Beyond Science

Astronomer Says Spiritual Phenomena Exist in Other Dimensions

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Consciousness

In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

Astronomer and mathematician Bernard Carr theorizes that many of the phenomena we experience but cannot explain within the physical laws of this dimension actually occur in other dimensions.

Bernard Carr
Bernard Carr

Albert Einstein stated that there are at least four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time, or spacetime, since Einstein said space and time cannot be separated. In modern physics, theories about the existence of up to 11 dimensions and the possibility of more have gained traction.

Carr, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London, says our consciousness interacts with another dimension. Furthermore, the multi-dimensional universe he envisions has a hierarchical structure. We are at the lowest-level dimension.

“The model resolves well-known philosophical problems concerning the relationship between matter and mind, elucidates the nature of time, and provides an ontological framework for the interpretation of phenomena such as apparitions, OBEs [out-of-body experiences], NDEs [near-death-experiences], and dreams,” he wrote in a conference abstract.

Carr reasons that our physical sensors only show us a 3-dimensional universe, though there are actually at least four dimensions. What exists in the higher dimensions are entities we cannot touch with our physical sensors. He said that such entities must still have a type of space to exist in.

“The only non-physical entities in the universe of which we have any experience are mental ones, and … the existence of paranormal phenomena suggests that mental entities have to exist in some sort of space,” Carr wrote.

The other-dimensional space we enter in dreams overlaps with the space where memory exists. Carr says telepathy signals a communal mental space and clairvoyance also contains a physical space. “Non-physical percepts have attributes of externality,” he wrote in his book “Matter, Mind, and Higher Dimensions.”

He builds on previous theories, including the Kaluza–Klein theory, which unifies the fundamental forces of gravitation and electromagnetism. The Kaluza–Klein theory also envisions a 5-dimensional space.

In “M-theory,” there are 11 dimensions. In superstring theory, there are 10. Carr understands this as a 4-dimensional “external” space—meaning these are the four dimensions in Einstein’s relativity theory—and a 6- or 7-dimensional “internal” space—meaning these dimensions relate to psychic and other “intangible” phenomena.

What Is the DNA of Your Mind?

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(Hlib Shabashnyi/iStock/Thinkstock; Edited, with text added, by Epoch Times)

 

In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

Your DNA determines everything about you: eye color, height, body shape, skin type, etc. But it does not determine one thing about you—your mind.

At birth, the human brain is nothing but an empty storage tank with 30 billion neurons in it. In contrast to your wonderfully choreographed body, with details from toe nails to hair thickness, there is nothing special about this most important vital organ. The brain needs to be filled. It is a process. The process of learning and maturing via various life experiences results in the final description of who you are, and yet it continues to change in time with increasingly smaller amounts and at a slower pace.

Artificial intelligence project exClone wants to map the DNA of your Mind (DNAM).

Although the terminology sounds original, DNAM is actually not a new concept. For example, tracking and profiling Facebook users based on their “likes” is a rudimentary form of DNAM. Such a thing is perceived by some as a dark enterprise nowadays, due to privacy concerns.

When we depart from this present gloomy picture, and imagine what can happen in the future, the meaning of DNAM changes drastically. If DNA cloning ensures the eternal continuation of your body, then DNAM may ensure the immortality of your mind, in a peculiar and exciting manner. The truthfulness of this statement very much depends on how DNAM will evolve from being just a commercial “profile” to something much more spectacular.

DNMA-quote-2

 Psychological studies have several, somewhat debatable, human personality theories. Creating a model for DNAM must use something like the  Raymond Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors. Marking them on a scale of 1 to 10 (either by measurements or self-determination) shows your behavior, such as reasoning, emotional stability, sensitivity, and other factors (as shown in the blue chart in Fig. 1 below). Mathematically speaking, if we had Steve Jobs’ blue chart, there could be another 20 million people out there with similar charts. As a result, psychological profiling is never unique enough to claim your DNAM.
DNAM-chart.jpg

This classical approach omits the role of a second important element of knowledge, which we call “expertise.” In the same scale of 1 to 10, now we can mark the level of knowledge in various fields (as shown in the green chart in Fig. 1 above). This list could be as long as it needs to be depending on each person. The expertise can be anything ranging from how to boil an egg to how to launch a nuclear missile. The blue chart combined with the green chart could potentially depict a unique DNAM for Steve Jobs or anyone else.

