900-Year-Old Cloth Dream 24-11-20
Currently not sleeping very well. I suspect my body is starting to produce more acetylcholine after smoking cessation and it hasn’t got the balance right yet.
I am walking through a leafy park across an open gravelled space. I know this place to be Kensington. I pass TJ whom I haven’t seen for over 15 years. He does a double take and recognises me. He gives me a small business card and a map. The business card is an invitation to an event at his university and is written partially in Arabic. The map shows how to find the venue on campus. I look at the date and it is for March next year. I return the invitation and map to him saying that I cannot attend. He is insistent and persuasive and tries to get me to take the invitation. I say that I cannot because I will be at home in Italy and it costs over a £100 per trip to come to the UK by car both in money for petrol and in coffee. He says that I really should try. Again, I politely decline. I congratulate him on his inauguration and say that I enjoyed his last paper. Which in the dream I have read and which demonstrates quantum entanglement of electronic spin wavefunctions in surface states. The entanglement is temporal and corresponds to the imaginary part of the wave function. He moves off.
I then enter a large semi-permanent marquee on a lawn. In the entrance area there are a lot of young women, smartly dressed, as if for an evening event. Somehow, they know me and ask me questions. I say that to me they do not look very happy. This they vehemently deny and wish to argue with me. I ask them; “how many of you are happy more than 50% of the time?” Many of them put their hands up. I walk over to them and say bullshit, bullshit, bullshit to several of them in turn. I turn to one of the young women and ask if she thinks her friends and colleagues are telling the truth about being happy. She says that she thinks they are lying. At which point several of them now concur and admit that they are not generally happy. One of the most vehement deniers now sidles up to me in a friendly way and wants to dance with me. We move into the main part of the marquee and onto a dance floor.
Off the dance floor there is a glass construction which has waist high walls, is shaped like a corridor and has automatic opening and closing doors. The entire structure is lined with a pastel peach piece of cloth. The “corridor” is about one foot under water.
Two other smartly dressed young women come over to me, one is tall the other normal height. They have a quaisi religious role in whatever ceremony is taking place. I am joined by my wife. They say that they would very much like for us to walk down the corridor for them. I approach the entrance door and it opens. I am wet by a wave of water. I step through and the door closes. I then walk along the cloth and exit by the far door. My wife follows suite. I then ask the women what is so special about the cloth. The shorter one says that it is only brought out of storage every 900 years and hence this event is extremely rare. The cloth is substantially older than 900 years old. I ask her do they have records of the last time it was brought out of storage. No, they do not, but it is what the legend of their order says.
She offers to show me around. We are led out of the marquee and into a large private house. We come across a very simple but exquisite altar and in the far corner of the room a man is playing a white grand piano. He has crazy out of control wispy hair. I know this room; I have been here before. I know the man. I say to the woman that I came here before to ask the man about my mind, but he was unable to help. This house is his.
She says that he is not rich and is very humble. I point out that given the size of the house and its location Kensington, it must be worth over £5 million pounds. I ask by what scale is that not rich?
Dream ends….
Lost Marbles Dream 1-12-20
I had a restless night because my knee was playing up. I took paracetamol and ibuprofen and managed to nod off sometime after 3:30 am.
I am on a large grassy area in front of some kind of low-rise apartment block. I am naked but wearing trainers. In my hand I have a small string bag full of marbles. In the dream I understand that my nakedness is a metaphor for having nothing to hide. Various people try to chase me and catch me so as to send me to a place of “safety”. Each time someone tries to get hold of me one or two marbles escaped from my bag. They think that I need to go to Samaritans because I am a suicide risk. The men who are trying to chase me are not so quick as me and they are easy to evade. The number or marbles in my bag remains constant despite it shedding a few. In the dream I know that this is a metaphor for people thinking that I have lost my marbles because I do not think like them, whereas I am in fact in full possession of my marbles and it is just their mis-perception.
I escape from the grassy field and am now jogging freely along a street in a city at night time. I am not sure where I am but can see what looks to be a high street up ahead. I know that there will be signs there so I jog off in that direction. I run past two small yappy dogs. They bark around my ankles and try to bite me. So, I lash out at them with my leg. {I do this in real life in bed, my leg moves suddenly and painfully}. This warns the dogs off and I carry on.
I see an open space with a large shipping container covered in a tarpaulin. I pull myself up onto the shipping container and check my string bag of marbles. It will be a good place to rest. In the morning, I lower myself down of the container thinking, that given my bad leg, it was not such a good idea in the first place. On descending my leg hurts but is not too bad. Out of curiosity I open the container up and walk in. On the wall at about head hight a small white circle is painted. I understand that this is a target where those about to be executed by firing squad stand to be shot. This is where people who oppose those in power get “shot”.
In one corner I can see D who is dismembering some apparatus and what looks like an old oven door. He has a handle in his hand and is intending to throw it away. I understand that I am amongst those who are to be “shot”, gotten rid of. Someone hands me a six way crosspiece of UHV vacuum kit, it is shiny and has a pair of windows on each axis X, Y, Z. “They” want to know if I know what it is. I take it off them and have a look. I can see that the windows are very slightly damaged because they have had a deep UV excimer laser passing through them, this leaves a ghostly imprint. I can see the sample and know it to be a nitrogen vacancy centre diamond sample to be used in quantum experiments. I say this. “They” are surprised.
So, prompted I sit down in the lotus position and adopt mudra in my left and right hands. I begin to chant softly “om mane padme hum” {the jewel in the centre of the lotus}. After doing this for some time “They” do not know what to do so they say that we are free to go and that we will not be “shot”. I motion to the others in the shipping container that we had better leave before they change their minds. Which we do.
Dream ends
No Phone Dream 18-3-21
I had a short snippet of a dream this morning.
I am in a large hall full of people. It is some kind of academic conference on quantum communication and non-linear optics. The hall is very busy, people are registering for the conference and collecting their lanyards with identity badges on. I sit down at one of the desks to register. Opposite me are two young women and a slightly older man, who is the “boss” of the table. He starts filling out a form on his laptop which will subsequently generate an identity card. He comes to a data entry point asking for a professional telephone number, a home land line and a mobile phone number. I explain to him that I do not have any of these. He does not believe me. He indicates that he thinks that I am taking the piss. I reiterate that I do not have any of these. He cannot progress my registration for the conference because the computer programme requires these data entry points. I ask, “am I therefore forbidden to attend, am I unacceptable?” He looks flummoxed. So, I get up and walk out of the hall.
Dream ends.
*In real life I do not have a land line, nor a professional telephone number, nor a personal mobile phone number. We have a pay as you go mobile which we use as a land line and for security authentication for online purchases. I think that I have probably made less than five telephone calls in the last twelve months and each of these less than a minute in duration. No phone is therefore close to a reality, and in this day and age.
Japanese Embassy – Patent – Dream 14-07-2021
Here is this morning’s dream.
In my hands I have a patent application on paper. I am walking through the corridors of the London office of the Intellectual Property Office. There are smartly dressed people everywhere. I enter a room where one can file patent applications by hand and on paper. There is a smartly dressed young woman sat behind a desk. I explain that I want to submit an application but because I am not a lawyer and am representing my own intellectual property nobody is taking me seriously. She asks a little of my background. She then writes on a piece of card a long code beginning with the letter K. She hands this to me and suggests that I go to the Whitehall office and hand them this code. This code means that they will take me more seriously. I thank her and leave her office. Once more I am walking down the corridor.
