Professor Frederic Pont, of the University of Exeter, imagined what it might really look like if a person were able to visit another planet and to then sit quietly watching as the sun set. He used data from a camera onboard Hubble, knowledge of how the color of light changes based on chemicals it encounters, and computer modeling, to create an actual image of what a sunset on an actual planet far out in space would look like. The planet in question, exoplanet HD209458b, nicknamed Osiris, just happens to be quite large and circles its star rather closely.

Though we couldn’t technically sit on the surface of Osiris, since it doesn’t have one, the picture that Pont produced approximates what it would look like, and the results are truly beautiful. The light from Osiris’s star is white, like our own sun, but when it passes through the sodium in Osirisi’s atmosphere, red light in it is absorbed, leaving the starlight to appear blue. But then, as the sun sets, the blue light is scattered in the same way as it is here on Earth (Rayleigh scattering) causing a gradual change to green, and then to mushy dark green. And finally, due to diffraction, the bottom of the image becomes slightly flattened.

VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major. At between 1800 and 2100 solar radii (8.4–9.8 astronomical units, 3.063 billion km or 1.7 billion miles in diameter), it is currently the largest known star and also one of the most luminous known …

Back in 2006, the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona noticed that a mysterious body had begun orbiting the Earth. This object had a spectrum that was remarkably similar to the titanium white paint used on Saturn V rocket stages and, indeed, a number of rocket stages are known to orbit the Sun close to Earth.

But this was not an object of ours. Instead, 2006 RH120, as it became known, turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few metres across–a natural satellite like the Moon. It was captured by Earth’s gravity in September 2006 and orbited us until June 2007 when it wandered off into the Solar System in search of a more interesting neighbour.

2006 RH120 was the first reliably documented example of a temporary moon …

Read More: MIT’s Technology Review

Scientists claim to have produced particles of light out of vacuum, proving that space is not empty.

An international team says that its ingenious experiment in which tiny parcels of light, or photons, are produced out of empty space has confirmed that a vacuum contains quantum fluctuations of energy, the ‘Nature’ journal reported.

In fact, the scientists have demonstrated for the first time a strange phenomenon known as the dynamical Casimir effect, or DCE for short.

The DCE involves stimulating the vacuum to shed some of the myriad “virtual” particles that fleet in and out of existence, making them real and detectable. Moreover, the real photons produced by the DCE in their experiment collectively retain a peculiar quantum signature that ordinary light lacks.

The research, led by Chris Wilson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, shows that a related dynamic effect can occur when such a mirror moves very fast through the vacuum. The DCE was predicted over 40 years ago, but had not yet been observed experimentally due to the difficulty of creating the required experimental conditions.

“The DCE was conceived as a kind of thought experiment, sort of like Schrodinger’s Cat. According to quantum theory, if one could accelerate a mirror very quickly to near the speed of light, the mirror would radiate light as some of the mirror’s motional energy is imparted to virtual photons lurking in the vacuum, converting them into real photons.

“But it is practically impossible to accelerate a massive mirror to such high velocities. The required accelerations would be greater than the kind of shocks found in supernova or nuclear weapons explosions,” said team member Prof Tim Duty.

Instead, the scientists set out to demonstrate the DCE using microwaves, like those used for mobile phone and wireless communication signals. And instead of a massive mirror, they used a tiny microcircuit called a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID.

At a specially-arranged seminar at the Cern laboratory in Geneva, researchers presented clues in their data which suggest experts may have pinned down the “God particle” at last.

Scientists remained cautious about their findings and insisted they did not represent an official discovery, but admitted the results were “intriguing”.

The two teams searching for the Higgs boson at the LHC said they had found hints which point towards a Higgs boson with a mass between 124 and 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

A mass of 125 GeV is equivalent to about 130 times the weight of a proton found in the nucleus of an atom.

The team working on the ATLAS detector said there was only a one per cent likelihood their results occurred by chance rather than reflecting a real effect, while the CMS team quoted a figure of about five per cent.

But this does not equate directly to a 95 per cent or higher chance that they reflect the Higgs boson, experts explained.

Oliver Buchmueller, a senior physicist on the CMS team, said: “We see a small bump around the same mass as the Atlas team and that is intriguing. It means we have two experiments seeing the same thing and that is exactly how we would expect a Higgs signal to build up.”…

[continues in the Telegraph]

A simulated event in the CMS detector, featuring the appearance of the Higgs boson. (CERN)

As an update to this post, physicists the world over are all ashiver at the prospect of the elusive Higgs boson particle being announced tomorrow. Via ExtremeTech:

Tomorrow, at 9am EST, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland are expected to announce, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson “God” particle at a mass-energy of 125 GeV.

For just over a week, rumors have been rife that observations with 2.5 to 3.5 sigma certainty (96% to 99.9%) have been made. For it to be declared an actual discovery, however, a sigma level of five has to be recorded. A score on the higher end of the range, towards 3.5, would definitely have particle physicists, engineers, scientists, and philosophers jumping around excitedly, though. Perhaps more importantly, LHC has two detectors at the end of its 17-mile-long particle acceleration tunnel, and both have reportedly seen the Higgs boson: the CMS detector with sigma 2.5, and ATLAS with sigma 3.5. Thanks to the matching observations, “we’re moving very close to a conclusion in the first few months of next year,” said Oliver Buchmeuller, a senior member of the CMS detector team.

If the Higgs boson has been observed, its mass of 125 GeV will probably prove to be the most interesting factor. As you probably know, the Higgs boson is odd in that our Standard Model of particle physics postulates that it exists — and if it didn’t exist, the whole Model would be faulty. This would be troublesome because, so far, the rest of the Model has stood up incredibly well to the onslaught of science. Finding the boson particle, then, is a relief, but not fundamentally world-changing — unless its physical properties are “odd,” and at 125 GeV, the boson could be very odd indeed…

[continues at ExtremeTech]

Rumors are flying about a December 13 update on the search for the long-sought Higgs boson at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.

The physics buzz reached a frenzy in the past few days over the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is widely expected to be tantalizing — although not conclusive — evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter.

Many physicists have already swung into action, swapping rumors about the contents of the announcement and proposing grand ideas about what those rumors would mean, if true. “It’s impossible to be excited enough,” says Gordon Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Read More: Scientific American

A simple atomic nucleus could reveal properties associated with the mysterious phenomenon known as time reversal and lead to an explanation for one of the greatest mysteries of physics: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.

The physics world was rocked recently by the news that a class of subatomic particles known as neutrinos may have broken the speed of light.

Adding to the rash of new ideas, University of Arizona theoretical physicist Bira van Kolck recently proposed that experiments with another small particle called a deuteron could lead to an explanation for one of the most daunting puzzles physicists face: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe. A deuteron is a simple atomic nucleus, or the core of an atom. Its simplicity makes it one of the best objects for experiments in nuclear physics …

More on Space Daily

Albert Einstein had the idea. A century of observations have backed it up. It’s one of the cornerstones of physics: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

But now a team of experimental physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, says that one exotic particle possibly can.

The scientists reached their conclusion after sending streams of tiny, subatomic particles called neutrinos hurtling from an accelerator at CERN outside Geneva to a detector at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, about 450 miles away.

The neutrinos seemed to get there too soon — 60 nanoseconds too soon, give or take — than they should if they’d been traveling at the speed of light.

That slight edge, if it holds up under scrutiny, has enormous implications for our understanding of the laws of nature, physicists said.

“Basically, all of special relativity would be wrong,” said Drexel University physics professor Dave Goldberg, referring to Einstein’s 1905 theory establishing that light travels at a constant speed, regardless of how fast an observer is traveling, and that nothing in the universe can go faster than it.

“If you have particles traveling faster than the speed of light, you can in principle go back in time. So you can be your own grandmother. As you can imagine, that causes some problems,” said Stephen Parke, a theoretical particle physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill…

[continues in the LA Times]

Researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have obtained a formula for building a ” Antimagnet.” that can nullify the magnetic field, a discovery that was published in the New Journal of Physics.

UAB researchers publish in New Journal of Physics a formula to create a device capable of blocking any type of magnetic field. The antimagnet will make it possible for people with pacemakers to undergo magnetic resonances and to control the magnetic fields of technological devices.

Researchers worked to obtain a formula which will cover three objectives. First, an object’s magnetic field will not penetrate the exterior once it is covered by the antimagnet. Second, everything cloaked by the antimagnet will be protected from external magnetic fields and the object inside will be undetectable. Third, all materials used to create the antimagnet must be available, i.e. the antimagnet must be manufactured with the use of existing technology.

The formula UAB researchers have devised is based on overlapping layers of materials with different magnetic properties, forming what is known as a metamaterial. The device consists of an internal superconductor layer covered by several layers of ferromagnetic material, separated by air or other materials which do not have magnetic properties.

