Tag: science

The Astral Plane

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The astral plane, also called the astral realm or the astral world, is a plane of existence postulated by classical, medieval, oriental, esoteric, and new age philosophies and mystery religions.[1] It is the world of the celestial spheres, crossed by the soul in its astral body on the way to being born and after death, and is generally believed to be populated by angels, spirits or other immaterial beings.[2] In the late 19th and early 20th century the term was popularised by Theosophy and neo-Rosicrucianism.

Another view holds that the astral plane or world, rather than being some kind of boundary area crossed by the soul, is the entirety of spirit existence or spirit worlds to which those who die on Earth go, and where they live out their non-physical lives. It is understood that all consciousness resides in the astral plane.[3] Some writers conflate this realm with heaven or paradise or union with God itself, and others do not. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), “The astral universe … is hundreds of times larger than the material universe … [with] many astral planets, teeming with astral beings.”

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My sense is the term astral plane has fallen a bit out of favor. In some cases it is replaced by ethereal plane. In Buddhism, it is traditionally referred to as ultimate reality or vaguely as nirvana, or what comes after nirvana. More recently among scientists and philosophers, we are seeing the concept of a conscious universe or a thinking universe, a universe in which consciousness is a primary force, feature or dimension. However we refer to it, we need a term that evokes dimensions or planes of awareness beyond earthly or mundane awareness or ‘relative reality’, as it is put in Buddhism.

The concept of an astral plane dates back to Plato if not before. The Buddha was referring to something like that without using any term when he spoke about nirvana. The Buddha was a Scythian who argued against the strong Scythian belief in an absolute distinction between right and wrong and a single, great God (Ahura Mazda) who created the world and could be known only through doing good.

It’s a good development that scientists and philosophers today are increasingly seeing what the Buddha and many others have seen throughout the ages. I believe deep meditative states and a moral life afford us frequent opportunities to commune with or glimpse dimensions or realms beyond our normal default cultural behavioral realms.

Buddhism is a profoundly ethical teaching but it also rejects absolutes. We humans are characterized by emptiness, impermanence, and the suffering wrought by clinging to any concept, belief or idea, and yet are capable of freeing ourselves from ‘relative reality’ through ethical practice and experiential samadhi states.

The Buddha remained silent on matters related to anything like the astral plane because he knew that focusing on ethereal aims (especially in his day?) tends to reify them, which then leads to ossification, doctrine, worship without reason. I wonder if in our day, the Buddha would reason differently as many reasonable thinkers now accept that consciousness may be inexplicable by rank materialism or particle physics or biology based on those; and thus may/must be a primary aspect of all that we know of.

My current understanding of Buddhism and ancient history has been recently influenced by Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China, which I highly recommend to Buddhists and everyone else. ABN

Spatiotemporal variation of excess all-cause mortality in the world (125 countries) during the Covid period 2020-2023 regarding socio economic factors and public-health and medical interventions

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The spatiotemporal variations in national excess all-cause mortality rates allow us to conclude that the Covid-period (2020-2023) excess all-cause mortality in the world is incompatible with a pandemic viral respiratory disease as a primary cause of death. This hypothesis, although believed to be supported by testing campaigns, should be abandoned.

We describe plausible mechanisms and argue that the three primary causes of death associated with the excess all-cause mortality during (and after) the Covid period are:

  • Biological (including psychological) stress from mandates such as lockdowns and associated socio-economic structural changes
  • Non-COVID-19-vaccine medical interventions such as mechanical ventilators and drugs (including denial of treatment with antibiotics)
  • COVID-19 vaccine injection rollouts, including repeated rollouts on the same populations

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The full study can be found at the link above. ABN

There’s an acidic zone 13,000 feet beneath the ocean surface — and it’s getting bigger

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The carbonate compensation depth — a zone where high pressure and low temperature creates conditions so acidic it dissolves shell and skeleton — could make up half of the global ocean by the end of the century.

In the deepest parts of the ocean, below 13,100 feet (4,000 metres), the combination of high pressure and low temperature creates conditions that dissolve calcium carbonate, the material marine animals use to make their shells.

This zone is known as the carbonate compensation depth — and it is expanding.

This contrasts with the widely discussed ocean acidification of surface waters due to the ocean absorbing carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

But the two are linked: because of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the ocean, its pH is decreasing (becoming more acidic), and the deep-sea area in which calcium carbonate dissolves is growing, from the seafloor up.

