visible cosmic network of deep sky filaments ("Murray mesh") as redshifted hard gamma radiation from macroscopic cosmic F- and D-strings from epoch just after inflation (Copeland, Myers, Polchinski 2004.05.25): Murray 2004.06.19 rmforall

From: Rich Murray (rmforall_at_att.net)
Date: 06/19/04 

Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 02:54:20 -0600

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/7
visible cosmic network of deep sky filaments ("Murray mesh") as redshifted
hard gamma radiation from macroscopic cosmic F- and D-strings from epoch
just after inflation (Copeland, Myers, Polchinski 2004.05.25):
Murray 2004.06.19 rmforall

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 USA 505-501-2298

2004 June 19

On August 30 2001, I became intrigued with easily visible, equally easily
dismissable networks of faint, thin, crooked, connected, continuous threads,
discernable with patient scrutiny of almost all deep sky images at visible
and infrared ranges.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/1
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/astrodeep/lst?.dir=/&.view=t
deep sky background filaments: images and interpretation:
Murray 2002.01.19 rmforall

Click on the thumbnail photos to get the photos, and click on those
in turn to get full screen photos.

Artifacts? Or?-- immense filaments of H, He, and dark
matter, lit by intense UV from the earliest very massive
stars, "...during the first 10E8 years of the history of
the universe at redshifts between 50 and 10...,"
Prof. Richard B. Larson, Sci. Am. Dec 2001, and
http://www.astro.yale.edu/larson/papers/Noordwijk99.pdf
[7 pages]. This very early intense UV is now redshifted
into the visible and IR bands, and may supply about half of
the current cosmic IR background. The filaments are
generally as thin as 1 pixel.

Photo #2: deeptt1k.jpg:
One pixel = .258 arc-sec, about .25 mm on my 15" monitor.
In MGI PhotoSuite 4.0, I can zoom in to 1600 %, at which point
each pixel is about 4 mm on my 15" monitor.

This is a 20KB cut from the center of the
673 KB original, Photo #1: deeptt1.jpg:
1024X1024 pixels, a random sample, the first of three,
a little to the lower left of center of the 1.15X1.15 degree field,
16000X16000 pixels, 750.3 Mb 24-bit color TIFF,
the highest available resolution,
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0637.html
National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field Survery.

I was captivated by the article with images,
Sky & Telescope Sept 2001
p. 42-45 by David Tytell. In this article,
image #7 has twice the resolution of the other six closeups,
2.6X2.6 arc-min in a 13.1X13.1 cm square. I noticed that by looking
in relaxed way into the dark background for a few minutes, I could
start to discern a network of dark, thin, tangled filaments,
on Aug 30, 2001. Intrigued, I started downloading and
studying images from the NOAO website.

Photo #3: deepttl.jpg:
Using a $ 50 program, MGI PhotoSuite 4.0, available from
http://www.mgisoft.com, 505-764-7291, on Dec 12, I used the
Touchup Filters function to change Gamma from 1.00 to 6.00,
revealing a tangle of red and green thin filaments, and a few
red and green spots in the formerly dark background.

I am assuming that the original photo uses only light in the visible
range, with no data from infrared bands added in-- I will be
grateful for clarification about this important point. What exactly
are the measured wavelengths, how are they coded as the
colors in the image, what is the angular size of a pixel, and how
many photons are recorded as the brightness levels of a pixel?

Photo #4: deeptt1m.jpg:
Brightness was increased from 0 to +30.

Photo #5: deeptt1n.jpg:
Invert reversed both colors and black and white,
and brightness was increased from 0 to +75.
Zoom In from about 100 to 200 [The maximum zoom is
1600, and then the pixels are about 4 mm wide on my monitor]. This
makes the tangle of dark and some light green filaments convincingly
obvious, along with striking bright pink and green spots.

Photo #6: deeptt1o.jpg:
Invert, revealing a stronger image of the filaments seen in Photo # 3.

Photo #7: deeptt1ka.jpg:
This is a collage, zoomed in, from Photos #2, 3, 5, 6.
PhotoSuite saves collages as pzp files, which can also be saved
as tiff and jpg versions. Yahoo Photos will accept only the jpg
versions, which are noticably more grainy than the pzp and tiff
versions. Much more can be seen when you download 5 to 10
MB tiff files and image process them yourself. Incidentally, I
would love to be given a CD of any version of Adobe Photoshop.

Photos #8 to 23 present photo pairs, along the same pattern of
image modification, zooming in deeper and deeper. About two
decades ago I noticed that when the same photo is set up side
by side, and viewed with slightly crossed eyes to make a third
composite image in between, that image is created by the
brain's visual system as an excellent 3D image. In fact, you
can visit a TV store, where a lot of sets are all on the same
channel at once, and find two sets the same size, side by side,
and watch the composite image in moving 3D. If you settle
your gaze gently for a few minutes into the composite
image, the innate image processing facility of the brain's
visual system will develop and deepen the 3D appreciation
in remarkable and beautiful ways.
[ end of extract from 2002.01.19 post ]

Inspecting images in magazines and on the Net since then for two years, I
have found it easier and easier to verify the original discovery.

Use of an image processor to magnify deep sky images shows that the
filaments are always behind foreground objects, such as galaxies.

They usually are as thin as a single or a few pixels, yet each thread
maintains a fairly limited range of colors and intensities.

The threads characteristically form a mesh, crooked, connected, and
continuous, with few isolated spots, segments, or circles-- rather like a
loosely knit wool sweater.

The mesh seems much the same at all magnifications, indicative of a
fractile, scale-invariant structure.

The actual size of the sources may, of course, be much smaller than the
angular resolution available as a pixel in recent deep sky images.

Highly intense gamma radiation would be able to some extent to escape the
local environment of the sources and travel undeflected until eventual
detection.

Murray mesh, if factual and not artifactual, must be a complex 3D structure,
probably fractile, across a range of redshifts, during which the source
outputs must be varying complexly in intensity and frequency, as well as in
polarization, orientation to line of sight, and rate of fluctuation.

A long thread will display an evolution of successive phases along its
crooked length if it happens to largely line up with our line of sight.

The recorded signals will be subject to complex dispersions and absorptions
by their hot, dense local environment as well as the line of sight
absorptions from successive epoches along the line of sight.

I haven't discerned signs of gravitational magnification of the mesh by
foreground galaxies and clusters, which indicates that the sources are too
distant to be "in focus".

The downshifting from hard gamma, perhaps 10E22 Hz, to infrared, about 10E13
Hz, would be a redshift factor of a billion.

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/
Cambridge Relativity & Gravitation Research Home Page
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_history.html
Brief History of the Universe

This chart indicates that, from:

Grand unification transition: G -> H -> SU(3)XSU(2)XU(1)
Inflation, baryogenesis, monopoles, cosmic strings, etc?
time = 10E-35 sec
Temperature = 10E15 Gev = 10E24 electron volt

to Santa Fe, New Mexico:

time = 13.7 billion years = 430 million billion seconds = 4.3E17 seconds
[ 1 year = 31.5E6 seconds ]
Temperature = 3 degrees K = 1 milli electron volt, 10E27 times less.

So, there's plenty of room to redshift some pretty hard gamma rays.

Speculations in recent theoretical cosmology provide a class of candidate
sources.

"In principle, fundamental strings could have been produced in the early
universe and then grown to macroscopic size with the expansion of the
universe."

"After their formation at the end of inflation,
string networks decay by the combined processes of intercommutation, which
breaks longer strings into smaller loops, ...... and gravitational
radiation."

"......Superconducting strings may act as sources for vortons [51],
loops of cosmic string with charge and current stabilized by the angular
momentum of the charge carriers.

In this case they would be subject to bounds on their allowed tension, with
10-28 < ~ Gµ < ~ 10-10 being claimed to be a cosmologically unacceptable
range of values [52].

If the energy scale associated with superconducting strings were close to
the electroweak scale, then the vortons could become serious candidates for
cold dark matter."

"If the string couples strongly to Standard Model fields then instead of
primarily producing gravitational radiation the string network may decay
through the production of high energy cosmic rays, photons and neutrinos
from string
cusps [55]."

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0312/0312067.pdf
arXiv:hep-th/0312067 v5 25 May 2004
Preprint typeset in JHEP style - HYPER VERSION

Cosmic F- and D-strings

Edmund J. Copeland
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9QJ, UK
E-mail: e.j.copeland@sussex.ac.uk

Robert C. Myers
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9 Canada
and
Department of Physics
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 Canada
E-mail: rmyers@perimeterinstitute.ca

Joseph Polchinski
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Santa Barbara, CA
93106-4030, USA
E-mail: joep@kitp.ucsb.edu

Abstract: Macroscopic fundamental and Dirichlet strings have several
potential instabilities:
breakage, tachyon decays, and confinement by axion domain walls.
We investigate the conditions under which metastable strings can exist, and
we find that such strings are present in many models.
There are various possibilities,
the most notable being a network of (p, q) strings.
Cosmic strings give a potentially large window into string physics.

Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Stability Conditions 3
2.1 Breakage 3
2.1.1 Breakage on an M4-filling brane 3
2.1.2 Breakage on a 'baryon' 4
2.2 Axion domain walls 6
2.3 Two puzzles 7
2.3.1 The first puzzle 7
2.3.2 The second puzzle 8
3. The KKLMMT model 9
3.1 Generalities 9
3.2 Scenarios 11
3.2.1 No branes in the throat 11
3.2.2 Stabilizing D3-branes in the throat 13
3.2.3 Standard model branes in the throat 14
4. Large dimension models 15
5. Observational consequences 16
5.1 String properties 16
5.1.1 Tension 16
5.1.2 Superconductivity 17
5.1.3 Intercommutation 17
5.1.4 Network properties 18
5.2 Observational bounds 19
6. Conclusions 21

1. Introduction

Before the 'second superstring revolution' there appeared to be a clear
distinction between fundamental strings and cosmic strings.

Fundamental strings were believed to have tensions µ close to the Planck
scale. In perturbative heterotic string theory,

page - 1 -

for example, Gµ = GUT/16 pi >~ 10-3,
whereas the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background implied (even before
COBE) that any string of cosmic size must have Gµ < ~ 10-5 [1].

Thus any cosmic strings would have had to arise in the low energy effective
field theory, as magnetic or electric flux tubes.

In principle, fundamental strings could have been produced in the early
universe and then grown to macroscopic size with the expansion of the
universe.

Inflation provides a simple explanation for the absence of cosmic
fundamental strings of such high tension.

However, even aside from inflation it was noted in ref. [2] that there are
effects that would prevent the appearance of cosmic fundamental strings.

Macroscopic type I strings break up on a stringy time scale into short open
strings, and so would never form.

Macroscopic heterotic strings always appear as boundaries of axion domain
walls, whose tension would force the strings to collapse rather than grow to
cosmic scales [3].

At the time of ref. [2] no instability of long type II strings was known,
but it is now clear that NS5-brane instantons [4] (in combination with
supersymmetry breaking to lift the zero modes) will produce an axion
potential and so lead to domain walls.

Today the situation in string theory is much richer.

First, many new onedimensional objects are known:
in addition to the fundamental F-strings, there are D-strings,
as well as higher dimensional D-, NS-, M-branes that are partially wrapped
on compact cycles so that only one noncompact dimension remains.

Second, the possibility of large compact dimensions [5] and large warp
factors [6] allows much lower tensions for these strings.

Third, the various string-string and string-field dualities relate these
objects to each other, and to the field-theoretic flux tubes, so that they
are actually the same object as it appears in different parts of parameter
space.

