"A Seamless, Intimate Totality"

"There is no separate, inside self and no separate outside object, other or world. Rather, there is one seamless, intimate totality, always changing when viewed from the perspective of objects, never changing when viewed from the perspective of the totality." ~ Rupert Spira

From the Science & Nonduality website.

Light Speed May Not Be Constant

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, as was definitively stated in 1983 and has believed to have been a constant since that time. But that may not be the case.

Now, according to the Christian Science Monitor: 

A pair of studies suggest that this universal constant might not be so constant after all. In the first study, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud and his team found that the speed of light in a vacuum varies ever so slightly. 

This happens because what we think of as nothing isn't really nothing. Even if you were to create a perfect vacuum, at the quantum level it would still be populated with pairs of tiny "virtual" particles that flash in and out of existence and whose energy values fluctuate. As a consequence of these fluctuations, the speed of a photon passing through a vacuum varies, about 50 quintillionths of a second per square meter. 

That may not sound like much, but it's enough to point the way toward a new underlying physics.

Click here for the article.

Possible Ending to a Long Scientific Search

A section of CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

Leading physicists are saying it’s still too soon to know whether CERN’s newly discovered subatomic particle fits the description given by the Standard Model ~ the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century ~ or whether it is an impostor, a single particle, or even the first of many particles yet to be discovered.

According to today's New York Times, CERN Director Rolf-Dieter Heuer’s exclamation earlier today of, “I think we have it,” signaled what is probably the beginning of the end for one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science. If scientists are lucky, the Times contends, the discovery could lead to a new understanding of how the universe began.

Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. And it affirms a grand view of a universe ruled by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws, but in which everything interesting in it, like ourselves, is a result of flaws or breaks in that symmetry.  

According to the Standard Model, which has ruled physics for 40 years, the Higgs boson is the only visible and particular manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles that would otherwise be massless with mass. Particles wading through it would gain heft.  

Without this Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, physicists say all the elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life. Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new Higgs particle for years. 

Any deviations from the simplest version of the boson — and there are hints of some already — could open a gateway to new phenomena and deeper theories that answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model: What, for example, is the dark matter that provides the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies? And why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter?

 For now, some physicists are calling it a “Higgslike” particle. “It’s great to discover a new particle, but you have find out what its properties are,” said John Ellis, a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Click here for the complete article.

Math Theory Seeks to Explain Weirdness

Graph of Bose-Enstein condensates.

Physicists have developed a mathematical theory describing how the collective quantum mechanical weirdness of peculiar materials such as magnets, superfluids and neutron star matter.

“It’s like shooting many, many birds with one stone,” says particle physicist Hitoshi Murayama of UC Berkeley, co-author of a paper on the work. He showed that the behavior of these materials hinges on a phenomenon known as spontaneous symmetry breaking.

According to Wired magazine:

Symmetry breaking happens when a group of particles that once had no preferred alignment or direction suddenly does, creating a collective behavior. 

One of the best-known occurrences of symmetry breaking happens when certain metals ~ such as iron ~ cool down and form a magnet. Each atom in the metal contains an electron that forms a microscopic magnetic field. When the metal is hot, the atoms have their individual magnets pointing willy-nilly in random directions. 

But as they cool down, the atoms start to point their magnets in the same direction as their neighbors. If enough of the atomic magnetic fields align, their collective action will be strong enough to attract and repel other magnetic materials.

 “It is a neat tie-up of things that we know about individually,” said condensed-matter physicist Anthony Leggett of the University of Illinois, who was not involved in the work. “With this theory, it may be possible to predict or classify new materials.”

Click here for the complete article.

What Would Finding 'God Particle' Mean?

Here renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku discusses the Higgs-Boson ~ also referred to as the "God particle" ~ and what its discovery would mean for physics.

What Happens to You in a Black Hole?

Black holes are so massive they deform space and time, so dense their centers are called "points at infinity," and are absolutely black because even light can't escape them. 

So what would happen if you were sucked into one?

If you were to step into a black hole, your body would most closely resemble "toothpaste being extruded out of the tube," says Charles Liu, an astrophysicist who works at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium.

According to LiveScience.com:

"First of all, you approach the speed of light as you fall into the black hole. So the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time," Liu said. "Furthermore, as you fall, there are things that have been falling in front of you that have experienced an even greater 'time dilation' than you have. So if you're able to look forward toward the black hole, you see every object that has fallen into it in the past. And then if you look backwards, you'll be able to see everything that will ever fall into the black hole behind you.  

"So the upshot is, you'll get to see the entire history of that spot in the universe simultaneously," he said, "from the Big Bang all the way into the distant future."

Liu also explains the effects of other universal forces such as relativity on the hapless person who would encounter a black hole.

Click here for the complete description. 

Wormholes Again Deemed Possible

Wormholes theoretically are shortcuts through space and time allowed by Einstein's theory of gravity and potentially permitting rapid travel across many light years' distances.

The concept was weakened, however, when some physicists concluded that wormholes connecting far apart distances in space would likely collapse before something traveling even as fast as the speed of light could pass through them. Now, a new study from Burkhard Kleihaus and Jutta Kunz of Germany's Universtat Oldenberg and Panagiota Kanti of Greece's University of Ioannina, reanalyzes the problem.

The new study employs string theory techniques used in the past to analyze black holes and reveals a range of wormhole diameter-to-energy ratios that appear stable. String theory ~ more properly "superstring theory" ~ broadly envisions subatomic particles as strings or loops of vibrating energy rather than point-like particles described in more standard physics theories.

Click here for the complete article.

"Wave/Particle" Measurement Achieved

Physicists have now observed light behaving as both a wave and a particle ~ a feat that “pulls back the veil” on quantum reality in a way previously thought impossible.

According to the BBC:

For instance, a well-known rule called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle maintains that for some pairs of measurements, high precision in one necessarily reduces the precision that can be achieved in the other. One embodiment of this idea lies in a "two-slit interferometer", in which light can pass through one of two slits and is viewed on a screen.

… Now, Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto and his colleagues have sidestepped this limitation by undertaking "weak measurements" of the photons' momentum. The team allowed the photons to pass through a thin sliver of the mineral calcite that gave each photon a tiny nudge in its path, with the amount of deviation dependent on which slit it passed through. 

By averaging over a great many photons passing through the apparatus, and only measuring the light patterns on a camera, the team was able to infer what paths the photons had taken.

On one level, the experiment appears to violate a central rule of quantum mechanics, but Professor Steinberg said this was not the case. "While the uncertainty principle does indeed forbid one from knowing the position and momentum of a particle exactly at the same time, it turns out that it is possible to ask 'what was the average momentum of the particles which reached this position?'" he told the BBC. "You can't know the exact value for any single particle, but you can talk about the average."

Click here for the complete article.

Reconciling Parallel Universe and Multiverse

The idea that the cosmos constantly splits into parallel universes ~ in which every conceivable outcome of every event happens ~ has been unified with the idea that our universe is part of a larger multiverse. While solving a bizarre but fundamental problem in cosmology, the concept and has set physics circles buzzing with both excitement and bewilderment.

The problem is the observability of our universe. While most of us simply take it for granted that we should be able to observe our universe, it is a different story for cosmologists. When they apply quantum mechanics - which successfully describes the behavior of very small objects like atoms - to the entire cosmos, the equations imply that it must exist in many different states simultaneously, a phenomenon called a superposition. Yet that is clearly not what we observe. 

Cosmologists reconcile this seeming contradiction by assuming that the superposition eventually "collapses" to a single state. But they tend to ignore the problem of how or why such a collapse might occur, says cosmologist Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley. "We've no right to assume that it collapses. We've been lying to ourselves about this," he says.

In an attempt to find a more satisfying way to explain the universe's observability, Bousso, together with Leonard Susskind at Stanford University in California, turned to the work of physicists who have puzzled over the same problem but on a much smaller scale: why tiny objects such as electrons and photons exist in a superposition of states but larger objects like footballs and planets apparently do not.

Click here for the complete article.

Closing In On Space-Time Ripples

3-D visualization of gravitational waves.

Scientists have been trying ~ but failing ~ for years to detect theoretical ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. New research suggests that building just one more detector might finally bring success.

Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity as a result of some of the most violent events in the universe, such as the collision of two neutron stars. When two neutron stars merge into each other, they are predicted to release strong gravitational waves that should be detectable on Earth.

Four gravitational wave detectors are currently in operation. Proposals have been submitted to build additional ones each in Japan, Australia and India. Constructing just one of these would double the amount of sky being covered in current searches for gravitational waves and would drastically increase the chances of a detection.

