I love seeing mathematical concepts expressed physically in a way people can understand. *quality

more on the golden ratio here:

There is no cross on that can.
Φφ Phi is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. (a drink for the 21st century?)
Phi is also used as a symbol for the golden ratio and on other occasions in math and science.

"666" in Hebrew would be written "Tav Resh Samech Vav," or "six hundred sixty-six."


http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/monster666.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi

Ok,
I have been pondering this same question for the last two years; mainly reading about the earliest recorded events of humanity and focusing on the science that led to where we are today; Obviously, anything earlier than Planck Time cannot be resolved scientifically, so there's a leap of faith there just like with religion.
One of the major discoveries I stumbled into is that religion exploded around the same time human cuneiform (writing) was invented. The oldest and most prolonging religion from panbabylonism is Mesopotanian Religion which extended from 4200 B.C. to 600 A.D. Religion's first and foremost goal was self-governance; in other words, since the lawmakers couldn't watch you all the time, they figured out a way to make a policeman within you, they called him God. He knows if you've been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!
On the topic of the universe itself, logic dictates that as humans, our limbs and torso are mostly there to supply the brain with energy; extrapolating this a few billions years (and assuming we can survive that long), we could end up with no limbs at all. There is also the strong craving for putting more and more information in smaller and smaller space; Again, extreme extrapolation would dictate that over infinite time, the universe would be filled with smaller replicas of itself where the golden ratio of sufficient universal information vs space volume proliferated across time-space might indeed bring the universe online. The ultimate no-reservations goal of the universe would be for it to become self-aware...

All I have said here is in direct contradiction with information loss from black holes, and the big freeze, but I like to think this way as a Gedankenexperiment. I don't necessarily believe what I say, and I'd like to hear other sifter's thoughts about what they think is the role of the universe.

Awww thanks!

Luckily for you Danes are not territorial about their partners.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
Wow, nice profile! The spatial organisation reminds me of the golden ratio rectangle, and the colours work perfectly.

(okay, I am incapable of making a non-creepy sounding compliment; you are pretty! please don't kill me @gwiz665)

Wow, nice profile! The spatial organisation reminds me of the golden ratio rectangle, and the colours work perfectly.

(okay, I am incapable of making a non-creepy sounding compliment; you are pretty! please don't kill me @gwiz665)

He brings up thermodynamics ( you could add QED into this to make it even stronger, quantum foam and what not...), but entropy would be what he is talking about. Entropy can be seen as something that is the same homogeneous "thing" (quarks, photons, hydrogen; or in the case of QED potential energies) breaking down by "physics" or the physical mechanics and properties of the universe into a less homogeneous "thing". Hence energy then particles then elements, stars, black holes, planets, galaxies, cluster groups, the universe. It never really changed it is merely entropy that distinguishes most of these things.

Time itself may induce entropy, but we still have things to figure out in that area. What QED teaches is that you don't need anything special at all to create the universe, "chance" is more than enough. Throw in time or entropy and wallah, instant mechanical system created with it's own mechanics and in superposition to anything outside to detect it unless they become entangled to us. If they measure anything our "universes" would combine into a hybrid (most likely--impossible for now to begin thinking if this would be possible).

Recently scientists have been able to "tune" cobalt niobate (the magnetic spins) into a quantum critical state (superposition) and more recently they've done the same with electrons. The magnetic "tuning" frequency they used to accomplish this was extremely close to the Euler's number: e. "Euler's number" may be linked to the appearance of entropy merely being a function of mechanics that me be described by physicists later as an algorithm. If e is linked it would explain many observable systems we already have knowledge of. You can see it already at work in multiple situations. It also has a strong correlation with: fractals, golden ratio, golden spiral, Fibonacci sequence, etc... It's also an irrational number which may cause the algorithm to seemingly never stop; you could zoom in and out on the universe and it would continually look the same in correlation with an universal algorithm.

I hoped I made my thoughts clear enough; I dumbed down a lot of the material hopefully I still get the point across. It may be that the universe is merely just potential energies with an algorithm thrown in for spice. Other universes would have their own algorithm and constants like e.

Some articles pertaining to some of this: Here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Enigma is/was the pwn in the 90's.

He should look up "quantum critical states" and the relationship to the natural number e (golden ratio/spiral, Fibonacci sequence); also, e8 symmetry. Physics may get very interesting in the next decade.

0,0,65408,38208,43696,54576,32832,57152,34096,50480,41280,49216,43696,38192,43712,65408

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
I made a pattern
In Golden Ratios
Saw God
It was Tuesday.