More on PES Wiki

The idea that other universes – as well as our own – lie within “bubbles” of space and time has received a boost.

Studies of the low-temperature glow left from the Big Bang suggest that several of these “bubble universes” may have left marks on our own.

This “multiverse” idea is popular in modern physics, but experimental tests have been hard to come by.

The preliminary work, to be published in Physical Review D, will be firmed up using data from the Planck telescope.

For now, the team has worked with seven years’ worth of data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which measures in minute detail the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the faint glow left from our Universe’s formation.

[Continues at BBC News]

Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein’s theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light — demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research team led by Du Shengwang said they had proved that a single photon, or unit of light, “obeys the traffic law of the universe.”

The possibility of time travel was raised 10 years ago when scientists discovered superluminal — or faster-than-light — propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium, the team said. It was later found to be a visual effect, but researchers thought it might still be possible for a single photon to exceed light speed.

Du, however, believed Einstein was right and determined to end the debate by measuring the ultimate speed of a single photon, which had not been done before. “By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon,” said Du, assistant professor of physics.

It’s no illusion: Science has found a way to make not just objects but entire events disappear, experts say.

According to new research by British physicists, it’s theoretically possible to create a material that can hide an entire bank heist from human eyes and surveillance cameras.

“The concepts are basically quite simple,” said Paul Kinsler, a physicist at Imperial College London, who created the idea with colleagues Martin McCall and Alberto Favaro.

Unlike invisibility cloaks — some of which have been made to work at very small scales — the event cloak would do more than bend light around an object. Instead this cloak would use special materials filled with metallic arrays designed to adjust the speed of light passing through.

[Continues at National Geographic]

Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

“The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts,” says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

“This is an epic result,” adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein’s theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. “One day,” he predicts, “this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics.”

Time and space, according to Einstein’s theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called “space-time.” The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.

Read More: NASA’s website

A newly created form of antimatter is the heaviest and most complex anti-thing ever seen. Anti-helium nuclei, each containing two anti-protons and two anti-neutrons, have been created and detected at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Upton, New York.

Anti-particles have the opposite electrical charge to ordinary matter particles (anti-neutrons, which are electrically neutral, are made up of antiquarks that have the opposite charge to their normal quark counterparts). They annihilate on contact with matter, making them notoriously tricky to find and work with. Until recently, the most complex unit of antimatter ever seen was the counterpart of the helium-3 nucleus, which contains two protons and one neutron.

But experiments at RHIC are changing that. RHIC collides heavy atomic nuclei such as lead and gold to form microscopic fireballs, where energy is so densely packed that many new particles can be created.

Read More: New Scientist

Moon's Apogee and Perigee.

The ever lucid Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy:

Japan suffered a massive earthquake last night, measuring nearly magnitude 9. This is one of the largest quakes in its history, causing widespread and severe damage. Before I say anything else, I’m greatly saddened by the loss of life in Japan, and I’ll be donating to disaster relief organizations to help them get in there and do what they can to give aid to those in need.

While there isn’t much I can do to directly help the situation in Japan, I do hope I can help mitigate the panic and worry that can happen due to people blaming this earthquake on the so-called “supermoon” — a date when the Moon is especially close to the Earth at the same time it’s full. So let me be extremely clear:

Despite what a lot of people are saying, there is no way this earthquake was caused by the Moon.

The idea of the Moon affecting us on Earth isn’t total nonsense, but it cannot be behind this earthquake, and almost certainly won’t have any actual, measurable affect on us on March 19, when the full Moon is at its closest.

So, how can I be so sure?

Read More from Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy

Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon’s formation.

The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance, one permanently about 60 degrees ahead of the other. In the night sky of one planet, the other world must appear as a constant, blazing light, never fading or brightening.

Gravitational “sweet spots” make this possible. When one body (such as a planet) orbits a much more massive body (a star), there are two Lagrange points along the planet’s orbit where a third body can orbit stably. These lie 60 degrees ahead of and 60 degrees behind the smaller object. For example, groups of asteroids called Trojans lie at these points along Jupiter’s orbit.

Read More in New Scientist

Antimatter Cloud (NASA)

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but scientists are reporting that they have seen antimatter beams emitted from thunderstorms. Jonathan Palmer has the story at BBC News:

A space telescope has accidentally spotted thunderstorms on Earth producing beams of antimatter.

