Time To Travel

Time travel is the concept of movement (such as by a human) between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space, typically using a hypothetical device known as a time machine, in the form of a vehicle or of a portal connecting distant points in time.

Time travel is a recognized concept in philosophy and fiction, but traveling to an arbitrary point in time has a very limited support in theoretical physics, and usually only in conjunction with quantum mechanics or Einstein–Rosen bridges.

In a more narrow sense, one-way time travel into the future via time dilation is a proven phenomenon in relativistic physics, but traveling any significant "distance" requires motion at speeds close to the speed of light, which is not feasible for human travel with current technology.

The concept was touched upon in various earlier works of fiction, but was popularized by H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine, which moved the concept of time travel into the public imagination, and it remains a popular subject in science fiction.

Forward in time

Some ancient myths depict skipping forward in time. In Hindu mythology, the Mahabharata mentions the story of King Raivata Kakudmi, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn when he returns to Earth that many ages have passed.


The Buddhist Pāli Canon mentions the relativity of time. The Payasi Sutta tells of one of the Buddha's chief disciples, Kumara Kassapa, who explains to the skeptic Payasi that, "In the Heaven of the Thirty Three Devas, time passes at a different pace, and people live much longer. "In the period of our century; one hundred years, only a single day; twenty four hours would have passed for them."


The Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō", first described in the Nihongi (720) tells of a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who visits an undersea palace. After three days, he returns home to his village and finds himself 300 years in the future, where he has been forgotten, his house is ruins, and his family has died.

Backwards in time

Like forward time travel, backward time travel has an uncertain origin. Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) is a series of letters from British ambassadors in 1997 and 1998 to diplomats in the past, conveying the political and religious conditions of the future.


Because the narrator receives these letters from his guardian angel, Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of Futuristic Fiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel."


Madden does not explain how the angel obtains these documents, but Alkon asserts that Madden "deserves recognition as the first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backward from the future to be discovered in the present."


Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig dance in a vision shown to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Past.


In 1836 Alexander Veltman published Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii (The Forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon), which has been called the first original Russian science fiction novel and the first novel to use time travel.


The narrator rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff, meets Aristotle, and goes on a voyage with Alexander the Great before returning to the 19th century.


In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), editor August Derleth claims that an early short story about time travel is "Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism", written for the Dublin Literary Magazine by an anonymous author in 1838.


While the narrator waits under a tree for a coach to take him out of Newcastle, he is transported back in time over a thousand years.


He encounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery and explains to him the developments of the coming centuries. However, the story never makes it clear whether these events are real or a dream.

Acting On Intuition

The word confidence is used both for the human feeling that a decision is correct and for the mathematical reliability of a calculated answer.

Now it seems these two meanings are more similar than expected.

Even though you don't know it, most of your decisions are actually based on statistics rather than intuition.

The word confidence is used both for the human feeling that a decision is correct and for the mathematical reliability of a calculated answer. 

Now it seems these meanings are more similar than thought. 

Even though you don't know it, your decisions (like whether to play or fold) are based on statistics rather than intuition

Adam Kepecs, professor of neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the subjective feeling of confidence is actually based on secret objective calculations performed by the brain.

'The feeling ultimately relies on the same statistical computations a computer would make,' he says.

Writing in the journal Cell, Professor Kepecs describes a series of experiments that prove that confidence in a decision is based on number-crunching rather than guesswork.

He and graduate student Joshua Sanders created video games to compare human and computer performance.

Human volunteers listened to streams of clicks to determine which were faster, and then rated their confidence their decision.

The scientists found that human responses were similar to statistical calculations.

In a follow-on experiment, people were asked questions comparing the populations of countries. 

This was more complex, because it included each participant's individual knowledge. 

Even with 'human foibles' such as being overconfident with poor data or under-confident with easy decisions, decisions were consistent with the model.

The scientists found that human responses were similar to statistical calculations...  and, while we might find this very interesting (to say the least) we still think our decisions and subsequent action are based upon some sort of "gut" feeling most of the time that, of course, is then predicated upon education and experience.

And, I suppose that this work for intuition that is both logical as well as illogical?


 

Brave New Earth

Scientists at UCLA have discovered that Earth is made up of two planets: Earth and Theia. 

Theia, a Mars-sized protoplanet, crashed into Earth 4.5 billion years ago when Earth was just 100 million years old. 

Previously, the giant impact hypothesis suggested that Theia sideswiped Earth, knocking off a chunk.

That chunk, the theory goes, became the moon.  Theia then continued on its journey through space. 

However, this new research, published in the journal Science, suggests that when Theia collided with Earth, it hit head on and fused with Earth instead of continuing its trek through the stars. That means that Theia is still here, under our feet. It's a part of Earth.

