December 21, 2012: Mayan Apocalypse

    There is a lot of misinformation out there so let's set the record straight before we all start running for the hills.  Because after a few ridiculous blockbuster movies and  some thought-provoking history channel documentaries we are now a society closely approaching a highly anticipated date.  The Mayan calender known as the long count will end its 13th baktun (a period of 144,000 days) which marks the end of the first "Great Cycle" on December 21, 2012.  There are questions on the accuracy of this date due to the calendar not accounting for leap years, however the issue of leap year only plays a role in calendars that count years.  This calendar simply counts days and is independent of the solar year.  The Mayans have just been counting the sunrise and sunset for thousands and thousands of days.  Perhaps the misconception has stemmed from use of the word calendar and the Mayan Long Count is more of a day recorder.  None the less, it has been recording for something like 1.8 million days since the beginning of the first baktun (August 11, 3113 BCE).  And on December 21 of this year the calendar will reach 1,872,000 days, the day recorder will reset, and we will enter into the 14th baktun.  The number 13 was considered a holy number by the Mayans who thought there to be 13 levels of heaven, thus the "Great Cycle" comprises of 13 baktuns.

   So that is what the Mayan Long count "is," but what did the end of this "Great Cycle" actually mean to the  ancient Mayans?  To see time as the Mayans did we have to strip away the prejudices and preconceptions of our Western thought.  Western man sees time as linear, it begins at some point and ends at another.  However, the Mayans saw time as cyclical; what has happened in the past will happen again and time is comprised of looping events.  Their culture makes no claims that the end of the world occurs when the "Great Cycle" ends in 2012.  Instead, it is the turning over into a new era, a period of change and renewal, which has been speculated as meaning that this world must be destroyed for a new one to begin.  This is not necessarily the case.  We see similar renewing mentalities in our own culture each January when our calender resets and the gyms are swarmed by new years resolutioners.  What we don't see is people worried the world is going to end every year on December 31st.  At least not sane people because it is simply the beginning of a new cycle around the sun.

    But all ancient Mayan cultural speculative significance aside, why would we trust a ancient civilization to predict the end of the world in the first place?  Where does this confidence in their astronomical and temporal predictions come from?  To their credit, the Mayans were in fact great astronomers for their time, thought to be obsessed with the happening of the stars.  Without a sextant or any modern technology, they were able to predict lunar events within seconds 1,500 years into the future and they also very accurately charted the orbits of planets, such as Mercury,  Mars and Venus.  The Mayans are also thought to have predicted the alignment of the earth, the sun and the center of the Milky Way galaxy on December 12 of 2012.  Some have suggested that this alignment will invoke gravitational effects that could throw the earth off its axis or even out of orbit. And while the gravitational effects of this alignment are mathematically negligible, there is a easier way to prove this theory wrong.  The Earth, the Sun, and the center of the galaxy will align on that day, that much the doomsday theorists have gotten right.  But what often is overlooked is that this alignment occurs EVERY YEAR on December 21, which is known as the winter solstice.  And since we have survived every previous winter solstice, our past suggests we will also survive this one.  There are also many other fabricated theories on alignments of planets which will cause the planets to waver off their orbits.  These are simply not true, there is no special alignments of planets on 12/21/12, and the only significant sources of gravity on the earth are the Sun and the Moon.

December 21, 2012...Just Another Day

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

   Doomsday 2012 advocates will tell you that the precision of Mayan astronomy must have been influenced by gods or aliens because their knowledge is too great for their time period.  Also that these aliens shared with the Mayans their knowledge of the universe and even told them the date of the end of the world (a idea made even more famous by the TV show: Ancient Aliens).  However, if the Mayans did have aliens telling them the secrets of the universe, a lot of the basic secrets were left out.  For instance, the Mayans thought the world to be flat and resting on top of a giant crocodile and they also were unaware of the structure of our solar system, viewing the planets as simply faster moving stars.  More significantly, if December 21st is the end of the world, that would mean the Earth began at the beginning of the Mayan "Great Cycle" on August 11, 3113 BCE, which is only a couple thousand years ago.  However, geological and astronomical evidence has proven the earth to be just over 4.5 billion years old.  This means the Mayans wrongly calculated the beginning of the Earth by over 4 billions years! Why then should we trust the Mayans to predict the Earth's end?

   But even more far-fetched are the rumors surrounding the proposed planet, Nibiru.  This planet was first introduced by the writer and ancient alien theorist, Zachariah Sitchin.  Sitchin stated that the ancient Sumerian culture was aware of a extra planet that follows a very elliptical orbit around the sun.  This planet has no real link to the Maya other than their shared interest in astronomy.  Nibiru is speculated to be slowly approaching the earth and will either crash into the earth or have intense gravitational effects on it.  However, if this planet was approaching it would be very visible at this point and there has also been no effects on any neighboring planets that suggest a unwelcomed visiting planet.  Some suggest that the planet has been observed by NASA and other government agencies and they are working hard to keep it under wraps.  If this is true then they would have to confiscate every telescope in the world.  Honestly I haven't checked in a while, but I'm fairly certain my telescope is still collecting dust in the garage.  On top of that, this is based on only one mans interpretation of a ancient text that at the time very few people could read.  However, the few that can now read ancient Sumerian assert that Sitchin has twisted the language to fit his own theories and in some cases even gotten translations completely wrong.  The errors in his translations were so great that some accused Sitchin of not being able to read ancient Sumerian at all.

Zachariah Sitchin Debunked

   Conveniently, most of the astronomical claims of  the 2012 doomsday advocates are very testable with a telescope or a astronomy computer program.  However, there are a few that would have little more warning than a flash of light immediately before our destruction.  A solar flare followed by a coronal mass ejection is a emission of high energy particles from our sun that if aimed directly at earth with a large enough energy could do considerable damage.  These ejections happen very frequently and our planet is fairly consistently bombarded with material from the suns solar flares.  Luckily for us, the Earth has a magnetic field that shields us from these particles.  But if the solar flare was large enough or if the shields were down, we would be showered with radiation and electromagnetic waves that could incinerate all life in a instant.  However, there is no indication that the Earth's magnetic field will shut off.  Even during periods of magnetic pole inversion (when the north and south poles switch their orientation) it continues to protect us from solar radiation even though our compasses would need re-calibration.   Moreover, the sun is currently in a period called a solar minimum, which is a time of low solar activity.  During this time it is extremely unlikely that there will be a coronal mass ejection large enough to devastate the earth.  Instead a solar flare on this day would simply treat some penguins and Eskimos up north to an aurora borealis or "Northern Lights" that this radiation causes.

