Last shot of the day on a film set, also the last name of the author of this blog. Martin - Latin singular, those soldiers who work for Mars, God of War. A smith. In this lifetime of words, music and film. AKA "The Afterlife Expert" (Coast to Coast AM) If you want to reach me, I can be found on FB, LinkedIn, or Gmail under MartiniProds (my youtube channel)
Another of his theories proven
accurate, 100 years after he predicted it. Gravitational waves exist.
Think of the universe as one giant pool of water; a wave from an event
moves out and through the universe like ripples in a pond. But beyond
that, like molecules of water, we too may be interconnected. When a
wave of positivity, or a wave of negativity moves our way, we feel it,
we adjust to it; we may not be conscious of it, but it's there. "There's
a Nobel in this discovery" indeed.
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted something called gravitational waves. Science has tried to prove their...
Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes
By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News
Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity.
They
have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of
two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. The international team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy.
It is the culmination of decades of searching and could ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang. The research, by the Ligo Collaboration, has been published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.
The
collaboration operates a number of labs around the world that fire
lasers through long tunnels, trying to sense ripples in the fabric of
space-time. Expected signals are extremely subtle, and disturb
the machines, known as interferometers, by just fractions of the width
of an atom. But the black hole merger was picked up by two widely separated LIGO facilities in the US.
"We
have detected gravitational waves," David Reitze, executive director of
the Ligo project, told journalists at a news conference in Washington
DC. "It's the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we've been deaf."
Prof Karsten Danzmann, from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, is a European leader on the collaboration.He
said the detection was one of the most important developments in
science since the discovery of the Higgs particle, and on a par with the
determination of the structure of DNA.
"There is a Nobel Prize in it - there is no doubt," he told the BBC. "It
is the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves; it's the
first ever direct detection of black holes and it is a confirmation of
General Relativity because the property of these black holes agrees
exactly with what Einstein predicted almost exactly 100 years ago." Ripples in the fabric of space-time
Gravitational waves are prediction of the Theory of General Relativity
Their existence has been inferred by science but only now directly detected
They are ripples in the fabric of space and time produced by violent events
Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light
Detectable sources ought to include merging black holes and neutron stars
LIGO fires lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light
Detecting the waves opens up the Universe to completely new investigations
That view was reinforced by
Professor Stephen Hawking, who is an expert on black holes. Speaking
exclusively to BBC News he said he believed that the detection marked a
moment in scientific history.
"Gravitational waves provide a
completely new way at looking at the Universe. The ability to detect
them has the potential to revolutionise astronomy. This discovery is the
first detection of a black hole binary system and the first observation
of black holes merging," he said.
"Apart from testing (Albert Einstein's theory of) General
Relativity, we could hope to see black holes through the history of the
Universe. We may even see relics of the very early Universe during the
Big Bang at some of the most extreme energies possible."Team
member Prof Gabriela González, Louisiana State University said: "We have
discovered gravitational waves from the merger of black holes. It's
been a very long road, but this is just the beginning.
"Now that
we have the detectors to see these systems, now that we know binary
black holes are out there, we'll begin listening to the Universe. "
Prof Stephen Hawking: "This provides a completely new way of looking at the universe."Prof Sheila Rowan, who is one of the lead UK researchers
involved in the project, said that the first detection of gravitational
waves was just the start of a "terrifically exciting" journey.
"The
fact that we are sitting here on Earth feeling the actual fabric of the
Universe stretch and compress slightly due to the merger of black holes
that occurred just over a billion years ago - I think that's
phenomenal. It's amazing that when we first turned on our detectors, the
Universe was ready and waiting to say 'hello'," the Glasgow University
scientist told the BBC.
Being able to detect gravitational waves
enables astronomers finally to probe what they call "dark Universe" -
the majority part of the cosmos that is invisible to the light
telescopes in use today.
