The Biologian: electro-magnetism

Monday, September 5, 2011

Science Meditation

I had a friend recently say that, "Creativity is the combining of ideas in a new way." (Jamie Riley paraphrase) I think he's on to something there. Creativity is the game "Apples to Apples"--making new connections between disparate ideas.

What I'd like to do is consider how two ideas--meditation and science literacy--might intersect. Let me give a greenhorn's understanding of some meditation practices and then discuss how science can fit hand in glove with your own practice of meditation.

First, a story on how meditation saved my butt!!!

I was at a local meditation event listening to a guided meditation and my mind unprompted went where it often goes in these situations--to imagining the invisible electro-magnetic/atomic world around me. I was imagining the atoms around the room bustle in Brownian motion, interact with photons, change quantum states, vibrate synchronistically through sound, circulate around the room in zyphers of wind and conviction currents, etc...and...suddenly...O SH%#!!! I forgot to turn off a heating plate at my job at a chemistry lab!!! Luckily I was able to call over and have it turned off, but I was so scared since I had it on for a few hours!! Yikes! Meditation saved my butt! haha!

Ok, back to an over view of meditation so we can see how science meditation can fit in!

Types of meditations (as I understand it)

Mind Scape Meditation

Idea/mantra

Focusing deeply on a central thought. Learning about it. Thinking through it. Applying it. Making it real within your mind. Reveling in it.

Person

Meditate on a person you truly admire. Why do you admire them? What can you learn from them? How can you honor their lives with your life?

Object

Symbolism
Essence
Function

Feeling

Become self aware. Not necessarily judging what you're mind is feeling, just only observing, analyzing. Becoming mindful of your brain--the vast expanse of neural experiences within.

Problem solving

Taking time to work through a problem--reviewing past actions, considering future options.

Thankfulness

Counting one's blessings.

Bodyscape

Become aware of your body

What is your body feeling? Pain? Boredom? Fatigue? Why? Analyze, don't judge.

Motion

Walk
Be mindful of the motion, the muscles, the action, the intention.

Surroundings

Become aware of your senses.

What sounds do you hear around you? See? Feel?
For a challenge, see if you can observe more than one occurrence at a time. Can you do three? It's supposed to not really be possible to pay attention to three things with any real level of depth.

Now, within these three realms of focus--the mind, the body, the world around us--how can the teachings of science inform and empower our meditation? My understanding of meditation centers around awareness, mindfulness and science has empowered human awareness to a degree that former generations could not have comprehended--so revel in it! Become mindful of the universe happening around you right now!

Mind

Consider the crackle of electric impulses within your mind--100 billion neurons buzzing, humming, communicating, resting, their amoeboid arms stretching out to form connections totaling 100 trillion
Consider the micro ocean of neurotransmitters chemically setting into motion the thoughts, sensation and actions of the body--just slight parts per billion that manifest huges changes

Body

Go from head to toe considering all the functions that are taking place in your body

Blood

Red blood cell oxygenation
White blood cells capturing invaders and consuming dead or defunct cells
Heart and its molecular muscle motors reacting to the power of ATP
Lungs filling, oxygenating, dispursing CO2

Liver, kidneys, pancreas, gall bladder, intestines, muscles and on and on!!!

Surroundings

Consider sound. Become mindful of the sources of the sounds around you. Consider the waves emanating from the source--the compression pulses of wave in the form of concentric circles growing larger and then reflecting and bouncing off the other objects in the wall. Much like a 3-D version of the surface of a pool of water that has been disturbed. Become aware of how that sound hits the curves and bowl of your ear, traveling down your ear canal to the ear drum, the three ear bones, the inner ear, the cochlea, the fluid and hairs within the cochlea, the impulses traveling from ear to brain, etc.

The Electromagnetic world around you

The process of seeing
The invisible spectrum

I have benefited greatly from these lectures by Dr. Feynman and really do hope you'll click on this link if for no other reason that to see that they exist. Feynman has a brilliant way of bringing the invisible reality to life.: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+feynman+fun+to+imagine&aq=f

Neutrinos

There are billions of neutrinos flowing through our body every second flowing from the Sun.

Geographic location

Consider the forces that created the land around you. Reverse, in your mind, time to undo the weathering forces, plate tectonics, igneous forces, etc.

Elemental history

Consider the history of the elements around you. Their age in billions of years. Their star ancestry.

Evolution

If you're walking, consider an animal. In your mind go through their evolution history, the epochs, bio-geography, the predators and prey its ancestors encountered.

Solar Power

Become mindful of how a seething ball of magnetized gas 93 million miles away is heating itself to astronomical degrees--27 million in the core-- by the crush of gravity as new heavier elements are created and releasing prodigious amounts of energy. Electron motion becomes wavicle photons that travel through a void of space to a spinning ball held in rotation by the gravitational bending of space time. This energy causes photosynesis, which powers plants, which power the animals we see and ourselves. Everything is solar powered.

Space

See through the Earth and the physical features around you. See in your minds eye the position of the Sun, the moon, the stars through the atmosphere and through the Earth. See the core of the Earth, the upside down walking of people on the other side of the Earth, consider the distances of how far they are, imagine birds flying upside down, water being pulled "up", kangaroos hopping upside down in Ausatralia, the thousands of people in the air in planes being ferried from place to place, etc.

