Hoelder1in's Mindfile
Der Name ist gefälscht, ich habe nie Hölderlin geheissen.
the poet Hölderlin upon seeing an edition
of his own poetry
The namesake of this page is German 18th century poet Friedrich Hölderlin. While it is almost impossible to translate poetry, I wanted to share with you these two translations of his poems. They are among the best I could find and I like them almost as much as the original.
In case anyone got interested, here are links to Hölderlin's complete works and lots of German literature at Projekt Gutenberg-DE.
This is my first attempt at a blog-style web page format - please bare with me...
What do I have in mind with this page? Not sure yet - I guess this may turn out to be a collection of loosely connected thoughts and ideas, prompted by whatever I read or think about, whatever pops up in my head, and which would otherwise have been lost, had I not typed it on this page - ideally, over time this may develop into something in the spirit of Howard Bloom's Omnologist Manifesto.
Ok, so this isn't really a blog: the entries aren't dated and I mostly write them from top to bottom (and occasionally edit old ones). But I seem to be comfortable with this format, so this is how it is going to be. Also, you may have noticed that my HTML style is kind of minimalistic. I guess I don't want to procrastinate even more by thinking about fancy formatting tricks...
DISCLAIMER: I will be writing about various subject areas I am not an expert on and some of it may even be somewhat tongue-in-cheek (whatever pops up in my head). It is for you, dear reader, to make up your mind whether any of this makes sense. Read at your own risk!
This is to inform all Hölderlin lovers of planet Earth
that, as of Friday, January, 14th 2005, a copy of the poem
Hyperions Schicksalslied rests on the surface of
Saturn's moon Titan,
the most distant celestial body on which humankind has yet left it's mark.
Background: Before the launch of the
Cassini-Huygens space probe on October, 15th 1997, the
European Space Agency (ESA) asked the
public to submit short messages which were to be
copied onto a CD, to be carried to the surface of Titan by the Huygens
space probe.
I submitted Hyperions Schicksalslied as one of 80,000
messages (nr. 4532) that were sent in. The last line of the poem,
Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab, seems to be particularly fitting, given
Huygens' long and perilous journey.
Your IP address: 38.107.179.241; your browser and OS: CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html).
So little time, so many things to know...
What is dark energy? - What is dark matter? - How fine-tuned is the Universe? - What is the nature of time? - How rare are habitable planets? - Can we understand consciousness better? - Is information at the heart of physics? - Is life ubiquitous? - How should we interpret quantum mechanics? - Whence the constants of nature? - Can quantum mechanics be reconciled with gravity? - Are there other universes? - What happened before the Big Bang?
I copied these questions from the home page of the FQXi Web site and I want to point everyone, who, like me, can't help but think about such things, to the often boldly speculative but very accessible articles and essays on their community Web site.
So where did all the rest of this page go? Click on any of the years on the left to read older entries of this blog.
I had this interesting discussion on physicalism, reductionism, sub/supervenience and weak and strong emergence, the other day, forcing me to think a bit more clearly where I stand on these issues. So I ordered David Chalmer's book, just to be able to explain in clearer terms what I actually mean when I say I don't agree with him... ;)
Added a link to the Mathematical Universe hypothesis Wikipedia page on the right - it discusses several variants of the hypothesis as well as counter arguments, most notably those due to Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Regarding the relevance of Gödel's theorems for physics, I found parts of the paper Gödel and Physics by John D. Barrows quite useful. A very special take on kind of the same subject (though Gödel is actually never mentioned) can be found in Greg Egan's stories Luminous and Dark Integers. Wow, I still need to wrap my mind around this some more...
Shortly after the so far undistinquished student Isaac Newton finished his degree in the year 1665, Cambridge University temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plage. Returning from Cambridge to his home in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, his private studies in the subsequent year allowed him to develop his theories on calculus, optics, motion, and gravity.
After the patent office clerk Albert Einstein published his papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Special Relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy within months of each other in the year 1905, he was promoted from 3rd class expert to 2nd class expert in his day job at the patent office of Bern. It took him four more years till he was awarded his first academic position.
Makes one wonder about the role of academic institutions in fostering progress in science - will the next game-changing insights in physics also be the work of an outsider? In that case, we may have to be patient. There were 239 years between Newton's and Einstein's discoveries and the next one of a similar magnitude may not happen before the middle of the next century.
Day 5:
But how did you survive?
