Christopher Golde

Blindsight

The brain contains several mechanisms involved in vision. Consider two systems in the brain which evolved at different times. The first that evolved is more primitive and resembles the visual system of animals such as fish and frogs.


The second to evolve is more complex and is possessed by mammals. The second system seems to be the one that is responsible for our ability to perceive the world around us and the first system is devoted mainly to controlling eye movements and orienting our attention to sudden movements in our periphery.


Patients with blindsight have damage to the second, "mammalian" visual system (the visual cortex of the brain and some of the nerve fibers that bring information to it from the eyes).


This phenomenon shows how, after the more complex visual system is damaged, people can use the primitive visual system of their brains to guide hand movements towards an object even though they can't see what they are reaching for. Hence, visual information can control behavior without producing a conscioussensation.


This ability of those with blindsight to see objects that they are unconscious of suggests that consciousness is not a general property of all parts of the brain; yet it suggests that only certain parts of the brain play a special role in consciousness.

Blindsight patients show awareness of single visual features, such as edges and motion, but cannot gain a holistic visual percept. This suggests that perceptual awareness is modular and that—in sighted individuals—there is a "binding process that unifies all information into a whole percept", which is interrupted in patients with such conditions as blindsight and visual agnosia.


Therefore, object identification and object recognition are thought to be separate process and occur in different areas of the brain, working independently from one another. The modular theory of object perception and integration would account for the "hidden perception" experienced in blindsight patients.


Research has shown that visual stimuli with the single visual features of sharp borders, sharp onset/offset times, motion, and low spatial frequency contribute to, but are not strictly necessary for, an object's salience in blindsight.

Deep Impact

On the 12th January 2005’The Deep Impact’ spacecraft lifted off on-time aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 1:47:08.574 p.m. EST. Deep Impact had successfully begun its mission to investigate Comet Tempel 1.

 
On July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft arrives at Comet Tempel 1 to impact it with a 370-kg (~820-lbs) mass. On impact, the crater produced is expected to range in size from that of a house to that of a football stadium, and two to fourteen stories deep. Ice and dust debris is ejected from the crater revealing fresh material beneath. Sunlight reflecting off the ejected material provides a dramatic brightening that fades slowly as the debris dissipates into space or falls back onto the comet. Images from cameras and a spectrometer are sent to Earth covering the approach, the impact and its aftermath. The effects of the collision with the comet will also be observable from certain locations on Earth and in some cases with smaller telescopes.

 
The data will be analyzed and combined with that of other NASA and international comet missions. Results from these missions will lead to a better understanding of both the solar system's formation and implications of comets colliding with Earth.

Australia on the move

The Earth's surface is broken into thin jigsaw-like pieces called tectonic plates. The Australian continent is actually part of the Indian-Australian plate.  


 Earthquakes are most common at plate boundaries where moving tectonic plates meet. Very large earthquakes usually happen where two plates are colliding, causing large amounts of rock stress to build up rapidly.


Understanding plate motion helps us understand our region's earthquake patterns. The Indian-Australian Plate is slowly moving, carrying the continent with it. When Australia moves, Geoscience Australia measures which way and how fast! Sixteen Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are located across Australian territory, including three receivers at Australia's Antarctic bases, one on Cocos Island and one on Macquarie Island south of New Zealand.


Each receiver measures horizontal and vertical movement to an accuracy of one millimetre! These receivers show that Australia is actually moving north east at 73 mm per year. The receivers also measure how fast Antarctica is moving away from Australia, continuing the separation of these two continents that began over 100 million years ago when dinosaurs walked the Earth.



Note: The information included in this section has been taken and edited from various on-line and hard copy journals. Although, the assembling of the information and its presentation is original the content is not. 

It has been provided to offer the reader information about aspects of this novel that might not be commonly known. Some of the information is factual and some theoretical and every attempt has been made by the writer to identify for the reader the difference.

Scientific factual evidence provided is summarized and condensed to offer the reader a brief explanation and it has been researched to be as accurate a depiction of the subject as possible.

Christopher will continue to add to this section so keep watching.

   Facts and Definitions 2

Dark Matter

Taking into account the amount of gravity required to hold our galaxy together and stop everything from flying off into open space it is a fact that 99% of each galaxy comprises of a ‘dark matter’ or should we say unknown substance as we can only find (or see one percent of the required mass). If we then take into account all those possible hard elements that could be there but we cannot see then we can still only account for 10% of the required mass. So it seems about 90% of our universe is made up of what we call ‘dark matter’ and or ‘dark energy’. One scientific theory touted is that the missing mass is evidence of the existence of other dimensions of our own universe which are not visible to ourselves but do contribute to the overall totality of a complete universe.

Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642 (by the Julian calendar then in use; or January 4, 1643 by the current Gregorian calendar) in Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England. He was born the same year Galileo died. Newton is clearly the most influential scientist who ever lived. His accomplishments in mathematics, optics, and physics laid the foundations for modern science and revolutionized the world.

Newton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge where he lived from 1661 to 1696. During this period he produced the bulk of his work on mathematics. In 1696 he was appointed Master of the Royal Mint, and moved to London, where he resided until his death.

As mathematician, Newton invented integral calculus, and jointly with Leibnitz, differential calculus. He also calculated a formula for finding the velocity of sound in a gas which was later corrected by Laplace.

Newton made a huge impact on theoretical astronomy. He defined the laws of motion and universal gravitation which he used to predict precisely the motions of stars, and the planets around the sun. Using his discoveries in optics Newton constructed the first reflecting telescope.

Of these Cambridge years, in which Newton was at the height of his creative power, he singled out 1665-1666 (spent largely in Lincolnshire because of plague in Cambridge) as "the prime of my age for invention". During two to three years of intense mental effort he prepared Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) commonly known as the Principia, although this was not published until 1687.

From time to time, a man arises like a bubble from the deep whose work changes the course of human thought pointing to the true path away from the trackless desert. Such a man was born in Lincolnshire, England in 1642. There entered the world one of the strangest and most baffling figures in the history of human thought. Einstein remarked that Newton was a more significant figure than his own mastery makes of him, since he was placed by fate at the turning point of the world’s intellectual development. Isaac Newton was to be the starburst of the Enlightenment.

God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreters, be thereby manifested to the world.

When John completed the book of Revelation, true prophecy ceased. This was the age of the prophecy expositor which was a comparable calling. Newton stated in his observations that previous interpreters had given prophecy a bad name by attempting to foretell the future. The design of God was much different. He gave the prophecies, not to gratify the curiosity of man to know the future, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event. (John 13:19). Then the God who saw all from the beginning would receive the glory and men’s faith would increase.

The need for chronological precision led Newton into another discipline, astronomy. In this he had no peer. He determined ancient dates such as Christ’s birth and Artaxerxe’s decree to rebuild Jerusalem by measuring the precession of equinoxes  and locating eclipses, comets and natural disasters which were often  mentioned in ancient history. His Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended when joined with his history of empires and churches since Daniel, forms one complete universal history of mankind, both sacred and profane since creation.

He developed a novel dictionary of prophetic symbols like the little horn, the seals and the candlesticks that demonstrated every notable physical and religious occurrence conformed exactly to the possible meanings of each prophetic verse. There was nothing left over, no random words still unexplained and no images were superfluous. He continued his scientific approach until he felt the system was complete and flawless.

 

 

Numbers

Before primitive man had grasped the concept of numbers, the written word or even speech, he was able to count. This was important for various reasons, including keeping track of food supplies, sending messages, trading between villages or even keeping track of how many animals were in a herd. There were various ways in which this was done. However, whether these primitive people realised it or not, the underlying principle behind their methods of counting was one-to-one correspondence. This correspondence between the objects being counting and their counting aid, enabled primitive man to make the first important steps towards an abstract counting system.

Over time and at varying places around the world different methods for counting arose. With the use of counting aids such as collections of pebbles, tally sticks and knotted strings, primitive people were able to count and keep records.  However, all around the world the use of the hand was common as a way of representing numbers. In some cases, such body counting was extended to counting with other parts of the body. There were some cultures that used points over the entire body to aid in counting.

Special Theory of Relativity

Relativity explains the way an object appears to be relative to an observer. You can understand this if you consider yourself in a car, observing other cars. Imagine you are observing a car travelling at 20km/h. If your car is stationary, then the other car's speed relative to you is 20 km/h. However if you are travelling alongside the car also doing 20 km/h, then the other car seems to be stationary compared to you. Its speed relative to you is zero! (Ever been at the traffic lights when another car has moved away and you thought you were rolling backwards?)

Einstein developed the special theory of relativity by thinking about travelling alongside a light beam at the same speed as the light. He determined that the speed of light is constant, no matter what you are doing or how fast you are travelling, light always travels through empty space at 'the speed of light'. This means that time and length are not absolute, but depend on the relative motion of the object and the observer. If you are stationary, an object that is moving seems to get shorter and heavier, and time slows down for the object. In everyday situations, the slight changes are immeasurable, but they become obvious as the speed increases towards the speed of light. As the object travels closer to the speed of light, the length of the object appears closer to zero. Its height stays the same unless it moves up or down — the contraction only happens in the direction of movement. However if you are travelling at the same speed as the object, then everything looks normal! The 'contraction' of moving objects is the contraction of space itself not the object within space.

In moving through space, time changes. Space and time are two parts of one whole called spacetime. If you stand still, you are only moving through time. If you move at the speed of light, you move through space only and not through time — time stands still. In between, you move partly through one and partly through the other!

So the famous twin trip example: Twin A travels round the world at fast pace in a space ship while the twin B stands still. When twin A returns, (s)he will be younger than twin B. Twin B has moved only through time, twin A has moved partly through space and only partly through time — less time than the twin who stayed still.

The Special theory of relativity also led to the most famous equation which first appeared in an article by Einstein in 1907. There is a fundamental relationship between rest energy and mass according to the equation E = mc2 where E is the rest energy of an object, m is the mass of the object and c is the velocity of light. The mass of something is a measure of the energy within it; matter and energy are interchangeable, and a small amount of mass is made up of a large amount of energy.

In the 1930s nuclear fission was discovered. This gave a way to release the energy stored in the nuclei of atoms, and the possibility of nuclear weapons was realised.