The Story of Life

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The Story of Life

Once upon a time there was time, more time than the human mind can imagine, billions of years, time enough to do the impossible, time enough for things that seem like magic to occur.
That is the incredible story of life, how it began and how its inception was more astounding than god and almost as unlikely.
Step by slow step the unbelievable happened. The slowness, unlikeliness and wonder of it, is beyond our conception. We would rather believe in dragons, magic and supernatural creatures who are spawned from nowhere, just like the universe itself.
But life did not come from nowhere. It formed ever so sluggishly by chance through more time than we can understand because it had all the time in the world.
In the primordial seas the chemicals accrued. All they needed was chance, the way molecules naturally develop, and time beyond imagination.
That is hard to believe.
We know it happened because we are here to tell the tale.

Dark Matter becomes weirder than Sci-fi as Opher names the DM

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Dark Matter becomes weirder than Sci-fi as Opher names the DM atoms and sub-atomic particles.

 

It appears that only 4% of the universe is visible, the rest is made of Dark Matter. That’s right – 96% of the known universe is made of something we can’t see.

And as for Dark Energy (DE to us buffs), that accounts for 70% of all the energy in the known universe and we haven’t a clue what it is.

All the ‘ordinary’ matter in the universe is made of atoms and all atoms are made of quarks. Everything is made of the same building blocks.

But Dark Matter (DM to us authorities on the subject) is made of something else. It does not appear to be quarks. So I will deign to name them prior to their discovery. I want it noted that the subatomic particles that make up the ‘atoms’ (or Goodwins, as they are now termed) of Dark Matter are to henceforth be known as Ophers.

I predict that there will be a number of different Ophers just as there are with quarks. Rather than calling them upward, downward, strange and charm as with quarks I want them named after my favourite Rock stars. So, depending on how many we later discover, in descending order, I want them named Roys (after Roy Harper), Dylans (after Bob Dylan) Beefies (After Captain Beefheart), Jimis (After Jimi Hendrix and Woodys (after Woody Guthrie). If there are more discovered then I would like them called Elmores (after Elmore James) and Nicks (after Nick Harper). Hopefully we’ll eventually discovered loads more and we can deploy Howlins (after Howlin Wolf) and Muddy’s (after Muddy Waters) as well as Beatles and Countrys (after the Fab Four and Country Joe and the Fish).

The interesting thing about Dark Matter is that it is probably all around us but we cannot see it or feel it. It is only detectable by its gravitational effect. There is a whole world out there made of Ophers all constructed out of Roys, Dylans, Jimis, Beefies, Nicks, Elmores and Woodys. There are people just like us moving through us right now having a conversation that is a conjecture about what the other 4% of their Dark Matter (our matter) might be made of.

I told you it was weirder than imagination.

In the UK – paperback and digital:

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In the USA in both paperback and digital:

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Hasn’t Genetic Engineering been around for thousands of years.

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Haven’t we always been doing genetic engineering for thousands of years? Didn’t we just call it selective breeding?

Yes we have been doing this with animals and plants (and even humans sometimes) with various techniques of selective breeding. We have selected the genes we want. But this has been a slow and uncertain business and perfection is not possible.
It would be possible, over many generations, for humans to breed for selection of intelligence. At the end of that we would undoubtedly have more intelligent offspring but they would not be optimal.
Intelligence is 80% genetic. There are around 500 genes involves in a polygene system. All of those genes would each have a number of alleles (maybe up to ten alleles each – I’m guessing). To get maximum intelligence the top allele would have to be selected for each one of those genes. The chances of doing that through selective breeding would be nigh on impossible – even if you went through a hundred generations of careful selective breeding.
With genetic engineering it would be possible to insert the optimum allele into each one of those genes. You could produce a human with the greatest possible intelligence in one single generation.
I think that is a bit different to anything we’ve done in the past. It is like comparing an old biplane with the Space Shuttle.

Genetic engineering has opened up new possibilities – not just for intelligence but all other aspects of human attributes and possibly even behaviours.

Designer Babies – straight off the shelf!!

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We are now fast approaching the ability to easily insert genes into the human genome. We can cut and paste.

This will mean that defective genes causing terrible hereditary diseases such as Huntingdon’s Chorea and Haemophilia will be a thing of the past.

We can remove all those genes which give us predispositions to cancers and other illnesses.