The transition zone within which calcium carbonate increasingly becomes chemically unstable and begins to dissolve is called the lysocline. Because the ocean seabed is relatively flat, even a rise of the lysocline by a few metres can rapidly lead to large under-saturated (acidic) areas.

Our research showed this zone has already risen by nearly 100 metres since pre-industrial times and will likely rise further by several hundreds of metres this century.

Millions of square kilometres of ocean floor will potentially undergo a rapid transition whereby calcareous sediment will become chemically unstable and dissolve.

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Scientists use nanoparticles to remote control brains of mice

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They were able to control their appetite, friendliness, and even maternal behaviors

Scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have developed a new way to control the minds of mice by manipulating nanoparticle-activated “switches” inside their brains with an external magnetic field.

The system, dubbed Nano-MIND (Magnetogenetic Interface for NeuroDynamics), works by controlling targeted regions of the brain by activating neural circuits.

While it’s not the first “mind control” experiment involving animals, previous approaches have conventionally relied on invasive surgery and bulky external systems that limit the movement of test subjects, as Science Alert points out.

“This is the world’s first technology to freely control specific brain regions using magnetic fields,” said Jinwoo Cheon, director of the IBS Center for Nanomedicine, and senior author of a new paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a statement about the research.

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Dr John McDowell regarding the Nazca mummies

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Dr. John McDowell Named 2024 R.B.H. Gradwohl Laureate

A study on this topic: Biometric Morpho-Anatomical Characterization and Dating of The Antiquity of A Tridactyl Humanoid Specimen: Regarding The Case of Nasca-Peru

Results and Discussion: The tomographic imaging analysis showed that the specimen is a desiccated humanoid body with a biological architecture similar to that of a human, but with many morphological and anatomical structural differences such as the lack of hair and ears, an elongated skull and an increase in cranial volume. (30% greater than humans); maxillary and mandibular protrusion as well as protrusion of the eyeballs, absence of the fifth lumbar vertebra, tridactyly in both hands and feet, in additionto different foci of arthropathies. Carbon-14 dating analysis of the specimen gave an age of 1771 ± 30 years, corresponding to 240 AD-383 AD. (after Christ). Implications of the research: If it is demonstrated with further studies that this is a new humanoid species, it would have a strong impact on biology and science and scientific-historical and socio-cultural -implications.

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Audio analysis reveals third weapon probably fired at Trump rally

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The most sinister and obvious explanation, if there was a third weapon fired, is a professional shooter was further out, backing up the dead assassin. Some say the professional sniper was on the water tower but line of sight is questionable from there. The least sinister and also obvious explanation is the other SS sniper fired a round. I read a fair amount on the third weapon and as of now do not see much substance beyond the speculation above. Even time may not tell on this one. ABN

Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean

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…One promising model proposed in 2023 described an inner core that in the past had spun faster than Earth itself, but was now spinning slower. For a while, the scientists reported, the core’s rotation matched Earth’s spin. Then it slowed even more, until the core was moving backward relative to the fluid layers around it.

At the time, some experts cautioned that more data was needed to bolster this conclusion, and now another team of scientists has delivered compelling new evidence for this hypothesis about the inner core’s rotation rate. Research published June 12 in the journal Nature not only confirms the core slowdown, it supports the 2023 proposal that this core deceleration is part of a decades-long pattern of slowing down and speeding up.

Scientists study the inner core to learn how Earth’s deep interior formed and how activity connects across all the planet’s subsurface layers.

Scientists study the inner core to learn how Earth’s deep interior formed and how activity connects across all the planet’s subsurface layers. forplayday/iStockphoto/Getty Images

The new findings also confirm that the changes in rotational speed follow a 70-year cycle, said study coauthor Dr. John Vidale, Dean’s Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

“We’ve been arguing about this for 20 years, and I think this nails it,” Vidale said. “I think we’ve ended the debate on whether the inner core moves, and what’s been its pattern for the last couple of decades.”

But not all are convinced that the matter is settled, and how a slowdown of the inner core might affect our planet is still an open question — though some experts say Earth’s magnetic field could come into play.

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The argument that global warming is coming from heat transfer in the core-mantle region is illuminated by this section from the article: The mysterious region where the liquid outer core envelops the solid inner core is especially interesting, Vidale said. As a place where liquid and solid meet, this boundary is “filled with potential for activity,” as are the core-mantle boundary and the boundary between mantle and crust.

