Science
Scientists found that “volitional control and awareness of breathing engage distinct but overlapping brain circuits.” What does this mean? Basically, when we voluntarily control the breath, even if we just focus on the breath, we create additional access and synchronicity between different parts of the brain.
We simply cannot observe and measure everything, so how does that impact what we’ve discovered about everything else we are measuring? There are so many variants to consider when trying to prove anything. We can speculate all we want, but how can we ever prove anything without a shadow of a doubt?
Science says there’s a good chance you don’t know what really makes you happy. When estimating our happiness, we humans tend to engage in something called “impact bias” where we overestimate the actual effect that different outcomes will have on our lives.
When if they think they’d be happier winning the lottery or becoming paraplegic, most people quite understandably respond that they’d be happier with all that money and no handicap.
Still, real life statistics show that one year after winning the lottery or losing the use of their lower body, people in both these groups are equally happy. Yes, really, EQUALLY.
No time to read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time? Here are Hawking’s big ideas… made simple via animation.
New research demonstrates that it is possible to replicate the heart through 3D printing using biological materials. How far will technology go?
Just as the scientists of today have evolved the tools to penetrate the secrets of the physical, so scientists of the future will evolve the tools to penetrate beyond the physical. This will mean developing as yet unused forms of perception – effectively, our “inner senses” – to the point at which they, too, will be as useful in the search for knowledge and understanding as our familiar five physical senses.
The old adage, “Never Go to angry” now has some scientific support. Read this.
Best-selling author Steven Kotler recently visited Big Think to discuss the optimization of consciousness through flow states, a key topic in his recently published book, The Rise of Superman. The best way to describe a flow state is to use the example of practically every action movie released since The Matrix. Experiencing flow is similar to being in “bullet time.” Like Keanu Reeves’ Neo (though certainly not on his level), a person in flow obtains the ability to keenly hone their focus on the task at hand so that everything else disappears.
In the latest episode of What On Earth? on the Science Channel, viewers can gaze at recently taken satellite images showing the archaeological site, Nan Madol, from above. There are walls that are 25 feet tall and 17 feet thick. As Dr Patrick Hunt, an archaeologist at Stanford University, points out, “Why would somebody build a city out on the middle of the ocean? Why here, so far away from any other known civilization?”
Before there was life on Earth, there were simple chemicals. Somehow, they produced both amino acids and nucleotides that eventually became the proteins and nucleic acids necessary to create single cells. And the single cells became plants and animals. Research this century has revealed how the primordial chemical soup created the building blocks of life. But it’s still a mystery how the amino acid building blocks were first assembled according to coded nucleic acid templates into the proteins that formed the machinery of all cells.
In an article published in the journal Nature, an international team said the 30-meter void deep within the pyramid is situated above the structure’s Grand Gallery, and has a similar cross-section. The purpose of the space is unclear, and it’s not yet known whether it was built with a function in mind or if it’s merely a gap in the pyramid’s architecture.
The idea that you remain conscious in the moments after death really is like something out of a horror movie, and it becomes even more terrifying when you put yourself in that situation. Imagine what it would be like to hear doctors talking about your death, but not being able to move or respond in any way; no longer living, but thinking as if you were.
Ancient manuscripts describe sound levitating heavy objects, perhaps aiding in the building of huge pyramids and monuments. Ancient texts, all over the globe, describe sound as an effective method to move and alter dense physical matter.
Researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, recently published their findings, which ultimately left them wondering why the universe hasn’t been destroyed.
“The world we experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the outside in.” ~ Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom
