The discovery of the Higgs boson at LHC confirms that what we experience as empty space should actually be thought as a condensate of elementary quanta. This condensate characterizes the physically realized form of relativity and could play the role of preferred reference frame in a modern Lorentzian approach. This observation suggests a new interpretative scheme to understand the unexplained residuals in the old ether-drift experiments where light was still propagating in gaseous systems. Differently from present vacuum experiments, where anyhow (...) deviations from Special Relativity are expected to be at the limit of visibility, these now acquire a crucial importance and become consistent with the Earth’s velocity of 370 km/s which characterizes the CMB anisotropy. In the same scheme, one can also understand the difference with the other experiments where light propagates in strongly bound systems such as solid or liquid transparent media. This non-trivial level of consistency motivates a new generation of precise laser interferometry experiments which explore the same particle physics vacuum and, in this sense, are complementary to those with high-energy accelerators. (shrink)

It’s perhaps natural to think that our universe should be more or less the same in all directions, once we average out the lumpiness of stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, superclusters, etc. However, there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that this presumption is not true. There is now a strong suspicion that our universe may contain a gaping “hole” located in the constellation Eridanus. This all started several years ago with the observation that there was a pronounced “Cold Spot” in (...) the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that produced space-based measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) left behind about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. (shrink)

The existence of big bang relic neutrinos—exact analogues of the big bang relic photons comprising the cosmic microwave background radiation—is a basic prediction of standard cosmology. The standard big bang theory predicts the existence of 1087 neutrinos per flavour in the visible universe. This is an enormous abundance unrivalled by any other known form of matter, falling second only to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photon. Yet, unlike the CMB photon which boasts its first (serendipitous) detection in the 1960s and (...) which has since been observed and its properties measured to a high degree of accuracy in a series of airborne/satellite and ground based experiments, the relic neutrino continues to be elusive in the laboratory. The chief reason for this is of course the feebleness of the weak interaction. At present, the observational evidence for their existence rests entirely on cosmological measurements, such as the light elemental abundances, anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, and the large-scale matter power spectrum. In this paper we argue that Direct Detection of relic neutrino background is indeed impossible by any means, because of two chief reasons: (a) there was no such thing of cosmic singularity, hence the hot big bang/primeval atom model was based on false premises (quantum birth assumption); (b) the neutrino existence itself is not unquestionable, in particular if we consider a realism view of vector potential, A, in classical electrodynamics. (shrink)

In §1, the bona fide anisotropy of physical time is sharply distinguished from the alleged one-way flow of time.

Additional evidence is presented concerning the anisotropy between vertical and horizontal encoding, which emerges from studies of human perception and cognition of space in plane mirror reflections. Moreover, it is suggested that the non-metric characteristic of polarization is not limited to the vertical dimension.

Cultural forms are constrained by cognitive biases, and writing is thought to have evolved to fit basic visual preferences, but little is known about the history and mechanisms of that evolution. Cognitive constraints have been documented for the topology of script features, but not for their orientation. Orientation anisotropy in human vision, as revealed by the oblique effect, suggests that cardinal orientations, being easier to process, should be overrepresented in letters. As this study of 116 scripts shows, the orientation (...) of strokes inside written characters massively favors cardinal directions, and it is organized in such a way as to make letter recognition easier: Cardinal and oblique strokes tend not to mix, and mirror symmetry is anisotropic, favoring vertical over horizontal symmetry. Phylogenetic analyses and recently invented scripts show that cultural evolution over the last three millennia cannot be the sole cause of these effects. (shrink)

A meta-analysis and an experiment show that the degree of compression of the in-depth dimension of visual space relative to the frontal dimension increases quickly as a function of the distance between the stimulus and the observer at first, but the rate of change slows beyond 7 m from the observer, reaching an apparent asymptote of about 50 %. In addition, the compression of visual space is greater for monocular and reduced cue conditions. The pattern of compression of the in-depth (...) dimension as a function of distance is similar to the ratio of in-depth to frontal visual angles of stimuli, but is not as extreme as this ratio would suggest, implying that observers are incapable of fully ignoring size information provided by cues to depth. Size and distance judgments may be described by an Affine transformation of physical space; however, the compression parameter in this model changes as a function of distance from the observer and other experimental conditions. (shrink)

이 논문은 새터민과 소통 문제를 주요하게 다룬다. 새터민은 북한-중국-남한 등 여러 이동경로를 거치면서, 새로운 문화를 경험하게 되는 다중문화체험자이다. 새터민은 이주민으로서, 우리와 단절되어 있는 북한사회에서 오는문화적 이방성과도 소통해야 하는 문제를 제기한다. 그래서 여기서는 새로운 문화담론인 으로 새터민의 이방성을 이해하려고 한다. 그것은 새터민 주체와 연관된 지리적 이해를 확장하여, 접경지역을 문화담론으로 전환시키는 작업이다. 동시에, 분단에 의한 단절에서온 소통 불능의‘문화적 결손’을 새터민을 통해 역으로 치유하게 할 수 있다. 첫째, 새터민 문제는 북한사람과 남한사람을 담론 속으로 들어오게 매개한다. 둘째, 지리적으로 접경지역을 매개시켜 북한-중국-남한의 경계를 넘어서는소통공간의 확장이 (...) 가능해진다. 그것은 분단문화 전환을 함축하는 문화 체험과유사하다. 여기서는 남북한 사이의 문화적 이질성 또는 이방성을 아는 것으로그치는 것이 아니라, 그 과정의 실제적 대상인 현실과 사람을 담론 속에 끌어들이는 하나의 소통 전략을 구성하고 있다는 점이 중요해진다. 이처럼 변경을 텍스트로 하여 새터민의 이방성을 추적해 가는 작업은 새터민의 원체험사회‘북한’을 이해하는 새로운 방법도 된다. 새터민 이해는 북한을 빼고 알 수 없다. 또한 새터민 주체는 남북관계 속의 지속적인 행위 주체임을 주목해야 한다. 이 논문에서 구체적으로 분석한 사례는, 새터민의 원체험문화의 전형성을 접경지역에서 볼 수 있는 삶의 현장에서 찾아냄으로써, 그 전형성을 통해 새로운문화와 접촉, 충격, 변화 등을 이해할 수 있었다. 이 담론은 과정으로서의 의미를 중시하며, 그 과정 속의 주체, 대상으로서의 현실, 실천행위 등 세 측면을 포괄하는 진행형의 언술 집합체 개념이다. 다시 말해 변경문화담론은 어떤 실천행태를 띰으로써, 그 담론이 이야기로 끝나지 않고, 현실을 변화시키는 힘의 관계를 장악하는 행위까지 포함한다는 말이다. (shrink)

Riemer’s recent paper on the perception of time discusses a neglected yet important topic in the psychological literature: the consequences for psychology (and psychophysics) from the ‘anisotropy’ of time. The paper presents an argument that there are unique kinds of challenges for psychophysics from such temporal anisotropy: (a) Challenges because the psychological experience of time has temporal anisotropy and the physical concept of time does not have temporal anisotropy. (b) Challenges for experimental research which are unique (...) to temporal anisotropy. -/- Although it is important to consider temporal anisotropy, I think there are reasons to deny the force of both kinds of challenges. (shrink)

The concept of an objective spatial direction in special relativity is investigated and theories assuming light-speed isotropy while accepting the existence of a privileged spatial direction are classified, including so-called very special relativity. A natural generalization of the proper time principle is introduced which makes it possible to devise non-optical experimental tests of spatial isotropy. Several common misunderstandings in the relativistic literature concerning the role of spatial isotropy are clarified.