Such storms have long been known to give rise to fleeting sparks of light called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. But results from the Fermi telescope show they also give out streams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.

The surprise result was presented by researchers at the American Astronomical Society meeting in the US.

It deepens a mystery about terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or TGFs — sparks of light that are estimated to occur 500 times a day in thunderstorms on Earth. They are a complex interplay of light and matter whose origin is poorly understood.

Thunderstorms are known to create tremendously high electric fields — evidenced by lightning strikes. Electrons in storm regions are accelerated by the fields, reaching speeds near that of light and emitting high-energy light rays — gamma rays — as they are deflected by atoms and molecules they encounter.

These flashes are intense — for a thousandth of a second, they can produce as many charged particles from one flash as are passing through the entire Earth’s atmosphere from all other processes…

[continues at BBC News]

Photo: The National Geographic

Some secrets of the universe may be found by looking underground. Under the South Pole to be exact. There, under the ice, is the world’s largest neutrino observatory used to find clues to cosmic mysteries and subatomic particles that can travel through almost any matter. Via The National Geographic:

An IceCube sensor is dropped into 1 of 86 holes drilled into the Antarctic ice in a December 2010 picture.

To reach the icy depths, scientists designed and built the Enhanced Hot Water Drill, which can penetrate more than 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) of ice in less than two days. The team then fed the IceCube detector—86 cable strings that each contain 60 neutrino sensors—into the holes.

Each cable is equipped with another four sensors at the surface, which together make up one IceCube array. The detector and arrays combine to make the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

Situated at the geographic South Pole, the U.S. $279 million observatory-the largest of its kind-will search for neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles that can travel through almost any type of matter.

[Continues at The National Geographic]

Russian author Gennady Belimov published an article in which he described experiments led by Vadim Chernobrov, the inventor of a time machine in 1987. Chernobrov claims his machine can slow or speed up the course of time by tinkering with the Earth’s magnetic field. His biggest success was the slowing of time for 1.5 seconds. One of the problems remote viewers have is acquiring time lines for future or past events that they examine. For example, a viewer might foresee a major catastrophe like a volcanic eruption, airplane crash or hurricane, but pinning down an exact moment when it will occur is extremely difficult. To deal with this problem, Aaron C. Donahue spent years developing an advanced form of viewing, which he calls the acquisition and practical application of non-historical data.

Source: http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/10506-vadim-chernobrov

There’s something exciting afoot in the world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

This, they say, is exactly what you’d expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.

That’s an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang.

Today, another group says they’ve found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called eternal inflation. In this way of thinking, the universe we see is merely a bubble in a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.

These bubbles probably had a violent past, jostling together and leaving “cosmic bruises” where they touched. If so, these bruises ought to be visible today in the cosmic microwave background.

Read More at Technology Review’s Physics arXiv blog

Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4th he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies.

Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump — many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt’s experiment — and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels:

The reaction created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun, which have not been reached since the first billionths of a second following the Big Bang.

The heavyweight particle collisions follow seven months of earlier experiments crashing protons – which are 200 times lighter than lead ions – at near-light speeds.

The collisions were produced by firing lead ions – atoms with their electrons removed – at incredible speeds in opposite directions around the LHC’s underground tunnel at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva.

This was expected to cause atomic particles such as protons and neutrons to melt, producing a “soup” of matter in a state previously unseen on Earth.

Scientists, including British particle physicists, will now study the particles in the hope of discovering what holds atoms together and gives them their mass.

Continues at The Telegraph…

In 2008, Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan made waves with a mind-boggling proposition: The 3D universe in which we appear to live is no more than a hologram. Now he is building the most precise clock of all time to directly measure whether our reality is an illusion.

The idea that spacetime may not be entirely smooth — like a digital image that becomes increasingly pixelated as you zoom in – had been previously proposed by Stephen Hawking and others. Possible evidence for this model appeared last year in the unaccountable “noise” plaguing the GEO600 experiment in Germany, which searches for gravitational waves from black holes. To Hogan, the jitteriness suggested that the experiment had stumbled upon the lower limit of the spacetime pixels’ resolution.

Black hole physics, in which space and time become compressed, provides a basis for math showing that the third dimension may not exist at all. In this two-dimensional cartoon of a universe, what we perceive as a third dimension would actually be a projection of time intertwined with depth. If this is true, the illusion can only be maintained until equipment becomes sensitive enough to find its limits.

