What Keeps Me Awake #12

 John Collier, The Land Baby, 1909

 
Anything that suggests a hybrid of human and animal scares me; specifically marine life/ human crosses. I once had a dream where I was walking along a pebble strewn beach  and when I looked down I saw a little creature that was octopus like with a little human head that resembled mine. I bent down closer and it was crying out, much like the creature in "The Fly", "Help Me!", in a high whiny voice. I don't remember anymore even though I have had this dream many times. I am pretty sure it was originally a dream?

What Keeps Me Awake #11

What Keeps Me Awake #10

Because of Dark Energy the Universe is expanding faster and faster. In perhaps as few as 100,000 years all the celestial objects will be so far spread out from each other that the Earth's night sky will be totally empty and completely black! Whatever intelligent life there is then will have no empirical basis for knowing the universe is expanding or anything about the rest of the objects in the universe. This calls into question whether what we observe now has any relevance to the true nature of the universe or is just a relatively, equally distorted view of the cosmos. Maybe more importantly, as scary and humbling as the vastness of the night sky is, would not a perpetually empty dark sky be existentially devastating?

What Keeps Me Awake #9

The Earth could find itself with a 'second sun' for a period of weeks later this year when one of the night sky's most luminous stars explodes! More here.

What Keeps Me Awake #8

When you consider that everything we know of reality is sifted through our brains why do we so blithely dismiss our dream life as something less then real? (Hey this is like a tweet !!)

Are We Smarter Then Bees?

I have come to realize that animals have a higher form of intelligence then their brain size should allow. The advanced primates of course as well as elephants and marine mammals all show an intellectual capacity as well as a strong emotional life. But how does one explain bees and how they communicate complex information to each other. All living creatures seem to exhibit amazing abilities that we dismiss as "instinct" but what does that mean? It seems as though instinct is an ill defined catch all phrase that almost seems supernatural. Perhaps a better explanation is that all life is connected on an "intelligence  grid" that is sub-atomic and as yet unknown; living creatures tap into this force in different ways for different needs. We confuse our own brain power, which is suited to our situation, with with the totality of intelligence available to the universe. This "intelligence grid" or field is not supernatural but a force that prevails through out the universe and is discoverable scientifically proving the whole mind/body dichotomy false as well as allowing  perhaps for some form of soul. In that case ants and humans would both have a deeper connection then ever anticipated! There is some force common to all life, that connects all life, that is indivisible and non-hierarchical, that is just beyond our comprehension.

This Remarkable Thing

What Keeps Me Awake #5

New Evidence that Mysterious Dark Force From Outside Tugs at Our Universe

"First came dark matter, the gravitational source from within our galaxy that astronomers couldn't see. Then came dark energy, the undetectable force pushing the expansion of the universe. Now, NASA scientists believe they have confirmed a new player, dubbed "dark flow," that is dragging hundreds of galaxies along the same path. Even stranger, the researchers believe that dark flow is actually the gravitational pull from matter beyond the edge of the known universe." More here.

What Keeps Me Awake #4

What Keeps Me Awake #3

Waiting for the First 6-D Movie

Clearly the mystery of the universe is not solved by understanding that there are 3-dimensions, nor by 4, 5, 6 or any other number of dimensions. All dimensionality requires space and any amount of space requires there to be space outside of space. Now some theorists may be happy with the concept of infinite space but I find that too easy and impossible. I know this sounds naive and a little too commonsense; knowledge of the "real" foundations of the universe and existence itself will show dimensionality either misunderstood by us or just an illusion. Unfortunately no human will ever know these truths and in fact can never know them because we can only really perceive, even mathematically, in a dimensional way.

What Keeps Me Awake #2

Young blue stars are surrounded by leftover natural gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy composed of up to several billion stars

An evolving star known as V838 Monocerotis

The Orion nebula - within which new stars are forming. The inset is a close-up of a young star surrounded by a dusty disk that may eventually form planets

What Keeps Me Awake #1

Often I have heard people questioned, "Don't you care about the Earth?".  To this I would reply, "The Earth can take care of itself." There is nothing man can do that will ever destroy the Earth; only the sun has that power. That is not to say that mankind will survive, nor much of the animal and plant life we see today. But eventually some new species will rise and evolve towards intelligence.
My belief is that there is a basic intelligence programed into the universe. Why at the big bang did a system of "laws" based on mathematics come into existence? Why after millions of years has a creature on earth evolved into a life form that can understand this structure? Is it because the universe itself needs to evolve that intelligence to see itself? Without self-reflective self-aware life can anything be said to truly exist? Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest can something exist without someone to view it, without someone to say, "that is there and it is not me, it exists separate from me". If I told you that outside our universe was another universe that was made of candy you would say I was crazy and couldn't possibly know such a thing. Existence requires a viewer or something to somehow perceive it's reality. I believe the universe is constantly evolving intelligence in order to exist; without us the universe is naught. This is not God in any traditional sense but a rational development of a rational system. What will happen when the universe is completely self-actualized? Maybe God does not yet exist and this is the process by which God is created.