Subjec: Is It Dry Or Wet?  Part 2.                        June 21, 2007.

  Here is something about Quarks.

........................................................................
........................................................................

  Cramer, a physicist, for decades has been interested in resolving a
fundamental paradox of quantum mechanics, the theory that accounts
for the behavior of matter and energy at subatomic levels. It's
called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

  It was set up by Albert Einstein (and two other guys named Rosen and
Podolsky) in the 1930s to try to prove the absurdity of quantum
theory. Einstein didn't like quantum theory, especially one aspect of
it he ridiculed as "spooky action at a distance" because it seemed to
require subatomic particles interacting faster than the speed of
light.

  However, experimental evidence has continued to pile up
demonstrating the spooky action. Two subatomic particles split from a
single particle do somehow instantaneously communicate no matter how
far apart they get in space and time. The phenomenon is described as
"entanglement" and "non-local communication."

  For example, one high-energy photon split by a prism into two lower-
energy photons could travel into space and separate by many light
years. If one of the photons is somehow forced up, the other photon --
even if impossibly distant -- will instantly tilt down to compensate
and balance out both trajectories.

  As the evidence for this has accumulated, several fairly contorted
and unsatisfying efforts have been aimed at solving the puzzle.
Cramer has proposed an explanation that doesn't violate the speed of
light but does kind of mess with the traditional concept of time.

  "It could involve signaling, or communication, in reverse time," he
said. Physicists John Wheeler and Richard Feynman years ago promoted
this idea of "retrocausality" as worth considering. Cramer's version
aimed at using retrocausality to resolve the EPR paradox is dubbed
(by him) the "transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics."

  Most physicists, such as the celebrated cosmologist Stephen Hawking,
still believe time can move only in one direction -- forward. Cramer
contends there is no hard and fast reason why.

  He has proposed a relatively simple bench-top experiment using
lasers, prisms, splitters, fiber-optic cables and other gizmos to
first see if he can detect "non-local" signaling between entangled
photons. He hopes to get it going in July. If this succeeds, he hopes
to get support from "traditional funding sources" to really scale up
and test for photons communicating in reverse time.

  It may be important to note, at this point, that Cramer is not crazy.

  On Sunday, he began his annual stint running particle physics
experiments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider. He and others at the national lab use the
supercollider to smash together particles, create the hottest matter
ever made by humans and study things such as quarks or other
subatomic particles. (JW  That sounds like what we used to do
at SLAC at Stanford University at Stanford, Calif.  I operated a
5.0 megawatt power supply that powered and experiment that produced
Z particles.)

  Cramer, who also writes science fiction books as a hobby, earlier
worked at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, on
the border between France and Switzerland. In the 1980s, he was
director of the UW's nuclear physics laboratory and today remains a
well-respected experimental physicist.

  "I'm not crazy," he confirmed. "I don't know if this experiment will
work, but I can't see why it won't. People are skeptical about this,
but I think we can learn something, even if it fails."

  Not too long ago, Cramer thought he would not even be allowed to fail.

  None of the standard scientific funding agencies wanted any part of
the project. N-SA's Institute for Advanced Concepts sent Cramer a
rejection letter, adding it was getting out of the advanced concepts
business anyway -- now that most of the space agency's money is going
to the federal g-vernment's renewed push into manned spaceflight.

  The most creative branch of the m-litary-science-industrial complex
(known as DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) also
rejected Cramer's proposal. Officials at DARPA told the UW physicist
his experiment is "too weird" -- even though they recently gave money
in support of a project aimed at creating Terminatorlike liquid
robots.

  "I thought we were going to have to pull the plug," Cramer said. But
when word of his funding plight went out across the Internet a few
months ago after a Seattle P-I article, people like Rudman and Gmur
began contacting the UW to see if they could lend some support.

  "Heck, if it works we can go back in time and get our money back,"
laughed John Crow, a businessman who splits his time between his gas-
and-o-l business in Shreveport and a home in Port Angeles.