“You can’t perceive it because nothing ever travels faster than light,” says Hogan. “This holographic view is how the universe would look if you sat on a photon.”

Read More in Symmetry

Dickey Eason

We all have our ideas about how the world and universe work. Some of us see the hand of “God” in everything. Others are atheists or agnostics—still others are guided by spirituality. But no matter where we are on the “believe” spectrum, most of us see a rather benign universe. By that I mean that we do not see specific forces struggling with one another in the cosmos once we get away from earth, which is interesting to me. We see conflict and battles on earth but not in the rest of the universe.

We view it much as we do a documentary—no plots, no dynamics—just an intriguing show. We look at ourselves—human life on earth—as being the real show. But that separation has, I believe, caused us to distort our perceptions of the Big Picture. I think if we start seeing the natural conflicts that exist in the universe, then we might start the process that leads to fewer human conflicts on earth.

Why don’t we see a dynamic operating in the universe where forces are actually vying against one another? After all, it would be just as easy to see a battle as it would a “beautiful picture show”. But a powerful force is setting the agenda, and it wants us to see conflict on earth but not in the cosmos. Why is that? Because if you see a dynamic at work in the cosmos, then you will quickly see a dynamic at work among human beings. And then you would probably develop an independent, inquisitive mindset which would threaten the existence of the “agenda” creators. I call this force the SN for structural nucleus. It is the power-control center of human organizations, whether country or company. SNs run the gamut—from practical and reasonable to violent and suffocating.

I introduced the IMPACTS and the IMPACTS concept in a couple of articles on this site, June 22 and June 29, 2010. The IMPACTS are a group of people I discovered about ten years ago who make everything work in human society. They are the fuel for the human race. Take them out and the whole societal machine would come to a screeching halt—just as a car without fuel would go nowhere.

Originally, I found the IMPACTS in the business world on both sides of the transaction—as a valuable customer and as an innovative, entrepreneurial business person. But then I started seeing them in everything I read—history, science, anthropology, art and culture, contemporary society—anything and everything. The IMPACTS were quiet leaders and change artists, trying to maximize the potential of the environment. What I seemed to be seeing was a salient dynamic—it was so consistent and predictable that I started exploring the physical world to see if it existed there as well. I suspected that it did.

The hydrogen atom, one proton and one electron, appears to me to be the structural model for the universe, which only makes sense because it was possibly the first “structure” in the universe, forming 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The proton is relatively massive and therefore pulling inward; the electron is almost mass-less, and is, I believe, essentially captured by the proton. The electron is the “creative” part of the structure. How so?

There are different energy levels for electrons in the atom. The first level will hold 2 electrons, the second 8 electrons, the third 18, the fourth 32, and so on. When the outer energy level is not complete, then the electron(s) in that level is a valence electron, meaning that it is ready and willing to bond with the valence electron of another atom, forming a NEW structure—a molecule—and achieving balance.  Balance appears to be a primary goal of a force or forces of the universe but not of all forces.

Going back to the “beginnings” in the physical universe necessitated going back to the early beginnings of modern humans. There I discovered the San tribe of Africa, the oldest modern human group, having emerged well over 100,000 years ago. Their shaman-centered way of life laid the foundation for modern humanity. It became clear to me that today’s problem-solving IMPACTS possess the same basic characteristics as the San and shaman—the San tribe members being cooperative and sharing, the shaman innovative and somewhat “asymmetrical”—often different in behavior, thought, perception, vision, and more. This asymmetry seemed to motivate him to balance himself and the tribe—to “maximize” the potential around him. There were female shamans also, particularly in the San tribe.

Another element was very clear: the San tribe was the out-of-Africa group. The evidence was overwhelming. Why would this not be common knowledge across the world, especially the anthropological world? There could only be one reason—there must be a force that was benefitting from it not being accepted knowledge.

In my study the social world became entangled with the physical world. I could actually detect no difference between the two as far as energy dynamics were concerned. Both were following the EXACT same model, and again, that model was based on the hydrogen atom: an inner massive core and an opposite, “lighter and more mobile” energy on the periphery.

Our universe is governed by the second law of thermodynamics, which basically states that concentrated energy is an anomaly. The tendency of the universe is toward high entropy, or maximum disorder. But obviously there is much concentrated energy that we see—billions of galaxies with billions of stars, planets in our solar system and more being discovered around other stars, and on earth life, including us. Something is working to overcome the second law.