Perfect probe
Not
only will they be able to investigate black holes and strange objects
known as neutron stars (giant suns that have collapsed to the size of
cities), they should also be able to "look" much deeper into the
Universe - and thus farther back in time. It may even be possible
eventually to sense the moment of the Big Bang.
"Gravitational
waves go through everything. They are hardly affected by what they pass
through, and that means that they are perfect messengers," said Prof
Bernard Schutz, from Cardiff University, UK.
"The information
carried on the gravitational wave is exactly the same as when the system
sent it out; and that is unusual in astronomy. We can't see light from
whole regions of our own galaxy because of the dust that is in the way,
and we can't see the early part of the Big Bang because the Universe was
opaque to light earlier than a certain time.
"With gravitational waves, we do expect eventually to see the Big Bang itself," he told the BBC.
In
addition, the study of gravitational waves may ultimately help
scientists in their quest to solve some of the biggest problems in
physics, such as the unification of forces, linking quantum theory with
gravity.
At the moment, the General Relativity describes the
cosmos on the largest scales tremendously well, but it is to quantum
ideas that we resort when talking about the smallest interactions.
Being able to study places in the Universe where gravity is extreme,
such as at black holes, may open a path to new, more complete thinking
on these issues.
A laser is fed into the machine and its beam is split along two paths
The separate paths bounce back and forth between damped mirrors
Eventually, the two light parts are recombined and sent to a detector
Gravitational waves passing through the lab should disturb the set-up
Theory holds they should very subtly stretch and squeeze its space
This ought to show itself as a change in the lengths of the light arms (green)
The photodetector captures this signal in the recombined beam
Scientists have sought experimental evidence for gravitational waves for more than 40 years.
Einstein himself actually thought a detection might be beyond the reach of technology.
His
theory of General Relativity suggests that objects such as stars and
planets can warp space around them - in the same way that a billiard
ball creates a dip when placed on a thin, stretched, rubber sheet.
Gravity
is a consequence of that distortion - objects will be attracted to the
warped space in the same way that a pea will fall in to the dip created
by the billiard ball.
Inspirational moment
Einstein
predicted that if the gravity in an area was changed suddenly - by an
exploding star, say - waves of gravitational energy would ripple across
the Universe at light-speed, stretching and squeezing space as they
travelled.
Although a fantastically small effect, modern technology has now risen to the challenge.
Much
of the R&D work for the Washington and Louisiana machines was done
at Europe's smaller GEO600 interferometer in Hannover.
"I think it's phenomenal to be able to build an instrument capable of measuring [gravitational waves]," said Prof Rowan.
"It
is hugely exciting for a whole generation of young people coming along,
because these kinds of observations and this real pushing back of the
frontiers is really what inspires a lot of young people to get into
science and engineering."
Off the port bow.
WHY IT MATTERS. The Universe is not composed how we thought it was:Finite objects moving through space. It actually is more like a pool. And gravity - is the relation between objects in that pool.
