Ardern (2025), Jacinda, A Different Kind of Power, Penguin NZ 2025 'What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be. When Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at age thirty-seven, the world took notice. But it was her compassionate yet powerful response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, resulting in swift and sweeping gun control laws, that demonstrated her remarkable leadership. She guided her country through unprecedented challenges-a volcanic eruption, a major biosecurity incursion, and a global pandemic-while advancing visionary new polices to address climate change, reduce child poverty, and secure historic international trade deals. She did all this while juggling first-time motherhood in the public eye. Ardern exemplifies a new kind of leadership-proving that leaders can be caring, empathetic, and effective. She has become a global icon, and now she is ready to share her story, from the struggles to the surprises, including for the first time the full details of her decision to step down during her sixth year as Prime Minister.' 
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Babur (2020), Zahiru'd-din Mohammad, and Annette Susannah Beveridge (Translator) and William Dalrymple (Introduction), , Knopf / Penguin Random House 2020 Jacket: 'Zahiru'd-din Mohammad Babu (1485-1530) a poet-prince from central Asia, was the first Mughal emperor and author of one of the most remarkable autobiographies in world Literature. The Babur Nama reveals its author as not only a military genius but also a ruler unusually magnanimous for his time, cultured, witty and possessing a talent for poetry, an adventurous spirit and an acute eye for natural beauty.' 
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Brandt (1995), Siegmund, and Hans Dieter Dahmen, The Picture Book of Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag 1995 Jacket: 'This book is an introduction to the basic concepts and phenomena of quantum mechanics. Computer-generated illustrations are used extensively throughout the text, helping to establish the relation between quantum mechanics on one side and classical physics . . . on the other side. Even more by studying the pictures in parallel with the text, readers develop an intuition for notoriously abstract quantum phenomena . . .' 
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Brown (2018), Kevin, Reflections on Relativity, 2018 ' . . . general relativity teaches us that the principles of special relativity are applicable only over infinitesimal regions in the presence of gravitation, so in a sense the general theory restricts rather than generalizes the special theory. However, we can also regard special relativity as a theory of flat four-dimensional spacetime, characterized by the Minkowski metric (in suitable coordinates), and the general theory generalizes this by allowing the spacetime manifold to be curved, as represented by a wider class of metric tensors. It is remarkable that this generalization, which is so simple and natural from the geometrical standpoint, leads almost uniquely to a viable theory of gravitation.' (page 700) 
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Woolf (1980), Harry, Some Strangeness in the Proportion : A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of Albert Einstein, Addison-Wesley ' Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was born in Germany and became an American citizen in 1940. A world-famous theoretical physicist, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics and is renowned for his Theory of Relativity. In addition to his scientific work, Einstein was an influential humanist who spoke widely about politics, ethics, and social causes. After leaving Europe, Einstein taught at Princeton University. His theories were instrumental in shaping the atomic age. 
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Abd al-Rahman I - Wikipedia, Abd al-Rahman I - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham (7 March 731 – 30 September 788), commonly known as Abd al-Rahman I, was the founder and first emir of the Emirate of Córdoba, ruling from 756 to 788. He established the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus, which continued for nearly three centuries (including the succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba). Abd al-Rahman was a member of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, and his establishment of a government in Iberia represented a break with the Abbasids, who had overthrown the Umayyads in Damascus in 750.' back

Albert Einstein (1909), On the development of our views concerning the nature and constitution of radiation, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 2, back

Alhambra - Wikipedia, Alhambra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Spain. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture and one of the best-preserved palaces of the historic Islamic world. Additionally, the palace contains notable examples of Spanish Renaissance architecture. The complex was begun in 1238 by Muhammad I Ibn al-Ahmar, the first Nasrid emir and founder of the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim state of Al-Andalus. [. . .] After the conclusion of the Christian Reconquista in 1492, the site became the Royal Court of Ferdinand and Isabella (where Christopher Columbus received royal endorsement for his expedition), and the palaces were partially altered.' back

