The National Wormhole Day Blog Hop

The National Wormhole Day Blog Hop is hosted by Stephen Tremp, Laura Eno, and L.G. Smith. Like the recent Back to the Future blogfest, it's based on time travel--though this time it's a person traveling through time, not a shoe box! It sounded like fun, so I signed up.

About the blogfest (from Stephen's blog):

What would you do or where would you go if you could traverse a wormhole through space or time just once? One safe round trip passage. Would you go back in time and talk some sense into a younger you? Go five years into the future and bring back the Wall Street Journal? See just how the heck the Great Pyramids of Giza were really built? View what the other side of the universe looks like? Kill Hitler?

I love speculating about the future; I am a huge fan of stories that cast human society forward hundreds or thousands of years. Therefore, I'd choose traveling through time to year 3001, just to see what it looks like--because while 2001 didn't turn out to be the milestone predicted I'm sure 3001 will be entirely different from today, either for better or for worse. Hopefully the better.

And (since this is for fun and I don't want to think about all the possible breakdowns of spacetime if time travel occurred) I'm pretty sure I'd try sticking around in the future for a while before cashing in on the second part of the "safe round trip". You know, move into a space colony, experience all the cool technology, eat amazing food, be amused by the historians who think Windows was the pinnacle of engineering a millennium before. The usual things one would do a thousand years after they were born.

What would you do if you ended up in the future? Where would you go if you could travel through time?

-----The Golden Eagle

Back from the Future Blogfest

The Back from the Future Blogfest is hosted by M. Pax, Suze, and Nicki Elson. The concept is really cool: Post about what you'd find in a time capsule you've sent yourself from the future. I love thinking about the future, so of course I signed up! (Sorry about posting so late, though. It's past 16:30 in my time zone . . . oops.)

From the hosts:

You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you.

You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox--sent from ten years in the future--and it's filled with items you have sent yourself.

What's in it?

First, there would be a note that says, "Time travel has been invented. Here's the formula so you can go win the Nobel Prize for Physics and do ourselves proud."

Second, there would be a note that says, "You're not insane. Here's a textbook that proves the mathematics of time travel."

Third, there would be yet another note that says, "You really aren't crazy. Remain calm. You're going to make some fabulous memories in the next 10 years and you're going to get a degree and you're going to do well for yourself. You just have to work hard enough. (No, I'm not giving you a copy of your dissertation.)"

Fourth, there would be a final and concluding note that says, "I don't know what else to say. I don't want to ruin anything for you--me?--but I want to yammer away because you understand more than anyone about how this brain works.

"Oh, well. As long as you don't make the stupid decision--er, never mind, something good comes out of that. Anyway. You'll find all this out on your own. I apologize for the questions I must have raised, now that you've analyzed the box and checked the return address (fictional, I assure you), tested the handwriting against your own, and studied the voice of these notes.

"And one last thing: You can stop worrying about Sherlock: Season Three now, because it was just as great as the first two."

**********

What would be in your time capsule? Mostly words? Mostly pictures? Do you think you'd have a lot of information to convey to a younger version of you? Would you try to be humorous or serious, or a mix of both?


-----The Golden Eagle

A-Z Blogging Challenge: Y Stands For: Yellowstone

Yellowstone was the world's first national park. It was established in 1872, signed into law by Ulysses S. Grant on March 1st. It is a World Heritage Site and designated Biosphere Reserve, with 2.2 million acres, and covers parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

(Yellowstone River, Upper Falls. SOURCE)

The name "Yellowstone" came from the Minnetaree (a Native American Indian tribe) word for a river with yellow sandstone bluffs: "Mi tsi a-da-zi". French trappers interpreted this as "Yellow Rock River", and called it "Pierre Jaune" or "Roche Jaune". Lewis and Clark came into contact with the same tribe, and also called it Yellow Rock River.