“We might have volcanoes on the inner core boundary, for example, where solid and fluid are meeting and moving,” he said. ABN

Exothermic Core-Mantle Decoupling – Dzhanibekov Oscillation (ECDO) Hypothesis

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Exhibit N – Engineering Analogous to a Sextant – In practice, the foreman would take the shaft ceiling stone upon which the star map was marked, align the bottom center of the stone with the celestial north pole in the sky, and then ensure that the center of the stone matched exactly the azimuth and altitude of the celestial pole itself – in this manner, aligning the next day’s work (as well as the shaft) to true north. The stone had to bisect the north sky horizontally so that the altitude of the celestial north pole could also be shot, along with its azimuth. If the foreman used an 8 inch mirror fit into the shaft itself, this would in essence be analogous to a sextant.

The fact that all four of these shafts initially run at odd angles to the celestial north pole, thereafter reattaining the altitude and azimuth discipline in each case, indicates just how important this alignment was to the function of these shafts. They were not air shafts (despite our employment of that name at times herein). The copper fittings in the sealing stone were not for dropping the stone into place, as every stone in the pyramid had to be dropped into place, yet none of them used such labor intensive through-stone-fittings. Nor are the fittings placed at the right center of gravity to afford such a function. These were copper cables, for which we previously had no theory regarding their purpose—that is until now.

This form of evidence is indeed inductive, nor do I believe that the builders constructed two of the shafts while underwater during the counter-alignment. That issue is tactical, non-critical-path, and is resolvable by a number of plausible means. Dismissing the observation as defacto irrelevant—when in fact, the stone depiction is salient—perpetuates the linear induction or Nelsonian Ignorance Trap approach to science that we criticized at the outset of this article. Science is stuck in that trap regarding the Khafre and Khufu pyramids, in desperate need of disruption and paradigm shift. We are introducing a hypothesis, not another ‘perfect answer’ for a new doctrinal set of beliefs. If a priori perfect answers were the standard, the current consensus would have never survived to be considered in the first place.

The star map exists, the stone exists, the shafts exist, the shafts point at celestial north, Khafre is clearly differentially-damaged by ocean water inundation, the Tura casing stones are completely gone from both Khufu and Khafre except for above the water level, the carbonic-acid-dissolved residue of those stones was found at their bases. An official narrative must definitively explain (not simply inductively dismiss or ignore) these critical path elements, or that Narrative is pseudo theory, no matter how many experts revere it.

However, setting aside the debate over the possible date range for the stone star depiction, one fact remains unmistakably clear:

The shaft that was aligned by means of this celestial north star map
today points toward Giza’s southern sky.

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Above in an excerpt from an essay by The Ethical Skeptic which claims that two of the pyramids in Egypt were constructed ‘around 9200 to 9600 BCE‘ and were intended to be a warning to future generations that the earth’s angle of rotation has changed abruptly in the past and will do so again, leading to massive flooding across the globe. The essay is well-worth reading. ABN

‘A Failed Medical School’: How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA

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Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff. “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school—six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.

Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country. The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence.

“I have students on their rotation who don’t know anything,” a member of the admissions committee told the Free Beacon. “People get in and they struggle.”

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It is irrational anti-science to pretend we can create a functional society based on ‘equality of outcome’. ABN

Faster-than-light ‘warp speed’ interstellar travel now thought to be possible

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In another example of how truth is often stranger than fiction, scientists have taken a significant step towards turning the sci-fi concept of “warp drives” into a feasible reality.

New research, led by Dr. Jared Fuchs from Applied Physics and published in the prestigious Classical and Quantum Gravity journal, presents a new solution to one of the long-standing challenges in realizing warp drive technology.

Applied Physics researchers identified a new way in which warp technology might one day be possible. The team introduced the concept of a “constant-velocity subluminal warp drive” aligned with the principles of relativity.

The new model eliminates the need for exotic energy, using instead a sophisticated blend of traditional and novel gravitational techniques to create a warp bubble that can transport objects at high speeds within the bounds of known physics.

“This study changes the conversation about warp drives,” said lead author Dr. Fuchs. “By demonstrating a first-of-its-kind model, we’ve shown that warp drives might not be relegated to science fiction.”

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