January 31, 2024

    My adventures in hiking are less intense and much less risky due to age, health changes including cardiac pacemaker, atrial fibrillation, past heart attack surgeries and stents, torn achilles tendon, peripheral neuropathy, loss of vision especially in left eye with macular hole treatments ongoing, etc. Tomorrow I'll hike up from Hawaii Kai up Hahaione Ridge towards Kuliouou Trail. Here the elevation gain is over 900 feet in four + miles on a secure trail without ropes or severe narrow drop-offs. I'm missing the Kahekili Trail hike with the Solemates and Rusties Group. Here's why https://the-wanderlust.com/2015/01/kahekili-manamana/ and https://www.google.com/search?q=Kahekili+Trail+in+Ka%27a%27awa&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lpg=cid:CgIgAQ%3D%3D,ik:CAoSLEFGMVFpcFB2RUFzOFk4cndCaE1TcEVkRnZ6QUdKQXlrSzRfNjNKb3FPcEw0

    I show you this 1827 feet climb in less than three miles round trip because I would like to go but at this stage in my life it's much too dangerous. This is an epic hike I've heard about, talked to people who have done this, and always hesitated in the challenge. To me it's like the bear claw ridge challenge that is no longer attempted to my knowledge that has resulted in fatalities.  https://kenjisaito.com/bear-claw-left-fork/

    Tomorrow our Hahaione Hike will be just fine. I'll have one or two hikers with me hiking to Mabel's trail as the turn around point. Mabel was a octogenarian hiker and trail clearer who made a bypass trail up from the bottom of Kuliouou bypassing the switch back Kuliouou trail part way. We went to her scattering of ashes off of the Hahaione summit ridge trail a few years ago.  

    Yesterday, at home I was talking with my wife's son who was at our house doing some repairs on our water fountain. He was asking me about plans for his mother and myself in the future when we may require some assistance due to frailty due to aging issues. Not a hot issue now for us but becoming a worry for my wife and I for an aging friend now 94 who recently grieved the loss of his wife after a protracted illness at home with caregivers. He is unsteady on his feet maybe due to peripheral neuropathy, is on medications for atrial fibrillation, is struggling with mobility issues due to his heart and being overweight.  I have attempted to get him interested in walking but he procrastinates and seems to show more problems with mobility. Another friend I try to motivate walking in a botanical gardens with me but his mobility is less over these past few years. My circle of relationships with people my age who when younger I'd have adventures with hiking, skiing, kayaking, biking, and scuba diving with is changed so that my adventure partners and friends are now aged, impaired, and yet present and sharing when I can communicate with them. 

    To answer my wife's son all I could discuss is that currently we're fine but the future will have us more impaired and at some point we may need assistance. Our support comes from him and my three children. their families, and our providers of health services. 

    Did you know that a vacuum in space with nothing in it has energy? That since General Relativity Theory has a formula E=MC2 , the energy can be s transformed to matter and be discovered as for example fleeting evidence of positrons, electrons, photons, amd force if matter is placed in the vacuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy. The positrons and electrons are called virtual since they collide and annihilate themselves. Since a vacuum now is not empty but has energy this may help explain the observations that our universe is expanding and that this expansion previously attributed to dark energy may in part be due to the energy in a vacuum. Einstein played with a fudge factor he called the cosmological principle to have his equations show the universe is expanding and now maybe this fudge factor is correct due to the discovery of energy present in a vacuum. Also, to me very interesting the theory of the big bang when the dense soup of matter and energy began expanding the positron and electrons collided creating energy but for still some unknown reason there was an excess of electrons leftover giving the universe some matter. Our theory of the big bang is now challenged due to the research now possible with the newer instruments that can capture radiation light frequencies and see far into the beginning of the universe. What I understand is that star and galaxy presence is formed much earlier that hypothesized a puzzle bringing the issue of the effects of gravity on the quantum world. Also there are very large structures and masses of matter present in some parts of the universe calling into question the perfect cosmological principle that the universe looks the same everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle#:~:text=The%20perfect%20cosmological%20principle%20is,always%20has%20and%20always%20will. 

