Life, the Universe, and Everything Else: Know your reality.
Life, the Universe, and Everything Else: Know your reality.
We are the most fascinating thing in the universe. It is us. The human being is designed perfectly.
This blog is not meant for those with an untrained eye and not for the insincere. It is also not self-righteous. It focuses on the actual practice, pushing aside conspiracies and history information that don't do anything for real progression and only serve as a distraction for those who are seeking real Truth: which is in the practice and can be attained now, we are not here to waste time. We are separating our Self and reality into parts which is like trying to play each instrument in an orchestra which does nothing but cause chaos. Your very mind is the gateway to real progression: as in you are not your thinking mind, which is governing ALL ASPECTS of your life. You must figure out what you truly are, your real nature -- not the illusory nature -- using sincere contemplation and the process of elimination, WHO you are NOT. Surprise, you do not need meditation which is exactly like riding on a donkey. There is no time for meditation. Get on the jet plane and the method is the Mirror, it is time to see the Self as a Whole unit and not divided into individual and separated parts. Use direct experience as a vehicle for your quest to understand and figure out Absolute Reality. Begin to explore your mind through Psychegnosis here: http://allyouareisheaven.blogspot.com/2014/12/begin-to-explore-your-mind.html
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Heaven in Thought
"Physical reality is happening in your consciousness. But really if you want to look at it, it's really just like a reflection in a mirror. There's really nothing out there, it's all here. But when you look in a glass mirror you think, "Oh something is over there." Well not really. All the light is going to the mirror and it's actually bouncing back to you and that's why you can see your reflection. Not because you are actually over there, it's just that it's a reflection. So if we understand physical reality as a reflection then we'll understand that the only way to allow a change to occur in the reflection is to change ourselves. Because if you see your reflection in a mirror frowning, you don't reach out to the mirror and try to change the expression on the face of the reflection, that makes no sense. The only way to get the reflection to change is by you changing your expression first. Then the reflection has no choice but to change. But you have to understand that that's what physical reality is."
Very simply, the Fibonacci Sequence is a basic sequence found in nature. Among these are plants, the human body, seashells, galaxies, planets, and even in DNA. The sequence is a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers beginning with 0 and 1, as follows:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, .... and so on.
Then from this is a ratio from each successive numbers in the series which quickly converges to approximate 1.618. This ratio is known as Pi / Divine Proportion / Golden Ratio. For example:
3 divided by 2 is 1.5..., 5 divided by 3 is 1.666..., 5 divided by 8 is 1.60..., until the 40th number in the series which completes the Pi in its accurate 15 decimals places from there on: 1.618033988749895
Through mathematical equations that can be applied to both the Fibonacci Sequence and Pi, this leads us to a Fibonacci spiral or a perfect Pi spiral, known as the Golden Spiral (there is a difference between the two because of the approximation early in Fibonacci series leading to Pi). Fibonacci spiral:
Golden spiral:
The Spiral Path in Our Lives
This knowledge is needed to technically understand expansion and transformation of the Ego (please refer to The Real Definition of Ego). We each are Pi. There is an invisible spiral path that we each travel on in order to attain a spiritual awakening, or higher states of consciousness/awareness. My spiral path is different from yours. You need different experiences than mine. That is why we must not imitate people. If we want to experience truth and are seeking it, we will travel up this path. At first you won't see the path and you will be confused as to where to start but in later stages you will begin to metaphorically understand and then feel and see the path, you will understand that there is a course you are taking that nature is leading you on, that you don't know where it is going but something is definitely happening. This path becomes very tangible as you go along. You will see and experience the amazing synchronicities that will appear in your life. This is the path.
The lotus flower contains the Fibonacci sequence/Spiral. It is an important symbol in Buddhism. We can be the lotus flower.
Below is a video that will describe and show visuals of the Fibonacci Sequence, Phi, and spirals. The intention of showing this video is to focus on the math and nature. It is not intended to have you distracted by the conspiracy argument being discussed in the video. When you focus on the conspiracy side of the argument you will miss the entire point of the Fibonacci sequence information! Take what you need for personal growth and don't get distracted by a flipside that has nothing to do with the actual practice. Watch between 12:00 - 20:55.
