Muon Decay: CR4 Challenge (05/12/08)

Hi, jfmfit!

It's difficult to imagine that particles passing through the human body do not cause damage to the cellular structure in some sense, and might even contribute to aging. However, there are 10,000 such particles passing through a very small space every second, and in an accumulated amount of time, millions and millions of them. Muons are only one of proabably dozens of these. With that many little bombs hitting us all the time, we must have developed some sort of immunity against them in order to remain alive. What I'm expressing is the thought that they don't do much damage, if any, to any species that has evolved under their influence as they go through.

The human body has evolved within this milieu. Cell membranes are permeable, allowing things to 'pass through' them, and closing up right afterward. But these particles are so small that they pass between the atoms that make up everything, and so numerous that our poor body cells would never be able to completely close around the 'openings' that they make, should they actually make any.

Our brains work with minute chemically-induced electrical signals. Imagine what kind of interference the particulate bombardment would impose on that, if it were an effective form of interference.

It's been said that 'cosmic rays' contribute to aging. Certainly, over-exposure to the sun has been said to promote premature aging of the skin due to UV presence.

You could be correct. Interesting question.

Mark

Hello once again Mark The Handyman,

I just love that word 'milieu'. I think where you find a word as good as that it should be fitted into a sentence as often as possible!

I understand all you say...............(surprisingly for me!) I have a book called 'A sea of oxygen' or something like that. Though I do not have it to hand at the moment, it explains Oxygen is the main cause of aging. As it does with metal rusting, the skin and all cells literally 'oxygenizes' and it leaves tiny scars which eventually over time make, not only the skin but every cell in our bodies because they are all open to the need and ravages of oxygen, age by the damage they do over our lifetime.

I don't know where you are but here in the UK there is some new cream out "infused with oxygen", which is rather odd, as the more cream applied ages the skin more, and not as said, make you look younger!

jfmfit

Isn't a Muon a type of sheep?

Is that a baaa-ad joke, or what?

Joke? What joke?

Sorry just trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Boom Boom, ta-ching.

Actually, the scientist that "discovered" muons was a alien. He's from Felinios, the planet of the cat-people. They have used "mew-ons" for centuries as an energy source. He came to this planet as part of a plot to slowly introduce advanced technology into our culture to make us easier to assimilate. Naming the particle after the Greek letter μ is just a convenient cover story.

Think about it. Del the Cat is one of the more active members of CR4. I have noticed several other members have cat avatars. And Hendrik? A lion is a big cat after all. Then there's that "Engineers' Guide to Cats" video.

Also, there's that joke about dogs having owners while cats have staff.

Need any more evidence?

Hi, 3Doug!

Well, this would indeed seem to pose a conundrum , for as you have noted, mewonic energy has been around for ages.

[As a side note, however, we don't have to worry about cats taking over. They are just pets, after all, and we feed them and put them down when they get old. Also, as is evidenced by Del and others, including personal acquaintances of mine like Minerva, Caesare, Zoe and Scottie, their stealth is highly over-rated. Just observe, despite the obvious intelligence of his contributions, the lack of subtlety of Del's claims to want to take over the world so he can be the center of attention in his own blogging. He just wants to be a pet cat, only Del's desire to take over and be thus-served is megalomaniacal instead of just familial. (And, in spite of its obvious advantages and advanced technology, you may have heard of mewonic energy referred-to jokingly as "me-want-it now energy" ...a gentle poke at the cat people's mentality around attention-seeking.)]

Mewonic energy has been around for a long time. But then, so has moo-onic energy, known here on earth as methane; but having been (according to recorded history) first observed and utilized on either KineyWine, the planet of the cow people (and let's not go into that sorrowful aspect of human history...we still eat them!), or by other ancient civilizations like the various Termitic cultures of the universe.

