Parsecs

Deep space — Some of those little dots are galaxies the size of our Milky Way

A parsec is a convenient astronomical unit equal to about 3.26 light years ... and a light year is the distance that light travels in a year ... nearly 6 trillion miles. Now the universe is more than 92 million-light years (28.2 million parsecs) across ... or 46 million light years in radius ... yet the universe is only about 15 million years old. So there is a bit of a disconnect here ... meaning matter in the universe must have been moving faster than the speed of light?

Einstein resolved this dilemma by positing the universe itself is like a gigantic rubbery fabric that is being stretched ... which means that its fast-moving components ... particularly near its edges appear to be moving faster than the speed of light ... but not really ... see: Space.com Explanation for a more scientific explanation.

Einstein’s logic mostly works ... but is it true? Some scientists believe that time itself is slowing down ... which, because it appears as a squared denominator in the formula f or acceleration  ... would account for the apparent speeding up of distant galaxies ... see: Curiosity.com Write-up.

Since I am no Einstein, I have no idea who is correct. But I do know that our understanding of such things seems to undergo a paradigm shift about every hundred years or so ... so such a shift might now be underway.

Stay tuned ...

Sidebar: If time is indeed slowing down, then gravity everywhere would be increasing as per above logic ... another possible path to an explanation for our dinosaurs dying off ... see: Pterosaurs (Updated).

Sapient Window (Update)

"Sapient window" is a term I have used before to describe the time period when intelligent beings on a planet have the knowledge base to realize the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe and the scientific wherewithal to search for it ...  see: Sapient Window. In this  referenced link I estimate that, here on Earth we are now in our sapient window ... having been so for about a hundred years or so.

Being in this window, we are pouring resources into attempting then to discover life on other planets ... and to look for them contacting us and, maybe, eventually contacting them ... a naturally appealing idea. The largest radio telescope ever built ... partly to this end ... has just been activated  ... see: UK Mirror Story.  So far this search has been to no avail using other means. As full of romantic agony this search entails, it is my contention that this quest is very likely to continue to be quixotic. (Stephen Hawking disagrees ... see: CNET Story.) And my sad conclusion is simply based on three indisputable facts:

1) The likelihood that our sapient window, even were it to last for another 13 thousand years, would line up with the sapient window on some other inhabited exo-planet ... just in our galaxy alone ... is vanishingly small ... given the enormous span since the beginning of time (the Big Bang?) ... I calculate the probability of such alignments at 0,0001% (see: Are We Alone?). Even if I am off by three orders of magnitude (because of things likely being back-end loaded), there is still only a one in a thousand chance of these sapient windows matching up.

2) The vast distances ... just in the galaxy in which our solar system exists, the Milky Way, let alone the Universe, are so large that the time delays imposed on any intelligent communications pretty much negate things ... even at the speed of light. We are talking about at least tens of thousands of years between any "Hello" and our excited response. This makes any meaningful communication pragmatically impossible.

3) it has been estimated that the energy required to send a receivable message of greeting over these vast interstellar distances could be equivalent to the energy output of our sun. I kind of doubt that this is realistically doable by all but a minuscule number of exo-planets with intelligent life, if any.

Thus, I again conclude that we are on a fool's errand with our attempt to wait for the phone to ring from another exo-planet ... and our possibly responding is even nuttier. The cost benefit analysis and actual science make no rational sense to this quest. I conclude that it is all just emotional pandering by scientists looking for more grant money.

Rigging

Full disclosure: I have owned the NASDAQ stock market’s common stock for a number of years

First a short story … when I was much younger working for a bank which did mutual fund clearing, the following gambit came to light. Apparently a computer whiz who had written a program for resolving mutual fund purchases had devised a scheme to divert fractions of cents (which would normally be rounded down in such transactions) into a special account over which he had control.  What was interesting was that this scheme did not violate the balancing audits for this program … nor did any particular mutual-fund purchaser suffer as a consequence. Over the months this whiz’s special account accumulated a sizable amount of money that this programmer could then withdraw at will. (He was eventually caught and prosecuted.)

I tell this story because it is analogous to the dust-up that is now underway regarding the “rigging” of the stock market as a result of the new book, Flash Boys, written by Michael Lewis … see: Reuters Article. Basically, this book makes the valid claim that electronic stock trading has enabled big investment banks to connect electronically to the stock exchanges computers and take microsecond advantage of trading patterns ("front-ending") to pull fractions of a cent per share profits on trades.  These small fractions when multiplied by the huge volumes of shares involved can generate large profits for these investment banks.  This Mr. Lewis claims is rigging the market … and I agree.

This process is not currently illegal and, in truth, is abetted by all the stock exchanges … which are now even allowing investment-bank stock traders to move their arbitrage computers closer to their stock exchanges’ trading computers so as to decrease even further the trading lags due to communication transmission delays (even at close to the speed of light). All this technology one-upmanship really doesn’t punish normal long-term stock purchasers … but it does grab profits from investment banks whose computers might be slightly slower or further away than their competitors. Yes, the public might pay a very small fraction of a cent more per share on their purchases … but not really noticeable given the small unit volumes involved.

This kerfuffle is causing consternation and lots of comment by the talking heads on cable TV … and, yes, putting pressure on the stocks of the stock exchanges. However, there is, I believe, an even bigger scandal waiting to break some day. That is, that there is a growing “dark pool" market for stocks.  This means that bank A contacts investment bank B and sells them a million shares of company Z at an agreed upon price … without this transaction ever being printed on a public stock exchange for all to see. This I contend gives these institutions much larger information leverage than is available to the general public. I believe that these transactions should be forced to be somehow disclosed to the smaller investors … to put them on an equal footing with the big institutions.

So we see, it can pay to be on the in on Wall Street ... where such questionable practices are winked at ...

The Laws of Physics

Einstein's Notes

The way to make money is to get an information edge.  Apparently some enterprising traders have found a way of making communications travel faster than the speed of light.  Last week the Federal Reserve Bank's Open Market Committee decided not to start the tapering-off of its $85 billion a month of government securities and mortgages purchasing (aka "quantatative easing").  This was an unexpected decision and thus a bond-market moving piece of news. There are supposedly strict rules to keep this information from leaking out and giving traders an edge.  It is quite apparent that these rules had somehow been circumvented ... and not for the first time.  For the details see: USA Today Story.

The reason it is clear that this breach occurred was that, if it weren't, the communications between New York and Chicago must have traveled faster than the speed of light.  Such "front trading" totaled hundreds of millions of dollars ... reaping millions of dollars of profits for these unknown miscreants. It doesn't seem to me that it would be too difficult to get to the bottom of who these cheaters were ... if the powers-to-be in Washington really wanted to do so.  That is, of course, pretty much depends upon the size of the political donations that have been received from said cheaters ... or the degree of interlocking directorships that exists between the Fed and those trading parties who know how to defy the laws of physics.