(Canada Lynx. SOURCE)

Yellowstone National Park is home to several threatened endangered species, including the Canada Lynx, the gray wolf, and the grizzly bear. Some other notable animals are the American bison, bighorn sheep, bobcats, coyotes, elk, moose, mountain lions, mule deer, to name the large ones. 67 mammal species live in the park (the largest concentration in the 48 states), 322 species of birds are recorded (148 of them nesting in the park), 16 species of fish (although 5 of them are non-native), 6 reptile species, and 4 species of amphibians. There are also 7 conifer species, 1,100 native species of plants, 199 non-native species of plants, 186 species of lichens, and 406 species of thermophiles.

(SOURCE)

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest supervolcano in North America. It is indeed considered an active volcano, producing half the world's volcanic activity. The caldera has been measured at 55 km (34 miles) by 72 km (45 miles) in size, although a new survey has shown it could extend for up to 640 km (400 mi) east to west.

(SOURCE)

Three supereruptions have happened in Yellowstone's history--at 2.1 million, 1.3, and 640,000 years ago. The last time Yellowstone exploded, it sent 1,000 cubic km (240 cubic mi) of dust into the air, and if it was to erupt again (supervolcano eruptions are predicted to happen sometime in the future; in fact, we're overdue) it could bury North America in ash and disrupt life around the globe.

(SOURCE)

They say it won't be happening anytime soon. But, obvious in the recent catastrophes, the prediction of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural disasters is shaky at best.

*****

Source:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm
http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/history.html
http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/factsheet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone
http://www.yellowstone-online.com/history/yhtwo2.html
http://www.visityellowstonepark.com/Park-Facts.aspx
http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/mammals.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_of_Yellowstone
http://www.nps.gov/yell/parkmgmt/bisoneiscon5.htm
http://www.livescience.com/200-super-volcano-challenge-civilization-geologists-warn.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/13/yellowstone-supervolcano-2011_n_848681.html

*****

Do you think supervolcano eruptions are something we should be worried about? Do you think Yellowstone will erupt in the near future, or do you think this is just a bunch of pointless speculation?


Also, have you ever been to Yellowstone?


-----The Golden Eagle

A-Z Blogging Challenge: T Stands For: Teleportation

Teleportation usually comes across as a science fiction mechanism of traveling interstellar distances instantaneously, between planets, from ships, to bases, and etc. But while it isn't as grand or as immediately obvious as a person being teleported across space, quantum teleportation (a bit different from transfer of actual matter) has been done by scientists.

(SOURCE)

Quantum teleportation, also called entanglement-assisted teleportation, is when a unit of quantum information or "qubit" is transmitted from one place to another, without that qubit crossing the space between the two points. It doesn't physically transport any matter or information, and no particles are reassembled at the second location.

(SOURCE)

Scientists are capable of doing this because of quantum entanglement, which is when particles are linked to each other even when physically separated, share a single quantum state, and remain in quantum superposition (the idea the particles can be two things at the same time--this links to the idea of Schroedinger's cat of being both alive and dead) until a measurement is taken. Because the particles are entangled, and in two states at once, in theory the measurement of one would immediately affect the other, faster than the speed of light. Albert Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance".

(SOURCE)

Some uses for this technology? Quantum teleportation could be used for communications. It could allow transmission of large amounts of information, speed up quantum computation, and perform tasks impossible for classical systems.

*****

Sources:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1874760,00.html
http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleportation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
http://www.jqi.umd.edu/news/211-entanglement-with-frequency-combs.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/physicsofinfo/members/teleportation.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/#2
http://www.quantum.at/research/quantum-teleportation-communication-entanglement/first-quantum-teleportation.html
http://www.quantiki.org/wiki/Quantum_communication

*****

Do you think we'll be using quantum technology in the relatively near future? Do you think teleportation will ever reach the point where people, or even just macroscopic objects, could be transported from one place to the other?

And please, PLEASE don't quote Star Trek. I've read enough articles researching this post with the phrase stuck in there somewhere. :P

-----The Golden Eagle