DNMA-quote-3

The exClone project has undertaken the digital cloning of human expertise. To make exClones useful to society, the main emphasis is given to the expertise part (the green chart). To ensure their organic potential, exClones continue to learn, following the personality traits of their creators (following the blue charts) by means of social conversations and Internet sources. The project is significant in its comprehensive attempt to model deep artificial intelligence.

The uniqueness of the green chart lies in its identification and prioritization of knowledge. For example, between two dentists who went to the same school, it would be impossible to produce equal expertise in real life. Each would have a different clinical experience over time. This unique experience, combined with the personality traits (blue chart), is what makes up the final definition of our minds and DNAM in this exClone model.

Of course, some may say that distilling the definition of the mind down to a number of personality traits and experiences may not capture the essence of the human mind, it could be useful in a practical sense in developing artificial intelligence.

DNMA-quote-4

Should the computers we create have personalities and knowledge prioritization? The short answer is “absolutely, yes.” Differences fill all the gaps and avoid common blind spots. That is the power of group thinking and a cornerstone of human civilization. The future of computerized human societies will be more successful with human-like variety as opposed to a single, “can do all,” generic computer model.

A Physicist’s Explanation of Why the Soul May Exist

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In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

Henry P. Stapp is a theoretical physicist at the University of California–Berkeley who worked with some of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. He does not seek to prove that the soul exists, but he does say that the existence of the soul fits within the laws of physics.

It is not true to say belief in the soul is unscientific, according to Stapp. Here the word “soul” refers to a personality independent of the brain or the rest of the human body that can survive beyond death.  In his paper, “Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory With Personality Survival,” he wrote: “Strong doubts about personality survival based solely on the belief that postmortem survival is incompatible with the laws of physics are unfounded.”

He works with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics—more or less the interpretation used by some of the founders of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Even Bohr and Heisenberg had some disagreements on how quantum mechanics works, and understandings of the theory since that time have also been diverse. Stapp’s paper on the Copenhagen interpretation has been influential. It was written in the 1970s and Heisenberg wrote an appendix for it.

Stapp noted of his own concepts: “There has been no hint in my previous descriptions (or conception) of this orthodox quantum mechanics of any notion of personality survival.”

 

Why Quantum Theory Could Hint at Life After Death

Stapp explains that the founders of quantum theory required scientists to essentially cut the world into two parts. Above the cut, classical mathematics could describe the physical processes empirically experienced. Below the cut, quantum mathematics describes a realm “which does not entail complete physical determinism.”

Of this realm below the cut, Stapp wrote: “One generally finds that the evolved state of the system below the cut cannot be matched to any conceivable classical description of the properties visible to observers.”

So how do scientists observe the invisible? They choose particular properties of the quantum system and set up apparatus to view their effects on the physical processes “above the cut.”

The key is the experimenter’s choice. When working with the quantum system, the observer’s choice has been shown to physically impact what manifests and can be observed above the cut.

Stapp cited Bohr’s analogy for this interaction between a scientist and his experiment results: “[It’s like] a blind man with a cane: when the cane is held loosely, the boundary between the person and the external world is the divide between hand and cane; but when held tightly the cane becomes part of the probing self: the person feels that he himself extends to the tip of the cane.”

The physical and mental are connected in a dynamic way. In terms of the relationship between mind and brain, it seems the observer can hold in place a chosen brain activity that would otherwise be fleeting. This is a choice similar to the choice a scientist makes when deciding which properties of the quantum system to study.

The quantum explanation of how the mind and brain can be separate or different, yet connected by the laws of physics “is a welcome revelation,” wrote Stapp. “It solves a problem that has plagued both science and philosophy for centuries—the imagined science-mandated need either to equate mind with brain, or to make the brain dynamically independent of the mind.”

Stapp said it is not contrary to the laws of physics that the personality of a dead person may attach itself to a living person, as in the case of so-called spirit possession. It wouldn’t require any basic change in orthodox theory, though it would “require a relaxing of the idea that physical and mental events occur only when paired together.”

Classical physical theory can only evade the problem, and classical physicists can only work to discredit intuition as a product of human confusion, said Stapp. Science should instead, he said, recognize “the physical effects of consciousness as a physical problem that needs to be answered in dynamical terms.”