A study last year estimated that by 2016 the four existing gravitational wave detectors would be able to detect, on average, 40 neutron-star merger events per year. This could be increased to 160 events per year with improved data analysis techniques, that research found.

Click here for the complete article.

Physicists Successfully Trap Antimatter

Artist's conception of antimatter trap.

Physicists say they have trapped antimatter ~ an elusive type of matter rare in the universe ~ for more than 16 minutes, an eternity in particle physics. Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva expect to soon begin experiments on this rare substance.

Antimatter is like a mirror image of matter. For every matter particle, a matching antimatter particle is thought to exist, with the same mass but the opposite charge. Trapping it is difficult, because when it comes into contact with matter, the two annihilate each other. So a container for antimatter can't be made of regular matter, but is usually formed with magnetic fields.

Click here for the complete article.

Leaked Memo Points to Higgs Boson Particle

A leaked internal memo regarding the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva hints at the existence of the Higgs boson, the long-sought theoretical particle that could make or break the standard model of particle physics.

The controversial note was posted April 21 in an anonymous comment on physicist Peter Woit’s blog, Not Even Wrong. Four physicists claim that ATLAS ~ one of the LHC’s all-purpose particle hunting experiments ~ caught a Higgs particle decaying into two high-energy photons, but at a much higher rate than the standard model predicts.

According to Wired.com:

“The present result is the first definitive observation of physics beyond the standard model,” the note says. “Exciting new physics, including new particles, may be expected to be found in the very near future.” 

The word from CERN, which operates the LHC, is that the leaked note is not an official result, and hasn’t been backed up by the cast of thousands that makes up the rest of the ATLAS collaboration. 

“It’s way, way too early to say if there’s anything in it or not,” said CERN spokesman James Gillies. “The vast majority of these notes get knocked down before they ever see the light of day.”

A member of the ATLAS collaboration who wished to remain anonymous said unexpected signals show up frequently and turn out to be due to errors. The signal is much more likely to be a fluke than anything else, he cautioned.

Click here for the complete article.

Large Hadron Collider May Be a Time Machine

Concept of H.G. Wells' time machine by artist Danny Cardle.

The Large Hadron Collider ~ the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year ~ could be the first machine capable of causing matter to travel backwards in time.

One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

According to Science Daily:

“Our theory is a long shot,” admitted Tom Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints.”

According to the theory Weiler and Chui Man Ho have developed, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."

Weiler began looking at time travel six years ago to explain anomalies that had been observed in several experiments with neutrinos, says Science Daily. Weiler and Ho's theory is based on M-theory, a "theory of everything." A small cadre of theoretical physicists have developed M-theory to the point that it can accommodate the properties of all the known subatomic particles and forces, including gravity.

Click here for the article.

String Theory Points to Parallel Universe

String theory likely holds the secret to the magnitude of our universe ~ which is probably actually a “multiverse,” according to physicist Brian Greene.

“You almost can't avoid having some version of the multiverse in your studies if you push deeply enough in the mathematical descriptions of the physical universe,” Greene tells NPR. “There are many of us thinking of one version of parallel universe theory or another. If it's all a lot of nonsense, then it's a lot of wasted effort going into this far out idea. But if this idea is correct, it is a fantastic upheaval in our understanding.”

Greene believes the key to understanding these multiverses comes from string theory, the area of physics he's studied for the past 25 years.

According to NPR:

In a nutshell, string theory attempts to reconcile a mathematical conflict between two already accepted ideas in physics: quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. 

“Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things,” Greene says. “Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum ~ for small things. The big problem is that each theory is great for each realm, but when they confront each other, they are ferocious antagonists and the mathematics falls apart.” 

String theory smoothes out the mathematical inconsistencies that currently exist between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. It posits that the entire universe can be explained in terms of really, really small strings that vibrate in 10 or 11 dimensions ~ meaning dimensions we can't see. If it exists, it could explain literally everything in the universe ~ from subatomic particles to the laws of speed and gravity. 

Greene, the author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, tackles the existence of multiple universes in his latest book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Law of the Cosmos.

Click here for the NPR article and “Fresh Air” interview.