At the end of the corridor, I open a door, and this leads me into the reception area of the Japanese Embassy. There are several men and women on the welcome desk. They seem surprised to see me appearing in their foyer. A man in his thirties in an old-style suit says hello and asks me to explain how I got there. I say that I was trying to file a patent application. He asks on what subjects. I say “quantum optics and entangled photon pairs” his ears prick up. He says that this is something we in Japan are very interested in. From beneath the counter, he pulls out an old-style document holder briefcase. He intimates that they would be helpful if my application was filed in Japan. Hinting that they would bear the costs of translating the application into Japanese. He wants me to hand him the application to put in the briefcase.
I briefly come to and make a mental note of the dream. I then drift back off.
In the dream I can now see a Japanese translation of my patent application. Each paragraph and each diagram have a very light violet coloured stamp of two kanji, two Japanese characters. The kanji are tiny but easily visible because they are glowing somewhat.
I awake thinking that is weird, because it all seemed so very realistic.
Threefold Ginormous Mess Dream 17-01-23
It is impossible to recall all of this because it went on for a very long time both before and after a short waking break. Here is the gist.
The dream starts in a very upmarket high specification domestic kitchen. I am tasked with cooking a meal therein. However, the kitchen is an absolute “bomb site”. All the surfaces are covered with plates, condiments, and debris. I remonstrate to the owner that they need to clear this mess up if they want me to cook. The mess is huge and it is of their making. The owner does not accept that the mess is a) bad and b) of their own making. I start to try to cook on the range. I have a clean pan and am able to gather some ingredients together in the sink. It is very difficult to work with all the heavily cluttered surfaces. I know in the dream that this is a metaphor for a huge mess in the web of life made by others. It is not my responsibility to clean up this mess but until it is cleared I cannot “cook” or do anything meaningful.
I am now in a laboratory setting. The laboratory is beyond chaotic. There are glassware and books everywhere. There are lab electronics, computers and displays. The optical table is littered with unmounted optics. The place is very unkempt. Again, I know that the mess is not of my making. The algorithm for convergence, a variational quantum method, is failing to converge. With each day it is more and more divergent. I know that we could use Møller-Plesset perturbation theory with a large basis set. A larger basis set is perhaps the answer. This might help the problem to converge. But the lab owners fail to accept that the mess is of their origin, so there is no chance that they will listen to my advice.
I am now in a house in South London. I am trying to figure out a way to solve the mess. A black woman is looking into my house. On the floor are rubble, empty cans and strips of pharmaceuticals. This is not the ideal place for me to work. The havoc in my house has not been caused by me. The terrible mess has been made by others. In the background I can hear, “They should not have killed Biko, Biko never trouble no one.” The black woman sighs and turns away.
Dream ends.
Quantum Key Distribution Dream 08-09-23
Here is this morning’s dream…
The dream starts with an internet Skype like call. I am speaking with an ex-student of mine. I can see him on the lap-top screen and he can see me. We are talking and there is a large amount of background noise and his image is juddering. I can see that he is flying a helicopter over some mountains. One of his friends has recently died and he would like to come visit to talk about this with me. He is on holiday with his father in the Swiss-French alps. I agree and he says that he will be here in a few days’ time.
I think it odd that he is flying a helicopter but knew that his family are very wealthy.
He turns up with his father and I invite them in. We start talking about how he buried his friend. There were not many people at the ceremony and he said that it was very strange seeing someone his own age in a coffin. He had touched the coffin after it was placed in the grave as did his friend’s mother. She had freaked out a bit and he was concerned for her. I say that death touches all of us in different ways and that before grief there can often be denial. It sounds like that is what is happening. I say that I need to go and fetch something from outside.
As I come back into the house, I note the father’s car. It is a top of the range Mercedes convertible, bespoke even. I notice on the back of it the letters QKD. In the dream they stand out for me.
I go back inside. I say to the father, “Is that one of the new Quantum Key enabled prototypes?”
“Yes, it is fully Quantum Key enabled and if I need to make secure transactions, I can do it from the car while I am en route.”