The study, which was funded by NASA, the Deep Carbon Observatory and a grant from the European Research Council, focused on comparing moon rocks to Earth matter. 

The findings led the research team to the conclusion that Earth and the moon are so similar because the moon was created at the same time that Theia impacted and altered Earth. 

Richard Young, head researcher and professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry, says that after the impact, "Theia was thoroughly mixed into both the Earth and the moon, and evenly dispersed between them." 

The identical nature of moon and Earth matter has long confounded scientists in understanding the relationship between the two planetary bodies. 

To try and get a firm grasp on the expected differences, Young and his team compared seven moon rocks (brought back by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions) to five Earth rocks. 

The terrestrial rocks were gathered from Earth's mantle in Hawaii and Arizona. According to UCLA, "Young's research team used state-of-the-art technology and techniques to make extraordinarily precise and careful measurements, and verified them with UCLA’s new mass spectrometer." 

By studying the chemical signatures of the rocks' oxygen atoms, Young and his team were able to determine that the moon and Earth-as-we-now-know-it did, in fact, result from the same event: Theia's collision and fusion with Earth. 

Young elaborates, "This explains why we don't see a different signature of Theia in the moon versus Earth." 

The head-on collision also raises questions about the origin of water on Earth. 

Young suggests that water could have been present before Theia's impact, or it could have been brought to Earth by water-rich asteroid impacts millions of years later. 

Young notes that, "Collisions of growing bodies occurred very frequently back then." 

Young points out that Mars seems to have escaped any such impacts — as far as we know. 

Young also offers insight into the planet that could have been. 

Had Theia not collided and fused with Earth, it might have evolved from a planetary embryo into a true planet. 

However, we should be thankful that 4.5 billion years ago Theia undertook its crash course. 

Without it, we would not have the moon, and life as we know it would not exist.

Cloned Food Source

As the population of China has become wealthier and increasingly urbanized, the country’s consumption of meat has reportedly quadrupled in the past 40 years, and producers have struggled to keep up with demand. 

Now commercial genetics company BoyaLife plans to increase the supply of beef by cloning cows on an industrial scale, according to a recent press release.

Cloning livestock enables farmers to ensure a high, consistent quality of meat by allowing them to choose animals with the most desirable qualities, such as resistance to disease and large size. 

So it's not surprising that this technology isn't new; since Dolly the sheep was born in 1996, scientists have cloned animals including goats, horses, cats, and rabbits. 

Last year, another Chinese company called BGI opened a factory that produced pork from cloned pigs.

But this is the first time cloned cattle have been produced on an industrial scale. 

At first, the company plans to produce 100,000 cloned cows per year—more than 6 times the size of the largest American cattle farms, and 200 times the number of pigs produced annually at BGI’s facility—and will gradually build up to 1 million per year.

Genetically modified crops are a contentious issue in China, but it’s unclear if cloned beef will undergo the same scrutiny. In the U.S., opinions vary. In 2006, the FDA concluded that meat from cloned animals is safe and wouldn’t require any additional labeling to be sold commercially. 

However, detractors say the agency hasn’t looked at the long-term effects on human health, and some vendors such as Whole Foods have vowed not to sell meat from cloned livestock.

BoyaLife left out some important details from its press release, including how it will find the feed for so many cattle when the industry is already under strain in China, and how it will mitigate the environmental impact of so many cattle. 

At its facility in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area, not far from Beijing, the company also plans to clone dogs for pets and sniffing as well as racehorses. 

The company plans to start using the facility in the first half of 2016.

Ice Cloud Spotted

According to TrishaThadani of USA Today, A gigantic ice cloud spotted on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, means its southern winter will be even stronger than initially predicted, according to NASA.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently discovered the "monstrous" new ice cloud in Titan's stratosphere, which is the stable area above the moon's active weather layer, according to a NASA press release.

While the past New England winter was thought to be rough, it was nothing compared to Titan's winter season, which lasts about 7 1/2 calendar years. 

Researchers said the ice cloud will make the season even more intense.

Scientists discovered a large ice cloud in 2012, but it was "just the tip of the iceberg" compared to this new cloud, the release said. 

The new cloud hovers over Titan's southern atmosphere at 124 miles, nearly 60 miles lower than the cloud discovered in 2012.

Scientists detected the ice cloud with using Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer, which obtains profiles of the atmosphere at invisible thermal wavelengths, according to the statement.

“When we looked at the infrared data, this ice cloud stood out like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Carrie Anderson, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement. “It practically smacked us in the face.”

With a thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere, Titan is the only world in the solar system — other than Earth —known to have stable liquid on its surface, according to Discovery. 

