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Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku – Impossible Science

Recently, I was lucky enough to chat with theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku. Professor Kaku is one of a rare breed; working at the cutting edge of complex maths and physics, but also able to talk about his research topics with a layperson, in their language. He specialises in string field theory, but is also an eloquent populariser of science, having appeared on nearly every major television network in the United States and hosted a number of documentaries. He also has written numerous popular books on cutting edge science and future thought, the latest being Physics of the Impossible (Amazon US and UK).

Our discussion covered everything from the UFO phenomenon, to whether consciousness defines reality, and also touched on some of the more controversial science stories about today (most notably, the LHC and Active SETI). Professor Kaku was quick to assure me that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will definitely not destroy the world, instead listing some of the benefits that science could reap from the project – not least, a refining of the current understanding of particle physics. He didn’t shy away from the fact that in its current form “the Standard Model…is supremely ugly… It’s like gluing together an aardvark, whale, and platypus and declaring it to be nature’s supreme evolutionary creation.”

We also touched on the ‘mainstream’ view that human consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon of the brain – which in many respects, does not match up with the supreme importance that some branches of quantum physics accord consciousness. Professor Kaku agreed that “consciousness is one of the great problems facing science,” and stated plainly that despite the mainstream view, “most scientists cannot even define it, let alone explain it.” To illustrate how consciousness is important to quantum physics, he discussed the well-known “Schrodinger’s Cat” paradox, and then explored various theories which might explain it. One of those was put forward by Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner – he assumed that consiousness is the key factor in creating reality. Furthermore, extrapolating Wigner’s theory means that, as Professor Kaku put it, “eventually, we need an infinite chain of observers, each watching the other… Wigner implied that this chain was a cosmic consciousness or even God.”

One of the main reasons I was interested in talking to Professor Kaku was his openness to some of the more ‘heretical’ areas of science. One of those topics is the scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon, something which he has gone on the public record as supporting. Professor Kaku said that generally UFOs were subject to the “giggle factor” with scientists, because most assume that the distance between possible civilisations is far too great. But he thinks differently.

“Once you imagine a civilization a million years more advanced (which is a blink of an eye compared to the 13.7 billion year age of the universe) then new laws of physics and technologies open up,” Dr Kaku told me. “For such a civilization (a Type III civilization, according to the Kardashev scale), travel between stars might not be such a problem.”

He also pondered on how we might struggle to relate to such technically advanced alien civilisations – or more correctly, how they might fail to recognise our ‘sophistication’. “Imagine walking down a country road, and meeting an ant hill. Do we go down to the ants and say, ‘I bring you trinkets. I bring you beads. I give you nuclear energy and biotechnology. Take me to your leader?’ Or we have the urge to step on a few of them??”

Given the likely differences between us and alien civilisations, the next obvious question to me was to ask whether Professor Kaku thought SETI was worth the time and effort. His reply? “Yes, because it’s all we have today. So by default, we should fund it, but not expect too much.”

He wasn’t as charitable, however, about the idea of Active SETI (beaming messages out to space, rather than listening). “I think it’s an awful idea to advertise our existence in space, without understanding the motives and intentions of possible alien civilizations,” he said, comparing us to the inhabitants of the New World encountering “Cortez and his band of cut-throats”. Instead of David vs. Goliath, Professor Kaku suggests it would be more akin to “a fruit fly versus Goliath”.

The full interview transcript is after the fold, click ‘Read More’ to view it. Also, there is plenty of wonderful reading on Professor Kaku’s personal website, for those who want to explore these topics further.

——————–

TDG: Thanks for talking with us here at The Daily Grail Michio! When I read your latest book, Physics of the Impossible (Amazon US and UK), I wondered as to what would have inspired a serious physicist such as yourself to write a book on this topic. But when we look at your other books – Hyperspace, Visions and Parallel Worlds – it’s quite obvious that you are fascinated with ideas and concepts at the threshold of (and beyond) our current capabilities and understanding. Have you always been interested in exploring the boundaries of knowledge?

