autoevolution | We don't blame you if you're shocked the United States wielded a nuclear
spacecraft engine as far back as the 1960s. You're probably even more
shocked that hardly anyone remembers it. The Nuclear Engine for Rocket
Vehicle Application (NERVA) project would've been nothing short of a
crown jewel program for any other research team. But not for New
Mexico's Los Alamos Laboratories.
That's right; the NERVA engine was developed by the same team who brought the world the first nuclear-fission weapons. The
very same that helped end World War II. If there was ever a project
substantial or significant enough to overshadow literal nuclear rocket
engines, that certainly fits the description. For Los Alamos scientists
and engineers, it makes sense the first logical step post-Manhattan
Project would be in the direction of rocket engines.
Come the end of the Second World War, novel German rocket science from
future NASA personnel like Wernher Von Braun was now in the hands of the
Americans. But while the V2 chemical rocket was nothing short of
witchcraft to average folks in the mid-1940s, it wouldn't be long for
experts to ask if there was another, more powerful means of fueling
rocket engines.
In the following decade, a torrent of proposals across America for
nuclear-powered planes, trains, and automobiles defined the 1950s as the
start of the atomic era. Right alongside preposterous ideas like Ford's Nucleon
passenger car was one of the first working concepts for a nuclear
fission-powered thermal rocket. One that, in theory, could provide power
and fuel economy no traditional chemical rocket could ever dream of.
Though any number of nuclear isotopes could theoretically do the job,
Los Alamos Labs and Westinghouse chose enriched Uranium-235 for the
NERVA application. This choice was made because U-235 is lighter and
less prone to super-criticality than its Uranium-238 cousin. As a
result, it has the potential for an incredibly high measurement of what
rocket scientists call a specific impulse.
With the potential to heat hydrogen fuel to 2,400 Kelvin (3860.3°F,
2126°C), the NERVA engine could have provided American spacecraft with
exceptional performance while not being so wasteful that it couldn't
conserve fuel for an entire mission. The potential for space exploration
seemed palpable during the NERVA development. Be it traveling to near
planets like Mars and Venus or even places farther off like the Asteroid Belt. It was all suddenly theoretically possible.
In August 1960, the recently formed NASA established the Space Nuclear
Propulsion Office with the sole purpose of overseeing the NERVA program
and any developments made afterward. With offices in Germantown,
Maryland, Cleveland, Ohio, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the resources
and personnel required to keep the program running spanned the
continental U.S.
Six NERVA technology demonstrators were built between 1964 and 1973. The
highest power threshold NASA could muster during testing was a scarcely
believable 246,663 newtons (55,452 lbf) of thrust and a specific
impulse of 710 seconds (7.0 km/s) in the NERVA Alpha variant. This
engine could theoretically operate in deep space and maintain this level
of thrust throughout the duration of a space mission. So you can only
imagine what NASA may have had planned.
Records indicate Wernher Von Braun envisioned a successor booster rocket
to the Saturn V, called the Nova series. Had it been built, the
nuclear/chemical hybrid rocket would have joined the Space Shuttle in a
spacecraft fleet that would have been nothing short of astonishing. One
can only imagine how humans could have landed on the surface of Mars by the early 1980s had everything gone to plan.
dailymail |As swimmers
know, moving cleanly through the water can be a problem due o the huge
amounts of drag created - and for submarines, this is even more of a
problem.
However, US Navy funded researchers say they have a simple solution - a bubble.
Researchers at Penn State Applied Research Laboratory are developing a new system using a technique called supercavitation.
The new idea is based on Soviet technology developed during the cold war.
Called supercavitation, it envelopes a submerged vessel inside an air bubble to avoid problems caused by water drag.
A
Soviet supercavitation torpedo called Shakval was able to reach a speed
of 370km/h or more - much faster than any other conventional torpedoes.
In theory, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h.
This
would reduce the journey time for a transatlantic underwater cruise to
less than an hour, and for a transpacific journey to about 100 minutes,
according to a report by California Institute of Technology in 2001.
However, the technique also results in a bumpy ride - something the new team has solved.
'Basically
supercavitation is used to significantly reduce drag and increase the
speed of bodies in water,' said Grant M. Skidmore, recent Penn State
Ph.D. recipient in aerospace engineering.
'However, sometimes these bodies can get locked into a pulsating mode.'
Creating a
supercavitation bubble and getting it to pulsate in order to stop the
pulsations inside a rigid-walled water tunnel tube had not been done.
'Eventually
we ramped up the gas really high and then way down to get pulsation,'
said Jules W. Lindau, senior research associate at ARL and associate
professor of aerospace engineering.
They found that once they had supercavitation with pulsation, they
could moderate the air flow and, in some cases, stop pulsation.
'Supercavitation technology might eventually allow high speed underwater supercavitation transportation,' said Moeney.
China is also developing a'supersonic' submarine that could travel from Shanghai to San Francisco in less than two hours.
Researchers
say their new craft uses a radical new technique to create a 'bubble'
to surround itself, cutting down drag dramatically.
In theory, the researchers say, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h.
The technology was developed by a team of scientists at Harbin Institute of Technology's Complex Flow and Heat Transfer Lab.
Li Fengchen, professor of fluid machinery and engineering, told the South China Morning Post he was 'very excited by its potential'.
The new sub is based on Soviet technology developed during the cold war.
sagepub | Scientists have initially rejected many theories
that later achieved widespread consensus. In some instances, the
rejection lasted for half a century or more, until enough new evidence
arrived to convert all but the most obstinate opponents, who often
carried their opposition to the grave.1
The canonical example in the earth sciences is continental drift. First
proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, continental drift did not achieve
consensus until the mid-1960s.2
The theory of meteorite impact cratering on the Moon and the Earth
provides another example. We can date its origin to a classic 1893 paper
by the great American geologist G. K. Gilbert3
and the beginning of its broad acceptance to 1964 and the first
returned photographs of lunar craters from the Ranger missions to the
Moon. Both rejections stemmed mainly from the allegiance of geologists
to the principle of uniformitarianism, which eschewed catastrophic
events such as moving continents and colliding meteorites. Anthropogenic
global warming offers a third example. First proposed by Svante
Arrhenius in 1896, within a few years it had become almost universally
rejected, based on a single, misinterpreted experiment.4
Its acceptance began with the first results of computerized climate
modeling in the mid-1960s. The pioneer of climate modeling, Syukuro
Manabe, won the 2021 Nobel prize in physics for his early work. Today we
can only wonder what the effect would have been had scientists in the
first half of the twentieth century retained AGW as a working
hypothesis.
One would hope and expect that in
the internet age, with its online journals, instant communication, and
vastly improved scientific methods and instrumentation, premature
rejection would be a thing of the past. The reaction to the Younger
Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), introduced in 2007, shows that this
assumption is incorrect.5 Within months of its appearance, two authors6 called the hypothesis a “Frankenstein Monster” and in 2011, the same two plus others7
compared it to UFOs and other examples of “pathological science” and
wrote its “requiem.” Yet after a comprehensive review of the literature
in 2021, Sweatman8
concluded: “Probably, with the YD impact event essentially confirmed,
the YD impact hypothesis should now be called a ‘theory’.” The question
this article seeks to answer is how scientists can so thoroughly reject a
hypothesis, even write its requiem, only to have it emerge in little
more than a decade strengthened and deserving of possible promotion to
the status of theory.
It should have been clear to readers, including
peer reviewers, that Pinter and Ishman had offered hyperbolic language
but no actual evidence against the YDIH; that Surovell et al.37 had failed to sample the YDB and/or made fatal errors in procedure; and that the samples reported by Scott et al.40 and used by Pinter et al.7 and Daulton et al.49
had not come from the YDB and therefore did not bear directly on the
impact hypothesis. Instead of critically examining and rejecting these
false claims, many geologists and impact specialists embraced them,
thereby allowing an alleged absence of evidence to trump abundant,
peer-reviewed evidence, even photographic evidence. Then a kind of
“groupthink” seems to have set in, rendering the YDIH beneath further
consideration.
The broader lesson from impact
cratering, continental drift, anthropogenic global warming, and now the
YDIH is that it is better to encourage further research than to
prematurely condemn a novel, data-based hypothesis to the dust bin of
science. Unfortunately, once a hypothesis has been prematurely rejected,
even truly “extraordinary evidence” may not be enough to restore it to
scientific respectability.
realitysandwich |DMT (N, N-dimethyltryptamine) is an incredibly powerful, short-lasting tryptamine psychedelic
found naturally in animals, fungi, and a wide variety of plants. DMT
experiences are characterized by fantastic visions and breakthrough
events, including most interestingly, contact with a range of entities.
Among these DMT entities, “machine elves”, or “clockwork elves”, are
some of the most well-recognized in the DMT realm, even
cross-culturally. In this article, we will take a deep dive into machine
elves, and also explore some of the other DMT entities that are
commonly reported in DMT trips.
Overview of DMT Entities
Contact with entities is reported in the majority of DMT trip reports
in the West, but also in a multitude of non-Western cultures. This
ranges from the ancient shamanic traditions of Native Americans to
indigenous Australian and African tribes.
