Julia Sweeney PHOTO: tedtalks.com
In this 2006 Ted Talk, Julia Sweeney relays humorous stories on matters related to her experiences with Catholicism and Mormonism and culminates her talk by getting at the heart of religion.
< Watch the entire 17-minute presentation online at ted.com. >
link submitted by Michael McIntyre
The Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet PHOTO: sacredsites.com
The web site “Sacred Sites: Places of Peace and Power” provides a way to travel through the world region by region and visit specific sites by map and illustrations. Each specific region and site is also provided with links to topical books and blogs. The site offering is selective, but what is offered is done with style.
< Visit the site “Sacred Sites: Places of Peace and Power.” >
link submitted by Frieda Nelson
The magnetic field of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen by ESA’s Planck satellite. This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of … polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way. Darker regions correspond to stronger polarized emission, and the striations indicate the direction of the magnetic field projected on the plane of the sky. The dark band running horizontally across the center corresponds to the Galactic Plane. Here, the polarization reveals a regular pattern on large angular scales, which is due to the magnetic field lines being predominantly parallel to the plane of the Milky Way. The data also reveal variations of the polarization direction within nearby clouds of gas and dust. This can be seen in the tangled features above and below the plane, where the local magnetic field is particularly disorganized. PHOTO: ESA and the Planck Collaboration
“An international team of astrophysicists has released an unprecedented map of the entire sky that charts the magnetic field shaping the Milky Way galaxy and helps in our understanding of the birth of the universe.
“The team — which includes researchers from the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto — created the map using data from the Planck Space Telescope.
“Since 2009, the Planck telescope has charted the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the light from the Universe a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
“But Planck also observes light from much closer than the farthest reaches of time and space. With its High Frequency Instrument, Planck detects the light from microscopic dust particles within our galaxy and helps identify the non-random direction in which the light waves vibrate — known as polarization. It is this polarized light that indicates the orientation of the field lines.”
< Read the entire article posted online May 6, 2014 at sciencedeaily.com. >
link submitted by Frieda Nelson
Dark Sector Lab BICEP2 PHOTO: Steffen Richter, Harvard University
“The recent BICEP2 discovery of evidence for cosmic inflation might point to new physics.
“Last month, scientists on the BICEP2 experiment announced the first hard evidence for cosmic inflation, the process by which the infant universe swelled from microscopic to cosmic size in an instant.
“Scientists have thought for more than three decades that we might someday find such a signal, so the discovery was not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected, however, was just how strong the signal turned out to be.”
< Read the entire article posted online in Symmetry Magazine on April 23, 2014. >
link submitted by Frieda Nelson
PHOTO: AscendedHealth.com
“The Living Light: Can biophotonic light emitted from trained probiotic microbes help balance the body?”
Presented by Compton Rom Bada at the Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association (AzNMA) Spring Conference, June 2-3, 2012.
Are humans really beings of light? Our cells release biophotons.
In the 1970’s, Dr. Fritz Albert Popp coined the term “Biophotons”, for the ultra weak photonic emissions given off by cells during reactions. This light is very weak – typically several million times as faint as the light from a firefly. He was able to confirm that living cells emit small bursts of light. He determined that cells do not just radiate light, they also absorb light. He later found out that DNA is a source of our inner light…
links submitted by Robert Anderson
Vilayamar Ramachandran PHOTO: ted.com
In this 8-minute video of a TED talk filmed in India in 2009, neuroscientist Vilayamar Ramachandran gives a brief explanation of what he calls “mirror neurons” and their activity, which he claims is proof of empathetic intelligence. The talk also gives his takes on science and being One with the universe.
< Watch the 8-minute TED Talk by neuroscientist Vilayamar Ramachandran online. >
link submitted by Michael McIntyre
HR 5171, the brightest star just below the center of this wide-field image, is a yellow hypergiant, a very rare type of star with only a dozen known in our galaxy. Its size is over 1,300 times that of the Sun—one of the 10 largest stars found so far. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer have shown that it is actually a double star, with the companion in contact with the main star. PHOTO: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2
“The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope has revealed the largest yellow star — and one of the 10 largest stars found so far. This hypergiant has been found to measure more than 1,300 times the diameter of the Sun, and to be part of a double star system, with the second component so close that it is in contact with the main star.”
