Day 936 – Cygnus Flies Alone

Saturday, August 12, 2023

I survived my birthday and am now in post-pondering: “What am I going to do with my life?” etc.

It’s about time I figure that question out, but there are other things that need pondering too.

For example, The Iowa State Fair made a sculpture of Caitlin Clark out of butter – “Is it life size?”

Scientists at the Hadron Collider are on the verge of discovering a fifth source of .. of … what? Let’s see, there’s gravity and three others…damn. Here’s the problem – muons aren’t behaving the way the Standard Model says they should. Therefore, it might be that some other force – yeah, that’s the term I was looking for. There might be another force in the universe that is causing this. 

But then again, I thought the Standard Model was being replaced by a better explanation using octagonal math, that is being worked on by Nichol Furey (ie Chol Furey). I stand corrected. According to her website, she is working on  the following:

…

MOTIVATION FOR MY RESEARCH

The standard model of particle physics is the result of decades of collaboration, which began roughly in the 1930s, and converged finally on its current state in 1979, [1]. It is a perfected set of rules that tells us how the known fundamental particles behave. In the decades since 1979, the standard model has seen little in the way of alterations, and yet has survived rigorous experimental testing, nearly completely unscathed.

However, despite its long string of victories, the standard model is in some ways hollow, or incomplete. Roughly speaking, we know how to use the model to make predictions, but we do not know why it is the way it is.

To be more explicit, we do not know why the standard model is based on the gauge group SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)/Z_6, and not some other gauge group. Even given that gauge group, the standard model does not specify why it uses such a long, apparently arbitrary, list of particles to represent that group. The standard model does not explain why its quarks and leptons are organized into three generations. It does not explain why SU(2) weak isospin acts only on left-handed states. These questions, and others, have gone unanswered now for nearly 40 years.

The main goal of my work is to try to answer questions like these.

…

from: https://www.furey.space

To be honest I have not considered the gauge group SU(3)… before.

I wish Nichol well on her work. Btw she also plays the accordion and likes martial arts fighting. So if I say she can kick your ass, I mean that literally.

But Back To Butter (BTB – is not a K-Pop group), I knew from research my PhD math daughter had done a few years ago in Minnesota that they fashioned the heads of that year’s Butter Queen in … you guessed it – butter! But whole figures? Of sports athletes? This led me to wondering if Iowa and Minnesota have a long seething state fair butter challenge going on. I don’t know.

Tonight, or to be more exact, early this morning, I went out to see the Perseids Meteor Shower. I have always been disappointed by this event. Mainly, because of my high expectations. This based on Uncle Bill saying years ago that his son and a friend were hiking somewhere one night and saw hundreds of meteors. I envisions fire from the sky, almost, raining down in a glorious shower of light. I’ve never really gotten that vision out of my head, and so, the paltry one or two I see an hour is, well, disappointing. I do remember standing on a rooftop in a valley in new Jersey and seeing a few more than that. 

Given the insistence of my neighbors to have on lights all night, and the kindness of the community organization to insist on putting a street light near the road one house up despite my saying I didn’t want it and being besieged by concerned mothers that their little darling couldn’t walk in the dark to the bus stop even though they don’t walk in the dark and are driven there didn’t seem to matter. Nor the fact that it is never dark when the bus comes. Close but not dark, besides there are all the neighbors yard lights. But all that included means that The Milky Way has disappeared. 

It’s easy to find the Milky Way because the constellation Cygnus The Swan can be clearly seen in the night sky. That’s all that is left of the Milky Way. Cygnus looks like the top of a cross. There’s a few other stars that make up its neck, but they are fainter. The cross would be her tail feathers. She flies down the Milky Way. If you find the “W” that is Cassiopeia, Cygnus will be to the west (ie left as you face Cassiopeia).

I miss The Milky Way. We can see it when we go to Maine, but otherwise it is gone. Which is too bad because that means that many will probably never see it. It is a grounding mechanism. It connects us to a larger world. It gives us wonder and joy.

As I watched the sky and tried to find a place where cast shadows blocked most of the most egregious light sources I heard the last hurrahs of some young people staying up late and I heard the metronomic sounds of frogs down the way in what remains of the woods and the creek. 

I had seen two meteors streak pretty much horizontally. There were no skippers, Nor was there a big green one that I saw one time that looked like a giant flat rock thrown on the top of our atmosphere, I said to myself, “One more, and I’ll call it quits.” 

Then between the end peak of the house and the rising top of the pear tree a giant wide white streak – straight down.

Time to call it a night. (or morning.)

ps In an earlier post I mentioned Tom Van Sant’s dragon kite and a video of it. I can’t find the original video but here is a later movie and my updated comments:

Here’s an updated color movie of Tom’s kite. I stand corrected on the drogue. Either my memory is faulty or he changed some of the design. (Couldn’t be me? Naw.)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6RiTIEgLDIc