In the West,the psychiatrist Rick Strassman was the first
to conduct human research with DMT at the University of New Mexico
throughout the early 1990s. In the five year study, nearly 400 doses of
DMT were given to 60 volunteers. In his book DMT The Spirit Molecule, where he documents these experiences, Strassman writes,
“I was neither intellectually
nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with
beings occurred in our studies, nor the often utterly bizarre nature of
these experiences.”
Indeed, of the thousand pages of notes taken throughout the course of
Strassman’s research, 50% of them involve interactions with DMT
entities. Similarly, Philip Mayer collected and analyzed 340 DMT trip
reports in 2005. Mayer found that 66% of them (226) referenced
independently-existing entities that interact in an intelligent and
intentional manner.
According to Strassman, the research subjects described contact with
“entities”, “beings”, “aliens”, “guides”, and “helpers”. Contact with
“life-forms” such as clowns, reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, cacti,
and stick figures was commonplace among the volunteers as well.
Interestingly, the DMT entities appear sentient and autonomous in their
behavior, as if denizens of a free-standing, independent reality.
What are Machine Elves and Clockwork Elves?
Machine elves is a term coined by the ethnobotanist,
philosopher, and writer Terence Mckenna to describe some of the entities
that are encountered in a DMT trip. They’ve come to be known by many
names, including “clockwork elves”, “DMT elves”, “fractal elves”, and
“tykes” (a word for small child).
In his book Archaic Revival, Mckenna refers to them as
“self-transforming machine elves.” In any case, they are inhabitants of
the DMT dimension that often try to teach something to whoever is
visiting. McKenna frequently resorts to a series of metaphors to
describe his experiences with machine elves (and the DMT experience in
general), underscoring the difficulty of reducing such ineffable
experiences to the lower dimensionality of language.
As detailed in his book True Hallucinations, Mckenna traveled with his brother and some friends to La Chorrera in the Columbian Amazon in search of Oo-koo-he,
a DMT-containing plant preparation used by the indigenous people to
access the spirit realms. Mckenna found their descriptions of entity
contact resembled his own experiences with the machine elves,
“What was eye-catching about
the description of this visionary plant preparation was that the Witoto
tribe of the Upper Amazon, who alone knew the secret of making it, used
it to talk to “little men” and to gain knowledge from them.“
Machine elves are frequently portrayed in trip reports as benevolent,
playful, prankish, and sometimes ornery. Generally, they’re reported to
greet the visitors with a child-like curiosity and innocence, often
continuously changing form and singing immensely complicated objects
into existence. They commonly urge the DMT realm visitors to try to
focus on what they are showing them, or even want the subject to imitate
what they are doing.
trueself | One of the most common things that people see on DMT is what Terrence
McKenna described as "machine elves." In the 1970s, McKenna and his
brother traveled to the Amazon to try ayahuasca, and experimented with
the drugs for a series of 11 days. They came away having seen " a
universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional,
and extremely alien," according to McKenna, who described these alien
intelligences as "self-transforming machine elves."
There are many different theories as to what these "machine elves"
might actually be. McKenna theorized that the elves were humans from the
future, returning to give us some kind of wisdom or insight.
Other conspiracy theorists have gone down darker paths, with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones theorizing
that the elves are aliens who have taken control of world leaders to do
their malicious biddings. Jones believes the elves are the true source
of the Illuminati, whispering their dark messages into the ears of world
leaders.
Another theory says that machine elves are the same creatures that
appear in folklore across the ages — elves, fairies, imps, and other
magical creatures. Some Celtic people believed that these creatures were
spirits of the dead, returned to communicate with the living.
Anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz chronicled this folklore extensively,
and in his 1911 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, he
proposed that these creatures exist "as a supernormal state of
consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams,
trances, or in various ecstatic conditions."
The "machine elves" also bear similarities to other supernatural creatures. The aforementioned Journal of Psychopharmacology
study found that ""[DMT]-occasioned entity encounter experiences have
many similarities to non-drug entity encounter experiences such as those
described in religious, alien abduction, and near-death contexts."
Some people are far more skeptical, such as James Kent, who proposes
that we see humanoid creatures in DMT visions because "we humans must
have innate evolutionary wetware that forces our senses to latch onto
any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops into otherwise randomly
uniform data."
So what are the machine elves? Are they random
hallucinations, malicious Illuminati members, or visitors from the past
or future here to give us the solutions to all of our problems? It's up
to you to decide.
flashbak | Louis Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939) was an English artist and
diagnosed schizophrenic who made a name from drawing self-conscious,
trippy and anthropomorphic cats and kittens. At the peak of his powers,
he cranked out 1500 original paintings and sketches of cats every year.
They were copied by the million. In Christmas 1903, you could buy 13 new
Louis Wain books. He illustrated more than two-hundred books and had
sixteen very successful Christmas annuals. “He made the cat his own,”
said the author H.G. Wells. “He invented a cat style, a cat society, a
whole cat world.” He was elected president of the National Cat Club, of
course. “Louis Wain was on all our walls some 15 to 20 years ago,” wrote
politician Ramsay MacDonald in 1925. “Probably no artist has given a
greater number of young people pleasure than he has.”
A cat that has “lived a life of ease, seeing nobody and
nothing beyond its mistress, will exhibit the most striking
characteristics of its mistress. Another cat will, perhaps, show itself
in the highest degree suspicious, taking after its master or mistress
again; while a fourth, that has had to fight his way, will quarrel and
rush at everything; and a fifth, that has been allowed to roam the
country, will ruffle up its straw, get underneath its bed to hide right
out of sight, and nothing but force will move it.”
– Wain – the November 1889 issue of Cassell’s Magazine on what he had learned from judging cat shows.
Wain was 24 when he sold his first drawing of cats to The Illustrated London News. Called ‘A Kitten’s Christmas Party’, the
picture portrayed 150 cats doing all manner of humanistic things –
holding a ball, sending invitations, playing games and making speeches.
Spread over two pages, it was an instant hit. A few years earlier he’d
sold his first picture: a drawing of bullfinches. He drew more birds
and animals with little success. And then came the catharsis. At age 23,
Wain fell ill. Peter, a black-and-white cat, would sit on his bed. Wain
passed the time by sketching his pal and handing the sketches to his
wife, Emily. One picture featured 150 cats, each one doing its own
thing. Success was his. Then tragedy struck. Three years after their
marriage, Emily died.
How this changed Wain, we cannot be certain. But he never remarried
and his mental health deteriorated. Despite huge commercial success, by
the 1920’s Wain was broke. In 1924 he was committed to the pauper ward
of London’s Springfield Mental Hospital. He continued to drew cats,
experimenting with new styles and colours.
In 1925, his plight became common knowledge. A public appeal was made
that raised £2,300. The money enabled Wain to move to the Bethlem Royal
Hospital.
In 1930 Wain was transferred to Napsbury Hospital, near St Albans.
Exhibitions of his work were held in London in 1931 and 1937, as well as
a memorial exhibition shortly after his death.
micro-magnet |Common
to all eukaryotic cells, these filaments are primarily structural in
function and are an important component of the cytoskeleton, along with
microtubules and often the intermediate filaments. Microfilaments range
from 5 to 9 nanometers in diameter and are designed to bear large
amounts of tension. In association with myosin, microfilaments
help to generate the forces used in cellular contraction and basic cell
movements. The filaments also enable a dividing cell to pinch off into
two cells and are involved in amoeboid movements of certain types of
cells.
Microfilaments are solid rods made of a protein known as actin. When it is first produced by the cell, actin appears in a globular form (G-actin;
see Figure 1). In microfilaments, however, which are also often
referred to as actin filaments, long polymerized chains of the molecules
are intertwined in a helix, creating a filamentous form of the protein (F-actin).
All of the subunits that compose a microfilament are connected in such
a way that they have the same orientation. Due to this fact, each
microfilament exhibits polarity, the two ends of the filament
being distinctly different. This polarity affects the growth rate of
microfilaments, one end (termed the plus end) typically assembling and
disassembling faster than the other (the minus end).
Unlike microtubules, which typically extend out from the centrosome
of a cell, microfilaments are typically nucleated at the plasma
membrane. Therefore, the periphery (edges) of a cell generally contains
the highest concentration of microfilaments. A number of external
factors and a group of special proteins influence microfilament
characteristics, however, and enable them to make rapid changes if
needed, even if the filaments must be completely disassembled in one
region of the cell and reassembled somewhere else. When found directly
beneath the plasma membrane, microfilaments are considered part of the
cell cortex, which regulates the shape and movement of the cell's
surface. Consequently, microfilaments play a key role in development
of various cell surface projections (as illustrated in Figure 2),
including filopodia, lamellipodia, and stereocilia.
Illustrated
in Figure 2 is a fluorescence digital image of an Indian Muntjac deer
skin fibroblast cell stained with fluorescent probes targeting the
nucleus (blue) and the actin cytoskeletal network (green).
Individually, microfilaments are relatively flexible. In the cells of
living organisms, however, the actin filaments are usually organized
into larger, much stronger structures by various accessory proteins.
