Politics, God and Religion vs. Science

When a belief is widely held in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we call it a superstition. By that criterion, the most egregious superstition of modern times is the 'scientific' belief in the non-existence of psi. - Thomas Etter

DNA evidence has revealed that the oldest known common male ancestor is 340,000 years old, more than twice as old as previous estimates.

New Scientist reports that the sample comes from a recently deceased man named Albert Perry. After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis.

The findings were published in the The American Journal of Human Genetics and may require researchers to adjust the known timeline of humankind’s evolution.

And the historical mark came at something of a bargain—the company does historical DNA analysis on individuals for about $150.

All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perry’s DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor.

"It's a cool discovery," Jon Wilkins of the Ronin Institute in Montclair, N.J., told New Scientist. "We geneticists have been looking at Y chromosomes about as long as we've been looking at anything. Changing where the root of the Y-chromosome tree is at this point is extremely surprising."

After the initial tests on Perry’s DNA, geneticists at the University of Arizona conducted further tests to confirm the anomaly. The Y chromosome in Perry’s test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon.

University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perry’s DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinct—but not before interbreeding with the more modern version of man.

By Jesse Emspak
updated 11/6/2012 12:40:31 PM ET

Quantum physics is the science of the very small. But physicists are making it bigger, setting records for the size and energies of objects they can get to exhibit quantum effects.

Now physicists at the University of Vienna in Austria have "virtually intertwined" or entangled two particles spinning faster than ever in opposite directions. Entanglement occurs when two particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, despite the distance between them. (Einstein referred to this eerie connection as " spooky action at a distance.")

In the new study, Anton Fickler and his colleagues entangled two photons that had a high orbital angular momentum, a property that measures the twisting of a wave of light. In quantum physics, particles such as photons can behave as particles and waves.

"It's a stepping stone on the development of new technologies," said Anton Zeilinger, director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and a co-author of the study, which is detailed in Monday's issue of the journal Science.

Such entanglement experiments have been carried out for decades. In this case, though, the researchers did something a bit different. They created entangled photons and gave them lots of angular momentum, more than in any experiment before.

Usually the energy contained in a photon is very small: its quantum number is low. At higher energies, this changes. Quantum physics and "normal" or classical physics start to look similar when quantum numbers get high; this is called the correspondence principle, and it applies to many areas of physics.

To create entangled photons, Fickler and his team sent a laser through a beam splitter, dividing the laser beam into two. Two photons were sent down separate optical fibers and their waves were twisted, and twisted, and twisted some more, ramping up their angular momentum — imagine a wave shaped like a spiral, spinning faster and faster.

Eventually, there was enough angular momentum in the photons that their quantum numbers — the units their momentum is measured in — differed by a factor of 600, a higher value than any seen previously. The photons spinning rapidly in opposite directions, meanwhile, were still entangled.

They knew this because when particles are entangled, measuring the quantum state (in this case the angular momentum and orientation) of one particle immediately tells you the quantum state of the other, no matter where it is. Since they had the ability to measure both, the researchers could confirm entanglement.

(Though this transfer of information between the particles is instantaneous, entanglement can't be used for faster-than-light communication because it is impossible to set the quantum state beforehand, as you would in a message).

This shows that entanglement effects can be seen at high energies, meaning closer to the macroscopic world we all know and interact with. "It means we have to take the correspondence principle with a large grain of salt," Zeilinger said.

Just as importantly, the experiment shows that the only barrier to applying certain kinds of quantum effects is technical — there is no physical reason that one shouldn't be able to see quantum phenomena at high enough energies that they would bleed into the visible world, though that will take some time to do.

The Black Cloud
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Black Cloud is a science fiction novel written by astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle. Published in 1957, the book details the arrival of an enormous cloud of gas that enters the solar system and threatens to destroy most of the life on Earth by blocking the Sun's radiation.

Plot summary
In 1964, astrophysicists on Earth become aware of an immense cloud of gas that is heading for the solar system. The cloud, if interposed between the Sun and the Earth, could wipe out most of the life on Earth by blocking solar radiation and ending photosynthesis. A cadre of astronomers and other scientists is drawn together in Nortonstowe, England, to study the cloud and report to the British government about the consequences of its presence.

The cloud decelerates as it approaches the Sun (contrary to physical laws) and comes to rest around the Sun, causing disastrous climatic changes on Earth and immense mortality and suffering for the human race. This section of the novel presages the nuclear winter scenario popularised in the 1980s. As the behaviour of the cloud proves to be impossible to predict scientifically, the team at Nortonstowe eventually come to the conclusion that it might be a life-form with a degree of intelligence. In an act of desperation, the scientists try to communicate with the cloud, and to their surprise succeed in doing so. The cloud is revealed to be a superorganism, many times more intelligent than humans, which in return is surprised to find intelligent life-forms on a solid planet.

When the astronomers ask the cloud how its lifeform originated, it replies that they have always existed. One of the characters suggests this is incompatible with the Big Bang theory. Thus it may be that Hoyle was hinting at his own Steady State theory of the existence of the Universe, which most cosmologists consider disproved by the discovery of cosmic background radiation.

