Special Interest Group (SIG) – Tuesday September 2, 2014: COSMOS & Camaraderie

Ancient History, Conspiracy, Cosmology, Geology, History, Philosophy, Science Comments Off on Special Interest Group (SIG) – Tuesday September 2, 2014: COSMOS & Camaraderie

Tuesday, September 2nd @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

NOTE: This group does NOT replace our regularly scheduled 2nd and 4th Wednesday presentation meetings. For more information on SIGs, please check out the SIG link.

This SIG is FREE for all Pre-Paid LES Members! Others are invited to attend for $5 per meeting to help cover the cost of food and drink. All are welcome! (On the menu: Pasta salad with almonds and sun dried tomatoes, bread and butter, and cheesecake!)

In our third COSMOS SIG meeting we’ll learn about a tiny creature who has survived all the previous mass extinctions on Earth, and who outnumber humans a billion to one –  the tardigrades. We’ll also hear about a secret the plants know that science is still trying to understand.  Mastering that secret would totally eliminate the need for any other fuel to power the entire planet! We’ll hear about how the ancient Greek philosophers, Thales and Democritus, helped to change the worldview of  government, God and our place in the universe. We’ll also visit a very strange place deep underground, Super-Kamioka.

In the second episode we’ll learn about a conspiracy “…one of the first times that the authority of science was used  to cloak a threat to public health…”  This conspiracy threatened the well-being of both humans and other living creatures who share our planet. Behind the conspiracy were some unscrupulous and powerful people motivated by something other than the search for truth.  Some truths can be revealed only through years of painstaking research and data collection.  Less scrupulous people sometimes manipulate that data and spin it so that the end result represents something other than the truth.  The conspiracy failed thanks to an unwavering scientist, named Clair Patterson, and those who supported and encouraged his work.  Patterson waged a twenty-year fight against those misinterpretations – and, in this case truth prevailed!  We’re all victors in Patterson’s victory.

Because each episode stands on its own with different subject matter, it’s not necessary to see all the episodes to follow the series. But, each episode is packed with information and all episodes are beautifully done and entertaining, so attend all if you can.

Note:  The final three COSMOS SIG meetings will take place on Wed., October 1; Wed., October 15; and Wed., October 29 from 6:00 – 8:30 PM.

We’ll have a greeter at the front door till 6:05. After that, late entrants may call the phone number posted on the door for admittance. Hope to see you there!!

For additional information about the COSMOS SIG, please refer to the the August 5th post announcing the SIG.

“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be…”

“…we are all star stuffand on a journey to go back to our origin...”  –  Carl Sagan

Click here for our NEW LOCATION (map and directions)

A calendar of upcoming meeting topics can be found here.

August 27, 2014 (Wednesday) – What We Learn About Earth’s Climate by Studying Other Planets

Cosmology, Geoengineering, Science, Weather and Climate Comments Off on August 27, 2014 (Wednesday) – What We Learn About Earth’s Climate by Studying Other Planets

Join the Louisville Esoteric Society on Wednesday, August 27, 2014 at 6:30 PM for our next meeting:  “What We Learn About Earth’s Climate by Studying Other Planets“ presented by Dr. Tim Dowling.

Dr. Tim Dowling, professor and director of the atmospheric science program at the University of Louisville, will speak about what we have learned about weather and climate from 60 years of space exploration, and how it affects our understanding of the home planet.
Comparative planetology helps to make this complicated subject tractable and sets Earth in a broad setting that highlights its intrinsic beauty, but also underscores its vulnerability.  Dr. Dowling will address several of the questions concerning weather and climate forwarded to him by our members, in an interactive session that will be informative and thought provoking.

 

Prof. Dowling studies planetary atmospheres and specializes in atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics. He is the Principal Investigator on the development of the EPIC Atmospheric model, funded by NASA and NSF, which is a general circulation model (GCM) designed for planetary applications. EPIC stands for “Explicit Planetary Isentropic Coordinate” and is the leading model for the atmospheres of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The model can also be used to simulate the atmospheres of terrestrial-class atmospheres, including Venus, Earth, Mars and Titan (a large moon of Saturn with a substantial atmosphere). Some topics Prof. Dowling and his students and postdocs are working on include: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, thunderstorms on Jupiter and Saturn, jet-stream stability, Venus and Titan spinup and superrotation, and the dynamics of vortices and clouds on Uranus and Neptune.

All sincere seekers are welcome.  $10 for pay-as-you-go attendees; No charge for LES pre-pay Members.