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY: We are all molecules in the pool. So what happens on one side of the pool effects the other side of the pool. We are energy. The pool is composed of energy. So if one side of the pool has a bad attitude, it affects our side of the pool. But we can combat that bad attitude with our own tool of choice: consciousness. We can affect the rest of the pool by focusing our energy into something that's the opposite of the bad attitude. Do you see where I'm going with this? If Tonglen - the Tibetan meditation studied by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin is an actual cure or can alleviate the symptoms of depression - THAT MEANS that by mental imagining, we can CHANGE OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. Let me say that again. By using a meditation - and Tonglen is the one that was studied, we can alter the physical structure of our brain - specifically the amgydala, which Davidson's study showed "even one session" of meditation could change the shape of this small part of the brain that retains depression. So if mental processes can change the shape of the amygdala - then mental processes can affect other areas of the body. Like a wave. And by extension - even though THERE'S NO EVIDENCE that mental processes - meditation, etc change those things on the outside of the body, it follows that like a ripple, or like a wave, it eventually will change the energy outside of the brain. So - meditating on the good health of someone else (a Tonglen concept) helps us... and there's a possibility that it MIGHT help someone else. The universe is a big pool of energy. Which is exactly what I saw when I had my own "out of body" experience. I don't call it a near death experience because I was lying in my bed - I had an awful cold, so I don't think I died, but here is what happened to my consciousness. (It's not unlike what people experience in near death observations, but was years prior to my Flipside research) As I was drifting off to sleep I felt myself DISSOLVE. I was conscious of myself dissolving into a SEA OF ATOMS. I can only call it that, because I was aware of myself turning into a shimmering blob of light - and it was golden. And it was like a thousand fireflies in my mind, and a tingling sensation of utter joy and connectedness. Overwhelming that I was going to faint from the joy. But I consciously thought "I need to expore this! What is this?" So my conscious mind still existed within this framework to allow me to want to explore. And I willed myself to continue to be "awake" as it took effort not to pass out. I saw this eddy of golden light move and dissipate - and then as if looking from one end of a pool, I saw that there was this giant vast sea of energy all around me. And then as if looking out into the vast pool of light, I saw this small cloud of dark or gray light coming towards me - and instantly understood that to be a small blot of negativity - coming my way. I was aware that this was how "negative thoughts" - directed at me, or directed somehow towards me find their way into your consciousness. But as I saw the gray light coming towards me, instead of fear, (which was my first option, as in "oh no, what's this?") I chose to think a positive thought... and it was right out of a special effects moment - I thought "I can defeat that negativity with a burst of positive thought" - and all the atoms of water in this vast pool around me suddenly began to glow, and rushed out like a giant colored pool of ink - a golden light that engulfed and dissipated the dark light - as far as the eye could see. The next thing I observed is that I was "outside of time." I observed that I was looking back at the earth from a perspective outside of it - and saw it as a circular time frame. So that if I put my finger in one side of the globe, it might be in the 8th century, and if I put my finger on the other side, it might be yesterday - and so therefore I could be simultaneously in both places at once. Because I was outside of time. Then I observed that wherever there was a photograph of myself - of Richard - no matter what age, no matter where on the planet, I could easily move to that object. As if the photo itself had captured my essence, or time - like a piece of a hologram contains all the elements of the larger picture - and I found myself visiting an attic of a relative where a box of photos existed with myself in them, and then into someone's wallet where there existed a photo of us in our youth, etc... So wherever a photograph existed of myself it was like a portal - I could more easily access it because it contained a reference point for me to access. If this vision is accurate, then I would recommend whenever you want to speak to a loved one who is not longer on the planet, to take out a photograph of them and address it in present tense. Ask a question, or make a comment and see if perhaps they are able to respond. Either with the first thought that comes into your mind, or by some event that happens during the day, or coming week that reminds you of something about that person. It's their way of responding. And finally, ask them a question you don't know the answer to. (I always ask for lottery numbers, and I almost always get a laugh). But some detail in your life that only this person would know - and will prove that they not only still exist, but are aware of what you're wrestling with. A long way of saying, "Thanks Albert!" What's
funny is that it relates to this video that I happened to catch the
other day. (two black holes traveling through the universe, that
collide)
Scientists find evidence of mathematical structures in classic books
Researchers at Poland’s Institute of Nuclear Physics found complex
‘fractal’ patterning of sentences in literature, particularly in James
Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which resemble ‘ideal’ maths seen in nature
James Joyce
James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake has been described as many things, from a
masterpiece to unreadable nonsense. But it is also, according to
scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Poland, almost indistinguishable in its structure from a purely mathematical multifractal.
The academics put more than 100 works of world literature, by authors
from Charles Dickens to Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Mann,
Umberto Eco and Samuel Beckett, through a detailed statistical analysis.
