Probaway Person of the Year – Astronomers who discovered gold.

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by probaway in evolution, photography, Probaway Person of the Year, research, survival

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Creation of the heavy elements, Probaway Person of the Year 2018, The creation of gold

This year is a fantastic followup to last year’s Probaway Person of the Year, Albert Einstein’s prediction of stars or black holes colliding and forming gravity waves. The huge difference this year is that this event was a collision of neutron stars now named GW170817 and that they were located visually within half a day of the gravity waves’ time of arrival. They were discovered by triangulating the three gravity wave observatories to a small portion of the sky, but that area was still loaded with billions of stars. A desperate search of that patch of sky with large telescopes found the kilonova before the light signal faded away and then published the exact location so astronomers all over the world could each do their own research. What was demonstrated by their study was that the heavier elements, most of those beyond iron, were created by the collision of neutron stars. See, nytimes text and video. Aug 17, 2017.

The complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2018 – Astronomers for discovering the signatures of the heavy elements like gold in the collision of neutron stars.
2017 – Albert Einstein for predicting black holes, their collisions creating gravity waves, and the laser for observing the gravity waves.
2016 – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.
2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth created theories that led to proofs this year of mass and gravity sources.
2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.

These may seem like strange choices but they are people involved in potentially long-term-memorable events which had a major tipping point the year before their selection.

The moment the discovery of the collision of two neutron stars by the LIGO instruments, while similar to last year’s pick, is of Universal importance. It begins a whole new era of astronomy, but the LIGO instruments were also involved in the reason why Albert Einstein was chosen last year. After the neutron star collision was detected by LIGO the web network permitted many of the major visual telescopes of the world to locate and then observe the results of the collision. This is of great importance because they were able to see the Fraunhofer lines and thus to discover the source of the heavy elements on the Periodic Table of Elements.

The energy needed to create some elements is greater than is produced by a supernova, where many of the lighter elements are created. Nearly all the elements necessary for life are the lighter ones, but there may be some traces of the heavy ones that are needed. Trace elements in the human body include boron, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, silicon, tin, vanadium, and zinc but there may be more.

Carbon-based life may not use these heavier elements but the computer-based life now being brought into existence by human beings and their huge factories does use them. It may be possible for us to create chips that are able to evolve into self-replicating beings. These transcarbon beings would look at the neutron stars’ collision as the beginning of their physical existence when combined with human beings’ God-like help. Human beings can live for a century but transcarbon ones might have infinite lifespans.

The discovery of the creation of the heavy elements is a major event to every sentient being in the Universe.

Time to start searching for the Probaway Person of the Year

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by probaway in evolution, Probaway Person of the Year, research, survival

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Probaway Person of the Year 2018, The creation of heavy elements

This blog began on January 2nd, 2008, with Probaway Person of the Year, and I have repeated that search every year since. It was prompted by the TIME Person of the Year being persons who were not going to be remembered for very long. Thus my search strategy was to place myself five hundred years into the future and ask, “Who did something in that year that is still remembered?” Neil Armstrong, who first set foot on the Moon, will be remembered but John F. Kennedy, who set the whole effort into motion, won’t be remembered.

The complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2017 – Albert Einstein for predicting black holes, their collisions creating gravity waves, and the laser for observing the gravity waves.
2016 – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.
2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth created theories that led to proofs this year of mass and gravity sources.
2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.

These may seem like strange choices but they are people involved in potentially long-term-memorable events which had a major tipping point the year before their selection.

At the moment the discovery of the collision of two neutron stars by the LIGO instruments, while similar to last year’s pick, is of Universal importance. It begins a whole new era of astronomy, but the LIGO instrument was also involved in the reason why last year Albert Einstein was chosen. After the neutron star collision was detected by LIGO the web network permitted many of the major visual telescopes of the world to observe the results of the collision. This is of great importance because they were able to see the Fraunhofer lines and thus to discover the source of the heavy elements on the Periodic Table of Elements. The energy needed to create some elements is greater than is produced by a supernova. Nearly all the elements necessary for life are the lighter ones, but there may be some of the heavy ones that are needed. Trace elements in the human body include boron, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, silicon, tin, vanadium, and zinc. I don’t know at this time if any of these elements need a neutron star collision for their formation, but some are candidates.

The discovery of the creation of the heavy elements of the Universe is a major event.