  Crow donated $-,000 because he found Cramer's approach too
fascinating not to try.

  "I'm just a crass businessman, but in business we know high risk
offers high reward," he said. "This isn't that much money to find out
if time can go both forward and backward."

  Walter Kistler, a retired physicist and rocket scientist who started
Redmond-based Kistler Aerospace, donated $-,000. Kistler's company
struggled for many years unsuccessfully promoting the concept of
reusable rockets, even going bankrupt once, but recently won a NA-A
contract.

  "I know how difficult it can be to get people to even consider new
or unusual ideas," he said. "Even Einstein had trouble accepting the
basic ideas of quantum theory. I've talked to professor Cramer, and
what he is trying to do could be very important."

  Kistler said he was overjoyed to hear that other people thought this
was worth supporting.

  "Artists have experienced non-local space all along, we just can't
prove it," said Richard Miller, an artist and photographer in Port
Townsend. Miller, who prefers not to disclose the amount of his
donation, said he's not worried about the strong possibility of
failure here.

  "I would say the predicted failure of this project is probably a
good omen," he said. "Most predictions are wrong."

  Cramer said it's possible that the primary goal of his experiment
could fail and yet still produce something of value. Some new
subtlety about the nature of entanglement could be revealed, he said,
even if the photons don't engage in measurable non-local
communication. The "disentanglement" itself, he said, could be quite
revealing.

  "It wouldn't be as nice as a positive result, but it would certainly
be interesting and publishable," Cramer said. If there is an
interesting negative result or a half-positive result, he said he
will buy more precise equipment to see if he can tease out what's
happening. Cramer has all the money he needs for this phase, but he
hopes to see a second phase.

  In the music business, said Rudman, the Las Vegas music mogul, most
records they produce don't do well. In the vernacular, he said, "They
stiff."

  "But the rare hits we get every once in a while pay for all the
stiffs, and then some," Rudman said. "If this stiffs, it stiffs. But,
man, you've got to try, don't you? You've got to be willing to take
the risk of being wrong to find something new."

                            HOW TO DONATE

  The University of Washington has set up a special account to which
individuals or groups can contribute funds for John Cramer's
experiment.

  Tax-deductible contributions to the project may be made by
contacting Jennifer Raines, UW Department of Physics, at
jraines@phys.washington.edu, or mailing a check made out to the
University of Washington with a notation on the check directing
deposit to the account for "Non-Local Quantum Communication
Experiment" to:

  Jennifer Raines, Administrator

  Department of Physics

  University of Washington

  Box 351560

  Seattle, WA 98195-1560

  Source: Seattle PI
  http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/319367_timeguy12.html
=====================================================================
                - TINKER-TOY SPECIES DEPARTMENT -

  Designer Bug Holds Key to Endless Fuel

  The U.S. scientist who cracked the human genome is poised to create
the world's first man-made species, a synthetic microbe that could
lead to an endless supply of biofuel.

  Craig Venter has applied for a patent at more than 100 national
offices to make a bacterium from laboratory-made DNA.

  It is part of an effort to create designer bugs to manufacture
hydrogen and biofuels, as well as absorb carbon dioxide and other
harmful greenhouse gases.

  DNA contains the instructions to make the proteins that build and
run an organism.

  The J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is applying
for worldwide patents on what it refers to as Mycoplasma laboratorium
based on DNA assembled by scientists. When asked whether the world's
first synthetic bug was thriving in a test tube, Dr Venter said: "We
are getting close."

  The Venter Institute's US Patent application claims exclusive
ownership of a set of essential genes and a synthetic "free-living
organism that can grow and replicate" that is made using those genes.
To create the synthetic organism his team is making snippets of DNA,
known as oligonucleotides or "oligos", of up to 100 letters of DNA.