Looking at sentence lengths and how they varied, they found that in an
“overwhelming majority” of the studied texts, the correlations in
variations of sentence length were governed by the dynamics of a cascade
– meaning that their construction is a fractal: a mathematical object in which each fragment, when expanded, has a structure resembling the whole.
“All of the examined works showed self-similarity in terms of
organisation of the lengths of sentences. Some were more expressive –
here The Ambassadors by Henry James stood out – others to far less of an
extreme, as in the case of the French 17th-century romance Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus.
However, correlations were evident, and therefore these texts were the
construction of a fractal,” said Dr Paweł Oświęcimka from the Institute
of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the authors
of the new paper Quantifying Origin and Character of Long-range
Correlations in Narrative Texts. Some works, however, were more mathematically complex than others,
with stream-of-consciousness narratives the most complex, comparable to
multifractals, or fractals of fractals. Finnegans Wake, the scientists
found, was the most complex of all. “The absolute record in terms of multifractality turned out to be Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.
The results of our analysis of this text are virtually
indistinguishable from ideal, purely mathematical multifractals,” said
Professor Stanisław Drożdż, another author of the paper, which has just
been published in the computer science journal Information Sciences.
Photo: IFJ Pan
Multifractal analysis of Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce: the graph shape
is virtually indistinguishable from the results for purely mathematical
multifractals. The horizontal axis represents the degree of
singularity, while the vertical axis shows the spectrum of singularity.
Photograph: IFJ PAN
Joyce himself, reported to have said he wrote Finnegans Wake “to keep
the critics busy for 300 years”, might have predicted this. In a letter
about the novel, Work in Progess as he then knew it, he told Harriet
Weaver: “I am really one of the greatest engineers, if not the greatest,
in the world besides being a musicmaker, philosophist and heaps of
other things. All the engines I know are wrong. Simplicity. I am making
an engine with only one wheel. No spokes of course. The wheel is a
perfect square. You see what I’m driving at, don’t you? I am awfully
solemn about it, mind you, so you must not think it is a silly story
about the mouse and the grapes. No, it’s a wheel, I tell the world. And it’s all square.” The academics write in their paper that: “Studying characteristics of
the sentence-length variability in a large corpus of world famous
literary texts shows that an appealing and aesthetic optimum … involves
self-similar, cascade-like alternations of various lengths of
sentences.”
Sequences of sentence lengths (as measured by number of words) in four
books, representative of various degrees of cascading character.
Photograph: IFJ PAN
“An overwhelming majority of the studied texts simply obey such
fractal attributes but especially spectacular in this respect are
hypertext-like, ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novels. In addition, they
appear to develop structures characteristic of irreducibly interwoven
sets of fractals called multifractals.”
The other works most comparable to multifractals, the academics
found, were A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers,
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, The USA trilogy by John Dos Passos, The
Waves by Virginia Woolf, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu showed “little
correlation” to multifractality, however; nor did Ayn Rand’s Atlas
Shrugged.
The
academics note that “fractality of a literary text will in practice
never be as perfect as in the world of mathematics”, because a
mathematical fractal can be magnified to infinite, while the number of
sentences in a book are finite.
“It is not entirely clear whether stream-of-consciousness writing
actually reveals the deeper qualities of our consciousness, or rather
the imagination of the writers. It is hardly surprising that ascribing a
work to a particular genre is, for whatever reason, sometimes
subjective,” said Drożdż, suggesting that the scientists’ work “may
someday help in a more objective assignment of books to one genre or
another”.
Drożdż suggested today that the findings could also be used to posit
that writers “uncovered fractals and even multifractals in nature long
before scientists”. “Evidently, they (like Joyce) had a kind of
intuition, as it happens to great artists, that such a narrative mode
best reflects ‘how nature works’ and they properly encoded this into
their texts,” he said. “Nature evolves through cascades and thus
arranges fractally, and imprints of this we find in the sentence-length
variability.”
Eimear McBride,
whose multiple award-winning debut novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, said she wasn’t taken
aback by the results.
