Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated by astronomy and physics, have read a bunch of books - including Alan Guth’s “The Inflationary Universe” - and watched a ton of content, from “Cosmos” (as a boy when it first aired) to nearly every PBS Spacetime video (among other hard science YouTube channels).

This video is the first time I’ve ever come across the Oscillon, as well as the Truth Quark and Beauty Quark in another one of this channel’s videos, and at this point in my life, to be surprised by three whole new particles in one evening is kinda thrilling.

Here’s the one that mentions the Truth and Beauty Quarks.

I can almost picture the academic analysis…
“The first character syllable can be read as kah or kuh, while the second character is read as unt, together they make the sound kawnt…”

Another way of putting the question:

What was the process of ancient Sumerian experimenting and realizing the potential of this new tool they had on their hands?

“Maybe I can use writing to do such-and-such thing…” and proceeded to do the first ever written snail-mail message, or the first medical or mathematical instructions/textbook, the first poem or essay, etc.

…and then to register astronomical observations! The birth of science, no less.

And all because every year like clockwork, the Eufrates and Tigris blanketed an area of hundreds of square kilometers with a fresh coat of silt (from the Taurus mountains in modern-day Turkey) that was perfect as a rudimentary but cheap, easy and quick writing medium, pushing the point of a stick into a pancake of soft clay, then leaving it to dry and harden in the sun.

There was no father.

For example, if one starts with Prelude To Foundation as the entry point, the reveal of Eto Demerzel being R. Daneel Olivaw in disguise all loses its’ punch, while if one reads the original Robot books first, it becomes an astounding reveal, a true “holy shit!” moment, on several levels, the delightful surprise of clearly seeing Asimov kneading together two separate series so intimately and right before your eyes, the narrative doubles in size and scope in the snap of a finger.

The power of that moment, that opportunity that Asimov seized, makes it worthwhile to follow Isaac’s mind instead of the plot in chronological order.

As with Isaac Asimov, I much prefer order of publication.
Woe the poor soul trying to get into Foundation and instead of getting the original trilogy, they start with Prelude To Foundation. I met a guy who did that, in college; he didn’t know where to start, at the bookstore thought “Hey… Prelude… sounds like a good place to start!”

[In] the Narnia books it’s like that “main world” where it was just an infinite number of ponds and jumping into one shoots you out to some world … I think The Magicians kind of ripped off the idea.

Completely off-topic from symmetries and entropies, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to mention that the specific Narnia installment where we see this “main world” and branches is The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth out of seven books.

But isn’t entropy an emergent phenomenon, manifesting only at larger, relativistic (by which I mean non-quantum) levels?
Entropy doesn’t affect the fundamental symmetries I mentioned in the title. So information may not be fundamental, then?

Man… information is such a weird concept when one stops to look at it, I wonder if a true definition of it is as difficult to pin down as time.

Yeah… what are the dynamics of such an extreme moment? How does a moment like that unfold from the perspective of a particle that was there?
Does time “start slow” before reaching the “stable rhythm” we experience today?

The fact that I felt compelled to use quotes twice in the previous sentence betrays the fact that I don’t even know how to ask what I’m trying to ask.

I see what you mean… I think. Let’s see if I can be more specific:

Considering that time slows down for particles moving near lightspeed, I was trying to visualize the universe immediately after the Big Bang, if it being so hot - or energetic, I think I mean to say - made time slow down in the entire, still tiny universe. And what effect this may have possibly had in the outcome we observe today.

I saw the whole damn thing in one night, but I had nothing else to do, sitting on standby keeping an eye on my old sleeping cat, he just started medical treatment and the good news seems to be that it’s working and the side effects are not too bad.

But yeah, your post gave me something perfect to pass the time with during the wee hours.

You read that right, boys and girls, in 1976 Harrison Ford wrote a script for The Star Wars; what the headline doesn’t mention outright is that this was not the version used for the film, Lucas ended up using the script version he wrote himself.

Yeah, I know… it’s just that I couldn’t resist putting this silly thing that popped into my mind, out into the world.

Looks to me like some of the boys at Fermilab came up with an experiment to keep Schrodinger’s cat inside the box but visible the whole time.

Did you know that at Fermilab if you’re a boy, you get to play around with cool collapsable wave functions, and if you’re a girl, you get to play around with groovy flavor-changing neutrinos.

The point is to give someone vulnerable a full life, with safety and warmth.
From your perspective, time went by too fast; from their perspective, it was a long and peaceful lifetime, they were incredibly fortunate to have someone like you.

Also, there is an implicit assumption we carry around that to be immortal is some sort of blessing or state to aspire to, while it may very well be that being mortal is itself the blessing.

In my opinion, the highest tribute one can pay to a departed friend and companion is to again open one’s home to another vulnerable creature and make him/her family.

Do it in your departed friend’s memory and honor. If you could communicate again with them, you would let them know this is part of their proud and gentle legacy, to reduce suffering on the world - “Look what you did, by being who and what you were for me in life, you opened the door for someone else when their turn came.”

This is what I have done, and do not regret a minute of it.

Does religion play into this?

In “middle America”, it’s the church that has usually lured well-meaning women into believing they are under siege, in peril like never before in the history of mankind. Same thing happened to my mother starting in the 70s with snake oil salesmen like Jerry Falwell, Jim Swagart, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson.

The non-stop message is that they are always under attack, it’s always the end of days, the antichrist is always already among us, The Rapture™️ is just around the corner, and they are the chosen ones… living in constant fear of the fairytale boogeyman and calling it a privilege, their minds have been shackled and atrophied by a state of perpetual red alert that Satan is everywhere, that their loved ones will spend an eternity in hell.

EDIT: tweaked a sentence for clarity

And how do they exploit them?
By keeping them at a hysterical fever pitch, 24/7.
Amplifying ignorance, weaponizing mental illness.
That is the right wing and republicans, with every profane breath.

Isn’t this place where David Lynch got a massive migraine? He was in consideration to direct Jedi on the merit on The Elephant Man, but took himself out on the day of that visit to Lucasfilm.

Inexplicably by that standard, then he signed on to direct Dune for Dino De Laurentis, and has regretted that decision to this day, refuses to speak of his experience.

Have you ever been to an oil and air filter warehouse?
Some are more common than others, but there are hundreds of different types, and some of them vary by a millimeter in diameter from the more common ones.

They couldn’t design the inlet to fit a pre-existing filter already in circulation, no sir, instead of any sort of compatibility they felt compelled to make up their own fucking specification and parameters that varied by a tenth of a percentage point.

That can only be the work of engineers, and from the looks of that oil filter warehouse, or from the different types of electrical sockets, the contrary bastards are everywhere, they REFUSE to meaningfully communicate with each other, and will NOT listen to reason.

More recently, look at crypto. For every well-meaning and thoughtful endeavor like Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are ten thousand shitcoins. Many are just greedy con jobs, but many are also due to stubborn and petty, noisy squabbles over minutiae. Suddenly the whole damn space was a hive of useless noise and confusion.

Yet one more item in an endless exhibit of how mankind is unable to standardize anything at all. Get TWO engineers together to agree on ONE standard plug and the assholes will come out with THREE separate plugs, completely non-compatible with each other, of course.

It’s almost like a miracle that we got the world to agree on certain things like time and timezones, a system of coordinates, the metric system.
All of them received initial pushback, and some to this day. Noisy, noisy fucking humans.

Did you know that for a few decades, every town in the UK kept two different times on adjacent clocks? Back when their railway grid was expanding everywhere. Local time and London time.