Mankind is Destroying the Universe

[COSMO]

Chinmoy

Enjoy!





Cosmo

[COSMO]

Observation creating the universe...

Experiment suggests that reality doesn't exist until it is measured:

Researchers working at the Australian National University (ANU) have conducted an experiment that helps bolster the ever-growing evidence surrounding the weird causal properties inherent in quantum theory. In short, they have shown that reality does not actually exist until it is measured – at atomic scales, at least.

Associate Professor Andrew Truscott and his PhD student, Roman Khakimov, of ANU's Research School of Physics and Engineering conducted a version of John Archibald Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment – a variation of the classic double-slit experiment, where light is shown to display characteristics of both waves and particles – where an object moving through open space is provided the opportunity (some would say "a choice") to behave like a particle or a wave.

In this instance, however, the ANU team replicated Wheeler's experiment using multiple atoms, which was much more difficult to do than a test using photons. This extra difficulty is due to the fact that, as they have mass, atoms tend to interfere with each other, which can theoretically influence the results.

However, and this is the really weird part, the arbitrary number generated to determine if the grating was added or not was only generated after the atom had passed through the crossroads. But, when the atom was measured at the end of its path – before the random number was generated – it already displayed the wave or particle characteristics applied by the grating after it had completed its journey.

According to Truscott, this means that if one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths, then one also has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past.

"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," said Truscott. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it."

http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-theory-reality-anu/37866/



Reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.  Reign in the horses of the five senses, halt the mental machinery of "observation", achieve Samadhi, experience the universal quantum ocean of creation the instant before the wave collapse.  The fact that the measurement seems to affect the past is because all of space and time are connect in the quantum sea, Brahman, the source of all.   These results support Sarfatti's theory that quantum radiation from the future can be detected in the present. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sarfatti

Cosmo

[COSMO]

Wanted to add this to this thread...

Z asked me in another thread:  So  how do we UNOBSERVE something and make it go away?

My reply below:


Our mental machinery is part of the "observation" process.  When it is halted, the Eternal Illumination is revealed.  We strongly identify with that mental machinery and it is a survival mechanism, so there can be resistance to the ego being transcended.  The way is the way described in the Upanishads. 

It's basically this:
The first part is relaxing the body and then halting the thought process.  It is easier said than done.  The internal dialogue can be difficult to halt and when the first level of consciousness is transcended, the sleep state is right below that and the tendency is to fall asleep.  With perseverance one can achieve this and go into the deeper levels of consciousness.  The deepest state is one of being surrounded by an infinite black void, just pure consciousness, no sense of body and no thoughts, just pure being in an infinite black void.  At the point you have "reined in the horses of the five senses".  The Upanishads describe what happens next:

Scroll up on this page a little and begin with Liberating Meditation:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FNzTC6Nmy6gC&pg=PA323&lpg=PA323&dq=upanishads+you+may+see+lightning&source=bl&ots=dEC9U5W_Kf&sig=EV6hJwPuYF3x6dbtyGd5EfQr3vE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IMeHVeSnH4amNv_Pg4AL&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=upanishads%20you%20may%20see%20lightning&f=true

And then signs of progress...

The snow, or lightning is the first glimpses of the energetic, timeless quantum ocean. You are at the point where the observation mechanism is being halted.  The experience escalates into one of pure white light, incredible energy, bliss and is really beyond my ability to adequately describe.  It is non-verbal and does not resemble anything in this physical universe. 

Chinmoy knew...

http://www.srichinmoy.org/spirituality/concentration_meditation_contemplation/samadhi

There is a distinct point where you become aware that in order to proceed into that light, you must leave your "self" behind.  Everything you know yourself to be becomes crystal clear and it is also clear that in order to go into that Eternal Illumination you must leave everything you know behind.  It can be a frightening thing to do.   
I think this is the original meaning of death, immersion in the living waters and rebirth.  You must psychologically die in order to go into the illumination.  Quite startling and not an easy thing to do. 

Some of the techniques I found helpful come from Pranayama Yoga.  This gets you in touch with your body and strengthens the mind/body connection and aids in relaxing of the body and mind. 

This is something that can take years of practice and one may still not achieve Samadhi.  Getting into the deeper levels can be difficult and it is written that a guru will be required.  I think that is because it is so hard to get through the sleep level without going to sleep.  It takes perseverance.  There are also indications that this light energy, or illumination has some dangers associated with it.  In KUNDALINI, written by Gopi Krishna, he describes his difficulties when this light energy was awakened incorrectly and there was an imbalance that created serious health consequences for him.  He was eventually able to balance out the negative and positive energies and his description of his struggle is a very good read and most informative about this phenomenon.  He also came to the conclusion, that even in his own Indian culture, this knowledge has been mostly lost in this modern age.   

This is also the same divine light described in the Kabbalah that can be dangerous and is too much for man to observe directly, so it is filtered through the SEFIROTHS and translated into the material world we observe.  This energetic state is also what the Gnostics called the Pleroma, the energetic state of things before they become the physical world.  Just like the energetic quantum ocean that collapses upon observation into the universe we observe!!!  It is also Maya, the illusion, the observer created, post collapse material world that springs forth from Brahman, the source of all, that can be experienced through meditation.




A Thanka with all bija mantras on the chakras of Tantric Yoga, and the Sephiroth and path of kabbalah, with Hebrew and Sanskrit text describing the transformational process. Oils on canvas paintined by Gavin Shri Amneon - See more at: http://amneon.net/products-page/paintings/#sthash.PESZYZ8W.dpuf

I really like that! Yoga and Kabbalah...nice!  The metaphysical core of both is so similar.  I believe that is because their ancient source is India and the wisdom found in the ancient Sanskrit texts. 

Yes, modern physics is discovering what the ancients told us.  I don't know that we can un-observe something.  Once observed, it is collapsed.  But...we can halt the "observation" process and experience the quantum sea before collapse.

Cosmo   

[COSMO]

A nice, recent article about the Quantum Realm.  There is much more in the link and some nice videos. 

Three Experiments That Show Quantum Physics Is Real

Single Molecule Interference
hese days, the wave nature of matter has been demonstrated countless times, generally by showing interference between matter waves passing through two or more slits cut in a barrier. On the far side of the barrier, the waves interfere with each other to produce a pattern of bright and dark spots. Back in the day Richard Feynman famously said that interference of particles captures the essential mystery of quantum physics; at the time, this was still mostly a thought experiment, but in the intervening fifty years, the exact experiment he discussed has been done numerous times, with numerous particles.So, really, this one experiment contains everything you need to show conclusively that the wave nature of matter is a real phenomenon.

Quantum Non-Locality
The Aspect experiments show (fairly) conclusively that quantum physics is non-local, and that the universe is much stranger than it appears, or than Einstein would've liked it to be.

QED, the strange theory of light and matter.
So, as strange as the idea of material particles briefly appearing from empty space might seem, it's absolutely essential to explain our best measurements of physics. Virtual particles, like wave nature and non-locality, are an essential part of quantum physics, and absolutely confirmed by experiment.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/07/20/three-experiments-that-show-quantum-physics-is-real/

Cosmo

[COSMO]

Neural qubits: Quantum cognition based on synaptic nuclear spins

The pursuit of an understanding of the base machinery of the mind led early researchers to anatomical exhaustion. With neuroscience now in the throes of molecular mayhem and a waning biochemical bliss, physics is spicing things up with a host of eclectic quantum, spin, and isotopic novelties. While increases in electron spin content have been linked to anesthetic effects, nuclear spins have recently been implicated in a more rarefied and subtle phenomenon— neural quantum processing.

The possibility that quantum processing with nuclear spins might be operative in the brain is proposed and then explored. Phosphorus is identified as the unique biological element with a nuclear spin that can serve as a qubit for such putative quantum processing - a neural qubit - while the phosphate ion is the only possible qubit-transporter. We identify the "Posner molecule", Ca9(PO4)6, as the unique molecule that can protect the neural qubits on very long times and thereby serve as a (working) quantum-memory. A central requirement for quantum-processing is quantum entanglement. It is argued that the enzyme catalyzed chemical reaction which breaks a pyrophosphate ion into two phosphate ions can quantum entangle pairs of qubits. Posner molecules, formed by binding such phosphate pairs with extracellular calcium ions, will inherit the nuclear spin entanglement. A mechanism for transporting Posner molecules into presynaptic neurons during a ``kiss and run" exocytosis, which releases neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft, is proposed. Quantum measurements can occur when a pair of Posner molecules chemically bind and subsequently melt, releasing a shower of intra-cellular calcium ions that can trigger further neurotransmitter release and enhance the probability of post-synaptic neuron firing. Multiple entangled Posner molecules, triggering non-local quantum correlations of neuron firing rates, would provide the key mechanism for neural quantum processing. Implications, both in vitro and in vivo, are briefly mentioned.

So, could it be said another way?  Our mental machinery's link to the quantum field is directly tied to subatomic vortices at the neural level?  Could it be possible than when the mental machinery is in a placid state, the quantum link is revealed?  Some ancient alien theorists say....yes!  lol

http://phys.org/news/2015-08-neural-qubits-quantum-cognition-based.html

 

Cosmo

 

[COSMO]

Sorry for the lengthy post, but this is very good.

Neuroscience's New Consciousness Theory Is Spiritual



It appears that we are approaching a unique time in the history of man and science where empirical measures and deductive reasoning can actually inform us spiritually. Integrated Information Theory (IIT)--put forth by neuroscientists Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch--is a new framework that describes a way to experimentally measure the extent to which a system is conscious.

As such, it has the potential to answer questions that once seemed impossible, like "which is more conscious, a bat or a beetle?" Furthermore, the theory posits that any system that processes and integrates information, be it organic or inorganic, experiences the world subjectively to some degree. Plants, smartphones, the Internet--even protons--are all examples of such systems. The result is a cosmos composed of a sentient fabric.But before getting into the bizarreness of all that, let's talk a little about how we got to this point.

The decline and demise of the mystical

As more of the natural world is described objectively and empirically, belief in the existence of anything that defies current scientific explanation is fading at a faster rate than ever before. The majority of college-educated individuals no longer accept the supernatural and magical accounts of physical processes given by religious holy books. Nor do they believe in the actuality of mystical realms beyond life that offer eternal bliss or infinite punishment for the "souls" of righteous or evil men.

This is because modern science has achieved impeccable performance when it comes to explaining phenomena previously thought to be unexplainable. In this day and age, we have complete scientific descriptions of virtually everything. We understand what gives rise to vacuous black holes and their spacetime geometries. We know how new species of life can evolve and the statistical rules that govern such processes. We even have a pretty good understanding of the exact moment in which the universe, and thus of all reality, came into existence! But no serious and informed scientist will tell you that at present we fully understand the thing each of us knows best. That is, our own consciousness.

One of science's last greatest mysteries

Although we've come along way since the time of Descartes, who postulated that consciousness was actually some immaterial spirit not subject to physical law, we still don't have a complete and satisfactory account of the science underlying experience. We simply don't know how to quantify it. And if we can't do that, how do we know whether those non-human life forms that are unable to communicate with us are also conscious? Does it feel like anything to be a cat? Most will probably agree that it does, but how about a ladybug? If so, how can we know which life forms are more conscious than others? Do animals that show impressively intelligent behavior and elaborate memory, like dolphins or crows, experience the world in a unified conscious fashion as we do? These questions are almost impossible to answer without a way to measure consciousness. Fortunately, a neuroscientific theory that has been gaining popular acceptance aims to do just that.