However, its seas are composed of ethane and methane rather than water.

Although any organisms on Titan would have evolved quite differently that those that evolved on Earth, scientists see Titan as one of the most likely places in our solar system to host alien life, according to Discovery.

"I was so excited, I pretty much fell out of my chair," Anderson said, while presenting the results at a news briefing earlier this month.

Backwards Time

Using the 'holographic principle,' a new study suggests that the ever decreasing entropy of black holes could means that thermodynamic time may go backward near black holes. Time, at least defined thermodynamically, might not always run forward, at least not inside black holes.

Recent research published in Physical Review Letters may have discovered a new area law in general relativity that describes the geometry of black holes as curved "holographic screens."

In their study, Raphael Bousso, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Netta Engelhardt, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, developed an alternative explanation of a black hole's event horizon, the point-of-no-return that separates a black hole from its observers.

In 1974, Stephen Hawking proposed that, due to quantum effects around the event horizon, black holes are slowly evaporating, eventually taking with them all of the information dragged into them by their extreme gravity. 

The apparent destruction of this information is problematic for certain principles within quantum physics, which hold that information about a system cannot be permanently destroyed. 

To resolve this apparent paradox, scientists in the 1990s developed the so-called holographic principle, which held that the information is actually preserved as part of surface fluctuations of the event horizon itself.

The principle states that the facts of the existence of black holes in three-dimensional space is transcribed on a two-dimensional surface – in the same way that flat holographic pictures create 3D illusions.

In their report, Engelhardt and Bousso developed a new area law that indicates the direction of increase for holographic screens. There are two types – a “future holographic screen” and a “past holographic screen” – and they correspond to different gravitational fields.

"Holographic screens are in a sense a local boundary to regions of strong gravitational fields," Engelhardt said. "Future holographic screens correspond to gravitational fields which pull matter together … whereas past holographic screens correspond to regions which spread matter out."

This means that the direction of time is also different for the screens. In the latter, time goes forward. 

Our universe, for instance, is a past holographic screen, so by default, we understand thermodynamic time as always going forward. In future holographic screens on the other hand, time runs backwards.

 

Mean Aliens Ahead

E.T. was the perfect extraterrestrial: Cute, smart and — best of all — a perfect pacifist.

Unfortunately, scientists aren't so sure that an actual intelligent alien would be so benign. In a recent interview with El País, famed physicist Stephen Hawking posited that an alien visitation would put Earthlings in the same position as Native Americans when Columbus landed on their shores.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking speculated.

The likelihood that intelligent life is out there is up for debate; less discussed are the conditions necessary to evolve a life-form that's both smart and nice. But the lessons from Earth suggest that intelligence and aggression might evolve hand-in-hand.


No one really knows how humans got to be so clever. What's clear is that hominin brains began expanding wildly about 2 million years ago. (Hominins include those species after the human lineage — the genus Homo — split from the chimpanzee lineage.) 

By around 100,000 years ago, humans made the never-before-seen leap to inventing language. And by at least 40,000 years ago, our ancestors were making art.

"We have brains that are three times bigger than those of our closest relatives," said Mark Flinn, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who has researched the emergence of human intelligence. 

Humans have unprecedented abilities to think about each other's thoughts and motivations, he said, to play out social scenarios in their brains and to think about the past and future.

"The general presumption is that this is just sort of a natural outcome of the evolutionary process, but that's really giving short shrift to the very special circumstances of human evolution," Flinn said.

Huge brains are expensive. 

They take an enormous number of calories to grow and function (up to 50 percent of intake in infancy and childhood, Flinn said) and make humans basically helpless for years after birth. Read More:

Left In Darkness, They Seek Out Light

From the movie, I Robot,

Detective Del Spooner (played by the actor Will Smith) said:
Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny (the robot) said: Can *you*?

And...

Detective Del Spooner: I thought you were dead.
Sonny: Technically I was never alive, but I appreciate your concern.

Embodied Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies:

1. the modeling of psychological and biological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity,
   
2. the formation of a common set of general principles of intelligent behavior, and
   
3. the experimental use of robotic agents in controlled environments.
   

Embodied cognitive science borrows heavily from embodied philosophy and the related research fields, such as:
neuroscience
psychology
language acquisition
autonomous agent design
artificial intelligence
philosophy

Alan Mathison Turing, (1912– 1954) is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Turning proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak:

“It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best

sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand to speak

English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things

would be pointed out and named, etc. Again, I do not know what the right

answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried...” Turing, 1950.

So, sixty five years ago, there were people in the world who were exploring the feasibility and development of artificial intelligence. However, science fiction writers had broached the subject before 1950, the first of which was in Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift, where a mechanical information generator was mentioned.

As far as movies were concerned, in 1955 This Island Earth featured the interociter and the Hall 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the 1970's, there was Dark Star, Demon Seed, and Rollerball, and The Terminator and War Games in the 1980's. The 1990's gave us The Demolition Man, Freejack, and The Matrix, and from 2000's, we have Iron Man, The Red Planet, and A. I. Artificial Intelligence.

We, as a movie going population, have been completely acclimated and are accepting of the Artificial

Intelligence concept and no doubt with the fantastic expectation that we actually expect it to happen in our lifetime.... and, maybe it will... who knows.... but, is this a good thing?

Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (formerly the American Association for Artificial Intelligence) is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.

AAAI aims to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artificial intelligence, improve the teaching and training of AI practitioners, and provide guidance for research planners and investors regarding the importance and potential of current AI developments and future directions.

But, do we think, that we know all we need to know about Artificial Intelligence? Well, it appears not because UC Berkeley's upper division course CS188: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence is now available to everyone online.

And, students who have taken this course are saying:

"Nothing short of awesome. This is a top-notch class that teaches you a lot of important concepts in optimization and AI, while making you feel like you're on a wonderful adventure of discovery and fun."

The course will introduce the basic ideas and techniques underlying the design of intelligent computer systems and will focus on Behavior from Computation that will cover the following areas:
Statistical and decision–theoretic modeling paradigm.
Reasoning and Learning.
Applications for a wide variety of artificial intelligence problems.



Simply put, the term artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.



Don't some of our smart phones and other smart devices already do some of this... so, are we already so far entrenched with Artificial Intelligence that we cannot turn back... or, can we turn back? But, if we can turn back, should we?



"The Measure of a Man" is the ninth episode of the second season of the syndicated science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the 35th episode overall, first broadcast on February13, 1989. It is written by Melinda M. Snodgrass and directed by Robert Scheerer. In the episode, the android officer Lieutenant Commander Data must fight for his right of self-determination in order not to be declared the property of Starfleet and be disassembled in the name of science.



Picard initially finds Riker's prosecution difficult to challenge: on the account of Data being a human(oid) being, Riker, while apologizing, hits Data's off-switch, causing him to go numb; "Pinocchio is broken: its strings have been cut.", being the most challenging part. However, during a recess, Picard talks to Guinan who suggests that regardless of whether Data is a machine or not, Maddox's goal is tantamount to sanctioning slavery. Picard uses this to defuse Riker's arguments when the court reconvenes. The discussion of Data's sentience turns to metaphysical matters. Picard points out that Data meets two of the three criteria that Maddox uses to define sentient life. Data is intelligent and self-aware, but Picard asks anyone in the court to show a means of measuring consciousness



Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, cautioned against “capitalist forces” developing AI without any sense of morality, arguing it could lead to potentially “uncontrollable military technologies.”
Shanahan’s comments follow warnings from leading scientists and entrepreneurs, including Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.
Gates admitted last month that he doesn’t “understand why some people are not concerned” by the threat of AI.
Speaking to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge last week, Shanahan argued that AI development faces two options.
Either a potentially dangerous AI is developed – with no moral reasoning and based on ruthless optimization processes – or scientists develop AI based on human brains, borrowing from our psychology and even neurology.
“Right now my vote is for option two, in the hope that it will lead to a form of harmonious co-existence [with humanity],” Shanahan said.
AI based on the human brain would not be possible without first mapping the organ – a task the Human Connectome Project (HCP) is undertaking and aims to complete by late 2015.



Stephen Hawking, who has the motor neuron disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease and is paralyzed an unable to speak, is now capable of communicating verbally but only thanks to the help of an advanced artificial intelligence program developed for him by Intel.
“Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate,” Hawking warned.“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”
And let’s not forget, of course, aliens.
“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans,”he recently said.



Americans, like sheep, desire to be clustered in groups and be led to where there is food, opportunity, and shelter without needing to talk with their handlers or lawyers beforehand.

FEEDING THE WORLD

Genetically

Engineered

Crops

by Alex Hutchins

Genetically modified foods, also known as genetically engineered foods, are the latest contribution of genetic engineering technology. These foods are made by inserting genes of other species into their DNA. Though this kind of genetic modification is used both in plants and animals, it is found more commonly in the former than in the later. There are a variety of reasons for developing such foods. For instance, some foods are genetically modified to prevent the occurrence of allergies after consumption, while some are developed to improve their shelf life. It is also been said that experts are working on developing foods that have the ability to cure certain diseases.

 

Advantages

1. One of the major advantage is that they help in controlling the occurrence of certain diseases.
2. It is also said that these foods grow faster than the foods that are grown in the traditional manner.
3. At times, genetically engineered food crops can be grown at places with unfavorable climatic conditions too. A normal crop can grow only in specific season or under some favorable climatic conditions.
4. Though the seeds for such foods are quite expensive, their cost of production is said to be lesser than that of the traditional crops.
5. Genetically engineered foods are said to be high in nutrients, and contain more minerals and vitamins than those found in traditionally grown foods.

Disadvantages

1. The biggest threat caused by this food is that they can have harmful effects on the human body.
2. In many countries, manufacturers do not mention on the label that foods are genetically manufactured because they think that this would affect their business.
3. Many religious and cultural communities are against such foods because they see it as an unnatural way of producing foods.
4. Experts are of the opinion that with the increase of such foods, developing countries would start depending more on industrial countries because it is likely that the food production would be controlled by them in the time to come.

CAVEAT

A renowned cardiologist, Dr. William Davis explains how eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges, and reverse myriad health problems. Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food products made of wheat. 

Wheat Facts    

1. Wheat is the primary grain used in U.S. grain products.  Approximately three-quarters of all U.S. grain products are made from wheat flour.
2. More food is made with wheat than any other cereal grain.
3. U.S. Farmers grow nearly 2.4 billion bushels of wheat on 63 million acres of land.
4. About half the wheat grown in the United States is used domestically.

As Dr. Davis tells it, the hybridization of wheat came about in an effort to improve yield, which is now about tenfold greater per acre than it was a century ago. Older strains of wheat were taller and more prone to damage from wind and rain. Dr. Davis writes that modern wheat is approximately 70 percent carbohydrate by weight.  The carbohydrate is in the form of a starch called amylopectin A.  Far worse, according is Dr. Davis, is the new protean enzyme that this genetically altered wheat created called, Gliadin.  Gliadin, Dr. Davis says, is an opiate that actually causes us to eat more.

Gliadin is a protein found within wheat gluten. It is, from a cold scientific viewpoint, a fascinating issue, a protean protein capable of incredibly varied biologic effects in humans.

Among the things we know about gliadin:

• Gliadin is the most abundant protein in wheat, contained within gluten polymers.

• Gliadin of 2012 is different from the gliadin of, say, 1960, by several amino acids, part of the genetic transformation of wheat introduced to increase yield-per-acre. 

• Gliadin is degraded to a collection of polypeptides called exorphins in the gastrointestinal tract.

• Exorphins cross the blood-brain barrier and bind to opiate-receptors to induce appetite, as well as behavioral changes, such as behavioral outbursts and inattention in children with ADHD and autism, hearing voices and social detachment in schizophrenics, and the mania of bipolar illness. 

Ten Dimensions

I am not a scientist but I am curious about scientific stuff and believe very strongly that life on other planets is highly probable. Our Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy is so large and immense that it would take several lifetimes to cross from boarder to boarder even if we knew have to travel at the speed of light. And, there are literally millions, perhaps billions of galaxies in our Universe. Additionally, the Hubble Telescope, designed to measure and record the distance between planets, is sending back data that our known Universe is still expanding. This is not conjecture, this is fact. So, what is it expanding into?

There is so much that we do not know about our world that I thought it best to print the following article in the hopes of opening up your mind(s).

It is my sincere hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I did.

A Universe of 10 Dimensions

by Matt Williams on December 10, 2014

When someone mentions “different dimensions,” we tend to think of things like parallel universes – alternate realities that exist parallel to our own, but where things work or happened differently. However, the reality of dimensions and how they play a role in the ordering of our Universe is really quite different from this popular characterization.

To break it down, dimensions are simply the different facets of what we perceive to be reality. We are immediately aware of the three dimensions that surround us on a daily basis – those that define the length, width, and depth of all objects in our universes (the x, y, and z axes, respectively).

Beyond these three visible dimensions, scientists believe that there may many more. In fact, the theoretical framework of Superstring Theory posits that the universe exists in ten different dimensions. These different aspects are what govern the universe, the fundamental forces of nature, and all the elementary particles contained within.

The first dimension, as already noted, is that which gives it length (aka. the x-axis). A good description of a one-dimensional object is a straight line, which exists only in terms of length and has no other discernible qualities. Add to it a second dimension, the y-axis (or height), and you get an object that becomes a 2-dimensional shape (like a square).

The third dimension involves depth (the z-axis), and gives all objects a sense of area and a cross-section. The perfect example of this is a cube, which exists in three dimensions and has a length, width, depth, and hence volume. Beyond these three lie the seven dimensions which are not immediately apparent to us, but which can be still be perceived as having a direct effect on the universe and reality as we know it.

Scientists believe that the fourth dimension is time, which governs the properties of all known matter at any given point. Along with the three other dimensions, knowing an objects position in time is essential to plotting its position in the universe.

The other dimensions are where the deeper possibilities come into play, and explaining their interaction with the others is where things get particularly tricky for physicists.

According to Superstring Theory, the fifth and sixth dimensions are where the notion of possible worlds arises. If we could see on through to the fifth dimension, we would see a world slightly different from our own that would give us a means of measuring the similarity and differences between our world and other possible ones.

In the sixth, we would see a plane of possible worlds, where we could compare and position all the possible universes that start with the same initial conditions as this one (i.e. the Big Bang). In theory, if you could master the fifth and sixth dimension, you could travel back in time or go to different futures.

In the seventh dimension, you have access to the possible worlds that start with different initial conditions. Whereas in the fifth and sixth, the initial conditions were the same and subsequent actions were different, here, everything is different from the very beginning of time.

The eighth dimension again gives us a plane of such possible universe histories, each of which begins with different initial conditions and branches out infinitely (hence why they are called infinities).

In the ninth dimension, we can compare all the possible universe histories, starting with all the different possible laws of physics and initial conditions.

In the tenth and final dimension, we arrive at the point in which everything possible and imaginable is covered. Beyond this, nothing can be imagined by us lowly mortals, which makes it the natural limitation of what we can conceive in terms of dimensions.

The existence of these additional six dimensions which we cannot perceive is necessary for String Theory in order for their to be consistency in nature.

The fact that we can perceive only four dimensions of space can be explained by one of two mechanisms: either the extra dimensions are compactified on a very small scale, or else our world may live on a 3-dimensional submanifold corresponding to a brane, on which all known particles besides gravity would be restricted (aka. brane theory).

If the extra dimensions are compactified, then the extra six dimensions must be in the form of a Calabi–Yau manifold (shown above). While imperceptible as far as our senses are concerned, they would have governed the formation of the universe from the very beginning.

Hence why scientists believe that peering back through time, using telescopes to spot light from the early universe (i.e. billions of years ago), they might be able to see how the existence of these additional dimensions could have influenced the evolution of the cosmos.

Much like other candidates for a grand unifying theory – aka the Theory of Everything (TOE) – the belief that the universe is made up of ten dimensions (or more, depending on which model of string theory you use) is an attempt to reconcile the standard model of particle physics with the existence of gravity. In short, it is an attempt to explain how all known forces within our universe interact, and how other possible universes themselves might work.

For additional information, here’s an article on Universe Today about parallel universes, and another on a parallel universe scientists thought they found that doesn’t actually exist.

There are also some other great resources online. There is a great video that explains the ten dimensions in detail. You can also look at the PBS web site for the TV show Elegant universe. It has a great page on the ten dimensions.

You can also listen to Astronomy Cast. You might find episode 137 The Large Scale Structure of the Universe pretty interesting.     Source: PBS

New Solar System

Since it was launched in 2009, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope has identified more than 1,000 exoplanets and almost 4,200 exoplanet "candidates." It's even found entire solar systems--but never one like the system it just identified some 117 light-years from Earth.

The new found solar system consists of five rocky, Earth-sized planets circling a star called Kepler-444, which--at 11.2 billion years of age--is more than twice as old as the Sun. 

Astronomers say the Kepler-444 system may help scientists pinpoint when Earth-like planets first started forming, and may have important implications for the possibility of alien life.

"There are far-reaching implications for this discovery," Dr. Tiago Campante, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham and one of the astronomers who helped discover the new system, said in a written statement. 

"We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy."

Campante and his colleagues detected the ancient star system system by looking at data collected by Kepler over a four-year period. 

They used a technique called asteroseismology, in which small changes in a star's brightness indicate its mass, age, and diameter. They detected the five planets using what's called transit photometry, which involves observing a star dim slightly when planets cross its face (see an animation here).

The five planets are in tight orbits around Kepler-444, which means they're too close to fall within the so-called "Goldilocks zone," the region of space around a star that is warm enough but not too warm for a planet to have liquid water and, possibly, life.

Though Kepler-444 can't support life, Campante says it's possible there are other ancient solar systems out there that might.

"Other similarly old planets could indeed harbor life," he said in an email to The Huffington Post. 

"Think about a technologically advanced civilization that has a few billion years head start relative to us!"

Other scientists, who were not involved in the new research, have their doubts.+

"It is not clear that planets much older than the Earth have a higher expectation of having life than the more recently formed planets," William Borucki, a space scientist at the NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif told HuffPost in an email. 

"The discovery of Kepler-444 is important, but whether it implies advanced life or no life will remain a mystery until our technology advances to the point that we can get a definitive answer."