< Read the article posted March 12, 2014 online at sciencedaily.com. >
link provided by Frieda Nelson
“A few years after Charles Lindbergh flew his Spirit of St. Louis from New York to France, another pilot flying along the Colorado River first noticed giant drawings on the desert floor north of Blythe, California. One of the earth figures measured 176 feet in length. Since then, more than two-hundred images have been discovered along the river from Nevada to the Gulf of California. All told, six-hundred-plus geoglyphs have been recorded in the Southwest and nearby areas of Mexico.
“Known also as intaglio, it’s not known if geoglyphs are two-hundred years old or ten thousand. These giant ground paintings depict geometric designs, human form and animal figures. . . .
“Given the huge volume of rock art worldwide, one thing seems apparent: rock-art sites were as plentiful then as are churches today. Expression was important and widespread, the same as is religious worship today. And rock art expresssion must have been as sacred for them as religion is for people today.”
link provided by Jim Elliott
Cam-shot of sun viewed on March 12, 2012 PHOTO: NASA SOHO
“How is the SUN triggering many earth changes?
“More than any other major co-factor, the unprecedented, meteoric and relentless changes taking place throughout Planet Earth are the direct result of exceedingly powerful influences emanating from the presiding star of our solar system. The sun, and especially its recent and extraordinary activity, is at the very heart of every major geophysical and meteorological event taking place around the globe today.”
Altogether a far-reaching and encompassing perspective on the influence of the sun on planet earth and on controversial theories like “dark matter.”
< Read the complete article by Anthony Michael posted on April 23, 2012 at marketoracle.co.uk. >
link submitted by Frieda Nelson
Below find a brief scientific commentary on the article by Stephan Fuelling. And below that, a comment on Stephan’s comment and a link to the discussion of dark matter from the thunderbolts group, proponents of the electric universe theory:
Stephan Fuelling: “The whole thing [electric universe theory] lacks robust scientific evidence. Since the sun spews out plasma continuously, it would immediately neutralize any charge build-up in our solar system. The article cites some scientific work related to currents in the upper atmosphere of the earth or other planets that follow magnetic field lines (Birkland currents). These can carry large currents but the forces that are produced by these currents are negligible in comparison to the planet’s gravitational force. To then extrapolate this and put this on a cosmological scale is in my opinion ridiculous. Then one has to remember that most of these are dipole forces, like in a magnet, they dissipate with the 4th order of the distance versus the 2nd order for the gravitational force. And on average, these dipole forces from plasma currents should become zero anyway. There is, for example, no significant contribution of the sun’s magnetic force upon the earth’s orbit. The orbit is solely determined by the gravitational force, otherwise our planet would change its orbit drastically with the sun’s cycle – which it doesn’t. Since we do not observe any such force within our solar system, the much weaker density of plasma and weaker magnetic fields outside of our solar system cannot account for effects that are attributed to ‘dark matter’ and the ‘dark force’. We don’t know yet what these are, maybe our understanding about the forces of nature are incomplete but one does not have to jump to ridiculous theories.
“One explanation for dark matter that is not main-stream and that I know of is that dark matter is hydrogen in a ‘sub-state’, called ‘hydrino’, named by Dr. Randell Mills from Blacklight Power. It does not radiate, it would only interact via gravity or act kinetically as an inert gas. If it would accumulate around the sun or be ‘swallowed’ by the sun, it may (re-)convert into normal hydrogen or hydrogen plasma, therefore this hydrino form of dark matter would completely escape detection! However, as fantastic as the theory from Dr. Mills sounds, there are many scientists that have attacked Mills because of bad science. Maybe his theoretical approach is incorrect but the existence of ‘hydrinos’ could explain cold fusion and also dark matter. So time will tell! But I wouldn’t hold my breath. . .”
Robert Anderson: “Stephan is speaking as a trained scientist. As for non-robust science, hypotheses like “hydrinos” are completely “made up”; a speculation on what dark matter “might be; there’s no robust scientific proof. Here is a link to the Thunderbolts site that may be helpful.”
PHOTO: BigThink.com
“Isaac Newton defined the optical spectrum, but it was Goethe who first understood that color is more than just a physical problem. In Theory of Colours (1840), the German writer and painter examined phenomena like colored shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration, as well as the psychology of color, ‘marvelling at color’s occurrences and meanings’ and hoping to uncover its secrets. His great insight: color vision is shaped as much by human perception as it is by mechanical functioning.”
link submitted by Frieda Nelson