that I will make other predictions than those on the lists.

Astrology is at most a timing mechanism, and it is remarkable that one Jupiter cycle (slightly less than 12 Earth years) is roughly equivalent to the time spent in grade school, and that seven Jupiter cycles is a good approximation (84 years) of the survival of childhood consciousness within Howe and Strauss' generational theory of history. In essence, about everyone tries to prevent the catastrophic follies that they knew and recognized at any stage of their lives by preventing the bad behavior that led to those follies... but the last to prevent a catastrophic replay of a certain event of history through their influence upon political life are those then the youngest to know.

Think of the economic meltdown of 1929-1933. The celestial bodies did not ordain that, but the bad behavior of economic and political actors did. I see the Double-Zero Decade as much the same in many respects to the Roaring Twenties, complete with intensifying inequality, ultra-conservative and marginally-competent politics, great power of financial "experts" of great greed and ethical hollowness, a mindless mass culture (maybe more a symptom than a cause), reckless speculation, and Devil-take-the-hindmost economics. Veblen got it right in his Theory of the Leisure Class, Sinclair Lewis caught the emptiness of the then-equivalent of the huckstering Religious Right in Elmer Gantry and the shabbiness of real estate speculation in Babbitt. F. Scott Fitzgerald got the gangster tycoon right in The Great Gatsby. Does that sound familiar?

But that has nothing to do with the stars. The Double-Zero decade begins with the rapid disappearance of the long-influential GI generation, whose youngest had turned 76 on New Years' Eve as people celebrated the transition from years beginning with the number "1" to years beginning with the number "2". Even the youngest GIs could see fishy stuff going on in 1928 and 1929, and so long as they had influence upon public life they prevented a reprise of the economic and social rot that was the 1920s that they saw as the cause of the rotten consequences of the 1930s. Bad history does not repeat because people forget; it repeats because the people who remember its last occurrence are no longer around to remind the rest of us of the consequences of follies that people know from childhood.

So what wrecked the economy in the Double-Zero decade?

The Silent had done little throughout their adulthood to establish new businesses, and were intent on getting maximal gain from their investments by compelling businesses to become more daring in their day-to-day activities. Boomers had largely split between rapacious elites and either grudging dissidents or people who believed that God would take care of everything. Generation X needed jobs with which to pay off their student loans and didn't care that the jobs were linked to speculation doomed to a catastrophic failure because they were thinking at most of the duration of an auto loan. The Millennial Generation was still wet between the ears, so to speak.

But what was going on in the 1920s? The last Civic-like generation then living (the Gilded were not pure Civic, but hey had adopted much of the essence of a Civic generation by default), reached age 78 about as the Black Sox Scandal broke. The Progressive generation relied heavily upon the Gilded for bureaucratic jobs and were retiring, and they wanted their last pensions and stock valuations high so that they could avoid destitution in old age. The Missionaries became the leading generation in politics, religion, and culture and were either the harsh stewards of industry, repressed dissidents, or True Believers in the power of God to set everything straight. The Lost wanted jobs to avoid destitution but didn't care whether those jobs came from activities that would ultimately prove destructive. The GI Generation was still wet behind the ears.

But none of that results from the position of the planets

Skeptics are OK though; they keep me on my toes!

I will post my year-2000 lecture soon on you tube (probably tonight); it has a few predictions, but mainly the 9-11 and financial crash ones. They were the biggies that I knew about for decades before they happened.

Here is my new video:
http://youtu.be/WAoeW5fXJYU

You did, and it was fascinating. But I too could have predicted the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 based on what was going on in the financial markets. Except that Dubya was a glory-seeking character intent upon war for the ratification of his dubious wisdom and competence as a leader I could have looked at the generational theory and expected the Double-Zero Decade to much resemble the Roaring Twenties. I look at the disastrous last ten years of the 3Ts preceding the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Great Depression and I see as a rule weak leadership that allows people to do whatever they want even such is ultimately ruinous. I see Pierce, Fillmore, Buchanan, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Dubya among the worst Presidents in American history. I just don't need to know about planetary positions.

