It’s no exaggeration to say that without Greg Matloff, there would have been no Centauri Dreams. After reading his The Starflight Handbook (Wiley, 1989) and returning to it for years, I began working on my own volume in 2001. Research for that book would reveal Matloff’s numerous contributions in the journals, especially on solar sail technologies, where he illustrated early on the methods and materials needed for interstellar applications. A professor of physics at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) as well as Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Matloff is the author of, among others, Deep Space Probes (Springer, 2005) and Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel (with Les Johnson and Giovanni Vulpetti; Copernicus, 2008). His latest, Starlight, Starbright, is now available from Curtis Press, treating the controversial subject of today’s essay.
by Greg Matloff
Introduction: Motivations
As any web search will reveal, most of my research contributions have been in the fields of in-space propulsion, SETI, Earth-protection from asteroid impacts, planetary atmospheres, extra-solar planet detection and spacecraft navigation. Since I have consulted for NASA on solar-sail applications, I have trained myself to err on the side of conservatism. However, a true scientist cannot ignore observational data. He or she must base hypothesis and theories upon such results, not upon previous experience, ideology and dogma.
Image: Gregory Matloff (left) being inducted into the International Academy of Astronautics by JPL’s Ed Stone.
Until 2011, I never expected that I might contribute to the fascinating debate regarding the origin and nature of consciousness. On one side are the epiphenomenonalists, who believe that consciousness is a mere byproduct of bio-chemical activity in the complex brains of higher organisms. On the other side are the panpsychists, who believe that a universal field responsible for consciousness, sometimes referred to as “proto-consciousness,” reacts with matter to produce conscious activity at all levels. The philosophical arguments were fascinating, but to me as a scientist they were a bit disappointing. There seemed to be no way of elevating the argument from the realm of deductive philosophy to the realm of observational/experimental science.
But in 2011, as documented in my June 12, 2012 contribution to this blog – Star Consciousness: An Alternative to Dark Matter – I learned (much to my surprise) that it may be possible now to construct simple models of universal consciousness and test them against observational evidence.
I was primed for this work by several factors. First, an early mentor of mine and a coauthor of several astronautics papers, was the late Evan Harris Walker. With expertise in plasma and quantum physics, Harris (as his friends called him) was a pioneer in the infant field of quantum consciousness. Although I am far from an expert in quantum mechanics, I was fascinated by Harris’ attempt to explain consciousness by the quantum tunneling of wave functions through potential wells created by the inter-synaptic spacing in mammal brains [1].
After the success of The Starflight Handbook and other contributions to interstellar travel studies, I was asked by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the early 1990’s to join the team of scientific consultants for a science-fiction novel he was co-authoring with John Barnes [2]. For plot purposes, Buzz required the stable, long-term existence of a Jupiter-like planet at a 1 Astronomical Unit (AU) distance from a Sun-like star. When he asked me to check the possibility of such a planet, I was initially very pessimistic. When I told Buzz that most exoplanet experts believed that the Hydrogen-Helium atmosphere of such a planet would likely evaporate quickly (in cosmic terms), he asked me to check this assumption. I located an appropriate equation in a space science handbook and calculated the estimated lifetime of the giant planet’s atmosphere. I was surprised and Buzz was gratified to learn that the lifetime of the Jovian’s atmosphere at 1 AU would be billions of years. At that point in my career, I was an adjunct professor and consultant. Since I was unable to locate a derivation for the subject equation, I elected not to challenge scientific orthodoxy and attempt to publish these results in a scientific journal. After the discovery of “hot Jupiters” circling Sunlike stars a few years later, I became credited (by Paul Gilster and others) with predicting the existence of hot Jupiters in a science-fiction novel, but not in a peer-reviewed journal. I vowed to never repeat this mistake again and hold back data, if my results challenged established paradigms.
The third influence pointing me in the direction of conscious stars was an undergraduate, liberal arts student at New York City College of Technology. Between the time I became a tenure-track professor in 2003 and my retirement from full-time teaching in 2011, I organized and coordinated the astronomy program at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT). In the first term of the NYCCT astronomy sequence, students learn about astronomical history, aspects of classical and modern physics and solar-system astronomy. In the second term, they investigate the astrophysics of the Sun, stars, and galaxies, cosmology, and the prospects for extraterrestrial life. In one Astronomy 2 section, I was lecturing about dark matter. The existence of this mysterious substance has been invited to explain anomalous stellar motions. When a liberal arts undergraduate interrupted the lecture, I learned that he doubted dark matter’s existence. His supposition was that physics is at an analogous stage to the situation in 1900. A major shift in physical paradigms may be necessary to explain the many anomalies (including dark matter) building up in observational astrophysics.