I made a pattern
In Golden Ratios
Saw God
It was Tuesday.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
>> ^jonny:
As you mentioned, the amount of evidence required to sustain a belief is partially dependent upon the nature of the belief. So, for instance, how much evidence do you require to believe that a painting is beautiful? Do you trust your own eyes when everyone else is telling you different?
That wouldn't require evidence at all. It's subjective opinion, or reactions inside my brain to what I'm seeing.

Beauty isn't entirely subjective. There are certain forms, combinations of sound, etc., that do have universal appeal. Golden ratio stuff for example.

I also accept the view that perception of beauty is indeed a real, material reaction, entirely non-supernatural in origin. Studies show this all the time, scientist can measure brain activity when showing different faces, pictures etc, and different parts of our brain "lights up", in the same way as when we taste things etc.

What fMRI actually measures is known as the BOLD response - Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent. It is thought to correlate well with neural activity, but there is some debate about that. (This may have been settled - it's been some years since I worked with fMRI.) More importantly, it's still only correlating some neural activity with a particular mental state. AFAIK, no one has ever conducted a study demonstrating a causal relationship between neural activity and particular mental states. The closest we've gotten to that is nerve stimulation during brain surgery. But that is very anecdotal.


Of course we dont know exactly how the brain does all this, but thats why we keep working on it, and its very exciting. But I do not see how all this relates to a divine presence. Infact, it shows the opposite.

The connection is the kind of evidence required to believe something and how we go about analyzing that evidence. I think I've pretty clearly shown that in many cases anecdotal or non-verifiable evidence is plenty good enough.


If you believe love to be some kind of spiritual "force", independent of our brains and all material existence, I suppose the same thing applies, when you feel love, it confirms for you the existence of these supernatural phenomena, including the ever-elusive "higher power".

This is really getting to the heart of it. I'm not suggesting that the possibility of a divine presence is in any way supernatural. It seems possible to me that divinity may be as much a part of the natural world as anything else. For me, divinity does not have to be a creator or controller of the universe, but is something that suffuses every part of it. That we don't understand by what mechanism that happens is incidental. It may be that we are incapable of doing so.

I expect you will respond by saying any such thing could not be divine, because that's how you define it. "Just what is it that you're talking about?" you might ask. It's basically impossible to put into words. It's like trying to describe the taste of steak using the menu. Or describing what the color red looks like. I can describe the wavelength of light and how that affects the neurons involved, but I won't have done anything to convey the mental state of perceiving red.

This explains what "golden mean/golden ratio" is and its use in design in architecture and art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

*art

I don't believe our sexual orientation dictates our likeness towards forms, there are many male forms that males find appealing as well, in the creation of role models of physique especially.

I would disagree on pulling in classical art into this, what you are talking about is the classical view of the perfected man. The best example is Michelangelo's own statue of David. If you look at that piece you will find that it's entirely manipulated to create an appealing form. The head, arms and hands are enlarged, the physique is manipulated as well as the genitalia itself, the entire body follows golden ratio principles. It's basically a facade of reality.

Furthermore my response was mostly to do with adressing Pinky's question of why we don't see men exploited in this way. We do in the chip n' dale dancers but you will find their standards of form are more restrictive then say female strip clubs. Because as I said the base male form is not as appealing as the female form.

>> ^dag:
Farhad - sorry, but I disagree. Your and my sexual attraction to the female shape informs our conception of beauty. Michelangelo would also heartily disagree with you on the male form.
>> ^Farhad2000:
The reason we don't have men with sliver ding dongs attached to their penises dancing around is because the male body is ugly.
The female body on the other hand looks like it was designed by Italians, all curves and smooth lines. While the male body looks like it was stamp pressed in some oppressive Eastern European nation trying desperately to join the EU.

Tags changed from "phi, golden ratio, beauty, gimp, ps" to "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice" by gold star member thesnipe.

Yeah, I too saw his clip on youtube that mentioned this golden ratio video as being posted by him..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KipP_03SrI

The golden ratio video is from his You Tube account. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO3o9drC1mQ

Pi 'occurs' (actually almost never, but 'close enough' circles and ellipses are all over the place) in nature because as far as we know it is fundamentally built into the physics of our world. A point charge creates a spherically symmetric electric field. A point wave source creates a spherically propagating wave.

Phi is just the positive solution to X^2 - X - 1 = 0. It has nothing to do with symmetry, an altogether separate concept.

Of course it's a 'real' ratio (as opposed to i/2, which is an imaginary ratio), but then so is every other real number; there isn't anything mystical about ratios.

As for Da Vinci's discovery... the golden ratio is approximately 1.618; e (a much more important constant) is approx. 2.718; maybe the 'real' proportion is e - 1 (approx. 1.718)? I bet if I look hard enough, I could find e - 1 all over the place.