  To build a primitive bug, with about 500 genes in half a million
letters of DNA, Dr Venter's team is stitching together blocks of 50
or so letters, then growing them in the gut bug E. coli. Then they
turn these many small pieces into a handful of bigger ones until
eventually two pieces can be assembled into the circular genome of
the new life form.

John Winston.  johnfw@mlode.com


Subjec: Is It Dry Or Wet?  Part 3.                       June 21, 2007.

  This talks about wireless transmission of electrical power.

.......................................................................
.......................................................................

  The synthetic DNA will be added to a test tube of bacteria and the
team hopes that one or more microbes starts moving, metabolising and
multiplying.

  The Canadian ETC Group, which tracks developments in biotechnology,
believes that this development is more significant than the cloning
of Dolly the sheep a decade ago.

  On Wednesday, ETC spokesman Jim Thomas called on the world's patent
offices to reject the applications. He said: "These monopoly claims
signal the start of a high-stakes commercial r-ce to synthesise and
privatise synthetic life forms. Will Venter's company become the
'Microbesoft' of synthetic biology?"

  A colleague, Pat Mooney, said: "For the first time, G-d has
competition. Venter and his colleagues have breached a societal
boundary, and the public hasn't even had a chance to debate the far-
reaching social, ethical and environmental implications of synthetic
life."

  However, Dr Venter did ask a panel of experts to examine the
implications of creating synthetic life. His institute convened a
bioethics committee to see if its plans were likely to raise
objections.

  The committee had no objections but pointed out that scientists must
take responsibility for any impact their new organisms had if they
got out of the lab. The organisms can be designed to d-e as soon as
they leave laboratory conditions.

  Dr Venter announced the project to build a synthetic life form in
2002. In theory, by adding functionalised synthetic DNA, the
bacterium could be instructed to produce plastics, d-ugs or fuels.

  Dr Venter's institute claims that its stripped-down microbe could be
the key to cheap energy production. The patent application claims an
organism that can make either hydrogen or ethanol for industrial
fuels.

  Source: The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/designer-bug-holds-key-to-
endless-fuel/2007/06/09/1181089398547.html
end of consp


=====================================================================
                 - TESLA WAS RIGHT DEPARTMENT -

  Wireless Energy Promise Powers Up

  A clean-cut vision of a future freed from the rat's nest of cables
needed to power today's electronic gadgets has come one step closer
to reality.

  US researchers have successfully tested an experimental system to
deliver power to devices without the need for wires.
The setup, reported in the journal Science, made a 60W light bulb
glow from a distance of 2m (7ft).

  WiTricity, as it is called, exploits simple physics and could be
adapted to charge other devices such as laptops.

  "There is nothing in this that would have prevented them inventing
this 10 or even 20 years ago," commented Professor Sir John Pendry of
Imperial College London who has seen the experiments.

  "But I think there is an issue of time. In the last few years we
have seen an exponential growth of mobile devices that need power.
The power cable is the last wire to be cut in a wireless connection."

  Professor Moti Segev of the Israel Institute of Technology described
the work as "truly pioneering".

  The researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
who carried out the work outlined a similar theoretical setup in
2006, but this is the first time that it has been shown to work.

  "We had a strong faith in our theory but experiments are the
ultimate test," said team member Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic.

  "So we went ahead and sure enough we were successful, the
experiments behave very much like the theory."

  The experimental setup consisted of two 60cm (2ft) diameter copper
coils, a transmitter attached to a power source and a receiver placed
2m (7ft) away and attached to a light bulb.

  With the power switched on at the transmitter, the bulb would light
up despite there being no physical connection between the two.
Measurements showed that the setup could transfer energy with 40%
efficiency across the gap.

  The bulb was even made to glow when obstructions such as wood, metal
and electronic devices were placed between the two coils.

  "These results are encouraging. The numbers are not far from where
you would want for this to be useful," said Professor Soljacic.

  The system exploits "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object
to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.