So, why bother? Why spend the time? Why expend the energy?

To me that's almost like asking, "Why love?" To connect. To realize. To become one. To stretch. To unbound yourself.

"The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality--we are connected; not in the trivial ways that Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways." --Carl Sagan

Later note: There are two main kinds of meditation--focused attention and open monitoring. Focused attention finds holds an object in conscious attention. Open monitoring allows the mind and senses to wander, allowing thoughts and perceptions to come and go as they will. Open monitoring with science might include being in nature and simply soaking up the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations.

Monday, April 25, 2011

How You See - Light Interacting with Matter

"There's this tremendous mess of waves all over in space, which is the light bouncing around the room and going from one thing to the other. And it's all really there! But you gotta stop and think about it--about the complexity to really get the pleasure." --Richard Feynman

I love to hear Feynman talk about the intellectual pleasure that contemplating reality can bring. He actually has a book by the title of "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". With that taste and thirst for the pleasure of the true and real let's delve into what the light you're reading this blog is all about. :)

First, we have to understand something about atoms to understand something about light. (Before I proceed know that I am very open to being corrected! I am not an expert on quantum electrodynamics. I'm just someone who's curious and likes to share! I could be wrong about this stuff and want you to let me know!) As you know, electrons orbit around the nucleus of an atom within shells, they're 'quantized'. Why? Why not just any where they want to be? (We could also ask why they don't just crash into the nucleus!) Well, at least in analogy, because the areas in between the shells cause some what of an interference pattern that pushes the electrons back into these pockets of copacetic vibrations of waves. It's a lot like harmonics on a guitar.

The dots you're seeing are points at which you can put your finger while it is vibrating and cause all other frequencies of vibrations to be canceled thus only leaving that pitch.

Notice the nodes:

It's these shells that are vitally important to understanding how light interacts with matter and makes seeing possible.

How is light made? One way is that energetic atoms slam into each other so hard that the electrons bounce around between shells (making a quantum leap) and this jostling emits energy in the form of photons. How? Well, when electrons go down an electron shell that lost energy just can't disappear so it gets emitted as a photon. The bigger the drop the more energetic the photon.

So, how is it that we see things? Meaning, how is it that light is reflected? What happens when light hits material?

Reflection:

Chew on this. When you're outside during the day the light that you're seeing with traveled 93 million miles from a seething cauldron of energy created by atoms fusing. The photon strikes an atom causing an electron to jump up a shell (multiple shells more likely) then that electron nearly instantly descends back down to ground state emitting another photon of equal or lesser value energy. This is flawed way of thinking about it, but in my mind I almost see atoms breathing in photons (puffing up as its electrons rotate further out) and then breathing them out.
Metallic Substances: Metals are special for a number of reasons; one of which is that they share electrons. This being the case they easily jump up a shell when a photon hits them and then they are also easily able to drop back down. Metal is shiny because those electrons just bounce right off that sea of electrons that are shared by the atoms.
Florescence/Phosphorescence: A photon hits, pops an electron up a shell by exciting it, it then descends, but not as much as it was elevated and emits a lower energy wave (like neat neon glowing colors under a black light[which is UV]).

Neat black light tattoos.

Absorption

Color: How do we explain things having different colors? Mostly from absorption. Say for example white light hits a green object. It's green because all the other spectra are absorbed (yellow, red, blue, purple, etc) and only green light is reflected. So, what happens to the other spectra? If my understanding is correct it's this: a photon hits an object, an electron becomes excited and pops up a shell. Instead of falling down and reflecting the same wave length light it slowly comes down slowly, intermediate shell by intermediate shell. This very well may emit something of lesser energy like infrared that then warms up the material. (Some of this is educated speculation since there's such a dearth of easily accessible in depth explanations out there. Please help.)

Solar power - Photon hits a metal, an electron pops up to an elevated state and is then transfered as a current.

Transmittance

How does light go through material? The photon hits an electron but does not have enough energy to get the electron up to another shell and therefore the photon keeps on moving in the same direction. We still know that the photon is interacting with the electron, though, since the speed of light is slowed down through material (the speed of light is only constant in a vacuum). Normally light travels at something like 671,000,000 miles per hour, but scientists have gotten light to go as slow as 38 miles per hour going through extremely cold super-atomic clouds.

Sun screen: Is a great example of partial absorbance. Visible light isn't high enough energy to get the electron to jump to the next shell (so it appears clear), but UV light is and is therefore absorbed!

Polarization: It's these interactions that can affect the orientation of the oscillation of the photons and cause them to get directed into one direction or spin.

Water color filtration: Why is it that red light doesn't travel very far in water? Why is water blue? I still need clarification on this, but we're basically talking about specific partial absorbance. If my understanding of light attenuation through water is correct, the photon isn't just interacting with the electron as a independent agent, but as a molecule. Molecules have a natural vibrational frequency that light can harmonize with. Something like this perhaps: a photon hits an electron, that photon causes the electron that is held in place by electro-static forces to vibrate the entire molecule. The likelihood of the photon to strike the electron/molecule at the right place to resonate is what causes the partial absorbance. This website explains the possible vibrations pretty well.