Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagGolden Ratio

spiral aloe vera
Spiral aloe vera with water drops, closeup

Our Physical Universe Is Based on Patterns in Mathematics

In that sense, the underlying basis of our universe is immaterial, not material

Sunny Labh, science writer and “budding astrophysicist,” reminds us that, in our universe, everything from snowflakes to black holes can be described by mathematics: To have a basic understanding of how accurate and loyal this universe is to math, we could visualize our solar system. Back in 1905, scientists discovered that the orbit of Uranus and Neptune was not following Newton’s Gravitational laws, and using mathematical expressions, predicted that there must be some other heavenly body that was influencing their orbit. In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh used the method of comparative plating of astronomical photographs also known as the blink comparator technique. The calculations were made precise to a point where we could even tell where to point our telescope in Read More ›

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Science and research of the universe, spiral galaxy and physical formulas, concept of knowledge and education

Unexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe

For example, brilliant physicist Richard Feynman called 1/137, the fine structure constant, “a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”

In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure of our universe too — and why they are critical does not make obvious sense. ➤ Perhaps the most fundamental and mysterious one is the fine structure constant of the universe: A seemingly harmless, random number with no units or dimensions has cropped up in so many places in physics and seems to control one of the most fundamental interactions in the universe. Its name is the fine-structure constant, and it’s a measure of the strength of the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic force. The current Read More ›

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Illustration of spiral arrangement in nature.  Golden Ratio concept

Quick Facts on IIT (the Leading Theory of Consciousness)

IIT may be part of a trend in science in which emergence and panpsychist theories are slowly replacing materialist and physicalist ones

Consciousness, as a concept, is so easy to experience and so hard to define. Or explain. The most popular current theory of consciousness is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), pioneered by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and championed by Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch. For the purpose of discussing IIT, science writer Mike Hogan works with this definition: Consciousness for purposes of this theory is defined as ‘self-awareness’ or the Central-Identity; the inner-voice that allows your brain to talk to itself, an awareness that ‘you’ exist, the rationalization of your own relevance to that existence, and an awareness of the cause and effect of your actions in regard to yourself and your environment. Mike Hogan, “The Best Available Story of Human Consciousness” at Read More ›