Scientists May Be Atheists, But Still Spiritual

Nearly 300 scientists who consider themselves atheists also claim to have distinct spiritual beliefs.  More than 20 percent of atheist scientists, according to new research from Rice University, say they have a spirituality that’s consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.

While the general public tends to marry spirituality with religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea ~ one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery ~ for "spiritual atheist" scientists.

"Our results show that scientists hold religion and spirituality as being qualitatively different kinds of constructs," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice and lead author of the study. "These spiritual atheist scientists are seeking a core sense of truth through spirituality ~ one that is generated by and consistent with the work they do as scientists." 

"There's spirituality among even the most secular scientists," Ecklund said. "Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought. It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning.”

According to the research, the scientists find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because where spirituality is open to a scientific journey, religion requires buying into an absolute "absence of empirical evidence."

Click here for the complete article.

US Belief in God Still at 90 Percent

Michaelangelo's "Conversion of St. Paul"

A new Gallup poll finds more than nine in 10 Americans continuing to believe in God. Ninety-two percent of Gallup's 1,018 respondents answered yes when asked whether they believed in God.

According to Gallup pollsters:

Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said "yes." That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s.

When asked, "Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?" 80 percent said they believed in God and 12 percent said they believed in a universal spirit. The survey did not probe into specific religious allegiances.

Belief in God drops below 90% among younger Americans, liberals, those living in the East, those with postgraduate educations, and political independents. Believing in God is nearly universal among Republicans and conservatives and, to a slightly lesser degree, in the South.

Click here for the complete article.

Osho on Love and Hate

Here Osho delves into love and hate, which he considers as two sides of the same coin. He also explores several implications, including:"Never judge anybody by his act, because the real thing is not the act but the consciousness through which that act has been performed."

Number 4 ~ YOUTHFUL FOLLY

Youthful folly has success.
It is not I who seek the young fool;
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.
Perseverance furthers.

In the time of youth, folly is not an evil. One may succeed in spite of it, provided one finds an experienced teacher and has the right attitude toward him. This means, first of all, that the youth himself must be conscious of his lack of experience and must seek out the teacher. Without this modesty and this interest, there is no guarantee that he has the necessary receptivity, which should express itself in respectful acceptance of the teacher. This is the reason why the teacher must wait to be sought out instead of offering himself. Only thus can the instruction take place at the right time and in the right way.

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.

Talking Dogs Were Goal of Nazi Research

Nazi scientists attempted to breed an army of educated dogs that could read, write and talk. "In the 1920s, Germany had numerous ‘new animal psychologists’ who believed dogs were nearly as intelligent as humans, and capable of abstract thinking and communication," writes Cardiff University historian Jan Bondeson in his new book Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities. 

Scientists envisioned a day when dogs would serve alongside German troops and perhaps free up SS officers by guarding concentration camps. Hitler set up a Tier-Sprechschule (Animal Talking School) near Hanover and recruited “educated dogs” from throughout the country.

Teachers claimed a number of incredible findings. An Airedale terrier named Rolf became a mythic figure of the project after teachers said he could spell by tapping his paw on a board (the number of taps represented the various letters of the alphabet). With that skill in hand, he mused on religion, learned foreign languages and even asked a noblewoman, "Can you wag your tail?" Perhaps most outlandish is the claim by his German masters that he asked to serve in the German army because he disliked the French. Another mutt barked "Mein Fuhrer" when asked to describe Hitler.

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.

Australia's UFO Files Now Missing

Australian defense officials say the country’s files on UFO sightings are lost or destroyed. Two months ago, an Australian newspaper submitted a Freedom of Information request for files on UFO sightings across the country. Government officials have come back empty handed.

"The files could not be located,” Australia Department of Defense's FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the Sydney Morning Herald, the newspaper that had made the request. Two months spent going through drawers turned up only one UFO-related file, Carpenter said. All other files had been lost or destroyed.

This isn't the first time in recent history that a government body has misplaced UFO files. Earlier this year, Britain's Ministry of Defense released thousands of reports related to UFO sightings in Britain over the past few decades. All files from 1980 to 1982, however, were missing, raising suspicion among conspiracy theorists.

Click here for the complete article.

Tree Rings Say Violent Storms to Continue

Scientists studying ancient tree rings are assembling important benchmark data for studying effects of El Niño and La Niña worldwide, already concluding that our current era ~ because of its warming trends ~ will continue to witness extreme storms.

Due to Earth’s current phase of global warming, which is causing temperatures in the tropical Pacific to rise, the world might see “enhanced El Niño Southern Oscillation variability ~ more severe El Niños and La Niñas, and more extreme climate conditions around the globe,” according to researcher Jinbao Li of the University of Hawaii.

According to LiveScience.com:

The tree rings reveal that over the centuries, the intensity of this climate pattern has been highly variable, with decades of strong El Niño and La Niña events and decades of little activity. The least variability happened during the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the 11th century, whereas the highest variability occurred between the 18th and 20th centuries. 

Many of the El Niño and La Niña events of the last millennium were more intense than the ones scientists have direct data on. Overall, the world has seen a trend of increasing swings to extremes over the past millennium, researchers said. 

These changes in the intensity appear to be linked to the tropical Pacific climate. Samples from lake sediments in the Galapagos Islands, the northern Yucatan in Mexico and the Pacific Northwest suggest that the eastern-central tropical Pacific climate swings between warm and cool phases, each lasting from 50 to 90 years. During warm phases, El Niño and La Niña events were more intense than usual, and during cool ones, they deviated little from the long-term average.

The international team of scientists has peered back into the history of this climate pattern by analyzing trees up to 1,100 years old. Periods of El Niño result in wider tree rings, and periods of La Niña in narrow ones.

Click here for the complete article.

Roswell a Soviet Scheme to Create Panic?

Was the 1947 flying saucer crash at Roswell actually a Soviet ruse to cause Americans to panic? That’s one of the conclusions journalist Annie Jacobsen reached in her new book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. Her findings throughout the book are based on interviews with 74 people with firsthand knowledge of Area 51.

The saucer that crashed at Roswell was the invention of two brothers who were former aerospace designers in the Third Reich ~ Walter and Reimar Horten. The craft contained several child-size beings ~ possibly the creation of Soviet human experimentation programs ~ who appeared alien.

“The plan, according to my source,” Jacobsen said in an NPR interview, “was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack.”

The bodies were taken from Roswell to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton and then, in 1951, transferred to the new secret military installation in Nevada, which from then on would be called Area 51.

Click here for the NPR article.

Compilation of Recent UFO Sightings

Sightings of UFOs around the world are increasing, according to several sources. This video compilation of newscasts mostly from the past two years certainly supports that point. It contains some of the best footage yet on these mysterious objects. I'm not sure what to say about the audio clip at the end from the Art Bell radio show regarding the former Area 51 employee.

Tales of the Invisible Companion

Sometimes, when a person is in great peril, he or she senses the presence of a companion. Accounts of a supportive presence ~ sometimes called the "third-man phenomenon" ~ are common in mountaineering literature.

For example, in 1933, Frank Smythe made it to within 1,000 feet of the summit of Mount Everest before turning around. On the way down, he stopped to eat a mint cake, cutting it in half to share with someone who wasn't there but who had seemed to be his partner all day.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

In “The Third Man Factor," John Geiger, a fellow at the University of Toronto, presents many accounts of such experiences, and not only from climbers. Among those who have felt a ghostly companionship, he cites Charles Lindbergh on his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 and the last man to walk out of the South Tower of the World Trade Center before it collapsed on 9/11. 

"Over the years," Mr. Geiger writes, "the experience has occurred again and again, not only to 9/11 survivors, mountaineers, and divers, but also to polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, shipwreck survivors, aviators, and astronauts. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having experienced the close presence of a companion and helper." 

"The Third Man represents a real and potent force for survival," Mr. Geiger writes, "and the ability to access this power is a factor, perhaps the most important factor, in determining who will succeed against seemingly insurmountable odds, and who will not." Mr. Geiger, however, is at a loss to explain why some can access this power and others can't.