What a boon!!

The ethical issues will kick in when we take it further than that, as I’m sure we will.

We will also have the ability to select the alleles to optimise anything we want – beauty, athleticism, intelligence or various skills.

We could, for a certain cost, be able to order a whole smorgasbord of attributes for our babies. There could be a whole generation of designed children with optimised characteristics.

Will they be free to perform in the same Olympic Games as the non-designed? To take the same exams? To enter beauty pageants?

What will governments be after in the ways of skills and attributes – fearless, strong and ruthless soldiers? Highly intelligent and loyal scientists? The perfect spies?

What about the sex industry?

Big Business?

Potential partners?

Will this treatment be available to everyone or only the rich?

What will they choose for their offspring?

Will this create a division into two distinct races?

The ramifications are endless!!

Brain enhancing drugs.

Posted on by Opher

We are on the start of a new epoch. Brain enhancing drugs are on the horizon. Some people are already buying them on the internet.

A new range of drugs are becoming available. They enhance performance. They stimulate the brain and make it work better. They enhance IQ.

They were developed to boost those suffering from dementia. They can alleviate the symptoms.

They are being used by students to help them perform better in studies or exams.

They could help out geniuses become bigger geniuses. They could help our bosses make better decisions. They could even help our stupid politicians!!

Shouldn’t we all we taking them? We might even vote better!

Consciousness – The next frontier!

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Science is still in its infancy. Our knowledge and understanding expands by the second. Give it a couple of thousand years and there is no telling what it will have uncovered. It will be a different world.

Consciousness is something that we have only recently had the tools to enable us to explore. It is a wondrous result of evolution.

Are all creatures conscious? Do plants possess consciousness? Who would dare say?

Will we develop machines that are fully conscious in the near future? Will they be independent and more intelligent than us?

How many creatures on this planet have had consciousness on a par with our own? Surely the other species of humans had? But they are, unfortunately, gone. Surely our nearest ape cousins have consciousness comparable to our own? Surely whales, with their bigger brains than us have comparable consciousness to that of our own? – Different certainly, but on a par – or superior?

Consciousness is a wondrous thing to be cherished. However you believe it came about surely it is to be nourished, nurtured and celebrated?

Why then are we not cherishing it? Why are we driving our cousin, the apes, to extinction? Hunting and killing Orangutans, Chimps and Gorillas? Harpooning whales for a little blubber and a snack?

Why can’t we cherish something that is so wondrous and seek to preserve it?

‘You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’

 

How Good Would It Have Been To Share The World With Other Species Of Humans?

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We have not always been alone. Since the Genus Homo, the Human animal, evolved in Africa we are but one of many. At one point in time Homo sapiens shared the planet with at least three other species of Humans and probably more.

We were all intelligent tool makers and fire users and we probably all used language and had customs and rituals.

Who knows what we lost with the loss of our fellow species? What music, art, dance and creativity would they have had? What different thoughts and insights?

We are not even the most intelligent. The Neanderthals had considerably bigger brains than us – despite us portraying them as ignorant and stupid. Perhaps they were just too kind?

We’ll never know what we have lost because the last Neanderthals met their end just 30,000 years ago.

I wonder what religion would have made of many other species of intelligent Humans? Would they have been accepted as being made in God’s image? Or shunned as works of the devil?

It would certainly throw a spanner or two into the works wouldn’t it? Just as if we encounter aliens who believe in different things.

 

My Beliefs – Quantum Physics – weird and wonderful.

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My Beliefs – Quantum Physics – weird and wonderful.

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My Beliefs – Quantum Physics

We stand on solid ground.

That’s not true.

In effect we are standing on a force-field that our force-field, our the force-field of our solid body, cannot penetrate. There is relatively more ‘space’ between atoms that there is between the stars. If it wasn’t for the force-fields holding things in place the atoms would simply slide past each other without a single one touching.

That’s weird. You think of solid things hitting something solid but there is no solid thing to hit.

But that is as nothing to the world of Quantum Physics.

This is a world where nothing makes sense. Things can be in two places at once. This is a world explained by mathematical theories. It is the world of energy, atoms, subatomic particles and atomic forces. It does not behave like the universe we inhabit.

I believe the universe we live in is an illusion.

I believe we only see it partially.