MK: When I was a child, I was fascinated by the old Flash Gordon series. I would watch, glued to the TV screen, because it introduced to me an entirely new world. Physics of the ImpossibleAfter a while, however, I had my first insight: I realized that I did not have blond hair and muscles. I began to realize that although Flash got the girl, the man who actually made the entire series work was the scientist, Dr. Zarkov. With the sheer force of his intellect, he created the invisibilty shield, the energy for the city in the sky, and other scientific wonders. Without the science, there was no science fiction. So I became a science fiction fan.

Then I had my second insight. I realized that I could daydream all I wanted to about the fourth dimension, about hyperspace, about star ships, but if I did not have the mathematics and the physics background, then I would forever be an outsider, speculating about these fantastic technologies. That’s why I decided to get serious and learn as much advanced mathematics and physics as I possibly could. The language of nature is mathematics, so if I really wanted to know about other universes and other dimensions, I would have to sit down and learn this language.

Now, when I look back at science fiction, I know precisely where modern science and technology ends, and science fiction begins, and even when science fiction may become science fact.

TDG: Heading into the boundaries of science, and starting with a topical subject: the Large Hadron Collider is about to come online, with much confusion and speculation about what this machine might be capable of. Can you explain – to a layman – what the LHC will contribute to our quest for knowledge and whether it presents any danger at all?

MK: The LHC, contrary to myth, will not destroy the world. Each proton in the LHC beam has a lot of energy, but there are very few protons in the beam. Hence, the energy of the beam is about the energy of a fruit fly. In fact, you would not light up a light bulb with the energy of the sub-atomic particles created by the machine.

In reality, we want to re-create the temperatures of the big bang. We hope to find a particle, called the Higgs Boson, which is the last missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle called the Standard Model of particles. Although the Standard Model has had much success in explaining the sub-atomic world, it has several glaring defects: first, it is supremely ugly (containing 36 types of quarks, 3 exact copies of sub-atomic particles, and a zoo of particles including neutrinos, leptons, hadrons, gluons, W-bosons, mesons, etc. etc. etc.) It’s like gluing together an aardvark, whale, and platypus and declaring it to be nature’s supreme evolutionary creation.

So we physicists hope to find particles beyond the Higgs boson, such as “sparticles” or superparticles which are predicted by superstring theory. In this picture, the world we see around us corresponds to the lowest vibration of tiny vibrating rubber bands. Sparticles represent the next set of vibrations. If true, then superstring theory, being a theory of everything, may reveal the deepest secrets of the universe, such as what happened before the big bang, whether parallel universes and other dimensions exist, whether time travel is possible, and whether wormholes are credible. All this could have a profound impact on our view of the universe or multiverse.

TDG: Speaking of superstring theory: You have a running ‘Long Bet’ with science writer John Horgan, challenging his prediction that “By 2020, no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” Six years into the bet, how safe is your money looking?

MK: There are two ways that experiments may find evidence for string theory. First, we can use earth-bound technology. The LHC may find sparticles which are predicted by the theory. Or, we may find evidence of dark matter in our labs (the leading candidate for dark matter is the neutralino found in string theory). Or, we may find experimental evidence for higher dimensions by searching for deviations in the Newton’s inverse square law for gravity.

Second, we can use space-basesd detectors,like LISA. LISA is a laser satellite system, 3 million miles across. (It consists of 3 satellites connected by 3 laser beams). Any gravity wave left over from the instant of Genesis is still floating around and will disturb these lasers, which will therefore allow us to detect the instant of the Big Bang. Even better, we may be able to match this big bang gravity radiation with various pre-big bang theories now being proposed. In this way, we might be able to probe the pre-big bang universe, and hence verify string theory this way.

TDG: Taking a step sideways: the dominant paradigm of consciousness research considers consciousness as simply an epiphenomenon of a biological brain. Does this position fit with the findings of modern physics, given the role of the observer in quantum decoherence? Or does ‘observer’ mean something else entirely, unrelated to consciousness?