    The other unpredictable and perhaps most destructive of all celestial events is a supernova.  If the world is going to end on 2012, this is how it would happen without any warning.  When a star runs out of its hydrogen fuel, gravity compresses the mass of the star and it becomes a fiery ball of immensely unstable plasma.  When all this energy is then released the explosion outshines entire galaxies.  The high energy particles of this explosion then carry a shock wave demolishing anything in its path and remodeling portions of galaxies.  The blasts can carry across thousands of light years and travel nearly the speed of light.  Any creature living on a planet in the path of this blast would be bathed in light and then instantaneously treated to a swift death by heavenly fire.  This might be the most terrifying of all the solar calamities but fortunately it is also one of the most unlikely and modern astronomy has found no candidate stars close enough to cause us harm.  So once again earthlings can rest at ease knowing that if there is a supernova, it is much more likely some other poor fools on a far away planet that will draw the cosmic short straw.

Supernova Simulation

   It seems that all evidence points towards the continual existence of the earth as a beacon of life in the universe.  Our planet has weathered 4.5 billion years without being wiped away.  But then again, it has also seen many extinctions and destructive events.  More than 99% of all species of life that have lived on our planet are now extinct and through studying the skies, we have learned that cataclysm in this cosmic shooting galaxy is humbling eventuality.  The Earth will most likely survive December 21, 2012 and many December 21's to follow but someday this will all come to an end.  This is a fact that no doubt every prophet of doom is counting on.  And so it seems man will keep prophesying its end until by sheer inevitability one of us is proven right.



*Thus, if I was to predict the end of the world it  would have to be April 13, 2036.  The day that the asteroid Apophis, according to NASA, has a one in 45,000 chance of hitting the earth.  (see video)

Neil Degrasse Tyson: Death by Giant Meteor

End of the World in 2012 - Maya Calendar

Ancient Maya: Tools of Astronomy (History Chanel Documentary)

by: Brett Vollert

Sources:

http://www.nasa.gov

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasa-crushes-2012-mayan-apocalypse-claims

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html#mayans

http://web.archive.org/web/20070602162121/http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/calnote.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20070702005434/http://www.crystalinks.com/precession.html

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-232_Apophis_Update.html

I believe in Aliens, just not in YOU....

     I love a good UFO conspiracy as much as the next guy.  However, traveling across the universe and through the vacuum of space to probe some humans seems ridiculous.  And while the numbers are clearly on the side of the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, it is hard for me to believe that these same advanced aliens fail to be able to land securely and crash into the the deserts of New Mexico.  Although if these are aliens are crashing into our planet, I have new found confidence that we could successfully defend ourselves against a alien invasion.  Because while they might be extraterrestrial, they clearly are not all that intelligent.

    There are roughly 200 billion stars in the our Milky Way galaxy and there are around 200 billion more galaxies just like it throughout the universe.  It would then make sense that there would be at least one other planet circling one of these 400 billion billion stars that fosters intelligent life.  Especially because extra-solar planets are being discovered on a weekly basis and we have even found planets that fall into the "Goldy Locks Zone," whose orbits are the right distance from their stars to allow for biological life.  Using all this information, a scientist by the name of Frank Drake devised a equation that took into consideration all of the factors that would need to be aligned in order for intelligent life to exist in the universe.  The equation showed that there are likely millions of civilizations throughout the universe and thousands even in our galaxy.  (estimated at: 10,000 radio communicating civilizations in the Milky Way)

    And so we search the skies for some like us.  Organizations like SETI (http://www.seti.org/)  dedicate their resources to listening for radio waves from distant stars.  Our radio waves from early radio broadcasts have now reached out over 100 light years from the earth and the aliens circling our closest star, 4.3 light years away, are now caught up in the drama of the TV series, LOST.
   
     But after all our searching, there is no definite evidence that we have company in the universe.  Some may think that we have looked long enough and that the lack of evidence can be considered proof.  However, we have only been listening to the universe's radio waves for a little over 30 years, and to definitively state that there is no evidence of life is tantamount to scooping a cup of water out of the ocean and concluding that there are no whales in our seas.  It will take time, but why not keep looking?  Are we afraid that we might find we are not unique?

   We are made from the most common chemicals in the universe (H, O, C, N).  So the chemicals that make us are not unique, simply their configuration.  But perhaps life is a eventuality of complex chemistry.  It was very early in the earths history that life arose, in fact, it appeared almost immediately when the earths surface stabilized after the violent period of heavy bombardment.  One would think if it was a unlikely happening that it would take billions of years to arise.  But then again life seems to make logical sense.  On the very basic level, life is simply repeating chemical patterns.  Could we then even apply the evolutionary rules of natural selection to chemicals themselves?  Would it be to far a leap to say that life itself was naturally selected?  That even matter evolves?   Because all evolution is proclaiming is that structures that have attributes that promote their continual existence, continue to exist and to multiply. The second law of thermodynamics (order in a closed system always decreases and "entropy" increases) might suggest otherwise but that law is looking at the universe as a whole. In a non-closed system, physics allows for order to increase.

    With all this said, I am still weary to believe your UFO story.  Well...I believe you saw a UFO, a UNIDENTIFIED flying object, but not a alien.  Lets not jump to any conclusions when we see a object in the sky.  Too often people see a light in the sky and they claim it was a alien craft visiting earth with no proof other than their ignorance of what the object was.  Occum's Razor is a scientific law that states that usually the simplest answer is the correct one, in biology this is called the law of parsimony.  Using this law, I conclude that there was no alien craft because it is more likely that you are simply a idiot.  Sorry but not sorry.  To over throw this law all we need is some sort of concrete evidence that aliens are in fact visiting our planet and a photo-shopped blurry flying saucer does not count.  Instead lets try to get a piece of the craft or maybe even a living or dead alien.  Because if it truly a alien craft, as Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests, the technology would be like nothing we have ever seen and the alien will likely not be DNA based.  Until that time, please stop mistaking weather balloons and low flying planes for aliens.  If we keep doing this, aliens might eventually visit and find the earth to be void of intelligent life.

      But like I said the whole alien conspiracy topic is incredibly interesting and I too find myself often falling into the drama of it all.  The way I see it; either these people are crazy, they are wanting attention and money, or they actually saw aliens.  Any of these three possibilities I find fascinating    With that said, I will leave you with my favorite clip from the "Disclosure Project," a organizational effort to bring together the most reliable sources on the Alien Conspiracy.  Clifford E. Stone was supposedly a government employee who worked on recovering crashed alien ships.