I am impressed. I heard about these but have not seen one. The implication is that the father is very wealthy indeed a special client of the banks.
The ex-student says that I should tell his father about my patent applications.
I say to the father that I have two old patents concerning EUV and one for an entangled pair photon source. I say that this device could be integrated into a Quantum Key Distribution device.
His ears prick up. He reaches into a briefcase and pulls out a piece of paper. The paper is an email. On the top is his email address together with that of one of his technical people and his lawyer.
He says to get in contact with them with more details.
His ‘phone rings and he starts to speak animatedly in French.
The dream ends and I know that it is pointing towards looking again at Quantum Key Distribution.
Quantum Confinement in Water Clusters Dream 14-12-23.
I am just recalling a dream from the other night.
In the dream I am examining clathrate-like structures of water clusters and considering them from a permutation-inversion point group basis. These structures are icosahedra surrounded by larger icosahedra. They are fluxional yet stable. They are by way of proton traps and the allowed energy levels for the proton wave functions are confined and therefore quantised. They are by way of trapped protons, confined. More than one proton may be found in these traps and as a consequence the proton wave-functions are entangled. Because the potential barriers in the hypersurfaces are low, geometrical tunnelling occurs. Or rather it can be explained that way.
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I have found a way to make these structures and isolate them at liquid nitrogen like temperatures. They are a new class of material, proton quantum traps.
In the adjacent building there is a new kind of electron microscope which operates at very low beam currents and yet offers atomic resolution. It does not damage. It is equipped with cryo-transfer. I can walk across the corridor between my building and into his. He is in the basement and is of Chinese like appearance. The sense is that we are in Singapore.
I get across the corridor but do not have the access code to enter the building. I call down to him and he speaks to security who let me access the building. I go to the lift to get down to the basement. Again, I do not have the security swipe card needed. The ‘phone no longer works because the building is shielded for scientific purposes. The impinging EM radiation is kept to as low as possible. I look at the liquid nitrogen Dewar in which my samples are. I look at the security measures.
I cannot get down to the basement because I am not allowed. I do not have clearance. The structures will melt and there is nothing I can do about it.
Dream ends…
InAs Molecular Beam Epitaxy Dream – 07-03-2024
This is about as far out of the blue as one can get…
The dream starts in a semiconductor clean room. The laboratory is large scale and there are a number of molecular beam kits together with fume hoods and ancillary diagnostic equipment. I am talking with a dark-haired man who has a feint Irish accent. It is his facility.
“We have asked you here to help us with our InAs growth program”, he says.
I say that I will start to read up on it. To my mind’s eye come various physical review type journal articles.
He says, “that is good, but we would like you to get involved with the practical side of things.”
He introduces me to a young man with fair hair. He opens the load lock to the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) kit and introduces an etched wafer. He closes the load lock. The chamber pumps down as we wait for the wafer to outgas. When ready it is transferred to the growth chamber.
In the growth chamber we use the in-situ atomic force microscope to examine the morphology. The wafer needs to anneal at high temperature under an Arsenic over pressure in order to make it smoother and to clean up the atomic height step edges.
The man opens the Arsenic flux and starts to ramp up the temperature.
The lab dog, a spaniel, starts running around like a mad one and goes into the communal seating area.
From the lab there is a large ceiling to floor window which looks out onto a village style crossroads. I see a red bus go past and a woman on a bicycle.
I say to the man that not a lot happens here and that I had forgotten how much waiting there was in MBE growth. Growing one atomic layer per second takes a while.
They are interested in InAs as an optical emitter and are thinking of trying to get quantum dot behavior.
In the dream I knew that this is a follow on from yesterday.
Dream ends…
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InAs is a iii-v semiconductor. It therefore highlights the jewels 3,5 and 8.
* In real life around twenty years ago I examined several Ph.D. theses on InAs MBE growth with inter alia Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy, quantum dots, luminescence and FTIR studies.
Dreamyoga 