Thus it is important to revisit this subject, and ask whether some of these
strings may be cosmologically interesting.

Indeed, it has been argued by Jones, Sarangi, and Tye and by Stoica and Tye
[7] that D-brane-antibrane inflation [8] leads to the copious production of
lowerdimensional D-branes that are one-dimensional in the noncompact
directions.

This is a special case of the production of strings in hybrid inflation [9].

Refs. [7] also make the important observation that zero-dimensional defects
(monopoles) and two-dimensional defects (domain walls) are not produced;
either of these would have led to severe difficulties.

It is necessary then to investigate the stability of possible cosmic strings
against the processes noted above.

A naive extrapolation of the results of ref. [2] would suggest that all BPS
strings are confined by domain walls, and that all non-BPS strings are
unstable to breakage or tachyon decay.

We will find that the situation is more interesting, and that stable strings
exist in certain classes of models but not in others.

In §2 we investigate this subject, and identify conditions under which long
strings can be at least metastable.

Our focus is on type I/II theories, though the same

page - 2 -

principles will hold in heterotic and M theory compactifications.

In §3 we apply our conditions in the string theory inflation model of
Kachru, Kallosh, Linde, Maldacena, McAllister, and Trivedi (KKLMT) [10],
which is based on the stabilization of all moduli in the warped IIB
framework of ref. [11].

We find that the nature of the cosmic strings in this model depends on
precisely how the Standard Model fields and the moduli stabilization are
introduced.

We identify three possibilities:

(a) no strings;

(b) D1-branes only (or fundamental strings only);

(c) (p, q) strings - bound states of p fundamental strings and q D-strings
for relatively prime (p, q) - with an upper bound on p.

In §4 we briefly discuss large compact dimension models without large warp
factors, and find a similar range of possibilities.

In §5 we discuss the observational signatures of these cosmic strings.

Although the various bounds currently are all in the area of Gµ < ~ 10-6,
there are future observations that will reach many orders of magnitude
further in Gµ.

With (p, q) strings there are more complicated string networks than when
only one type of string is present.

This may enhance the signatures for these strings, and possibly place strong
constraints on models of these types.

While we were completing this work we learned of papers on related subjects
by Dvali, Kallosh and Van Proeyen [12] and by Dvali and Vilenkin [13]
........

........ 5.1.4 Network properties

After their formation at the end of inflation, string networks decay by the
combined processes of intercommutation, which breaks longer strings into
smaller loops, [ 8 ]

[ 8 There has been extensive study of two-dimensional supersymmetric
networks formed in this way; see for example ref. [41]. ]

page - 18 -

and gravitational radiation.

For gauge theory strings there is also the decay process due to the fields
themselves, and there is a debate as to which of the decay processes
dominate (gravitational versus Higgs) [43, 44].

 Assuming gravitational radiation dominates, then if the decay proceeds at
the maximum rate consistent with causality, the distribution of strings will
scale with the horizon volume.

This scaling behavior leads to an energy density that goes as t-2, so that
w = 1/3 in the radiation-dominated era and w = 0 in the matter-dominated
era.

That is, in each era the energy density in strings is a fixed fraction of
the total energy density.

Simulations indicate that networks composed of a single kind of string do
scale, with
p-string/p-rad ~ 400 Gµ in the radiation dominated era and
p-string/p-mat ~ 60 Gµ in the matter dominated era.

These values are for recombination probability P = 1 and
increase as P decreases [45].

When there are several kinds of string, with trilinear vertices, then there
is the possibility that the network evolves to a three-dimensional structure
which freezes in a local minimum of the potential energy and
then just grows with the expansion of the universe.

In this case the energy density would evolve as a(t)-2, or w = -1/3.

Whether the network freezes or scales is a complicated dynamical problem.

Such networks arise in field theory when a symmetry group G breaks to a
discrete subgroup K.

When K is non-Abelian, intercommutation cannot occur,
rather the network evolves as in figure 5.

Simulations of K = Z3 (with string vertices provided by monopoles) [46] and
K = S3 [47, 48] indicate that these systems scale rather than freeze,
but with some enhanced density of strings.

Simulations of K = S8 [47] show an energy density that grows relative to the
scaling solution and appears to indicate freezing behavior.

This is consistent with the fact that the larger group allows networks of
greater topological complexity, but it could also be a reflection that the
simulations in [47] have not yet managed to reach the scaling regime.

It is worth investigating this issue further.

To determine whether networks of (p, q) strings scale or freeze will
ultimately require simulations.

We conjecture that they scale, in that their topological complexity appears
to be roughly that of the S3 networks.

If gs is close to one, only the four lowlying strings with |p|, |q| = 1 are
likely to be heavily populated.

For any crossing etween two lowlying strings, one of the two processes in
figure 5 will again involve only lowlying strings, and
for most angles of crossing this process will be energetically favored.

Another argument for scaling behavior is to consider the limit gs « 1, where
the D-strings are much heavier than the F-strings.

The D-strings should then evolve largely independently of the F-strings, and
so scale like a single-string network;
after the D-strings decay to the scaling distribution on a given length
scale,
the F-strings in turn evolve like a single-string network.

5.2 Observational bounds

If a string network freezes into a w = -1/3 state, it quickly comes to
dominate

page - 19 -

the energy density of the universe unless the initial energy scale is much
lower than those considered above:
it must be of order the weak scale or less.

Thus if (p, q) string networks freeze, models with (p, q) strings are
excluded with the parameters considered here.

Again, our conjecture is that they do not freeze.

Assuming a scaling distribution of cosmic strings,
the current upper bound on Gµ comes from the power spectrum of the CMB,
based on numerical evolution of the Nambu-Goto equations:
Gµ < ~ 0.7 × 10-6 [49] (see also ref. [50]).

The tensions given in section 5.1.1 for the various models are below this
bound.