Ancient Knowledge Pt. 2 Fibonacci Sequence, Golden Ratio, Phi in Nature, DNA, Fingerprint of God
Simulating Matter Distribution Across The CosmosJoe Insley and the HACC team, Argonne National Laboratory.
Imagine being asked to solve a complex algebra problem that is roughly 95 percent variables and only five percent known values. This is a rough analogy perhaps, but it paints a fairly accurate picture of the task faced by modern cosmologists. The prevailing line of thinking says that the universe is mostly composed of dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that have never been directly observed or measured even though the cosmological math insist that they are real. We can see their perceived effects, but we can’t see them directly--and thus we can’t seen the real structure of our own universe.
And so we make models. Sometime next month, the world’s third-fastest supercomputer --known as Mira--will complete tests of its new upgraded software and begin running the largest cosmological simulations ever performed at Argonne National Laboratory. These simulations are massive, taking in huge amounts of data from the latest generation of high-fidelity sky surveys and crunching it into models of the universe that are larger, higher-resolution, and more statistically accurate than any that have come before. When it’s done, scientists should have some amazing high-quality visualizations of the so-called “cosmic web” that connects the universe as we understand it. And they’ll have the best statistical models of the cosmos that cosmologists have ever seen.
THAT’S COOL, BUT WHY DO WE EVEN NEED TO DO THIS?
Mostly, we do this so we can turn the latest batch of sky survey data into something meaningful. Scientists hope these models will answer some pressing questions about dark matter, dark energy, and the overall structure of the cosmos. Particularly vexing are questions about dark energy, which is purportedly driving the accelerating expansion of the universe and--actually, that’s pretty much all we know about it.
“‘Dark energy’ is just a technical shorthand for saying ‘we have no idea what’s going on.’”“Dark energy is confusing because the universe isn’t just expanding--we knew that already--but that expansion is also accelerating, which is very unexpected,” says Salman Habib, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory and the principal investigator for the Multi-Petaflop Sky Simulation at Argonne. “The cause of this acceleration is what people call ‘dark energy,’ but that’s just a technical shorthand for saying ‘we have no idea what’s going on.’”
These simulations are aimed at shedding some light on this expansion happening all around us. But just as importantly, they are aimed at defining just exactly what is not going on. There are a lot of theories about dark energy; it could be a new kind of field in the universe that we’ve yet to discover, or a characteristic of gravity at large scales that we don’t yet understand. It could be some twist on general relativity that we haven’t thought of. The latest crop of high resolution sky survey data should allow the Argonne team to model very subtle effects of dark energy on the cosmos, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the nature of dark energy itself. That in turn should help cosmologists rule out possible explanations--or even entire classes of explanations--as they try to zero in on a more perfect theory for how the universe works.
BUT THE UNIVERSE IS INFINITE. HOW CAN YOU SIMULATE THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE?
We don’t, because we can’t. We can’t really define the limits of the universe for these purposes, and computer models by their nature need a set of constraints. But we can simulate larger and larger chunks of the cosmos thanks to regular leaps in computing power and ever-better sky surveys, and from these increasingly larger and higher-resolution simulations we can extrapolate things about the larger universe. That’s important.
Simulations like the ones being run on Mira have been run before, says Katrin Heitmann, another Argonne National Lab researcher and Habib’s co-investigator on the Mira simulation project, “but we are now getting into a regime where we have to be more and more precise.” The next generation of data coming back from the most sophisticated sky survey instruments astronomers have ever created--like the Dark Energy Camera, for instance, which achieved first light just last month--will contain more data (reflecting billions of observed galaxies) and fewer inherent statistical errors. So while previous simulations like the beautifully articulated Millennium Simulation Project have yielded excellent visualizations and models of the distribution of matter across the cosmos, these new and better data sets require a new and better computing architecture to deal with them.