 

 

Our Cosmic Bubble

     Our cosmic bubble is a nurturing oasis, yet so fragile and vulnerable.   The Earth is home to us all, the only known refuge for life across the universe.  Past its thin atmosphere, we find life growing abundantly.  From the oxygen rich atmosphere, to the shielding magnetic field; the Earth seems to be almost perfectly adjusted for life.  As if the planet was made with humanity in mind.  As if this place we call home was predestined for life.  So much had to have gone right for the earth to be so hospitable.

     However, this third rock from the sun has not always been so inviting.  For most of its 4 billion year history mankind would have not found it suitable at all.  In the first billion years of its infancy it was a violent place, covered in magma and constantly bombarded by asteroids.  Volcanoes leaked toxic gasses into the atmosphere that would be fatal to humans.  It was not until the proliferation of photosynthetic species that the oxygen rich atmosphere was formed at around 2 billion years into the Earth's life.  And after this, aerobic life found the Earth full of opportunity.  It diversified and multiplied.  But this period was also full of ice ages, astrological bombardment, and mass extinctions.  Over 99% of all species that have existed have also gone extinct.  In fact, this period of time might speak more to life's perseverance rather than the earths hospitality.  But then again, this only adds the the unlikeliness of mans existence.  Made evident every time we call out into the expanse of space without answer.
    But to truly understand ourselves and our home planet, we must take a step back to see our existence from a different perspective.  We must be careful to not only see the snapshot of now.  Because we are as much our past as our present.  And to say that our planet is made for us, is to forget that life has spent the past 3 billion years conforming to this planet.  We have co-evolved.  Our environment has shaped us, while we have also shaped our environment.  Hardened by our violent beginnings and now comforted by our global reach.  Humanity should then not be so surprised by the Earth's overwhelming hospitality because we would remember that we worked for so long to make it so.

-by: Brett Vollert

Programmable Consciousness

   The most common assessment of human consciousness among scientists is that it has spawned from the unique complexity of the human mind.  That within our DNA lays a design for a being capable of dreams, hopes, and fears.  Yes, these seemingly intangible qualities are thought to be simply manifestations of a complex physical structure.  It is ironic that the concept of consciousness being the product of complex bio-chemistry is hard for that same consciousness to accept.  That mechanical processes, quantum effects, chemical interactions and biological machines can generate such a seemingly unique, self-aware, and sentient being.

   But if it is only a matter of complexity then it could be replicated.  Imagine a computer program code generating a virtual reality.  The video games and computer programs we have today are not nearly complex enough but with enough man hours and enough time we could theoretically generate a world as complex as ours.  After all, many scientists are finding that our world has characteristics of a computer code.  The question then is...if this world has equally complex features and equally complex people within it, will this then incite consciousness? (and will they then create another equally complex reality!?)  Will these people within this program have our same thoughts and dreams?  This question is very crucial because if the answer is in fact yes; then what would prevent us from living in a similar program.  Who is to say that we too are not apart of a program and an eventual product of complex code?  Matter seems to scream intangibility, quarks could be our pixels and  mathematics shows us a set of absolute rules, all characteristics suggesting a programmable reality.  But would it even matter if we were?  Why does this idea so shake the souls of men?   Without a doubt it is the ego of mankind that causes their discomfort.  Their belief in a higher power that causes them to stumble over an equally high calling.  But as for me, if the world is a product of code.  It is quite a beautiful code....

-By: Brett Vollert

DNA's Cat in the Bag

   

    Maurice Wilkins was a chatty Cathy.  Steeped in a war of secrecy he handed the opposition his most precious intel and watched them claim victory.  Some may think him the fool who let the cat out of the bag, but he just may be the hero science needed. 

   At a time when life was thought to have some immaterial quality, three opposing factions were racing to be the first to give the essence of life a physical explanation.  It was a race to see the structure of DNA, the “life molecule”.  Maurice Wilkins was working with Roslyn Franklin at Kings College in London, the two time Nobel Prize winning Linus Pauling worked independently in the US and James Watson and Thomas Crick were working at Cambridge University.  However, Wilkins and Franklin were the only ones doing any real experimental or physical science.   Their opposing teams were simply building models or trying to figure out the structure in their head based on some chemical analysis of chromosomes.  This was widely viewed as the lazy approach to the problem.  The difficult approach founded by Wilkins was using x-rays to determine the shape of DNA in a crystalline form.  Essentially, they were bombarding the DNA with X-rays and then looking at its shadow. Originally this was the sole mission of Maurice Wilkins, but due to the importance of the task, he was assigned a partner in Roslyn Franklin.  She was a talented scientist who quickly stole the spotlight along with the hearts of many young geeky scientists.  However, the much less intoxicating, Maurice was the backbone of the operation.  So with a shy temperament and determination for the advancement of science, Wilkins tirelessly widened the peephole viewing DNA’s structure.  On the other side of the door he found that his data indicated a helix shape for DNA.  He was mere steps away from determining the entire structure along with Roslyn Franklin, but in their midst a spy lurked.
   Jim Watson was infamous for his nosy antics and questionable intel gathering methods, he could often be found at events gathering info and interrogating external scientists.  This noisy nature lead him into the office on Roslyn Franklin, where he claims to have been waiting to meet with her but when she entered he was snooping around her laboratory and she instantly became furious.  Kicked out of the office, Jim Watson was quickly sheltered by Maurice Watson.  Perhaps Maurice was bitter that they let Roslyn take over the project or perhaps he was simply to excited to contain himself, but in a moment of reckless abandon he reached into his drawer and pulled out his diffraction images that indicated DNA's helix structure.  Jim Watson was handed the single biggest piece of evidence for DNA's structure.  After all his prying and prodding for information, it was the willing hands of Maurice Wilkins that let the cat out of the bag.  Now Watson and Crick only had to put the pieces together.  Soon after this meeting, the Cambridge duo released their model for the structure of DNA, and soon after they all received Nobel Prizes, including Maurice Wilkins for his contribution of the X-ray diffraction images.  But the names Watson and Crick are the ones that echo through the halls of Universities and stain the pages of textbooks.
  Maurice Wilkins faded back into the shadows, forgotten and disregarded.   But his timid temperament was not one for the spotlight, his persona does not jump off the pages of history.  Instead he was a servant of science.  In a age that was optimized by harsh rivalries and scientific non-cooperation, he was the only hand reaching across the aisle.  Wilkins saw no enemies in fellow scientists, and he felt no remorse.  The science of DNA excited Wilkins, and he felt that his contribution was meant to be shared with the entire world.  In fact when asked if he had let the cat out of the bag he simply stated, "I guess that is perfectly true, but i don't believe science should be kept in bags...any more than cats."

