Life on Earth-like Planets: Gaia and Her Sisters

From its ancient Greek roots to Lovelock’s groundbreaking 1979 book, the concept of Gaia has evolved to depict Earth as a single, intricate organism sustaining life through the interplay of its organic and inorganic elements. From the Hadean epoch, where life’s emergence radically transformed our planet, to the present, Earth stands as our sole model for understanding life’s potential on other Earth-like worlds. While the lifeforms that evolve on Earth-like planets would not necessarily be identical to those on Earth, they must satisfy the same constraints. These constraints are the central subject of this book.

Here is a link to the book: https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/13897#t=aboutBook

THE WAR BETWEEN HAMAS AND ISRAEL: IRAN IS THE WINNER

Before the war that began when Hamas brutally attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Bahrain,
Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates were on the way of normalizing their
diplomaIc relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia seemed poised to do so. This has all been
derailed. Iran is the clear winner.

http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/THE-WAR-BETWEEN-HAMAS-AND-ISRAEL.pdf

THE ORIGIN OF DARK MATTER AND THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT

The concept of exotic charged dust is introduced here to represent dark matter. The term “exotic” means that the dust is not composed of normal matter, and the charge-for lack of a better term-is not an electric charge. It is also shown that the often-used approximate
expression for dark matter density corresponds to an exact solution of the coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations for charged dust. The Einstein field equations tells us is that for a flat universe the cosmological constant acts as a gravitating negative energy distribution that is gravitationally repulsive; following Schwinger, it is shown that the vacuum must have a negative energy spectrum if QFT is to be gauge invariant.

http://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15461

GAZA & THE BOMBING OF CITIES AND CIVILIANS

Before the beginning of WW-II, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain said in parliament that it was “against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks on the civilian population.” U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt called civilian bombing “inhuman barbarism.” How cities and their populations during WW-II became military targets in violation of international conventions is explained in this essay.

In has been claimed that the high level of civilian deaths in the 2024 Gaza war is due to Israel dropping some five hundred 2000 pound “bunker busting bombs” in Gaza. It is shown hthat this is not the case.

The number of civilian deaths in Gaza is not exceptionally high in comparison with past wars, and the number would be significantly less if it were not for the well-known Hamas policy of deliberately placing military facilities in high population density areas.

http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/Gaza-the-Bombing-of-Cities-and-Civilians.pdf

A FORCE-FREE MAGNETIC FIELD SOLUTION IN CYCLIDAL COORDINATES

There are no known analytic solutions to the force-free magnetic field equations in coordinates representing Dupin cyclides. Here it is shown that force-free fields can not only have solutions for toroids, as was shown in an earlier paper, but also for cyclides. The fact that the curvature lines of Dupin cyclides are all circles is used to derive a force-free magnetic field on the surface of an elliptic Dupin cyclide.

The paper is available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/2310.17673

OPPENHEIMER

A LETTER TO SCIENCE MAGAZINE IN RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE BY ADRIAN CHO IN THE 21 JULY 2023 ISSUE

To the Editor,

In his article about Oppenheimer Adrian Cho interviewed David Cassidy about Oppenheimer and in his final question stated that “Oppenheimer lost his security clearance in part because he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb”.  This is incorrect and probably comes from the transcript of In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, published by the Atomic Energy Commission, of the hearings that led to Oppenheimer’s clearance being revoked. 

K. D. Nichols, then General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission surely new that Oppenheimer never opposed the hydrogen bomb, only Teller’s Super.  He did so because he thought that the Super would divert valuable resources away from fission weapons development.  After a meeting of the GAC held at Princeton during June of 1951, Oppenheimer changed his mind and enthusiastically supported Teller’s new “technically so sweet” approach.  This was when he was first exposed to the Teller-Ulam idea for the hydrogen bomb. 

It was David Rosenberg, who is now one of the country’s foremost historians of the nuclear age, had succeeded in obtaining a declassified copy of the AEC Thermonuclear Weapons Program Chronology, which gave a clear description of the Super.  It was nothing like the description of the hydrogen bomb.  I subsequently learned from I. I. Rabi that there had been closed secret sessions during the Oppenheimer hearings where Oppenheimer could well have defended himself against Nichols’ charge by drawing the necessary distinction between the classical Super and the hydrogen bomb.  I have no idea to this day whether he did so or not.

USA Today Magazine Articles 2001-2023

This book gathers together the articles I published in USA Today Magazine. They cover a large variety of topics and the book contains a commentary, sometimes giving history and technical details that could not be included at the time.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/gerald-marsh/usa-today-magazine-articles-2001-2023/paperback/product-em22p8.html

A FORCE-FREE MAGNETIC FIELD IN TOROIDAL COORDINATES

While there are no known analytic solutions for force-free magnetic fields in toroidal coordinates, with a reasonable boundary condition it is possible to find a solution for the surface field and, with a restriction on the form of the field, to the interior of the torus as well. Published in Physics of Plasmas (vol. 30, Issue 5); online 17 May 2023.

Here is the link to the paper:

http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/POP23-AR-00182.pdf

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