Day: February 8, 2015

Space & Time Posted on

The Illusion of Time [Full Documentary]

Published on Oct 12, 2013 SUPERBSCIENCE An amazing Documentary on the Illusion of Time [Full Documentary] Based on the book The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by renowned physicist Brian Greene, this PBS documentary explores the concept of spacetime as it relates to our common understanding of the past, present, and future. Related articles Maybe Ancient Aliens Are Out There After All The One Story You Ever Need to Read to Demand and End to All Wars 1958: Green Creature sighted in Bogota Inside the Bizarre Right-Wing Panic over Ebola Virus Coming to the US Stinging Nettle Soup The Mysterious Black Mountain of Queensland 1970: Frijid Pink

Virtual Reality Posted on

Embracing Virtuality

In 2009, a Japanese man married a woman named Nene Anegasaki on the island of Guam.  The curious thing was that Nene was a virtual character in the Nintendo videogame LovePlus. In 2013, Spike Jonze directed the highly acclaimed (and Academy Award nominated) film “Her”, in which the protagonist falls in love with an OS (operating system) AI (artificial intelligence). Outrageous you say? Consider that for centuries people have been falling in love sight unseen via snail mail.  Today, with online dating, this is even more prevalent.  Philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev notes that online technology “enables having a connection that is faster and more direct.” So it got me thinking that these types of relationships aren’t that different from the virtual ones that are […] Read More

Consensus Reality Posted on

Quantum Zeno Effect Solved

Lurking amidst the mass chaos of information that exists in our reality is a little gem of a concept called the Quantum Zeno Effect.  It is partially named after ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, who dreamed up a number of paradoxes about the fluidity of motion and change.  For example, the “Arrow Paradox” explores the idea that if you break down time into “instants” of zero duration, motion cannot be observed.  Thus, since time is composed of a set of instants, motion doesn’t truly exist.  We might consider Zeno to have been far ahead of his time as he appeared to be thinking about discrete systems and challenging the continuity of space and time a couple thousand years before Alan Turing resurrected the […] Read More