I believe we are living in a sandwich of ‘reality’. The macrocosm, full of quasars, black holes and dark matter, full of galaxies, neutron stars and astronomical size, is a universe of incomprehension of Newtonian Physics, Einstein’s magic and String Theory. The microcosm with its neutrinos, Higgs-bosun, quarks and particles that go back in time, is another world that you couldn’t make up.

I believe the reality we live, suspended between the two, is much more peculiar than even we can imagine. We don’t know half of it.

I don’t understand it but I am fascinated by it.

I believe the human mind is amazing. We have invented maths and we have invented tools that enable us to learn and understand to levels that are stupendous.

We stand on the backs of giants.

Our knowledge and understanding expand beyond all comprehension. No living person can embrace it all.

I believe our understanding of Quantum Physics makes the religious fundamentalists, like ISIS, look like primitive savages. They would have us chuck aside all of our knowledge for the sake of a medieval book of dubious ramblings.

The next time I hear someone tell me that evolution is not true I will think on the minds that worked out the mysteries of the microcosm and macrocosm and feel sorry for them.

I know we are far from understanding it. But we do know that the earth is billions of years old and that the ark was never a reality. The whole world did not flood. The flood that is taking place is the massive inundation of knowledge and understanding.

A controversial way of getting rid of radioactive waste and solving the energy crisis!

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I was speaking to a relative who spent his life working in the nuclear industry. He was lamenting on the way the industry had been run resulting in a complete loss of public trust. His view was that it could have been so much better and could now be solving our energy problems in many constructive ways.

  • They had veiled themselves in secrecy rather than being completely transparent.
  • They had covered up leaks and even meltdowns (Windscale 1957) with government and nuclear operatives colluding to stop damaging information getting out.
  • They had irresponsibly always tried to take the cheapest options for disposing of nuclear waste instead of the safest. It took Greenpeace to expose and put a stop to their ridiculous dumping of waste in barrels at sea (on a fishing ground!).

As a result of this people were totally distrustful of anything they did, said or claimed. Of course this has not been helped by a series of catastrophes – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the Japanese Tsunami to name but three. As a consequence the nuclear industry has not developed as it might have.

One of their biggest problems was how to dispose of nuclear waste. They had not come up with a cheap, safe method. At present it is piling up on site. But my relative had a solution that would not only help with the disposal but also drastically reduce peoples’ power bills. He suggested that we should vitrify the low level waste emitting Alpha radiation and put plates of the vitrified material in our immersion tanks.

The vitrified material would not dissolve, would constantly emit heat to warm water for free, its radiation would be blocked by the water and wall of the tank and the industry could get rid of a lot of its waste. It was completely safe and an effective way of heating water and reducing bills. He claimed it was a win win situation.

If only the industry and politicians had handled things better we might not all be so skeptical.

Postscript:

There are three primary types of radiation:

  • Alpha – these are fast moving helium atoms. They have high energy, typically in the MeV range, but due to their large mass, they are stopped by just a few inches of air, or a piece of paper.
  • Beta – these are fast moving electrons. They typically have energies in the range of a few hundred keV to several MeV. Since electrons are might lighter than helium atoms, they are able to penetrate further, through several feet of air, or several millimeters of plastic or less of very light metals.
  • Gamma – these are photons, just like light, except of much higher energy, typically from several keV to several MeV. X-Rays and gamma rays are really the same thing, the difference is how they were produced. Depending on their energy, they can be stopped by a thin piece of aluminum foil, or they can penetrate several inches of lead.

Consciousness – a wonder

Posted on by Opher

 

Consciousness – as a scientist I don’t think we can explain or understand consciousness. We know that it is a phenomenon of the brain and the result of a neuronal net involving the firing of neurones. We understand the ionic polarisation of a neuron and the way an impulse uses acetyl choline to jump a synapse. We even know, thanks to the latest imaging, which areas of the brain are used in experiences such as pain, pleasure, recognition, memories and even love. We can even stimulate these areas to induce these sensations.

 

What we cannot do is to explain the wonder of consciousness.

 

Religious people say this is proof that science has no answers.

 

I say that it is proof that science is only at the beginning; it is still in its early days and hasn’t even got going yet. I think there are a lot more revelations to come.

 

Death – we don’t really understand that either.

 

Isn’t it great that we still have some great mysteries to investigate?

 

Right now I will glory in the wonder of my mysterious consciousness and enjoy it.