Probaway Person of the Year, Albert Einstein

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by probaway in Probaway Person of the Year, research

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Albert Einstein, Gravity waves, High frequency lasers, LIGO, Probaway Person of the Year

The Probaway Person of the Year is Albert Einstein who one hundred years ago predicted black holes, the collision of black holes and those collisions forming gravity waves in the time-space continuum and he laid the groundwork for lasers which were used for detecting the gravity waves last year. He died in sixty-two years ago but the search for gravity waves was conducted because of his prediction based on his General Theory of Relativity.

Albert Einstein when a child

Albert Einstein when a student about age 19.

Albert Einstein January 1903 a year before publishing the four miracle papers.

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) instruments using advanced laser measuring tools detected the gravity waves created by the collision of two 30 solar mass black hole objects. Einstein predicted and did the math for 1. Black holes, 2. Black hole collisions, 3. Gravity waves, and 4. Lasers.

Predicted in 1916by Albert Einstein on the basis of his theory of general relativity,gravitational waves transport energy as gravitational radiation, a form of radiant energy similar to electromagnetic radiation.

On 11 February 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first observation of gravitational waves; because these waves were generated from a black hole merger it was the first ever direct detection of a binary black hole merger.

Note that Einstein did all of those things essential to the discovery of gravitational waves one hundred years ago in 1916, but it took that many years to develop the technology necessary to prove his gravity wave theory. We must thank the thousands of people who worked on the LIGO project, and the millions of people that were responsible for creating the background technology that was necessary for these scientists to do their work, and the billions of people who through their purchasing of modern products supplied the money and the inputs to do those extraordinary things. This is ongoing research that is providing a new form of a telescope to observe the workings of our universe. Strange things are being discovered that are putting us into our place and time in the Universe. Albert Einstein – A Genius Amongst Men is a documentary video of Einstein’s life.

The complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2017 – Albert Einstein for predicting black holes, their collisions creating gravity waves, and the laser for observing the gravity waves.
2016 – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.
2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth created theories that lead to proofs this year of mass and gravity sources.
2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.

These may seem like strange choices but they are potentially long-term-memorable events which had a major tipping point the year before their selection.

Moving our sentient life into the Universe.

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by probaway in evolution, inventions, Lifehaven, survival, Travel

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Life extension, To the ends of the Universe

This blog has pursued various forms of trying to help humanity to self-actualize its potentials. The Life Haven Project was intended to save the human species, and The Earth Ark Project was aimed at saving the plant DNA and storing all possible data for a thousand years. The Life Haven Project had its simplest form as a retired cruse ship docked at Adams Island, south of New Zealand, where a hundred people would be safely isolated from humanity’s problems on a rotating basis. The Earth Ark Project is separate and would be located at the top of Argus Dome in Antarctica, at 14,000 feet altitude, where storage containers of seeds could be maintained at minus 55° F. without further human intervention.

Unfortunately neither of these projects has captured any public interest, and I have been moving on to considering creating a more permanent form of sentient life. Now is the time to seed the Universe, where the goal of us sentient human beings is to help the Universe evolve into the fully conscious super-being that I assert that it is capable of becoming. We are at the pivot point in the history of the Universe where humans create the future Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables the Universe to become a unified self-conscious super-sentient being.

My current discussions have involved many people who assert that silicon life can never be sentient, and yet it is obvious that in the past one hundred years computers have come from an impossible dream of sentience to “OK Google” answering complex verbal questions as part of an ongoing conversation. “Oh, that’s just a parlor trick!” said one of my friends sarcastically. And, yet “Ok Google” can answer millions of direct questions better than he can. “It’s just data!” was the semi-hysterical moan. Perhaps, and yet what would you have expected from Earth’s earliest life form a hundred years after its first advent? It took some three billion years to come to our level of living intelligence, and now our infantile level computers are already self learning games, and already beating world champions at the most complex game there is, Go. What will three billion years of computer evolution bring into existence?

What is life? At its simplest, it’s 1) the ability to convert energy to action, 2) to survive and, 3) to reproduce some portion of itself. The first two of these are already existing, granted with the help of a major human chip-industry, but all it needs to take off is some form of reproduction, even of the tiniest parts, the silicon equivalent of proteins. It may be that a combination of Jennifer Doudna‘s CRISPR and Craig Venter‘s artificial life forms could create and modify a carbon living life form to create these parts of the silicon life forms. At some time in the future the advanced silicon life could do all of the needed assembly of its offspring, without the need of the computer industry, or the human-created biological factories.