MK: Consciousness is one of the great problems facing science. Some have claimed to have “explained” consciousness. But actually, most scientists cannot even define it, let alone explain it.

Consciousness enters quantum physics because of the Schrodinger cat problem, perhaps the greatest paradox in all of science. If we put a cat in a box, and point a gun at the cat, which in turn is connected to a geiger counter sitting next to uranium, then we physicists describe the system as the sum of two wave functions. In one wave function, the cat is dead. In the other, the cat is alive. So, before we open the box, the cat is neither dead nor alive, but exists in a nether state. Once an observation is made, the cat suddenly “chooses” one state or the other, and we can then see that the cat is dead or alive (but not both).

(Most people find this paradox silly, but it troubled Einstein for decades. He would ask his guests at night: does the moon exist because a mouse looks at it?)

There are several ways to resolve this puzzle. The standard theory is to say that observation determines existence. So opening the box and making the measurement collapses the wave function and determines the state of the cat. This assumes that the sub-atomic world is different from the macroscopic world, that there is a “wall” separating the two. In the microworld, electrons can be two places at the same time, disappearing and reappearing all the time. But in the macroworld, cats are either dead or alive. (Lately, this standard picture has fallen into disfavor because, in nanotechnology, we can smoothly go from the macroworld and microworld and we do not encounter any wall.

Another way, pioneered by Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner, is to assume that consiousness is the key factor. Only conscious observers can make observations, and hence consciousness causes the wave function to collapse. But how do we know that we are alive and not dead? Hence, we need a third person to observe us to collapse our wave function. But then we need a fourth person to observe the third person and collapse his wave function. Eventually, we need an infinite chain of observers, each watching the other. Wigner implied that this chain was a cosmic consciousness or even God.

There is a third way, which is gaining popularity among physicists. And this is that the universe splits in half everytime an observation is made. In one universe, the cat is dead. In the other universe, the cat is alive. The beauty of this approach is that we do not have to introduce any “wall” or “collapsed waves.” The wave function merrily splits continually, creating infinite numbers of parallel universes. (We don’t see all these parallel universes surrounding us, because we have “decohered” from them. Our wave function is no longer vibrating in unison with these other universes, so we cannot easily interact with them. Otherwise, we would bump into versions of ourselves where we made different choices in life, or bump into universes where people how have died in our universe are still alive.)

TDG: You have been one of the few ‘mainstream’ scientists to speak out in support of reasoned investigation of the UFO phenomenon. What prompted you to take this minority view?

MK: In science, we have something called the giggle factor. Scientists giggle when they hear of UFOs. Most scientists laugh at UFOs because the distance between stars is so great that it would take thousands of years for a UFO to reach the earth. But I look at it differently.

I ask: what is a civilization a million years more advanced than ours capable of? Usually, we think of alien civilizations as being a few hundred years ahead of us, and they would indeed have a hard time reaching us. But once you imagine a civilization a million years more advanced (which is a blink of an eye compared to the 13.7 billion year age of the universe) then new laws of physics and technologies open up. For such a civilization (a Type III civilization, according to the Kardashev scale), travel between stars might not be such a problem.

TDG: Given the minimal age of human civilisation – and what we have achieved in that time – are we perhaps still ‘savages’ compared to the truly ‘civilised’ denizens of the cosmos? Astrobiologist David Grinspoon speculates that these ‘Immortals’ “are likely to be out there, and they might seem like gods to us if they ever decide that it’s a good idea for us to meet them.” Does this suggest that we should never discount extraordinary experiences – such as UFO sightings – out of hand?

MK: Imagine walking down a country road, and meeting an ant hill. Do we go down to the ants and say, “I bring you trinkets. I bring you beads. I give you nuclear energy and biotechnology. Take me to your leader?” Or we have the urge to step on a few of them??

Actually, the distance between us and an ant hill is quite small when compared to the distance between our Type 0 civilization and a Type III civilization. Since the energy difference between each Type is roughly 10 billion, it means that a Type III civilization has a minimum 10 billion times 10 billion times more energy than us. At that energy scale, new forms of physics begin to open up, at the Planck energy, where space and time become unstable. So technologies that we can only dream of today may become common place if one can master the Planck energy (which is 10 to the 19 billion electron volts).