Regardless of whether the discovery makes alien life more or less likely, Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, Calif., hopes the discovery will help E.T. hunters home in on where to look.

"The implication of this is that worlds of all ages are out there, and the average planet is going to be billions of years older than our own," he told HuffPost in an email. "Complex, thinking beings required 4 billion years of evolution on Earth. 

If clever creatures always take a long time to appear, then older planets might be preferred hunting grounds for signals that could tell us someone’s out there.”

Time-Space Warping

It's not easy to weigh a star, but an international team of astronomers has done just that. 

In fact, they've measured the masses of both stars in an odd binary star system some 25,000 light-years from Earth--and gauged the space-time warp resulting from the system's intense gravitation.

"Our result is important because weighing stars while they freely float through space is exceedingly difficult," Dr. Joeri van Leeuwen, a University of Amsterdam astrophysicist and the leader of the team, said in a written statement. 

"That is a problem because such mass measurements are required for precisely understanding gravity, the force that is intimately linked to the behavior of space and time on all scales in our universe."

The binary system under study is known to astronomers as J1906. It features a fast-spinning neutron star, or pulsar, in orbit around another star that is believed to be either another neutron star or a white dwarf.

Neutron stars are the smallest, densest stars known to exist. 

Each of the stars in the system is more massive than our sun, and they are 100 times nearer to each other than the Earth is to the sun.

To gauge the pulsar's mass and measure the warping of space within the system, the team tracked the pulsar's rotations using observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (where the original observations were made) and four other radio telescopes around the world. 

The measurements showed that the pulsar's mass is about 1.29 times the mass of the sun, Dr. Ingrid Stairs, a professor of physics and astronomy at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, told The Huffington Post in an email. Its companion star is about 1.32 times as massive as the sun. 

The extreme gravity within the system causes a wobble in the axis of the pulsar's spin, meaning the portion of the pulsar's emission that we are able to see changes over time.

"We have observed this, and in fact it turns out that we are starting to get close to the edge of the emission region, so that the pulsar is getting fainter and fainter," Stairs told The Huffington Post in an email. "We were lucky to catch it before it disappeared."

"This cosmic spinning top is expected to wobble back into view," van Leeuwen said in the statement, "but it might take as long as 160 years."

What Dreams Are Made Of

Dreaming is a fundamental, seemingly timeless part of the human experience. For many thousands of years, humans have contemplated, theorized about, and given meaning to dreams.

Ancient cultures paid great attention to dreams. Among diverse ancient cultures, dreams took on many forms of meaning and significance. Sometimes dreams were warnings and messages from gods or divine entities. In some cases, dreams might be evidence of evil spirits.

Dreams were considered a vehicle for predicting the future, a way to communicate with the dead, a means to travel beyond the physical limits of the body. Dreams were believed to be both powerful and important.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, physicians exploring the complicated emotional landscape of the human experience gave tremendous attention and significance to dreams. Sigmund Freud believed dreams were the necessary expression of the unconscious mind, a vehicle for the mind to explore repressed emotions and desires.

Carl Jung theorized that dreams provided a means to resolve conflicts between an individual's conscious and unconscious mind, conflicts that reflected the tensions of both the individual's internal sense of self and a sense of self in society.

By the mid-20th century, scientists were engaged in study of the cognitive and neurological mechanisms of dreaming, one part of a broader scientific exploration of sleep.

Today, new technologies enable us to observe and explore dreaming states in whole new ways.

Yet dreaming remains in many ways a deep mystery.

Despite sustained scientific exploration and attention, we still don't know the answer to the most fundamental question: Why do we dream?

For all the study and attention that dreams have received, its rather remarkable how much we don't know about dreaming -- not only about its purpose, but also about the mechanics in the brain that make dreams happen.

In this three-part series, we'll explore the world of dreams, looking at the latest science has to say about why we might dream, and the mechanics of dreaming in the brain.

We'll examine the content of dreams, and how dreams may both reflect and influence waking life. We'll look at disorders related to dreaming, and how health conditions and some medication can disrupt dreams.  Read more: 

Life on Mars

Evidence that Mars once harbored alien life continues to mount. 

Just weeks after NASA's Curiosity rover detected spikes of methane in the Martian atmosphere--possible evidence of biological activity--a prominent geobiologist says she sees possible signs of past life in photos of the Martian landscape taken by the rover.

"We can detect sedimentary structures in rocks on Mars using the rover images," Dr. Nora Noffke, an associate professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., told The Huffington Post in an email.

"The structures I describe belong to a group of microbial structures that form by the interaction of benthic (living on the ground) microbes with sediment dynamics (erosion) in clastic deposits such as sand."

In other words, if such structures do exist on Mars, that suggests the planet may have once harbored microbial life. The microbes would have existed on Mars less than 3.7 billion years ago, Noffke said.

