VIII. Earth Earns: An Open Participatory Earthropocene to Astropocene CoCreative Future

1. Mind Over Matter and Energy: Quantum, Atomic, Chemical, Astronomic Realms

Ni, Xiang, et al. Topological Metamaterials. arXiv:2211.10006. We cite this entry by CCNY Photonics Initiative and Florida International University researchers among much current work as an example as the global mind over matter frontier opens for cocreative business.

Recent physics findings that materials with non-trivial topological properties for electronic, electromagnetic, acoustic and mechanical usages can be designed and made through engineered metamaterials (MMs). We review these state-of-the-art advances and discuss how topological MMs enable novel wave phenomena for a broad range of interdisciplinary sciences such as classical and quantum chemistry. This survey aims at basing this progress associated with topological concepts, and highlight opportunities going forward offered by these geometric facilities for the chemistry community at large. (Excerpt)

Norreys, Peter, et al. Prospects for High Gain Inertial Fusion Energy: An Introduction to the First Special Edition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. October, 2020. An introduction to papers from a March 2020 London meeting about progress and problems with large scale, practical usage of this atomic power source. In any event, it seems that human intellect is actually capable of learning about and taking over nature’s deep energies.

A European consortium of 15 laboratories across nine nations have worked together by way of EUROFusion Enabling Research grants for the past decade with three principle objectives. These are: (a) investigating obstacles to ignition on megaJoule-class laser facilities; (b) investigating novel alternative approaches to ignition, including fast ignition, auxiliary heating, shock ignition etc.; and (c) developing technologies that will be required for a fusion reactor. The Hooke discussion meeting was an opportunity to reflect on progress in inertial confinement fusion research world-wide to date. (Abstract)

Inertial Confinement Fusion is a type of fusion energy research that attempts to initiate nuclear fusion reactions by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet that most often contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium. (Wikipedia)

Nosengo, Nicola. The Material Code. Nature. 533/23, 2016. A news report on the historic revolution with regard to the formula and preparation of novel atomic, (bio)chemical, electronic, structural compositions. The articles draws on the work of Gerbrand Ceder and Kristin Persson (search) which we reported in 2013. A national and worldwide collaboration has since expanded their vision of treating natural materiality as genomic in kind, so as to apply similar computational, machine learning, and intelligent search approaches. In the USA, a NAS Materials Genome Initiative is underway, an Open Quantum Materials Database at Northwestern University, along with other projects. New journals such as NPJ: Computational Materials, Computational Materials Science, and Nature Reviews: Materials cover the latest advances. By a philosophical regard could be seen an epic takeover by human intellect of substantial matter from subatomic scales as we Earthlings may begin a new intentional creation. A further import would be to witness this endeavor as a matteromics effort, which deeply infers an organic cosmic genesis.

Oganessian, Yuri. Superheavy Elements. Physics World. July, 2004. The discovery – and novel creation - of transuranium elements now extends to “islands of stability” in atomic number ranges of 112 to 118. The former Soviet Union has long been a leader in this regard.

Oganessian, Yuri and Krzysztof Rykaczewski. A Beachhead on the Island of Stability. Physics Today. August, 2015. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Russia, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory senior researchers review recent progress to synthesize the heaviest transuranium elements. This work presages dramatic expansions of the Periodic Table first laid out by their countryman Dmitri Mendeleev in the 1870s. Again by a natural philosophy view, phenomenal human beings seem to be a genesis universe’s way of taking over and beginning a new atomic material creation.

Olson, G. Designing a New Material World. Science. 288/993, 2000. As science and technology increasingly articulates material dimensions it can further these substantial realms by “...the creation of materials from thought.”

Omidshafiei, Shayegan, et al. Alpha-Rank: Multi-Agent Evaluation by Evolution. Nature Scientific Reports. 9/9937, 2019. A ten person team from DeepMind Paris, London, and Edmonton, Singapore University and Columbia University achieve a frontier advance as our collective human acumen begins to intentionally take up life’s algorithome programs. While we would not consider cosmic genesis as a “game” as per the Abstract, what is being found is an open, natural procreativity whence an optimum or good enough result can be seen is reached by and accrues from a wide array of candidate options.

A ten person team from DeepMind Paris, London, and Edmonton, Singapore University and Columbia University achieve a frontier advance as our collective human acumen begins to intentionally take up life’s algorithome programs. While we would not consider cosmic genesis as a “game,” what is being found is an open, natural procreativity whence an optimum or good enough result can be seen is reached by and accrues from a wide array of candidate options.

Ornes, Stephen. Quantum Effects Enter the Macroworld. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116/22413, 2019. A science writer describes how the 2010s quantum revolution whence this arcane depth became treatable as a complex network system, in addition to its special characteristics, which has then opened a new frontier for all manner of devices and communications.

Entanglement is the counterintuitive idea that particles can have an intrinsic connection that endures no matter the distance between them. The phenomenon remains one of the most curious and least understood consequences of quantum mechanics. Measure the quantum properties of one of a pair of entangled particles, and the other changes instantaneously. But recently, physicists have taken entanglement and other quantum effects to new extremes by observing them in large systems such as clouds of atoms, quantum drums, wires, and etched silicon chips. Device by device, they are bringing the quantum world into a new territory — the macroscopic, classical world. (22413)

Parisi, Jason and Justin Ball. The Future of Fusion Energy. Singapore: World Scientific, 2019. Oxford University and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology physicists cover the range from basic principles to plasma confinement, construction, problems on to the ITER project below. The project is then set in a context of human beings gaining ever more access, control and usage of natural solar energies from combustions to this hypercomplex avail of atomic force. In an even wider vista, it could appear that our human phenomenon is meant to do this, which we to soon need realize, so as to migitate climate change in time.

In an engaging narrative, this popular science book explains the basic tools to understand how fusion works, its potential, and contemporary research issues. Written by young engineer researchers in the field, it shows how physical laws and the Earth's energy resources motivate the current fusion program — a broad endeavor that is approaching a critical point. The world's largest fusion reactor to date, a 35 nation joint effort dubbed ITER Tokamak (www.iter.org) is nearing completion. Its success could trigger a worldwide race to build a power plant, but failure could delay fusion by decades. To these ends, this book details how ITER's results could be used to design an economically competitive power plant as well as some of the many alternative fusion concepts. (Publisher edits)

Patterson, Eann, et al. An Integrated Digital Framework for the Design, Build and Operation of Fusion Power Plants. Royal Society Open Science. 6/10, 2019. As a next stage in this broad project to research and construct, a team of British nuclear scientists and engineers lay out programs going forward to achieve a practical, safe and effective fusion model, instead of and beyond problematic fission methods. Google these titles MIT launches multimillion-dollar collaboration to develop fusion energy and UK hatches plan to build world's first fusion power plant to reach news items in Nature.

Pelesko, John. Self Assembly: The Science of Things That Put Themselves Together. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2007. A University of Delaware mathematician and co-director of its Modeling, Experiment, and Computation laboratory contends that a natural guide exists for such nanotechnology since the whole universe can be seen as engaged in a process of emergent self-assembly. In this copious view, human persons lately take on a role as ‘selves’ who are to further organize and ‘assemble’ this dynamic developing earth and cosmos.

Peplow, Mark. Skeleton Crew. Nature. 618/21, 2023. A science writer extols recent novel abilities to manipulate, insert, delete or swap single atoms core molecular structures. It opens with the empirical work of Mark Levin at the University of Chicago, which along with other labs is being dubbed (almost magical) “skeletal editing.” (A reader might notice an evident, common similarity with genetic CRISPR editorial methods.) The article goes on to select chemical reactions for better medicines with graphic examples. In our website context, here is a dramatic instance of our collective Earthumanity beginning to take up and over a new ecosmic mind/matter cocreation.

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