“It doesn’t surprise me that works described as “stream of
consciousness” appear to be the most fractal. By its nature, such
writing is concerned not only with the usual load-bearing aspects of
language – content, meaning, aesthetics, etc – but engages with language
as the object in itself, using the re-forming of its rules to give the
reader a more prismatic understanding of the subject at hand. Given the
long-established connection between beauty and symmetry, finding works
of literature fractally quantifiable seems perfectly reasonable.”
But she added that she couldn’t “help being somewhat disappointed by
the idea that the main upshot of this research may be to make the
assigning of genre more straightforward”.
“Surely there are more interesting questions about the how and why of
writers’ brains arriving at these complex, but seemingly instinctive,
fractals?” she said. “And, given Professor Drożdż’s pretty inarguable
contention that it remains unclear whether or not
stream-of-consciousness writing does indeed reveal a deeper layer of
consciousness, what distance this research may go to explain why some
readers believe themselves to be experiencing exactly that while others
have the opposite reaction?”
So what does this have to do with the Flipside you ask?
A bit hard to digest. But scientists have put the "number of words
in a sentence" to measure recurring length in great works of art, and
discovered that many are fractals - a mathematical structure that has
within it, a repeated sequence.
In this dense article, they argue that
somehow great artists tap into "unconscious" fractals - and call Joyce's
"Finnegan's Wake" the ultimate in "Stream of consciousness writing."
Here's the thing. In my "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" research, people talk about seeing "fractals" while under
deep hypnosis, and when asked to describe the contents of these
"geometric shapes" that appear to follow people around, one claimed they
were like "external hard drives that contain all the memories of our
previous lifetimes."
Another claimed they contain "ancient information."
And now here is the Guardian quoting Polish scientists saying that
fractals are not only inherent in nature (snowflakes) but also in art.
As if we have the code of fractal creation somewhere in our
consciousness, we may not be aware of it, but it appears in our art.
Next up would be to examine other works of art to see if this pattern
repeats itself. "What's the point?" you might ask? It's that
consciousness isn't confined to the brain. And if that's true, then
everything we think we know about the planet is off, wrong. A
fundamental rethink is in order. Don't shoot the messenger. A fractal is
defined as: a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the
same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling
structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar
patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly
random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence,
and galaxy formation."
Turns out that we too are working within the fractal universe, but just aren't aware of it.
Until now.
Here's an interesting headline, that I've been mentioning in all of my books:
A 69-year-old monk who scientists call the 'world's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes a day
Who is the happiest man in the world? If you Google it, the name "Matthieu Ricard" pops up.
Matthieu Ricard, 69, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk originally from France who has been called "the world's happiest man." That's because he participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation
and compassion led by a neuroscientist from the University of
Wisconsin, Richard Davidson.
Davidson hooked up Ricard's head to 256 sensors and found that when
Ricard was meditating on compassion his mind was unusually light.
The scans showed that when meditating on
compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those
linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never
reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said. The
scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal
cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally
large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards
negativity.
Ricard, who says he sometimes meditates for entire days without
getting bored, admits he's a generally happy person (although he feels
his "happiest man" title is a media-driven overstatement). He spoke with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Here's his advice for how to be happy.
Stop thinking 'me, me, me'
To Ricard, the answer comes down to altruism. The reason is that,
thinking about yourself and how to make things better for yourself all
the time is exhausting and stressful, and it ultimately leads to
unhappiness.
"It's not the moral ground," Ricard says. "It's simply that me, me, me
all day long is very stuffy. And it's quite miserable, because you
instrumentalize the whole world as a threat, or as a potential sort of
interest [to yourself]."
If you want to be happy, Ricard says you should strive to be
"benevolent," which will not only make you feel better but also make
others like you more.
That's not to say you should let other people take advantage of you,
Ricard warns, but you should generally strive to be kind within reason.