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.

More on Fear and the Amygdala

Several recent commentaries map brain structure against political views, all with similar findings based on recent research: Conservatives have larger amygdalas and more fear, while liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex and greater tolerance.

It remains unclear, however, whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views or are the effect of them.

According to new article on a recent study from the University of London, other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but the University of London’s is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place. "Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."

People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions," the study said. "Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."

Click here for the complete article.

More Proof: Meditation Conquers Pain

While this particular study may be new, its main conclusion is centuries old. Not only in eastern spiritual beliefs, but also in mind/body research a few decades ago, the ability of meditation to greatly reduce chronic pain has been widely confirmed.

“Only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” according to Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “We found a big effect ~ about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”

For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated attended four, 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention, a form of mindfulness meditation where people attend to the breath and let go of distracting thoughts.

Both before and after meditation training, study participants’ brain activity was examined as a pain-inducing heat device was placed on the participants’ right legs. Scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant’s pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11 to 93 percent, Zeidan said.

Click here for the complete article.

More Catholic Priests Being Trained as Exorcists

The handful of priests in the country trained as exorcists say they are overwhelmed with requests from people who fear they are possessed by the Devil. So now, American bishops are training more priests and bishops to respond to the demand.

The purpose is not necessarily to revive the practice, the organizers say, but to help Catholic clergy learn how to distinguish who really needs an exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist, or perhaps some pastoral care.

“Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one,” Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki recently told the New York Times. “It’s only used in those cases where the Devil is involved in an extraordinary sort of way in terms of actually being in possession of the person. But it’s rare, it’s extraordinary, so the use of exorcism is also rare and extraordinary.”

According to the New York Times:

Exorcism is as old as Christianity itself. The New Testament has accounts of Jesus casting out demons, and it is cited in the Catholic Church’s catechism. But it is now far more popular in Europe, Africa and Latin America than in the United States. 

Most exorcisms are not as dramatic as the bloody scenes in films. The ritual is based on a prayer in which the priest invokes the name of Jesus. The priest also uses holy water and a cross, and can alter the prayer depending on the reaction he gets from the possessed person, said Matt Baglio, a journalist in Rome who wrote the book “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist” (Doubleday, 2009). “The prayer comes from the power of Jesus’ name and the church. It doesn’t come from the power of the exorcist. The priest doesn’t have the magic power.” 

Some of the classic signs of possession by a demon, Bishop Paprocki said, include speaking in a language the person has never learned; extraordinary shows of strength; a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God; and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite and cutting, scratching and biting the skin.

Click here for the complete article.

Authorship of Several Scriptures In Question

Rembrandt's "Paul." Wrote only 7 of the 13 Pauline letters?

The words “lie” and “Bible” aren’t often linked, but a leading biblical historian points out that the level of deception in the scriptures is much greater than most people think ~ especially regarding issues of authorship.

Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, says that the New Testament book of 2 Peter was not written by the apostle Peter, and that Paul wrote only seven of the 13 letters ascribed to him.

Regarding the impact of such fakery, Ehrman writes:

This may all seem like a bit of antiquarian curiosity, especially for people whose lives don't depend on the Bible or even people of faith for whom biblical matters are a peripheral interest at best. But in fact, it matters sometimes. Whoever wrote the book of 1 Timothy claimed to be Paul. But he was lying about that -- he was someone else living after Paul had died. In his book, the author of 1 Timothy used Paul's name and authority to address a problem that he saw in the church. Women were speaking out, exercising authority and teaching men. That had to stop. The author told women to be silent and submissive, and reminded his readers about what happened the first time a woman was allowed to exercise authority over a man, in that little incident in the garden of Eden. No, the author argued, if women wanted to be saved, they were to have babies (1 Tim. 2:11-15). 

Largely on the basis of this passage, the apostle Paul has been branded, by more liberation minded people of recent generations, as one of history's great misogynists. The problem, of course, is that Paul never said any such thing. And why does it matter? Because the passage is still used by church leaders today to oppress and silence women. Why are there no women priests in the Catholic Church? Why are women not allowed to preach in conservative evangelical churches? Why are there churches today that do not allow women even to speak? In no small measure it is because Paul allegedly taught that women had to be silent, submissive and pregnant. Except that the person who taught this was not Paul, but someone lying about his identity so that his readers would think he was Paul. 