  When two objects have the same resonance they exchange energy
strongly without having an effect on other surrounding objects. There
are many examples of resonance.
  "If you fill a room with hundreds of identical glasses and you fill
each one with a different level of wine each one will have a
different acoustic resonance," explained Professor Soljacic.

  Each glass would ring with a different tone if knocked with a spoon,
for example.

  "Then if I enter the room and start singing really loudly one of the
glasses may explode if I hit exactly the right tone."

  Instead of using acoustic resonance, WiTricity exploits the
resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.

  In the experiment both coils were made to resonate at 10Mhz,
allowing them to couple and for "tails" of energy to flow between
them.

  With each cycle arriving, more pressure, or voltage in electrical
terms, builds up in this coil," explained Professor Pendry.

  Over a number of cycles the voltage gathered until there was enough
pressure, or energy, at the surface to flow into the light bulb. This
accumulation of energy explains why a wine glass does not smash
immediately when a singer hits the right tone.

  "The wine glass is gathering energy until it has enough power to
break that glass," said Professor Pendry.

  Using low frequency electromagnetic waves, which are about 30m
(100ft) long, also has a safety advantage according to Professor
Pendry.

  "Ordinarily if you have a transmitter operating like a mobile phone
at 2GHz - a much shorter wavelength - then it radiates a mixture of
magnetic and electric fields," he said.

  This is a characteristic of what is known as the "far field", the
field seen more than one wavelength from the device. At a distance of
less than one wavelength the field is almost entirely magnetic.

  "The body really responds strongly to electric fields, which is why
you can cook a chicken in a microwave," said Sir John.

  "But it doesn't respond to magnetic fields. As far as we know the
body has almost zero response to magnetic fields in terms of the
amount of power it absorbs."

  As a result, the system should not present any significant health
risk to humans, said Professor Soljacic.

  The team from MIT is not the first group to suggest wireless energy
transfer.

  Nineteenth-century physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla experimented
with long-range wireless energy transfer, but his most ambitious
attempt - the 29m high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower, in New
York - failed when he ran out of money.

  Others have worked on highly directional mechanisms of energy
transfer such as lasers. However, unlike the MIT work, these require
an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for
powering objects around the home.

  Professor Soljacic and his team are now looking at refining their
setup.

  "This was a rudimentary system that proves energy transfer is
possible. You wouldn't use it to power your laptop.

  "The goal now is to shrink the size of these things, go over larger
distances and improve the efficiencies," said Professor Soljacic.

  The work was done in collaboration with his colleagues Andre Kurs,
Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, John Joannopoulos and Peter
Fisher.

  Source: BBC
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6725955.stm
=====================================================================
                - ARCHEOLOGY OR GEOLOGY DEPARTMENT -

               Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Loses Funding

  The hills in Visoko are a natural formation and not pyramids, as
Semir Osmanagic wishes to present them, says Bosnian Culture Minister.

  The Ministry of Culture of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
wants to put an end to the funding of the project "Bosnian Pyramid of
the Sun." Opinions on the subject as well as on the pyramid
phenomenon are so divided in Bosnia that some public persons, who
have denied the existence of pyramids, said that they would set
themselves on fire if those were really proven to pyramids.

  Numerous p-liticians have given support to the research in Visoko,
formerly a royal town. Experts have protested and the people find all
this interesting.

  However, Culture Minister Gavrilo Grahovac decided to shut down the
source of funding, at least this one, because this was not a serious
archaeological research. The credibility of the people who
collaborated on the project was "unreliable" and they have published
their findings that were kept away from the experts.

  The scientific research team has proved that the hill Visocica is a
natural geological formation and its relief is the consequence of
natural tectonic movement.

  The present appearance of Visocica is the result of structural
factors and climate changes at work. By acting on its own initiative,
the foundation does not act in keeping with the existing regulations
of archaeology, in spite of being registered at the B-H Justice
Ministry, and its registration itself ought to be looked into.


Part 3.

John Winston.  johnfw@mlode.com