Thinking about the string theorists, developing a "theory of everything" consisting of a "unified field theory" (in the tradition of Einstein), what would "everything" consist of in this "theory"? The four forces. Where is "matter" or "mass" in this theory of everything? Not even mentioned. "Everything" doesn't even include "matter," apparently.

The "mass" you guys refer to, is only a way of referring to energy.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Astrology is at most a timing mechanism, and it is remarkable that one Jupiter cycle (slightly less than 12 Earth years) is roughly equivalent to the time spent in grade school, and that seven Jupiter cycles is a good approximation (84 years) of the survival of childhood consciousness within Howe and Strauss' generational theory of history. In essence, about everyone tries to prevent the catastrophic follies that they knew and recognized at any stage of their lives by preventing the bad behavior that led to those follies... but the last to prevent a catastrophic replay of a certain event of history through their influence upon political life are those then the youngest to know.

Think of the economic meltdown of 1929-1933. The celestial bodies did not ordain that, but the bad behavior of economic and political actors did. I see the Double-Zero Decade as much the same in many respects to the Roaring Twenties, complete with intensifying inequality, ultra-conservative and marginally-competent politics, great power of financial "experts" of great greed and ethical hollowness, a mindless mass culture (maybe more a symptom than a cause), reckless speculation, and Devil-take-the-hindmost economics....

Astrological cycles do not preordain; human decisions and learning (or lack of it) determine how things actually play out. Yes it is a timing mechanism, in a manner of speaking, although I think it also indicates a vital connection between our lives and the larger cosmos, and that the archetypes within us and society are reflected in those of the solar system and its planets; according to the hermetic, fractiline, holographic principle.

You did, and it was fascinating. But I too could have predicted the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 based on what was going on in the financial markets....I just don't need to know about planetary positions.

But did you predict it? Very few did. I predicted the date of the crash within a month, at least.

The saeculum follows the orbit of Uranus (= 7 orbits of Jupiter). Astrologers knew about the cycle long before Generations was published. So which comes first?

Question, Eric: how did those who developed astrology know about the orbit of Uranus...when it was only discovered in 1781???

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Here is my new video:
http://youtu.be/WAoeW5fXJYU

I listened to this. You are a good speaker Eric. You actually reminded me of Neil Howe (style and voice, not content).

I think you did predict the coming wars*. Still not onboard that you predicted the 9/11 attacks.

I am curious about this though. The something squaring with whatever business. Was there some major event during each occurrence of this over the last 100 years? How often does it happen? When will it happen again?



*All my usual disclaimers apply.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But high school physics teaches that it "has" weight.

Ah.. you went to one of those shitty high schools.

No. They don't teach that it "has weight". Things in HS parlance "have mass". But they "weigh" (that is, a verb -- an experience, not a thing).

Inertia causes the scale to move down as you quickly lift it up. Astronauts feel pressure when they are blasting off into space.
But I don't think the earth is holding me, or resisting my escape, because it is moving.

Inertia is a word that means "resistance to acceleration". That is, inertia is mass. And indeed, mass causes a scale to move down when it is accelerated. That's exactly the point.

Astronauts don't feel pressure (which is a force over an area). They feel force (which is the acceleration of a mass). The exact same thing you feel when you are being supported against falling towards the massive body on which you stand.

Originally Posted by TeddyR

I listened to this. You are a good speaker Eric. You actually reminded me of Neil Howe (style and voice, not content).

I think you did predict the coming wars*. Still not onboard that you predicted the 9/11 attacks.

I did predict that America would be attacked, but I don't think I have proved that I said so exactly. I did say specifically that the USA would be involved. How about Nostradamus predicting "terror from the sky"? Came pretty close, though he didn't say where or exactly when.