-By: Brett Vollert

Your Science is Flawed!

       In philosophy, it's name is in-determinism but in science it is referred to as the burden of proof.  Yes, fact is the foundation that science rests upon.  In fact, the search for quantifiable and observable proof may just be the defining quality of science.  Science searches for truth and its compass is proof.  But much like the real thing, could this compass also not always point north?  Could this absolute dedication to observable validation lead us astray?
    As children we are confronted with the harsh reality that absolute certainty is realistically unattainable.  When children observe their favorite play toy covered by a box or a blanket, at first they are distraught that it has disappeared forever.  It is not until later that they realize that, out of sight does not mean our of reach and their toy is simply obstructed from view.  This is a very important lesson for man to learn as he grows to accept this seemingly observer independent universe.  A idea so ingrained in humanity that it leads most men to truly believe that the world keeps on spinning even with their eyes closed, a belief supported by a myriad of data from when his eyes are open but none from when they are actually closed.  The truth is, that there is no way to have absolute proof in that dark moment but instead we base our thoughts on the experience we gain from opening our eyes.  And so, man has grown to ignore this uncertainty of the unobservable as a logical loophole.
    Science has not done the same.  Perhaps, its foundation in observation is too deep to be uprooted by common sense.  But there has seemed to be a recent disconnect between scientific theory and common sense with the advent of quantum theory, most specifically the Copenhagen interpretation.  This interpretation essentially states that the world is instead observer dependent and it is our observation of the universe that brings it into existence.  The idea is that it is our observation that causes the world to go from a realm of infinite possibilities to actually one of these possibilities being reality.  More technically, anything can happen and is happening as a wave function of the quantum world but when it is observed by a conscious being; the wave function collapses to one possibility.  We call this collapsed wave, reality.

 

   The best example of this disconnect is the mind experiment of Schrodinger's Cat.  In this experiment, a cat is placed in a box with a container holding poisonous gas.  This gas is rigged to have a random %50 chance to go off using the decay of radioactive particles.  Once the cat is put in the box we have no way to observe it if has survived of died.  Its survival is based on random chance.  The Copenhagen interpretation would state that the cat actually exists in both states, that it is both alive and dead.  And that it is only until the box is opened that we force the possibilities to become one reality.
   While this may seem ridiculous, there is in fact a large population of the scientific community that has thrown away their childhood lesson of a observer independent reality and put themselves back at the focal point of reality.  So steeped in the scientific method of observation that the black moment of doubt caused them to derive an extravagant explanation.  Might the scientific method have failed them?  Like children we are so determined to bring the darkness to light.  But instead, we might have to grow up to realize that the room has remained in tact during the obscured walk from the light switch back to our beds and no monsters lurk in the shadows.

-By: Brett Vollert

The Superior Species Complex

      Hello my name is humanity and I have a species superiority complex.  I am the pinacle of evolution ....or creation, I haven't unanimously decided yet.  Unfortunately, my neighboring species on this planet dont all feel the same.  They find me a nuisance and a danger to our planet, but honestly I couldn't care less because they are too inferior to even have a opinion.  In fact, I dont think that they can even think at all.
    We humans have a giant ego.  However, have we posibly misevaluated our superiority?  It just might be the case that we have delusions of grandeur.  Does the towering grizly bear find us more powerfull?  Does the echolocating dolphins find us persceptive?  Or does even the colony building termite find us industrious?  It seems more likely they would find us to be fragile, weak organisms hiding behind mechical tools unable to live harmoniously with nature.  But despite our less powerful bodies and deafened senses, surely we are more intelligent.   We have displayed our dominance on a global scale, building structures that scratch the sky and extending our influence into almost every corner of the earth.  All very impressive but it has been a short run.  We are barely a spec on the evolutionary timeline.  Our reign has been on the scale of tens of thousands of years and already we are in jeopardy of abruptly ending it with world altering technology and weapons.  Contrarily, great whites have been dominating the oceans for a much longer 16 million years, and if it wasn't for a that very unlucky day 65 million years ago, the earth might still be dominated by dinosaurS, who ruled for 135 million years.  We have reached such great heights, one might hope this would grant us perspective instead of pride. 
     Of course this arrogance might be apart of what makes us human.  The excertion of our will which gave us the evolutionary advantage.  Religions proclaim us made to rule over the animals, and our cultures embrace mans conquering of beasts and naturE itself.  We are a product of our perseverance and survivability through ingenuity, of that there is no doubt.  But has this survivability come at a cost.  We do not seem to be organisms that account for natural resource depletion or have any type of self regulating behavior.  In this sense we have fallen into the most common class of organism, the parasite.  We feed off the land and move on, without equilibrium or sustainability.  This is not behavior of a superior species, simply a hungrier one.  A hungrier species with enough mental capacity to make radical changes to the dinner table.  But does this mental capacity make us superior?  And what happens when our food runs out?  Will another organism a million years from now be speaking of the foolish humans who thought the world infinite and who fancied themselves royalty?  Perhaps we have mistaken our intelligence for wisdom and our prevalence for power.
    Yet there is some intangible uniqueness that man embodies.  Some ghost in the biological machine.  Many have called it a soul, consciousness, or the human spirit.  And perhaps this is simply another biological trick to ensure our survival and continual affluence.  Perhaps we are too much in awe of the outcome of a incredibly complex physical system that we label it magic,  a mistake many of our ancestors have repeatedly committed.   But even the stubbornest scientist must see there is something more there.  Something hard to grasp like water through our bare hands.  But it is surely there.  It pulls us away from a realm of experimental validation and concrete evidence, into somewhere transcendent; something unworldly.  In this place we find ourselves existentially unique.  And it just maybe that our bridging of these two worlds is what separates man from beast, this duel citizenship which makes us human.  Surely this makes us superior?  Doesn't it?...

-by: Brett Vollert
 

The True Nature of Nature

   

     Science aims to reveal what the world really is.  Not what we think it should be or what we wish it to be but what it truly is.  Science seeks the true nature of nature.  But scientists have become increasingly aware that the world we see is only a shade of reality.  That the true nature of nature is an elusive entity.

