Probing The Matrix: Is our universe simulated, and if so… by who?
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 31 January 2013 07:48
- Written by John Hewitt
Interpreting the universe as a computer simulation is perhaps the inevitable byproduct of living in the computer age. The question today is not whether we live inside a simulation, but rather — what does it want, and what compromises with regard to the welfare its inhabitants might have been made to get it? The first rudimentary experiments to poke it in the belly and see how it jiggles are just getting underway.
If it's possible to hack the universe, then particle physicists must be its early phone phreakers. Fears, which turned out to exaggerated, were raised few years ago that a black hole might unwittingly be created inside the Large Hadron Collider.
Scientists discover evidence of our “soul”
- Details
- Published on Monday, 05 November 2012 09:53
- Written by BC-Stuff
University of Arizona researchers have provided scientific explanation to near-death experiences.
Understanding where consciousness comes from could solve mysteries such as what happens to the "soul" during near-death experiences, or when a person dies.
In a video that recently aired on "Through the Wormhole" narrated by Morgan Freeman on the TV channel Science, Dr. Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona shared hypothetical scenarios derived from the Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) theory of consciousness that he and Roger Penrose, mathematician and physicist, proposed in 1996, according to the Huffington Post.
The Higgs boson 'God Particle' discovery explained in the context of conscious cosmology
- Details
- Published on Friday, 06 July 2012 06:45
- Written by Mike Adams
The ultimate goal of the study of physics is to decode the rules and laws of the universe; to understand what "makes it all tick," so to speak. That goal, of course, has remained elusive, but great strides have been made toward it over the last few thousand years. Newton's formulations of the laws of gravity, Kepler's laws of motion, Bohr's modeling of the atom, Maxwell's equations on electromagnetic behavior... these all contributed to a deeper understanding of the very fabric of reality. Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, and then General Relativity, soon followed.
Our understanding of physics accelerated throughout the 20th century with theories on the Big Bang, inflation and the inflaton field, string theory, M-theory, supersymmetry, quantum mechanics, parallel worlds, bubble universes and much more. It's truly fascinating to observe all this as a conscious being sitting inside the very universe we're all trying to figure out, and one thing I really appreciate about physicists in general is that they require an extraordinarily convincing burden of proof before they announce something to be "discovered."
This is your brain on... nothing. Scientists are working out why the brain is so incredibly active when you are not thinking of anything
- Details
- Published on Saturday, 22 September 2012 04:02
- Written by Kerri Smith
For volunteers, a brain-scanning experiment can be pretty demanding. Researchers generally ask participants to do something — solve mathematics problems, search a scene for faces or think about their favoured political leaders — while their brains are being imaged.
But over the past few years, some researchers have been adding a bit of down time to their study protocols. While subjects are still lying in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, the researchers ask them to try to empty their minds. The aim is to find out what happens when the brain simply idles. And the answer is: quite a lot.
US physicists say evidence of 'God particle' found
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 04 July 2012 08:50
- Written by BC-Stuff
Physicists say they have all but proven that the "God particle" exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.
The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what it is and can put that knowledge to further use.
Aliens, Alternate Dimensions, and Allah
- Details
- Published on Monday, 13 August 2012 11:33
- Written by Aaron Wannamaker
Let’s say that one day we discover extraterrestrials knocking on our atmosphere. No doubt, this would be a shock to the world. But would the mere existence of these aliens shake the core foundation of all world religions? Would Islam come to a screeching halt with the revelation that there is other intelligent life in the universe? Not at all.
For starters, here is this verse in the Qur’an:
“And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the living creatures that He has scattered through them: and He has power to gather them together when He wills.” (42:29)
The Arabic term used for the phrase “through them” is fihima, which can only mean the living creatures can exist both within the heavens and on Earth[1]. One could interpret the “living creatures” to be angels, since the term “heaven” used here is often used to denote the realm of God. There are two problems with this interpretation, however. First, there is another verse in the Qur’an where God makes a clear distinction between “living beings” and angels:
Facebook: Social Networking or Social Engineering?
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 03 July 2012 05:16
- Written by Mirza Yawar Baig
The big question is, ‘What is social networking and how is it useful?’
Of course you will hear the usual bleating saying, ‘It is so nice to know what my sister is doing….blah, blah.’
So ask this person, ‘Why can’t you send your sister an email asking what she is doing and she can respond to you. Or even better, if you can, call your sister and talk to her.’ But no, I must talk to my sister in a space where it is not only the sister who is listening but almost anyone who cares to listen, even if that person is a total stranger. So is it about your concern for your sister or is it something else?
So also in this space are pictures which really have no place outside the home – like the pictures showing you hugging your sister or wife or whoever! And so on and so on. I don’t think I need to describe all that there is to people who put it there in the first place.
Former climate change skeptic now says global warming is man-made
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 18:52
- Written by Liz Goodwin
He finally came around to what other climate scientists have been spouting for years. Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, announced over the weekend that his much-publicized investigation into climate data has found that humans' production of carbon dioxide is causing the world to slowly warm up. And this process could speed up dramatically in the coming years.
Drones, computers new weapons of U.S. shadow wars
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 17 June 2012 19:47
- Written by Kimberly Dozier
After a decade of costly conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American way of war is evolving toward less brawn, more guile.
Drone aircraft spy on and attack terrorists with no pilot in harm's way. Small teams of special operations troops quietly train and advise foreign forces. Viruses sent from computers to foreign networks strike silently, with no American fingerprint.
It's war in the shadows, with the U.S. public largely in the dark.
Human corpses harvested in multimillion-dollar trade
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 17 July 2012 16:06
- Written by Kate Willson, Vlad Lavrov, Martina Keller, Thomas Maier and Gerard Ryle
A grisly trade in human body parts leaves relatives grieving and some recipients at risk of life-threatening disease.
On February 24, Ukrainian authorities made an alarming discovery: bones and other human tissues crammed into coolers in a grimy white minibus.
Investigators grew even more intrigued when they found, amid the body parts, envelopes stuffed with cash and autopsy results written in English.
What the security service had disrupted was not the work of a serial killer but part of an international pipeline of ingredients for medical and dental products that are routinely implanted into people around the world.
Science behind the big freeze: is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe?
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 05 February 2012 04:26
- Written by Lewis Smith
A loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK in the past week, weather experts say
The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.