Andrew Thomas (2025_06_04), A two-state solution is gaining momentum again for Israel and the Palestinians. Does it have a chance of success?, ' As Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has ground on, the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was thought to be “dead”. Now, it is showing signs of life again. French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly pressing other European nations to jointly recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference in mid-June, focused on achieving a two-state solution. Macron called such recognition a “political necessity”. Countries outside Europe are feeling the pressure, too. Australia has reaffirmed its view that recognition of Palestine should be a “way of building momentum towards a two-state solution”. During Macron’s visit to Indonesia in late May, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto made a surprising pledge to recognise Israel if it allowed for a Palestinian state. Indonesia is one of about 28 nations that don’t currently recognise Israel. France, Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea are among the approximately 46 nations that don’t recognise a Palestinian state. [. . .] A power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland was similarly unpopular in the 1990s, but peace was achieved through bold political leadership involving the US and European Union. In other words, we won’t know what’s possible until negotiations begin. Red lines will need to be drawn and compromises made. It’s not clear what effect growing external pressure will have, but the international community does appear to be reaching a political tipping point on the two-state solution. Momentum could start building again.' back

Battle of Chaldiran - Wikipedia, Battle of Chaldiran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Battle of Chaldiran took place on 23 August 1514 and ended with a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire over the Safavid Empire. As a result, the Ottomans annexed Eastern Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia from Safavid Iran. It marked the first Ottoman expansion into Eastern Anatolia, and the halt of the Safavid expansion to the west. The Battle of Chaldiran was just the beginning of 41 years of destructive war, which only ended in 1555 with the Peace of Amasya. Though the Safavids eventually reconquered Mesopotamia and Eastern Anatolia under the reign of Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629), they would be permanently ceded to the Ottomans by the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab.' back

Chandra Roychoudhuri & Katherine Creath, What is a photon, ' Focusing on the unresolved debate between Newton and Huygens from 300 years ago, The Nature of Light: What is a Photon? discusses the reality behind enigmatic photons. It explores the fundamental issues pertaining to light that still exist today. Gathering contributions from globally recognized specialists in electrodynamics and quantum optics, the book begins by clearly presenting the mainstream view of the nature of light and photons. It then provides a new and challenging scientific epistemology that explains how to overcome the prevailing paradoxes and confusions arising from the accepted definition of a photon as a monochromatic Fourier mode of the vacuum. The book concludes with an array of experiments that demonstrate the innovative thinking needed to examine the wave-particle duality of photons.' back

Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Dirac equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1⁄2 massive particles such as electrons and quarks, for which parity is a symmetry, and is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It accounted for the fine details of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way.' back

Dirac operator - Wikipedia, Dirac operator - Wikipedia, the dree encyclopedia, ' In mathematics and in quantum mechanics, a Dirac operator is a first-order differential operator that is a formal square root, or half-iterate, of a second-order differential operator such as a Laplacian. It was introduced in 1847 by William Hamilton and in 1928 by Paul Dirac. The question which concerned Dirac was to factorise formally the Laplace operator of the Minkowski space, to get an equation for the wave function which would be compatible with special relativity. back

Emma Lovell & Jessica Allen (2025_06_02), Australia’s latest emissions data reveal we still have a giant fossil fuel problem, ' According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below 2005 levels”. That’s great news, right? Well, yes and no. Australia continues to rely on changes in land use to compensate for emissions released into the atmosphere. In other words, Australia’s plants are considered to be taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere now than in 2005. Their efforts are captured in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, which is the single largest reason for the significant reduction in Australian emissions. Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%. [. . .] When it comes to fugitive and export emissions, Australia is not on track to meet 2030 targets. Recent export-focused fossil project approvals such as the North West Shelf gas project suggest we might even be backtracking. [. . .] Unfortunately the reality is we will need much, much more renewable energy in the future. Up to three times the current capacity of the National Electricity Market will be needed to cover future domestic energy requirements across electricity and other sectors out to 2050. Significantly more would be required to generate enough additional green energy to also produce green value-added commodities. [. . .] Unless we ramp up green manufacturing – replacing fossil fuel exports with much needed renewable products and fuels – we will continue to bear responsibility, if not direct accountability, for large, exported emissions as well as onshore fugitive emissions. ' back

Étienne-Louis Malus - Wikipedia, Étienne-Louis Malus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Étienne-Louis Malus (23 July 1775 – 23 February 1812) was a French officer, engineer, physicist, and mathematician. Malus was born in Paris, France and studied at the military engineering school at Mezires where he was taught by Gaspard Monge. He participated in Napoleon's expedition into Egypt (1798 to 1801). He was also a member of the mathematics section of the Institut d'Égypte. Malus became a member of the Académie des Sciences in 1810. In 1810 the Royal Society of London awarded him the Rumford Medal. His mathematical work was almost entirely concerned with the study of light. . . He conducted experiments to verify Christiaan Huygens's theories of light and rewrote the theory in analytical form. His discovery of the polarization of light by reflection was published in 1809 and his theory of double refraction of light in crystals, in 1810. [. . . ] Malus is probably best remembered for Malus's law, giving the resultant intensity, when a polariser is placed in the path of an incident beam. A follower of Laplace, both his statement of the Malus's law and his earlier works on polarisation and birefringence were formulated using the corpuscular theory of light.[4] His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower' back

Ewen Callaway (3025_05_29_, Rare ‘ambidextrous’ protein breaks rules of handedness, ' Scientists have discovered an ancient protein that has the rare property of being ‘ambidextrous’ — it can function in mirror-image forms. The molecule could be a relic of a time when life based on mirror-image molecules existed on Earth. Many chemicals have a handedness, or chirality, and can exist in two mirror-image forms. But the building blocks of life tend to stick to one or the other. Sugars in nucleic acids such as DNA are right-handed — causing the DNA double helix to twist to the right, if you were looking down its axis — whereas the amino acids that build proteins are left-handed. I told AI to make me a protein. Here’s what it came up with Scientists think that a preference for right-handed DNA and left-handed proteins could have helped to maintain the stability and function of biomolecules early in life’s evolution. Liam Longo, a protein historian at the Tokyo Earth-Life Science Institute, was examining a protein fragment, or peptide, that recognizes nucleic acids and is commonly found in DNA repair enzymes. He noticed that the structure was symmetrical around a central axis, and suspected that both left- and right-handed versions of the protein could bind DNA. The symmetrical segment — called a helix-hairpin-helix motif — is common in proteins that can manipulate and bind DNA and RNA and is found across the tree of life, suggesting that it existed in an early ancestor of all cells, says Longo.' back

Great Mosque of Djenné - Wikipedia, Great Mosque of Djenné - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Great Mosque of Djenné in the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style is the largest adobe brick building in the world. The mosque is located in the city of Djenné, Mali, on the flood plain of the Bani River. The first mosque on the site was built around the 13th century, but the current structure dates from 1907. As well as being the centre of the community of Djenné, it is one of the most famous landmarks in Africa. Along with the "Old Towns of Djenné", it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.' back

Horror vacui (philosophy) - Wikipedia, Horror vacui (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In philosophy and early physics, horror vacui (Latin: horror of the vacuum) or plenism —commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum", for example by Spinoza—is a hypothesis attributed to Aristotle, later criticized by the atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius, that nature contains no vacuums because the denser surrounding material continuum would immediately fill the rarity of an incipient void. Aristotle also argued against the void in a more abstract sense: since a void is merely nothingness, following his teacher Plato, nothingness cannot rightly be said to exist.[citation needed] Furthermore, insofar as a void would be featureless, it could neither be encountered by the senses nor could its supposition lend additional explanatory power.' back

Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World - Wikipedia, Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' slamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World is an American PBS documentary film that showcases the variety and diversity of Islamic art. It discusses Islamic culture and its role in the rise of world civilization over the centuries. It was produced in 2011 by Alex Kronemer and Michael Wolfe of Unity Productions Foundation. The film had its world premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC on December 1, 2011. It was originally broadcast nationwide on July 6, 2012 on PBS, as part of their Arts Summer Festival programming. [. . .] It was given the Accolade Global Film Competition's Award of Excellence in 2013. and was named Best Educational Film at the International Family Film Festival.' back

J B Manchak, Space and Time, Abstract Here, formal tools are used to pose and answer several philosophical questions concerning space and time. The questions involve the properties of possible worlds allowed by the general theory of relativity. In particular, attention is given to various causal properties such as “determinism” and “time travel”. back

John Hawkins (2025_06_06), Can a book help the left rebuild the good life? Ezra Klein’s Abundance is the talk of Washington – and Canberra, ' Many observing the economic chaos, cruelty and climate vandalism emanating from United States President Donald Trump are hoping the Democrats can clip his wings at the November 2026 mid-term elections. What does the left need to do differently? Some see the ideas in a bestselling new book as a path back to power. California governor Gavin Newsom called Abundance “one of the most important books Democrats can read”. [. . .] “We have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life,” they write, calling for a “correction”. They conclude “what we can build is more important than what we can buy”. [. . .] “There is some margin at which trying to do more means ultimately achieving less,” the authors conclude. One cause, they suggest, may be the excessive influence of lawyers: legal thinking centres on processes rather than results. The US has four times as many lawyers per capita as France. [. . .] The authors concede their primary audience is the left. They are writing for those who think inequality and climate change are real problems and want more effective ways of dealing with them. The book’s final sentence states their goal: “a liberalism that builds”.' back