On the other hand numerical evolution of the underlying Abelian-Higgs field
theory has led Vincent et al to argue that the bound is closer to Gµ ~ 10-8
[43] (however see also [44]).

Superconducting strings may act as sources for vortons [51],
loops of cosmic string with charge and current stabilized by the angular
momentum of the charge carriers.

In this case they would be subject to bounds on their allowed tension, with
10-28 < ~ Gµ < ~ 10-10 being claimed to be a cosmologically unacceptable
range of values [52].

If the energy scale associated with superconducting strings were close to
the electroweak scale, then the vortons could become serious candidates for
cold dark matter.

In the context of the KKLMT model, this would correspond to having inflation
in the throat occurring at or around the electroweak scale.

Cosmic strings produce large quantities of gravitational waves, because they
are relativistic and inhomogeneous.

Pulsar timing measurements then place an upper bound on Gµ which is roughly
comparable to that from the CMB, depending on uncertainties from network
properties [53].

Remarkably, future measurements of non-gaussian emission of gravitational
waves from cusps on strings will be sensitive to cosmic strings with values
of Gµ seven orders of magnitude below the current bound, covering the entire
range
of tensions discussed in section 5.1.1.

According to ref. [54], even LIGO 1 may be sensitive to a range around Gµ ~
10-10, while LIGO 2 will reach down to Gµ ~ 10-11 and LISA to Gµ ~ 10-13.

In addition [54], pulsar timing measurements may reach a sensitivity of
Gµ ~ 10-11.

Thus, gravitational waves provide a potentially large window into string
physics, if we have a model in which strings are produced after inflation
and are metastable.

If the string couples strongly to Standard Model fields then instead of
primarily producing gravitational radiation the string network may decay
through the production of high energy cosmic rays, photons and neutrinos
from string
cusps [55].

These authors have calculated the predicted flux of high energy gamma rays,
neutrinos and cosmic ray antiprotons and protons as a function of the scale
of symmetry breaking at which the strings are produced, and argued that in
order to reproduce the (possibly) observed distribution of particles above
the GZK cut-off, they require Gµ = 10-9.

Given the values we expect in the KKLMT model this remains in the
interesting regime for cosmic strings arising out of string theory.

Note however refs. [56], which argue that the cosmic radiation from cusps is
suppressed.

page - 20 -

6. Conclusions

We have found that both fundamental and Dirichlet strings might be observed
as cosmic strings.

The issue is model-dependent - it depends on having brane inflation to
produce the strings, and on having a scenario in which the strings are
stable.

Nevertheless, this is a potentially large and rather direct window onto
string theory.

Of course, if cosmic strings are discovered,
the problem will be to distinguish fundamental objects from gauge theory
solitons.

Indeed, this is not a completely sharp question,
because these are dual descriptions of the same objects.

If one can infer that the strings have intercommutation probabilities less
than unity, this is a strong indication that they are weakly coupled
F-strings.

Discovery of a (p, q) spectrum of strings would be a promising signal for
F- and D-strings.

Note however that these throats have a dual gauge description [23] and
therefore such strings can also be obtained in gauge theory;
the spectrum is actually a signal of an SL(2,Z) duality and so might arise
in other ways as well.

If cosmic strings are found through the gravitational radiation from cusps,
determining their tensions and intercommutation properties will require a
spectrum of many events as well as precise simulations of the evolution of
string networks.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Stephon Alexander, David Berenstein, Robert
Brandenberger, Alessandra Buonanno, Thibault Damour, Gia Dvali, Jaume Gomis,
Chris Herzog, Nick Jones, Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh, Tom Kibble, Andrei
Linde, Eva Silverstein, Scott Thomas, Sandip Trivedi, Mark Trodden, Henry
Tye, and Alex Vilenkin for useful discussions.
We also thank Jose Blanco-Pillado, Greg Moore, and Ken Olum for comments on
the manuscript.
EJC and RCM would like to thank the organizers of the String Cosmology
program at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics for their invitation
to participate in such a stimulating meeting.
The work of RCM at the Perimeter Institute is supported by funds from NSERC
of Canada.
The work of JP is supported by National Science Foundation grants
PHY99-07949
and PHY00-98395.
*****************************************************************

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/6
background filament networks (Murray mesh) in deep sky photos-- noise
artifacts or early cosmic structure? Boehringer: Murray 2004.06.15 rmforall

2004 June 15
Bob, thanks for your lucid and careful comments about the
very reasonable interpretation that the faint background filaments noticable
in the background of many extremely deep space photos at very high red
shifts are possibly just noise.

In response to your second post on the effects of raising gamma on making
random noise more visible in photos, I want to point out that the "Murray
mesh" threads are visible on deep sky astronomical photos with gamma at the
usual value 1.00, as in the case of the recent Hubble images of Abell 1689.
Why would random pixels become a mesh of thin, long, crooked, continuous
threads?

With a low-cost program MGI PhotoSuite 4, it is easy to use my 1.4 GH
Pentium 4 system to switch from gamma .30 to 3.00 in steps of .10 gamma, and
magnification from .25 to 4.00, examining the variously colored more
prominent threads. They are quite persistent.

They look to me like a scale invariant, fractile mesh, as predicted by
current models of the evolution of initial large scale structure into
filament networks around voids.

If this is what we are viewing, then of course we are looking from inside a
dense large-scale condensed region, within which our local cluster of
galaxies has evolved, and so it would be expected that we would see the same
dense network of filaments in all directions at a redshift earlier than the
condensation of stars and galaxies in our region, since it is improbable
that we would be located near the boundary of our region. So, the question
of whether "Murray mesh" is artifactual or factual is worth exploring.

The Touchup Filters also includes Invert, which reverses all the colors.
Switching every second to Invert and back makes it easy to find delicate
threads that are visible in both modes.