I read Dr. Robert Piccioni’s Everyone’s Guide to Atoms, Einstein, and the Universe and contacted him. He agreed to answer some of my physics questions. One of his quotes was:

“Life has a very unique relationship to the second law of thermodynamics. That law makes a statistical statement–it is vastly more likely than not that in any closed system particle energies will equalize and disorder will increase. Life seems uniquely able to consistently overcome the second law, not by violating that law, but by systematically taking in more ordered matter and expelling less ordered matter. Life decreases its disorder at the expense of its surrounding. This is allowed by the second law, and is essential to any living organism. Indeed, I think this leads to a very sensible definition of Life: Any entity that can consistently overcome the second law is Alive.”

The carbon atom is the perfect foundation for life because it has 4 electrons in its outer energy level and therefore needs 4 more to complete that outer level. Carbon is therefore stable and reactive—we could say asymmetrical, just as the hydrogen atom is with its one electron, which is also a valence electron. You will recall that the first energy level in the atom holds 2 electrons. But most of the atomic world is asymmetrical as it relates to the outer energy level of the electrons. Carbon is significant because it will bond with other carbon atoms along with other atoms such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous, forming long chains of organic molecules for life. These molecules have concentrated energy in the covalent bonds between the electrons, and thus are working against the ever-present second law.

The IMPACTS group I mentioned earlier, though I believe a small percentage of human society (probably 5 to 10%), appeared to me to be the “ordered matter” of human society, though asymmetry was often not far away. The IMPACTS were the “carbon atoms and molecules”—they kept everything bonded together and functioning. Plus they had “concentrated energy” and were always looking for ways to improve their particular environment, whether business, family, or even the physical environment, including the home.

There seemed to me to be two major forces in the universe—a male force and a female force. Why male and female? Because the traits generally associated with males and females on earth were the same as those I was seeing across the universe. The proton was male—it was “capturing” the electron, getting Bigger and Stronger. The black hole of a galaxy, another massive core, was doing the same—it was getting Bigger and Stronger as stars formed around it, some of which it “ate”. As the galaxy grew, it would try to capture other galaxies, again becoming Bigger and Stronger. These are traits generally associated with males and male-led organizations, including countries.

The electron was female. It was creative as it bonded with the electron of another atom to create a molecule. It shared and cooperated, traits more suggestive of female behavior.

All of my study suggested to me that there was a tug-of-war across the universe between male and female forces—male forces trying to get Bigger and Stronger, female forces trying to create and produce in order to defeat the second law of thermodynamics. Male forces seemed to be aligned or allied with the second law—they took what they wanted or what they could take, breaking up the energy field around them.

So one force was aiding the second law and one force was its antithesis. One was pulling inward—one was reaching outward and bonding. Inward pressure—outward pressure, the same model everywhere you look. Stars, the atom, a galaxy with its black-hole center—all the same model. It’s the same in the social world as well—businesses, families, countries—all with pulling-inward elements and all with creative-productive pressure that maintains equilibrium—sometimes. That is the subconscious goal anyway.

In a star, when the hydrogen fuel is exhausted, the star collapses on itself. So the outward pressure caused by the fusion of hydrogen into helium and the subsequent release of massive amounts of energy prevent the star from collapsing. The IMPACTS group that I had discovered in society seemed to me to be performing the same role—they were the fuel that kept society functioning. And they too were often found on the PERIPHERY, just like the valence electron and just like the outward pressure of a star. Some IMPACTS however were more peripheral than others.

I was still looking for something that would explain what we see, which is a universe with copious amounts of ordered matter and, at the same time, a universe that is expanding at the speed of light.

Physicists presently (as far as I know) believe there are four fundamental forces in the universe:

• The strong nuclear force
• The weak force
• Electromagnetism
• Gravity

But the weak and the electromagnetic forces are believed to actually be one force, the electroweak. The male and female forces I mentioned may be an amalgam of these (now) 3 forces, or the universe could have a thousand or a million forces. Still, presently, I think primarily there is a male force and a female force, or there could be a male force, a female force, and a hybrid of the two. Anything is possible. We are not looking for the definitive answer—we couldn’t find it anyway at this particular stage of our development. We are looking for strong probabilities and possibilities—we are looking to move the boundaries of our present knowledge. We can fill in the blanks later. Let’s get the template down first.