We can build architectures to deal with these new data sets thanks largely to Moore’s Law. Every three years or so, supercomputing on the whole experiences a roughly ten-fold increase in computing power. That enables supercomputing centers like Argonne to construct machines (or upgrade old ones) that can far outperform what was at the very vanguard of the field just a year or two ago. The 10-petaflop (that’s ten quadrillion calculations per second) Mira system is one such example of this, and it’s Mira that will enable Argonne to run the biggest dark matter simulations ever performed.
WHAT WILL THESE SIMULATIONS LOOK LIKE?
Visually, they’ll look like this:
This visualization comes from some preliminary tests of the new computing architecture, known as HACC (for Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code--more on this later). And what you are looking at is essentially a 3-D block of the universe and the way matter is distributed throughout it, according to the data gleaned from various sky survey sources.
“What you’re looking at is the cosmic web,” Habib says. “You can see clearly these big voids and these filaments and these clumps. What you’re actually seeing is the matter density. The blobby parts are where the density is highest, and that’s where the galaxies are.” You can’t actually see the galaxies here--this is a representation rather than a true optical model. In the smallest clumps there may be no galaxies at all. In the medium-sized clumps, there could be one or more. The largest clumps represent galaxy clusters where thousands of galaxies might reside.
Simulating Matter Distribution Across The Cosmos (Zoomed): Salman Habib
This is a still frame of the cosmos as we currently see it, but the simulations slated for Mira will build something more like a movie of the universe going back billions of years when the universe was much denser--like a million times denser--than it is now. Astronomers can then watch this movie in extremely high detail to see how the universe developed over time, and thus observe the roles dark matter and especially dark energy had in forming our current universe. And, because it is a computer model, they can then play about with the parameters of this virtual universe to test their theories. Hopefully Mira will prove that some theories still stand up. At the very least, it should prove some theories unlikely.
SO IF EACH SIM IS BIGGER AND BETTER THAN THE LAST ONE, WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THIS ONE?
For one, its unprecedented resolution and detail, which we’ve described at length above. But where the future of supercomputer modeling is concerned, the HACC architecture is extremely important as well. HACC was developed from scratch for this project, and it is optimized for Mira. But it was designed so it can be optimized for other supercomputers--and other supercomputer applications--as well, a rarity for a this kind of software.
Why? Every supercomputer is designed a bit differently, and each has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies. Unlike programs written for desktop computers, for instance, software written for supercomputers is generally written for the specific machine it will be used on. It won’t work optimally (or at all) if shifted to a different machine. So each time supercomputers leap forward a generation, an ongoing research project has to write new software for a new machine. “During a decade of code development you may have three different computing architectures come and go,” Habib says. “So that’s the magic of HACC.”
HACC isn’t so much magic as smart design. Its modular construction means part of the underlying software works the same on all machines, so it’s far easier to port it from one machine (or generation of machine) to another. The other piece is a pluggable software module that can be optimized for each particular machine. This drastically reduces the amount of time researchers have to spend waiting on new code development before pushing their research forward. And when a new computer comes online, likeOak Ridge National Labs’ brand-new 20-petaflop Titan, it’s relatively simple for researchers to quickly apply jumps in computing power to their research.
Its customizable, optimizable nature also means HACC can be applied to many research projects rather than just the one for which it was originally designed. And it’s creators want HACC to be hacked. “We’re a small team, so we can’t really exploit all the scientific capabilities of this code ourselves, nor do we necessarily want to,” Habib says of HACC, adding “it’s a kind of code that other teams need to write, not just for cosmology but for other applications.” Habib, Heitmann, and their colleagues see HACC as a community resource--not only in the sense that they plan to share their cosmology results freely with the scientific community, but also in the sense that the software itself can potentially be altered and adapted to any number of modeling applications in other fields.
SO WILL THESE SIMULATIONS SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF THE DARK UNIVERSE?
No. Or at least the possibility is very, very remote. But it will influence some existing theories, send others to the discard heap, and otherwise focus the current line of thinking and future lines of questioning into these mysterious forces. And in the offing, these simulations will help researchers continue to refine the tools they use to leverage the ongoing explosion in supercomputing power into meaningful scientific gains. If Mira solves the mystery of dark energy in the coming months, we’ll be surprised. We’ll be equally surprised if it doesn’t push the field of theoretical cosmology noticeably forward. And if HACC doesn’t help accelerate the pace of supercomputer science at large, we’d be equally stunned.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated that Salman Habib and Katrin Heitmann are researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They are currently employed by Argonne National Laboratory. The story has ben amended to reflect this.
"The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and the intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world ... Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than the intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.
Western rational though is not an innate human characteristic, it is learned and it is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the village of India, they never learned it. They learn something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in others ways is not. That's the power of intuition and experiential wisdom."
- Steve Jobs
Read about the intellect, termed on this blog as the Ego/Ego Mind/Physical Mind/Mind here is a strong suggestion: One School of Thought: Ego Job & Responsibilities. Search this blog to learn more about the Ego. Search this blog to learn how to meditate in order to strengthen your intuition.
Heaven in Thought
"You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating."
- Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life
Read about the rational mind, termed on this blog as the Ego/Ego Mind/Physical Mind/Mind here is a strong suggestion: One School of Thought: Ego Job & Responsibilities. Search this blog to learn more about the Ego.
Heaven in Thought
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
Read about the rational mind, termed on this blog as the Ego/Ego Mind/Physical Mind/Mind here is a strong suggestion: One School of Thought: Ego Job & Responsibilities. Search this blog to learn more about the Ego.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Heaven in Thought
"Meditate profoundly, that the secret of things unseen may be revealed unto you, that you may inhale the sweetness of a spiritual and imperishable fragrance, and that you may acknowledge the truth ..."
- Baha'u'llah, Kitab-i-Iqan, p.8
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Heaven in Thought
"For the roads to God [or Source / All That Is /etc.] are as many as human beings [said our teacher]."
- Irina Tweedie, Sufi spiritual teacher
Monday, October 22, 2012
Heaven in Thought
"The elephant of the mind wandering wildly
Is to be securely bound with the rope of mindfulness
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
This wonderful video is a visual 'walk-through' from Earth to the outer edges of the universe in light time.This is the reality. Perhaps from this perspective can we begin to see the immense fascination of what exactly we are. Perhaps from this perspective can we remedy our unhealthy minds -- the ego (Because of our ignorance the human mind or ego's job and responsibilities wrongly inflates, creating illusions). Perhaps from this perspective can we be humbled by our own ignorant egos that deceive us into thinking that we know how to live and what life is all about. Being humbled by our own ignorant egos into respecting what we are and respecting others, respecting things, respecting the power of life. Being humbled into beginning to understand what is real and what are illusions in our very reality. Ask yourself: If you were suddenly taken out into deep space, what would you be without your possessions and familial relations and societal standing? The ignorant ego crumbles and disintegrates. We must consistently practice this reality to evolve us as humans, to crush our false egos so that we may understand how to really live. And from there will be the beginning of the real and incontrovertible journey in reaching our highest potential of what we actually are.
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams
Search this blog to learn more and be aware of your own Ego.
Universe: Journey from Earth to the Edge of the Cosmos
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Heaven in Thought
"To tell a child to believe in God is nonsense, utter nonsense -- not that God does not exist, but because the child has not yet felt the thirst, the desire, the longing. He is not yet ready to go in search of the truth, the ultimate truth of life. He is not yet mature enough to inquire into the reality of God ...
Now the longing will never arise, because before the question has taken possession of his soul, the answer has already been supplied. Before he was hungry, the food has been forced into his being. Now, without hunger, this forced food cannot be digested."
Despite what it looks like to the ignorant eye, T'ai Chi takes massive amounts of concentrated focus. It clears the mind. Learn from Master Champion David-Dorian Ross, "Known as the ultimate workout in China, T'ai Chi is a more physically charged form of energy practice that resembles martial arts in slow motion and will give you the benefits of weight training, aerobics or sports conditioning while exercising your mental-spiritual strength at the same time. You'll see more balance in the way you move, think and feel every day."
Thanks to Max for suggesting this. Pay particular attention to the golf ball metaphor and tie it in with the popular assertion that we only use 10% of our brains, because in actuality it has to do with awakening our consciousness, allowing us to understand what we are, remembering all of our past lives and so on. Click on related links below from previous blog posts which explains in details certain subjects discussed in the documentary. To put it in an awesome nutshell .....
Ancient Knowledge Pt. 1 Sacred Geometry, Cymatics, Illusion of Reality (Rare Footage)
Tuning In is a comparative documentary about the most important and influential spirit channelers/multidimensional beings channelers in the USA. It is "the result of 10 years of inquiry into the phenomenon of spirit channeling by filmmaker David Thomas". These channelers are: Lee Carroll - Kryon, John Cali - Chief Joseph, Shawn Randall - Torah, Darryl Anka - Bashar, Geoffrey Hoppe - Tobias, and Wendy Kennedy - Pleiadian Collective. I have already discussed one of the channelers, Darryl Anka (who channels 'Bashar'), in several of my posts, you can click below the video for all related links including the introduction, which is very important to see if you really want to understand Tuning In. What is most interesting about this documentary is that it exposes the similarities of the messages being channeled. The only difference is that each channeler explains things in their own individual way and they also apply different names to certain phenomena. The following video is part 1 of 9 parts. You can easily locate parts 2 - 9 in the suggested videos on the side bar. Enjoy. For another comparison source, this is a great website: http://iasos.com/metaphys/
An interesting multidimensional being called Bashar is channeled via Darryl Anka, an American (part Lebanese) living in Los Angeles. This is not exactly what you might have pictured, people on street rampage, screaming and yelling "the aliens have landed!" ... No. Far from that. In fact there have been quite a large number of listeners from all walks of life. What is most intriguing is that a wealth of information on a wide range of topics are being made available and even more intriguing is that their advice actually work! Bashar gives lectures and takes live questions from audiences attending. And by the way, the questions can be ANYTHING from where the pyramids came from to how to win the lottery to who your guardian angels are and so on. Every single question thrown is responded with quick and sophisticated answers. If this doesn't blow your mind, then nothing will. Their civilization, in the star cluster called Pleiades, is 3,000 years ahead of ours. You can view the star cluster at night with your naked eye. If you would like to learn more, here is the introduction to Bashar in one of my earliest posts: Introduction to Bashar
New particle fits description of elusive Higgs boson, scientists say
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 4, 2012 -- Updated 0947 GMT (1747 HKT) |
The scientists outlined their final analysis based on research and particle collisions using the Fermilab Tevatron collider near Batavia, Illinois.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Finding the Higgs boson would help explain the origin of mass
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," scientist says
The announcement is based on data from the Large Hadron Collider
Researchers stress the preliminary nature of the results
(CNN) -- Scientists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new particle whose characteristics match those of the Higgs boson, the most sought-after particle in physics, which could help unlock some of the universe's deepest secrets.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe," Heuer said.
Announcements by scientists about their analysis of data generated by trillions of particle collisions in the LHC, which is located beneath the Alps, drew avid applause at an eagerly awaited seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
Finding the Higgs boson would help explain the origin of mass, one of the open questions in physicists' current understanding of the way the universe works.
The researchers stressed the preliminary nature of the results they were announcing Wednesday.
"A more complete picture of today's observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data," the nuclear research organization, known as CERN, said in its statement.
But despite the words of caution, the scientists' mood and many of their comments were brimming with enthusiasm about the potential scope of what they had discovered.
"It's hard not to get excited by these results," said Sergio Bertolucci, the research director at CERN.
The announcements by the CERN researchers come two days after scientists in Illinois said they had crept closer to proving the existence of the Higgs boson but had been unable to reach a definitive conclusion.