How This Understanding Affects the Moral Fabric of Society

Furthermore, it is imperative for maintaining human morality to consider people as more than just machines of flesh and blood.

In another paper, titled “Attention, Intention, and Will in Quantum Physics,” Stapp wrote:  “It has become now widely appreciated that assimilation by the general public of this ‘scientific’ view, according to which each human being is basically a mechanical robot, is likely to have a significant and corrosive impact on the moral fabric of society.”

He wrote of the “growing tendency of people to exonerate themselves by arguing that it is not ‘I’ who is at fault, but some mechanical process within: ‘my genes made me do it’; or ‘my high blood-sugar content made me do it.’ Recall the infamous ‘Twinkie Defense’ that got Dan White off with five years for murdering San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.”

4 Common Misconceptions About Quantum Physics

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Left: (Miszaqq/iStock) Background: (AGS Andrew/iStock)

 

In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

Quantum physics is so fascinating that it appeals to a broader lay audience than a lot of other topics in science. It’s also so difficult to grasp and attempts to simplify it for a lay audience may open it to misunderstanding.

It is invoked to explain all sorts of strange, even paranormal, phenomena. Yet these explanations are often based on misconceptions about quantum physics. Quantum physics may indeed have the potential to explain such phenomena, since much remains to be discovered about it. But it is important to remain clear on what it does and does not actually claim at this point in its development.

1. No Indication That Entanglement Transfers Information

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which pairs or groups of particles that have been in contact with each other seem to remain connected over vast distances. When actions are performed on one of the particles, corresponding changes are observed on the others.

Some have said that this entanglement may explain psi phenomena (psi refers to psychic phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, et cetera).

(Jezperklauzen/iStock)

Some have said that this entanglement may explain psi phenomena.

Garret Moddel, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado who has worked extensively with quantum mechanics, warned that the effect “is a very subtle one. It’s not a causal effect, it’s a correlational effect. What the distinction between those two is requires a rather patient and detailed explanation.”

“People tend to think that quantum entanglement means that when I shake one particle, I’ll be able to see the effect on another, but that’s not so,” he said. “It’s been shown quite rigorously that you cannot use quantum entanglement to convey information, only to convey correlation. So, it’s not a signaling mechanism.”

“It’s possible that psi and the whole world works by correlation and not transfer of information in a causal way, but that’s a much deeper discussion.”

2. Consciousness Is Not Necessarily the Key to Collapsing the Wave-Function

The observer effect in quantum physics is often seen as the most shocking and interesting aspect of quantum physics. The outcome of a particular action—the wave-function collapse—is suspended until it is observed. This seems to suggest that human consciousness is able to physically affect an experiment. But, Moddel warned, it is not generally thought by physicists that consciousness is necessary to collapse the wave-function.

(DM Bbaker/iStock)

A detector is sufficient, as most physicists see it. Of course, it is possible that a human checking the detector is the key, but quantum physics as it is generally conceived does not currently hold this to be necessary.

Astrophysicist Mario Livio also discussed this misconception in a post on NASA’s “A Curious Mind” blog. He wrote: “Perhaps the most common misconception is that the observer plays a crucial role in the uncertainty principle—namely, that the principle really stems from the influence of the observer of the phenomenon being observed. This misunderstanding has even led some to conclude that the principle could be directly applied to a variety of everyday experiences.”

3. It Doesn’t Only Describe the Subatomic Level

Achim Kempf, a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, explained via email that quantum physics does not only describe phenomena at very small scales and only in special circumstances.

“In reality, quantum physics determines most of what we see in daily life, such as the color, elasticity, and heat capacity of everyday things such as water, rocks, metals, and also biological matter. On larger scales, the way in which stars, in their interior, fuse primordial hydrogen into the elements of the periodic system is also governed by quantum physics,” he said.

“Our universe itself may have arisen from a quantum fluctuation inside a mother universe.”

— Achim Kempf, University of Waterloo

Furthermore, researchers speculate that our universe may have inflated so rapidly during its genesis that quantum fluctuations were “dragged along and thereby stretched to cosmological size.”

“Our universe itself may have arisen from a quantum fluctuation inside a mother universe,” he said. Though this hypothesis fits with the current standard model of cosmology, however, no concrete evidence has supported it so far, Kempf said.