For her research, Noffke looked at the structures seen in rocks on Mars and compared them to geological structures on Earth that are formed by microbes living in communities called microbial mats. 

"Mats are composed of trillions and trillions of microbes that assemble on the floor of lakes, rivers, oceans," Noffke said in the email. "The microbes communicate with each other, they arrange into a dense layer and collaborate in gaining nutrients and light."

In the abstract to a paper describing her research, Noffke detailed the similarities found between the structures on Earth and Mars:

"The microbially induced sedimentary-like structures (MISS) identified in Curiosity rover mission images do not have a random distribution. Rather, they were found to be arranged in spatial associations and temporal successions that indicate they changed over time. On Earth, if such MISS occurred with this type of spatial association and temporal succession, they would be interpreted as having recorded the growth of a microbially dominated ecosystem that thrived in pools that later dried completely."

What do other scientists make of the new discovery? Dr. Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., hails it as promising research.

“I’ve seen many papers that say 'Look, here’s a pile of dirt on Mars, and here’s a pile of dirt on Earth. 

And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets,'" he told Astrobiology magazine. “That’s an easy argument to make, and it’s typically not very convincing. However, Noffke’s paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I’ve seen.”

Mysterious Crater

Scientists are closing in on what caused three massive holes to open up mysteriously in northern Siberia last July.

This week a team of Russian researchers roped their way down 34 feet to the bottom of the largest crater and found no evidence of alien beings or meteorites that some people had offered up as possible explanations.

"We managed to go down into the funnel, all was successful," Vladimir Pushkarev, director of the Russian Center of Arctic Exploration and the leader of the team, told The Siberian Times. "We took all the probes we planned, and made measurements. Now scientists need time to process all the data and only then can they draw conclusions."

So what did cause the holes to form? According to Pushkarev, the leading theory is that the holes were created by pockets of gas that exploded underground.

"As of now we don't see anything dangerous in the sudden appearance of such holes," he told The Siberian Times, "but we've got to study them properly to make absolutely sure we understand the nature of their appearance and don't need to be afraid about them."

Researchers have long contended that the epicenter of global warming is also farthest from the reach of humanity. It’s in the barren landscapes of the frozen North, where red-cheeked children wear fur, the sun barely rises in the winter and temperatures can plunge dozens of degrees below zero. 

Such a place is the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, translated as “the ends of the Earth,” a desolate spit of land where a group called the Nenets live.

By now, you’ve heard of the crater on the Yamal Peninsula. It’s the one that suddenly appeared, yawning nearly 100 feet in diameter, and made several rounds in the global viral media machine. The adjectives most often used to describe it: giant, mysterious, curious.

Scientists were subsequently “baffled.” Locals were “mystified.” There were whispers that aliens were responsible. Nearby residents peddled theories of “bright flashes” and “celestial bodies.”

Space Molecule

Scientists have found the beginnings of life-bearing chemistry at the center of the galaxy.

Iso-propyl cyanide has been detected in a star-forming cloud 27,000 light-years from Earth.

Its branched carbon structure is closer to the complex organic molecules of life than any previous finding from interstellar space.

The discovery suggests the building blocks of life may be widespread throughout our galaxy.

Various organic molecules have previously been discovered in interstellar space, but i-propyl cyanide is the first with a branched carbon backbone.

The branched structure is important as it shows that interstellar space could be the origin of more complex branched molecules, such as amino acids, that are necessary for life on Earth.

Dr Arnaud Belloche from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy is lead author of the research, which appears in the journal Science.

"Amino acids on Earth are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are very important for life as we know it. The question in the background is: is there life somewhere else in the galaxy?"

The molecule was detected in a giant gas cloud called Sagittarius B2, an active region of ongoing star formation in the centre of the Milky Way.

As stars are born in the cloud they heat up microscopic dust grains. Chemical reactions on the surface of the dust allow complex molecules like i-propyl cyanide to form.

The molecules emit radiation that was detected as radio waves by twenty 12m telescopes at the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma) in Chile.

Each molecule produces a different "spectral fingerprint" of frequencies. "The game consists in matching these frequencies… to molecules that have been characterized in the laboratory," explained Dr Belloche.

"Our goal is to search for new complex organic molecules in the interstellar medium."

Previously discovered molecules in the Sagittarius B2 cloud include vinyl alcohol and ethyl formate, the chemical that gives raspberries their flavor and rum its smell.

But i-propyl cyanide is the largest and most complex organic molecule found to date - and the only one to share the branched atomic backbone of amino acids.

"The idea is to know whether the elements that are necessary for life to occur… can be found in other places in our galaxy."