How Many Photons?

How many photons are there?

Refinement: in the "potentially" observable universe? [There are some that have perhaps never have interacted... even since the Bing Bang]

Related: How many have there ever been? How to even think about this?

There are estimates for the number of protons at around 1E80. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_number

How about all the mass particles? Using other modern methods. And simplistically multiplying by three to take account of neutrons and a few other exotics... 3E80. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a27259/how-many-particles-are-in-the-entire-universe/

This is the observable universe "now". One can argue that there are more "now" but largely unobservable... in that they went outside of our spacetime "hyper cone".... and have been doing so for all of the history of the universe. This means the hyper spacetime volume is roughly eight times bigger (would be sixteen if time had +-) and the ones observable plus the ones that have left would be 2E81

Photons are a different beast. Involved not only in the static existence of matter but in every interaction. AND some are not observable even within our spacetime hyper cone. That is to say they have not interacted, or many not ever interact. Imagine a neutrino but more ephemeral. And interacting purely because of their sheer weight numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

BTW the number of neutrinos are estimated to be on the order of 1E80 (or more) as well. And the thinking around this is also helpful https://socratic.org/questions/how-many-neutrinos-are-in-the-universe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massless_particle

Well here is a number for the photons produced by stars during the universes lifetime..

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-determined-number-of-photons-produced-by-stars-in-the-entire-universe

Star made photons 4E84

BUT it is about interacting photons. And again in the spacetime cone. Let us again multiply by eight for the ones that "went the other way"... and set aside "primordial" or "native" photons that have never interacted.... even though that could be quite a sizeable constituency.    Interacting 3E85.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_Model_of_Elementary_Particles.svg

Now let us over reach and make a wild guess that native photons are actually over eight but under ten more orders of magnitude. E95 for round numbers. Interestingly this is about one to ten moles of photons for every other single particle. 

New question: What mass could a photon have? Be completely undetectable by current methods? And yet make up about eight times more mass energy than all the others put together? That is fairly simple from the above. The lightest particle is the electron neutrino at around .1 eV. Call a photon 23 orders of magnitude less than that or about 1E-25 eV

Does a photon mass of 1E-25 eV fit?

RS485 RS232 and all Serial for GPIO

Have been working on projects with GPIO to unusual sensors. Intermediate idea:

Let any more GPIO peripherals be SPI for now?

 

I looked around for sensors prepackaged SPI sensors in the SD form factor.

ala Horwoitz and Hill Chapter 15  with no luck...

 

See Chapter 15 of latest Horowitz and Hill - Art of Electronics.
  https://artofelectronics.net/ 

 

 Look particularly at the tables/diagrams of SPI and I2C peripherals.
 Table 15.20 p1080 All IO
 Table 15.21 p1083 SPI
 Table 15.22 P1085 I2C

 

One could use the 6x1 pin header Digilent PMOD Standard for SPI.

Digilent PMOD Getting Started

There are many PMOD sensors available COTS.

 

Put in a secondary SPI header/socket on the existing SPI bus. Use the GPIO for CS.

The CS would also control power to the sensor in the socket.

One could not talk to sensor and SPI memory at exactly the same time. But maybe no big drawback?

 

One could also do TTL RS485 or RS232 to a UART to SPI bridge ala FT9xx. (or similar) on a bigger daughter board. Again a GPIO would be needed for CS and power ON/OFF for the target sensor on the bus. In fact one would power up and down the whole FT9xx as needed to conserve power.

And Even Longer.... Security at Edge, Smart Toys

Doing post just to keep things alive. It seems it has been a year since trying to get started again.
Now interested in LoRa WAN. Still toys.... especially Lego and construction toys. Also smart toys.

Security for physical edge devices is more and more an important topic.
Secured by Cimetrics Cybersecurity Framework

Pivot to Toys, Products, POC, Ecosystems, Design for....