The exact structural form that a group of microfilaments assumes depends
on their primary function and the particular proteins that bind them
together. For instance, in the core of surface protrusions called microspikes, microfilaments are organized into tight parallel bundles by the bundling protein fimbrin. Bundles of the filaments are less tightly packed together, however, when they are bound by alpha-actinin
or are associated with fibroblast stress fibers (the parallel green
fibers in Figure 2). Notably, the microfilament connections created by
some cross-linking proteins result in a web-like network or gel form
rather than filament bundles.
Over the course of evolutionary history of the cell, actin has
remained relatively unchanged. This, along with the fact that all
eukaryotic cells heavily depend upon the integrity of their actin
filaments in order to be able to survive the many stresses they are
faced with in their environment, makes actin an excellent target for
organisms seeking to injure cells. Accordingly, many plants, which are
unable to physically avoid predators that might want to eat them or harm
them in some other way, produce toxins that affect cellular actin and
microfilaments as a defensive mechanism. The death cap mushroom, for
example, produces a substance called phalloidin that binds to and stabilizes actin filaments, which can be fatal to cells.
mysteriousuniverse | The entire saga of the US military's modern investigations into UFOs
has been clouded in confusion, obfuscation, and a whole alphabet soup of
acronyms—AATIP, AAWSAP, UAP, etc.—which have enabled the Pentagon's
avoidance of actually answering the real question: is there something
weird going on or not? Since the story of the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program broke in 2017, the Pentagon's story has gone from
acknowledging that AATIP investigated "unidentified aerial phenomena"
(UAPs, not UFOs, which is rather important to them), to saying AATIP had nothing to do with UAPs.
Add to this the strange list of AATIP funded projects and the former
head of AATIP starting a side-project with Blink-182 frontman Tom
DeLonge and you've got the dumbest possible byzantine labyrinth that
could maybe lead to "soft disclosure."
This week, however,Popular Mechanics reported
that they had obtained leaked documents dating to 2009 which show that
not only did AATIP investigate UFOs, but investigated them as possibly
otherworldy or interdimensional phenomena and continued to do so beyond
2012, the year AATIP was "officially" shuttered. Furthermore, AATIP took
an interest in the paranormal phenomena at Utah's famed Skinwalker
Ranch with an interest in harnassing whatever's going on there for
defense purposes. Paranormal weaponry, that's just what we need, right?
The leaked documents come from Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space
Studies (BAASS). The centerpiece is a 494-page "Ten Month Report"
compiled by BAASS for the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems
Applications Program (AAWSAP), the contracting division of the broader
AATIP program. Bob Bigelow,
the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, is a well-known figure in
the UFO world. Bigelow's private research group the National Institute
for Discovery Science (NIDS) was stationed at Skinwalker Ranch
for years after the billionaire purchased the property. Bigelow
Aerospace's involvement with AATIP has also been well-publicized.
In 2008, BAASS was awarded a $10 million contract by AAWSAP for a guaranteed year with a 5-year option. According to Popular Mechanics,
the "Ten Month Report" was one of many such reports given by BAASS to
AAWSAP through the duration of the contract. Throughout the document, it
is clear that what is being investigated is not an unknown foreign
weapons system. From the Popular Mechanics piece:
● Overview of the BAASS Physics
Division’s efforts to conduct research on advanced aerospace vehicles,
including the development of standardization for measurement of physical
effects and signatures associated with UAP.
● Overview of BAASS research for measuring and gleaning the effects on biological organisms from UAP.
● Mention of Skinwalker Ranch in
Utah as a “possible laboratory for studying other intelligences and
possible interdimensional phenomena.”
● Strategic plans to organize a
series of intellectual debate forums targeted to broad audiences
pertaining to the “potential disclosure of an extraterrestrial
presence.”
● Mention of BAASS program dubbed
“Project Northern Tier,” which involved securing documents related to
instances where dozens of UFOs flew over restricted airspaces of
facilities housing nuclear weapons.
● Project databases of UAP-related
materials compiled through various partnerships, and the intent to
expand these databases by coordinating with foreign governments.
● Summaries of multiple UAP events both inside the U.S. and in foreign countries.
● Photographs of UAPs provided by various sources, including foreign governments.
ufos-scientificresearch | The Journal "Progress in Aerospace Sciences"
is an "...invitation only international review journal, designed to be
of broad interest and use to all those concerned with research in
aerospace sciences and their applications in research establishments,
industry and universities."
Volume 128, January 2022 contains
an article by authors Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang,
and Larry G. Lemke. Its title is "Improved instrumental techniques
including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of
unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics." The
article was made available on line on 9 December 2021. Many thanks to
researcher Jonathan Davies for pointing me to this article.