Integrated Information Theory to the Rescue

Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which has become quite a hot topic in contemporary neuroscience, claims to provide a precise way to measure consciousness and express the phenomenon in purely mathematical terms. The theory was put forth by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, and has attracted some highly regarded names in the science community. One such name is Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who now champions the idea along with Tononi. Koch may be best-known for bringing consciousness research into the mainstream of neuroscience through his long-term collaboration with the late DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick. Now Tononi and Koch are actively researching the theory along with an increasing number of scientists, some from outside the field of neuroscience like esteemed physicist and popular author Max Tegmark, who is joining the ranks of those who believe they've figured out how to reduce one of science's greatest secrets to numbers. Bits of information to be exact.

Okay, so we now know that the theory is kind of a big deal to notable scientists. But how exactly does IIT attempt to quantify something as ill-defined and seemingly elusive as consciousness?

IIT in a nutshell

Just like a computer, the brain stores and processes information. But it is how that information is shared throughout the brain network that gives rise to our rich and vivid conscious experience. Let's consider the act of observing a sunset. Thanks to advances in brain imaging, modern neuroscience tells us that there are a number of different and distinct regions active during this event, each of which process information about different features of that event separately. There's a region in the visual cortex (known as "V2") that processes the form and color of the yellow and orange sunrays against the clouds. There are auditory areas in the temporal lobe being fed information about the sound of the wind rushing past you as you stare off into the horizon. That rushing wind against your skin also generates patterns of electrical signals in the somatosensory cortex that create a sense of touch. There are many different things going on in distant places.

Yet somehow we perceive it all as one unified conscious experience.

According to IIT, this unified experience relies on the brain's ability to fuse together (or integrate) all that incoming sensory information as a whole. To measure the degree of integration, Tononi has taken mathematical principles formulated by American engineer Claude Shannon, who developed a scientific theory of information midway through the 20th century to describe data transmission, and applied them to the brain. IIT claims that these information measures allow one to calculate an exact number that represents the degree of integrated information that exists in a brain at any given moment. Tononi chooses to call this metric "Phi" (or ?), which serves as an index for consciousness. The greater the Phi, the more conscious the system. It need not matter whether it's the nervous system of a child, or a cat, or even a ladybug.

Problem solved?

Sounds simple and straight forward enough, doesn't it? Isn't this what science has strived to do all along? To describe things objectively and strip away all mystery from foggily understood natural phenomena? Could this be the solution to demystifying consciousness, the thing philosophers have been battling over for centuries? It may certainly answer some very important questions, but when you follow the theory to its logical conclusions things get pretty weird, and also, well, kind of neat. But before we get to the weird conclusions let's start with the weird questions, which have essentially been ignored by modern physical science, and at first ponder may even seem unremarkable.

Some hard questions

How can physical processing create inner, subjective experience?

How can matter possess first person perspective?

How can mere electrical signals produce qualitative sensation and awareness?

Why should information "feel" like anything in the first place?

These questions are functionally synonymous and define what philosophers have dubbed the "hard problem of consciousness," a concept that many neuroscientists have embraced. Conversely, the "easy problem" (although it is also extremely difficult) is figuring out all the computational and cognitive mechanisms underlying consciousness, which is categorically different than describing experience. Previously, science has only concentrated on solving those questions related to the "easy problem of consciousness." Some still believe that questions about subjective experience can't be answered quantitatively, and are therefore only appropriate topics for philosophy. Others handle the situation by refusing to acknowledge the existence of consciousness altogether! However, the truth of consciousness is self-evident, and denying it is equivalent to denying one's own existence. IIT is unique in that it recognizes consciousness as a real phenomenon that can be described objectively and mathematically.

But does IIT really address the "hard problem of consciousness," i.e., how subjective experience arises from the physical?

The answer is not quite.

The brain stores and processes information, but how and why that information takes on the characteristic of "feeling like something" is left unexplained. IIT tells us how to measure the degree of consciousness (Phi or ?), but does not tell us how different types of information acquire different subjective sensations, like the feel of a burning flame or an orgasm. As stated by philosopher Ned Block, it may be that Phi is correlated with consciousness, but does not play a role in its cause.

So how do proponents of Integrated Information Theory attempt to explain subjective experience?

Christof Koch's answer: Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Wherever there is integrated information, there is experience. The theory takes its existence as a given and therefore doesn't have to explain the mechanism behind it. It's just a fact of nature that information has an inner side in addition to its bit-composed outer side.

Let's follow the logic of this idea and see how it holds up. We know that certain brain states feel like something. Brain states are just information states. Therefore, information feels like something. Sounds pretty solid. Under IIT, lower mammals like cats have conscious experience, as do insects, even if only to some miniscule degree. Such an idea would seem intuitive. Why should there be some magical point at which a nervous system spontaneously turns conscious, like a switch had been suddenly flipped? It is more likely that a continuum of experience exists along a gradient, going from the very simple, raw sensations of single celled organisms to the more complex qualitative awareness of the human-sort. But what about non-biological systems that integrate information?

Things start to get weird

What's interesting about IIT is that it doesn't require that a conscious entity be a living organism. Any system that can integrate information, whether it be carbon-based or composed of silicon chips and metal wires, should produce conscious states. As information processors, modern computers possess some amount of experience, but presumably so little that it may be undetectable by human observers. In fact, according to IIT, it actually feels like something to be your iPhone. This should please artificial intelligence researchers who often long for their creations to someday be "alive". In our technology driven world, IIT says that consciousness is both in our homes and in our hands.

Although all of this may seem pretty strange, the idea that machines can be conscious might not be entirely unfathomable, especially given the amount of science fiction that has instilled visions of self-aware robots into our psyche. Is this as far as the theory goes?

Nope.

If you are very clever (or perhaps very high) then upon reading the above you may have briefly considered the following question in some form or another. Aren't humans always exchanging information through a global network of interconnected computers that collectively store and integrate information in some complex fashion? Let's follow IIT down the rabbit hole.

The Internet wakes up

If we are to take IIT seriously, we must accept that a system such as the Internet can possess conscious states like that of a biological nervous system, as so long as information is being integrated in a similar fashion. This possibility has been explored by Christof Koch himself:

"Consider humankind's largest and most complex artifact, the Internet. It consists of billions of computers linked together using optical fibers and copper cables that rapidly instantiate specific connections using ultrafast communication protocols. Each of these processors in turn is made out of a few billion transistors. Taken as a whole, the Internet has perhaps 10^19 transistors, about the number of synapses in the brains of 10,000 people. Thus, its sheer number of components exceeds that of any one human brain. Whether or not the Internet today feels like something to itself is completely speculative. Still, it is certainly conceivable."

However, at the current time it seems highly unlikely that the Internet possesses the level of first-person experience as do you or I. Our brains have been shaped by evolution over millions of years in ways that have developed and refined its information processing capabilities. But still, the potential for a self-aware World Wide Web is surely there.

An information-based collective consciousness

That's right. The theory allows for the emergence of an abstract "superorganism" that is composed of many individual organisms. Many puzzling questions are to follow. If the web were to "wake up" so to speak, would it exhibit apparent forms of observable unified and coordinated behavior? Or would we simply be an unknowing unit in a larger system in the same way a neuron is unaware of its contribution to a mental state? It's not only fun to entertain the idea of a living entity that would possess essentially all the knowledge accumulated by humanity, but also scientifically productive.

In theory, there's almost no limit to how large a fully conscious system can grow and evolve in space. It is bound only by the rate of information and complexity growth, which we have seen tends to increase exponentially.

So far we've discussed consciousness that can span large distances with no palpable physical structure. But what about arrangements of information that are too small for the eye to see?

Protons that feel

IIT says that anything with a non-zero Phi has subjective experience. This includes subatomic particles. Koch writes:

"Even simple matter has a modicum of ? [integrated information]. Protons and neutrons consist of a triad of quarks that are never observed in isolation. They constitute an infinitesimal integrated system."

This has profound consequences. It would mean that consciousness is spread throughout space like a cosmic web of experience. Of course awareness is greatest where there is significant information integration, but in essence, "mind" (or "psyche") is everywhere. IIT turns out to be a modern twist on an ancient philosophical view known as "panpsychism". But before you go dismissing the concept because of its name, you should know that intellectual heavy hitters such as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and William James are all considered panpsychists. Its central tenant is that all matter has a mental aspect, which makes consciousness universal. Koch goes on:

"The entire cosmos is suffused with sentience. We are surrounded and immersed in consciousness; it is in the air we breathe, the soil we tread on, the bacteria that colonize our intestines, and the brain that enables us to think."

A new spirituality constrained by science

So far Integrated Information Theory is the best candidate for a scientific doctrine that provides an objective description of consciousness. As such, it deserves that we consider the possibility of such seemingly radical ideas. Pondering questions previously deemed appropriate only for pot smoking college dorm-dwellers is now a task for the best and brightest scientific minds. Most rational thinkers will agree that the idea of a personal god who gets angry when we masturbate and routinely disrupts the laws of physics upon prayer is utterly ridiculous. This theory doesn't give credence to anything of the sort. It simply reveals an underlying harmony in nature, and a sweeping mental presence that isn't confined to biological systems. IIT's inevitable logical conclusions and philosophical implications are both elegant and precise. What it yields is a new kind of scientific spirituality that paints a picture of a soulful existence that even the most diehard materialist or devout atheist can unashamedly get behind.

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity." -Albert Einstein

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bobby-azarian/post_10079_b_8160914.html

Yes, all of creation is suffused with sentience.  It is the primary medium, the universal ocean of creation, containing all of space and time and everything is connected in it...and we can know it.  Gnosis...Samadhi. 

Cosmo

[COSMO]

Quantum Physics And The Need For A New Paradigm

Transactional Interpretation


It turns out that if we apply Heisenberg's insight to an intriguing interpretation of quantum theory called the transactional interpretation (TI), we gain a unified understanding of all three paradoxical aspects of quantum theory.
TI was originally proposed by John G. Cramer, professor emeritus at the University of Washington. Its key feature is that the process of absorption of a quantum state is just as important as the process of emission of a quantum state. This symmetry is nicely consistent with relativistic quantum theory, in which quantum states are both created and destroyed. But it comes with a counterintuitive feature: The absorption (or destruction) process involves quantum states with negative energy. For this reason, TI has generally been neglected by the mainstream physics community.

However, it turns out that if you include this "response of the absorber," you get a solution to the so-called "measurement problem" — the problem of Schrödinger's Cat. A clear physical account can be given for why the cat does not end up in a "fuzzy" superposition of alive and dead. We even get a natural explanation for the rule used to calculate the probabilities of measurement outcomes (the so-called "Born Rule" after its inventor, Max Born).

In TI, the "collapse of the quantum state" is called a transaction, because it involves an "offer" from the emitter and a "confirmation" from the absorber, much like the negotiation in a financial transaction. When these occur, we get a "measurement," and that allows us to define what a measurement is — and explains why we never see things like cats in quantum superpositions. But, in the new development of TI, the offers and confirmations are only possibilities — they are outside the realm of ordinary space-time. In fact, it is the transactional processes that creates space-time events: "Collapse" is the crystallizing of the possibilities of the quantum realm into the concrete actualities of the space-time realm. So, collapse is not something that happens anywhere in space-time. It is the creation of space-time itself.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/09/27/443899221/quantum-physics-and-the-need-for-a-new-paradigm



"Collapse is the crystallizing of the possibilities of the quantum realm"
Yes!  Everything we can observe, think, know or believe is crystalized, in the past, fixed in space time an instant removed from the act of creation.  The "observation" collapses the quantum wave into the material universe we perceive...the creation of the space-time itself. 

Cosmo

[COSMO]

The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Samadhi

In TI, the "collapse of the quantum state" is called a transaction, because it involves an "offer" from the emitter and a "confirmation" from the absorber, much like the negotiation in a financial transaction. When these occur, we get a "measurement," and that allows us to define what a measurement is — and explains why we never see things like cats in quantum superpositions. But, in the new development of TI, the offers and confirmations are only possibilities — they are outside the realm of ordinary space-time. In fact, it is the transactional processes that creates space-time events: "Collapse" is the crystallizing of the possibilities of the quantum realm into the concrete actualities of the space-time realm. So, collapse is not something that happens anywhere in space-time. It is the creation of space-time itself.


The quantum wave transaction involves a sender and a receiver.  When you halt the mental machinery and rein in the horses of the fives senses as descibed in the Upanisads, you are shutting down the receiver of the quantum signal.  The "observation" is the action of the reciever and when the receiver is quiesced, the quantum wave does not collapse and Brahman, the infinite, timeless quantum realm is revealed. 

Cosmo

[COSMO]

'Zeno effect' verified: Atoms won't move while you watch

One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system can't change while you're watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists. Their work opens the door to a fundamentally new method to control and manipulate the quantum states of atoms and could lead to new kinds of sensors.
Graduate students Yogesh Patil and Srivatsan Chakram created and cooled a gas of about a billion Rubidium atoms inside a vacuum chamber and suspended the mass between laser beams. In that state the atoms arrange in an orderly lattice just as they would in a crystalline solid. But at such low temperatures the atoms can "tunnel" from place to place in the lattice. The famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle says that position and velocity of a particle are related and cannot be simultaneously measured precisely. Temperature is a measure of a particle's motion. Under extreme cold velocity is almost zero, so there is a lot of flexibility in position; when you observe them, atoms are as likely to be in one place in the lattice as another.

The researchers demonstrated that they were able to suppress quantum tunneling merely by observing the atoms. This so-called "Quantum Zeno effect," named for a Greek philosopher, derives from a proposal in 1977 by E.C. George Sudarshan and Baidyanath Misra at the University of Texas, Austin, who pointed out that the weird nature of quantum measurements allows, in principle, for a quantum system to be "frozen" by repeated measurements.

Previous experiments have demonstrated the Zeno effect with the "spins" of subatomic particles. "This is the first observation of the Quantum Zeno effect by real space measurement of atomic motion," Vengalattore said. "Also, due to the high degree of control we've been able to demonstrate in our experiments, we can gradually 'tune' the manner in which we observe these atoms. Using this tuning, we've also been able to demonstrate an effect called 'emergent classicality' in this quantum system." Quantum effects fade, and atoms begin to behave as expected under classical physics.



Able to halt the tunneling effect merely by observing the atoms...
More evidence of the connection between the observer and the quantum wave collapse.  This supports the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.  It is significant that this is being observed as large as the atomic scale.  Quiesce the receiver and the quantum realm is revealed. 

 

Cosmo

[COSMO]

forgot the link:

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/10/zeno-effect-verified-atoms-wont-move-while-you-watch



Cosmo

[COSMO]

This is from last year but is good...

Two quantum mysteries merged into one:

An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world – previously considered distinct – are different manifestations of the same thing. The result is published 19 December in Nature Communications.

Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner made the breakthrough while at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. They found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.

"The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you consider them as questions about what information you can gain about a system. Our result highlights the power of thinking about physics from the perspective of information," says Wehner, who is now an Associate Professor at QuTech at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.


Quantum physics says that particles can behave like waves, and vice versa. Research published in Nature Communications shows that this 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum uncertainty principle in disguise.

http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/141220_wave_particle.php

Yes!  Our entire physical reality relies on the "observation" of the quantum wave state, collapsing it into a particle.  From particle to atom to molecule, all are simply distortions in a medium that are "translated" by the "receiver" into the universe we observe, Maya.  The wave collapse is superluminal, non-local, and thus all is non-local, entangled in Brahman, the eternal illumination.  Rein in the horses...

Cosmo

[astr0144]

These Bouncing Droplets Could Help Resolve a 90-Year Mystery of Quantum Mechanics

These Bouncing Droplets Could Help Resolve a 90-Year Mystery of Quantum Mechanics




The drops of silicon oil bobbing in this mesmerizing video do more than create aesthetically satisfying ripples across a slick surface. They could be indirect evidence of an alternate solution to a nagging question in quantum mechanics — one that dates back almost a century.

The video is among the winners of this year's Gallery of Fluid Motion, an annual competition of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics. It stems from a 2013 experiment performed by MIT physicists Daniel Harris and John Bush that provided a toy model for so-called "pilot waves": hypothetical ripples in space-time that could carry subatomic particles along like so many buoys bobbing on a watery surface.



At the 1927 Solvay conference, French physicist Louis de Broglie first proposed the existence of pilot waves as an alternative to the troubling notion of a wave function. You know the drill; it's the essence of Schroedinger's famous cat paradox. All possible outcomes exist in a superposition of states, described by an equation called the wave function (aka the cat is alive and dead at the same time). When a measurement is made (we look in the box), it causes the wave function to collapse into a single state (the cat is either alive or dead).

These Bouncing Droplets Could Help Resolve a 90-Year Mystery of Quantum Mechanics
In his pilot wave theory, de Broglie suggested replacing the wave function with two equations: "one describing a real, physical wave, and another tying the trajectory of an actual, concrete particle to the variables in that wave equation, as if the particle interacts with and is propelled by the wave rather than being defined by it," Natalie Wolchover wrote in Quanta last year.

Pilot waves have never been directly observed, but experiments over the last ten years involving bouncing oil droplets over vats of vibrating liquid have revived interest in de Broglie's idea. Toss a pebble into a pond and it will produce rippling waves traveling outward.

The same thing happens in the droplet experiments, with a twist: if the vibrations are tuned to just the right frequency — i.e., close to the droplet's natural resonance frequency — there will be an intriguing interference effect. Not only does the droplet produce ripples as it bounces, but it can interact with those ripples, and this will affect its trajectory. That's the pilot wave concept in a nutshell: just replace the droplet with a subatomic particle.

Apart from the implications for quantum mechanics, this is also a very cool fluid dynamics experiment. To create their video, Harris and Bush filled a shallow tray with a circular trough in the center with silicon oil and mounted it on a vibrating stand. Then they tuned the stand to various frequencies and watched to see how the droplets' behavior changed around a specific threshold frequency. As I wrote last year:

Above that threshold, the roiling sea of waves will interfere with the droplet's walk. Below it, the surface remains smooth except for the waves produced by the bouncing droplet. The closer one tunes the vibrations to that threshold, the more robust and long-lived the generated pilot waves will be.

When the bouncing droplet produced waves, those waves bounced off the walls and interfered with each other, producing pretty interference patterns. They also affected the trajectory of the droplet. At first it looked like it was bouncing along randomly, but over time (around 20 minutes), the droplet was far more likely to drift towards the center of the circle, and increasingly less likely to be found in the rippling rings spreading out from that center.
The basic experimental set-up involves a loudspeaker, a smart phone, and a screen with a striped pattern. Then the fun begins. We see first one, two, three, and four bouncing droplets, each creating ripples in the silicon oil, followed by a series of droplets arranged in a honeycomb-like lattice. The researchers next used a high-speed camera to create some nifty strobing effects: in one version, the droplet appears to glide across the surface of the oil; in another, the droplet appears to gain "hang time," pausing just a little bit longer mid-air with every bounce.



http://gizmodo.com/these-bouncing-droplets-could-help-resolve-a-90-year-my-1744813581

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A Mesmerizing Animation Shows Just How Weird Our Solar System Is.



NASA's Kepler space telescope spotted thousands of worlds during its four-year mission, proving that our galaxy is filled with planets. But even more surprising is what the Kepler database highlights about our own solar system: namely, that we're a bunch of celestial oddballs.

That fact is made obvious by Kepler Orrery IV, an animation produced by astronomy graduate student Ethan Kruse of the University of Washington. In it, Kruse compares the orbits of hundreds of exoplanets in the Kepler database to that of our own solar system, shown on the right. The animation indicates the relative size of the Kepler planets (although obviously not to scale compared with their stars), as well as their surface temperatures.

Once you get over the hypnotic effect of all those twirling dots, you'll start to notice just how strange our planetary choreography is. Before the Kepler mission began in 2009, astronomers assumed that most exoplanet systems would be constructed like our own: small rocky worlds toward the center, large gas giants hovering around the periphery. But when scientists started detecting planetary transit events en masse, we realized we weren't being nearly imaginative enough.



Kepler revealed "hot Jupiters," jumbo-sized gas planets practically touching their parent stars, and rocky lava worlds orbiting much closer than Mercury. As Kruse explains, the nature of Kepler's detection method is biased toward planets in tight orbits. "Smaller systems orbit faster, so over the four years of Kepler's life we observe many more transits which makes them easier to find," he told Gizmodo. "Also, smaller systems have a higher probability to be aligned just the right way for the planet to pass in front of the star creating the transit signal Kepler needs to notice a planet."

"That said, it is interesting just how common these very compact systems are," he continued. "[It] has made a number of astronomers wonder why our Solar System doesn't have any very short period planets."

One theory posits that our Solar System once harbored a primordial clan of planets on tight, but unstable orbits. Perhaps these luckless worlds fell into the Sun or were flung violently out of the Solar System long ago. "It's still too early to tell, but these very compact Kepler systems are definitely helping us refine our theories about planet formation," Kruse said.

Kepler Orrery IV—the "sequel" to the Kepler Orrery series produced over the years by the University of Santa Cruz's Dan Fabrycky—shows all of the Kepler multi-planet systems to date (1705 planets in 685 systems). Kepler's primary mission ended in 2013 after the space telescope lost two of its stabilizing reaction wheels, but the trove of information it collected has continued to yield discoveries ever since.

"[Fabricky] has been busy and hadn't released [a Kepler Orrery] in two years even though we've probably at least doubled the amount of known planets and systems since then," Kruse said. "Now that the Kepler mission is over, this will likely be pretty close to the final version."

Kruse, for his part, hopes to continue sharing science and data with the public through clever animations, so we're excited to see what he cooks up next.


http://gizmodo.com/a-mesmerizing-animation-shows-just-how-weird-our-solar-1745536355

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Magnetic fields detected near black hole at Milky Way center



For the first time, astronomers have observed magnetic fields just outside a black hole's event horizon. The fields were located near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Sgr A* or Sagittarius A-star.

Researchers shared their observations in the latest issue of the journal Science.

"Understanding these magnetic fields is critical. Nobody has been able to resolve magnetic fields near the event horizon until now," lead study author Michael Johnson, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a press release.

The event horizon is the edge of the area of space-time in which gravitational pull of a black hole can be seen to affect matter and energy.

"These magnetic fields have been predicted to exist, but no one has seen them before. Our data puts decades of theoretical work on solid observational ground," explained principal investigator Shep Doeleman, also a CfA researcher and assistant director of MIT's Haystack Observatory.

Though Sgr A* is 4 million times the mass of the sun, its event horizon stretches just 8 million miles across. At 25,000 light-years away, it's very hard to zoom in on with even the most powerful telescopes. But because the gravity of supermassive black holes' warp the light as matter and energy is sucked to its center, the event horizon appears magnified.

The magnetic fields were seen using the Event Horizon Telescope, which isn't a single telescope but a system of radio telescopes working in coordination around the world. Scientists used the network to study the polarized light surrounding Sagittarius A-star.

Polarized light is emitted by electrons spinning around the lines of the black hole's magnetic fields, thus revealing the fields themselves.

The field lines surrounding the event horizon were varied. In some regions they appeared disorganized and tangled, featuring intertwined loops. In other regions they were more patterned. Researchers believe such regions might be the birthplace of the jets shot out by the black hole's accretion disk.

"Once again, the galactic center is proving to be a more dynamic place than we might have guessed," says Johnson. "Those magnetic fields are dancing all over the place."

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/12/03/Magnetic-fields-detected-near-black-hole-at-Milk-Way-center/5451449171335/

[astr0144]

The Universe is Dying? Now What?




Paul Sutter is a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Yes, the universe is dying. Get over it.

Well, let's back up. The universe, as defined as "everything there is, in total summation," isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Or ever. If the universe changes into something else far into the future, well then, that's just more universe, isn't it?


But all the stuff in the universe? That's a different story. When we're talking all that stuff, then yes, everything in the universe is dying, one miserable day at a time.

I mentioned in my last article (What Triggered the Big Bang?) how revolutionary the modern cosmological paradigm is: We don't live in a static, unchanging universe, but a dynamic one that has been around for a finite amount of time and will continue to change into its future. But what I didn't mention before is how agonizingly slow, painful and dreary the whole process will be.

You may not realize it by looking at the night sky, but the ultimate darkness is already settling in. Stars first appeared on the cosmic stage rather early — more than 13 billion years ago; just a few hundred million years into this Great Play. But there's only so much stuff in the universe, and only so many opportunities to make balls of it dense enough to ignite nuclear fusion, creating the stars that fight against the relentless night.

The expansion of the universe dilutes everything in it, meaning there are fewer and fewer chances to make the nuclear magic happen. And around 10 billion years ago, the expansion reached a tipping point. The matter in the cosmos was spread too thin. The engines of creation shut off. The curtain was called: the epoch of peak star formation has already passed, and we are currently living in the wind-down stage. Stars are still born all the time, but the birth rate is dropping.

At the same time, that dastardly dark energy is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, ripping galaxies away from each other faster than the speed of light (go ahead, say that this violates some law of physics, I dare you), drawing them out of the range of any possible contact — and eventually, visibility — with their neighbors. With the exception of the Andromeda Galaxy and a few pathetic hangers-on, no other galaxies will be visible. We'll become very lonely in our observable patch of the universe.

The infant universe was a creature of heat and light, but the cosmos of the ancient future will be a dim, cold animal.

The only consolation is the time scale involved. You thought 14 billion years was a long time? The numbers I'm going to present are ridiculous, even with exponential notation. You can't wrap your head around it. They're just ... big.

For starters, we have at least 2 trillion years until the last sun is born, but the smallest stars will continue to burn slow and steady for another 100 trillion years in a cosmic Children of Men. Our own sun will be long gone by then, heaving off its atmosphere within the next 5 billion years and charcoaling the Earth. Around the same time, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide, making a sorry mess of the local system.

At the end of this 100-trillion-year "stelliferous" era, the universe will only be left with the ... well, leftovers: white dwarves (some cooled to black dwarves), neutron stars and black holes. Lots of black holes.

Welcome to the Degenerate Era, a state that is as sad as it sounds. But even that isn't the end game. Oh no, it gets worse. After countless gravitational interactions, planets will get ejected from their decaying systems and galaxies themselves will dissolve. Losing cohesion, our local patch of the universe will be a disheveled wreck of a place, with dim, dead stars scattered about randomly and black holes haunting the depths.

The early universe was a very strange place, and the late universe will be equally bizarre. Given enough time, things that seem impossible become commonplace, and objects that appear immutable ... uh, mutate. Through a process called quantum tunneling, any solid object will slowly "leak" atoms, dissolving. Because of this, gone will be the white dwarves, the planets, the asteroids, the solid.

Even fundamental particles are not immune: given 1034 years, the neutrons in neutron stars will break apart into their constituent particles. We don't yet know if the proton is stable, but if it isn't, it's only got 1040 years before it meets its end.

If you're a topical expert — researcher, business leader, author or innovator — and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, <a href="mailto:expertvoices@techmedianetwork.com">email us here</a>.If you're a topical expert — researcher, business leader, author or innovator — and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here.
Credit: SPACE.comView full size image
With enough time (and trust me, we've got plenty of time), the universe will consist of nothing but light particles (electrons, neutrinos and their ilk), photons and black holes. The black holes themselves will probably dissolve via Hawking Radiation, briefly illuminating the impenetrable darkness as they decay.

After 10100 years (but who's keeping track at this point?), nothing macroscopic remains. Just a weak soup of particles and photons, spread so thin that they hardly ever interact.

And then? Who knows? When you're contemplating such unfathomable time scales, it's hard to say. Maybe the universe will just continue cooling off, erasing temperature differences, making engines and computation — and cognition — effectively impossible.

But maybe our universe is just a small patch of a larger framework, and while our branch is dying, another piece of the greater cosmos is just now entering its glorious star-forming days. Not that you'll ever be able to reach it, but it's a small comfort. Maybe a chance fluctuation will ignite a new Big Bang. Maybe whatever's driving Dark Energy will reveal its true nature, decaying into a shower of matter, breathing fresh life into a broken-down cosmos. Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ... Maybe not.



http://www.space.com/31282-the-universe-is-dying.html

[COSMO]

Hi Astro,
I did read the the article about the pilot wave research.  Very interesting and maybe there are applications there for quantum manipulation. 
I also keep in mind what Professor Higgs said about the Higgs Boson.  He said that it is not really a particle, but instead is a distortion of the Higgs Field which I think also the case with all matter and energy being distortions in a primary medium that pervades space/time.  So the analogy with the fluid pilot wave and a separate particle is not quite the same.  Everything we can observe is a distortion in a primary medium that pervades all of space and time, not separate from it and everything is united in that field and that is also the physics of elevated consciousness.  That quantum field is the probability ocean.  Everything we can see is the result of that raw stuff of creation being forged by the observer into the material universe we observe. 

As for the universe dying, that may be so if you don't accept the multiverse theory. 

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=6829.msg95746#msg95746

A flow of space time into the vortex of a black hole, creating another volume of space time is the model I think fits in with the way the universe does things.  It would appear it is a multi-verse with positive space-time pressure that is driving the expansion of our universe and the flow of ETHER into black holes, spawning  more universes and I think this model extends all the way down to the subatomic scale and is what drives subatomic rotation of black-hole-subatomic-particles, resulting in gravity.  As long as the flow continues the multiverse continues to unfold, like a plant does, expanding and replicating in a fractal manner into the true vacuum. 

 

Cosmo

[COSMO]

Time to knock the dust off of this thread!  lol

I have always been a fan of the physicist Bohm and his relationship with Krishnamurti was a rare, beautiful thing.

wiki: David Joseph Bohm FRS[1] (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century[2] and who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.

Here is some more validation  for the non-local nature of our universe. 

Quantum weirdness may hide an orderly reality after all:

in 1952, Bohm suggested that the quantum world only appears weird because we don't know enough about its underlying reality. Beneath the quantum weirdness, he said, reality is orderly.

"It's a very deterministic description, where all the particles in nature have definite positions and follow definite trajectories," says Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Many recent experiments have suggested that no such hidden reality exists. However, they have only ruled out a specific class of theories in which the hidden reality of any particle is local, and not influenced by something far away.

Bohm's ideas involve non-local hidden reality, in which everything depends on everything. In his universe, something happening in a distant galaxy is influencing you right now and vice versa, however minor the effect.

Take the debate over whether an electron is a wave or a particle. Bohm's theory says that it's both: an electron is a particle with a definite trajectory, but this path is governed by a wave upon which the electron rides. The wave can also be influenced by other particles, which in turn changes the trajectory of the electron.

Bohm is back
Now Steinberg and colleagues have performed the ESSW experiment themselves – and concluded that Bohm is back in the game.

They started with pairs of entangled photons, which are so intimately related that measuring the polarisation state of one affects the polarisation state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. One of each pair was sent into apparatus analogous to the double-slit set-up.

Depending on whether its polarisation was vertical or horizontal, the photon was steered towards either the top or bottom slit. As it traversed the apparatus, the researchers probed its position gently enough to preserve its quantum nature. Each measurement gave only an approximate value, but by tracking a vast ensemble of identical photons, they were able to reconstruct the set of trajectories the photons followed from the slit to the screen.

The other photon of each pair remained outside the double-slit apparatus, allowing the researchers to use it as a probe – analogous to the detector in the ESSW experiment. Because of their entanglement, the probe's polarisation should dutifully reflect the slit its partner took as it entered the apparatus. And indeed, at the start of the trajectory, the probe photon's polarisation state accurately mirrored the path its partner took.

The team kept measuring the probe's photon state as its partner sped through the apparatus, and found that the polarisation kept changing. For example, if it was horizontally polarised to start with, this suggested that its partner went through the bottom slit.

But by the time the partner reached the screen, the probe photon had ended up in a superposition of both states, equally likely to be horizontally or vertically polarised. Depending on when you looked at the probe photon's state, you either got correct information about its partner's path, or would be led astray.

Real world
The team thinks this means that the trajectory of the first photon changed the probe's polarisation – in line with Bohm's ideas on non-local interactions. This could resolve the problem identified by the ESSW thought experiment. ESSW thought the problem lay with the photon's trajectory, but Steinberg and his colleagues showed that the trajectory is real – but the detector is an unreliable witness.

"I'm happy to see this resolution. It restores my taste for Bohmian mechanics," says Steinberg. "We want to bring it back to its rightful place among all other interpretations."

Hiley is impressed by the experiment. "It is a new way of looking at quantum non-locality, which vindicates the Bohm position," he says.

Sheldon Goldstein, an expert on the foundations of quantum mechanics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, points out that the experiment's observation of particle trajectories predicted by Bohmian mechanics does not prove that Bohm's theory on the nature of reality was correct. Such paths can also be explained using other theories, he says.

But Goldstein says there are changes afoot. "After decades and decades, people are taking Bohmian mechanics a little bit more seriously," he says. "There was a time when you couldn't even talk about it because it was heretical. It probably still is the kiss of death for a physics career to be actually working on Bohm, but maybe that's changing."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078251-quantum-weirdness-may-hide-an-orderly-reality-after-all/

"I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment...."
(David Bohm: Wholeness and the Implicate Order)



"contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind"...I think those multiple areas of study gave him a better view of the true nature of reality and that approach is the only way we will ever be able to understand the connection between the quantum realm and the universe we perceive.  All of creation is connected in that realm. 

Cosmo