The cloud then learns that another intelligent cloud has stopped communicating and may have mysteriously vanished, not so far away in space in the cloud's terms, so it decides to move on, relieving Earth's suffering. Two of the scientists die in an attempt to learn some of the cloud's vast store of knowledge through visual signals, in order to gain further insights about the Universe.

Plausibility
Using a computer model of molecular dynamics, an international team has discovered that, under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organized into helical structures. These structures can interact with one another in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and with life. Not only do these helical strands interact in a counter-intuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. For example, they can divide to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours. And they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma. 'These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter,' said the lead researcher. 'They are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve.'" The research, published in the New Journal of Physics 2007, was carried out using a computer model of molecular dynamics. [3]

Hoyle's scientific background
Though the presence of a sentient cloud of gas may seem unlikely, the story is grounded in hard science.[4] The detection of the cloud is described using physics equations, all of which are included in the book. Hoyle brought his experience and knowledge as the Director of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society into the book. Hoyle was also responsible for the term "Big Bang", though Hoyle himself did not believe the Big Bang theory. In a plot twist that would foreshadow Hoyle's stance on panspermia, the cloud expresses surprise that intelligent life is capable of forming on planets.

Originally, a DNA sample obtained from an African American living in South Carolina was submitted to the National Geographic Genographic Project. When none of the genetic markers used to assign lineages to known Y chromosome groupings were found, the DNA sample was sent to Family Tree DNA for sequencing. Fernando Mendez, a postdoctoral researcher in Hammer's lab, led the effort to analyze the DNA sequence, which included more than 240,000 base pairs of the Y chromosome.
Hammer said "the most striking feature of this research is that a consumer genetic testing company identified a lineage that didn't fit anywhere on the existing Y chromosome tree, even though the tree had been constructed based on perhaps a half-million individuals or more. Nobody expected to find anything like this."

Another thought experiment

The relativity of simultaneity is a difficult concept in physics that practically seems counterintuitive to us, since the effects are only noticeable at speeds that are a substantial fraction of the speed of light. The whole idea states that if two events are separated in space, it is impossible to tell in an absolute sense if they occurred at the same time. It all depends on the reference frame in which an observer is.

A mind-bending prediction of the above principle of special relativity is the length contraction(or Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction). It is partially related to the time dilation phenomenon. It refers to the observation that the measurements of length made to an object within a frame of reference (FR) in which the object is stationary (or “proper”) are larger than those made in another FR that is moving relatively to the first. In other words, a stationary observer will make a smaller measurement of an object’s length, should the object move at a relativistic speed (speed which is a significant proportion of the speed of light).

Hence the following thought experiment. Alice runs with a ladder towards a garage and tries to pass through. Suppose she carries a ladder whose length she has measured to be Lo. She travels at a high speed towards a garage which has also a length Lo. The garage has two doors, one at the front and one at the rear, and the front one is closed while the rear is open. Since Bob doesn’t want Alice to mess with his garage’s integrity, he will simultaneously close the rear door and open the front when Alice’s ladder is fully into the garage, so that Alice passes safely through.

Bob is outside the garage and observes the scene. Since Alice is traveling at a relativistic speed he will observe the ladder’s length to lessen. So not only will he see the ladder fit into the garage, but there will also exist enough space for it to move inside the garage. Thus he closes the rear door and opens the front. Alice passes safely through.

But what does Alice observe? Since the garage is the one traveling at a relativistic speed through her FR, she will actually see the garage’s length to shorten. Therefore, she would expect to smash against the front door and the rear door to close onto her ladder. However, things will be observed differently though her FR. First, the front door will open, giving her space to move the ladder in order for the rear end to fit in the garage. Then, the rear door will close, but that will not matter as she will have moved her ladder outside of the rear door’s area.

The crucial question remains; whose observation is the “right” one? Both, says the Special Relativity. One cannot have an absolute sense of the order of events that are separated in space; everything depends on the frame of reference in which an observer resides.

The "length contraction" was produced by Fitzgerald and Lorentz. However, it was Einstein that explained the kinematic effect due to change in space, time and simultaneity brought about by special relativity.

Sources: http://www.rafimoor.com/english/SRE.htm#The%20Relativity%20of%20Simultaneity http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/RelativityOfSimultaneity/ http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_pole_paradox.htm

The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists—and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness—the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both). The epistemological corollary is the notion that man gains knowledge of reality by looking inward (either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another, superior consciousness). ...

They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness — they want to be that God they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.

The philosophic source of this viewpoint and its major advocate in the history of philosophy is Aristotle. Its opponents are all the other major traditions, including Platonism, Christianity, and German idealism. Directly or indirectly, these traditions uphold the notion that consciousness is the creator of reality. The essence of this notion is the denial of the axiom that existence exists.

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it, religion has actually convinced people that there's an INVISIBLE MAN...LIVING IN THE SKY...who watches every thing you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten special things that he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever ´til the end of time...but he loves you."