The U.S.-based scientists outlined their final analysis based on more than 10 years of research and 500 trillion particle collisions using the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab Tevatron collider near Batavia, Illinois, whose budgetary woes shut it down last year.
They passed the baton onto their counterparts using the LHC, which is much more powerful than the Tevatron.
Located 328 feet underneath the border of France and Switzerland, the LHC cost $10 billion and has been sending particles smashing together in 17-mile tunnel for the past 18 months.
High speed proton collisions generate a range of even smaller particles that scientists have been sifting through in search of a signal in the data suggesting the existence of the Higgs boson.
The elusive particle is part of a theory first proposed by physicist Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s to explain how particles obtain mass.
The theory proposes that a so-called Higgs energy field exists everywhere in the universe. As particles zoom around in this field, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster around the particles in varying numbers.
Imagine the universe like a party. Relatively unknown guests at the party can pass quickly through the room unnoticed; more popular guests will attract groups of people (the Higgs bosons) who will then slow their movement through the room.
The speed of particles moving through the Higgs field works much in the same way. Certain particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons -- and the more Higgs bosons a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.
While finding the Higgs boson won't tell us everything we need to know about how the universe works, it will fill in a huge hole in the Standard Model that has existed for more than 50 years, according to experts.
"The Higgs boson is the last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe," Martin Archer, a physicist at Imperial College in London, told CNN.
CNN's Jethro Mullen, Nick Thompson and Atika Shubert contributed to this report.
In the News: Hidden Portals in Earth's Magnetic Field
Hidden Portals in Earth's Magnetic Fieldby Dr. Tony PhillipsHuntsville AL (SPX) Jul 03, 2012
A NASA-sponsored researcher at the University of Iowa has developed a way for spacecraft to hunt down hidden magnetic portals in the vicinity of Earth. These gateways link the magnetic field of our planet to that of the sun, setting the stage for stormy space weather. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will study these portals. Credit: Science@NASA. To view the video "Hidden Magnetic Portals Around Earth" please go here .
A favorite theme of science fiction is "the portal" - an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed ... It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find them.
"We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions," explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa. "They're places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun's atmosphere 93 million miles away."
Observations by NASA's THEMIS spacecraft and Europe's Cluster probes suggest that these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day. They're typically located a few tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth where the geomagnetic field meets the onrushing solar wind.
Most portals are small and short-lived; others are yawning, vast, and sustained. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth's upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras.
NASA is planning a mission called "MMS," short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, due to launch in 2014, to study the phenomenon. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four spacecraft of MMS will spread out in Earth's magnetosphere and surround the portals to observe how they work.
Just one problem: Finding them. Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable, and elusive. They open and close without warning "and there are no signposts to guide us in," notes Scudder.
Actually, there are signposts, and Scudder has found them.
Portals form via the process of magnetic reconnection. Mingling lines of magnetic force from the sun and Earth criss-cross and join to create the openings. "X-points" are where the criss-cross takes place. The sudden joining of magnetic fields can propel jets of charged particles from the X-point, creating an "electron diffusion region."
To learn how to pinpoint these events, Scudder looked at data from a space probe that orbited Earth more than 10 years ago.
"In the late 1990s, NASA's Polar spacecraft spent years in Earth's magnetosphere," explains Scudder, "and it encountered many X-points during its mission." Because Polar carried sensors similar to those of MMS, Scudder decided to see how an X-point looked to Polar.
"Using Polar data, we have found five simple combinations of magnetic field and energetic particle measurements that tell us when we've come across an X-point or an electron diffusion region. A single spacecraft, properly instrumented, can make these measurements."
This means that single member of the MMS constellation using the diagnostics can find a portal and alert other members of the constellation. Mission planners long thought that MMS might have to spend a year or so learning to find portals before it could study them. Scudder's work short cuts the process, allowing MMS to get to work without delay.
It's a shortcut worthy of the best portals of fiction, only this time the portals are real. And with the new "signposts" we know how to find them.