Just like you. One miserable day at a time.
Day 19:
I see you again in a place where no shadows fall.
President Sheridan to Ambassador Delenn, when Babylon 5 was under attack and he wanted her to go to a lifepod (s5e4). I watched B5 a lot in the last weeks to distract myself and I completely lost my composure when I heard that sentence.
Preparing lots of rose petals:
If only I could, I'd burn up a sun just to say goodbye.
...slightly misquoting the Tenth Doctor in his final farewell scene with Rose Tyler.
Good night my love, the brightest star in my sky.
Another B5 quote (Sheridan to Delenn in the final episode).
In a place where no shadows fall
I will meet you again,
Below the moon and the stars
Where it all began.
Erinnerst Du Dich unserer ungestörten Stunden, wo wir und nur wir um einander waren? Das war Triumpf! Beide so frei und stolz und wach und blühend und glänzend an Seel und Herz und Aug und Angesicht, und beide so in himmlischem Frieden neben einander! Ich hab es damals schon geahndet und gesagt: man könnte wohl die Welt durchwandern und fände es schwerlich wieder so. Und täglich fühl ich das ernster.
Friedrich Hölderlin, Brief an Susette Gontard
Hinter meinen Augen stehen Wasser, die muss ich alle weinen.
My ophtalmologist told me that my eyes are way too dry to determine the strength of my new glasses. She prescribed me eye drops and asked me to come again in one or two weeks. Seems I ran out of tears for now.
Good-by, good-by. Good-by, Grover's Corners ... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking ... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
from Our Town by Thornton Wilder as quoted by Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake.
I can do nothing but go on, dive deeper, deeper, till my lungs are filled with the light of the stars.
S. would have liked that sentence very much. It's such a pity that she never got to meet the person who wrote it.
At what was in New York City 2:27 p.m. on February 13th of that year, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point?
Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake
Just in case you wanted to see another (and a bit older) part of me as in
the photo at the top of this page - well, and my new glasses, which I
finally got. It's actually a part of my new passport photo.
Hope those eyes will manage to look somewhat
optimistically into the future, S. would have wanted that (Kopf hoch,
as she would have said). To make the point, I am already - in early December -
adding the grey bar, below:
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Edgar Allan Poe
ACTA: The new threat to the net - watch this video!
To all Members of the EU Parliament:
As concerned global citizens, we call on you to stand for a free and open
internet and reject the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA), which would destroy it. The internet is a crucial tool
for people around the world to exchange ideas and promote democracy.
We urge you to show true global leadership and protect our rights.
Sign the Petition!
March 1st is Future Day. And
fittingly,
Zeit-online
published a series of pieces titled Born 2012, the first one being a
letter to a
child just
born by
Jeff Jarvis.
The reader comments below the letter are a bit depressing,
though, not a single one of them embracing the promises of the future.
This is Germany, I guess. I'd like to know how old these commenters are.
Strangely enough, being at an age at which people used to be called "old", I
am still full of expectations for a future, I can't wait to see.
Leap seconds and leap years, oh my...
The recent discussion about abolishing leap seconds made me read up on leap seconds and leap years. Fascinating! Well, like most things if one takes the time to study them more closely then one usally would. Ha, so I celebrated my first Future Day, by thinking about the future of time. ;)
For instance, did you know that the number of leap seconds needed in each given century to keep time in sync with the sun is approximately 31 x (2n+1), n being the number of centuries counting from the year 2000 (i.e, n=1 for the 21st century)? Well, assuming that the rotation of the earth will keep slowing down at a roughly constant rate (which it probably will for the time being), causing days to lengthen by about 1.7 ms per century. The main thing to take home from the formula is that the number of leap seconds will increase quite significantly over the centuries. There were 31 leap seconds in the 20th century (n=0 in the above formula), but more than 90 will be needed in the current one. By the 26th century, leap seconds will have to be inserted at the end of each quarter, which, I believe, is the maximum forseen by the current system. But if our descendants decided to insert leap seconds on a daily basis, they would be ok till about the 60th millenium, at which point the length of the day will have increased by a full second (expect 25 hour days in something like 300 million years). And in case you wonder, if there were no leap seconds at all, the sun would be 'late' by a full hour, or one time zone, by the end of the millenium (think DST in winter).
OMG, our calender is wrong!