Would you create a completely random 2 MB image with pixels evenly shared
among white, black, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and put it on
a site where anyone can copy it and look for similar artifacts?

The striking 3D effect of looking with relaxed, slightly crossed eyes for a
while at paired identical images, until a third image emerges between them,
is my direct experience. I have successfully guided many others to also
have it. It is quite striking to pick out two color postcards in a shop and
see the third 3D image hanging in space between them. I surmise that some
level of the brain's image processing is cued by the slight convergence of
the eyes to carry out the 3D interpretation function, even though the images
are identical.

I find that I see much more in astronomical photos this way, even though the
3D quality may be somewhat off-- for instance, craters may be confused with
hills. I'm interested in whether you and others report success or not in
actually trying it with a number of photos. When I rotate both images 90
degrees or 180 degrees, I get the same effect-- a definite and enjoyable
enhanced perception of the third image, quite different from focusing both
eyes on a single image.

I welcome civil debate on these images.
Anyone can post to AstroDeep@yahoogroups.com

I had to place low-resolution JPG images in the archive at my discussion
group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/1

However, the filaments are even more convincingly obvious in the original
TIFF images, up to 100 MB of color coded data, especially if the gamma is
shifted from 1.00 to 2.00 or 3.00.

They show up in images of different sky locations, with different
wavelengths, various color codings, and from a variety of large telescopes.
They are easy to see in color deep sky photos in popular astronomy
magazines, especially when the gamma has been shifted to about 2.00 to
render the black background more luminous.

Try it with selections from the recent Hubble photo of Abell 1689 at

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/01/image/

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/01/image/f

This 1.89 MB TIFF image at 1X or 2X clearly show myriad red and black
filaments in what I intrepret as a deep 3D mesh, which can been seen behind
as well as between the translucent foreground galaxies. I haven't seen any
signs of gravitational lensing, which might be because they are too far
behind the lensing cluster to be "in focus".

The 3D effect with paired identical color photos is very striking for me-- I
can do it with tourist picture postcards in a store. I'm interested in how
many people can readily experience various versions of 3D perception this
way.

In mutual service, Rich
****************************************************************

From: "Rich Murray" <rmforall@att.net>
Subject: Hubble sees via Abell 1689 to 2 B ly 1.7.3
Date: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 5:01 PM

Hubble sees via Abell 1689 to 2 B ly 1.7.3

Hubble Sees Deep Universe Using Cosmic 'Zoom Lens'

Updated 2:32 PM ET January 7, 2003

By Deborah Zabarenko

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Using a cosmic "zoom lens" made up of cluster of a
trillion stars, the Hubble Space Telescope looked back in time to see
the universe just 2 billion years after the theoretical Big Bang,
astronomers said on Tuesday.

Hubble's new Advanced Camera for Surveys looked straight through a
massive galaxy cluster known as Abell 1689. The gravity of the cluster's
trillion stars acts as a monster magnifying glass in space, warping and
magnifying the light of galaxies far behind it.

Abell 1689 is 2.2 billion light-years away, and it acts as a 2
million-light-year-wide "zoom lens" in space, scientists said at a
meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a
year.

The new image appears at first glance as hundreds of jewel-like bright
objects -- distant galaxies -- against a black background, much like
previous Hubble pictures.

On closer examination, there are faint arcs of red and blue, the light
from even more remote galaxies smeared by the gravitational bending of
the light as it is magnified.

"We create a kind of pothole in the geometry of the universe," said
Narciso Benitez of the Johns Hopkins University, referring to the
warping known as gravitational lensing.

Some of these galaxies have been seen before, but the new picture
reveals 10 times more arcs than would be seen by a telescope on the
ground, and makes an image twice as sharp as previous images from the
orbiting Hubble's earlier cameras.

Hubble scientists also showed a new image of the dusty disk around a
nearby baby star where planets could lurk.

The 5 million-year-old star -- a true infant in cosmic terms -- lies 320
light-years away in the constellation Libra and appears to be part of a
triple-star system.

Earlier Hubble images showed two rings separated by a dark lane in the
star's disk, and this was interpreted as evidence of one or more planets
around the star.

The new disk image gives a more complex picture, revealing a tight
spiral structure with two arms, one of which appears to be associated
with a nearby double star system.

In a color image, there is a black blob where the light from the star
has been masked to highlight the disk.

"In the picture, we're seeing an interaction between the binary system
and the disk," said Holland Ford, also of Johns Hopkins. "We're not
seeing planets in this disk, but there is nothing that would preclude
planets in this debris disk."

Hubble images and information are available at
http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/01

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/01/image/
****************************************************************

From: "Louise and Bob" <coatsbob@yahoo.com>
To: "Rich Murray" <rmforall@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: a friendly introduction: Beohringer: Murray 2004.06.12
Date: Monday, June 14, 2004 10:11 PM

I went to the Yahoo groups and took a look at the
photos. I have to say that I did not see any
filaments. I was expecting to see something a little
more obvious.

Having worked for several years in image processing I
was wondering how much of the photos you started with
were information and how much was noise.

For example, if an image has 8 bits of depth per pixel
are there 4, 5, 6, or 7 bits f information. It is
rare to have the lowest bit as actual information and
in many imaging situations there are fewer than 6 bits
of actual information. This means that the lowest 1,
2, and often 3 bits are noise, ie not information.

Image processing is often the task of making images
more pleasing to the eye. This can be simple as in
changing the brightness or contrast. Gamma is a
simple change of pixel intensity in which the change
is greater to darker pixels than to brighter pixels.

Suppose that the images are 6 bit images. That leaves
2 bits of noise. Alter the images so that 2 bits are
information and 2 bits are noise and 4 bits are now
nothing. What just happened to the information
content of the image relative to the noise content?

Also, these images are JPGs. That is a lossy
compression method. How has that changed the noise
content of the images?