I am curious about this though. The something squaring with whatever business. Was there some major event during each occurrence of this over the last 100 years? How often does it happen? When will it happen again?

That's my whole book; I dealt with a number of them. There are various squares, oppositions and conjunctions involved, in various combinations. You have to look specifically at each one, but also at returns to key positions in an important chart like that of the USA. The combination that occured in the early 1930s repeated around 2010; that may have been a unique re-occurance, but something similar occured in 1850-51 too. That one was very significant too, but didn't quite mean the same things; or at least, the recovery from the great crash/depression of a few years before was already under way by 1851.

That particular cycle of 80 years, of course, aligns well with recent saecula, as brower pointed out. There are cycles in history, and cycles in the sky, and they all work together. You can learn a lot about cycles without astrology, using economics, generations or whatever; but with it, you know even more. Uranus aligns with the saecula, because (according to astrologer-philosopher Dane Rudhyar) Uranus' orbit corresponds to the basic length of a human lifetime (84 years). Saecula occur because we don't easily see beyond that timeframe, and so events in that cycle are "shocking" (as Uranus' "influence" is described). 84 years is the exact length of an archetypal saeculum, according to S&H in The Fourth Turning.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Question, Eric: how did those who developed astrology know about the orbit of Uranus...when it was only discovered in 1781???

They didn't know. Only in modern times can we look back in history and see the correspondences to the invisible planets that occurred in earlier times.

Just like in generations/turnings theory, we can look back and see them operating, even though people then had no idea about them.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Ah.. you went to one of those shitty high schools.

No. They don't teach that it "has weight". Things in HS parlance "have mass". But they "weigh" (that is, a verb -- an experience, not a thing).

Inertia is a word that means "resistance to acceleration". That is, inertia is mass. And indeed, mass causes a scale to move down when it is accelerated. That's exactly the point.

Astronauts don't feel pressure (which is a force over an area). They feel force (which is the acceleration of a mass). The exact same thing you feel when you are being supported against falling towards the massive body on which you stand.

Yes, we are in agreement. I notice that even the 1966 Webster dictionary refers to "weight" in describing the nature of mass. A common mistake.

When we try to "see" this "mass" or "matter" however, all we see is the forms it takes. When we feel it, what we feel is in relation to our sense of touch. When we look for it, it dissolves into strings and an infinite division of particles. There are no ultimate constituents of matter. Mass is an element in Newtonian equations. They work in some contexts, but not in others. The behavior of air masses is less predictable than solid ones. At the quantum level, we can't pinpoint location and momentum at the same time. Beings that are alive can resist inertia by spontaneous decision and will, to some extent. And so on.

I would say, inertia is a kind of energy. I think we would all do a lot better in our respect for the world around us, if we look upon "solid things" as "energy" of a particular kind. It would be better for us too if we recognize that we humans are not separate egos in bags of skin; "meat puppets" or "meatsacks" as you called us. The environment is as much a part of us as what is inside our skins. Realizing this gives us a different viewpoint about "matter" and "mass."

Eric,

I watched part of your youtube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAoeW...&feature=share

and noted with interest the 12 year repeating pattern (or as you name it..Jupiter in 7th house). It seems fairly accurate except one would say the Korean War came a bit early in 1950 instead of 1953. Still..1941, 1929, 1965, 1989 (panama) and 2001. Next one is in 2013?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Astrological cycles do not preordain; human decisions and learning (or lack of it) determine how things actually play out. Yes it is a timing mechanism, in a manner of speaking, although I think it also indicates a vital connection between our lives and the larger cosmos, and that the archetypes within us and society are reflected in those of the solar system and its planets; according to the hermetic, fractiline, holographic principle.

