Sacred Solstice and a Wonderful Winter, Fellow Space Voyagers!

22 12 2011

It may seem extra dark right now,
but everything is erupting with radiance
when we look at the universe through the lens of the mind…
and bursting with love
when we let our heart lights shine.

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.





Open Science Summit Videos

17 11 2011

Videos of presentations from the 2011 Open Science Summit can be viewed at Fora TV.
Wonderfully juicy topics include open source drug discovery, big data bioinformatics, ‘clinical trials 2.0′, open science education, open access science journalism, personal genomics, radical longevity, transparency in science, incentive and intellectual property: FORA.TV





Open Source Science

12 11 2011

Peter Binfield, PhD, publisher of PLoS ONE, the wildly successful open-access science journal, discusses the future of scholarly research and publishing at the Stanford Summit @ Medicine 2.0 on Sept. 16, 2011.





A Complete List of ‘Every Insanely Mystifying Paradox in Physics’

12 11 2011

—>  http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/physics-paradoxes.html

 

 

 

 





Jason Silva on time, intelligence, language, psychedelics…

5 10 2011

and 50 other things in less than 2 minutes! :D

But really, these quick Jason Silva videos are wonderful.  Watch in full screen.

 

 

 

 

More info on each of the videos (and more rants by Silva) on his vimeo page.





Parking Lot at the Center of Time

29 09 2011

Amazing, trippy artistic portrayal of a story based on a premise by Terence McKenna.





New estimate for alien Earths: 2 billion in our galaxy alone

22 09 2011

You think planetary overpopulation is bad?  Wait till galactic overpopulation becomes an issue!

Roughly one out of every 37 to one out of every 70 sunlike stars in the sky might harbor an alien Earth, a new study reveals.

>>> Space.com





Heartbeat of a Black Hole

20 09 2011

This video is based on recent findings made by astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer of a pulsing “heartbeat” coming from the binary star-black hole system GRS-1915.

The link made to the famous Yeats poem “The Second Coming” does not reference the complex religious and historical imagery of this famous poem. Rather, it’s designed to evoke the violent rise of a cosmic monster, a black hole.

Here’s a brief analysis of the Yeats poem:http://www.yeatsvision.com/SecondNotes.html

All around the universe, energy roars out of cauldrons of matter… in the form of winds… jets… shock waves. While gravity… pulling matter in, smashes and pulverizes it.

In the crucible of this epic conflict… our universe builds majestic galaxies…. stars that can shine for trillions of years… and planets that may well produce life. There are times, though, when these forces lock, and… “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

In the plane of our galaxy, GRS 1915 is a star with a black hole bound together by gravity. This 14 solar mass black hole is steadily drawing mass from its companion.

Two space telescopes…. the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer… recorded pulses of x-ray light… one every 50 seconds. What’s causing this strange heartbeat?

Matter swirling into the black hole forms a disk that pushes in close to the black hole’s event horizon. Gas, racing around the monster this close is thought to approach 50% the speed of light.

Heat and magnetic energy build to a critical level. “The center cannot hold.” The disk erupts… blasting some inflowing matter back into space… at a rate some 25 times greater than what the black hole can swallow. This will go on until the star is stripped bare.

“The darkness drops again.”

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last…”





Thrive documentary trailer

20 09 2011

This documentary appears to be an impressive and timely mash-up of fringe and esoteric memes such as exopolitics and free energy with key points of societal change such as the monetary system and sustainable living practices.

website: http://thrivemovement.com/





Fractal Dimensions Should Modify The Casimir Effect

14 09 2011

The effects of fractal dimensions could one day be observed if Casimir measurements can be made sensitive enough, according to theoretical physicist.

“One day”?  I’m pretty sure I sure I observed some fractal dimensions at a trance party last month.  But it would sure be pretty awesome if we could take a picture of them using scientific instruments:

Hongbo Cheng at the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai [...] has calculated how extra fractal dimensions would influence the Casimir effect. This is the mysterious force that pushes two parallel conducting plates together when they are only a tiny distance apart.

The effect is caused by the maelstrom of particles flitting in and out of existence at the Planck scale. These particles all have an associated wavelength. If the gap between the plates is smaller than this wavelength, then the particle cannot fit in the gap and so is excluded. When this happens, the excess of particles outside the plates tend to push them together.

Cheng says that if the distance between the plates is about the same as the scale of any extra dimension, then this must effect the Casimir force too. In fact, he says that this force will be stronger if the extra dimension is integral than if it is fractal but that the exact nature of the difference is sensitive to the fractal degree.

Read more: arXiv





New scientific mystery: Cyclical quantum influences of the Sun on radioactive decay

22 04 2011

Scientists have learned that the Sun has multiple, cyclical, measurable effects on the decay rates of radioactive elements, which was previously observed to be extremely steady.  Basically, it looks like the laws of physics started oscillating a few years ago.  I chalk it up to the time-space continuum itself going through a phase shift that has probably not yet ever ever occurred since the beginning of this universe.  ;)

Discovery News: Is the sun emitting a mystery particle?





The Sky of Earth

13 02 2011

An incredible, 360-degree panormaic, navigable, zoomable image of our view in the galaxy created by Serge Brunier.

(Be sure to check it out in full-screen)








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