John von Neumann (2014), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ' Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann translated from the German by Robert T. Beyer (New Edition) edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler. Princeton UP Princeton & Oxford. Preface: ' This book is the realization of my long-held intention to someday use the resources of TEX to produce a more easily read version of Robert T. Beyer’s authorized English translation (Princeton University Press, 1955) of John von Neumann’s classic Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, 1932).'This content downloaded from 129.127.145.240 on Sat, 30 May 2020 22:38:31 UTC back

M. L. de Broglie, , ' For a long time theoretical physics has used abstract representations such as the configuration space of a system, the phase space, Hilbert space etc. These are certainly assist very useful arguments and are almost indispensible. But we should not forget that these abstract representations have no actual reality. The only physical reality is the movement of localized elements in space through the passage of time. For this reason, abstract representations are to some extent dangerous.' back

Mark Edele (2025_05_28), Vladimir Putin’s bombing of Ukrainian civilians won’t end the war any faster. So, why is he doing it?, ' United States President Donald Trump was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, this week. For three consecutive nights, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched about 900 drones and scores of missiles at Ukraine. At least 18 people were killed, including three children. “We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, after Putin ordered the largest air assault on Ukraine’s civilians in its three-year war. [. . .] With his latest air campaign on Ukraine, however, Putin is threatening to destroy the goodwill he’s built up in Washington, where Trump has been consistently soft on Russia and tough on his allies. So, what is Putin’s strategy? Why is he launching these massive air bombardments on Ukrainian civilians now? [. . .] Is Putin desperate or impatient? Likely the latter. [. . .] Indiscriminate air war on civilians is the only means Putin currently has to pressure Ukraine. His army has been advancing, but painfully slowly. [. . .] All he can do is rain death on women, children and the elderly from relatively cheap, unsophisticated weapons, such as drones. He now has these in large supply, thanks to ramping up military production at home. [. . .] A strategic air war on civilians seldom works, however. [. . .] Other historical failures are even more spectacular. The US air force dropped 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam during an air campaign of more than 300,000 sorties lasting from 1965 to late 1968. The North Vietnamese lost maybe 29,000 people (dead and wounded), more than half of them civilians. The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies still lost the war. Putin’s air war will likely follow the historical pattern: it has further embittered the Ukrainians, who know very well that what comes from the east is not liberation. Another summer of fighting lies ahead. Ukraine’s friends in the democratic world need to urgently redouble their efforts to support Ukraine. The misguided hopes that Putin would somehow “make a deal” lie under the rubble his drones leave behind in Ukraine’s cities.' back

Matthew Sussex (2025_06_04), The secret to Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia – it knows wars are never won in the past, ' The iconoclastic American general Douglas Macarthur once said that “wars are never won in the past”. That sentiment certainly seemed to ring true following Ukraine’s recent audacious attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, using small, cheap drones housed in wooden pods and transported near Russian airfields in trucks. [. . .] Western military planners have been carefully studying Ukraine’s successes ever since its forces managed to blunt Russia’s initial onslaught deep into its territory in early 2022, and then launched a stunning counteroffensive that drove the Russian invaders back towards their original starting positions. There have been other lessons, too, about how the apparently weak can stand up to the strong. [. . .] Above all, they have focused on winning the war they are in, rather than those of the past. This means: using technological advancements to force the Russians to change their tactics shaping the information environment to promote their narratives and keep vital Western aid flowing, and deploying surprise attacks not just as ways to boost public morale, but also to impose disproportionate costs on the Russian state. [. . .] This is also why the latest drone attack is so significant. Russia needs its long-range bomber fleet, not just to fire conventional cruise missiles at Ukrainian civilian and infrastructure targets, but as aerial delivery systems for its strategic nuclear arsenal. The destruction of even a small portion of Russia’s deterrence capability has the potential to affect its nuclear strategy. It has increasingly relied on this strategy to threaten the West.' back