Up until a while ago, I had assumed that a tropical year (roughly speaking, the time period after which the seasons repeat) is 365.2422 days long and that it will stay that way essentially for ever. This turned out not to be quite correct on several different levels: for one, there are two slightly different definitions of the tropical year (the details are probably too involved to explain them here; go to the above Wikipedia link for details). On top of that, the definition on which the Gregorian Calender is based (time between consecutive March equinoxes) is not the modern one (time in which the mean longitude of the sun advances by 360 degrees), but one which was in part motivated by religious reaons, namely making sure that the Easter date does not shift with respect to the seasons. From our current perspectrive, the modern definition would actually be more suitable to base a calender on it, as, according to the old definition, the length of the tropcial year varies, on a timescale of many millenia, due to the movement of the March equinox along Earth's elliptical orbit. But even according to the modern definition, gravitational interactions with the other planets cause the tropical year to decreases by about half a second per century. Since we are interested in calenders and leap days, we need to measure the length of the tropical year in units of days. Remember that days are getting longer by about 1.7 ms per century. Thus, if expressed in days, the length of the tropical year will decrease even faster. Both effects taken together cause the tropical year to get shorter by about 1.1 seconds each century. By the 20th millenium this will add up to cause the Gregorian calender to be out of sync with the seasons by almost three weeks - about as much as the error of the Julian calender when it was replaced with the Gregorian calender in the 16th century.
Numbers, numbers, numbers...
In the table below I calculated how the "errors" of various calenders (Julian, Gregorian, plus some variations of the Gregorian calender) will grow over the millenia:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2500 -3.92 -3.92 -3.92 [ -3.92, -3.92] 3 -0.92 4 +0.08 365.24216 365.24212 3000 -7.87 -7.88 -7.88 [ -7.87, -7.88] 7 -0.78 8 +0.12 365.24213 365.24206 3500 -11.86 -11.87 -11.86 [ -11.85, -11.87] 11 -0.86 12 +0.14 365.24210 365.24199 4000 -15.87 -15.89 -15.88 [ -15.87, -15.90] 15 -0.88 16 +0.12 15 -0.88 [-0.90,-0.87] 365.24207 365.24193 4500 -19.92 -19.94 -19.94 [ -19.91, -19.96] 18 -1.94 20 +0.06 19 -0.94 [-0.96,-0.91] 365.24204 365.24186 5000 -24.00 -24.03 -24.02 [ -23.99, -24.06] 22 -2.02 24 -0.02 23 -1.02 [-1.06,-0.99] 365.24201 365.24180 5500 -28.11 -28.14 -28.14 [ -28.09, -28.19] 26 -2.14 28 -0.14 28 -0.14 [-0.19,-0.09] 365.24199 365.24173 6000 -32.26 -32.29 -32.29 [ -32.22, -32.36] 30 -2.29 32 -0.29 32 -0.29 [-0.36,-0.22] 365.24196 365.24167 6500 -36.43 -36.47 -36.47 [ -36.38, -36.55] 33 -3.47 36 -0.47 36 -0.47 [-0.55,-0.38] 365.24194 365.24161 7000 -40.64 -40.68 -40.68 [ -40.57, -40.78] 37 -3.68 40 -0.68 41 +0.32 [+0.22,+0.43] 365.24192 365.24156 7500 -44.88 -44.92 -44.91 [ -44.78, -45.04] 41 -3.91 44 -0.91 45 +0.09 [-0.04,+0.22] 365.24190 365.24150 8000 -49.15 -49.18 -49.17 [ -49.02, -49.33] 45 -4.17 48 -1.02 50 +0.83 [+0.67,+0.98] 365.24188 365.24145 8500 -53.45 -53.47 -53.46 [ -53.28, -53.64] 48 -5.46 52 -1.28 54 +0.54 [+0.36,+0.72] 365.24187 365.24140 9000 -57.79 -57.79 -57.77 [ -57.57, -57.98] 52 -5.77 56 -1.57 58 +0.23 [+0.02,+0.43] 365.24185 365.24135 9500 -62.16 -62.13 -62.11 [ -61.87, -62.35] 56 -6.11 60 -2.11 63 +0.89 [+0.65,+0.71] 365.24185 365.24131 10000 -66.55 -66.49 -66.47 [ -66.20, -66.74] 60 -6.47 64 -2.47 67 +0.53 [+0.26,+0.80] 365.24184 365.24127 10500 -70.98 -70.88 -70.84 [ -70.54, -71.15] 63 -7.84 68 -2.84 71 +0.16 [-0.15,+0.46] 365.24184 365.24123 11000 -75.45 -75.28 -75.24 [ -74.89, -75.58] 67 -8.24 72 -3.24 76 +0.76 [+0.02,+1.11] 365.24184 365.24120 11500 -79.94 -79.70 -79.65 [ -79.26, -80.03] 71 -8.65 