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

   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

   

    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

       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

      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
 

   

     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:

 

   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***