TDG: The other human hunt for alien civilisations is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Terence McKenna once criticised SETI by saying “to search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.” Is SETI worth the time and expense?

MK: Yes, because it’s all we have today. So by default, we should fund it, but not expect too much.

If ants in an ant hill detect a 10-lane superhighway being built near them, would they understand how to communicate with the workers? Would they assume that the workers communicate only on ant frequencies? In fact, the ants are so primitive that they would not even understand what a 10-lane superhighway was.

TDG: Do you believe the concerns over the dangers of ‘Active SETI‘ (that we should not advertise our presence to possibly hostile alien civilisations) are valid?

MK: I think it’s an awful idea to advertize our existence in space, without understanding the motives and intentions of possible alien civilizations.

Remember what happened to Montezuma and the Aztecs when they encountered Cortez and his band of cutthroats. Within a few months, the great Aztec civilization was demolished, and Cortez only had technology a few centuries at most ahead of the Aztecs. Imagine what would happen if we met a civilization a million years ahead of us. Instead of David vs. Goliath, it would be a fruit fly versus Goliath. (However, although active SETI is a dangerous idea, I believe that alien civilizations may not want to conquer or eat us, as we see in Hollywood movies. They will not want to eat us, since we will be made of different proteins and DNA, assuming the aliens even have proteins and DNA. Also, there are plenty of uninhabited planets with resources without
restive natives, so they would probably not disturb us.)

Also, the main danger faced by ants confronting workers building a 10 lane superhighway is not that the workers want to eat the ants or conquer and enslave them. The main danger faced by the ants is that they will be paved over. Think of most animals in a forest. The main danger they face is not that humans will shoot them and eat them. No, the main danger is that humans will rob them of their habitat, and they will die as a consequence, even if the humans are not aware of this.

So the main danger we face from an advanced civilization is simply that we might get in their way.

TDG: Our Universe is ideally constructed for order. The Earth is an oasis perfectly suited for life to evolve. Humans have evolved consciousness. And we – of all species on Earth – have now figured out how to leave the planet and venture into the cosmos…and, during *our* lifetime. Given the above, at some point does the Anthropic Principle just get pushed to absolute breaking point, with the almost ‘fate-like’ scenario that we in the 20th century are confronted with (even moreso for an Apollo astronaut!)?

MK: When I was in second grade, my teacher made a statement which left a deep impression on me. She said that God so loved the earth that he put the earth “just right” from the sun. If the earth were closer, the oceans would boil. If the earth were farther, the oceans would freeze. But the earth is just right from the sun, she said. This was my first encounter with a scientific statement with religious implications.

Today, however, we have detected almost 300 dead planets in space which are too close, and are too far, from their mother sun. So we don’t have to invoke God. It is just a random event that we are just right from the sun, otherwise, I would not be able to write down this sentence.

The same reasoning applies to the universe. Our universe is “just right” to allow for intelligent life. If the nuclear force were a bit stronger, the sun would burn out before life gets started. If it were a bit weaker, the sun would never ignite. Similarly, if gravity were a bit stronger, we would all perish in a Big Crunch. If gravity were a bit weaker, the universe would have entered a Big Freeze long ago, and we would all be frozen now.

The conclusion is that there are probably many universes which are lifeless, with suns that never ignited, or universes which have collapsed back. A multiverse of universes solves the mystery of why our universe seems fine-tuned to allow for life and consciousness.

Physics of the Impossible is available from Amazon US and UK.

Editor
  1. Kaku balls…
    Excellent interview, Greg. He’s a breath of fresh air when it comes to the E.T. question–very ballsy, when you consider the atmosphere he’s working in–and it almost makes one wonder whether he’s had some experiences/sightings himself along the way…

    Ray G.

  2. Infinite universes
    I have never been comfortable with the notion of infinite universes. We can never measure or interact with them, so what purpose does it serve to even consider them?