4. Speaking of a ‘Wave-Particle Duality’ Is Not Exactly Correct

It’s a popular conception that in quantum mechanics microscopic objects, such as electrons or photons, are neither pure particles nor pure waves—they are both waves and particles. In some conditions they behave as waves, in some conditions, they behave as particles.

Serious textbooks on quantum mechanics, however, only talk about waves, or wave-functions, noted theoretical physicist Hrvoje Nikolic of the Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Croatia in a 2008 paper titled, “Quantum Mechanics: Myths and Facts.”

“The word ‘particle’ has a very different meaning than the same word in classical physics.”

— Hrvoje Nikolic, Rudjer Boskovic Institute

“Electrons and photons always behave as waves, while a particle-like behavior corresponds only to a special case. In this sense, the wave-particle duality is nothing but a myth,” he said. We can say that electrons and photons are “particles,” if we keep in mind that “the word ‘particle’ has a very different meaning than the same word in classical physics,” Nikolic said. But this is a matter of linguistics. They are waves according to the usual interpretation.

The De Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics, he said, comes close to a kind of wave-particle duality, but it still treats “particles” very differently than “particles” are treated in classical physics. The De Broglie-Bohm is not one of the most popular interpretations.

Is Anything Truly Random or Is There an Underlying Order to Everything?

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Is Anything Truly Random or Is There an Underlying Order to Everything?
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 In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote in “Ethics I”: “Nothing in Nature is random. … A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”

In modern physics, certain quantum processes are deemed fundamentally random.

“As we currently understand it, quantum randomness is true and absolute randomness,” said theoretical physicist York Dobyns in an email to the Epoch Times. “Nothing in the universe can predict quantum outcomes except at a statistical level.”

Put simply, things are considered fundamentally fuzzy or indeterminate in quantum theory. A particle may behave as a wave; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we have a limited ability to know more than one physical property of a particle (such as position and momentum) at the same time; radioactive decay is unpredictable, it results from a particle quantum tunneling into or out of the nucleus.

As far as physicists can tell, quantum mechanics includes true randomness. But Spinoza may still be right.

Uncertain Footing of Quantum Theory’s Uncertainties

Dobyns admitted that it is possible even quantum randomness is not truly random. If that is so, quantum theory would have to be majorly reworked.

Physicists expect such a reworking. Quantum theory has major gaps and scientists are seeking a new major theory to replace or complement it.

Science is torn between classical physics and quantum physics. Each holds true in certain circumstances, but neither can explain how everything works.

“Current quantum theory can and will be replaced if a better theory (one that explains more) can be devised, and a theory that can make accurate predictions of events that are random according to the current version of QM [quantum mechanics] would be a great candidate,” Dobyns said.

If quantum theory is replaced by a so-called “Theory of Everything,” the idea of randomness may also disappear. No theory that can predict random quantum events has been proposed, so for now we must assume they are truly random.

Random Number Generators

Machines called random number generators (RNGs) use the quantum processes to generate encryption keys for banks. They are also used as tools for various scientific experiments.

 Machines called random number generators (RNGs) use the quantum processes to generate encryption keys for banks.

RNGs have particularly been used in psi (the unknown “psychic” factor that cannot be explained by known physical and biological mechanisms) experiments; for example, researchers have used them to test whether a person could exercise psychokinesis by causing the machine to produce a pattern instead of randomness.

Dobyns designed and implemented data processing strategies for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab at Princeton University, where RNGs were often used in psi experiments.

Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has also used RNG generators to conduct psi experiments. He explained how the randomness of RNGs is tested statistically.

RNGs produce random bits. They’re often described as electronic coin-flippers; they randomly produce either a 1 or a zero.

To test the RNG, researchers run tens of millions of bits produced by the RNG through statistical tests (one such suite of statistical tests is called Die Hard, developed by mathematician George Marsaglia at Florida State University). They test the distribution of bits in many ways, using variables that mathematicians have determined should indicate if the RNG is behaving randomly.

“If it passes all of the tests, then you say, ‘As best as we can tell, this is behaving like a true random system,’” Radin said. “But it’s quite true that you actually never know. Because it could be that after you’ve tested the 10 million random bits that the next 10 million might all come out the same, or some silly thing like that.”

“You assume that the sample of the tested bits is a fair representative of the whole population of bits and accurately reflects how the RNG works,” he said.