An excerpt from my screenplay:
"No, the universe doesn't scare me.  In fact, it is the universe’s expanse that entices me.  I find solace in its enormity.  Looking out at the night sky, I see that I am just part of a bigger whole.  And through studying the rules and laws that govern it, I feel connected to it.  No, I don’t fear it.  I cherish it.  But what I do fear?... is the world within.  Because everything that occurs out in this sprawling universe is only revealed to me by my mind.  The entire universe might as well be squished between my ears... every burning star and every spinning galaxy."
-by Brett Vollert


     It is true that the world is revealed to us by our minds.  And one thing that continually is forgotten is that we did not evolve to see the world as it actually is, but instead in a way that best allows us to function within it.  We are here to survive and our sensory organs and central nervous system evolved to ensure just that.
       One example of this disconnect between reality and our mental image is colors.  There are no colors out in the world, only different wavelengths of light (most of which our mind cannot even recognize at all).  Colors are simply mental tags used by our minds to create a mental map of our environment.  Many people might not even see colors in the same way within their minds.  It is also theorized that bats, who see the world through echolocation, use color to create their mental map, even though their visual mapping system is not based on light but instead sound.  Once we realize that colors are only the mind's representation of waves, we begin to realize that our senses are merely meant to filter relevant data and our mind to organize that data to make it usable.
      The universe is a network of waves.  Quantum mechanics has taught us that down at the very small scales of reality, matter acts more like a wave than a thing.  Scientists call it a quantum cloud or a realm of possibilities, which is a very vague way of the scientific community saying, "we have no clue."  We have so many answers but we are still unable to tell what our world is made of.  And even so, life goes on.  Perhaps this lack of information is too little to distract us from the little things in life.  But once in a while, something small might catch our eye.  And we might wonder what the stuff of stuff is.
      Similarly, we cannot definitly define our consciousness scientifically and we are also finding that a conscious observer has a huge role to play in our universe.  For example, quantum physics has discovered that the universe might actually be observer affected and controlled.  This means that our universe is affected and changed by simply our act of observing it.  (see videos below)  We fell further into paranormal activity when Bells theorem discovered that objects can be affected instantaneously at a distance.  Indicating that the universe is non-local, everything is connected instantly.
      Magic was once used to explain unknown phenomena.  But now when a scientist speaks about the strangeness of the world it seems more like magic than logic,  more like philosophy than science.  With these recent discoveries, science has seemed to cross into the realm of magic.  The true nature of nature is much stranger that any could have imagined.  And a logical scientific community is scratching their heads in disbelief of a seemingly irrational reality.
-by: Brett Vollert


Dual Slit Experiment:

Quantum Consciousness:

Goodbye Blue Sky

 

   All men have looked up at the sky in wonder, but a few have looked down at the sky in awe.  Few have been wrapped in the dark arms of the universe.  And even fewer have seen all of mans existence shrink into a pale blue dot as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it.  These men, through the help of our government were the pioneers of a new frontier.  And their efforts have paved the way for hundreds of new space fearing innovations like satellites, orbiting telescopes, and private space flight.  But even though this innovation has redefined the skyline, it still has found a glass ceiling encircling the earth.  This ceiling was once broken by the 12 men of Apollo who once miraculously took a stroll on the lunar surface.   But men have never flown farther or reached beyond our moon, possibly the budget is not there or the risk is too great.  So we satisfy our need for exploration with machines.  We send out probes to our neighboring planets and moons. And our robotic friends have sent back scientific data and shown us images of incredible foreign worlds.  But have they grasped the publics hearts and prodded at the core explorer's spirit of humanity?  No, they have had their 15 minutes of robot fame and they have keep us nerds occupied in this age of exploratory drought.  Apollo changed the world and inspired a whole generation of youth, it gave not only America but the whole world with it a feeling of invincibility.  "If we can put a man on the moon then what else can we do?"  Anything instantly became achievable and, in the decades following giving rise to the modern age, if you had asked a man on the street when we would land a man on Mars he might have responded, "10 maybe 20 years from now...anything is possible."  And he might have been right if we had not lost JFK's vision to, "go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard."
    Our world is crying out for change; we see it in our elections, in our media, and in our daily lives.  But change is not achieved through reorganizing the cards, but instead by reaching out and grabbing a new deck.  Our people need inspiration, man needs a frontier.  And there is one staring at us every night when the sun falls behind the horizon.  Perhaps we miss it in our beds at night under our warm covers. But man will not stay still for long.  Like a rebellious grounded child we will soon sneak out into the night sky.  Even tonight there might be a child dreaming of a stroll on mars, to be the first man or woman to stand on the red Martian soil.  On that day we will once again be reminded of humanity's limitless capability and people on every planet will realize that they have not yet reached a ceiling.  That the universe keeps on going and going.  And so should we.

-by: Brett Vollert


Here is a INCREDIBLY INTERESTING Panel discussing the future of space exploration at TAM convention featuring: Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, and Lawrence Krauss

***If you want to skip forward past introductions, the core discussion begins at around minute 5:30***

Deeps Discuss: The First Post (Technology)

Our goal here at DEEPS is to inspire thought. To not simply provide information, but to ignite imagination.  We challenge you to doubt, to question, and to ponder.  As the world is revealed we fight to understand it and search for a place within it's expanse.  Here at Deeps we aim to question what we know and dream of what might next be illuminated.

This first post will be a trial run in the form of a back and forth debate. We plan to have plenty of individual posts authored by both ourselves and guest authors but this will be hopefully the first installment in a series of monthly debates between the two of us on a variety of different topics.

The topic we plan on covering in September is the future of technology and its role in society:

Brett:  Technology has become such a integral part of human life and society it is almost as though it has evolved with us and its existence is now vital for the survival of the human race.  Without the current technology the population of the world would find themselves without the resources to live and the means to survive.  Has technology become the crutch that man stands with? Has it become so integral with our society that we would cease to be human without it?  And where does its involvement in society bring us to a different future?  Man has been unique that it is able to adapt the world around it to ensure its survival and, apart from fire, there has never been a bigger leap in technology than in modern times.  My great grandmother saw over the past 100 years man go from horse and buggy, to the automobile, to walking on the moon.  We have reached a point of no return, technology is exponentially becoming more and more powerful and its reach has entered all facets of humanity.  But where do we see it go from here?  What is the new world that technology will create?

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Ryan: Love the topic. Way to kick this off. We have been given the unique opportunity to be raised right into the middle of the technology boom.  Our generation has seen changes that have never been seen before and are likely to only escalate as the next decade unravels. Think about it. We owned one of the first home video game systems ever as kids. We were the first users to adapt social media into our every day lives. We have revolutionized efficiency by allowing employees to work, get this, more efficiently by working remotely from mobile devices and tablets. Technology has now even taken over music as we see less live instruments and more insane production reliant upon the precise timing of the technologies that support it. It's safe to say we're beyond the point of "technology has changed the way we live our lives" and are quickly approaching "our lives would be irreversibly changed if these technological luxuries ceased to exist."

My question to you is, does this technology make us better off? Here's an interesting way to think of things that occurred to me while spending time with my precocious 9 year old brother, Nolan. I could make a legitimate argument to you right now that in a job that requires technological adaption or knowledge, I would hire Nolan over a 60 year old man with no experience in that area 95 times out of 100. I played a fun game the other weekend when I was back visiting my family. I asked my dad and my baby brother a question that neither of them knew the answer to. I wrote down the question, gave them each a copy and had them open it at the same exact time and told them I was taking the first one to answer the question out to lunch. The question read, "Where was President James Knox Polk born?" My father immediately walked over to his bookcase and removed a monstrous 700 page behemoth from amongst hundreds of historical databases while my brother quickly slipped over to my dad's iPhone, unlocking it with the swipe he could determine based on the fingerprint marks left on the glass. He proceeded to open the Safari app and search "James Knox Polk birthplace." My brother had given me the answer before my dad even had the book open to the appropriate chapter. Our youth are better served in that KNOWLEDGE is now instantly available. Unfortunately, I think this will have an inverse effect on the amount that these kids actively use their brain for proactive problem solving. I know I didn't answer half of your questions but I figured you got to start so I wanted to put in my 2 cents before the ball got rolling.

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Brett:   Technology does seem to be changing the way we learn.  The amount of available information even seems to at times allow for people to be experts in anything.  But does this access of information make us intelligent?  How does instantly being able to regurgitate information from a website make us more equipped for a job?  Well it can allow you to have exposure to worlds and ideas never otherwise attainable.  Yes, technology is a remarkable tool.  And for a person to remain vocationally relevant and competitive, they must stay somewhat technologically savvy.  The world once judged intelligence by the amount of information in a individuals mind, I believe we are now moving to a world where intelligence is what the the individual can do with the information in the global mind.  Can they comprehend concepts?  Can they apply trends?  Can they use what they've learned?  Yes your brother could find the answer to your trivia question but what can he do with that information?  Your father might instead be able to use the information he finds to form a strategy or comprehend a situation.  The issue is he must also stay technologically capable enough to attain the information in the first place.  Because what we do agree on is that without the ability to obtain the information, it doesn't matter what you could possibly do with it.

Particle Physic’s Independence Day

     The opening of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland in 2008 was paired with grandiose predictions of a glimpse of the early universe and the elusive Higgs particle.  “The particle that gives all other particles Mass.”  Or so they thought as they dubbed it “the God Particle,” giving rise to the first transatlantic particle physics holy war between CERN in Geneva and Fermilab in Chicago, IL.  Fermilab was home to the Tevatron particle accelerator that had been in operation since 1983, and with the creation of the LHC at CERN they were immediately dwarfed as technologically outdated.  CERN’s LHC was the 10 billion dollar experiment sports car that was to change the face of particle physics forever by sending protons off at 99.9% of the speed of light around the great circle in Geneva.  And when these protons collided with oppositely moving protons physicists were treated to a glimpse of the conditions of the Big Bang.  But the Higgs Boson remained elusive.  And it has remained in hiding for 4 years as the two warring facilities raced to be the first to confirm the existence of the Higgs.  You could imagine that the researchers at Fermilab might have thought they had a chance with a great head start but they were working on borrowed time and they were finally shut down due to lack of funding and public support in September 2011.  It seemed that the LHC had won the war but the Higgs Boson remained silently elusive until July 4th, 2012 when the existence was confirmed with sigma 5 accuracy.  This independence day was no longer an American holiday but instead the world gained independence from the American scientific community.  And America had so easily given over the reins.

        What happen to the America that constantly was pushing new frontiers, that was dreaming to reach the moon and be the first to split the atom?  Have we become numbed to scientific discovery?  Have we forgotten we are a country founded on innovation, raised through the industrial revolution and refined in the modern technology boom?  Giving up scientific prowess is giving up our identity as pioneers.  Possibly our country has matured and we are attempting to be team players on the global field.  But budget cuts to particle physics, NASA, and other exploratory sciences can leave us crippled.  History has taught us that the civilizations with the most advanced technology always prevail. But with the recent years' recession and the economic downturn of the country many people have thought scientific research an unnecessary cost, a cuttable expense.  And with the cutting of funding given to scientific facilities like Fermilab or the space program we have set our eyes on only reasonable, small, short term endeavors.  Perhaps the Higgs boson was too abstract an idea to grab America’s attention.  Perhaps something more tangible is needed to stir the minds of the American people.  But without leadership with vision and courage, the challenge of scientific discovery will be met by men and women across the seas and beyond our grasp.  Can we sit idly by? Can we forget our roots?  Are we not still America the brave? Brave enough to plunge into uncharted territory and overcome all doubts, an America that pushes past boundaries and excites the world by doing so.  I believe that we can be and we must be, or someone else will be.

-by: Brett Vollert

Creationist Evolution

      

There is a great divide between science and religion.  And these two groups have never had a more polarizing topic than the origin of man.  Evolutionists vs. Creationists has become a misconstrued bifurcation.  But this battle royal is an unnecessary one and this divide can be easily bridged.  There can be a peaceful union of church and science.

     Evolution through natural selection is a theory for a mechanism of positive change in organisms.  Simply put it states that the organisms that survive are the ones that have properties that encourage their survival.  This idea is a theory, much like the theory of gravitation or quantum mechanics, and although it is a theory it has been used to make predictions and is the most accurate model for describing the physical world.  We have seen multiple events of new species evolving in modern times and also organisms adapting to their environments by altering their genetic code.  The fossil record also points to an evolutionary pattern of gradual adaptation and modification.  Scientifically, evolution is the most complete theory of the how life diversified. 

     However, this theory causes many Christians to feel that scientists are pushing God out of the equation.  And many scientists find that this theory causes god to be irrelevant.  But both of these ideas are drawn from unfounded assumptions.  If God created the universe could he not have done it through the creation of standard laws that give rise to complex organisms?  Many people see the universe as something that God has to interact with to impose his will.  But if he truly is the creator of the universe why would he have to change anything?  Are we confining the power of the creator by thinking from too human of a perspective?  The theory of evolution could just as easily be apart of God’s creation as the theory of gravity.  To God the universe is a clock he has wound from the beginning (even though from God’s perspective there is no time). 