Howe and Strauss suggest that cycles based on physiological norms (childhood to reproductive age, birth to various levels of full adulthood, and birth to actuarial mass death) that dictate what is possible in human activity. It may be that a large number of adults remaining physically and intellectually active into their eighties (a trend that the GIs started, the Silent have continued, and that Boomers will surely endeavor to continue, but the Lost did not do) will itself make a huge difference in the operation of the generational cycle. Since about 1980 (when Generation X began to enter adulthood) we have continued to have four active adult generations at once. GI influence came to an end only after the Millennial Generation made its presence known. To be sure, the Civic presence has been weak for a time (early in the Double-Zero Decade) but it didn't vanish altogether. Such changes the way in which political cycles operate. Unless the culmination of the current Crisis era is deferred until 2030 or so we can reasonably expect the presence of a substantial Silent influence upon public life through this one. It may also be that generations establish their cultures earlier than they used to (of course the Millennial generation does what Civic generations typically do, and develops its 'voice' later than do other generations. I can predict that the Millennial Generation will establish an omnibus culture that has something for everyone in the latter part of this decade much as GI musicians as Glenn Miller, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra, and the Andrews Sisters established Big Band music as the norm -- and when GI male film stars such as Orson Welles, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gene Kelly established norms for masculinity and GI female film stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck set new norms for women. This tendency will come as the first part of the Millennial Generation approaches age 40, but it will be inexorable.

But did you predict it? Very few did. I predicted the date of the crash within a month, at least.

Not having good access to the media, and likely to be dismissed as a party-spoiling Cassandra I would have been discounted easily. I drew my conclusions from an article in Business Week Magazine in 2005 that exposed how shaky the 'commoditized securities' based upon real estate lending had become shaky and that high ratings of some fecal investments were shams. I told some people that there would be much opportunity to make money short-selling, but I couldn't say quite when. 2008 seems right because of the political cycle that has little to do with any cycle of any particular planet except for four Earth cycles that some politicians decided upon arbitrarily in 1787.

So what if I had been an investment adviser? Almost all have sold out to an industry that depends upon selling cast-off investments from knowledgeable Insiders to fools. Stockbrokers and mutual-fund managers make their money off commissions and fees, and such traps them into offering sucker deals to the masses. If someone wants to sell packages of fecal investments, then the stockbrokers who deal with the high-level investors who have stock in Enrob Corporation need to sell to bargain-hunting schmucks who would be better off investing their money in 10-year bank CDs or in life insurance policies that pay 0.05% interest. The real money among stockbrokers goes to people able to convince people that economic excrement is gold.

The saeculum follows the orbit of Uranus (= 7 orbits of Jupiter). Astrologers knew about the cycle long before Generations was published. So which comes first?

Or roughly three orbits of Saturn (roughly 88 years).

But the saeculum used to be about 100 years, and no planet is even close to fitting a 100-year orbit. (Uranus 84 years, Neptune 165). Of course, Howe and Strauss had to explain how the saeculum shrank from roughly 100 to roughly 80 years. Mass culture, perhaps, forcing generations to self-define earlier, an unintended consequence of the technologies of recorded sound and cinema -- and mass education?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Howe and Strauss suggest that cycles based on physiological norms (childhood to reproductive age, birth to various levels of full adulthood, and birth to actuarial mass death) that dictate what is possible in human activity. It may be that a large number of adults remaining physically and intellectually active into their eighties (a trend that the GIs started, the Silent have continued, and that Boomers will surely endeavor to continue, but the Lost did not do) will itself make a huge difference in the operation of the generational cycle. Since about 1980 (when Generation X began to enter adulthood) we have continued to have four active adult generations at once.

I have thought it could make the cycle smoother. It has been rather dysfunctional, moving us from one extreme to the other and thus causing upheavals and culture wars. However, it seems most younger people have the same resentment to older folks that we boomers had growing up, so perhaps the situation will continue. We of all ages probably just need to get wiser before we can get functional. One thing that means is that Americans need to maintain a spiritual consciousness through all turnings, instead of the materialist consciousness we currently maintain through all turnings.

the saeculum used to be about 100 years, and no planet is even close to fitting a 100-year orbit. (Uranus 84 years, Neptune 165). Of course, Howe and Strauss had to explain how the saeculum shrank from roughly 100 to roughly 80 years. Mass culture, perhaps, forcing generations to self-define earlier, an unintended consequence of the technologies of recorded sound and cinema -- and mass education?

I have explained it before as the switch to the modern age of progress. That switch also corresponds to the discovery of Uranus, and thus its expansion in human consciousness, at the time of the Revolution. Technology and mass culture is part of it; in general it is the fact that people have become more free to depart from the roles set for them by their parents, and to participate in national affairs. During the 100-year saecula, only a very small portion of the population really participated in it. Most lived very limited lives as peasants and others tied to the land, who did not change from generation to generation, and did not take part in affairs of state, and there was no mass culture to contribute to or be influenced by. So there were no generation gaps, and no changes from generation to generation, except among a few aristocrats and artists, as long as we were under the reign of Chronos (Saturn) and did not know the planet of progress (Uranus).

This also explain the civil war anomaly, in so far as it existed, because the civil war was another step in revolution that ended the feudal-aristocratic culture in the South that was holding our nation back (although it continued to do so to a lesser extent, even to our own day). So, faster change equals a saeculum that keeps up with the life cycle. Like a hurricane that has developed a stable eye. Before that, perhaps, the cycle was 5 Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, and 5 saecula within one cycle of civilization; although the dates of early-modern saecula are not very uniform.

It is hard to see how the saeculum could have operated on the basis of generations anyway in those days. Only two generations were active at any one time, given the shorter life span, and the cycle stretched far beyond the length of any human lifetime.

Originally Posted by Hutch74

Eric,

I watched part of your youtube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAoeW...&feature=share

and noted with interest the 12 year repeating pattern (or as you name it..Jupiter in 7th house). It seems fairly accurate except one would say the Korean War came a bit early in 1950 instead of 1953. Still..1941, 1929, 1965, 1989 (panama) and 2001. Next one is in 2013?

Yes indeed. One can hope that since Americans are war weary, they won't be led into another war, though the situations in Pakistan and other places are still unsettled. But diplomatic or other events could happen that directly lead to war involvement at the next cycle. Korean War doesn't fit, though it fits the usual Mars-Saturn war patterns. So the indicator isn't perfect, but almost. During the era of the civil war, we were so preoccupied at home that we didn't go to war or venture abroad during the entire period (c.1850-1890). There was a diplomatic event in 1871, but from the 1890s on the cycle fits every time (except maybe 1929; though the economic crash set the table for the rise of Hitler, etc.).

Are we entering another time, with Neptune in the same place, when we are preoccupied with problems and conflicts at home, and so won't be able to venture abroad? Maybe, but the great shift of the 1890s (Neptune-Pluto conjunction, aka 500-year cycle of civilization) put America in the position of world leader that it won't so easily relinquish. I think in the 2020s the American people are likely to demand that we relinquish it.

Researchers Entangle Two Millimeter-Sized Diamonds, A Huge Leap in the Scale of Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement, the spooky action at a distance that promises to be so useful for things like high-powered computing and security, is generally considered a function of the tiny world. It’s easy — OK, not easy, but relatively practical nowadays — to take two particles or two microscopic things and intertwine their fates. Now for the first time, scientists have accomplished quantum entanglement on the macro scale, entangling two millimeter-sized diamonds.

The findings, published in this week’s issue of Science, are a potential major leap for both quantum and classical mechanics. It’s the first time entanglement has been achieved between two fairly large objects — and at room temperature to boot.

As regular readers know, entanglement is the process of connecting two separate things, be they photons or nanoscale objects, so that they behave the same no matter their distance apart. What happens to one particle also happens to the other, even if they are separated by the entire universe.

