Im posting this again in the light of a new analysis from my buddy Aodhaghán in Dublin. This makes a fascinating read. Thanks Ao P.S. check the link at the end Hey Pete, Thanks for the nice animation of the solar system, showing the time dimension as well as the usual elliptical orbits. However ... ... it isnt correct to think of this system as a vortex. The whole thing, the solar system - which includes the approximately spherical Oort Cloud and the teardrop-shaped solar magnetosphere with the Sun nearer its leading edge, altogether something like a light-year or more in extent - is being carried along with and by the centre of mass, the Sun. Near neighbours - up to a few hundred light-years maybe - see the whole thing as a single mass, not varying very much in relation to them, though they will of course be aware of our solar system as well as theirs orbiting the very large black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy as a coherent and (relatively) stable structure of the Orion Arm. Within the solar system, the long-term orbits of the planets, which look like ellipses to us, actually form strange attractors centered on the centre of mass - not quite the centre of the Sun. They are both stable in the long term and also subject to chaotic change and reconfiguration. Whatever happens to individual orbits, though, they are still bound by the overall momentum of the whole solar system (barring, of course, crashes with erratic bodies which transfer angular momentum). A vortex on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish. It is a dissipative structure, something that comes into being to process an increase in system energy. A good example is the vortex that can form in a bath. If the water is released at a rate that the water can process as laminar flow, there is no vortex, just the usual emptying. If water is released above the threshold rate, it is able to reconfigure itself into separate sheets, which can twist and align themselves to flow faster - the sheets have less friction at their boundaries than they have internally. In a bath, this process can be more efficient than is actually needed - you can sometimes see a clear opening right through the hole, through which even more water could flow in the same time, but the pressure is not high enough to require this. This temporary structure is the vortex. If pressure is increased further, the vortex structure breaks down, and turbulent flow results - the water squirting out at pressure (the vortex water is not under pressure once it comes out, except for gravity). A vortex is only one form of dissipative structure, and can occur in may media. For instance, the event horizon surrounding the central black hole is a vortex (and were all heading there). For me, the vortex is a good metaphorical tool to use in discussing life or souls. Where was it before it formed, and where does it go when it is no longer there? Answer: it wasnt anywhere else, and didnt go anywhere else, it was just a thing of its moment. It arose out of the laws of the universe, brought to bear at a specific moment in time on a particular situation. It did its thing - as a temporary structure to process energy - and then the circumstances of its existence no longer obtained. But there are many other types of dissipative structures, some more interesting even than vortices. Life, for instance. When the genome, made of chemicals, is activated it begins processing other chemicals. The complexity of the instructions in the genome - evolved according to and by the laws of the universe - is able to reconfigure the chemicals to follow its patterns, creating more complexity which is able to do more still, until we get a tree. Or a bee. Or a me. These things are all designed to keep entropy at bay - for a while; they are not perfect. In this sense life is a dissipative structure: it increases local information and decreases local entropy. It takes the raw and unstructured energy available from physical matter and creates structure. These temporary dissipative structures pollinate trees, bear apples, and investigate the nature of the universe. The bees and apples and us are part of a larger dissipative structure, which we think of as Gaia. So while the physical solar system is really a closed (almost) system, and the planetary orbits merely a temporary configuration within that, other things within it - Gaia, for instance, and us - are much more interesting and closer to the idea of a vortex. By the way, the spiral forms of leaves and shells and many other living things arent vortices either, really. The are individual responses to a series of constraints created by physics and the environment in the context of the different genomes. A lot of these structures are to do with logistics, energy efficiency. For instance, say you have to carry calcium to your shell boundary. At some point, the cost of shipping it from the processing area in your mouth to the wall becomes greater that the cost of building a new factory at the wall. So you have a segment boundary at that point. Because of your existing shape (say you began life as D-shaped; many good reasons for this), the new boundary cannot be exactly the same as the last one, so you curve the shell in at one end and out at the other. You end up as a segmented 3D helix, like a snail or a whelk. Or you want to maximise sunlight on your leaves, so you grow them to a fractal, space-filling pattern, spiraling around the trunk. A circle from above. A sphere from the side, modified for things like leaf shape and optimal positioning, branch configuration, growing environment etc. And dont talk to me about fractals! I remember being told in 1st science that the roots and root-hairs of a single wheat plant down to the fourth level added up to 4000 kilometers in length. Thats an awful lot of biological action in a small space (invariably filled with other things as well). Anyway, small rant over. New visuals always great, we can take in so much more of a structure. For me the uplifting thing is to be completely surrounded at all times by actual examples of these processes, going on their merry way, with or without us. Heres a nice video of the physics in slo-mo: gfm.aps.org/meetings/dfd-2014/5404d95669702d07719a0100 ... and theres more good stuff on this site as well. Love, A.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:14:12 +0000