The Wheel Goes Around: 2014

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Christmas Comet and Supernova! C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy and SN2014lp

December 20 - Finally got clear enough to see a new promising comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy. Currently is is due south low in the horizon around 10pm-1am in the constellation Columba. I saw it in 12x50 binoculars on 12/20 for the first time and have been following it since, moving quite fast and getting higher in the sky. It is very easy to find in binoculars large and bright.

December 24 4am saw a new supernova SN2014lp in NGC 4666 about one degree from Porrima in the constellation Virgo. I used a 9mm ES100 eyepiece for 217X power in the 15" Obsession. This gave a separation of the supernova from the core of the galaxy. It is quite bright > 11magnitude.

Dec22 10-12pm and Dec24 4-6am was able to get some very nice stargazing lots of familiar galaxies in Virgo, Ursa Major, Leo, Corvus, Canes Venatici, and Corona Borealis. Many bright and dim including Sombrero, M51 M101 Antennae Hickson 44 2903 4565 4485/90 3224/7 Markarians Chain etc.
Seeing was not quite good enough for Jupiter viewing.

Nov15 6:42-6:52am using 80ED with 16mm and 3X barlow 52 degree Fahrenheit saw Ganymeade occult Io!!!

Oct 23 partial solar eclipse!

Oct 22 large sunspot AR2192 .

Aug 22 saw Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques.

April 21 met Sir Roger Penrose and got his autograph! He gave a talk on Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.

April 14-15 Total Lunar Eclipse.

March 24 Syrtis Major on Mars.

Jan 27 SN 2014G in NGC 3448

Jan 25 SN 2014J in M82

Jan 3 Large sunspot AR 1944.

Early January revisited both C/2012 X1 Linear and C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

Attachments:

C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

SN2014lp

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

From Goldmans's THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS

THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS THAT GUIDED KURT GÖDEL’S REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS
by David P. Goldman
August 2010

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/the-god-of-the-mathematicians

Cantor asserted that the infinity of the integers and rational numbers was the first transfinite number, and he named it “Aleph-zero.” What, then, was the second transfinite number, or “Aleph-one”? He had proven that the infinity of the continuum of real numbers was “denser” than that of the integers; unlike that of the rational numbers, it could not be counted. He assumed that if the first transfinite number contained the integers, the second transfinite number would contain the continuum, and that no other transfinite number could be discovered between these two.

That is Cantor’s “continuum hypothesis,” which attempts to identify a first and second transfinite cardinal number. From there, he believed, all the possible orders of infinity could be counted, the same way the integers count groups of one, two, three, and so forth. He not only recognized, but was driven by, the ontological implications of this assertion: If the continuum hypothesis turned out to be true, Spinoza would be vindicated because God’s infinity could be packaged into a neat series of numbers. Cantor spent the last thirty-five years of his life in a vain effort to prove this. He died in 1918 in a mental hospital.

It was Gödel and, later, Paul Cohen who demonstrated respectively that Cantor’s continuum hypothesis could be neither proved nor disproved within existing set theory. Indeed, Cantor’s hypothesis remains maddeningly undecidable. Intuition, added Gödel, strongly suggests that Cantor’s hypothesis is wrong: Among the infinite number of transfinite numbers, there are an infinite number of cardinalities between the integers and the points on the continuum line, and mathematical investigation of the infinite will remain infinitely fruitful. God’s infinitude remains safe in heaven. Mathematicians have proven that an infinite number of transfinite numbers exist but cannot tell what they are or in what order they should be arranged.