I think if you can get access to a copy of Purr-posepedia from Felinios (not exactly sure if that's the title, although it's something like that, I think); or the Ferengi Energy Acquisition Rule Book with the historical appendices, you will note that mewons --although of an apparently random scooting nature, and making a distinct squeaking noise-- are a more powerful, manageable and predictable energy source than muons, which are silent, ephemeral and fleeting in nature. The Ferengi physicists joke about 'silent muons'. (Because of the "mu" mother-in law connotation, it's a part-oxymoron.) That's also where the ironic expression "silent as a muon", which is rapidly gaining popular usage throughout the known universe, originated.

Both are sub-atomic particles, but the muons have to originate with nuclear energy burst activity and are a second-hand observation of the same, whereas the mewons are the activity, if you see what I mean. If it were possible to use muons as an energy source, you would first have to build an energy source to make them. And as you well know, the Ferengi Energy Acquisition Book rule number 14 (or was it 15?) is "Any utilization of energy must efficiently be able to create a profit"...their nod to energy efficiency.

Mark

Mark, your reply shows how deceptive their plan is. Cats are not seeking to take over in the sense of attacking and conquering as humans would. They seek to make us willingly surrender to their furry cuteness and cuddliness. Obviously, they have gotten to you.

Of course all cats and cat-people wish to be the center of attention. Del is not a leader in their efforts. He is just a follower, or a foot soldier (maybe that should be paw-soldier). By drawing our attention, he makes it easy for us to succumb to their charms.

The Ferengi are competitors of the cat-people. They knew they couldn't compete with the cat-people on cuteness, so they turned to business and acquisition. They acquired mewonic technology by bribing a cat-technician with a lifetime supply of tuna.

For more evidence of the plot, consider how the dominant candidate for a Grand Unification Theory is String Theory. It was actually first developed by a cat-scientist conducting experiments on a ball of yarn. Whenever you see a cat "playing" with a string, you are actually witnessing one of their routine exercises in science education.

Also consider how every line of discussion in a blog or forum such as CR4 is called a "thread." Another sign of the cat-people.

I have seen a copy of their plan, but only briefly. It is called The Catmunist Meownifesto, written by one of their philosophers, Karl Manx.

Open your eyes, and you will see the lynx to their plan everywhere.

Hi, 3Doug!

Well, you could be correct, except for those authorities I spoke of, and the requirement of creating muons with a separate source of power as compared to mewonic power, which is a source of power, and the immutable high regard Ferengis have for their rules. There is also, come to think of it, those linguistic references, but they might have been based upon a misconception, if indeed there is any misconception being made.

I'm not going to try to differ with you, however. I think "Cats are not seeking to take over in the sense of attacking and conquering as humans would. They seek to make us willingly surrender to their furry cuteness and cuddliness..." is a pretty transparent piece of prose.

I prefer cats as a pet because of their independent low maintenance lifestyles and uncontrollable, constant hunting drive (which requires --in order to remain sharp-- the possession of a powerful ego that transmutes itself into a self-delusional need to believe they are running things). I personally have always regarded their ploys as obvious, and am not, in their vernacular, a 'well-trained' human. Hence, I have been able to retain my objectivity as regards their "cuteness" (not!) and "cuddliness"(prefer my own species, thanks). When I am in the mood, I like them, and I do not for an instant doubt that they are very clever. I think they would like to believe that no humans are like me; but unfortunately (witness the plague), as a species, we are not very outgoing about cats. In fact, we are divided into two distinct camps: those who 'like' cats (sub-dividable into your type and my type), and those who dislike them, for whatever reason. The only time they ever got the edge they wanted was in ancient (by our reckoning) Egypt, and then only by exposing Osiris. (BTW, 'μ' as a chosen symbol for many things in maths & physics originates in Egypt as the word for 'water', not 'cats'. The 'miaow' we attribut to cats is an English-language derivation. Its sound and spelling have widely interpreted variations base on language. It's time they realized that Egypt is in the past.