"If your mind is filled with benevolence, you know, the passion and
solidarity ... this is a very healthy state of mind that is conducive to
flourishing," Ricard says. "So you, yourself, are in a much better
mental state. Your body will be healthier, so it has been shown. And
also, people will perceive it as something nice."
That all sounds great in theory, but how does a person actually
become altruistic and benevolent and not let selfish thoughts creep in?
Start training your mind like you'd train to run a marathon
Ricard believes everyone has the ability to have a lighter mind
because there's a potential for goodness in every human being (unless
you're, say, a serial killer, and there's something actually chemically
abnormal going on with your brain).
But like a marathon runner who needs to train before he or she can
run 26.2 miles, people who want to be happier need to train their minds.
Ricard's preferred way of training his is meditation:
"With mental training, we can always bring
[our level of happiness] to a different level. It's like running. If I
train, I might run a marathon. I might not become an Olympic champion,
but there is a huge difference between training and not training. So why
should that not apply to the mind? ... There is a view that
benevolence, attention, emotional balance and resilience are skills that
can be trained. So if you put them all together, you could say that
happiness is a skill that can be trained.
OK, so how does one train their mind to be happier?
Just spend 15 continuous minutes a day thinking happy thoughts
Start by thinking happy thoughts for 10 to 15 minutes a day, Ricard
says. Typically when we experience feelings of happiness and love, it's
fleeting and then something else happens, and we move on to the next
thought. Instead, concentrate on not letting your mind get distracted,
and keep focused on the positive emotions for the next stretch of time.
And if you do that training every day, even just two weeks later you
can feel positive mental results. And if you practice that for 50 years
like Ricard has, you can become a happiness pro too. That's backed up by
neuroscientists, by the way. Davidson found in his study that even 20 minutes of daily meditation can make people much happier overall. _______________________________________ I asked Richard Davidson what specific
meditation he used in the epic Univ of Wisconsin study.
"Tonglen" he
told me. "But a non specific version." Meaning instead of the
traditional Tibetan Buddhist meditation (paraphrasing) where you imagine
a person who is ill and then you "call upon the healing light of the
universe" to draw the illness (anger, sickness, rage) from them into
you, and as it comes into you, you transform it into healing energy and
breathe that energy back into them - instead of visualizing a person,
the monks visualized the planet as a sick patient.
So focusing on losing
the word "me" "mine" and "I" is one way of eliminating self focus, but
the other way is to actually think of people you love (or don't love,
depending) who are in need of a cure, and you visualize yourself helping
to facilitate that cure. The point is simple; Science proves that by
doing so you can "cure or eliminate symptoms of depression" in yourself.
There's no evidence that the meditation cures or helps the other
person, (or prayer for that matter, but it can't hurt) but there is
science that absolutely proves that it can cure depression. Literally
"loving your neighbor as yourself"affects the amygdala, the part of the
brain where depression resides.
Davidson says that even "one session
of meditation" (or tonglen) can change the physical shape of the
amygdala. Should be included/required in every doctor's kit bag; every
school yard; ten minutes a day cures or alleviates symptoms of
depression (and eventually replaces medications involved with amygdala
suppression (SSRI drugs like zoloft and prozac) which as we know, in
some people, some children, have dangerous side effects (suicide/violent
acts).
Let me say it again. Ten minutes a day. Cure (or alleviate
symptoms of) depression. Not a fad. Not a religion. Not a philosophy.
It's free. It's science. It's data with proven results.
("Is this mic
on?")
A sunset from a year ago....
An old sunset from a year ago.
Does a foto capture a slice of time the
way a piece of a hologram carries all the info of the object?
If so,
everything in a foto still exists, just have to figure out a way to
access it, or tune ourselves to it. Virtual reality may be useful,
using the senses to recreate an experience, or retain info from a place
or person.
If they still exist, then creating an environment they could
access would be key to hearing, seeing them. That is, a field where
those outside of time could revisit old information... or loved ones.
