NEWS
It has been six busy months since our last eTORUS, in May 2001, and Stan and I thank you for your patience. We spent six weeks in California this summer during June and July, making progress on several fronts.  (See below.)  We are currently in Massachusetts, and plan to return to California for a brief visit during December 2001.
 

JULY LECTURE AT CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES
During July, Stan taught a highly successful two-day introductory class at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.  I want to thank those subscribers to eTORUS with their own mailing lists who passed along our announcement.  We had an unexpectedly strong response – approximately 30 people each evening, which completely filled the room, during a time when most students and professors were on vacation.  Teaching this class of well-prepared and interested students was a very rewarding experience, and we hope to arrange another session with CIIS, perhaps in the spring of 2002.
 

MERU EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP
I also want to let eTORUS readers know about an extraordinary new collegiate group of professionals – technical, scientific, and academic – created during our July and August stay in California, to continue and expand Meru's ongoing research.  Some members of the Meru Experimental Research Group (MERG) have been on our Advisory Board for many years; others, we met – via email – only recently.  In a sense, we have been waiting for fifteen years for this group to form, to give us working colleagues, taking Meru's ideas and testing them in fields beyond our own expertise.  MERG includes web designers, technical graphics programmers, and scholars in linguistics, mathematics, and physics – each of whom brings skill, their own philosophical perspective, and a keen interest in contributing their talents to this work.  Some of MERG's active projects include a redesign and modernization of the meru.org website; animations of the Meru "First Hand" model and other concepts Stan has storyboarded over the years; high-level research into the patterns of the letter-text itself, and internally, philosophical and technical discussions on the implications of Meru research that help to focus future projects.  We are tremendously excited about this group – it is very stimulating to work with others who have their own independent perspectives on this material, and their own reasons for investigating it.

At present, all MERG's work is taking place in the background.  When we have results to announce – anything from a new animation, to discoveries about the text – I will of course announce them here in the eTORUS.
 

JULY FUNDRAISING LETTER -- UPDATE
Most of you received an email in July 2001 from William Haber, Meru's CEO, about Meru's difficult financial situation, and requesting contributions – or sales – from eTORUS subscribers.  I want to thank all those of you who responded.  I am pleased to report some modest success – we were able to raise $6000 towards our goal of $10,000, to fund Meru's operations through the end of 2001.  To help us complete that goal, I would like to ask any of you who were considering making a contribution to Meru Foundation, but who have not yet done so, to respond now if you can.  Our work depends both on continued sales of our videos and other products, and on the generous gifts of individuals who believe in its value.  We also want to make contact with individuals and personally-controlled foundations that could offer full support for some specific projects we have in mind, including, for example, an Internet-based class, with active participants on East and West Coasts and overseas, open for viewing by anyone.  We would be pleased to discuss this and other possible projects in more detail with persons who can help us reach appropriate funding sources – please contact Stan and Cynthia, or Bill Haber, via email or phone, at the addresses listed at the end of this newsletter.

"CARTOON" ANIMATION OF POSSIBLE 6-BODY PROBLEM SOLUTION
Stan wrote the following as an email message to the Meru Experimental Research Group, just after we returned to Massachusetts in August.  Since it poses an interesting problem, we thought we would ask eTORUS readers to take a look as well.  If anyone is interested in exploring this problem, please contact us directly at <meru1@well.com>.

On our way back East, one of the ideas that [R.N., a member of MERG] and I discussed was the possibility that the shape of the 3,10 torus knot Continuous Creation model was a solution to a 3-body problem in 3-space.  The idea is that the tetrahelix column consists of three masses, rotating around each other as they move together vertically.  Then, as they spread apart at the event horizon, they "flip" and start to rotate around a horizontal axis (each on a different horizontal axis, 120-degrees apart). So, it's a 3-body top-flipping problem.  (This is the undergrad option grad physics course that I didn't quite master.  Wouldn't you know it. <smile>  We need someone who can handle Legrangians.)

Friday, the [April 8, 2001] issue of New Scientist [magazine] showed up with an article [by David Appel] on the many recent solutions to several many-body problems.  This is really exciting, because all of the solutions shown appear to be in 2-D.  Our model is in 3-D.

As I think about it, and run the simulation in my mind based on my internal simulation of inverse-square attraction and conservation of angular momentum, I think that the 3,10 knot is actually the solution to a 6-body problem.  3 [bodies], in a triangular configuration, move up the central column, while 3 [bodies], in a triangular configuration, move down the outer 3 loops.  The system balances momentum on all axes at all times.  It requires either an initial starting momentum if started from the neutral equatorial plane, or it might "breathe for itself" without additional input if it started with a configuration of 3 on the top event horizon, and 3 on the bottom event horizon, which would then attempt to close on each other and set the whole system turning.

Here is a link to an 11-cell cartoon animation that I put together to illustrate this idea:

<please contact us at meru1@well.com for this URL>   (Windows Media .avi and Quicktime .mov versions available)

I see the whole system (in my internal cartoon space) as a "breathing", and somewhat like the cubeoctahedral jitterbug and the child's toy top that's pumped by a spiral central screw.

I don't know if the physics will be trivial or brutal, but it works in my head, anyway.

If this is correct, if we've got a 6-body problem orbit, then that in itself could be very helpful, because after all, this would be one way to visualize Calabi-Yau spaces, with 6 internal dimensions.  (M-theory / string theory)

I hope my verbal descriptions make some sense.  Comments?

Best,
Stan

The article from "New Scientist" by David Appel, mentioned above, included several URLS to animations of 2-D solutions to multi-body problems discussed in the article:

Java animations of the figure-of-eight orbit:
<www.ai.mit.edu/people/wessler/halo/rmont.html> and
<www.ams.org/new-in-math/cover/orbits2.html>
The border collie solution and many others:
<www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/astro/galaxy/Galaxy.html>
gnuplot animations of the N-body problem:
<www.maia.ub.es/dsg/nbody.html>

FEATURES FOR THE NEXT eTORUS(tm) NEWSLETTER
When we finished this newsletter, and read it through, we realized we had too much material!  So, we're saving two features for the next issue:

1) A "Poetic Essay" by Stan Tenen titled "Paradise", which describes, in "sort-of poetry" (as he puts it), the imagery of the Model of Continuous Creation at <www.meru.org/continl.html>  and

2) A few book recommendations, plus one full review, for recently-published popular works on cosmology and mathematics.

I hope you enjoy this Meru Foundation eTORUS(tm) Newsletter.  We welcome your feedback; if you have questions, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to write me at:
Cynthia Tenen <meru1@well.com>

Thank you for your interest in the work of the Meru Foundation.

You may duplicate and pass along this newsletter, in its entirety, as long as you include this copyright notice and the contact information below. Please send comments and questions to <meru1@well.com>.

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