Check with the original source of the images to learn
how much of the images is real and how much is noise.
Knowing the quality of the images is important.
Calibrating digital equipment is tricky. Lots of
different techniques have been employed to adjust
sensing equipment.

I am a bit curious about the means of viewing 3-d when
the images are identical such as in viewing multiple
tv screens. The composition of images into an
internal 3-d view by the brain requires that the eyes
see slightly different images. I sometimes work in a
virtual reality lab here at VT. The CAVE produces 3-d
worlds by supplying 24 image pairs to the eyes per
second. A different image is rendered for each eye.
The same is true when a head mounted dsplay is used.
Three-d movies do the same. Two televisions side by
side or two telescope images side by side are not
going to create the 3d effect sicne the images do not
differ.

SIRDS (single image random dot stereograms) produce a
3-d effect, but rely on the use of noise and low
resolution images to produce the effect. Two
superimposed images are laid over a noisy background.
The eyes separate the low resolution images from the
noisy background. The important point here is that
two differing images are imbedded inthe single image.
This is still different than a tv image.
************************************************

From: "Louise and Bob" coatsbob@yahoo.com
To: "Rich Murray" <rmforall@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: gamma
Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 8:43 AM

The important first step is to consider whether or not
the pattern in the images is real or not. This is
before there is any discussion of redshift or distance
or UV or anything else.

So now I am going to avoid discussing tangled webs of
distant objects and gravitational lensing
possibilities and everything else like that.

Step 1 is to see what gamma is all about. A common way
of computing gamma is as follows:

 new = ((old/max)^gamma)*max

Here max is the maximum value of a pixel. For
simplicity of discussion consider max to be 255 which
corresponds to the largest value when 8 bits are used.

Dividing a pixel by max maps the pixels from 0 to max
to the interval 0 to 1. Then the value is raised to
the gamma. The number is still between 0 and 1.
Multiplying the result by max stretches the data back
out to the 0 to max range, which here is 255. So back
to the original range of a pixel.

The gamma value is not the number you entered.
Typically it is 1/n, where n is the number you
entered. Because gamma correction is a point process
it is possible to precalculate what a pixel maps to.
By point process it is meant that each pixel is
independent of its neighbors. Local values do not
affect the result. Each pixel is on its own. I
attached graphs of the correction for gamma values of
2.5, 100, 200, and 300.

Here is what happens. The 2.5 graph is a typical
upper limit for corrections used with monitors. The
other graphs are effectively identical. Take a look
at the left side in the range 0 to 8. Assume 3 bits
of noise. Noise is now raised to the level of bright.
 The 5 bits above the noise are all 0. There should
not be anything in the image, yet applying gamma
effectively shoves the noise pixels into the visible
range.

I think it is rather clear that the use of large gamma
values on these pictures is generating nothing, but
noisy images.

If you want to dispute this you might try something
like the following:

Take all of the pixels in the image. Count how many
bits are on and off. For example, take the highest
bit. How often is it 1 and how often is it 0? If the
bit is a noise bit it is conceivable that the number
times that the bit is 1 is approximately equal to the
number of times it is 0. Compare these results to the
 results for lesser bits.

There is no 3-d possibility from identical images.
The 3-d effect is based on the differences, apparent
shifts, between the objects in the images. There are
lots of optical tricks that can be played on the mind.
Try this one. Take a pattern of random dots.
Duplicate it. Shift the second patterns a small
amount relative to the first random dot pattern. What
do you see? Is this real or an artifact of the way in
which the visual system tries to make sense of
potential patterns.

bob
****************************************************************

a friendly introduction: Beohringer: Murray 2004.06.12

2004 June 12 Hello Bob,

I enjoyed your website on stereology. You might be interested in my simple
analysis of mysterious background filaments in very deep cosmological
photos, for which I set up a group over two years ago. I am organizing
myself to offer a post on recent images.

"About two
decades ago I noticed that when the same photo is set up side
by side, and viewed with slightly crossed eyes to make a third
composite image in between, that image is created by the
brain's visual system as an excellent 3D image. In fact, you
can visit a TV store, where a lot of sets are all on the same
channel at once, and find two sets the same size, side by side,
and watch the composite image in moving 3D. If you settle
your gaze gently for a few minutes into the composite
image, the innate image processing facility of the brain's
visual system will develop and deepen the 3D appreciation
in remarkable and beautiful ways."

deep sky background filaments: images and interpretation 2002.01.19:
Murray rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/1
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/astrodeep/lst?.dir=/&.view=t

Click on the thumbnail photos to get the photos, and click on those
in turn to get full screen photos.

Artifacts? Or?-- immense filaments of H, He, and dark
matter, lit by intense UV from the earliest very massive
stars, "...during the first 10E8 years of the history of
the universe at redshifts between 50 and 10...,"
Prof. Richard B. Larson, Sci. Am. Dec 2001, and
http://www.astro.yale.edu/larson/papers/Noordwijk99.pdf
[7 pages]. This very early intense UV is now redshifted
into the visible and IR bands, and may supply about half of
the current cosmic IR background. The filaments are
generally as thin as 1 pixel.

Photo #2: deeptt1k.jpg:
One pixel = .258 arc-sec, about .25 mm on my 15" monitor.
In MGI PhotoSuite 4.0, I can zoom in to 1600 %, at which point
each pixel is about 4 mm on my 15" monitor.

This is a 20KB cut from the center of the
673 KB original, Photo #1: deeptt1.jpg:
1024X1024 pixels, a random sample, the first of three,
a little to the lower left of center of the 1.15X1.15 degree field,
16000X16000 pixels, 750.3 Mb 24-bit color TIFF,
the highest available resolution,
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0637.html
National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field Survery.
****************************************************************

----- Original Message -----
From: "bob" <rboehrin@vt.edu>
Newsgroups: bionet.neuroscience
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 5:43 AM
Subject: Use of stereology

> How often do people make use of stereology in their research. If you
> do use it, do you use a software package or do you use a manual
> technique?

