"If only we knew what we were made of," said the little girl to her tear-stained mother. "We would know how these things happen,"

While the rabbit hole linked will take you to another story, this one begins at the kitchen table with thoughts on breath. We breathe in 'air' and breathe out carbon dioxide, we were told at school. That's a lot of nitrogen we're taking in to be breathing out CO2 and it might seem we're disposing of more oxygen than is incoming, if 78% of what we're getting into our lungs is nitrogen. Having looked it up, this is Nitrogen according to the popular search engine;

Let's go back to the time when science dumped Rutherford's atomic concept and dismissed the idea that electrons zip around nuclei in little circles. The revelation that electrons could be superpositioned (in any number of places at once) silenced further argument, it seems, on what electrons actually do for real. What really happens may still be open to debate but the interesting thing about all this, atm, is the relationship we have with hydrogen.

H2O is as essential to us as air and that's something else we all know. The BBC writes:

Nice of them to add the extra information about 'what Carbon Dioxide is' in the same sentence.

Nitrogen and hydrogen combine to form ammonia; highly toxic - an adult human has, they say, less than 50 micromoles per litre in their blood. In an adult, that is... an infant has twice as much. Some ammonia is urinated, but if we are to follow recent recommendations and down 8 litres of water a day (Eds' advice; don't try this at home), are we not running a huge risk of ammonia poisoning by drinking and breathing at the same time?

Looking up 'what happens to the nitrogen we breathe in' will give you a range of answers from carrier oxygen atoms escorting it into the bloodstream to it being expelled entirely in the next breath, so with a variance on the agenda I'd say there's no agreement on this one. It goes somewhere, okay?

This juicy little diagrammatic explanation tells us that the air breathed in and out is composed of the same ingredients, more or less - there's a <5% drop in the oxygen that escapes us. So when we take a breath, the oxygen incoming has to take over, presumably, from the oxygen we breathe out while the nitrogen content, apparently, doesn't do anything at all (being inert... remember when there was total conviction that 95% of DNA was 'junk'?). Just sayin'. Take no notice of the Argon and those 'other gases'.

Ahh - but there's the drinking water to consider, with its oxygen atom carried around by 2 hydrogen atoms. Quora had an Assistant Bot on its staff in 2014, which said this:
​

Did you know AI was alive and kicking in 2014? Me neether. Never mind... no oxygen atom we drink can escape the hydrogen police, who might be tiny but have handcuffs. They are clearly escorting the oxygen somewhere on suspicion of intent. (Looking up 'what happens to the oxygen from drinking water' turns out to be an amusing exercise - recommended.)
What happens to the hydrogen?

Asking "What happens to the hydrogen in water when we drink it" or a similar variable on the same question will probably deliver you a lot of hype from Hydrogenated water salesmen, just as the Oxygenated water salesmen clowned about on the previous exercise. Diddly squat scientific information. Let's try something else:

"biological explanation of what happens to hydrogen in water drunk"

Nope, diddly squat. Perhaps someone sober will be kind enough to leave a comment!?

Meanwhile, I carried on hunting for what happens to the hydrogen. Could it have locked itself up? I found a potential explanation from Harvard University but my screen told me someone might be trying to steal my identity, so the computer wouldn't let me go there. The only other vaguely scientific find was something to do with microbes (don't you just love those microbes?} that you can find here from a government source (that didn't flag up anything about cookies ... lol lmao ... yeah sure, nobody need ask).

Another Government paper says that urinary ammonia excreted carries "n the range of 0.7–45 mmol/L" out of our body. Not a lot, then. Somewhere, that hydrogen is doing something in the cells and my guess is that nobody really knows what - if you do, please comment your elucidations... thanks!

Hydrogen blows up, we know that much. You can run cars on it.

Image credit : Adelaide University

Some considerable time has passed since I last wrote. Not without good reason, I might add. Only those reasons are likely to incriminate me so I won't go into them here :) 

With new data coming from the LHC in the form of Beauty Quark experiments (yes, my frequent indignation at its demotion to Bottom Quark paid off) we know that quark matter takes many forms and some of those are still beyond peripheral vision. Here's a link to latest findings:    home.cern/news/news/physics/lhcb-discovers-three-new-exotic-particles

Heartening it is to see new particles coming into focus, more heartening still that arguments now rage over quantum mechanical consciousness and the conditions in the brain which may be harbouring said phenomenon. This article from last year cites new research which could prove groundbreaking:  singularityhub.com/2021/07/25/can-consciousness-be-explained-by-quantum-physics-new-research/
An article came out in 2020 from which I quote:  "The neurons in the brain oscillate in activity in a coherent pattern during specific thought processes. This synchronous oscillation may be what allows communication between different regions of the brain and establishes memory. Different frequency oscillations occur at the same locations in the brain in order to avoid information traffic when communicating to other regions of the brain. Quantum mechanics may explain how so many different subsets of oscillating connections in the brain can be generated at once.
One way these oscillations may occur is if the microtubules within neurons are constructed like quantum computers. Microtubules are like the brain of a brain cell. They’re rapidly changing structural molecules that respond instantly to mental events by reconfiguring the structure of dendrites and axons, the input and output branches of the neuron. The array of microtubules in the brain may exhibit a quantum effect similar to those in quantum computers."
medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/is-consciousness-a-quantum-phenomenon-fcbb65bed950

Echo my missives on microtubules and I daresay you'll notice some ground being re-surfaced there:​
www.quantumology.org/blog/soul-and-the-cellular-strangeness                      ​


​Or this one, which didn't hit so highly in popularity but perhaps says more about the subject matter:
www.quantumology.net/blog/dr-lanza-microtubules-and-the-multiverse

Quantumology has been here for some time. In no rush for anything to happen on the grounds that I have no control whatsoever over the timing of things, I'm simply glad to be chatting with physicists and still immersing myself in the territory with a YouTube channel, a Facebook group holding steady at 2,200 members and a Page attracting plenty of Likes. 