[Pre-pay memberships are offered at discounted rates. Pick up a brochure at LES HQ for more information about the rates and benefits of becoming a pre-pay LES Member.]

 

Click here for our NEW location (map and directions)

We’re adding additional events to our calendar – our normal twice-monthly presentations plus SIGs (Special Interest Groups) and Member-only social events. Check it frequently here for updates!

Special Interest Group (SIG) – Tuesday August 19, 2014: COSMOS & Camaraderie

Ancient History, Cosmology, History, Philosophy, Science Comments Off on Special Interest Group (SIG) – Tuesday August 19, 2014: COSMOS & Camaraderie

August 19 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

NOTE: This group does NOT replace our regularly scheduled 2nd and 4th Wednesday presentation meetings. For more information on SIGs, please check out the SIG link.

This SIG is FREE for all Pre-Paid LES Members! Others are invited to attend for $5 per meeting to help cover the cost of food and drink. All are welcome! (A variety of sandwiches – some vegetarian – and chips, lemon bars and sin bars are on the menu for the second meeting.)

In our second COSMOS SIG meeting we’ll view two more episodes and learn about a secret code embedded in light and sound waves. We’ll learn about the people, who discovered the code and the coincidences (or, were they?) which made those discoveries possible. Breaking those codes yielded some powerful knowledge about the universe.

We’ll also learn about Mo Tzu, a Chinese philosopher and teacher (470 – 391 BC) , who believed in and taught democratic principles-  and Ibn Alhazin (965 -1040AD), an Islamic polymath and philosopher, who laid the groundwork for the scientific method still used today.  One of my personal favorite quotes is from Ibn Alhazen…”Finding truth is difficult and the road to it is rough. As seekers of the truth you will be wise to withhold judgement and not simply put your trust in the writings of the ancients.You must question and critically examine those writings from every side. You must submit only to argument and experiment…and not to the sayings of any person. For every human being is vulnerable to all kinds of imperfection. As seekers of the truth we must also suspect and question…our own ideas as we perform our investigations…to avoid falling into prejudice or careless thinking. Follow this course and truth will be revealed to you.

Because each episode stands on its own with different subject matter, it’s not necessary to see all the episodes to follow the series. But, each episode is packed with information and all episodes are beautifully done and entertaining, so attend all if you can.

We’ll have a greeter at the front door till 6:05. After that, late entrants may call the phone number posted on the door for admittance. Hope to see you there!!

For additional information about the COSMOS SIG, please refer to the the August 5th post announcing the SIG.

“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be…”

“…we are all star stuffand on a journey to go back to our origin...”  –  Carl Sagan

Click here for our NEW LOCATION (map and directions)

A calendar of upcoming meeting topics can be found here.

August 13, 2014 (Wednesday) – The Illusion of Time & Are We Real: Missing Pieces of the Puzzle

Cosmology 1 Comment »

 

Join the Louisville Esoteric Society on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 at 6:30 PM for our next meeting:   The Illusion of Time & Are We Real: Missing Pieces of the Puzzle“ presented by John Pickard.

John will be presenting the following videos and discussion:

The Illusion of Time

Time. We waste it, save it, kill it, make it. The world runs on it. Yet ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: They have no idea. Even more surprising, the deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be nothing more than an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong? In search of answers, Brian Greene takes us on the ultimate time-traveling adventure, hurtling 50 years into the future before stepping into a wormhole to travel back to the past. Along the way, he will reveal a new way of thinking about time in which moments past, present, and future—from the reign of T. Rex to the birth of your great-great-grandchildren—exist all at once. This journey will bring us all the way back to the Big Bang, where physicists think the ultimate secrets of time may be hidden. You’ll never look at your wristwatch the same way again.

What We Still Don’t Know – Are We Real?

The Universe is still a place of mystery and wonder. As a cosmologist, Sir Martin Rees is exhilarated that we can make some progress towards tackling what seem very fundamental questions. Was there a beginning? Are we alone? What’s the future of the cosmos? What is the nature of reality? With each advance, new questions come into sharper focus. The key issue is what we still don’t know. There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone else’s experiment.

All sincere seekers are welcome.  $10 for pay-as-you-go attendees; No charge for LES pre-pay Members.

[Pre-pay memberships are offered at discounted rates. Pick up a brochure at LES HQ for more information about the rates and benefits of becoming a pre-pay LES Member.]

 

Click here for our NEW location (map and directions)

We’re adding additional events to our calendar – our normal twice-monthly presentations plus SIGs (Special Interest Groups) and Member-only social events. Check it frequently here for updates!