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/rboehrin/index.htm
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/rboehrin/Introduction/AboutAuthor.htm

The Author

I am Robert Boehringer and presently living in Blacksburg, Virginia where I
attend Virginia Tech. I have been enrolled in the Masters program for
Computer Science as a part time student. My GPA is 3.90 (A=4.0 A-=3.7)
Although part time I am an active student and attend as many of the lecture
series as possible. I also make good use of the cultural opportunities that
are available through the university.
I am employed by MicrobrightField, Inc. the leader in software for
stereological research and serial reconstructions.
Outside of the school and work I have hobbies that include bird watching,
hiking, traveling, and the occasional rock climb.

My motivation for creating information about stereology is due to the the
lack of information available online. It also provides me the chance to
record some of the observations I have made.
It is surprisingly easy to find misinformation about stereology. Examples
are:
Suggestions to avoid proper sampling
Poorly done simulations
The use of ocular mathematics
The latter entry is in reference to a joke that several of us started in
high school. It was suggested that the easiest math would be a discipline
with a single axiom, "If it looks right, then it is right." It should come
as no surprise that ocular mathematics is prevalent in many disciplines.
Stereology is no exception. I have seen corrections for numbers that are too
large, generate even larger numbers. I have seen counting rules changed to
forms that were more pleasing to the eye. I have seen assumptions made about
averages that do not hold under even the simplest conditions. I cannot be
certain in all cases, but I believe that the ocular axiom was invoked in all
of these cases as well as many others.
Please send in suggestions or comments to rboehrin@vt.edu.

Tricouni Nail in the Needles of South Dakota

This page written by Robert Boehringer at Virginia Tech.
****************************************************************

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/06/040614080542.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/uocs-ndt061004.php

Public release date: 11-Jun-2004

Contact: Jacquelyn Savani jsavani@engineering.ucsb.edu
805-963-8324 University of California, Santa Barbara - Engineering

Newly devised test may confirm strings as fundamental constituent of matter,
energy
Experimental verification would mean more spatial dimensions exist

Santa Barbara, Calif.--According to string theory, all the different
particles that constitute physical reality are made of the same thing--tiny
looped strings whose different vibrations give rise to the different
fundamental particles that make up everything we know. Whether this theory
correctly portrays fundamental reality is one of the biggest questions
facing physicists.

In the June on-line Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP), three theoretical
physicists propose the most viable test to date for determining whether
string theory is on the right track. The effect that they describe and that
could be discovered by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory), a facility for detecting gravitational waves that is just
becoming operational, could provide support for string theory within two
years.

When physicists look at fundamental particles--electrons, quarks, and
photons--with the best magnifiers available (huge particle accelerators such
as those at Fermi Lab in Illinois or CERN in Switzerland), the particles'
structures appear point-like. In order to see directly whether that
point-like structure is really a looped string, physicists would have to
figure out how to magnify particles 15 orders of magnitude more than the 13
orders of magnitude afforded by today's best magnifying techniques--a feat
unlikely to occur ever.

In their paper "Cosmic F and D Strings," the three physicists propose
looking instead for the gravitational signature of strings left over from
the creation of the universe.
The physicists are Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical
Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), Edmund
Copeland of Sussex University in England, and Robert Myers of the Perimeter
Institute and Waterloo University in Canada.

The international collaboration took place at a semester-long program on
"Superstring Cosmology" held last fall at the Kavli Institute for
Theoretical Physics (KITP). Located on the UCSB campus and supported
principally by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Kavli Institute
brings together physicists worldwide to collaborate on deep scientific
questions. According to Polchinski, who is a string theorist, the KITP
program that produced the test for string theory was the first sustained
effort ever to bring cosmologists and string theorists together to advance
the newly emerging field of string cosmology. Two-thirds of the roughly 100
participants were string theorists; and the other third, astrophysicists.

In the mid 1980s Edward Witten, now at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, asked whether miniscule strings produced in the early universe
would grow with the universe to a size that would make them visible today.
Witten answered his own question negatively by raising three objections to
the idea. Because of subsequent developments, all three objections have in
turn now been answered, according to Polchinski and his collaborators, who
dispelled the last objection and then proposed a way of detecting those
strings.

The first objection depends on a property of strings called "tension," which
is the mass of a string per unit length.

"One way to characterize that number," said Polchinski, "involves the
gravitational effect of the string. If you look at a string end on while a
couple of light rays go past it on either side, the light rays will bend
towards the string. So light rays that started out parallel to each other
will now meet at some angle. The heavier the string, the more those light
rays will bend, and the bigger the angle."

When Witten first worked on the problem, string theorists thought that angle
had to be one degree. If it were one degree, the satellite COBE (Cosmic
Background Explorer) would have detected that imprint in the microwave
background radiation, which pervades the universe and which was released
when the early universe cooled enough for matter and energy to decouple some
300,000 years after the hot birth of the universe. The maps of the early
universe that COBE produced show no such imprint and, furthermore, put an
upper limit on that angle of no more than one hundredth of a degree. The
satellite WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) has now reduced it to
one thousandth of a degree.

In the mid-1990s string theory underwent profound developments. One of the
consequences of those developments was the realization that the tension of
the string and therefore its gravitational effect could be much less than
had been thought when Witten made his initial calculation of the angle of
separation between light rays affected gravitationally by a string.

Henry Tye of Cornell and his collaborators showed that in some string theory
models the angle of separation would be between a thousandth of a degree and
a billionth of a degree--far too small for COBE to have detected.

Tye and collaborators also demolished the second objection to cosmic strings
having to do with "Inflation," which can be thought of as an intensification
of the explosion and rapid expansion of the early universe following rapidly
on the heels of the universe's genesis in the "Big Bang." Witten back in the
'80s had argued that the strings produced by the Big Bang would be both
heavy enough and produced so early that Inflation would have diluted them
beyond visibility.