Michael Bachelard & MaxMaddison (2025_06_07), ‘Game On’: The minute-long message that unleashed the Brethren’s election machine, ' One Sunday in mid-April, two weeks into the federal election campaign, the global leader of the extremist Christian sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren recorded a brief audio message to his followers. To the Brethren, the words of “Man of God” Bruce Hales are close to holy writ. The message was only a minute or so long and narrowcast to the flock on a Brethren-only app called the Global Media Stream, according to a church source who has requested anonymity for fear of recrimination. That message gave permission for an unprecedented electoral effort by the church. The following week, thousands of members of what’s now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church began appearing at pre-polling stations throughout the country, handing out election material and swamping booths in signage to try to get Peter Dutton elected. [. . .] Days later, the Brethren army was unleashed on the public. Members of this church generally are exempt from voting – they claim a conscientious objection, arguing that government is of God and should not be chosen by men. They are also taught to despise the “world” and “worldly people” because they will defile and contaminate them. Despite this doctrine, thousands took time off from Brethren company jobs and fanned out to marginal Labor seats nationally to hand out for the Coalition.' back

Mughal Empire - Wikipedia, Mughal Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.[8][9] The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighboring Safavid and Ottoman Empires[10] to defeat the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat, and to sweep down the plains of North India.' back

Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics is a description of quantum theory which generalizes the action principle of classical mechanics. It replaces the classical notion of a single, unique trajectory for a system with a sum, or functional integral, over an infinity of possible trajectories to compute a quantum amplitude. . . . This formulation has proved crucial to the subsequent development of theoretical physics, since it provided the basis for the grand synthesis of the 1970s which unified quantum field theory with statistical mechanics. . . . ' back

Pauli Equation - Wikipedia, Pauli Equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum mechanics, the Pauli equation or Schrödinger–Pauli equation is the formulation of the Schrödinger equation for spin-½ particles, which takes into account the interaction of the particle's spin with an external electromagnetic field. It is the non-relativistic limit of the Dirac equation and can be used where particles are moving at speeds much less than the speed of light, so that relativistic effects can be neglected. It was formulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1927.' back

Qanat - Wikipedia, Qanat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A qanāt is a water supply system that was developed in ancient Iran for the purpose of transporting usable water to the surface from an aquifer or a well through an underground aqueduct. Originating approximately 3,000 years ago] its function is essentially the same across the Middle East and North Africa [. . .] Proving crucial to water supply in areas with hot and dry climates, a qanat enables water to be transported over long distances by largely eliminating the risk of much of it evaporating on the journey. The system also has the advantage of being fairly resistant to natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes, as well as to man-made disasters, such as wartime destruction and water supply terrorism. Furthermore, it is almost insensitive to varying levels of precipitation, delivering a flow with only gradual variations from wet to dry years.' back

Qiu-Hong Hu (2005_12_29), The nature of the electron, ' Through investigating history, evolution of the concept, and development in the theories of electrons, I am convinced that what was missing in our understanding of the electron is a structure, into which all attributes of the electron could be incorporated in a self-consistent way. It is hereby postulated that the topological structure of the electron is a closed two-turn Helix (a so-called Hubius Helix) that is generated by circulatory motion of a mass-less particle at the speed of light. A formulation is presented to describe an isolated electron at rest and at high speed. It is shown that the formulation is capable of incorporating most (if not all) attributes of the electron, including spin, magnetic moment, fine structure constant, anomalous magnetic moment, and charge quantization into one concrete description of the Hubius Helix. The equations for the description emerge accordingly. Implications elicited by the postulate are elaborated. Inadequacy of the formulation is discussed.' back

Ross Gittins (29025_06_04), In one awful decision, Albanese has revealed his do-nothing plan, ' It didn’t take long for us to discover what a triumphantly re-elected Labor government would be like. [. . .] Well, now we know. The re-elected government’s first big decision is to extend the life of Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf gas processing plant on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia for a further 40 years from 2030. What was it you guys said about your sacred commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050? [. . .] So you’re happy for one of the world’s biggest liquified natural gas projects still to be pumping out greenhouse gases in 2070, 20 years after it’s all meant to be over? Some estimate that the plant will send 4.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, but that’s OK because nearly all the gas will be exported. We won’t be burning it, our customers will. (Though we don’t quite know how we’ll ensure their emissions worsen their climate but not ours.) To be fair, had the government failed to extend the project’s licence, Woodside would have been ropeable and the West Australian branch of the Labor Party – which I sometimes suspect is a wholly owned subsidiary of the mining industry, or maybe the mining unions – might have seceded.' back

Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia, Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation is a partial differential equation that describes how the quantum state of a quantum system changes with time. It was formulated in late 1925, and published in 1926, by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. . . . In classical mechanics Newton's second law, (F = ma), is used to mathematically predict what a given system will do at any time after a known initial condition. In quantum mechanics, the analogue of Newton's law is Schrödinger's equation for a quantum system (usually atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles whether free, bound, or localized). It is not a simple algebraic equation, but in general a linear partial differential equation, describing the time-evolution of the system's wave function (also called a "state function").' back

