Published August 17, 2011 | In the last several days I spoke with Gary P. Zank, Director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) and Chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. CSPAR is a continuous intellectual contributor to NASA. He agreed with me that the outer edges of the Local Cloud (the one shown with a red center in the slide show on the Home Page) are likely to have the matter density sufficient to penetrate the Solar System’s protective barrier en masse and threaten Earth’s habitat. Note the red part of the cloud is red to show that it is hot. The heat is a reason why it is one three-hundredth the density of the dark colored parts of the cloud. What this means is the choice by me of seventy years for infiltration of the cloud into the Solar System is not an unreasonable prediction. Then scenario predicted by The Infinity Option -Be More Than You Are! is likely to come into play.
I also managed to locate, and speak to Lov K. Grover who is universally credited as among the world’s few leaders in quantum memory and computing. He put me in contact with Apoorva Patel, a quantum memory and computing physicist who is a leading thinker in the area of DNA transmission in quantum. For example Patel wrote “Quantum Algorithms and the Genetic Code.” I feel that the leading edge of scientific literature has justified this part of the story in The Infinity Option. Dr. Patel is a leading edge thinker. In his explanation of how DNA copies itself from cell to cell he makes a clear case that what otherwise would be explained as mere coincidences, is instead explained as numerous sychronies of characteristics of DNA that match requirements and conveniences for quantum law, as if quantum law developed DNA using quantum computing shortcuts to make it practical by reducing the odds of chance to a governable and “do-able” biological process. The Progeny Framework, the second book in the series, I am writing, which of course has not even been started except in conception, will use as a premise Dr. Patel’s work extensively. The Infinity Option just hinted around the edges of the idea.
Published August 2, 2011 | Scientific digs tells us Beryllium-10 deposits spiked thirty-three thousand years ago and sixty thousand years ago in the Antarctic. The meaning for this that scientists conjecture is at those times there may have been interstellar clouds that infiltrated the Solar System and radiated the Earth, responsible for havoc on its habitability for life.
As a science fiction writer I take notice that the digs were at the South Pole rather than the North, where the current preoccupation with the thinning of the ozone layer is. This makes the fiction writer in me conjecture that at least one of these times there was also a switch in Earth’s polarity resulting in the current polarity. That is why I have Dr. Moreau worried that the Earth’s polarity may shift again. But am I advancing fiction, or a scientific theory?
Published August 1, 2011 | For an article on the Local Fluff she calls the Local Interstellar cloud, or just our local cloud, the whispy, benign cloud now in contact with and entering the Solar System see http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2000/1/the-galactic-environment-of-the-sun/1 . Note that it is benign because of its characteristics. Its density is less than 0.001 atoms per cubic centimeter compared to the average cloud 0.3 atoms per cubic centimenter, or 300 times denser.
Dr. Priscilla Frish, its author, explains in American Scientist Magazine, January 2000, how all of this works. Dr. Frish is Senior Scientist, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Note the article was written before Voyager discovered the vast cloud that The Infinity Option story involves us with. Nevertheless the article is informative about the mechanics by which cloud matter penetrates into the Solar System.
She says, “We do not know whether the interstellar cloud complex flowing past the sun is a homogeneous structure.” Discussing the possibility of encountering more typical formations among the cloud, she continues, “My colleague Gary Zank at the Univerity of Delaware and I have recently modeled the changes that might take place should the heliosphere encounter a dense interstellar cloud. If the density of the Local Interstellar Cloud increased to 10 particles per cubic centimeter, the heliopsphere would contract to a radius of about 15 AU and the heliopause would become unstable (oscillating in and out of existence)…[It] would dramatically alter the interplanetary environment of the earth. (By comparison, virtually all of the interstellar hydrogen is ionized before it gets to the earth’s orbit under current conditions.) A more severe scenario–say a cloud with a density of 1,000 atoms pere cubic centimeter–would alter heliosphere physics entirely and probably contract the heliosphere to within a few AU of the sun. Planets such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (all of which are outside 9 AU) would be fully exposed to the flux of interstellar neutrals. Interstellar gas would overwhelm the solar wind at 1 AU.” AU are Astronomical Units. One AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun.
Dr. Frish then calls our attention to the fact of earthbound evidence of previous interstellar cosmic ray influxes thirty-three thousand and sixty thousand years ago. Ice-core samples from the Antarctic show spikes in the concentration of beryllium-10. Scientists study it based on its 1.5 million year half-life and have determined a sudden increase in cosmic-rays would be best explained by intrusions of denser parts of the Local Interstellar Cloud.
The Infinity Option story involves the threat of such a dense cloud formation and Earth intersecting within seventy years.
Published July 28, 2011 | Stewart sent me a link of an article by Gary P. Zank of UD’s Bartol Research Institute, who earned a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1993 and a Zeldovich Medal in 1996. The article explains his research into the threat of interstellar clouds. Note that the cloud The Infinity Option -Be More Than You Are! is the Local Fluff, which has a wisp already in contact with our Solar System. The seventy year deadline is something I created for the benefit of the story. But note Zank does not deny the possibility of a crisis within seventy years. In fact his research establishes a breathing cycle of the Solar System’s magnetic barrier every eleven years when it is possible for hydrogen to enter the Solar System and wreck havoc on Earth’s habitability.
In The Infinity Option -Be More Than You Are! story the group of scientists organized by Dr. Irene Moreau suggest a solution to the threat — a worldwide network array of super electromagnets poised to defend Earth. That is my own postulate based on the observation that I attribute in the story to Dr. Moreau, that the operation of cyclotrons, which operate the world’s largest magnets, accompany cooling of the atmosphere when and where they operate–synthetically augmenting magnetic protection as the Earth accomplishes to screen out harmful excessive energy from the Sun and other radiation.
The neuro science in the book is based on experiments recited by Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind Change Your Brain –how a new science reveals our extraordinary potential to transform ourselves-a groundbreaking collaboration between neuroscience and Buddhism, Ballentine Books, New York 2008.
On background of the composition of the universe in the book the story is consonant with Brian Green, The Elegant Universe, First Vintage Books, New York, 1999, 203 and Paul Davies, God & the New Physics, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, New York, 1983.
For the death/near death experience I used and the book is consistent with Michael B. Sabom, Recollections of Death A Medical Investigation, Harper and Row, New York, 1982 and Lewis R. Aiken, Dying, Death and Bereavement, 4th Ed., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey, London, 2001.
Groundbreaking work which I predict will eventually win Nobel Committee notice done by Grover, Ahn, Weinacht, Backsbaum, Myer, Kwait and Hughes demonstrates mathematically that the information that contains for want of a better term the DNA of the universe can be contained in light waves and thusly spread throughout the universe is not only possible, it is plausible. The book’s story portrays interstellar transport of human DNA by light waves since ignition based propellants simply won’t work as desired in hydrogen clouds. Ignition rocket ships in hydrogen clouds would explode into smithereens since hydrogen is the most volatile element in nature. I recite only two of their articles. Ahn, Weinacht, and Bucksbaum “Quantum Information Storage and Retrieval” Science, V. 287 21 Jan 2000, pp. 463-5.Meyer, Kwiat, Hughes, Bucksbaum, Ahn, and Weinacht “Does Rydberg State Manipulation Equal Quantum Computation?” Proc Nat’l Acad Sci USA 13 Mar 2001 2973-2978