String theory presupposes nine or 10 spatial dimensions, that is six or
seven more spatial dimensions than have heretofore been assumed to exist in
addition to the one dimension of time. Some of the "extra" dimensions are
thought to be curled up or compactified and therefore exceedingly small; and
some, to be larger, perhaps infinite.

In his attempts to understand Inflation in terms of string theory, Tye and
collaborators envisioned our reality as contained in a three-dimensional
"brane" sitting in higher dimensional space.

Branes, a key conceptual breakthrough discovered by Polchinski in 1995, are
essential structures in string theory in addition to strings. Instead of
being only one-dimensional like strings, branes can have any dimensionality,
including one. One-dimensional branes are called "D1 branes or D strings."
So there are essentially two types of strings-- the heterotic string or "F"
(for "fundamental") string, which physicists knew about prior to 1995, and
the "D string," or one-dimensional brane.

Tye and collaborators explained Inflation in terms of a brane and an
anti-brane separating from each other and then attracting back together and
annihilating. So a brane and an anti-brane existing in the extra dimensions
would thereby provide the energy responsible for Inflation. Everything
existing afterwards--our universe--is the product of their annihilation.
And, according to the Tye models, at the end of Inflation, when brane and
anti-brane annihilate, not only does their annihilation produce heat and
light, but also long closed strings that could grow with the expansion of
the universe.

At the outset of the KITP program in fall 2003, the only remaining objection
to cosmic strings was what Polchinski calls summarily "the stability
argument," first made by Witten back in the '80s. If, on the one hand, the
post-Inflation strings were charged, then they would pull back together and
collapse before they could grow to any great size. If the strings weren't
charged, then they would tend to break into pieces. Either way--collapsing
or breaking--the strings couldn't survive until today.

Copeland, one of the JHEP paper's authors, went to a talk at the KITP by
Stanford string theorist Eva Silverstein, who was interested in networking F
and D strings--hooking them together to form something analogous to a wire
mesh or screen. After the talk, Copeland wondered aloud to Polchinski
whether Silverstein (who was thinking string theory mathematics, not
cosmology) was inadvertently describing a mechanism for the dark
matter--that as yet unidentified, non-radiating component of the universe
which must exist in much greater abundance than all the ordinary "baryonic"
matter of which we are aware.

Polchinski and Copeland worked out why Silverstein's scenario could not
pertain to dark matter, but the engagement with that question got Polchinski
to thinking about the old instability argument against the existence of
cosmic strings in terms of Tye's brane-antibrane Inflation, particularly as
worked out in detail by six physicists in a 2003 paper, "Towards Inflation
in String Theory."

Using that model, Polchinski, Copeland, and Myers calculated the decay rates
for cosmic strings and discovered how slow the rates could be--so slow in
fact that the strings would survive to the present day. By "survive" they
mean not just detecting the gravitational footprint left long ago in the
cosmic microwave background and "seen" by looking back in time, but actually
seeing the gravitational effects of cosmic strings existing if not now, then
billions of years after the genesis of the universe.

Polchinski said their calculations showed that both F and D cosmic strings
could exist and that the JHEP article explains how to distinguish the
signature of one from the other. He also pointed out that Gia Dvali (New
York University) and Alexander Vilenkin (Tufts University) have
independently made the same point about cosmic D strings in March in another
on-line publication, the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
(JCAP).

Finally and most importantly, the JHEP authors show, said Polchinski, "how
we can see cosmic strings. They are dark, but because they are massive and
moving pretty fast, they tend to emit a lot of gravitational waves."

During the "Superstring Cosmology" program at the KITP, Alessandra Buonanno
(Institut d'Astrolophysique de Paris) provided an overview of the possible
gravitational wave signatures from the early universe. "When she gave the
talk," said Polchinski, "I didn't pay careful attention because I wasn't
thinking about that, but later I went back to her talk in the KITP online
series and started clicking through and got to where she talked about
gravitational waves from cosmic strings. She had these curves which were
quite amazing."

The large-scale, long-term experiment to detect gravitational waves has
three stages, LIGO I and II and the satellite LISA, with each successive
stage affording a markedly higher degree of sensitivity. Most of the
gravitational signatures of cosmic events are so weak that they will
probably only be visible in the later stages of the experiment. But,
according to Polchinski, "the gravitational signatures from cosmic strings
are remarkable because they are potentially visible even from the early
stages of LIGO! That means 'potentially visible' over the next year or two."

Gravitational waves have yet to be directly detected, which is the mission
of the LIGO and LISA experiments. So in addition to the possibility of
confirming string theory, the JHEP paper offers a better target for initial
LIGO detection of gravitational waves than any other from cosmic events.

Identifying the gravitational signature of cosmic strings is the work of
Vilenkin and Thibault Damour (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques,
France). They figured out that when cosmic strings oscillate, every once in
a while, they crack like a whip. "It's surprising," said Polchinski, "but
when you write out the equations for an oscillating string, a little piece
of the string snaps and moves very fast. Basically, the tip will move at the
speed of light. When a string cracks like this, it emits a cone of
gravitational waves, which is a remarkably intense and distinctive signal,
which LIGO can detect."

Polchinski said that the biggest question mark in the whole argument has to
do with the stability of the strings over billions of years. But, he added,
"There has been a fair amount of discussion about the signature of string
theory in cosmology, this is by far the most likely. What excites me most is
how much we could learn about string theory if LIGO were to detect the
signal from cosmic strings."
*****************************************************************

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1071
research on aspartame (methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid) toxicity:
Murray 2004.06.18 rmforall

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 USA 505-501-2298

[ NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, Benevia, E951 ]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/927
Donald Rumsfeld, 1977 head of Searle Corp., got aspartame FDA approval:
Turner: Murray 2002.12.23 rmforall
****************************************************************

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