Dr. Robert Piccioni again, speaking of the “accidental” nature of life and human beings existing:

“The asymmetry of the weak force (technical term is CP-violation) that very slightly favors matter over antimatter is one of these knobs. There is no known reason why the weak force acts this way. By 1 second after the Big Bang, there were 1,000,000,001 particles for every 1,000,000,000 antiparticles. If that asymmetry had been slightly more, the universe would have long since collapsed to nothing, hence no life. If that asymmetry had been slightly less, the universe would have almost no matter in it and would have expanded so rapidly that a volume of space now occupied by an entire galaxy might instead contain only 1 atom, hence no life. No one knows why, but we are quite sure this is true.

The electromagnetic part of the electroweak does not violate CP; only the weak part does.

EM and weak forces were mathematically united into electroweak because they both involve the exchange of spin 1 bosons. EM forces arise when charged particles exchange a photon, which has zero mass resulting in a force with infinite range. Weak forces arise when any particles exchange an intermediate vector boson (W+, W–, or Z0), which have masses in the range of 90 times the proton mass resulting in extremely short range forces (much less than the diameter of a proton).

CP violation arises in the W/Z exchanges. The amount of CP violation is quite small—less than 1% of the weak force which itself is generally less than 1% of the EM force. (An absolute direct comparison of force strengths is not possible as they vary in different ways with various parameters such as charge.)”

I believe this carries all the way through the universe, including to the IMPACTS. What do I mean? I mean a slight asymmetry that produces “positive” results just as the early asymmetry of the weak force produced matter. We may not be able to see it “scientifically” at this time, but there are just too many “coincidences” for it not to be a real phenomenon.

I have mentioned that the IMPACTS are the group that holds humanity together—and they are its fuel. And like the San-shaman, they are often asymmetrical (off-the-beaten-path), or come from a family with “asymmetry”—such as autism or so-called psychological issues. But this is what we should expect because I believe that the San and shaman profiles are embedded in the human genome, and are now manifested through the IMPACTS. I strongly suspect that autism may have been the progenitor of modern humans—the asymmetry that was needed—and is still prevalent because it possesses value for our species. What value? Creative genius often resides near it.

The wolf pack seems to have embedded roles; e.g., alpha, beta, and omega. Why would humans be any different? I don’t think we gave up social strategies and social roles when we acquired higher consciousness though most of us would like to think we did. In the wolf pack, the beta wolf is the glue that holds the pack together, and is very often male. The beta sees needs that others do not see—and takes care of them. It is the same with the IMPACTS in the human “pack”—they see needs and they seek solutions. The entire group leans toward androgyny and has a strong female orientation. The group is predominantly heterosexual but there are large numbers of homosexual IMPACTS as well, just as there were large numbers of homosexual shamans.

What the asymmetry of the weak force appears to be doing is PREVENTING COLLAPSE. It is overcoming the second law—or trying to. Its actions help maintain outward pressure such as you find with fusion in a star. There would be no stars without the weak force. The weak force changes hydrogen into deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and then fusion can take place. The weak force is also responsible for all the different elements that have been formed since hydrogen. So the weak force is really responsible for most of what we see in the universe. It is the creative force—and it is slightly asymmetrical—just as are many IMPACTS—and just as was the shaman. You have to have asymmetry or nothing happens. Asymmetry is the condition that initiates the process that leads to order and “ordered matter”.

The weak force is also responsible for radioactivity which helps keep the iron core of the earth molten, which in turn produces a strong magnetic field. This field protects us from the dangerous solar wind of the sun. You can see that the weak force is anything but weak.

The San-shaman’s main role was to prevent collapse of the tribe and to maintain the health of individuals—to prevent the collapse of human beings into death—to keep their outward pressure functioning. That is what the IMPACTS are doing—preventing collapse of societies, companies, countries, communities, people—maintaining outward pressure, keeping the “fires” burning. That is why you find them on the periphery—like the valence electron(s).

It appears that the weak force is the ultimate computer—it KNOWS what needs to be done at the CRITICAL moment—like the Big Bang. The shamans were asking the same question—what needs to be done at this precise moment in order to maximize the potential? The IMPACTS are asking the same question. That’s why you find them at critical positions where collapse is possible.

The weak force was there at the moment of the Big Bang and produced a tiny bit more matter than antimatter. The IMPACTS are trying to do the same wherever they are—produce the “little extras” that will lead to positive results for all—that will “save the day”. It can be a nurse in the emergency room, an entrepreneur like Steven Jobs who changes the world, the director of a non-profit who discovers a new approach to raising money, or any one of the millions of people around the world who every day use their caring, innovative energy to “find a way to make it happen”.