Ehrman is author of bestsellers including Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted. His latest is Forged: Writing in the Name of God ~ Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

Click here for the complete article.

Ode to the Brain

"Ode to the Brain" is the ninth episode in the Symphony of Science music video series. Here’s creator John Boswell’s explanation of this video:

Through the powerful words of scientists Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, and Oliver sacks, it covers different aspects the brain including its evolution, neuron networks, folding, and more. The material sampled for this video comes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran's TED Talk, Bill Nye's Brain episode, BBC's "The Human Body", Oliver sacks' TED Talk, Discovery Channel's "Human Body: Pushing the Limits" and more.

First Public Showing for Mysterious Sculpture

 A mysterious sculpture ~ thought by some experts to predate the pyramids of Egypt ~ is being displayed publicly for the first time in hopes of attracting international attention and fresh insights into its origins.

No expert among the many consulted over the past decade can identify the sculpture's age or artistic tradition, nor can they decipher the "ancient, yet unidentifiable language" etched into the artwork.

The large limestone object depicting two entwined and perhaps emaciated figures, "could be one of the rarest finds of its kind," according to Clarence Epstein of Montreal’s Concordia University.

The two nude subjects ~ one a male and the other possibly a female holding a child ~ are depicted in a sitting position with abnormally large heads and elongated limbs. It was brought to Canada in the 1940s by Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos, Greek immigrants from France who had amassed a world-class collection of antiquities gathered from Egypt, Israel and other ancient sites. The family's vast collection was donated about 10 years ago to Concordia.

The Diniacopouloses considered the mysterious sculpture the centerpiece of their collection. And while there is little documentation about the artwork's provenance, the couple had listed the object under the title "The Starving of Saqqara," referring to one of Egypt's largest burial grounds.

Click here for the complete article.

Ancient Israelites Worshipped God and His Wife

Asherah, or Ishtar, on 2nd millennium BC terracotta relief.

Findings that the ancient Israelites worshipped Asherah ~ the wife of Yahweh, the Israelites’ god ~ is gaining new prominence among biblical scholars. Accounts of Yahweh and Asherah are in the Old Testament’s Book of Kings.

The first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah was Raphael Patai in 1967. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

According to Discovery News:

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Asherah ~ known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar ~ was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing," Wright continued.

Click here for the complete article.

Dreamtime Sees Origin of Life in Meteors

Ancient Aboriginal cave drawing.

Aboriginal dreamtime stories were linking meteorites to the origins of life thousands of years before modern science reached the same conclusion.

Duane Hamacher of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says the Arrernte and Luritja people of central Australia have an unusually strong focus on meteors, meteorites and impact craters and knew about the nightly and yearly movements of stars. Many of their folk tales and legends feature meteorites as origins of life.

According to Hamacher, one story spoke of life coming from two rocks that fell out of the sky. "These rocks were people described as stars falling to the ground; they were like Adam and Eve," he says. "Another described how the egg of life was accidently dropped from the sky, falling to the ground and breaking into pieces, bringing life to the Earth."

Hamacher says science has recently confirmed that amino acids ~ the basic building blocks of life ~ are transported to earth by comets and meteors.

Click here for the ABC Science article.

Political Conservatives and the Larger Amygdala

New research linking conservative political views with an enlarged part of the brain called the amygdala ~ responsible for reflexive impulses such as fear ~ still lacks sufficient data to say which came first: Does a fear-provoking enlarged amygdala encourage political conservatism, or does conservative thinking actually change the brain to create a larger amygdala?

Conservatives also display a smaller anterior cingulated, which is the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

"We were very surprised to find that there was an area of the brain that we could predict political attitude,” according to Professor Geraint Rees of the University College of London, who lead the study. "It is very surprising because it does suggest there is something about political attitude that is encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that there is something in our brain structure that determines or results in political attitude."

The new research ~ to be published this year ~ supports an earlier study showing that some people were born with a "Liberal Gene" that makes people more likely to seek out less conventional political views. That gene, a neurotransmitter in the brain called DRD4, could even be stimulated by the novelty value of radical opinions, according to the London Telegraph.

Click here for the London Telegraph 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.

Detecting Future Criminal Behavior in Children?

The demon Krampus marching naughty children to Hell.

Some criminologists are suggesting that children be screened with brain-imaging technology to identify violent tendencies. If the tendencies are present, the children would be treated … in some fashion.

They claim abnormal brain make-up could be a cause of criminality ~ psychopaths and criminals have smaller amygdala and prefrontal cortex, both of which regulate and control emotion and behavior. They also argue that children as young as four exhibit “callous unemotional traits” such as lack of guilt and empathy that suggest future bad behavior.

Linking these features with “conduct problems” such as throwing tantrums could be a strong way to predict who could be anti-social in later life.

Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University used data from more than 9,000 twins born in England and Wales between 1994 and 1996. Assessments of callous unemotional traits and conduct problems were based on teacher questionnaires when the children were seven, nine and 12. Information was taken from parents when the children were as young as four.

She found there was a correlation between risk factors at a young age and bad behavior at an older age.

A British criminologist, Adrian Raine, told the Telegraph he acknowledged the ethical implications of treating children before they had done anything wrong, but argued that “biological” causes of crime could not be ignored. “We could be ostriches and stick our heads in the sand but I believe we have to pursue the causes of crime at a biological and genetic level as well as at a social,” he said.

Click here for the Telegraph article.

Evidence Points to Probable Site of Atlantis

Artist's conception of Atlantis's multiple rings.

Researchers using satellite views of an ancient city submerged in southern Spain’s marshlands are claiming they may have located Atlantis. The site is 60 miles inland, just north of Cadiz. Following the researchers' scenario, a giant tsunami would have destroyed Atlantis millennia ago.

They believe the site may be Atlantis because it fits the age-old description of a multi-ringed metropolis, according to Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, the professor leading an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.

Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of “memorial cities” ~ built in Atlantis's image by its refugees after the city's destruction ~ gave researchers added proof, they say. Atlantis residents who did not perish in the tsunami fled farther inland and built new cities there.

While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain in Atlantis, Freund said the finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats on Spain's southern coast. “We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archeology, that makes a lot more sense,” he says.

Plato wrote about Atlantis some 2,600 years ago, describing it as “an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules,” as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in antiquity.

Click here for the Reuters article.

Is Magnetic Pole Shift a Cause for Alarm?

A recent Wall Street Journal article cited the movement of the earth’s magnetic field as a cause for potential alarm ~ but still posed the question, “Should we be alarmed?”

The earth's magnetic field is weakening at an accelerating rate. It is 15% weaker than it was at the time the north magnetic pole was "discovered"—and claimed for King William IV—by a British explorer in 1831. Should we be worried?

What's more, the north magnetic pole, after meandering through Canadian islands for half a millennium, is heading off across the Arctic Ocean toward Russia at the breakneck speed of 37 miles a year. It will pass close to the geographical North Pole in a few years. With the dastardly Russians about to pinch this British heirloom, should we be doubly worried?

While the WSJ admits we don’t know the answer, it contends there is no concrete evidence pointing to reasons for undue concern:

Though odds are strongly against it, it is just possible that this is the beginning of a polar reversal, when the North and South magnetic poles swap places. This used to happen quite often—by which I mean every hundred thousand years or so—but it's now 780,000 years since it last occurred, an unusually long interval.

During such a reversal there is probably a very brief interval (oops, there I go again; by "very brief" I mean a thousand years or so) when the earth has no stable magnetic field. This does not seem to have bothered our ancestors: There is no evidence of biological extinctions peaking during magnetic-pole reversals.

Click here for the complete article.

Extraterrestrials? What Would Jesus Do?

