Cats & Gravity

Your Cat May Understand Physics Better Than You Do

According to a new study, cats understand certain laws of physics. Does this make them smarter than their owners? Dog lovers will probably have an opinion on this. If he were still around, Isaac Newton might have one as well.

This study may be viewed as evidence for cats having a rudimentary understanding of gravity.

And not just the “cats always land on all fours” kind of gravity. Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan, led by Saho Takagi, collected 22 cats from Japanese cat cafes and eight domestic cats (they weren’t volunteers – cats don’t volunteer for anything) and tested their ability to understand the physics principle of cause-and-effect and some others.

Gravity?

Gravity?

Cat cafes? In countries like Japan where cats are popular but apartments allowing cats are not, cat cafes charge people an hourly rate to come in and play with cats. Sounds like a great plan to prevent the stray cat problem other countries like the U.S. have.

The researchers used a plastic container lined with an electromagnet and three iron balls to test the cats. They rattles the balls and dumped them out, then turned on the magnet, rattled the box (no sound) and nothing came out. Next they switched things around to fake out the cats – noise with no balls dropping, no noise with balls dropping.

According to the study, the cats demonstrated their awareness of gravity by moving away from the noisy box so they didn’t get hit by falling iron balls. Then they showed their awareness of cause-and-effect by staring longer at the box that made noise (anticipating the falling balls) and looking puzzled when sometimes nothing came out of a noisy box.

cat_physicsAt the risk of sounding like a biased dog owner … that’s it?

The results suggest that cats used a causal-logical understanding of auditory stimuli to predict the appearance of invisible objects. The ecology of cats’ natural hunting style may favor the ability for inference on the basis of sounds.

 

cat and dog

Gravity?

“Hunting based on sounds” sounds like the strategy of many animals, not just cats. If this is a demonstration of an understanding of physics, then there’s a lot of pets who could qualify for government grants to conduct government studies like this one.

Do cats understand physics better than some humans? Can you think of anyone you know who would flunk the “iron balls stuck to hidden magnets” test? Sober?

Did this cat sleep through the physics class on gravity?

Did this cat sleep through the physics class on gravity?

from:    https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/06/your-cat-may-understand-physics-better-than-you-do/

Another Universal Mystery Solved!

Researchers Solve Mystery of the Universe, Break Piece of Uncooked Spaghetti in Half

 

When you study physics, you’re bound to brush up against some of the universe’s larger mysteries. What came before the Big Bang? What lies inside a black hole? Is it possible to break a stick of dry spaghetti into exactly two pieces?

Perhaps you’ve found yourself asking that last question in your own kitchen. Why is it that, when you try to snap a single piece of uncooked spaghetti in half, you almost always end up with three or more pieces of pasta clattering across your counter? It’s a logic-defying phenomenon that has baffled chef and scholar alike for decades; even Nobel physics laureate Richard Feynman, who helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II, is said to have spent the better part of a night sitting in his kitchen, snapping spaghetti sticks and searching for an explanation. [The Mysterious Physics of 7 Everyday Things]

Feynman came up dry, so to speak — but finally, a new study published Monday (Aug. 13) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides some closure. With the help of some mathematical models and a spaghetti-bending robot, researchers at MIT have found that, yes, it is possible to break a piece of uncooked spaghetti into just two pieces, but there’s a twist … literally. To prevent bent spaghetti from splintering into a half dozen pieces, the researchers wrote, one end of the pasta first has to be twisted nearly 360 degrees.

Or in more technical terms, the “results advance the general understanding of how twist affects fracture cascades,” study co-author Jörn Dunkel, associate professor of physical applied mathematics at MIT, said in a statement. “In any case, this has been a fun interdisciplinary project started and carried out by two brilliant and persistent students — who probably don’t want to see, break, or eat spaghetti for a while.”

In their new study, the MIT researchers broke more than 350 sticks of Barilla-brand spaghetti and filmed the resulting fractures with an ultra-high-speed camera. To lend their carbo-rific trials complete precision, lead study author Ronald Heisser (now an engineering graduate student at Cornell University) built a special spaghetti-bending machine, complete with aluminum pincers that gripped each noodle on either end. In each experiment, a rod of spaghetti was loaded into the machine, twisted to a predetermined degree, then bent upward until it snapped.

After much pasta destruction, the researchers discovered that they were consistently able to break individual pieces of spaghetti into exactly two pieces only when the machine twisted the noodles at least 250 degrees, then slowly bent them up to the breaking point. According to the researchers, these results were consistent across two spaghetti types (Barilla No. 5 and No. 7, which have slightly differing diameters) and agreed with a series of spaghetti-bending models the team ran before the experiments began.

So, why is the twist so important? According to the new study, the twist”enables the rod to store its energy in more than one mode.” Consider that, when an untwisted rod first fractures, each half catapults backward in a burst of kinetic energy. A 2005 study found that this snap-back unleashes a wave of energy so powerful that it causes other stressed sections of the noodle to snap off as well. (That study won a 2006 Ig Nobel Prize, an annual parody award given to “improbable research.”) This behavior is not exclusive to noodles, mind you, but is visible in many thin, rod-like structures — including Olympic vaulting poles.

In a twisted noodle, however, much of that snap-back wave is transferred into a “twist wave” propagated through the noodle’s uncoiling, the MIT researchers wrote. The force of the snap-back is therefore weakened, and less likely to result in any more fractures occurring.

“Once [the noodle] breaks, you still have a snap-back because the rod wants to be straight,” Dunkel said. “But it also doesn’t want to be twisted.”

So, yes: It is possible to break your noodle into two precise pieces. Feynman would be pleased. And while this finding may be no atomic bomb, it could help future researchers better understand the mechanics of fractures in general, and even aid in the design of fracture-resistant nanomaterials. Whether these findings apply to other types of pasta — say, bucatini — will require further study.

Originally published on Live Science.

from:    https://www.livescience.com/63338-spaghetti-snap-machine.html

On Retrocausality

Article Image
credit: Pixabay

Quantum physics has spawned its share of strange ideas and hard-to-grasp concepts – from Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” to the adventures of Shroedinger’s cat. Now a new study lends support to another mind-bender – the idea of retrocausality, which basically proposes that the future can influence the past and the effect, in essence, happens before the cause.

At this point, retrocausality does not mean that you get to send signals from the future to the past – rather that an experimenter’s measurement of a particle can influence2 the properties of that particle in the past, even before making their choice.

The new paper argues that retrocausality could be a part of quantum theory. The scientists expound on the more traditionally accepted concept of time symmetry and show that if that is true, then so should be retrocausality. Time symmetry says that physical processes can run forward and backwards in time while being subject to the same physical laws.

The scientists describe an experiment where time symmetry would require processes to have the same probabilities, whether they go backwards or forward in time. But that would cause a contradiction if there was no retrocausality, as it requires these processes to have different probabilities. What the paper shows is that you can’t have both concepts be true at the same time.

Eliminating time symmetry would also get rid of some other sticky problems of quantum physics, like Einstein’s discomfort with entanglement which he described as “spooky action at a distance.” He saw challenges to quantum theory in the idea that entangled or connected particles could instantly affect each other even at large distances. In fact, accepting retrocausality could allow for a reinterpretation of Bell tests that were used to show evidence of “spooky action”. Instead, the tests could be supporting retrocausailty.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, was authored by Matthew S. Leifer at Chapman University in California and Matthew F. Pusey at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario. The scientists hope their work can lead towards a fuller understanding of quantum theory.

“The reason I think that retrocausality is worth investigating is that we now have a slew of no-go results about realist interpretations of quantum theory, including Bell’s theorem, Kochen-Specker, and recent proofs of the reality of the quantum state,” said Leifer to Phys.org. “These say that any interpretation that fits into the standard framework for realist interpretations must have features that I would regard as undesirable. Therefore, the only options seem to be to abandon realism or to break out of the standard realist framework.”

Are we going to have time travel as a result of this? In one idea proposed by Richard Feynman, existence of retrocausality could mean that positrons, antimatter counterparts of electrons, would move backwards in time so that they could have a positive charge. If this was proven to be true, time travel could involve simply changing the direction of moving particles in the single dimension of time.

Leifer doesn’t go as far as time travel in his explanation, but speculates that if retrocausality does exist in the universe, then there could be evidence of it in the cosmological data, saying that “there are certain eras, perhaps near the big bang, in which there is not a definite arrow of causality.”

Is this idea ready for the big time? It is supported by Huw Price, a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge who focuses on the physics of time and is a leading advocate of retrocausality. Leifer and Pusey are taking things in stride, however, realizing that much more work needs to be done.

“There is not, to my knowledge, a generally agreed upon interpretation of quantum theory that recovers the whole theory and exploits this idea. It is more of an idea for an interpretation at the moment, so I think that other physicists are rightly skeptical, and the onus is on us to flesh out the idea,” said Leifer.

There are no experiments underway by the physicists to test their theory, but they hope this work will question the assumptions of quantum mechanics and lead to new discoveries down the line.

You can read the study here.

from:    http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/a-new-quantum-theory-predicts-that-the-future-could-be-influencing-the-past

Energy, Physics, & the Brain

Consciousness and Unified Physics are the Keys to Our Future

Flower-of-Life-1Rob Parker, Contributor
Waking Times

What is consciousness anyway?

Is it a “tingly” warm feeling you get while meditating? Is it a mystical religious out of body experience? Well, for some maybe, but to the extent symbolic words metaphorically explain– it’s the ineffable quality of “what’s missing”.

So, let me clarify. Many have experienced the death of a beloved family member or pet and attended a viewing or funeral. Upon viewing the deceased, the “thing” that on inspection is “missing” is a first order “animating spark” of energy–that “gleam” in the eye, the certainty of an “I know you’re in there” presence. Some would say, the spirit, soul, or life essence–the creative energy force that animates and drives each of us toward its source. Consciousness is the pre-existent ‘is-ness’ or ‘I am-ness’ presence. It bemusedly and non-judgmentally regards ego and its “silly” antics a priori. Consciousness and love are synonymous.