The IMPACTS don’t have the power that the weak force appears to have but they usually have its “exacting” nature and its desire for balance—the template appears to be the same.

Brian Greene, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos:

“Some discoveries provide answers to questions. Other discoveries are so deep that they cast questions in a whole new light, showing that previous mysteries were misperceived through lack of knowledge. You could spend a lifetime—in antiquity, some did—wondering what happens when you reach earth’s edge, or trying to figure out who or what lives on earth’s underbelly. But when you learn that the earth is round, you see that the previous mysteries are not solved; instead they are rendered irrelevant.”

That is what I am attempting to do—render many mysteries irrelevant. Why? Because “untruths” prevent human beings from optimizing the potential that exists. I have a “weak force”, IMPACTS attitude—a drive for efficiency and “the best it can be” results.

What will “science” say about this discovery? It will mostly throw cold water on it because what I am proposing cannot be measured. But then how could you measure a dynamic? You couldn’t—not presently anyway. I suspect we will find ways to measure it once we accept the possibility that it exists. We couldn’t “measure” electrons at one time either. Does that mean they didn’t exist until we learned how to measure them?

I believe that science today is captured just as the electron is captured in the atom. Who has captured it? The power-control element I mentioned earlier—the SN. The SN has no power unless it has copious numbers of innovative IMPACTS and their energy, just as a black hole is powerless without billions of stars. The SN, like the proton, does not create—it depends on the IMPACTS (the valence electrons) for creative-production. That is where it gets its power.

At one time science was on the periphery. Remember Galileo, Einstein, Newton, and countless others? They were on the periphery. But now science has been captured and brought into the SN energy field, and the SN says what is and what isn’t science. Science and the SN are joined at the hip—just like the proton and electron in the hydrogen atom. Science answers to the SN—it has become politicized, meaning that it has lost its independence and objectivity. The societal SN, predominantly male, wants to use science to get what the male force in the universe seems to crave—Bigger and Stronger.

Why has this not been seen before, as far as we know? Because human beings would quickly start connecting the dots. If all models behave essentially the same way—with a pulling-inward male force and a creative-productive female force—then human society tends toward the same model. And therefore, it can be analyzed just as a galaxy or an atom can be analyzed. The vast majority of people are not ready for that—they prefer the paradigm that they know. People are trying to adjust to the world—they are not trying to create a new one. I think a new one needs to be created, and it has to start with knowledge and awareness of the dynamics involved. You can’t fix anything if you don’t understand how it works. Human society behaves exactly like the atom—it has 2 major forces just as the atom has 2 major forces, and they are the same forces and they behave the same.

Human beings have not always separated themselves from the natural world. Before the development of agriculture, the San-like people tried to live in harmony with nature. With agriculture came the emergence of a predominantly-male, SN power-control force which captured the San-like people as its fuel—exactly as protons did with electrons 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It is the same dynamic, and it is the same dynamic throughout the universe and the natural world.

One reason the world has so many seemingly insoluble problems is that the SN is in total control and the IMPACTS have no idea who they are and where they stand in the grand scheme of things. I hope I can change that—IMPACTS need to understand that they are the real source of power around the world, and they can start using that power more judiciously once they understand how all of it works.

Everything is political. The SN force that emerged with agriculture has always wanted to keep people in the dark—to keep knowledge away so they could maintain control. It is no different today but the machinations are more cleverly disguised. The SN wants people to believe it is “us against them”—us against other countries, religions, and societies. It is not. It is the SN against other SNs, and all are using the IMPACTS as their fuel—to create and produce goods and services (the economy) and weaponry for the military. SNs are essentially pitting IMPACTS against IMPACTS, which is especially heinous because IMPACTS are usually peaceful people who just want to make the world better. The creative-productive abilities of the IMPACTS are used by SNs around the world to inflict horrible damage on other people. The SN-types would prefer that the IMPACTS not learn that they (the IMPACTS) are the powerful “weak force” of humanity. Then the SNs can continue setting the agenda.

I have repeatedly said over the past few years that I see a dynamic operating across the universe that tries to maximize the potential. After years of study, I now believe it is the weak force.

Is the weak force God? I think the weak force is predominantly Goddess.

Dickey Eason, Cary, NC.

www.theimpacts.com