Spinor - Wikipedia, Spinor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In geometry and physics, spinors are elements of a (complex) vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space. Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation. When a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, however, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used: unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360°.' back

Süleymaniye Mosque - Wikipedia, Süleymaniye Mosque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Süleymaniye Mosque is an Ottoman imperial mosque located on the Third Hill of Istanbul, Turkey. The mosque was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) and designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan. An inscription specifies the foundation date as 1550 and the inauguration date as 1557, although work on the complex probably continued for a few years after this. [. . . ] It is considered a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture and one of Mimar Sinan's greatest works. It is the largest Ottoman-era mosque in the city.' back

Umayyad Mosque - Wikipedia, Umayyad Mosque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Umayyad Mosque also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus, located in the old city of Damascus, the capital of Syria, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. Its religious importance stems from the eschatological reports concerning the mosque and historic events associated with it. Christian and Muslim tradition alike consider it the burial place of John the Baptist's head, a tradition originating in the 6th century. Two shrines inside the premises commemorate the Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali, whose martyrdom is frequently compared to that of John the Baptist. The site has been used as a house of worship since the Iron Age, when the Arameans built on it a temple dedicated to their god of rain, Hadad. Under Roman rule, beginning in 64 CE, it was converted into the center of the imperial cult of Jupiter, the Roman god of rain, becoming one of the largest temples in Syria. The current walls of the mosque were the inner walls of the Temple of Jupiter (built in the 1st century BC to 4th century AD).' back

Wolfgang Pauli, The Connection between Spin and Statistics, 'In the following paper we conclude for the relativistically invariant wave equation for free particles: From postulate (I), according to which the energy must be positive, the necessity of Fermi-Dirac statistics for particles with arbitrary half-integral spin; from postulate (II), according to which observables on different space-time points with a spacelike distance are commutable, the necessity of Bose-Einstein statistics with arbitrary integral spin. It has been found useful to divide the quantities which are irreducible against Lorentz transformations into four symmetry classes which have commutable multiplication like +1, -1, +ε, -ε, with ε² = 1.' back

Wolfgang Pauli (1946), x, ' The question, as to why all electrons for an atom in its ground state were not bound in the innermost shell, had already been emphasized by Bohr as a fundamental problem in his earlier works. [. . .] Following Bohr’s invitation, I went to Copenhagen in the autumn of 1922, where I made a serious effort to explain the so-called « anomalous Zeeman effect », as the spectroscopists called a type of splitting of the spectral lines in a magnetic field which is different from the normal triplet. [. . .] This early work was of decisive importance for the finding of the exclusion principle. [. . .] Very soon after my return to the University of Hamburg, in 1923, I gave there my inaugural lecture as Privatdozent on the Periodic System of Elements. The contents of this lecture appeared very unsatisfactory to me, since the problem of the closing of the electronic shells had been clarified no further. [. . .] On the basis of my earlier results on the classification of spectral terms in a strong magnetic field the general formulation of the exclusion principle be- came clear to me. The fundamental idea can be stated in the following way: The complicated numbers of electrons in closed subgroups are reduced to the simple number one if the division of the groups by giving the values of the four quantum numbers of an electron is carried so far that every degeneracy is removed. An entirely non-degenerate energy level is already « closed », if it is occupied by a single electron; states in contradiction with this postulate have to be excluded. [. . .] The gap was filled by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit’s idea of elec- tron spin, which made it possible to understand the anomalous Zeeman effect simply by assuming that the spin quantum number of one electron is equal to ½ and that the quotient of the magnetic moment to the mechanical angular moment has for the spin a value twice as large as for the ordinary orbit of the electron. [. . .] At the end of this lecture I may express my critical opinion, that a correct theory should neither lead to infinite zero-point energies nor to infinite zero ncharges, that it should not use mathematical tricks to subtract infinities or singularities, nor should it invent a « hypothetical world » which is only a mathematical fiction before it is able to formulate the correct interpretation of the actual world of physics. From the point of view of logic, my report on « Exclusion principle and quantum mechanics » has no conclusion. I believe that it will only be possible to write the conclusion if a theory will be established which will determine the value of the fine-structure constant and will thus explain the atomistic structure of electricity, which is such an essential quality of all atomic sources of electric fields actually occurring in Nature.' back