      I see God in the laws of nature and evolution is no different.  Evolution is simply a part of the creation story, which much like the Bible ends with man.  Just as the laws of physics allowed for stars, galaxies, and solar systems to form, these same tenets seem to allow for Man to be created.  I see a universe that reflects its creator, with constant laws that give rise to unique attributes.  The universe does not reveal a God who is constantly tinkering with his creation but a God who has planned out his creation from the beginning, and it was good. 

      The Bible states that all of existence was created in seven days and this has often been criticized.  This first of all was written over 2000 years ago and the language of a day did not define a day as 24 hours but instead as day and night.  And with the general theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, even science has redefined time itself as a relative and changing dimension.  So simply because the simplified version of the creation of the universe in the bible only comprises seven days does not infer that it is incorrect. 

    We must be careful not to jump to soon to conclusions, or to too hastily think ourselves understanding of an omnipotent creator.  There are forces at work beyond our understanding or control, and that is something that science and religion can both agree upon.  

-by: Brett Vollert

Dr. Gerald Schroeder: Genesis and the Big Bang

Stargazing Monkeys

        

        We are as specks on a cosmic fabric, a vapor in the celestial wind.  However, our species have become conscious not only of our existence but also of the happenings of the universe we inhabit.   How is this revelation of existence evolutionarily significant?  Or is this question a leading one due to the assumptions imbedded?  There is strong fossil, genetic, and experimental data to support the selfishness of genes.  Meaning that genes that survive are the ones that promote the reproduction of the organism.  Or in some rare cases simply the reproduction of the gene itself.  This is not a complex idea, for something to exist it must have properties that support its continual existence.  However, these properties are conditional to the environment that the organism is in.  So it would make sense for an organism to contain a gene network that is meant to observe its environment so that the organism can adapt.  But this is astringent to aspects of the environment that will actually effect survival.  It would seem the events occurring in the outer reaches of the solar system would not be of evolutionary significance to man but still we gaze into the abyss, possibly for a new world to call home or extraterrestrial life to interact with.  This means somehow this network of genes has become so complex that the happenings of celestial bodies have become of interest to man, well at least some men.  Every step man takes forward is a brand new frontier and the new environment we are just beginning to get a taste of is beyond the thin atmosphere of the earth.  Man has become in awe of the heavens and claws at the sky to find what it hides.  But is this a product of mans genetic code or some higher calling?   

-by: Brett Vollert

Carl Segan describes how "life searches for life" in his book, The Pale Blue Dot

Video: The Segan Series

What's Real?

          What can we not doubt? What can we be certain of? It seems all that we can be entirely certain of is that we are in fact experiencing something, even though we do not quite know what it is.  In the words of Decartes, “cogito ergo sum” or  “I think therefore I am.”  Our experience is our reality, and our thoughts are our souls.  So how does this consciousness, capable of experiences, stem from matter.  “Well whatever matter is made of it clearly isn’t matter” (misquoted and source unknown).  At least not as defined by common understanding.  We see matter as inanimate, lifeless and solid.  The stuff that stuff is made of.  But in reality, matter is mostly empty space.  An atom is like a basketball being circled by marbles miles away.  Physically, not a whole lot there.  Except for the fact, that that isn’t even true.  Are we confused yet? A physicist’s best description of an atom, to meet what it is in reality, is a value in a wave function.  A value, meaning that there is no “thing” really there.  Quantum physics describes atoms as possibilities of existence or a likelihood of interacting with other values…Starting to make absolutely no sense?  Well the truth is that this is the real world.  And we did not evolve to see the world as it is but instead to see the world in a way that allows us to function and survive.  

-by: Brett Vollert

"Primacy of Consciousness" - Peter Russell

The Higgs are not All Right

     

(The existence of the Higgs Boson was confirmed with sigma 5 certainty July 4th, 2012 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland)  

      The Higgs Boson (discovered July 4th, 2012) was the brainchild of Dr. Peter Higgs, who mathematically theorized that such a particle could exist in 1964 and gained much support for his theory due to his strong mathematical proof.  But what is true on paper so often does not come to fruition.  Dr. Higgs theorized that the whole universe is occupied by a Higgs field and that these Higgs bosons attach to particles at varying abundance and by doing this they essentially weigh the particles down and give them their relative mass.  This at first seems like a likely idea. It makes sense to the common man and seems to follow classical Newtonian physics.  But unfortunately this is a step in the wrong direction and shifts thinking back towards an outdated paradigm.  Not that the discovery does not allow for a more complete model but that this model causes physics to be a diminished to a game of fill in the dots.  Physicists have perhaps become to enwrapped finding all the particle pieces of the standard model that they have gone away from describing how the world actually operates.  They have become categorizes not theorizers.  And with the discovery of the Higgs Boson we seem to be falling further into a world of objectivity.  On the other hand Einstein was a step in the right direction away from Newtonian physics.  Einstein taught us about relativity and the bending of time and space by matter; that these dimensions are somehow affected by matter and are warped in its presence.  But the answer to how matter warps space and time cannot be explained by another particle but instead by the addition of another dimension.  And just as the 3 spatial dimensions and time dimension are seemingly inherent to matter without the need for another particle to explain them, so is the gravitational dimension.  There is no gravitational force…gravity is merely the effects of another dimension warping the movements of objects.  This warping of 3 dimensions can be seen in the warping of two. 

        A plane travels from New York to London and a passenger watches the trip represented by a line on a flat screen GPS.  The passenger expects to see a straight line from New York to London on the GPS because everyone knows that the quickest distance from point A to point B is a straight line.  But this is not what he sees.  Instead there is a arch on his GPS showing the plane first heading northeast until it turns and heads southeast towards London.  The passenger believes that he had lost precious time by traveling north and south instead of due east.  But he is wrong, the plane did travel in the shortest possible path and actually got to London quicker than if had gone due east.  In fact all planes travel in these arching paths and they are referred to as, Great Circles.  Essentially, these Great Circles are straight lines around the curved Earth, or bands around the earth.  And they only seem the longer path on the GPS because the flat GPS leaves out the 3rd dimension of space.  This left out dimension is what warps the path and if we were living in “Flat Land” we might see the paths of these planes and assume there is some force causing them to be warped.  But we would be wrong.  We would simply be seeing the effects of a hidden dimension.  And this is the same problem we are facing in our 3 spatial and one time dimensional world.  We are seeing the effect of a hidden dimension; inherent to matter that is affecting the paths of objects. 