Contents
The
introduction spells out that precisely identifying unknown material is
an issue, in a number of areas, e.g. medicine, space exploration, and
military intelligence.
The first section of the article reviews
analytical processes which are currently in use, e.g. mass spectrometry
and x-ray spectroscopy. The second section "Basic approaches for the
initial characterization of unknown materials" reports on the material
analysis using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and
Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS.) These determine the masses of
atomic components of the material. Other analytical processes are also
discussed.
Council Bluffs, Iowa, a case study
Section
3 "Investigating unknown material collected in the field: A Case Study"
concerns an incident on the 17 December 1977, which occurred in Council
Bluffs, Iowa. At 1945 CST "...a red, luminous mass was observed by two
Council Bluffs residents, as it fell to Earth near the northern city
limits..." At the scene the witnesses found an area "...covered by
molten metal that glowed red-orange, igniting the grass. Police and fire
brigade personnel who attended the scene within 15 minutes all saw the
mass, estimated at 35-55 pounds. An investigation was conducted with
three initial thoughts in mind. These were, an industrial accident, an
aeronautical malfunction or a meteorite (despite there being no
cratering.) After investigations, it was concluded that it was not
re-entering space debris; not falling material from an aircraft, not a
meteorite, nor was it a hoax. It was also noted that two witnesses of
the eleven witnesses, described a round object hovering in the sky,
edged by red blinking lights.
The retrieved material had three
components, namely "solid metal, slag and white ash inclusions in the
slag." Vallee provided a piece of the original material for further
testing. "...our initial conclusion was that sample components were
consistent with a terrestrial origin." A recently developed Multiplexed
Ion Beam Imaging" (MIBI) instrument was used which is capable of
measuring a broader range of isotopes. Using this instrument
investigators concluded that "All isotopic ratios were similar between
the samples and did not show any statistically significant deviations
from expected terrestrial normal except for 57Fe..." However, there was a
suggested conventional explanation for this 57Fe deviation.
Speculative conclusions
Section 5, "Speculative conclusions" includes the statement:
"Our
experience with the Council Bluffs case study shows how difficult such a
determination can be, even when abundant evidence is collected within
minutes of an event, supported by reliable testimony from multiple
witnesses and in well-defined meteorological conditions."
The
authors speculate about the hovering, round object edged with red
lights; that "Such an object might have ejected the mass of material
observed by the other witnesses and recovered by police." They note that
"The materials from Council Bluff show no evidence suggesting it was
(sic) been engineered or designed. The material would not be expected to
form naturally, and has been shown does have unusual inhomogeneity."
cia.gov |A total of 25,449 trials were conducted under a variety of protocols. Analysisindicates that the odds that our result are notdue to simple statistical fluctuationsalone are better than 2 X 1020to 1 (i.e. 2 followed by 20 zeros). Using acceptedcriteriasetforthinthestandardbehavioralsciences,weconcludethatthisconstitutes convincing, if not conclusive.21
The psychogenetic effort has been divided into various categorieswithin these processes. The various categories within this domain are defined as follows: (1)Forced-Choice–remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a limited (andknown) set of potentialsymbols (e.g. the integers 0, 1)
(2)RV-Lab–remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a large set of potentialmaterials(e.g.photographsofnaturalscenes,naturalphysical locations), and the experiments are conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
(3)RV-Ops–remote viewing where the targets are drawn from specific targets of interest
(4)Search–remote viewing where the targets are generally known but their locationis unknown (e.g. a specific military aircraft is known to have crashed–where isit?)22
Theirpoint was clear that the remote viewing was convincing, if not conclusive, for thesefour categories, which wasapparentlyuseful to the military objective.
The CIA made acritical review on the remote viewing, even before the GRILL FLAME wasofficiallyestablished in the late 1970s.Dr. Ross Adey was asked to review the outcome in1984,and at the end ofthe1980s, the SRI itself wasordered todemonstratethe effectivenessof their researches.
Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the
belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the
"natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence
of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the
extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that
research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On
the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns
tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously
unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common
concept of "space visitors". Five specific arguments articulated here
contradict the ETH:
unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts
the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an
advanced race;
the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.
futurism | David Bohm’s influence extends beyond
physics to embrace philosophy, psychology, religion, art, and
linguistics. Interestingly, his ideas have been received more
enthusiastically by the arts community than by the scientific
establishment. The Tibetan Master Sogyal Rinpoche once remarked that
there are striking parallels between Bohm’s model of the universe and
the Buddhist *bardo* teachings, as they both “spring from a vision of
wholeness.”