What does it matter if it takes a billion years? As long as this new life form could do this before our sun goes supernova, and could spread itself out into the Universe it would be successful, and these beings would represent us to the ends of the Universe in the near infinity of time. Is that an interesting goal?

It is possible for us to boldly go where no man has gone before, with the help of our intelligent machines.

Probaway Person of the Year Xi Jinping

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by probaway in Probaway Person of the Year

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Probaway Person of the Year 2016, Remembered in 500 years, Xi Jinping

The proof that Xi Jinping, the President of China, is being successful is that China poured more concrete in the two years between 2011 and 2013 than the U.S. poured in the entire 20th century. This progress created more atmospheric pollution than any other country, but China is now leading the world in the Paris Green anti-pollution revolution. Xi has guided the world’s most populous backward country into being what will be seen in 500 years as the most successfully progressive country ever, and in doing so he will be remembered as the founder of a dynasty. Some of his quotations, “There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn’t export revolution; second, China doesn’t export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn’t come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?” “Our people […] expect better education, more stable jobs, better income, more reliable social security, medical care of a higher standard, more comfortable living conditions, and a more beautiful environment.” Xi also vowed to tackle corruption at the highest levels, alluding that it would threaten the Party’s survival.

Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China

The complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2017 – Albert Einstein for predicting black holes, their collisions creating gravity waves, and the laser for observing the gravity waves.
2016 – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.
2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth created theories that lead to proofs this year of mass and gravity sources.
2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.

These may seem like strange choices but they are potentially long-term-memorable events which had a major tipping point the year before their selection.

Zebrafish, CRISPR, Plague Inc., and computer-generated DNA

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by probaway in Probaway Person of the Year

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Combining technologies, Craig Venter, Jennifer Doudna, Plague Inc., Probaway Person of the Year, Zebrafish

My Probaway Person of the Year choices get blended into a single scientific experiment.

A new role for zebrafish: Larger scale gene function studies

NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute

That clickable report is about using Jennifer Doudna‘s method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA. It is being used to modify DNA code in schools of zebrafish where the effects of the DNA insertions can be seen. The zebrafish are transparent, and with florescent tracking the functions of the inserted or deleted DNA can be seen, and then with fast breeding zebrafish and positive recycling, desirable effects can be created. Because the zebrafish is a vertebrate some of the genes’ functions will be relevant to mammals and to humans. This work is greatly influenced by Craig Venter’s techniques for computer-generated DNA sequences. My seemingly strange inclusion of a computer game, Plague Inc, as a person of the year is relevant too, because it guides the way for combining all of these technologies into a new future for humanity. The game, as games tend to do, points to the evil uses of this wonderfully helpful technology, but most of the effects will be helpful. The Probaway choices were published on January 1st of each year with the guiding idea of looking back from 500 years into the future.

2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.

This current news won’t actually be published for another month. It will be in the July 2015 issue of Genome Research.

Probaway – Person of the year 2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by probaway in Probaway Person of the Year, research

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Alan Guth, Permanently memorable people, Peter Higgs, Probaway Person of the Year 2015

The points of the theories of Peter Higgs and Alan Guth are many orders of magnitude different in size and yet they are as nearly identical as it is possible to be. The physical proof of Guth’s theory, of how our Universe came to be as it is, was slow in coming but it finally did arrive this year. His original theoretical observations were published back in 1980. They concerned the expansion of our universe, the biggest observable thing there is, during the first second of its existence. In contrast Higgs’ theory refers to the tiniest of things, the eponymous Higgs boson, just observed last year in tiny explosions at the ATLAS high energy hadron particle collider. His theory was published in the 1960s. Both of these men’s work is inextricably pulled together both theoretically and in physical reality by gravity, and what gravity has pulled together I will leave together for the Probaway Person of the Year 2015.

Alan Guth, creator of the theory of the first few seconds of the Universe including gravity. – Picture derived from Steve Pyke, Esquire magazine 17March2014

Peter Higgs created the theory of the Higgs boson. It was just proven to exist this year in subatomic particles. It is the source of mass, that is gravity. – Picture derived from theguardian.com 6Dec13

What they each discovered could be found anywhere in the Universe, by any technologically sophisticated civilization, because it is so fundamental to our existence. But, on our Earth it was Higgs and Guth that discovered these fundamental things for us.

The complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2017 – Albert Einstein for predicting black holes, their collisions creating gravity waves, and the laser for observing the gravity waves.
2016 – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.
2015 – Peter Higgs and Alan Guth created theories that lead to proofs this year of mass and gravity sources.
2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.

These may seem like strange choices but they are potentially long-term-memorable events which had a major tipping point the year before their selection.

Probaway Person of the Year – 2015 – contender David Deamer

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by probaway in Uncategorized

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From out of deep time and deep outer space David Deamer comes into my life to contend for my Probaway Person of the Year title of 500 year memorability. I had previously published Probaway person of the year – 2015 – contender Alan Guth, and considered nothing capable of displacing his accomplishment. Even if former winners, 2011 – Craig Venter, or 2014 – Jennifer Doudna, succeeded in creating the complete life package from nonliving materials, I didn’t think they should displace the first trillionth of a second creation of the universe revelation as a memorable personal accomplishment of the previous year.

Dave Deamer lecturing to an overflow audience at Bend, Oregon

David Deamer lecturing to an overflow audience at the Tower Theater in Bend, Oregon

But then, David Deamer comes to Bend, Oregon, USA, such a tiny place that I have to put the state name added to the city name for Americans to even have a clue where it is, and probably have to put the country name USA on the address for most people of the world to even know where Oregon is located.

Deamer came here and gave what was a perfect lecture spanning acceptable science to a crowd of mostly retirees and a taste of the latest cutting-edge discoveries on the path to the creation of life. Not just the process for creating life on Earth but of life anywhere in the universe. It is a far more complex process than inserting known, albeit manufactured, DNA inside of a cell wall as Venter did, or of generating any DNA code and inserting it exactly where it is wanted in DNA, as did Doudna. Those are obviously incredible feats, but what Deamer is doing is successfully duplicating nature’s processes at each of many steps between nonliving matter and self-reproducing cells. He demonstrated exactly how he found critical places in space and here on Earth where the needed processes could occur. He then did experiments to demonstrate they would occur when he put the right ingredients into those previously existing types of places.

New life could come into existence spontaneously at present but it wouldn’t survive in the wild because it would immediately be eaten by our modern advanced organisms. He showed us a movie of his pouring a porridge of common pre-biotic chemicals into a hot volcanic freshwater pond and having a scum form that was very similar to what was needed in a pre-biotic world to form life and it came very close to generating living cells, even today. It included layering processes which would protect polymerase formations forming from monomers, and a cyclic drying processes that would tighten into layers and form containers. There needed to be methods for cell walls to form, and to form passages, but these would be naturally occurring events in the cracks at junction lines of the cells, and ways for RNA to grow inside a cell and stretch the cell into two similar entities. There were demonstrations in movies of these things happening.

It turns out that all of the processes he discussed were easy to understand as naturally occurring phenomena, and these special things are still happening almost continuously in many places here on early Earth and in outer space. Early life needed to occur only once to get started but there was an ocean dense with opportunities for it to happen as soon as early Earth cooled enough to have liquid water. It probably began frequently and continuously at the beginning, and the best adapted to their local environment survived best and soon they spread and covered the early Earth with stuff that was reproducing itself and evolving, and that’s a definition of life. Once this first cell was growing and pinching off because of excess length, an ongoing struggle would ensue to fill the many unusual new environments that came into existence. That has been going on for billions of years and it brought life through to the Neanderthals, but then one night something very ordinary but very special happened. See – Selection processes – Natural, Sexual, Artificial and Eveish.

Here is the complete up-to-present list of – Probaway Person of the Year:

2014 – Jennifer Doudna created a method for insertion of designed DNA precisely into existing DNA.
2013 – Plague Inc. is a computer game that explores the problems of creating a disease that will kill every last human being on Earth.
2012 – Zebrafish research-technique advances made it possible to observe drug interactions within living animals.
2011 – Craig Venter laid the groundwork for creating entirely new forms of life (greater than species) out of computer-generated DNA sequences.
2010 – Nadya Suleman (Octomom) and the society that created this travesty of good sense will be remembered into the distant future by many hungry people.
2009 – Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia, which will be still be used after our current computer operating systems are surpassed and forgotten.
2008 – Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) because he shows people how to relate to dogs and people much better than anyone else. His videos and techniques will be remembered and used as long as there are people and dogs.