76 -3.65 80 +0.35 [-0.03,+0.74] 365.24185 365.24117 12000 -84.47 -84.14 -84.07 [ -83.64, -84.49] 75 -9.07 80 -4.07 85 +0.93 [+0.51,+1.36] 365.24186 365.24114 12500 -89.02 -88.59 -88.50 [ -88.03, -88.97] 78 -10.50 84 -4.50 89 +0.50 [+0.03,+0.97] 365.24188 365.24113 13000 -93.61 -93.05 -92.94 [ -92.43, -93.45] 82 -10.94 88 -4.94 93 +0.06 [-0.45,+0.57] 365.24190 365.24111 13500 -98.23 -97.52 -97.39 [ -96.83, -97.95] 86 -11.39 92 -5.39 98 +0.61 [+0.05,+1.17] 365.24193 365.24110 14000 -102.89 -102.00 -101.84 [-101.23,-102.45] 90 -11.84 96 -5.84 102 +0.16 [-0.45,+0.77] 365.24196 365.24110 14500 -107.57 -106.49 -106.29 [-105.63,-106.95] 93 -13.29 100 -6.29 106 -0.29 [-0.95,+0.37] 365.24200 365.24110 15000 -112.29 -110.98 -110.73 [-110.02,-111.45] 97 -13.73 104 -6.73 111 +0.02 [-0.45,+0.98] 365.24205 365.24111 15500 -117.04 -115.46 -115.17 [-114.40,-115.94] 101 -14.17 108 -7.17 115 -0.17 [-0.94,+0.60] 365.24210 365.24113 16000 -121.82 -119.95 -119.60 [-118.77,-120.43] 105 -14.60 112 -7.60 120 +0.40 [-0.43,+1.23} 365.24216 365.24115 16500 -126.63 -124.43 -124.02 [-123.13,-124.91] 108 -16.02 116 -8.02 124 -0.02 [-0.91,+0.87] 365.24223 365.24118 17000 -131.47 -128.90 -128.42 [-127.46,-129.37] 112 -16.42 120 -8.42 128 -0.42 [-1.37,+0.53] 365.24230 365.24122 17500 -136.35 -133.37 -132.79 [-131.78,-133.81] 116 -16.79 124 -8.79 133 +0.21 [-0.81,+1,22] 365.24238 365.24127 18000 -141.26 -137.81 -137.14 [-136.06,-138.23] 120 -17.14 128 -9.14 137 -0.14 [-1.23,+0.94] 365.24248 365.24133 18500 -146.20 -142.25 -141.47 [-140.31,-142.62] 123 -18.47 132 -9.46 141 -0.47 [-1.62,+0.69] 365.24257 365.24139 19000 -151.17 -146.66 -145.75 [-144.53,-146.97] 127 -18.75 136 -9.53 146 +0.25 [-0.97,+1.47] 365.24268 365.24146 19500 -156.17 -151.05 -150.00 [-148.71,-151.30] 131 -19.00 140 -10.00 150 0.00 [-1.30,+1.29] 365.24280 365.24154 20000 -161.20 -155.41 -154.21 [-152.84,-155.58] 135 -19.21 144 -10.21 155 +0.79 [-0.58,+2.16] 365.24293 365.24164
Column 1: Year, all numbers are for January 1st of each year. Column 2: Offset of the seasons in days with respect to the Julian Calender, as compared to the year 2000, assuming that the length of the tropical year was exactly 365.2422 days in the year 1900, getting shorter by 1.1 seconds each century (the minus sign means that the seasons start at an earlier calender date). Column 3 and 4: More accurate calculation of the offset of the season with respect to the Julian Calender, based on a third order (McCarthy and Seidelmann, 2009) and fourth order (VSOP2000) polynomial representation of the length of the tropcial year. Column 5: This gives the error range of the values in column 4, assuming that the spin-down of the Earth's rotation causes days to lengthen by between 1.5 to 1.9 ms per century. Column 6: Leap days omitted in the Gregorian Calender as compared to the Julian Calender, starting from the year 2000. Column 7: Offset of the seasons with respect to the Gregorian Calender (for this and all following columns: length of tropical year as in column 4). Column 8: Leap days omitted with respect to the Julian Calender of a modified version of the Gregorian Calender: starting in the year 2000, the 400 year rule of Gregorian Calender is replaced by a 500 year rule. Column 9: Offset of the seasons with respect to the modfied Gregorian Calender of column 8. Column 10: Leap days omitted with respect to the Julian Calender if the 400 year rule of the Gregorian Calender is replaced by an 800 year rule, starting in the year 4000. Column 11: Offset of the seasons with respect to the modfied Gregorian Calender of column 10. Column 12: Error range of the values of column 11, assuming a spin-down of the Earth's rotation in the range from 1.5 to 1.9 ms per century, as in column 5. Column 13: Length of the tropical year in fixed days (86400 second days) calculated from a fourth order polynomial approximaton (VSOP2000) Column 14: Length of the tropical year in solar days, assuming that days are getting longer by 1.7 ms per century.
A new calender for our descendants
First a couple of comments and explanations about the table: column 2 is given mostly for pedagogical reasons. The difference between the values in column 3 and 4 may serve as an indication of the accuracy of these polynomial approximations. By the year 20000, the difference between the two approximations is about one day, still sufficiently accurate for the purpose at hand. The spin-down per century of the Earth's rotation (resulting from tidal friction and the counter-acting effect of post-glacial rebound) is not expected to be completely constant and can only be estimated for the future. The rather generous range of 1.5-1.9 ms results in an uncertainty of about 2.7 days by the year 20000, precluding an extrapolation even further into the future. As already discussed above, by the year 20000 the Gregorian calender will already be out of sync with the seasons by almost three weeks. If we changed the 400 year rule of the Gregorien calender with a 500 year rule immediately (changing the mean length of the calender year from 365.2425 to 365.2420 days), this would improve things, but by the year 10000 or so, the modified calender would again start to show unacceptable deviations from the seasons. My proposal therefore would be to keep the current Gregorain Calender till the year 4000 and then replace the 400 year rule with an 800 year rule, resulting in a mean length of the calender year of 365.24125 days. As a reminder, in the Gregorian Calender leap years are omitted in years divisible by 100, which aren't also divisible by 400; i.e., the year 2000 was a leap year, but the year 2100 won't be one, while if the rule is changed to omit leap years which are divisible by 100 but not by 800, the year 2000 would not have been a leap years. As can be seen in column 11 and 12, this calender could be kept till at least the year 20000 after which point the uncertainties of the calculation become too large to be meaningful. Gravitational interactions of the Earth with the other planets cause the tropical year (expressed in fixed days) to decrease till the 10th milenium and then start to slowly increase again (column 13). Since these effects are periodic, in the more distant future this trend will probably reverse its direction once more. If expressed in solar days, the lengthening of the tropical year is partially compensated by the spin-down of the Earth's rotation, and the minimum length of the tropical year is shifted to the 15th millenium. As can be seen in column 14, between about the 8th and 20th millenium the length of the tropcial year will stay relatively close to mean length of the 800 year rule calender year of 365.24125, which is why this calender works well for such a long time. As sometime after the 20th millenium the length of the tropcial year will start to decrease again, continuing it's longterm trend resulting from the ongoing spin-down of the Earth's rotation, it may be possible to use the 800 year rule calender even much longer. But eventually the tropcial year expressed in solar days will have decreased so much that another calender reform will be necessary, perhaps resulting in a simpler calender where the 400 year and then 800 year rule will not be needed anymore and a mean calender year of 365.2400 days will be a good approximation. So, to summarize this, let me address our descendants directly:
Dear descendants of the 40th century, I don't expect to still be around to talk to you in person and it is probably unlikely that any of you will be reading this. But if so, I wanted to let you know that I would be very pleased if, with your much improved data on celestial mechanics and on the spin-down rate of the Earth's rotation, you decided to follow my proposal of replacing the 400 year rule of the Gregorian Calender with an 800 year rule, starting in the year 4000. Of course this won't make any difference before the year 4400. So please take your time to make a wise decisison.
Rules are there to make you think before you break them. -Terry Pratchett
The last total solar eclipse - ever
Note to self: make back of envelope calculation when that will be.
openMindfile / openTimeline
Note to self: write up ideas.
Read/post comments or send email to hoelder1770 at googlemail dot com