Bohm had
doubts about the theory of quantum mechanics and its ability to fully
explain the workings of the universe. Despite having written a classic
textbook on quantum mechanics, Bohm, agreed with Albert Einstein that
“God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” While working on plasmas at
the Lawrence Radiation laboratory in California in the 1940s, Bohm
noticed that once electrons were in a plasma (which has a high density
of electrons and positive ions), they stopped behaving like individual
particles and started behaving like a unit. It seemed as if the sea of
electrons was somehow alive. He thought then that there was a deeper
cause behind the random nature of the subatomic world.
Bohm
came up with an idea of the quantum potential to suggest that subatomic
particles are highly complex, dynamic entities that follow a precise
path which is determined by subtle forces. In his view the quantum
potential pervades all space and guides the motion of particles by
providing information about the whole environment.
For
Bohm, all of reality was a dynamic process in which all manifest
objects are in a state of constant flux. By introducing the concepts of “implicate order” and “explicate order”,
Bohm argued that the empty space in the universe contained the whole of
everything. It is the source of explicate order, the order of the
physical world, and is a realm of pure information. From it, the
physical, observable phenomena unfold, and again, return to it. This
unfolding of the explicit order from the subtle realm of the implicate
order, and the movement of all matter in terms of enfolding and
unfolding, is what Bohm called the Holomovement.
Bohm believed that although the universe appears to be solid, it is, in
essence, a magnificent hologram. He believed in the “whole in every
part” idea, and just like a hologram, each part of physical reality
contained information about the whole.
Bohm was not the only scientist who
arrived at this conclusion. In neuroscience, Karl Pribram, who was
working on the functioning of the brain, concluded that memories are
encoded not in specific regions of the brain, but in patterns of nerve
impulses that crisscross the brain in the same way that patterns of
laser light interference crisscross the area containing a holographic
image. Together, Bohm and Pribram worked on developing the so called
“Holonomic Model” of the functioning of the brain.
Bohm
believed that his body was a microcosm of the macrocosm, and that the
universe was a mystical place where past, present, and future coexisted.
He postulated the existence of a realm of pure information (the
implicate order) from which the physical, observable phenomena unfold.
Unlike classical physics where reality is viewed as particles of
separate, independent elements, Bohm proposed that the fundamental
reality is the continuous enfoldment (into the implicate order) and
unfoldment (of the explicate order) from the subtle realms. In this
flow, matter and space are each part of the whole.
In stark contrast to Western ways of thinking about the nature of reality as external and mechanistic, Bohm considers our separateness an illusion
and argues that at a deeper level of reality, we, as well as all the
particles that make up all matter, are one and indivisible. For Bohm,
the “empty space” is full of energy and information. It’s a hidden world
of the implicate order, also known as the “Zero Point Field” or the
“Akasha”.
archive |MISHLOVE: You're very well known in
psychology
and in neuropsychology as the developer of the holographic or
holonomic
model of the brain. Can you talk about that a little bit, and how
it
relates to the mind -- or rather, to the mind-body process? I have to
be
on my toes with you today. PRIBRAM: Yes. The holonomic brain theory
is based
on some insights that Dennis Gabor had.
He was the inventor of the hologram, and he obtained the Nobel Prize
for
his many contributions. He was a mathematician, and what he was trying
to do was develop a better way of making electron micrographs, improve
the resolution of the micrographs. And so for electron microscopy he
suggested
that instead of making a photograph -- essentially, with electron
microscopes
we make photographs using electrons instead of photons. He thought
maybe
instead of making ordinary photographs, that what he would do is get
the
interference patterns. Now what is aninterference pattern?
When light strikes, or when electrons strike any object, they scatter.
But the scatter is a funny kind of scatter. It's a very well regulated
scatter. For instance, if you defocus the lens on a camera so that you
don't get the image falling on the image plane and you have a blur,
that
blur essentially is a hologram, because all you have to do is refocus
it.
MISHLOVE: Contained in the blur is
the actual
image.
PRIBRAM: That's right. But you don't
see it as
such. Soone of the main principles ofholonomic brain
theory,
which gets us into quantum mechanics also, is that there is a
relationship
here between what we ordinarily experience, and some other process or
some
other order, which David Bohm calls the implicate,
or enfolded, order, in which things are all distributed
or
spread -- in fact the mathematical formulations are often called spread
functions -- that spread this out.
MISHLOVE: Now what you're talking
about here
is the deep structure of the universe, in a way. Beneath the subatomic
level of matter itself are these quantum wave functions, so to
speak,
and they form interference patterns. Would I be wrong in saying it
would
be like dropping two stones in a pond, the way the ripples overlap? Is
that like an interference pattern?