    1. He!
      You do realize that there is bound to be another ‘you’
      in one of those Universes, who thinks the Infinite Universe idea does have a purpose in considering it 😉

      Great interview. Kaku is the Mick Jagger of Science. I think another of the big questions we need to face, apart from the consciousness issue, is the reason why Mathematics is the language of Nature. Those two queries are probably linked, but damned if I know how 🙂

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

  3. I’ve read Kaku’s books.
    I’ve read Kaku’s books. Ecology, again, is barely noticed and instead we get genetic engineering, nanobiomotors, and more bullshit. Sure the LHC might not destroy the world — but that’s exactly the problem — physicists are reductionists. If you have a structural critique of science based on the ecological crisis and the fact that physics is a military affair then you can not be part of the debate framework. There is no “pure” science — eversince magnitude and the Pythagorean theorem it’s been about catapults and chariots before that. 90% of human history did not have warfare and was sustainable — yet this doesn’t exist for physicists. Just because Kaku protested Cassini that doesn’t mean he’s not part of the military-industrial complex.

    1. sustainable ?
      I disagree that in the old days humans lived in a sustainable way. They changed the environment by burning vegetation, by over-hunting. Early societies collapsed because of this.

      Some people confuse a stable population count for sustainability. A stable population count merely means people are dying at the same rate as they are born. Typically this has been at the price of very high child mortality. But that is not very romantic, so the green people don’t talk about it much.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

  4. Let’s see — I read a book a
    Let’s see — I read a book a day ever since I got my masters degree 8 years ago and someone wants to “disagree” with me! ha. How many books on the Bushmen culture have you read to judge their sustainability or death to birth rate etc.? Are you able to determine the effects of their infanticide practices? haha. What a joke — Westerns can not even conceptualize how the trance dance healing works — how modern humans are stuck in the left-brain, unable to SEE THE DEAD AND COMMUNICATE WITH ANIMALS AND ROCKS, etc. Science is just pounding the nails in the coffin called western civilization.

    I went 8 days on half a glass of water while producing strong electromagnetic fields that opened up the top of my skull and enabled me to do healing, have telekinesis, etc. It’s all based on complementary opposites and gender dynamics and relying on sound as the dominant perception. The west lost this as the dominant culture around 10,000 BCE!! This ability was the standard training for all males — a month in isolation from females during which time fasting for a week at a minimum plus 24 hours straight of dancing.

    Good luck. There’s only 20 years left of freshwater on the planet so I’d start training now. The best books on the subject are: TAOIST YOGA: ALCHEMY AND IMMORTALITY trans. by Charles Luk and “In search of the miraculous” by Ouspensky. You can read my blogbook for further details: http://mothershiplanding.blogspot.com

    1. American Journal of Physical
      American Journal of Physical Anthropology

      RSS feed for American Journal of Physical Anthropology What is RSS?
      Volume 123, Issue 1, Pages 23-29

      Published Online: 22 May 2003

      Copyright © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
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      Abstract | References | Full Text: HTML , PDF (164k)
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      Research Article
      An ill child among mid-Holocene foragers of Southern Africa
      Susan Pfeiffer 1 2 *, Christian Crowder 1
      1Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
      2Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, 7700 Rondebosch, South Africa
      email: Susan Pfeiffer (Pfeiffer@chass.utoronto.ca)

      *Correspondence to Susan Pfeiffer, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada

      Funded by:
      Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

      Keywords
      rickets � South Africa � Khoisan � infant mortality � infanticide

      Abstract
      Abstract MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSIONS Acknowledgements References
      The skeletal remains of an infant from a southwest South African rock shelter at Byneskranskop show pervasive abnormalities that are consistent with the effects of hypertrophic (hyperplastic) rickets. Diagnostic features include beading of the costochondral junctions of the ribs, flaring and tilting of the metaphyses, and cupping of the distal ulna, as well as general skeletal hypertrophy. With an uncalibrated accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon date of 4820 � 90 BP (TO-9531), this is a very early instance of the condition, among foragers whose environment and diet make dietary shortages of active vitamin D or dietary calcium improbable. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios indicate a mixed diet, including marine as well as terrestrial protein. Solicitous care maintained the sick infant to an estimated age of 3.5-5 months; it was buried in a manner like that of other deceased group members. This case suggests that if infanticide was practiced, it was an option only during the immediate perinatal period, when this infant would have appeared normal. This is consistent with documentation of infanticide practices among historic foragers from southern Africa. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
      Received: 6 September 2002; Accepted: 7 February 2003

      Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

      10.1002/ajpa.10297 About DOI

      Article Text

      The characteristics of those children who fail to survive should tell us something about the stressors faced by their society. In many parts of the world, the burials of past foraging peoples are rare and geographically dispersed. As a result, we know little about their health, as reflected through palaeopathology. Relative to more sedentary groups, hunter-gatherers may have had less exposure to infectious and nutritional diseases, and more experience with accidental skeletal trauma (Cohen,[1989]; Larsen,[1997]; Bogin,[2001]). The rarity of birth defects and serious chronic diseases among the skeletons of foragers is consistent with scenarios suggesting that the frail may not have been maintained within the group, and that the option of perinatal infanticide was part of the culture. Information about how past foraging groups managed ill health is important to our understanding of human biosocial adaptation.

      The Later Stone Age of sub-Saharan Africa is an especially rich source of information about foraging adaptations. Until approximately 2,000 years ago, human groups who appear to be ancestral to modern Khoisan-speaking peoples moved through various habitats, subsisting on hunted, fished, and collected food resources (Deacon and Deacon,[1999]). Populations appear to have favored the Cape region, in which the climate is Mediterranean, with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers, and both terrestrial and aquatic resources are available for exploitation (Deacon and Lancaster,[1988]). Well-preserved human skeletal remains have been excavated, especially from rock shelters in the Cape Fold Mountains, which were used for burial rituals during the Holocene. While mature skeletons from the Later Stone Age have been studied for indications of palaeodiet and habitual behaviors (cf. Churchill and Morris,[1998]; Sealy and Pfeiffer,[1999]; Stock and Pfeiffer,[2001]), juvenile remains have received less attention. It was in the context of a broader documentation that the infant skeleton described here was noted.

      The study of Later Stone Age skeletal remains may be informed by data from historically documented foragers of southern Africa, now limited to the interior regions of Botswana, Namibia, and northern South Africa. Studies from the era of the Harvard Kalahari Research Group (ca. 1963-1970; Lee,[1976]) are particularly useful, because the application of a biosocial model caused researchers to ask specific questions about health and mortality. Studies of adult care of infants and children among Kalahari foragers indicate solicitous care, with relatively late weaning as the norm (Konner,[1976]; Draper,[1976]). Chronic maladies, like malnutrition and gastroenteritis, were rare among children, and child mortality was chiefly associated with epidemics (Truswell and Hansen,[1976]). During the postnatal care of infants in the Kalahari environment, it is reported that mothers would use their leather capes to protect their infants from intense sunlight, to the extent that infants occasionally showed craniotabes. This term refers to the softening of the parietal bone and the widening of fontanels that occur chiefly in rickets. Once the babies were exposed to the sun, the rickets would disappear (Truswell and Hansen,[1976]).

      While it is difficult from any ethnographic study to calculate the incidence of infanticide, its occasional practice at the discretion of the mother is unquestioned in the Kalahari setting (Howell,[1976],[1979]). An expectant mother normally gave birth in solitude, and if an infant was deformed or was one of twins, or if the mother seriously doubted that the child’s life could be sustained, it was her prerogative or duty to smother it (Shostak,[1981]). Schapera ([1930]) reported that among some historic Khoisan, unwanted babies, such as those born while mothers were still breastfeeding a child too young to wean, were disposed of immediately after birth in a burrow or hole in the ground. Several ethnographic accounts (Schapera,[1930]; Silberbauer,[1981]; Shostak,[1981]; Barnard,[1992]) describe how babies were named a few days or weeks after their birth, after which time they were seen as part of the family group and other extended relationships.

    2. congratulations
      Congratulations on your speed reading capabilities Drew Hempel.

      And be careful when your skull opens up, don’t let in the flies. But yes, dehydration will do amazing things to your mind.

      In the meantime, I will tell people that I disagree whenever I want. I don’t know if you can find that concept in the books you have already read. Read some more.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

    1. How things work…
      [quote=drew hempel]Ha! your stupid-ass (like mine) comments are barely worth reading! Haven’t heard of BIGU apparently?

      …I’ll tell you how it works from experience since you’re obviously under the position that you are totally oblivious to what I’m talking about[/quote]

      Hi Drew,

      Let me tell you how things work here on TDG, since you’re obviously totally oblivious to what I’ve talked about previously. We talk intelligently, and personal attacks are not tolerated.

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  5. In the U.S. we try to
    In the U.S. we try to practice equality — so if I make a stupid-ass comment that includes calling someone elses’ a stupid-ass comment. But then self-deprecation is a fine art, unlike WESTERN MUSIC. Capiche? I’ve been banned from michael prescott’s blog, anthony north’s blog, unexplained-mysteries.com, the whole “seed” science blogs, and a couple other measly blogs I think. So go for it Greg and consider that a personal attack against your continual support of stupid-ass scientists.

    1. Introspection
      [quote=drew hempel]In the U.S. we try to practice equality — so if I make a stupid-ass comment that includes calling someone elses’ a stupid-ass comment.[/quote]

      You can call yourself whatever you want…just don’t use it to justify personal attacks on other people. That’s just weak.

      [quote]I’ve been banned from michael prescott’s blog, anthony north’s blog, unexplained-mysteries.com, the whole “seed” science blogs, and a couple other measly blogs I think. So go for it Greg and consider that a personal attack against your continual support of stupid-ass scientists.[/quote]

      Perhaps it might be worth considering *why* you keep getting banned. Mayhaps it’s more to do with the obnoxious attitude you’re displaying above, than any particular conspiracy of science…

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  6. Damn. Not banned yet. OK
    Damn. Not banned yet. OK so let’s take this quote from Kakoo.

    “Remember what happened to Montezuma and the Aztecs when they encountered Cortez and his band of cutthroats. Within a few months, the great Aztec civilization was demolished, and Cortez only had technology a few centuries at most ahead of the Aztecs.”

    He’s PROJECTING people — it was SCIENCE that “conquered” (GENOCIDE) the Western Hemisphere. So to use science which already conquered and continues to conquer nonwestern cultures as a shield to defend physics which is destroying the ecology of the planet? That’s stupid-ass. By the way nonwestern shamans are already talking to “aliens” and by this I don’t mean psychoactive substances of drugs.

      1. Connect the dots
        [quote=Kalisto]hey greg, maybe you missed this:
        i would like to get in touch with you, but i can’t find any email address? how can i do it?
        [/quote]

        Hi Kalisto,

        Quite easy. Just my name (‘greg’ last time I checked), at dailygrail.com. (obfuscation intentional to avoid the spambots)

        Kind regards,
        Greg
        ——————————————-
        You monkeys only think you’re running things

  7. Kaku on Psi
    I should also mention: I didn’t get the opportunity to talk to Michio about some of his comments about psi in Physics of the Impossible, but would have liked to. Because, for all his openness to the UFO topic, when it comes to psi research it sounds like he has drunk from Randi’s big barrel of Kool-Aid. In fact, the page in his book where he discusses Joseph Rhine’s pioneering research sounds like it is taken straight from Randi’s Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural – it lists the same history, and comes to the same conclusions. In PotI, Michio writes (paraphrasing) “the crushing blow to Rhine’s reputation came with the discovery that one of his own lab members was cheating in tests”. Now, I don’t think Rhine’s reputation has in any way been “crushed”, and it’s worth noting that he immediately fired Levy and made clear that none of his research should be considered worthy of any merit unless it had been independently replicated.