But wait, didn’t René Descartes say “I think therefore, I am.” Yes, he did, but–in doing so he articulated the core error of who, and what humanness truly is. What Descartes meant to say was “I think therefore, I am ego.” Which begs the question, what is the abstract notion of ego?

Well, it’s the compulsive, distracting and noisily repetitive English voice in one’s head. The rudely “chatty” voice interfering with and interrupting your concentration while reading this article. Ego mind “rattles about” in one’s head, reaching back to re-play “newsreels” from the past creating anger, remorse, sorrow and regret, or reaching forward into the un-manifested future creating worry, anxiety, fear (of death) and foreboding–usurping control and draining one’s energy. Ego is at once, brilliant and dangerously mentally ill–repeatedly demonstrated in both the 20th and 21st centuries alone, it’s self-loathing murder of humanity during “societally approved” insane periods of warfare–escalating in psychopathic cruelty and efficiency with each new military technical advancement. Ego and hate are synonymous.

Hold on a second, you say–isn’t humanity’s creative development of culture, technology and the merits of modern contemporary society made possible by the ego mind’s scientific interface to reality via sight, sound, taste, touch and smell?

Well, yes and no.

Consider sight, for example, when a reflected light image enters the eye striking the retina, then somehow or another it passes through the Thalamus, ultimately reaching the Visual Cortex. To the best of our current scientific knowledge, no fiber optic glass fibers are threaded between the retina leading to the Visual Cortex, furthermore, it’s dark inside the skull. So, how does continuous, speed of light energy swiftly reach the visual cortex and become interpreted as an object? Is it multiple chemical pathways?

Fast synaptic junctions mediated by neural transmitters? No, what the human brain is in fact performing is Fourier Transform calculations, converting resonating energy densities into recognizable objects, all within the confines of the skull. Likewise, for lower energy sound waves, or resonating energy touch frequencies, or vibrating olfactory and taste frequencies. There is no “out there–out there.” All Fourier Transform interpretations occur within the confines of the human skull. The only “thing” that is physically present and “out there” is energy–a lot of energy, in all its myriad and remarkable forms–”knotted energy” as Buckminster Fuller referred to it. The brain, euphemistically, is a consciousness antenna of sorts receiving information from the field and imprinting generated memories (the past) on the energetic vacuum field milieu (the void) that everyone and everything is immersed in.

So, then–where does Unified Physics fit into the equation?

Well, like this:

64 Tetrahedron

This is an Icosahedral Vector Metric–so what, you say. One benefit for a famous physicist is that you may have physical constants named after you. The graphic above is also known as a Plank Spherical Unit (after Max Planck). Except in physics, it’s a physical constant, or the size of the smallest possible unit of light, and only 1.618 x 10⁻³⁵ meters in length (extremely small). It weighs 1 x 10⁻⁵ grams (very light). The diameter of a Proton is known, and it turns out that 1 x 10⁶⁰ (a lot of) Plank Spherical Units fit inside. If one multiplies the PSU weight (1 x 10⁻⁵ grams) by the number of PSU’s fitting inside a proton, you wind up with, not coincidentally, the mass of the universe 1 x 10⁵⁵ grams (extremely heavy). It’s here that the dichotomy of the very tiny micro environment of atoms, dovetail with the extremely large scaling cosmology of the universe.

So how does the “flower of life” relate to the Unified Energy Field, and the energy mentioned in the above? When one subtracts the circles from the picture above you’re left with the “sine qua non” essential skeletal structure of the zero point vacuum of space-time:

flower of Life

This skeletal framework is the most stable geometry known. Contained within each cubic centimeter (cm³ – the size of a sugar cube) of space, there is an energy density of 1 x 10⁹⁴ grams/cm³, or 11 tons of energy (exceedingly large amount). Even an extremely large thermonuclear explosion is just a tiny fraction of the aggregate energy potential from the entire space-time field.

The most obvious implication for modern society is an unlimited source of (zero-point) energy to power our homes, factories, cars, planes and so on. Wars fought for natural resource exploitation (oil, natural gas, coal) and other dwindling legacy energy sources would become a relic of the past, reducing the dependency on a currency driven economic model. Other environmental impacts would be quickly seen and our small green planet could begin to heal itself.

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/07/17/consciousness-unified-physics-keys-to-future/

Energy & Expanded Awareness

The Physics of Tao

by Owen K Waters

Almost forty years ago, Fritjof Capra’s book The Tao of Physics set out to explore the parallels between the worldviews of modern physics and Eastern mysticism. The author’s conclusion was that the two were, not just consistent, but in perfect harmony with each other.

Physics has advanced in many ways in forty years and so has mysticism and its understanding of the universe. In particular, many insights into the mysteries of the universe have emerged from the spiritual revolution in the West.

From the mystic perspective, the universe was created by Original Consciousness, Tao, or Infinite Being, focusing through an active Creator aspect of itself. The mystic asks, “How did God create this?” while hoping for a glimpse into the cosmic manufacturer’s mind. One thing’s for sure with such a mystical approach: You find a lot more answers when you open up to the idea of higher energies than by insisting that nothing exists beyond physical matter.

To the materialist, thoughts are just electrical signals firing somewhere inside the brain. If that were true, then you’d be like an electronic computer with pre-programmed thoughts, no self-awareness, no free will, and no feelings! Your mind is not your brain and mind energy is not electrical. Mind energy is one of those higher energies that the Creator saw fit to create.

One of the mysteries facing physics is a type of experiment which reveals that related energy particles can communicate with each other much faster than the speed of light. How could this be possible, they ask, when the speed of light is supposed to limit all action in the universe? In the view of physics today, all energies can travel at the speed of light and no faster. That’s because of the assumption that all energies must be down-to-earth, material, electromagnetic energies. Well, how about those higher energies?

In the broader picture, we don’t just live in a conscious universe, the universe IS conscious! All things are composed of consciousness because the universe was created from the only available material – consciousness.

We know that physical matter is composed of energy, but from what is energy made?

Energy is compressed consciousness.

There is not just one level of energy in existence. The next higher energy above electric energy is etheric, or vital life, energy. Electric energy is a compressed form of the higher, etheric energy.

What’s above etheric energy? All levels of mind energy, from the lowest to the most inspired. Feeling and thought are the yin and yang of mind energy. Both varieties intertwine all the way up into the realms of spirit, of soul consciousness, and beyond into the cosmic realms.

So, how do those two energy particles communicate with each other faster than the speed of light? The answer is easy to appreciate once your worldview is expanded…

Mind energy travels at millions of times the speed of light.

The two particles communicate at the speed of thought, and the speed of light has no bearing upon the situation. Like everything in the universe, those particles contain awareness. In a universe comprised of consciousness, nothing can exist without consciousness. As particles of a fundamental nature, their awareness may be rudimentary, but their display of feeling is quite obvious to the observer. As related particles, they have developed a connection with each other and their willingness to communicate demonstrates this bond. Thought and feeling are the materials from which this conscious universe is made.

Mind energy exists on a scale that rises into the higher realms of awareness like a stairway to heaven. Higher consciousness is very real and it can be yours by turning your attention within, spending time daily in reflection or meditation, and opening up to the intuitive knowingness which resides within your own soul level of consciousness.

Expanded awareness isn’t just for mystics. It opens the doors of perception where you can understand far more about the nature of reality. It brings you closer to the eternal fountain of joy and wisdom which lies within the soul consciousness of each and every one of us.

from:    http://www.spiritualdynamics.net/articles/the-physics-of-tao/

Information & Spacetime

Spacetime as Information – An Ordering Principle for Living Systems?

The predominant scientific paradigm does not regard the Universe as a Living System. This stems from a perspective that the Universe is unconnected, and mechanical. What is the difference between a mechanistic concept of the universe (acting like gears and cogs in a machine) versus a dynamical self-organizing system? Information.

Spacetime as Information – An Ordering Principle for Living Systems?

Information is the connecting fabric of our Universe. What are dynamic processes? Systems with information feedback operations (such as a fractal), which results in nonlinear evolution and local unpredictability. Interactivity (intercommunication) of such a system with generative and innovative elements results in exponential integration and syntropy. Far removed from the random and mechanical processes envisioned as the law of entropy – which in itself is a highly theoretical case scenario of isolation and disconnectivity. The unconnected and mechanistic worldview does not perceive the potential for nonlocal intercommunication (a universal information network) that may engender specific ordering influences underlying all physical processes. Such powerful deterministic orchestration is largely beyond the purview of such a myopic worldview. The stochastic nature of quantum mechanics – the consensus theory of the fundamental behavior of matter – is a reflection of the fragmented, isolationist worldview. However, even in this theory, it is acknowledged that a measuring device of infinite size could ascertain with complete deterministic certainty the quantum state and spacetime coordinates of every particle in a room. Alas, such a device is impossible, because it would collapse into a black hole. Yet, there is a black hole of that magnitude that is measuring the state of every fundamental quanta in every moment – and that is the Universe, since when the mass of our observable Universe is considered in the current measured radius – our Universe obeys the Schwarzschild condition or the condition of a black hole.

“It from bit”
– John Archibald Wheeler

How is information the connecting fabric of the cosmos? Is this just an abstract – unphysical statement? Hardly. John Archilbald Wheeler, one of the preeminent physicists of the 20th century and colleague of Einstein, developed geometrical equations that described the origin of the most fundamental characteristics of matter – such as a particle’s charge and mass – one of the most active areas of research even today (with contrived notions of a Higgs Boson). His formulations produced these characteristics purely from the geometry of spacetime, therefore deriving ‘charge without charge’, and ‘mass without mass’ – as emergent characteristics of the structure and dynamics of spacetime. While Wheeler is one who, alongside Einstein, understood the primacy of geometry – he later realized there is an even more fundamental source, and that is information – thus coining the term ‘it from bit’. As in ‘it’ all comes from ‘bits’ – base units of information.  (coincidentally, Wheeler also formulated a solution to quantum gravity, called the Wheeler-DeWitt equation – but since it did not require time physicists regarded it as unreal – not yet realizing that what we experience as time is a localized evolution of a subsystem through the structure of space, but not a change in the structure of space at the global scale of the Universe –time from quantum entanglement).

The geometrical structure of spacetime is an information encoding medium – planck pixels. The dynamics of spacetime transmit and process information. And the structure and evolution of spacetime determines and engenders the physical characteristics of matter and force in the Universe. Physically, what are planck pixels? That is, what is spacetime physically made of? The answer is zero-point electromagnetic quanta. It is an electromagnetic field filling all conceivable modes.  What does this have to do with biology? Other than the obvious inference that we are fundamentally made of electromagnetic quanta (space itself) – it has direct bearing on the nature of biological information processes (self-organizing systems) and most likely on the source of consciousness. Because we are each a functional unit of an information processing medium that is the connecting fabric of the Universe.

Universe and/or Neurons

What is this a picture of? A brain slice showing the microscopic view of neurons? A computer simulation of the distribution of matter and galaxies in the Universe (based on the observed values of the so called dark matter and dark energy)? Or maybe the quantum foam of the vacuum (spacetime)? Take your pick. Does form recapitulate function at these scales (which happens to scale across all 4 spatial dimensions of the observable Universe)?

Planck Scale Network

The above image gives a sense of the Planck-scale network of spacetime. Much like the filaments of “dark matter” that connect galactic superclusters together, or the dendrites that connect billions of neurons – lattice-like nodal points (The Planck-Kleinert World Crystal) are connected by filaments comprised of Planckian-Einstein-Rosen bridges (Building up Spacetime with quantum entanglement). And much like the electrical propagation of signals through the synaptic network of the brain – bundles of intense lines of electric and magnetic flux course through the Planckian network of spacetime (Poynting vortex fields).

There is a fractal reiteration across the magnitude of dimension. Just as a transistor can function as a binary unit (via the presence or absence of an electrical charge), so too can a single atom, or a subatomic particle – or, as Wheeler posited – the Planck harmonic oscillators of the quantum vacuum, space itself. This is nothing new, it is known as the Holographic Principle. However, what is being emphasized here is that this information encoding medium may be connected in a continuous wormhole network – allowing nonlocal, i.e. superluminal, transmission of information. This means that all sectors of spacetime are acting as one information encoding volume – they are not isolated – it is a manifold information processing network.

What the reader can retain from this discussion, is that our biological structure and the environment of our  biosphere, is emerging to be something else than an isolated result of some random fluctuation (a fluke) and much more part of an incredible network information highway that connects all points in our Universe and the multiverse generating highly advanced, complex, self-organizing structures from which information is continuously driving the transformation across all scales in a coordinated and astonishingly rapid evolution. In that view then, not only are the physics  of our Universe unified with the biological complexity we are a part of, but the whole of the structure is a manifestation of what we have come to describe as consciousness, or if you’d like a feedback of information across all scale producing self-awareness.

By: William Brown & Nassim Harameinfrom:    http://resonance.is/spacetime-as-information-an-ordering-principle-for-living-systems/

David Hamilton Explaining the Higgs Boson

What is the Higgs Boson?

David R. Hamilton PhD
a message from David R. Hamilton PhD
Thursday, 12 July, 2012  (posted 27 July, 2012)

Quite a few people have asked me about the Higgs Boson – or ‘God’ particle, as it’s been named – that was discovered at CERN recently. They have asked what it is and what it means for us.

The Higgs boson is a particle that gives most other particles mass.  OK, that might not mean much so let me explain it a little differently.

You can actually think of it as a field of energy and that’s an ideal analogy for how I need to explain what it is.

It’s a bit like a swimming pool that objects have to pass through. Say you had a steel ball and a dustbin lid and you had to drag both through the swimming pool. Which do you think would be easiest? The steel ball, of course! The dustbin lid would have a much greater drag factor.

The drag factor is the ‘Mass’ (or weight if that is easier to think about). The swimming pool is the Higgs field and it exerts a drag on all other particles, which mostly accounts for the differences in their masses. The Higgs boson might be thought of as a droplet of water in the swimming pool.

There’s another way you could think about it. Let’s say you have Usain Bolt, the world record holder for the 100 metres sprint (9.58 seconds) and a much less famous sprinter. Usain is much more famous so if the two sprinters walked side by side through Trafalgar Square in London, Usain would get mobbed by people, slowing down his walk. The less famous sprinter would walk right through, virtually unimpeded. You would say that Usain had greater ‘mass’. The people are the Higgs bosons and they weigh Usain down as they interact with him.

So what does that mean for you and me?

If it wasn’t for the Higgs boson most elementary particles (like quarks – that we are made of) wouldn’t have any mass and we would just be a mish-mash of particles floating in the universe, devoid of form. You wouldn’t exist, and neither would the planet Earth or the Sun. It’s kind of why some people call it the ‘God’ particle (although most physicists don’t really like the term).

So for the ordinary person it doesn’t really change anything. You exist now, partly because of the Higgs boson just as you did a few days before it was discovered. Life goes on and you’ll enjoy your morning coffee just as you did before Peter Higgs even thought up the concept of that particular boson.

It’s absolutely not the end of physics. There are still many mysteries to be probed. The Higgs boson could turn out to be not exactly as it was thought and could actually be made of smaller bits. No one knows yet. It might even by a scientific gateway that leads physicists into the search for weird new physics and even different dimensions of space and time. I think it’s all really exciting. It’s the beginning of something new!