Whether you're a newbie or an old hand at all this, have fun and enjoy your explorations. If anyone tries to kick you off a forum for asking the wrong questions, or gives you a hard time for holding true to your views, get in touch with me. I have a few T-shirts in those kinds of departments.

Stay with it, enjoy the journey... see you soon! x

The speed of Light is all very well. As a measurement, it's useful in gauging distance between stars and galaxies. But to say that nothing in the Universe can travel faster is a statement reminiscent of the age when the Earth was said to be the centre of the galaxy, or the solar system, even at one point the centre of the Universe.

We have a tendency to adopt a hugely inflated opinion of ourselves. When that opinion comes crashing down to earth we don't much like the effects, so tend to avoid inviting such catastrophes. Sometimes, though, catastrophe is unavoidable, much as the Ultraviolet Catastrophe was unavoidable in physics. When something absorbs/emits every frequency of everything that is, something has to give. Constants might well be first in line.

Look at any paper describing an equation and you'll see text that says something like, "If X equals Y then Z can be A, and B will be equivalent to C." Everything the maths tells us is coming from a place of safety, where symbols are sacred and the numbers don''t really matter because it's all relative anyway - the solution a product of its own device.

This video slashes the speed of light into silos for further management, asking questions of the constant that even Max Planck might approve of. Where there's light, there are things to be seen. The trouble is, we can only ever see a tiny slice of the bigger picture.

The word 'Super' is all very well but when it precedes a description in physics it means something beyond the state of goodness we generally ascribe to the principle. Something that is 'superb' is a great thing, a positive thing, a thing of beauty. So it should be across the board, one would think, but in quantum mechanics 'Super' is relative, superlative not as an expression of praise, but more often one of despair.

The superlative qualities of the quantum realm are yet to be defined; including as they do Uniqueness and Entanglement, therein being the classic juxtaposition of One versus All, for we do not know to what extent we are subject to entanglement as it's not a measurable commodity in the real world, but we do know that we are all unique. Our uniqueness is something we take for granted unless we're placing ourselves in the well of humanity and bemoaning it as we are wont to do. 

How many people, I can ask myself now, can sit at their desk with a collared dove on one side and a tawny owl on the other, both more than happy to be there, for the owl is blind and the flightless dove has worked that out, so their relationship with each other is ambivalent while their relationship with me is mutually affable. This situation might be shared by others with different birds, by people with animals of all kinds accompanying them on the journey without destination. But these birds beside me are unique, and that satisfies the desire to be One which humans seem to possess and other creatures ... well, do they perceive?

Our separation within the Supersystem carves out for us an illusion of grandeur, an unfortunate trait that has led to where we are now, on a planet suffering the consequences. Supermarkets buy into the system no matter what you choose to buy from them. They sell a lot of tuna. Most of us buy milk. Coffee. Palm oil - who checks the ingredients? Lives don't matter here. No wonder we are fraught with fears of loss on a promise of infinite nothingness. What have we to look forward to, when things are unlikely to change? These relationships of ours, where are they going, when neither can see a way to put right what is so often determined to be wrong? You're more than likely asking now what the hell that has to do with quantum mechanics. 

A hundred years have passed since Werner Heisenberg proposed the Uncertainty Principle as a description of inability to measure two things at once in the quantum world. Due to the fuzzy nature of particles like electrons, you cannot measure the speed or trajectory of such an object at the same time as knowing its position, and vice versa.
The best way to capture this mentally is to remember that while you're looking at the speedo in your car, you're not looking out the window at where you are, and while you're clocking the road-sign to tell you where you are, you can't also be looking at the speedo.

The entries you'll find while scrolling your search engine will tell you, variably, that it's not simply a matter of measuring two things at once, while others insist that it is no more than just that. Science has reached a point of no return with the U.P. and has had to grant it an extension - so now there is Expanded Uncertainty, but it's still a tale told in maths and resists implications of the wider variety. However, you'll be familiar with the fact that snowflakes and grains of sand are unique, for Nature doesn't like symmetry or straight lines, Nature likes asymmetry and turns out varieties that are all different from each other. The extent of this law, if we can call it that, is quite mind-boggling and we've no idea how far Uniqueness goes, or even why Nature is so insistent upon it.

This video looks at the implications of the Uncertainty Principle and asks politely (refusing to lower itself to Brian Cox's level) where the U.P. might be going from here.
To join in Live discussions with me, visit the Group at www.facebook.com/groups/quantumol 

​Symbiosis is a feature of Nature crossing species and circumstances all over the cosmos. We have little idea of how deep symbiosis may go in quantum terms, but the more we delve into the realms of particle physics, the more symbiosis we seem to find.

In this video, correlation between symbiotic features of the Universe and synchronicity is explored. There is much further to go, we can be sure, in our search for what lies at the depths of physics. While we're waiting for next steps to be taken, enjoy a few minutes with me and my owl...