Wow. Did not realize had not posted in so long. Have been busy on a pivot to products (and toys *grin*). Have to fill  in some things learned along the way. Big concepts: Proof of concept (POC) projects. Ecosystems at scale. Design for manufacturability, easy-configuration, security, low-cost, …. easy-re-configuration (not the same as at startup). Cheers, Albert

ARinAction at MIT Media Lab - January 17, 2017.

ARinAction at MIT Media Lab - January 17,18, 2017. Latest on Augmented Reality. Talks were great. Especially the short talks. Too many to cover all. But especially intrigued by Neurable and Virtual Cove. The demos were great, when they worked *grin*, but such is life. Panels... well they were "okay". AR and VR events always have stuff about new headsets and displays. Those are probably necessary steps, but it all gets a bit tedious. Real uses and better ways that reality can be made... well... more real are the key. We need to make our actions more informed and effective... based on truth.

Beliefs:
AR is extremely dangerous if it will give us an experience of multiple different truths. The power of AR is to make clearer to us immediately the common truth of reality. Industrial AR is rationally taking up this banner for its intrinsic practicality of common understanding. Headsets and tablets are only a step on the way forward. David Rose's Enchanted Objects are the goal. Screens allow us to have reality mediated to our own taste. What if hyper intelligent edge devices spoke the truth? We need to instead understand reality more deeply for what it is, not what we want it to be. Hyperspectral imaging (like IR and Xrays) go to the goal of deeply understanding reality.  Sensor and fact based analytics to give us more information and truth.

Actions:
Work to use modern compute and technology, especially in edge devices, to better exhibit the truth of reality.

Susan Tilsley Manley - 1965-2016 - Artist, Friend.

Just found out that Susan Tilsley Manley passed away a few days ago. The sadness cannot be encompassed. Susan was always smiles and rainbows.

Would have had her, of a select few, hidden from death forever, if it was in my power. We are all powerless, except as we are remembered. Brevity does not do justice to her life.

Look Inward. Look Outward. Break it Down.

There are two types of entites in an organization. Those that look inward and those that look outward. This applies to any size organization. Each extreme is deadly. Too much inward looking and one loses sight of all the ways the world moves on organically outside. Too much outward looking and ones loses all sense of self control. The middle road seems worthwhile. All things in moderation.

The same inward and outward view is true of one's, potential and existing, customers or believers. The hope is to match outward and inward appetites.

Most very large organizations fall into looking inward. They focus on internal issues. They become protective. And they often close their borders. They raise up walls. This can work for awhile - especially when everyone in a domain is looking inward - including clients.

But in the face of even a moderate amount of client and competitive outward looking behavior, introspection is ultimately doomed. It is like the network effect: The power of the arrangement is more than simply a linear function of the participants. It goes more like the scale of potential connections.

This is, in technical microcosm, the story of APIs and microservices. The move to outward facing APIs and microservices is a reflection of the larger effect of a move to looking outwards overall.

Fintech organizations (banks "which can be defined as a bank or division thereof") now a see a world where it is important to look for new vehicles and new services. And to actively partner and acquire those vehicles. One bank buying another bank wants seamless integration. The melding should be about business initiatives and synergies and not about whether COBOL speaks to Fortran... those days are long gone. And the days where differences could be used an effective protective wall are likewise gone.

Industries where there are walls:
PLC communications. Cold chain management. Security systems.

Domains where the walls have been broken down:
Google maps and APis in general. AWS, Cloudfoundry and VMware systems. Network management protocols: Cisco.

Areas in transformation:
Building automation - witness a move to RESTful webservices.
Certain types of industrial automation - witness MTconnect. Platforms like GE Predix for IIoT. Renewable energy management - witness Sunspec and others.
Tools and platform providers are deaggregating- witness Microsoft Azure and IBM Bluemix.

Even energy itself is being deaggregated with Microgrids - with a strong analogy to microserviecs and APis. Utilities which continue to look inward will have serious problems.

There can be no knowledge without looking inward and outward. One needs to work on the viewpoint where one is most blind.