PHOTO: thunderbolts.com

Today perhaps the ultimate unsolved mystery of human life for scientists and philosophers is: How and why does consciousness exist? Although some scientific literature still acknowledges that the question remains open, the overwhelming consensus among neuroscientists today is that the brain alone creates conscious experience.

But what happens when scientific investigation leads directly to officially “unthinkable” conclusions? To get an idea, watch this interview with Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona. He is the Director of the university’s Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. Much of his professional career has been devoted to examining scientific opinion on the nature of consciousness, in particular the often-unspoken “materialistic” assumptions about the mind-body connection.

It seems that science has not been prepared for the uncomfortable revelation now coming increasingly into scientific review: the self-aware mind is not simply an effect of brain activity; it endures when that activity is ended. Of course, any assessment of this finding will require much more than a brief interview, but the emphasis by Dr. Schwartz on an objective protocol, including double-blind and triple-blind studies, could reduce the emotional responses that the subject too easily provokes.

This emerging science could have a great impact for those exploring the electricity of life and mind-body paradoxes.

Watch the interview, then read the “Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science” at explorejournal.com.

Click Here to watch the interview with Gary Schwartz posted on YouTube October 1, 2014 (14 minutes).

Click Here to read the “Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science” at explorejournal.com.

link submitted by Robert Anderson

Tonatiuh, the Aztec Sun god, who wavered upon his first rising until bloody sacrifices were made. From the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (16th Century).

If folk memory is anything to go by, global warming in its most dreaded form is a thing of the past.

The universality of flood myths is widely known, but fewer people are aware that traditions of unbearable heat, often leading to a devastating Weltbrand, are just as ubiquitous. Although many reports do not identify the cause of the steep rise in temperature or the wildfire associated with the ‘age of myth’, others persistently attribute it to a group of phenomena we may conveniently call ‘anomalous suns’.

Generally, the sources trace the erstwhile emission of relentless heat to four solar properties, singly or combined, all of which seem equally bizarre when applied to the quotidian sun.

< Read the entire article by Rens van der Sluijs online at thunderbolts.info. >

Physicist Stephan Fuelling says: “I think that these are just that, ‘myths.’ If the sun had a strong output burst in human history, then this should have been recorded in the ice records, the activity of the sun relates to the formation of certain isotopes, which would point to such an event. To my knowledge, no such event ever occurred. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If it can’t be proven, then it is a myth.”

Robert Anderson responds: “I don’t think you can discount mythologies that are so widespread. Science is finding that myths often reflect real events. I know that Stephan rejects the whole electric universe position so his response is not surprising, but I also am aware of the research of Dr. Paul La Violette, an astrophysicist at Portland State who has found ice core evidence of such events, though his theory is that such events were caused by cosmic ray outbursts from the center of the galaxy, all of which coincide with climatic changes on earth. Discussion of his work can be found on youtube and gaiamtv sites.”

PHOTO: University of Birmingham

Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, investigators working around Stonehenge have detected a trove of previously unknown burial mounds, chapels, shrines, pits — and most remarkable of all — a massive megalithic monument made up of more than 50 giant stones buried along a 1,082-foot-long c-shaped enclosure.

This news is resetting virtually everything everyone thought they knew about Stonehenge.

Follow these links to learn more:

http://io9.com/archaeologists-have-made-an-incredible-discovery-at-sto-1632927903?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

http://www.cnet.com/news/digital-mapping-project-reveals-stonehenge-secrets/

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/scientists-discover-dozens-of-monuments-hidden-below-stonehenge/380002/

links submitted by Frieda Nelson

Symbols of an Alien Sky DVD cover

The Thunderbolts Project (www.thunderbolts.info), an organization advocating the “electric universe” concept, has recently posted on YouTube full-length videos from the three-part documentary series Symbols of an Alien Sky. The first of the series explains the extraordinary figures visible in the sky from Earth some 10,000 years ago; this is, of course, according to the electric universe theory as expounded by David Talbott. The images theorized by Talbott and catalogued from ancient sources worldwide are fascinating.

And the producer of the series is none other than our long-time Consociate Jerry Simonson!
< Watch Part 1 of the series Symbols of an Alien Sky online at YouTube.com. >

PHOTO: Image byCarl Weins

Though he probably didn’t intend anything so jarring, Nicolaus Copernicus, in a 16th-century treatise, gave rise to the idea that human beings do not occupy a special place in the heavens. Nearly 500 years after replacing the Earth with the sun as the center of the cosmic swirl, we’ve come to see ourselves as just another species on a planet orbiting a star in the boondocks of a galaxy in the universe we call home. And this may be just one of many universes — what cosmologists, some more skeptically than others, have named the multiverse.

Despite the long string of demotions, we remain confident, out here on the edge of nowhere, that our band of primates has what it takes to figure out the cosmos — what the writer Timothy Ferris called “the whole shebang.” New particles may yet be discovered, and even new laws. But it is almost taken for granted that everything from physics to biology, including the mind, ultimately comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time.

Ron Theriault thinks this is a wonderful little essay, with some interesting references. He says: “It clearly highlights the line between the materialist and non-materialist viewpoints that divide science as well as society at large. The second book mentioned (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality) reminded me of an interesting observation I read recently, which I will paraphrase: “. . . human sciences and philosophies have undergone numerous changes and revolutions since recorded history, but mathematics seems to stand apart in that when something is proven in mathematics it is proven for all time.”

< Read the entire New York Times article by George Johnson online at nytimes.com. >

link submitted by Frieda Nelson

PULLED IN The event horizon is framed by the bright ring in this black hole simulation. Color represents the intensity of light emitted by hot gas circling the horizon; red is brightest, blue dimmest. PHOTO: sciencenews.com

The entrance to a black hole could reveal insights into the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies.

 “A black hole’s event horizon is a one-way bridge to nowhere, a gateway to a netherworld cut off from the rest of the cosmos.

“Understanding what happens at that pivotal boundary could reveal the hidden influences that have molded the universe from the instant of the Big Bang.

“Today some of the best minds in physics are fixated on the event horizon, pondering what would happen to hypothetical astronauts and subatomic particles upon reaching the precipice of a black hole. At stake is the nearly 100-year quest to unify the well-tested theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics into a supertheory of quantum gravity.

“But the event horizon is more than just a thought experiment or a tool to merge physics theories. It is a very real feature of the universe, a pivotal piece of cosmic architecture that has shaped the evolution of stars and galaxies. As soon as next year, a telescope the size of Earth may allow us to spot the edge of the shadowy abyss for the first time.

“By studying the event horizon through both theory and observation, scientists could soon figure out how the universe began, how it evolved and even predict its ultimate fate.”

< Read the whole article by Andrew Grant posted on May 16, 2014 at sciencenews.org. >

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