Scientists Drill into Ancient Coral Reef Beneath Seafloor ǀ Fossilized Ancestor of Great Barrier Reef ǀ Quest for Answ A voyage to the outer edges of Australia's Great Barrier Reef has brought back pieces of an ancient, fossilized ancestor to the vast, living ecosystem. This fossilized coral reef was alive about 20,000 years ago, during the height of the last glacial period, a time when Earth was around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is now, and the city of Chicago was buried beneath an ice sheet almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) thick. By studying this ancient coral, scientists are hoping to put together the most accurate picture yet of how sea levels have changed over thousands of years, data that can help inform projections of how sea levels may change in the future. Getting to the ancient coral, a sort of great-great-grandfather to the Great Barrier Reef, posed a challenge; it lies on and below the ocean floor. "We don't have a separate signal to distract us, so we're fairly confident that what we have here are really the global sea-level changes," Cotterill said. Coral chronicles
Alchemy May Not Have Been the Pseudoscience We All Thought It Was | Science Throughout much of the 20th century, the academic community had little patience with alchemists and their vain efforts to transmute base metals into gold. Any contemporary scholar who even dared to write about alchemy, historian Herbert Butterfield warned, would “become tinctured with the kind of lunacy they set out to describe.” But, in the 1980s, some revisionist scholars began arguing that alchemists actually made significant contributions to the development of science. Historians of science began deciphering alchemical texts—which wasn’t easy. This painstaking process of decoding allowed researchers, for the first time, to attempt ambitious alchemical experiments. Principe mixed specially prepared mercury and gold into a buttery lump at the bottom of a flask. One morning, Principe came into the lab to discover to his “utter disbelief” that the flask was filled with “a glittering and fully formed tree” of gold. Other scholars have at times responded to this idea with outrage.
Have You Heard of The Great Forgetting? It Happened 10,000 Years Ago & Completely Affects Your Life By Deep Ecology Hub / deep-ecology-hub.com/ Jan 23, 2014 This article summarizes the ideas of Daniel Quinn, first written about in The Story of B, which was a sequel to Ishmael. The longer, original essay can be read here, and comes highly recommended, especially if you find yourself disagreeing with the summary below. The Great Forgetting refers to the wealth of knowledge that our culture lost when we adopted our new civilized lifestyle. The Great Forgetting accounts for an enormous cultural collapse as once tribal people found themselves in a new and strange mass centralized society. It is only recently that the Great Forgetting has been exposed. How The Great Forgetting Took Place It began around 10,000 years ago when one culture in the Near East adopted a new way of life that humans had not tried before. They began to practice an intensive form of agriculture which enabled them to live in a settled location. The Philosophical Roots of Our Culture The Truth Is Revealed But it didn’t.
Look Into Your Mind “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” - Alan Watts Tweet I am a guest here, so I’ll start with this. The mission of HighExistence says the site aims to… When I first started learning about Zen Buddhist philosophy, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you whether or not it encompassed all of these things. Why? Mindfulness (always being in the here-and-now)Compassion (generally being a nice, open person)Honesty (both to others, and also to yourself)Health (exercise, good food, and genuine relationships) Zen values experience over intellectualization; while it’s of high importance to learn, read books, and read stuff like this, you mostly need to get off your ass and really exist! Your happiness, freedom, and understanding of the mind– these all rely on your ability to not resist. Historically, people have worked on doing this in various ways. Don’t fear your own mind.
Water found in stardust suggests life is universal - space - 20 January 2014 A sprinkling of stardust is as magical as it sounds. The dust grains that float through our solar system contain tiny pockets of water, which form when they are zapped by a blast of charged wind from the sun. The chemical reaction causing this to happen had previously been mimicked in laboratories, but this is the first time water has been found trapped inside real stardust. Combined with previous findings of organic compounds in interplanetary dust, the results suggest that these grains contain the basic ingredients needed for life. "The implications are potentially huge," says Hope Ishii of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, one of the researchers behind the study. Dust rain Solar systems are full of dust – a result of many processes, including the break-up of comets. Ultra-high-resolution microscopy allowed them to probe the 5- to 25-micrometre specks of dust to reveal small pockets of trapped water just beneath the surface. Laboratory experiments offer clues to how the water forms.
Psychedelics Don’t Harm Mental Health; They Improve It Psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and LSD not only don’t cause mental health problems, they may actually improve mental health, say Norwegian researchers. Those are the findings by neuroscience researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who reported that LSD, psilocybin and mescaline not only don’t cause long-term mental health problems, but that in many cases the use of psychedelics is associated with a lower rate of mental health problems. The study (here) pulled data from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, observing 130,152 randomly-selected respondents from the adult population of the US. 13.4% of that group (21,967 individuals) reported lifetime use of psychedelics. Teri S. The study also found absolutely no evidence that “flashbacks” afflict users of psychedelics, slaying another commonly-held superstition around psychedelic use. Source: Ultra Culture, Altering Perspectives Free 10 Day Screening: Oct 20th - 30th!
In Search For Habitable Planets, Why Stop At 'Earth-Like'? : The Two-Way hide captionKepler-22b, seen in this artist's rendering, is a planet a bit larger than Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of its star. Some researchers think there might be "superhabitable" worlds that may not resemble Earth. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech In their hunt for potentially habitable planets around distant stars, scientists have been so focused on finding Earth-like planets that they're ignoring the possibility that other kinds of planets might be even friendlier to life, a new report says. So-called superhabitable worlds wouldn't necessarily look like Earth but would nonetheless have conditions that are more suitable for life to emerge and evolve, according to the study published this month in the journal Astrobiology. "In my point of view, astronomers and biologists are biased," says Rene Heller, an astrophysicist at Canada's McMaster University who is the study's lead author. Such planets would most likely be older than Earth and two to three times bigger, the researchers say.
Why did two German 'hobbyists' deface a cartouche of Khufu inside the Great Pyramid and what does it have to do with Atlantis? Two cranks broke in and damaged an Egyptian pyramid. Now they want funding for a film about their crazy theory. To access our premium content,please subscribe or log in. It's quick and easy. Your video will begin in 5 seconds The book behind the controversy ... EXACTLY what drove two men to pretend to be archaeologists and hack off pieces of the Great Pyramid? The Great Pyramid of Khufu (also known as Cheops) on the Giza Plateau is the largest pyramid in Egypt and the only surviving example of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The cartouche? The conspiracy? The cranks? RELATED: Tomb raiders deface Great Pyramid NEW FIND: Mystery tomb linked to lost pharaoh In November, Egyptian authorities expressed their outrage at the defacing of their nation's greatest monument. Enter Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann. They said they hoped Egypt's antiquities minister and the Egyptian people would accept their apology and offer to pay compensation. It appears their apology has not been accepted.
13-year-old inventor cracks the secret of trees to revolutionize solar energy A 13-year-old boy named Aidan Dwyer has an idea that can vastly improve solar energy technology. His idea is so revolutionary that it might make flat panel solar designs extinct. Aidan discovered a spiral mathematical formula in trees based on the Fibonacci sequence. When he recognized this design in the placement of tree branches, he began applying the secret knowledge to solar panel designs. Discovering a pattern in tree trunks On a winter hiking trip, Aidan noticed something unique about tree branches. Using the Fibonacci sequence to maximize sunlight collection Upon investigating, Aidan discovered a pattern based on a number sequence invented by medieval mathematician Fibonacci. This Fibonacci sequence and its ratios appear in nature, in many forms of life. Aidan found that tree trunks contain similar patterns based on the Fibonacci sequence. Using the spiral pattern for maximum efficiency in solar panel technology Sources for this article include: