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NASA
The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a few millimeters across. It has since expanded from this hot dense state into the vast and much cooler cosmos we currently inhabit. We can see remnants of this hot dense matter as the now very cold cosmic microwave background radiation which still pervades the universe and is visible to microwave detectors as a uniform glow across the entire sky.
Entropy- Simply Explained
The First Law is that energy is not created or destroyed, [the Second Law is conserved: the total amount of disordered energy is increased, even as a visible increase in order is produced. Thus, though an increase in entropy entails an increase in disorder, it does so only overall, and therefore as long as the amount of energy that becomes ordered is less than the amount of energy that becomes disordered, any amount of order can arise in a closed system without violating the Second Law.] and the Third Law is that absolute zero cannot be achieved--each of these laws is actually entailed from the first, in conjunction with certain other assumptions.
Man and Stars
Billions of years ago there were no elements, just protons and electrons - they grouped together to form hydrogen (one of each particle). Then through weak gravitational interactions they began to form into clouds, massive clouds. Which eventually become denser and denser and their gravity becomes stronger and stronger until they crunch down to form a star, which is essentially a massive ball of hydrogen whose gravitational force causes the hydrogen within to fuse together releasing massive amounts of nuclear energy (like an atom bomb) and converting the hydrogen into partly heat and light radiation and partly other elements. Hydrogen + hydrogen = helium, hydrogen + helium = something else and so on and so forth until eventually you get everything from gold to plutonium. This is how the matter which makes up our body (which is still about 70% hydrogen since the universe is 90% unconverted hydrogen) formed, so yes, we did come from stardust.
Not only are we In the Universe, but the Universe is in us.
-Neil Degrasse Tyson
Earth Lives
From the scientific viewpoint, the Earth would have had to form about 4.54 billion years since the earliest material in the solar system is dated back to about this time period. It is scientifically accepted that the solar system including the earth was the result of a solar nebula that collapsed from the formation of the sun. The dust and gas from the solar nebula took about 10-20 million years to form into the earth starting with the molten centre of the Earth which cooled down to form a crust that allowed water to begin to accumulate. The moon, the main satellite of the Earth is believed to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago when an object that roughly was the size of Mars collided with the Earth causing a significant blow to the Earth. It is theorized that some of the mass became Earth and the remaining chunk begin to orbit the Earth in what is now known as the moon.
The Ancients
Archaea though ancient creatures are a relatively recent discovery. Modern science only learned about them in 1977 when they were discovered by Carl Woese and George Fox. Far fewer Archaea are known to science than Bacteria, in fact only 209 species were listed in 1999, but now that more people are aware of, and looking for them many more species are sure to be found.
Most Archaea are anaerobic (living in the absence of Oxygen) and many live in uncommon and extreme environments, i.e. hot springs, Arctic ice floes, highly saline waters and highly acidic or alkaline soils. Many of the world record holders for extreme environments are Archaea. Their tolerances range from 4(C to 110(C, and from pH -0.06 to 9.5, examples are given in the group synopses. Nearly half of the known Archaea are Methanogenic, meaning that they give off methane as a by-product of their metabolic activity. Though many Archaea (singular Archaeon) live in environments which are hazardous to most other organisms, some live much closer to us and species of Archaea have been found in animal, including in the human, digestive tract.
Science
The archaeal DNA replication machinery bears striking similarity to that of eukaryotes and is clearly distinct from the bacterial apparatus. In recent years, considerable advances have been made in understanding the biochemistry of the archaeal replication proteins. Furthermore, a number of structures have now been obtained for individual components and higher-order assemblies of archaeal replication factors, yielding important insights into the mechanisms of DNA replication in both archaea and eukaryotes.
Holographic Universe
In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.
Aspect's experiment is related to the EPR Experiment, a consicousness experiment which had been devised by Albert Einstein, and his colleagues, Poldlsky and Rosen, in order to disprove Quantum Mechanics on the basis of the Pauli Exclusion Principle contradicting Special Relativity. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.
University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.
The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.
This fundamental connectedness would correlate with The Fifth Element, and its mathematical proof of all aspects of the universe being energetically connected - Hal Puthoff's assertion in his work on Zero-Point Energy of all charges in the universe being connected and that further mass is in all likelihood an illusion as well -- and both of these modern day theories of physics being in accordance with ancient traditions and philosophies, which claim the same connectedness of the diverse parts of the universe.
Holographic Universe
An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists. Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.
Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism. Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called "cosmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions. But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory.
For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion. We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram. This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the Holographic Paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far.
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In his book Gifts of Unknown Things, biologist Lyall Watson describes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then click off again and on again several times in succession
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A dream is a succession of images, sounds or emotions which the mind experiences during sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history.
Defined
Authentic dreams are defined by their tendency to occur "within the realm of experience" and reflect actual memories or experiences the dreamer can relate to. Authentic dreams are believed to be the side effect of synaptic efficacy refreshment that occurs without errors. Research suggests that the brain stimulation that occurs during dreaming authentic dreams is significant in reinforcing neurological pathways, serving as a method for the mind to "rehearse" certain things during sleep.
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Defined as dreams that contain impossible, incongruent, or bizarre content as the types of dreams hypothesized to stem from memory circuits accumulating efficacy errors. In theory, old memories having undergone synaptic efficacy refreshment multiple times throughout one's lifetime result in accumulating errors that manifest as illusory dreams when stimulated. Qualities of illusory dreaming have been linked to delusions observed in mental disorders.[2] Illusory dreams are believed to most likely stem from older memories that experience this accumulation of errors in contrast to authentic dreams that stem from more recent experiences.
Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Space, Time & Medicine writes: Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicist David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding-of-the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near-death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.
Who are we?
I believe that if we are honest with ourselves, that the most fascinating problem in the world is, ‘Who am I?’ What do you mean, what do you feel, when you use the word I, because it’s so mysterious, its so elusive. What you are in your inmost being escapes your examination in rather the same way that you can’t look directly into your own eyes without using a mirror. And that is why there is always a profound element of mystery in the problem of who we are.
- Alan Watts
Self
Each human discovers who she or he is in an ongoing series of revelations. Humans often have the illusion of inventing themselves from nothing. They often claim to be the authors of their own destiny, but they spend most of their time as passengers in an ancient vehicle on a journey that they have difficulty comprehending. As humans journey through life, they continue to discover who they are and what it means. If they have choices in the direction of their journey, reasonable decisions are achieved by diligent effort, learning and practice.
The process of individuation depends on the opportunities provided by the local environment and by practicing innate abilities and following innate tendencies. The journey through life is expressed and understood by telling stories. Human stories have inner and outer forms. The inner story teller is an almost continuous narrative process in the mind. This private monologue can be referred to as selftalk. Manifest stories are the daily conversations that dominate human social life. If you had to choose one feature of humans that separate them from all other animals it would be story-telling.
About the Course This course provides a thorough introduction to the principles and methods of physics for students who have good preparation in physics and mathematics. Emphasis is placed on problem solving and quantitative reasoning. This course covers Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, gravitation, thermodynamics, and waves.
Physics Lecture 01: Introduction This preview introduces revolutionary ideas and heroes from Copernicus to Newton, and links the physics of the heavens and the earth. This series helps teachers demystify physics by showing students what it looks like. Field trips to hot-air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and other locales make complex concepts more accessible. Inventive computer graphics illustrate abstract concepts such as time, force, and capacitance, while historical reenactments of the studies of Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell, and others trace the evolution of theories. The Mechanical Universe helps meet different students' needs, from the basic requirements of liberal arts students to the rigorous demands of science and engineering majors. This series is also valuable for teacher professional development.
Physics Lecture 02: The Law of Falling Bodies Galileo's imaginative experiments proved that all bodies fall with the same constant acceleration. This series helps teachers demystify physics by showing students what it looks like. Field trips to hot-air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and other locales make complex concepts more accessible. Inventive computer graphics illustrate abstract concepts such as time, force, and capacitance, while historical reenactments of the studies of Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell, and others trace the evolution of theories. The Mechanical Universe helps meet different students' needs, from the basic requirements of liberal arts students to the rigorous demands of science and engineering majors. This series is also valuable for teacher professional development.
Physics Lecture 03: Derivatives The function of mathematics in physical science and the derivative as a practical tool. This series helps teachers demystify physics by showing students what it looks like. Field trips to hot-air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and other locales make complex concepts more accessible. Inventive computer graphics illustrate abstract concepts such as time, force, and capacitance, while historical reenactments of the studies of Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell, and others trace the evolution of theories. The Mechanical Universe helps meet different students' needs, from the basic requirements of liberal arts students to the rigorous demands of science and engineering majors. This series is also valuable for teacher professional development.
Physics Lecture 04: Inertia Galileo risks his favored status to answer the questions of the universe with his law of inertia. This series helps teachers demystify physics by showing students what it looks like. Field trips to hot-air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and other locales make complex concepts more accessible. Inventive computer graphics illustrate abstract concepts such as time, force, and capacitance, while historical reenactments of the studies of Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell, and others trace the evolution of theories. The Mechanical Universe helps meet different students' needs, from the basic requirements of liberal arts students to the rigorous demands of science and engineering majors. This series is also valuable for teacher professional development.
Originally posted by TheMythLives
What do Ghosts, The Brain, Dreams, Déjà vu, Telepathy, Precognition, Telekinesis, Levitation, Aliens, The Wave Theory (My Theory of Time Travel), and Cryptozoology all have in common? They are all bleed outs from the alternative realities.
Originally posted by TheMythLives
The Beginning of Life, Evolution, and Genes
What makes something alive?
It has to have and maintain cellular Organization. It has to be highly complex and maintain high order. Has to be able to respond to stimuli. Has to be able to reproduce, grow, and possess molecules that can be passed onto children. Must utilize energy. Must be able to maintain homeostasis. And finally, must be able to adapt, evolve, and most importantly, be able to survive. But now the question is what gave rise to a "living" molecule? Was it non-living molecules? The question is complex in the answer, but the short answer is that everything is alive on a subatomic scale. However, the first self replicating molecules arose from bacteria. Bacteria was the first replicating molecule that was "alive".
You are saying that if a creature of cryptozoology, for instance a Bigfoot, 'bleeds' into our reality from an alternate reality then the creature is part of an alternate ecosystem? What about mythological creatures? Do they all have their own alternate ecosystems? Hard to imagine an ecosystem in which the Sphinx could evolve. Or a minotaur.
And could you elaborate a bit more on how a telepathic experience, for instance between a mother and her baby, could be explained in terms of alternate realities?
Are you suggesting that a reality can have a goal? Is it alive?