"Baptism of Christ," Aert de Gelder, 1710 (with saucer overhead)

In a far-reaching analysis of the potential impact on humans of learning that extraterrestrials exists, Christians likely would be scrambling to reconcile the idea of Jesus Christ with life on other planets.

“It's been argued for a couple of centuries now whether one incarnation of God as Jesus Christ for the entirety of creation is sufficient,” says theologian Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. For instance, aliens might lead religions to question whether a second genesis of life elsewhere belongs within the biblical understanding of creation. Might Jesus Christ have appeared more than once in the universe?

According to Space.com:

To see what effects the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence might have on religion, Peters and his colleagues surveyed more than 1,300 individuals worldwide from multiple religious traditions ~ including Roman Catholics, evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jews, Buddhists and non-religious groups. 

They found the vast majority of religious believers ~ regardless of religion ~ were overwhelmingly confident that they wouldn’t suffer a collapse in faith in the face of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. In addition, roughly one-third of religious people thought that the faith of other religions would be threatened, while two-thirds of nonreligious people thought that aliens would sway the faith of the religious as a whole. 

There are many open questions as to how people on Earth might view beliefs from space. Could advances that alien civilizations could bring be perceived much like a secular form of salvation? Might advanced civilizations and their perhaps equally advanced philosophies make our religions feel primitive?

Alien religions could draw converts, and if there are many points of agreement between religions on Earth and from space, one might see communication of ideas across species as well, Peters believes. “Greek philosophers never met the God of Moses, but there were people who said, ‘Doggone, there seems to be much that coheres,’” he added.

Click here for the Space.com article.

Music's Popularity Resides in Dopamine

Music causes the brain to release the chemical dopamine, creating a pleasurable rush and even helping listeners to anticipate a particularly thrilling moment. Previous research suggested a role for dopamine~ a substance brain cells release to communicate with each other ~ but new data shows it affects the brain directly.

Scientists for years have known dopamine creates pleasurable sensations when people eat, have sex, or take drugs. According to the Associated Press:

The tie to dopamine helps explain why music is so widely popular across cultures, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal write in an article posted online Sunday by the journal Nature Neuroscience. 

The study used only instrumental music, showing that voices aren't necessary to produce the dopamine response, Salimpoor said. It will take further work to study how voices might contribute to the pleasure effect, she said.

The researchers described brain-scanning experiments with eight volunteers who were chosen because they reliably felt chills from particular moments in some favorite pieces of music. That characteristic let the experimenters study how the brain handles both anticipation and arrival of a musical rush.

Results suggested that people who enjoy music but don't feel chills are also experiencing dopamine's effects, Zatorre said.

PET scans showed the participants' brains pumped out more dopamine in a region called the striatum when listening to favorite pieces of music than when hearing other pieces.

Click here for the article.

Is the Future Leaking into the Present? Maybe So.

Alice and the White Queen.

Ordinary people may be altered by experiences they haven't had yet, indicating the future can leak into the present. At least that’s the conclusion of a respected psychology professor, Daryl Bem of Cornell.

According to NPR:

Already critics are jumping up and down, saying this can't be, time is not porous, the experiments are flawed. But because this is the Professor Daryl Bem (he's in your high school textbook for his work on self perception) and because the journal publishing his article is top-of-the-line rigorous, all over the world psychologists are trying to duplicate what Dr. Bem has done. If serious scientists can repeat his results, this story is going to be big. 

The NPR article describes two experiments Bem conducted at Cornell that seem to prove his hypothesis. The article concludes:

So who knows? Maybe psychologists, like quantum physicists, will have to deal with the deep strangeness of our universe. Maybe time doesn't behave properly. Maybe it makes little leaps, suddenly appears uninvited when porn is in the air. Or maybe not.

It's not like we've never thought about this before. In his paper Bem recalls that in Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen casually mentions to Alice that in her realm, "memory works both ways."

Not only does the Queen remember past events, she can also remember "things that happened the week after next."

Alice, always puzzled, says, "I'm sure mine only works one way... I can't remember things before they happen." The Queen seems a little sorry for Alice. "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," she says.

In a year or so, Bem suggests, we may have to agree with the Queen.

Click here for the article.