'Big Bang' Theory Being Reconsidered

Cosmologists' view of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang theory has formed the basis of our understanding of the universe's origins since Georges Lemaitre first proposed it in 1927 ~ basing it on Einstein's widely accepted theory of general relativity. Now astrophysicists Maximo Banados and Pedro Ferreira have resurrected a theory of gravity from the early 20th century and discovered that it may hold an alternative to the Big Bang.

Banados and Ferreira have reconsidered the theory of gravity proposed by Arthur Eddington, a contemporary of Einstein. Although Eddington played a significant role in developing general relativity, during the following decades he became more interested in finding a theory to unify gravity and quantum mechanics. In 1924, he proposed a new “gravitational action” as an alternative to the Einstein-Hilbert action, which could serve as an alternative starting point to general relativity.

According to Banados and Ferreira, Eddington’s theory could lead to an entirely new view of the Universe that doesn't include a Big Bang, according to PhysOrg.com. The theory predicts that, depending on the Universe’s initial density, it may have loitered for a long time at a relatively small size before growing large enough to be controlled by standard cosmological evolution. Another possibility, depending on the initial conditions, is that the Universe could have undergone a bounce, resulting from the collapse of a previous Universe.

“Taking as a starting point what is a very old idea, we have ended up with a theory that has this very interesting property of not having singularities,” Ferreira, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, told PhysOrg.com. “It was unexpected and definitely not what we were looking for.”

Click here for the complete article.

Calculus "Is the Language God Talks"

The physicist Richard Feynman said, "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama." 
That's by the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Herman Wouk, whose new book "The Language God Talks" is due for release this week. 

Click here for a longer excerpt from New Scientist.

Time Acceleration

The topic of "time acceleration" fascinates me to no end. In that spirit, I offer this 3-minute clip featuring the thoughts of Terence McKenna, who studied time acceleration from several vantage points, but most notably from the perspective of the I Ching.

I still puzzle over whether time ~ as in the space/time continuum ~ is in fact speeding up, or if time only seems to be passing by more quickly due to the phenomenal rate of change we're experiencing. The catalyst, of course, would be technology and its ability to process information at ever-faster speeds, which would create the sensation of time accelerating. I don't know the answer.

If you're unfamiliar with the late Terence McKenna, he was something of a phenomenon. To sum him up, here's the opening paragraph to his Wikipedia entry:

Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was a writer, public speaker, philosopher, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, art historian, and self-described anarchist, anti-materialist, environmentalist, feminist, platonist and skeptic. He was noted for his knowledge, and the ability to articulate his knowledge, of the use of psychedelics, metaphysics, plant-based entheogens, and subjects ranging from shamanism, mysticism, hermeticism, neo-platonism, biology, geology, physics, astrophysics, media theory, linguistics, poetry, historical and civilizational timelines, the theoretical origins of human consciousness, psychedelic phenomenology, and his concept of novelty theory.

I want to thank the insightful Colorado astrologer Melody Scott Zindell for posting this a while ago on her blog, which is where I spotted it.

Science Fiction Approaching Scientific Fact

Michio Kaku agrees with Einstein that time is a river.

Breakthrough physicist Michio Kaku ~ a developer of string field theory, often called the “theory of everything” ~ believes some phenomena previously found only in science fiction is nearing science fact.

In his new book Physics of the Impossible, Dr. Kaku explores time travel, invisibility cloaks and teleportation, among other familiar tools of science fiction. His conclusion: "A lot of the predictions made by science fiction writers have been replaced by the march of science."

"Time travel is definitely on the table, and in principle it may be possible to build a time machine," Dr Kaku tells BBC World Service."So, if one day somebody knocks on your door and claims to be your great-great-great-grand-daughter, don't slam the door." According to the BBC article:

There is a logical problem though with time travel, one that offers rich pickings for films and books. It is known as the "grandfather paradox" and asks what would happen if a time traveller were to kill their grandfather and therefore prevent themselves from being born.

If the time traveller was not born, how would they travel back in time?

Dr Kaku has a solution.

While he agrees with Einstein that time is a river, he says we now realise that the river of time can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. In one of these forks, in another parallel universe, a different history can exist, but the past can never be altered.

"You cannot alter your own past. You cannot go back in time and kill your own parents before you were born. Your timeline is intact."

According to Dr Kaku, most of what we see on the silver screen is possible - it is just a question of time.

Click here for the complete BBC article.