Some RNGs use computer algorithms instead of the “noise” created by quantum processes. These are sufficient for certain uses, but the resulting sequences are deterministic, and some uses require truly unpredictable, non-deterministic sequences.

If you go to an online poker site, for example, and you know the algorithm and seed, you can write a program that will predict the cards that are going to be dealt

— Steve Ward, professor, MIT

Some RNGs also use thermal or atmospheric noise instead of defined patterns. But these may still be biased, for example, toward higher or even (as opposed to odd) numbers. RNGs using quantum processes are considered the most random.

In addition to banking encryption and psi tests, MIT Computer Science and Engineering Professor Steve Ward, pointed out another use for true randomness in a post on the MIT website: “If you go to an online poker site, for example, and you know the algorithm and seed, you can write a program that will predict the cards that are going to be dealt.”

Radin said the encryption keys produced by true RNGs are the best we can do at present, as confirmed by the mathematics used to test them. Quantum mechanics appears to provide us with true randomness, for now at least.

Accounts of People Who Seem to Literally Be From Parallel Universe

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In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

Over the past couple of centuries, some people have purportedly turned up who say they are from cities and countries that don’t exist. They speak unknown languages, and give other indications some say suggest they are from parallel universes.

In 1850, a man named Jophar Vorin was found and questioned in a small town near Frankfurt, Germany.

John Timbs wrote about Vorin in his 1852 “Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art,” which was praised for its accuracy by other publications of the time. Timbs wrote: “We find it attested, in the Correspondence of Berlin, that at the end of 1850, a stranger was picked up in a small village of the district of Lebas, near Frankfort-on-the-Oder, whither he had wandered no one could tell whence.
“He spoke German imperfectly, and had all the marks of Caucasian origin. On being questioned by the burgomaster of Frankfort, the stranger said his name was Jophar Vorin, and that he came from a country called Laxaria, situated in the portion of the world called Sakria. He understands, it is affirmed, none of the European languages (except, we must suppose, the broken German), but reads and writes what he calls the Laxarian and Abramian tongues.

(Insspirito/Public Domain)
“The latter he declares to be the written language of the clerical order in Laxaria, and the other the common language of his people. He says that his religion is Christian in form and
doctrine, and that it is called Ispatian. Laxaria he represents to be many hundred miles from Europe, and separated by vast oceans from it.

“His purpose in coming to Europe, he alleges, was to seek a long-lost brother; but he suffered shipwreck on the voyage—where, he does not know—nor can he trace his route on shore on any map or globe. He claims for his unknown race a considerable share of geographical knowledge.

“The five great compartments of the Earth he calls Sakria, Aflar, Aslar, Auslar, and Euplar. The sages of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after much examination of the tale and its bearer, believed it. However, Jophar Vorin was despatched to Berlin, and there became the subject of much scientific and curious gossip in the Prussian capital.”

The sages of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after much examination of the tale and its bearer, believed it.
— John Timbs, author, The Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art, 1852
This and two other such occurrences are mentioned in the book “The Directory of Possibilities,” published in 1981 by Colin Wilson and James Grant.

Wilson and Grant wrote: “In 1905, a young man was arrested in Paris; he spoke an unknown language but managed to convey that he was a citizen of Lisbian—not, it should be stressed, Lisbon.

“And in 1954 a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Taured.”

The “man from Taured” snope has rolled through the Internet and grown in size like a snowball rolled through the snow. All accounts seem to point back to this mention in Wilson’s book. Epoch Times could not find any original sources for all the other details that have been added on (for example, it is said that the man indicated the location of Taured as between France and Spain and that he vanished after being detained).

Wilson was a prolific writer, whose books varied from fiction—his most famous was “The Outsiders,” published in 1956 when he was 24—to non-fiction explorations of psychic phenomena and the occult.

An obituary for Wilson, published by the Telegraph in 2013, describes him: “He was regularly criticised for making sweeping generalisations and for his habit of quoting from memory without reference to his sources, but he remained unshakeably convinced of his own talent.

“‘Most criticism is based purely on incomprehension,’ he said. ‘I have long accepted that the chief difficulty with my work is that it covers too wide a field. Even sympathetic readers can’t see the wood for the trees.’”

The Vorin case seems to have convinced authorities at the time. While the accounts fall far short of proving it possible to travel between parallel realities, they stimulate the imagination.