PRIBRAM: That's certainly the way
interference
patterns work, yes.
MISHLOVE: And you're suggesting
that at that
very deep level of reality, something is operating in the brain itself.
PRIBRAM: Well, no. In a way, that's
possible, but
that's not where the situation is at the moment. All we know is that
the
mathematical descriptions that we make of, let's say, single-cell
processes,
and the branches from the single cells, and how they interact with each
other -- not only anatomically, but actually functional interactions --
that when we map those, we get a description that is very similar to
the
description of quantum events.
MISHLOVE: When you take into
account that there
are billions of these single cells operating in the brain.
PRIBRAM: That's right. And the
connections between
them, so there are even more; there are trillions of connections
between
them. They operate on the basic principles that have been found to also
operate at the quantum level. Actually, it was the other way around.
The
mathematics that Gabor used, he borrowed from Heisenberg and Hilbert.
Hilbert
developed them first in mathematics, and then Heisenberg used them in
quantum
mechanics, and Gabor used them in psychophysics, and we've used it in
modeling
how brain networks work.
MISHLOVE: So in other words, in the
brain,when
we look at the electrical impulses traveling through the neurons, and
the
patterns as these billions of neurons interact, you would say that that
is analogous, I suppose, or isomorphic to the processes that are going
on at the deeper quantum level.
PRIBRAM: Yes. But we don't know that
it's a deeper
quantum level in the brain.
MISHLOVE: That may or may not be
the case.
PRIBRAM: Analogous isn't quite the
right word;
they obey the same rules. It's not just an analogy, because the work
that
described these came independently. An analogy would be that you take
the
quantum ideas, and see how they fit to the data we have on the brain.
That's
not the way it happened. We got the brain data first, and then we see,
look, it fits the same mathematics. So the people who were gathering
these
data, including myself, weren't out to look for an analogous process. I
think it's a very important point, because otherwise you could be
biased,
and there are lots of different models that fit how the brain works.
But
this is more based on how the brain was found to work, independent of
these
conceptions.
MISHLOVE: Independent of any model.
PRIBRAM: Yes, essentially independent
of any model.
MISHLOVE: So you've got a
mathematical structure
that parallels the mathematical structures of quantum physics. Now what
does that tell us about the mind?
PRIBRAM: What it tells me is that the
problems
that have been faced in quantum mechanics for the whole century --
well,
since the twenties --
MISHLOVE: Many paradoxes.
PRIBRAM: And very many paradoxes --
that those
paradoxes also apply at the psychophysical level and at the neuronal
level,
and therefore we have to face the same sets of problems. At the same
time,
I think what David Bohm is doing is showing that some of the classical
conceptions which were thought not to apply at the quantum level,
really
do apply at the quantum level. Now, I'm interpreting Bohm; I'm not sure
he would want to agree to my interpretation of what he's doing. But to
me that seems to be what is going on. So that the schism between levels
-- between the quantum level, the submicroscopic almost, subatomic
level
and what goes on there, and the classical, so-called uncertainty
principle
and all of that -- that all applies all the way along; but you've got
to
be very careful in -- how should I put it? You've got to apply it to
the
actual data, and not just sort of run it over.
MISHLOVE: To the average layman,
why would they
be interested in this? Is there some significance to people in
their
everyday lives, or in their workaday worlds, in the business of
life?
PRIBRAM: Sure, and this is the critical
thing --
that if indeed we're right that these quantum-like phenomena, or the
rules
of quantum mechanics, apply all the way through to our psychological
processes,
to what's going on in the nervous system -- then we have an explanation
perhaps, certainly we have a parallel, to the kind of experiences that
people have called spiritual experiences. Because the descriptions
you
get with spiritual experiences seem to parallel the descriptions of
quantum
physics. That's why Fritjof Capra wrote The Tao of Physics,
why we have The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and all of this sort of
thing
that's come along. And in fact Bohr and Heisenberg already knew;
Schroedinger
talked about the Upanishads, and Bohr used the yin and yang as
his
symbol. Because the conceptions that grew out of watching the quantum
level
-- and therefore now the neurological and psychophysical level, now
that
it's a psychological level as well -- seem to have a great deal in
common
with our spiritual experience. Now what do I mean by spiritual
experience?
You talked about mental activity, calling it the mind. That aspect of
mental
activity, which is very human -- it may be true of other species as
well,
but we don't know -- but in human endeavor many of us at least seem to
need to get in contact with larger issues, whether they're cosmology,
or
some kind of biological larger issue, or a social one, or it's
formalized
in some kind of religious activity. But we want to belong. And that is
what I define as the spiritual aspects of man's nature.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...