Systems

Systems are only as good as the components that comprise them. While I’ve seen systematic approaches championed many times, I’ve also seen failures when particular components don't hold up under the system's stresses.

A classic system diagram comprises a bathtub. This system has an input— the faucet —and an output —the drain.

The system uses water as the physical thing it drives.

The faucet is a junction for two water inputs: cold and hot. The user can adjust these components to create a wide range of water temperatures coming into the tub. The flow for each can go from 0 to 100%.

The drain has a similar configuration. The flow can go from 0 to 100%.

The tub can hold a certain amount of water before failing. Typically, the system can drain water faster than it can take it in, but bandwidth ranges can occur.

Someone can tell you that the bathtub is a perfect system. It does everything you want it to. But what happens if the user demands more water than the system can handle?

Well, it doesn’t work any longer. The tub overflows, or the faucets can’t deliver it. The user starts bringing in five-gallon buckets and dumping them into the tub. This helps to fill the tub faster, but the drain can’t handle the amount of water coming in.

If the buckets help fill the tub faster, then suddenly the drain can’t remove it any faster. If there is a demand to empty the tub faster, an engineer drills an additional drain, or users start manually taking buckets of water out.

Then, when the smoke clears, you have a bunch of buckets, a hole in your tub, but hey, you got it all done faster.

Are We Inside a Black Hole?

This isn't the first time it's been proposed. We could also consider hypothetical Gravastars.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/james-webb-space-telescope/is-our-universe-trapped-inside-a-black-hole-this-james-webb-space-telescope-discovery-might-blow-your-mind

The idea of Gravastars somewhat complicates the concept of a universe within a universe. Gravistars are thought to contain maximized condensed empty space. You can't get it any smaller. So, how would we survive inside a black hole, a place with significant crunch going on? But I guess density could be relative. You could crunch more, just not so easily, in our own universe.

Concepts beyond me, but always fascinating.

Old shoes; old bike

 

Not sure if I had both of these at the same time, but I remember them both.

Petalodus

ChatGPT, you are getting better. Was this always your purpose? 

Time

Time runs slower for objects moving fast.

Time runs slower for objects closer to a strong gravitational pull.

True things:

Say you have two clocks that keep accurate time. If you leave one at home and take one with you on a round-trip airplane flight, the clock you bring with you on the trip will be behind the one you left at home when you get back.

If you take the same two clocks, put one on top of a mountain and one down by the beach (assuming no weird gravitational pull anomalies based on geographical location), the clock on the beach will be behind the one on the mountain. While that example is extreme, you can replicate scaled results simply by placing one on a table and one on the floor.

The mountain example works for Mount Everest.

https://ascentdescentadventures.com/blog/is-gravity-different-at-the-top-of-everest/
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circles/lesson-3/the-value-of-g

• At sea level, the value of g is approximately 9.806 m/s².
• At the summit of Mount Everest, this value drops to around 9.773 m/s².
• At twice the distance from the center of the Earth, g is approximately 2.45 m/s².

These clocks running slower or faster experiences always depend on two relative points in space. If you are an observer in intergalactic space (between galaxies) and one on Earth, the clocks are running very differently. There is a measurable difference if you are a person on Pluto vs. someone on Earth. It is not the insane levels shown on Interstellar, but it will tick by differently.

The Speed of Light

The last thing that is often tricky to comprehend is how things moving at the speed of light observe time. It has been shown using equations that anything with measurable mass cannot move at precisely light speed. There is a problem with mass and energy when you reach that c speed. However, if you could move at that speed, you could travel anywhere in the universe instantly for yourself.

The math shows that time would stop for a mass moving at the speed of light. If you wanted to travel 500 light-years at instant light speed, stop, and return at the same rate, it would take you 0 seconds, but the Earth would have experienced 1,000 years. Going to instant light speed is currently impossible, let alone changing direction 180 degrees in an instant.

Most of our ambitious plans to send probes to nearby stars use laser energy to speed objects up to insane speeds to shorten the time required to get there. If we could get a probe to 80% of the speed of light, the probe would experience 3/5ths of a year for every 1 year we sat here and waited for it to return the signal.

Fall Mid latitude Aurora

Last year, we were treated to at least two (some accounts say four) different aurora displays. The first one in the Summer was surprising, an event I had never experienced. The skies don't light up quite like the photos below, but you can tell there are reds and purples, and the curtains of charged particles are noticeable as you look skyward.

I set up a long exposure timelapse and captured the video below during the second aurora I witnessed in early October.

A phone photo highlights the color well. Digital devices detect charged particles well.

RIP Dark Energy

Dark energy and dark matter are both used to explain the unexplainable. Dark energy has been touted as reverse gravity, pushing things apart and explaining the Universe's accelerating expansion. This idea is used to describe things we could not understand.

However, a new study demonstrates that differences in gravity can actually explain it.

In short, time in the Milky Way Galaxy (our home galaxy) may run up to 35 percent slower on average. So, while 100 years in our galaxy is 100 years for us, approximately 153 years pass in intergalactic voids. Ramp that up to a billion years, and a whole extra 500 million years happen in the void. This is additional time for expansion, so it happens much faster. 

Mind blown.

References

• https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-blows-dark-energy-theory-132330258.html
• https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647?login=false

Politics and Advertising

This one will be short because it's not a fully formed thought. I've been on YouTube quite a bit over the past month or so, and the number of U.S. presidential campaign ads on videos is very high. You could watch a 10-minute video and see four ads, often two from each candidate. I'm unsure if the content creators can control which ads appear; I've seen right-leaning ads on left-leaning content and vice versa.

According to EMARKETER, 9% of political spending (national, regional, local) will occur on Meta and Google in 2024.

There's nothing like supporting your favorite candidate with a donation, and nearly 10% of it ends up in the pockets of two large American corporations. To be fair, the YouTube content creators also get their cut.

References

1. https://www.emarketer.com/press-releases/2024-political-ad-spending-will-jump-nearly-30-vs-2020/

The Dog and the Truck

 

There is a version of me who would love to own an old Ford Ranger and take it to the grocery store while my dog waits for me. The only problem with this version of the Ranger is that it does not have airbags. The truck didn't see airbags until 1995.