Science
Rupert Sheldrake: Now that science and technology seem to be at the peak of the power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Most scientists take it for granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but some, including myself, think that they are symptoms of a deeper malaise. Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical. There is no reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in human heads. These beliefs are powerful not because most scientists think about them critically, but because they don’t. The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith. The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still need working out, but the fundamental questions are settled, in principle.
NASA and Houston-based company GRoK Technologies will work on the development of new “breakthrough products,” noninvasive medical technologies designed to “regenerate bone and muscle tissues.”
Human skin cells have been turned into stem cells which have the potential to develop into fully-formed embryos, simply by bathing them in weak citric acid for half an hour, a leading scientist has told The Independent on Sunday.
On Tuesday evening more than 3 million people tuned in to watch ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye debate Ken Ham, founder of the biblically literalist Creation Museum on the topic ‘Is creation a viable model of origins?’ Mr. Ham believes that the world was created over a six 24-hour-day period about 6,000 years ago, and that all living land animals today are descended from those taken aboard Noah’s Ark some 4,500 years ago. Nye challenged Ham’s literal biblical view on several fronts, pointing out that radioisotopic and ice core data shows that the Earth has been around for far longer than the 6,000 years that Ham says it is, as does our ability to view stars that are more than 6,000 light years away. Nye also pointed out that Noah’s Ark, were it constructed the way the Bible says it was, wouldn’t actually stay afloat.”
A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests memory is faulty and can insert things from the present into memories from the past. In terms of accuracy, your memory is no video camera. Rather, memory rewrites the past with current information, updating your recollections with new experiences to aid survival. Love at first sight, for example, is more likely a trick of your memory than a Hollywood-worthy moment. READ MORE: Your memory is no video camera: It edits the past with present experiences
Conventional thinking has it that the universe and all the matter within it exploded out from a single point, the so-called Big Bang Singularity. But a German theoretical physicists says this never happened. Instead, the universe started empty and cold, slowly emerging from a deep freeze.
“He moistened his lips uneasily.” It sounds like a cheap romance novel, but this line is actually lifted from quite a different type of prose: a neuroscience study. Along with other sentences, including “Have you got enough blankets?” and “And what eyes they were”, it was used to build the first map of how the brain processes the building blocks of speech – distinct units of sound known as phonemes. The map reveals that the brain devotes distinct areas to processing different types of phonemes. It might one day help efforts to read off what someone is hearing from a brain scan.
![Time Is an Illusion: Past, Present, and Future All Exist Now [MUST SEE VIDEO]](http://i1.wp.com/consciouslifenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/illusion-of-time-Brian-Greene.jpg?resize=675%2C240&ssl=1 "Time Is an Illusion: Past, Present, and Future All Exist Now [MUST SEE VIDEO]")
Brian Greene, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University, presents interesting information about the nature of space-time, including an explanation of how past, present, and future all exist in the now.
NewsyScience: An astrobiologist says the jelly donut-shaped Martian rock appears to be a kind of fungus that grew into the shot rather than being physically moved there.
What if the universe itself is math? That’s what cosmologist Max Tegmark believes. In Tegmark’s view, everything in the universe — humans included — is part of a mathematical structure. All matter is made up of particles, which have properties such as charge and spin, but these properties are purely mathematical, he says. And space itself has properties such as dimensions, but is still ultimately a mathematical structure.
SA’s Physical Science Research Program will conduct physics research using the agency’s new microgravity laboratory, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2016.
For the first time in history, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have captured how our brain makes memories in video, watching how molecules morph into the structures that, at the end of the day, make who we are.
Renowned British scientist Stephen Hawking has stunned physicists by declaring there are no black holes. In a paper published online, Professor Hawking says instead of black holes there are grey holes. The fresh theory tries to address what is known as the black-hole firewall paradox, which has puzzled scientists for almost two years. The professor’s new grey hole theory would allow matter and energy to be held for a period of time before being released back into space. The theory offers a solution to the paradox.
Biophysicists theorize that plants tap into the eerie world of quantum entanglement during photosynthesis. But the evidence to date has been purely circumstantial. Now, scientists have discovered a feature of plants that cannot be explained by classical physics alone — but which quantum mechanics answers quite nicely. The fact that biological systems can exploit quantum effects is quite astounding. In a way, they’re like mini-quantum computers capable of scanning all possible options in order to choose the most efficient paths or solutions. For plants, this means the ability to make the most of the energy they receive and then deliver that energy from leaves with near perfect efficiency.
Scientists have long known that common emotions can trigger sensations in our bodies — whether it’s butterflies in the stomach (anxiety) or hot cheeks (shame). And now a new study suggests that we all have the same bodily sensations associated with our feelings regardless of culture or language — because the mind-body connection is biological, and is linked to our very drive for survival.