So if you want to explain to people what the Higgs Boson is, either you can use the simple descriptions above, or you can cut it down to this simple joke:

A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest says, ‘What are you doing in here?’ The Higgs boson replies, ‘You can’t have mass without me!’

from:    http://spiritlibrary.com/david-r-hamilton-phd/what-is-the-higgs-boson

Physicist Russell Targ on Psychic Phenomena

The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities by Russell Targ

  • Targ_and_me
As a laser physicist with forty years experience in psychic research, I am convinced that most people can learn to move from their ordinary, ego-based mind-set to a much more interesting perspective—one that is not obstructed by conventional barriers of space and time. Eighth-century Buddhists understood this meditative skill as moving from conditioned awareness to spacious or naked awareness. . .  this skill . . . what we in the twenty-first century call remote viewing . . . is about learning how to quiet your mind and to separate the visual images of the psychic signal from the uncontrolled chatter of the mind.

Seeing and Thinking Nonlocally

My firm conclusion from decades of ESP research is that we significantly misapprehend the physical and psychological nature of the interconnected space-time in which we live. As I sit on my deck in Portola Valley looking out across San Francisco Bay, I feel that I can reliably experience the beautiful and spacious scene before me. But on reflection, I realize that this conviction is unfortunately based on neither a complete perception nor a correct understanding of what I am viewing. The internalized perception of nature before me is created, obstructed, and obscured by mental noise.

Mental noise is the ongoing chatter in our mind, together with our desire to name and concretize everything we see or experience. The great psychic Ingo Swann calls this noise analytical overlay (AOL) and says it comprises memory, imagination, and analysis—all of which we use to color and reconfigure our sights and experiences. The idea is that we give everything we experience all the meaning it has for us. Our assumption is that the outer world has no meaning inherent to itself. This illusion is what Buddhists call maya or samsara—and it can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Remote viewing is not a spiritual path. However, living in a spacious and interconnected world such as I’m describing, one tends to be more open and compassionate than in a state of mind that is isolated and insulated. In exploring what physicists call our nonlocal universe, we begin to feel that the Buddhists have it right when they say again and again that “separation is an illusion,” that all is connected.

In this world of entangled or extended minds, compassion seems to me to be a natural conclusion. It’s an idea whose time has come—teaching that when one person suffers, we all suffer—because the data show that our minds are frequently telepathically connected to one another. And today, there are more than two million Google pages devoted to information about “remote viewing,” so at least some people are catching on to the idea that it is not difficult to do.

When I was first working on the development of the laser, about fifty years ago, I read a well-known psychology text that dealt briefly with psychic abilities, which was already a passionate interest of mine. The book was called Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings. With regard to my favorite subject, it said:

The state of research in parapsychology can be summarized as follows: A small number of investigators, roughly thirty or forty, who have done a large number of studies are convinced that there is such a thing as extrasensory perception (telepathy, clairvoyance, etc). Whereas, the majority of psychologists, most of whom have not studied the subject, are not convinced [emphasis mine].1

When I first read this analysis, I thought it was some kind of sardonic joke. But unfortunately, it still pretty well represents the view of much of the contemporary scientific community with regard to psychic abilities . . . Some people like to read about miracles. Others prefer double-blind, published experiments showing at least five standard deviations from chance expectation (meaning that a particular event would happen by chance less often than one time in a million). I am offering here a manifesto from my personal experience with both kinds of evidence for ESP, based on two decades of government-supported investigations at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). I cofounded this program with laser physicist Dr. Harold Puthoff in 1972.

I believe in ESP because I have seen psychic miracles day after day in our government-sponsored investigations. It is clear to me, without any doubt, that many people can learn to look into the distance and into the future with great accuracy and reliability. This is what I call unobstructed awareness orremote viewing (RV). To varying degrees, we all have this spacious ability. I do not believe that ESP has metaphysical origins. I believe that it is just a kind of ability we strengthen by expanding our awareness to think nonlocally. It will become less mysterious as more of us become more skillful.

For example, while working for the CIA program at our lab in Menlo Park, California, our psychic viewers were able to find a downed Russian bomber in Africa, to describe the health of American hostages in Iran, and to locate a kidnapped American general in Italy. We also described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia and a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred and performed countless other amazing tasks—all using the ability that our colleague Ingo Swann dubbed remote viewing.

An Accumulation of Evidence

There are presently four classes of published and carefully examined ESP experiments that are independently significant, with a probability of chance occurrence of less than one time in a million.

1. Remote Viewing. Princeton University Professor Robert Jahn (Dean of Engineering) and his associate Brenda Dunn oversaw two decades of remote-viewing experiments with Princeton students as subjects. Students in the laboratory were asked to describe their mental impressions of what they saw at a site where someone was hiding at a randomly chosen distant location. “These remote-viewing students had to fill out a thirty-item questionnaire to quantify their perceptions in this game of psychic hide-and-go-seek. Their findings—spanning several years and comprising a series of 411 trials—showed that it is no harder to remote view hundreds of miles in the distance than it is to describe a person around the corner. Furthermore, it is no harder to describe a randomly chosen hiding place to be selected in the next hour, day, or week than it is to describe a hidden event underway at the same moment. Modern physics would describe these phenomena as nonlocal, in that they are experimentally found to be independent of space and time. Nonlocality and entanglement, which were first described by Erwin Schrödinger in the late 1920s, are now hot research topics in modern physics. This intriguing phenomenon is explained very clearly and amusingly by Anton Zeilinger, one of the world’s leading experimentalists in quantum optics, in his 2010 book Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Teleportation. Zeilinger writes:

Entanglement describes the phenomenon that two particles may be so intimately connected to each other that the measurement of one instantly changes the quantum state of the other, no matter how far away it may be . . . this nonlocality is exactly what Albert Einstein called “spooky”; it seems eerie that the act of measuring one particle could instantly influence the other one.2

Robert Jahn’s highly significant results were published in the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1982 as a replication of our original SRI remote-viewing experiments published in the same journal six years earlier.3 These data show odds greater than a billion to one (1.8 x 10-11) against chance expectation—strong evidence for the existence of nonlocal mind.

2. Distant Mental Influence. In the 1970s and 1980s, William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz carried out nineteen successful experiments in what they called Distant Mental Influence on Living Systems (DMILS).4 In these experiments, a precursor to other distant-healing experiments supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the researchers showed convincingly that the thoughts of one person can affect the physiology (heart rate, skin resistance, etc.) of a distant person in another laboratory. Braud was able psychically to calm or excite the physiology of a person hundreds of feet away. Marilyn Schlitz is now the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California. Braud, who is now teaching at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) in Palo Alto, California, has published twelve of his highly significant formal experiments in an excellent book called Distant Mental Influence.5

3. The Ganzfeld. Over a span of thirty years, several researchers at five different laboratories here and abroad carried out telepathy experiments in which one person was in a situation of sensory isolation called ganzfeld, which is German for “whole field isolation.” This person was asked to describe his or her ongoing mental impressions of an interesting video clip being watched by a friend in a separate part of the lab. In a published meta-analysis of seventy-nine studies comprising hundreds of individual trials, the probability that the results of the experiments were chance was almost one in a billion (2 x 10-8), meaning that the isolated receiver was extraordinarily successful in describing what his distant friend was seeing.6

4. Feeling the Future. Recently, Professor Daryl Bem at Cornell University carried out a series of nine precognition experiments. In this remarkable five-year study, he showed that the future can affect the past in surprising ways. That is, the elephant you see on television in the morning can be the cause of your having dreamed about elephants the previous night: Saturday morning’s elephant caused Friday’s dream. We call that phenomenon retrocausality. For example, students in Bem’s experiments reliably favor and choose one of four possible pictures of people, even though they are shown that one only after they have made their conscious choice and even though the one shown has been randomly selected only after the students have chosen.

In 2010, Bem’s sixty-page paper presenting his meta-analysis of these retrocausal experiments was accepted for publication.7 This meta-analysis [which generated a firestorm of debate as reported by IONS’ Dean Radin and Cassandra Vieten] shows a statistical significance of more than six standard deviations from chance expectation (1.3 x 10-11), which equals odds of more than a billion to one against chance. I am entirely convinced by this analysis—and so is distinguished statistics professor Jessica Utts from the University of California–Davis. In all his experiments, Bem’s one thousand Cornell-student participants find themselves making free choices, guided again and again by the material they will see or experience in the future—but only after they have made their selection. Many people believe that precognition is the dominant phenomenon in all psychic functioning. All of Bem’s experiments have been carried out and published since the 1962 publication of the annoying Human Behavior: Inventory of Scientific Findings that I mentioned earlier. From his recent precognition experiments at Cornell and my own successful forecasting of silver commodity markets, it appears that we have the ability to expand our perceived “now” to include as much of the future as we choose to accommodate.

Ordinary Magic

The term psi is derived from the Greek Ψ (psi), the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, which means “psyche” or “soul.” Psi was coined in a parapsychological sense by biologist Bertold P. Wiesner and first used in print in 1942 by Robert Thouless. Parapsychologists prefer psi to ESP, because the termextrasensory perception implies the use of a sense that we don’t normally have—an extra sense, whereas in actuality there is nothing extra about psi, even though it is often repressed and even though, in fact, it transcends our usual ideas of the limitations posed by time and space. Psi is a gift we all have. It represents an amazing and unique opportunity for spaciousness that I am happy to share with all who will join me in this great adventure.

I had a brilliant friend named Dan Kubert, now deceased, who was a great polymath and a Harvard math professor. He was for some years a shut-in because of his poor physical health, but he would call me several times a week to chat. A year ago, he called to talk about a new proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem—the subject of a book we had both read. I told him I was sorry but I couldn’t talk with him that day because I was finishing a book I was reading for my book club. He immediately said, “That must be Anna Karenina”—a book which we had never discussed. I asked him why he named that particular book. He told me that as soon as I mentioned I was reading a book, he had a clear mental picture of the alluring Vivian Leigh as she appeared in the movie Anna Karenina. That was of course the book I was indeed reading. Dan was often startlingly psychic with regard to events in my life, both public and private. I attribute it to his very quiet lifestyle and his ability to focus his attention.

My point in telling this anecdote is that I believe each of us has the potential for vast psychic awareness that fills all of space-time. Not only do Hindu and Buddhist literature of the past two millennia describe the naturalness and availability of these abilities but also numerous laboratory experiments indicate that we have the opportunity to know anything upon which we fix our attention. In my experience and according to most other researchers, it appears that an experienced psychic can answer any question that has an answer. I cannot wait to see what the future holds when we fully open the doors of our perception!

When I say that I believe in ESP, it’s not as if I am saying that I believe in life on other planets elsewhere in the universe, which, although a statistical probability, remains unproven. Nor is it like saying that I believe in the ideal of social democracy. For in this latter case—while I affirm the desirability of freeing people from fear, poverty, and injustice and of supporting the inalienable right of all people to food, education, and health care—I am aware that many educated people seem to think otherwise. I may believe them to be profoundly mistaken, but it’s very hard to prove. To the contrary, however, when I say that I believe in ESP, it is as if I am saying that I believe in Maxwell’s equations (relating electromagnetism and light), quantum mechanics, or lasers—all of which are surprising and hard to believe but nonetheless absolutely true and scientifically provable. Indeed, the experimental evidence for ESP from a century of research is so strong and overwhelming that reasonable people simply should no longer doubt its reality. That powerful and undeniable evidence for extrasensory perception from laboratories around the world is the subject of this book.

For me, questioning reality and the exploration of psychic abilities are the essential next step in the greatest opportunity we have as a species—the evolution of consciousness.


This material was reproduced by permission of Quest Books, the imprint of the Theosophical Publishing House (www.questbooks.net), from The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities by Russell Targ, © 2012 Russell Targ.

from:    http://www.newrealities.com/index.php/articles-on-human-health/item/2166-the-reality-of-esp-a-physicist%E2%80%99s-proof-of-psychic-abilities-by-russell-targ


Unified Field Theory – An interview with John Hagelin & Lilou

Unified Field Theory, John Hagelin, Ph.D

posted 2 June, 2012,Recored at SANDS ( http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/)
For the interview, check out the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LHP7pcIPbWY
John Samuel Hagelin (born June 9, 1954) is an American particle physicist, three-time candidate of the Natural Law Party for President of the United States (1992, 1996, and 2000), and the director of the Transcendental Meditation movement for the US. Hagelin was a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and is now Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management. He has conducted research into unified field theory and the Maharishi Effect.

Hagelin was appointed Raja of Invincible America by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and is also President of the US Peace Government. He is Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense, Executive Director of the Global Financial Capital of New York, Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Performance,Director of the Board of Advisors for the David Lynch Foundation,Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Maharishi University of Management and International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace. – from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin

from:    http://spiritlibrary.com/videos/lilou-mace/unified-field-theory-john-hagelin-ph-d

Oh, Those Scientifically Attuned Infants!

Babies Are Born With “Intuitive Physics” Knowledge

27th January 2012

University of Missouri

While it may appear that infants are helpless creatures that only blink, eat, cry and sleep, one University of Missouri researcher says that studies indicate infant brains come equipped with knowledge of “intuitive physics.”

“In the MU Developmental Cognition Lab, we study infant knowledge of the world by measuring a child’s gaze when presented with different scenarios,” said Kristy vanMarle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science. “We believe that infants are born with expectations about the objects around them, even though that knowledge is a skill that’s never been taught. As the child develops, this knowledge is refined and eventually leads to the abilities we use as adults.”

In a review of related scientific literature from the past 30 years, vanMarle and Susan Hespos of Northwestern University found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months – the earliest age at which testing can occur. At that age, infants show an understanding that unsupported objects will fall and that hidden objects do not cease to exist. Scientific testing also has shown that by five months, infants have an expectation that non-cohesive substances like sand or water are not solid. In a previous publication, vanMarle found that children as young as 10 months consistently choose larger amounts when presented with two different amounts of food substance.

“We believe that infants are born with the ability to form expectations and they use these expectations basically to predict the future,” vanMarle said. “Intuitive physics include skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out. The person doesn’t have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts. The majority of an adult’s everyday interactions with the world are automatic, and we believe infants have the same ability to form expectations, predicting the behavior of objects and substances with which they interact.”

While the intuitive physics knowledge is believed to be present at birth, vanMarle believes parents can assist skill development through normal interaction, such as playing and talking with the child and encouraging him/her to interact with objects.

“Despite the intuitive physics knowledge, a parent probably cannot do much to ‘get their child ahead’ at the infant stage, including exposing him or her to videos marketed to improve math or language skills,” vanMarle said. “Natural interaction with the child, such as talking to him/her, playing peek-a-boo, and allowing him/her to handle safe objects, is the best method for child development. Natural interaction with the parent and objects in the world gives the child all the input that evolution has prepared the child to seek, accept and use to develop intuitive physics.”

The study, “Physics for infants: characterizing the origins of knowledge about objects, substances and number,” is published in the January issue of WIREs Cognitive Science

 from:    ttp://wakeup-world.com/2012/01/27/babies-are-born-with-“intuitive-physics”-knowledge/