       But how does this dimension arise simply from matter existing?  All dimensions are dependent upon matter and their relative location to each other.  Without matter we would have no reference for up, down, left, right, back, forth or even present and future.  Why cannot a gravitational dimension be similarly inherent?  And the more matter you have the more this dimension asserts itself.  Is this not the same with all dimensions?  The larger a object is or the more object there are the more the 3 dimensions of space seem to show their face.  And so the larger an object is or the more objects there are the more the gravitational dimension plays a role. 

      This gravitational dimension could also explain the dissipating effect of gravity over space.  Just as the further you are from a object the less the dimensions of it becomes clear so does the gravitational dimension becomes less involved.  Stars are no longer 3 dimensional giants at a distance but instead 1 dimensional points in the sky and a globular cluster is not a three dimensional cloud but instead a 2 dimensional tapestry.  Dimensions fade over space. 

The gravitational force we thought existed is simply the warping of straight lines by the gravitational dimension.  This is by no means a full theory but it does answer some unanswered questions and bring up many unasked ones.  Science cannot advance without a paradigm shift away from classical physics.  This theory might answer the gravitation question with, “them more you Matter, the more you Matter.”  But it leaves us with the question.  What’s the Matter?

-by: Brett Vollert

The Big Freeze

         Like most landmark discoveries, the history of our universe was stumbled upon by accident.  It seems most game-changing, earth-shattering discoveries are a product of proper planning giving opportunity to dumb luck.  (The discoveries of radiation, the electromagnetic force and penicillin to name a few.)  Albert Einstein once said, “education is what is left after we have forgotten all we have learned in school.”  And it seems similarly, scientific break-throughs are what is left after the scientific method breaks down.

            The discovery that revealed our universe's rich history was the detection of cosmic background radiation, and it was found in a horn shaped antenna in New Jersey.  Bell Laboratories was home to two very persistent astrophysicists named Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, who were just about ready to absolutely lose their minds.  Penzias and Wilson could not get rid of the background noise their antenna was picking up.  The tried adjusting the wiring, pointing it in a different direction, super-cooling the receiver but the noise remained.  The two astrophysicists even chased a family of birds out of the Horn antenna and cleaned up their droppings to get that irritating noise out of their data and out of their heads.  However, it turned out that that omnipresent hum was in fact the reverberating echo of the Big Bang.  The radiation left over from the largest explosion in of all existence.  And of all the discoveries that have been made, this one might be the most profound.  For the first time ever we had proof of a beginning, a victory for religion and science alike.   Scientists claimed it as proof that the universe could have spontaneously erupted into existence, arguably nullifying the need for a creator. And at the same time creationists gained solace in the fact that the first three words of Genesis were confirmed.  “In the Beginning.”  Now there truly was a beginning, a start date for the cosmic calendar, and inevitably science soon turned its eyes to the end.

            The Universe is ridiculously gigantic. So large that a human mind cannot even truly comprehend the titanic distances involved.  If the universe were the size of the planet earth, earth would only take up 180th of an atom.  This can easily give people an uncomfortable feeling of insignificance.  However, around 600 years ago man had thought the universe much smaller and himself a much larger part of it. In fact, man was considered the focal point.  And it was a large shot at the human ego when Copernicus proved that instead of being the center of the universe, we were actually revolving around a star.  We had moved from an egocentric world-view to a heliocentric universe, but this was not accepted well by those who thought themselves a centerpiece.  And when he added that we were also spinning on an axis, people scowled and argued that if our world were spinning, all the water of the oceans would slosh up on one side, making Al Gore at least half right.  (This was one of man’s first encounters with what would later be coined the general theory of relativity made famous by Albert Einstein and man did not handle it very well.)  It seemed such an obvious fact that the world could not be spinning; that the earth must be stationary.  And because of this logical disconnect the paradigm shift took the better part of the 16th century.  Man so easily changes his home, his friends, and his clothes but so rarely do men change their minds. Maxwell Plank once remarked that, “new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die.”  Unfortunately, Copernicus died along with his opponents so he was unable to truly bask in the glory of scientific victory.  But this was a very dramatic change for the minds of humanity to deal with as they were humbled by their new non-central role in the universe. 

    So man was left to take comfort in the fact that we are apart of a unique galaxy.  But not for long, because in an absolute stroke of genius (now known as the Hubble Deep Field) the Hubble Telescope pointed its lens at an empty, black and seemingly barren portion of the sky, exposed an image over time, and found the emptiness of space to be littered with glowing, distant galaxies. This was a portion of space thought to be empty but instead a cosmic crowd of galaxies were found.  Over 125 billion galaxies occupy our universe and most of them contain around 100 billion stars. Humanity begrudgingly grins and commemorates the discovery as they once again shrink into the expanse of the universe. 

    However, in order to win back its central role in the universe all humanity's ego must do is wait.  As I stated earlier, the discovery of the big bang caused scientists to race to find the answer to the question of how the universe will end.  If the universe were found to be contracting or expanding at a decelerating rate, it would suggest that all the matter in the universe would eventually coalesce and the force of the gravity would crush the matter once again into a singularity within a black hole.  But if the Universe were found to be expanding at an accelerating rate, all the matter in the universe would eventually separate and we would drift off into the expanse.  This was the great question of death by fire or ice.  The answer was found in the redshift of distant galaxies by the astronomer, Alexander Freidman.  Much like how the pitch of a sound gets higher as it’s source moves towards you and lower as it moves away.  Light gets bluer as it’s source moves towards you and redder as it moves away.  This is known as the Doppler effect.  Freidman found that the further a galaxy was from us, the redder it was.  This indicated that the universe was in fact expanding and at an accelerated rate, we will surely die icy deaths.  Winter is coming.  

    This discovery predicts that eventually all the distant galaxies will drift away from us and move out of our observable horizon.  So far away that we will never again be able to detect them.  One day man will look up to the sky and find the much removed comfort of being the center of his universe restored, once again we will be the only show in town. And no matter the length of exposure, nothing but black will be seen beyond the arms of the Milky Way. And ironically, the only way a scientist could be convinced of the existence of these distant unreachable galaxies is by passed down knowledge, perhaps from the fading words of a tattered book.  The experimental method will fail them and give false conclusions of an empty universe as the knowledge of these distant galaxies slowly becomes the ranting’s of aging mad scientists.  Those scientists who still remember the light from our neighboring galaxies might plead with the astronomers and physicists to believe them.  They might describe the gallery of galaxies that was the night sky, but weighed down by the burden of proof their pleas may fall on deaf ears and be brushed aside for concrete truths. Oh what a strange time it will be when scientists ask man to have faith.

-by: Brett Vollert