    I'm using this blog to describe these interesting finding and to write about them so I can understand them more completely. Way back at the turn of the century Max Plank was studying black body radiation. He could not accurately predict the frequency of light using the wave theories of light and energy which was the standard of that time. He noticed that if he used a different mathematical analysis of the data he discovered that the data fit more accurately by viewing the light from the black body as discrete chunks or quanta. His formula worked so the physicist can predict the energy level, time factor, space perimeters, etc. Think of the world of quanta where the smallest amount and ingredient is a sugar cube. You cannot pour the sugar you must take any number or quanta. The world of extremely small tiny things comes in quanta only. So Einstein took Plank's formula and principle to create his General Theory of Relativity. Hard for me to picture but space then comes in quanta and is not continuous the way I used to think of it. Time  and distance likewise are in chunks at the quanta level. Since space has energy and therefore mass, the amounts are extremely small but if you multiply this by the size of the universe the matter and energy add up to close to 70% of the known universe! There is some experimental confirmation of this called the Casimer and Polk experiment. If you have two metal plates extremely close to each other in an absolute vacuum there is an attractive force that can be measured "In fact, at separations of 10 nm – about 100 times the typical size of an atom – the Casimir effect produces the equivalent of about 1 atmosphere of pressure (the precise value depending on surface geometry and other factors)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy  

    Absolutely fascinating to me that we can have viable theories like these to explain that a vacuum has energy and mass, brownian movements continue in absolute zero temperature, dark energy hypothesized may have some reality with this new knowledge, and quantum theory such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are supported by the data. 

    I just completed reading Catching the Light by Arthur Zajonc. To discuss his ideas would require another blog so maybe for another day. He makes some points from the perspective of seeing, the eye, optical illusions, and light required for all of this wonder of eye vision to be present. For example, see the old woman and young lady?

We could not have an eye without light and we could not see without an eye. Our forebears before the reformation and science hypothesized that seeing required some force and ray from the eye outward. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of Faust fame studied the rainbow and light. 

   "Nay,,,then, the sun shall abide behind my shoulders!

    The cataract, that through the gorge doth thunder

    I'll watch with growing rapture, 'mid the boulders

    From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder

    In thousand streams, aloft shower

    Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under,

    Yet blossoms from the storm a radiant flower;

    The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,

    Now lost in the air, now limned with the clearest power,

    Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.

    Its rays an image of man's efforts render; 

    Think and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing

    Life in the many-hued, reflected splendor.  (Faust Part II page 15).

    Is there a quantum theory of candlelight? 

    "Some candle clear burns bright somewhere I come by.

    I muse of how its being puts bliss back

    With yellow moisture mild night's blear-all black,

    Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Candle Indoors"

    In summary, life requires change. Without change there is no life. Our understanding and decision making come from our biological structure including brain and guts. This structure has limitations and is subject to the laws of nature. Therefore error (and inner perceptual uncertainty) in our perceptions, our attempts at rational analysis, and our choices are ever present. We rationalize and are sometimes convinced of our group think views and opinions. We love narrative stories and we tend to enjoy game playing so much that we can murder and rampage against the opposing team. Our abilities are hampered by memory problems and sometime magical thinking yet to remember everything as a goal is a fallacy. Forgetting is important to remember and function. We sometimes reason without being aware of antinomies (Kant) in our thoughts. Scientific hypothesis making, data analyses, open debate, and searching for errors in the process has yielded tremendous advances in our knowledge and abilities to destroy ourselves. Since we are so difficult to govern with the increasing populations of the earth competing groups vie for control and dominance often rationalizing their actions claiming that people can not have governance without some head, monarch king, enlightened dictator, or adherence to religious doctrine determined by only certain people in the hierarchy. I'm more comfortable with the god of the gaps debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps. 

Leonard