    Michio then moves on to remote viewing, and just regurgitates the conclusions of the AIR committee, which was stacked with CSICOPians like Ray Hyman. There is no mention of Hyman’s finding that he could see no alternative explanation for the positive Stargate results, and definitely does not cite statistician Jessica Utts’ conclusion that the data established psychic functioning as taking place.

    Kind regards,
    Greg
    ——————————————-
    You monkeys only think you’re running things

  8. We are the universe looking back at iself
    Testing… testing. Hello internet, hello observers. Boinc.

    Seductive and fascinating theories. The universe is so vast that any time you are all alone, reaching out to someone, reaching out for something… always, almost like a mirror someone else is reaching back through space time and saying hey, I’m right here… exactly what you are reaching for. These kinds of theories must be what make scientists mad… because well, when we destroy our current biosphere, some other dimension will split off and will be just fine? Thank God, you may be right, lets be fine.

    Turn your digestive tract inside out. Imagine if this “alien” life already exists within us… the bacteria, fungi, parasites, and other critters… they are facilitating our evolution, and using us in conjunction with our highly evolved brains to some end. Like in this video, the parasitic cordyceps fungi that takes over an ants brain and makes it crawl way up to the winds in the top of a forested canopy where a mushroom pops out of its head… these and other symbiotic “aliens” all around us are tapping into our nervous system and will increasingly influence our evolution to some end.

    What will happen with all of this bacteria that has symbiotically evolved in conjunction with us and our ever evolving diet since the dawn of life, when our bodies become irrelevant? Watch as these jellyfish take over the ocean for the next 2,000 years, as the planet heats up… the gelatinous membrane of the jellyfish bodies, along with symbiotic relations with some of our bacteria and fungi create another enclosed oceanic Eden to keep water from evaporating; mean while the magnetosphere does its well thought 700,000 year skipped heartbeat flip until the atmosphere, hopefully, rebalances and the next Carl Sagan evolves from there?

    Hey we can dream cant we? Yes we can dream

    “We do not possess imagination enough to sense what we are missing.” GT; because “Its not the black side, its not the white side… its the interface, the edge… TM

  9. Those alternate universes
    The prof is great, very entertaining, amazingly entertaining for a physics geek. As an amateur, I find all these theories fascinating, the TV shows such as How the Universe Works (albeit a pretentious name) are outstanding.
    But all that said, I do have some issues with modern physics. Alternate universes are a bit too far out. Isn’t it easier to just say ‘God exists until proven otherwise’. There was a prime mover until proven otherwise. To go to the extent of postulating millions of alternate universes is far fetched, I can’t buy that. String theory; maybe but again if you posit the existence of particles too small to ever be seen, to me it smacks of being at the end of your rope looking for that unified theory.
    I’m also wondering what can be the next step in the search for alien civilizations. Since our SETI search has failed so far, it does not change anything for scientists to simply assert that there must be intelligent life somewhere. Also, there is the small matter that we are nowhere near having the technology (or the political will) for intergalactic space travel. Finding a civilization 50 light years away is as good as saying ‘we’ll never meet’.

  10. The prof is great, very
    The prof is great, very entertaining, amazingly entertaining for a physics geek. As an amateur, I find all these theories fascinating, the TV shows such as How the Universe Works (albeit a pretentious name) are outstanding.
    But all that said, I do have some issues with modern physics. Alternate universes are a bit too far out. Isn’t it easier to just say ‘God exists until proven otherwise’. There was a prime mover until proven otherwise. To go to the extent of postulating millions of alternate universes is far fetched, I can’t buy that. String theory; maybe but again if you posit the existence of particles too small to ever be seen, to me it smacks of being at the end of your rope looking for that unified theory.
    I’m also wondering what can be the next step in the search for alien civilizations. Since our SETI search has failed so far, it does not change anything for scientists to simply assert that there must be intelligent life somewhere. Also, there is the small matter that we are nowhere near having the technology (or the political will) for intergalactic space travel. Finding a civilization 50 light years away is as good as saying ‘we’ll never meet’.

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