Researchers at Oxford University took two small diamonds, about 3 millimeters square and 1 millimeter thick. They exposed them to incredibly short bursts — about 100 femtoseconds — of laser light, in a method called ultra fast pump probe spectroscopy. What happened next is complicated: The light induced some vibration in the lineup of the molecules in the diamond crystals. These inherent oscillations (present in all atoms, they’re just being taken advantage of here) are known as phonon modes. The pulse excited one phonon mode in both of the diamonds, and also produced two photons, which were scattered by the diamonds and which would be used to entangle the phonon states. Then the scattered photons were brought together, using a complicated setup involving a beam splitter and single-photon detectors.

The two diamonds were about half a foot apart, but when one of the photons was detected, the two diamonds were sharing a phonon. In other words, what happened to one diamond happened to the other. The researchers confirmed this by working backward, de-exciting the phonon and emitting another photon, which was itself detected. Entanglement lasted about 7 picoseconds, so it’s too short to be used in a quantum computer or other device — at least for now.

“The two diamond samples coherently shared one phonon, which is the hallmark of a quantum-entangled state,” explains L.-M. Duan, a physicist at the University of Michigan who wrote a perspective paper accompanying the Science paper. “These results provide a striking example that entanglement is not particular to microscopic particles but can manifest itself in the macroscopic world, where it could be used in future studies that make fundamental tests of quantum mechanics.”

I'm back now and am glad that this thread was alive.

I already knew that quantum entanglement can manifest itself in the macroscopic world.

American's aren't "war weary". You are confusing cabinet wars with general wars.

Physicists still think they can explain the nature of reality better than philosophers can. I still think they are mistaken.

The same problem remains. They still think they can explain the world how we experience it, without taking account of the fact that we experience it. They continue to want to think of reality as some things out there that you can see, touch and handle.

Quantum theory has opened the door to a combination of spiritual and physical theory, but few physicists have walked through that door. They still resist the fact that they are the ones doing the science, and refuse to make themselves part of their equations, even though quantum theory had already started doing exactly that. When science continues further down that road, that will be when they really start explaining "everything." And then things like hermeticism and astrology as well as philosophy in general will not seem so irrelevant.

At one point in Greene's PBS program, it was said that string theory points toward a universe that had no beginning. One scientist on the show said he is not comfortable with that, because it means a universe that has no explanation. That is a classic case of philosophical denial: refusal to admit the truth of the argument for the existence of God from first cause. If string theory proves the universe has no beginning, that is part of the road back to a philosophical and spiritual science. A universe that has no beginning can only exist now.

But how can a "theory of everything" be what it claims, as string theory does, if it does not take account of or explain consciousness? And yet, it is without a doubt a part of the reality, the everything, it seeks to explain. As Descartes and Augustine before him pointed out, the very fact that you doubt, proves that you exist as the doubter.

Maybe things like mathematics and strings that can't be seen can be used and described as if they existed without any observer. But even math has been proven by Godel to depend on the assumptions with which it starts. And the physicists still want to observe the effect of strings, somehow.

I'm not really clear on how the idea of "string" is arrived at purely from mathematics, or what kind of math this is, or what this math is supposed to describe. It is a cool metaphor, and that's about all I know.

The idea of multiple dimensions, I think, is itself a purely mathematical term. It confuses people to speak of these dimensions literally. There are no points, lines or planes; these are mathematical constructs used to measure things. The reality we experience has nothing to do with these terms. So in theory anyway, there's no problem with extra dimensions if we understand that they are just mathematics-- which is what string theory is.

The idea of parallel universes I posted sometime back seems to arise from the refusal to admit the observer. If something can't be pinned down in this universe, because its momentum and position can't be known simultaneously, but only by probability, you have to either assume there's a universe in which they CAN be pinned down; or admit that your own observation is what pins them down. That's my "theory" of parallel universes. They are created by scientists who refuse to include themselves in their reality.