As to string theory, Wickipedia indicates by: "In 1969 Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielsen and Leonard Susskind recognized that [field theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking] could be given a description in space and time in terms of strings. The scattering amplitudes were derived systematically from the action principle by Peter Goddard, Jeffrey Goldstone, Claudio Rebbi and Charles Thorn, giving a space-time picture to the vertex operators introduced by Veneziano and Fubini and a geometrical interpretation ["strings"] to the Virasoro conditions." that, since Albert Einstein, a lot of humans have been doing a pretty good job catching up to the rest of the universe in theoretical physics while maintaining our religion-based paranoic isolationism from it. When our skules begin to marry the theoretical and the practical engineering branches instead of giving the former's hand-me-downs to the latter, we will indeed begin to move forward into the future, catching up to the inhabitants of the other worlds that for now we can only admire from afar.

You and I may agree, however, that cats have encouraged routine and even exceptional educational advances (witness "The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum", by J.A. Peddiwell 1939, the gist of which has been revisited by Hall/Dennis in 'Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario', 1968; Ivan Illich's 'De-schooling Society', 1971; and so-called 'free' schools such as the Sudbury School system); a bonafide example of cat contribution to education that comes indisputably from the need for all cats to live free. Even the children's game 'cats cradle' can be instructive --as well as lucrative, as Kurt Vonnegut can attest, although in his 1962 novel there was "no damn cat, no damn cradle" in the string construct...a revelation approaching H.C. Andersen's 'emporer's new clothes' for the 20th century.

But as for the debate about muons being in actuality mewons, I find it difficult to put the two into the same context. I'm afraid I'll have to remain 'silent as a muon' on the subject.

Mark

Hello yet again MarkTheHandyman,

I read the 'moo-onic' bit and was about to put down some 'funny' stuff about Bovine doings, when a few lines further on you had already written it! Do you have to get it right all the time?.................

I like what you have written, but, not being an Engineer, though I have Engineric (is that a word?) (Engineer---ing-ish) (I am always making new ones up. Trouble is, it is me only that knows what they mean. Not good when you are trying to explain stuff right?) leanings , I missed the Math jokes, though, being an 'almost' engineer, I will now search for what you mentioned and I don't know. Thanks. Think its called 'lernin'?

jfmfit

Hi, jfmfit!

Pretty cute. However, like 3Doug, you may have confused muons

with moo-ons.

Check out my blog #22 above.

Mark

Hello MarkTheHandyman:,

oh bum!......................I knew I had done something wrong...............actually, I was wondering if the 'joke' was just too obscure but, you at least saw it.

I will look at your blog thanks! And, I secretly knew the peeps who view CR4 are mostly clever enough to 'get' it...................either that or tell me how bad it was!!! LOL!

jfmfit

Hey jfmfit

Please be assured that it was bad and it was obscure enough to be interesting.

As they say in the trade don't give up your day job just yet.

BAB

Hello BlueAussieBoy,

tar ever so! You are a kind lot really you know!

I just look back at some of my attempts of explanation and cringe!!

jfmfit

Hi, Guest!

In the case of ionic excitation due to a large electrical interference burst, the valence of some molecular structures is disturbed when oxygen ring electrons (the weakest ring in many valences) may be sent flying into other oxygen ring electrons to knock them out of orbit, thus forming a chain reaction called an ionization avalanche.

Due to the hunger of oxygen to unite with whatever is nearby, this disturbance resettles itself quickly with changes in nearby molecular structure reflecting fewer or more oxygen parts as they neutralize their temporary charges.

The initial charge burst has to be very large (eg storm clouds, lightening bolts, Van DenGraf generators, etc.) to effect such an avalanche. Muons couldn't cut it, I don't think, even with their heavily raining down on earth.

Mark

Hello MarkTheHandman,

just like to say that's the first time I have seen 'ionization avalanche' explained. Though I can't really remember the powers now, I was helping my Niece when she was asking for info on how valances work and what kind of power causes the splitting of the atom's valance, this was about 18 years ago, but the power that holds just about all atoms together is phenomenal! And, though I found it hard to 'grasp' when I first read it, is of course included atoms in solids as well as gaseous and liquid situations. I still find it difficult to imagine how something so tiny can have such a huge force?

jfmfit