In 2011, it all came together. Kelvin Long, who edits the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), invited me to participate in a one-day symposium at the London headquarters of the BIS to celebrate the work of Olaf Stapledon, a British science-fiction author and philosopher who has greatly influenced astronomical and astronautical thought. In his 1937 masterwork Star Maker, Stapledon predicted nuclear energy, nuclear war, interstellar travel, space habitats and rearrangement of solar systems by intelligent extraterrestrials. Because I usually author papers on these topics and have often cited Star Maker, I elected to avoid astrotechnology in my contribution to this BIS symposium and instead concentrate on a core aspect of Stapledon’s philosophy: that the stars and indeed the entire universe are in some sense conscious.
A Toy Model of Stellar Consciousness and Astrophysical Evidence
Many people have written about consciousness. Since there is no agreed upon definition of this quality, I decided to investigate a symptom of stellar consciousness. This is Stapleton’s supposition that a fraction of stellar motions around the centers of their galaxies is volitional. According to Stapledon, stars obey the canons of a cosmic dance as they travel through space. Many researchers consider the seat of consciousness in humans and other lifeforms to be neurons or tubules [1,3,4]. I have little knowledge regarding the intimate details of the stellar interior. But I am pretty sure that neurons and tubules do not exist within stars. However, most cooler stars, including the Sun, do have simple molecules in their upper layers.
Contrary to what many of us learned in high school chemistry, the Van der Waals forces that hold the atoms in molecules together are not purely electromagnetic. Some of this attraction is due to the so-called Casimir Effect [5]. Vacuum is not truly empty. Instead, in tiny intervals of space and time, there are enormous fluctuations of energy and matter. Generally, positive and negative energies in these fluctuations exactly balance. But in the opinion of most cosmologists, the Big Bang was a stabilized vacuum fluctuation. All the matter, energy, space and time in the universe inflated from a tiny volume of dynamic vacuum during this event.
An echo of this most creative event in the universe’s history occurs in every molecule. Not all vacuum fluctuations can fit between adjacent molecules. A fraction of the Van der Waals force holding molecules together is produced by the pressure of these vacuum fluctuations.
With astrophysicist Bernard Haisch [6], I assumed that a proto-consciousness field operates through vacuum fluctuations or is identical to these fluctuations. I developed a very simple “toy model” in which this field produces a form of primitive consciousness by its interaction with molecular matter in the Casimir Effect (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. A “Toy Model” of Proto-Panpsychism.
But models, no matter how simple or complex, are useful in physics only if they can be validated through experiment or observation. So I conducted a Google search for “Star Kinematics Anomaly and Discontinuity”.
Contrary to my expectation, what appeared on my screen was amazing. There was a Soviet-era Russian astronomer named Pavel Parenago (1906-1960). In addition to his astronomical contributions, Dr. Parenago was a very clever man. Unlike many of his colleagues, he avoided an extended vacation in a very cold place by dedicating a monograph to the most highly evolved human of all times – Joseph Stalin!
The anomaly named after Parenago, which is referred to as “Parenago’s Discontinuity”—is his observation that cool, low-mass stars in our galactic vicinity (such as the Sun) move around the center of the Milky Way galaxy a bit faster than their hotter, higher-mass sisters.
I used two sources to quantify Parenago’s Discontinuity for nearby main sequence stars. One was a chapter in Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities, a standard reference in astrophysics [7]. The second was a compilation of observations of 5610 main sequence stars using the European Space Agency (ESA) Hipparcos space observatory out to a distance of ~260 light years [8]. Figure 2, a graph presenting this data, is also included in my June 12, 2012 contribution to this blog and the JBIS paper based on my contribution to the BIS Stapledon symposium [9].
In Fig. 2, star motion in the direction of galactic rotation is plotted against star (B-V) color index, which is a measure of the difference between star radiant output in the blue range of the spectrum and the center of the human eye’s visual sensitivity. Hot, blue, massive stars have low and negative (B-V) color indices. From Table 19.1 of Ref. 7, G spectral class main sequence stars such as the Sun have (B-V) color indices in the range of about 0.6-0.7.
Fig 2: Solar Motion in Direction of Galactic Rotation (V) for Main Sequence Stars vs. Star Color Index (B-V). Diamond Data Points are from Gilmore & Zelik. Square. Data Points are from Binney et al.
Note in Fig. 2 that cooler stars to the right of the discontinuity move as much as ~20 kilometers per second faster than their hotter sisters around the center of the galaxy. As discussed in the June 12, 2012 contribution to this blog and in Ref. 9, Parenago’s Discontinuity occurs near the point where stable molecules begin to appear in stellar spectra.
Recent Work and Consideration of Alternative Hypotheses
Science is essentially a testing ground of alternative hypotheses to explain observational and experimental data. Since data points to at least the local reality of Parenago’s Discontinuity, some astrophysicists have developed rival explanations to Volitional Stars.
One possibility is stellar boil-off from local stellar nurseries. Perhaps this results in faster motions for cooler, low mass stars. But this process should result in a greater velocity dispersion in low mass stars, not a higher velocity of revolution around the galaxy’s center. Also, stellar nurseries typically live for tens of millions of years [10]. Why is there no discontinuity in the motions of short-lived O and B stars?
If Parenago’s Discontinuity is a local phenomena extending out a few hundred light years from the Sun, at least one other alternative explanation is possible. This is the Spiral Arms Density Waves concept [11]. The matter density of the interstellar medium is not uniform. Although the typical density of ions and neutral atoms in the Sun’s vicinity (the so-called Intercloud Medium) is less than 0.1 per cubic centimeter, matter density in the cooler, mostly neutral diffuse nebula that operate as stellar nurseries in the spiral arms of our galaxy is orders of magnitude greater. If a dense diffuse nebula passed through our galactic vicinity in the distant past, low-mass, cool, redder stars might be dragged along faster by the dense cloud than hot, blue, more massive stars.
There are at least two ways to check the validity of the Spiral Arms Density Waves hypothesis. One is to investigate the typical size of diffuse nebula in the Milky Way galaxy. The second is to check observational consequences of this hypothesis.
In a recent book, I reviewed the sizes of diffuse nebula in Messier’s compilation [12]. As part of a recent research paper, I performed a similar review of the more comprehensive Herschel catalog and an on-line listing of New General Catalog (NGC) deep-sky objects [13]. These results are summarized in Fig. 3.
Fig 3: Fraction of Galactic Bright Diffuse Nebulae with Diameters > D Light Years from Messier (Blue), Herschel (Green) and Atlas of the Universe—NGC (Yellow) Compilations.
Note in Fig. 3 that, in all three compilations of deep-sky objects, diffuse nebulae with diameters greater than a few hundred light years are rare. Since the Hipparcos main sequence dataset used in Ref. 8 includes stars in a ~500 light year diameter sphere, Fig. 3 does not support the Spiral Arms Density Wave hypothesis.
But there is worse news for this hypothesis, also derived from Hipparcos data. Giant stars are considerably brighter than their less evolved counterparts on the main sequence and
are consequently visible over greater distances. Richard Branham, an astrophysicist based in Argentina, has analyzed the kinematics of thousands of giant stars in the Hipparcos data set [14]. His conclusion that Parenago’s Discontinuity is present in these results is demonstrated in Fig. 4.
Fig 4: Giant Star Motion (V) in Direction of Sun’s Galactic Revolution. The reduction of Branham’s data to produce Fig. 4 is discussed in Chap. 23 of Ref. 12.
Note that Fig. 4 is not as neat as the corresponding results for main sequence stars in Fig. 2. This may be due to uncertainty in the > 1,000 light year distance estimates for many of the stars in Branham’s Sample.
An interpretation of the above results is that a local explanation for Parenago’s Discontinuity is unlikely. Existing galactic diffuse nebula are simply too small (and widely separated, as discussed in Ref. 12) to produce a stellar kinematics anomaly over a radius greater than 1,000 light years.
However, although the existing data does not support Spiral Arms Density Waves, the sample of stars, which numbers in the thousands, is not large enough to rule out this and other local explanations for Parenago’s Discontinuity. After all, the Milky Way galaxy contains more than a hundred billion stars.
Within the next few years, astrophysicists should know conclusively whether Parenago’s Discontinuity is a local or galactic phenomenon. In December 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched Gaia as a more capable successor to the Hipparcos space observatory. While Hippasrcos accurately determined the distance and motions of perhaps 100,000 stars,
Gaia should gather similar data over the next few years for about a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Gaia, its mission and capabilities are discussed in more detail in Ref. 12.
Fig 5: The European Space Agency’s Gaia Space Observatory (Courtesy ESA).
But even before the data from Gaia is analyzed and released, astronomers using different equipment have gathered preliminary data that may lead to the falsification of the Spiral Arms Density Waves hypothesis. Note in Fig. 6 the structure of M51, a typical nearby spiral galaxy not dissimilar from the Milky Way. The revolution of this galaxy is in the counterclockwise direction, from our point of view. Hundreds of millions of years are required for one
complete revolution [15].
A team of astronomers have carefully analyzed the light received from the leading and lagging edges of spiral arms of twelve nearby spiral galaxies. For the Spiral Arms Density Waves Hypothesis to be correct, differences should be observable between these two locations. Sadly for Density Waves (and happily for Volitional Stars), such an effect was not noticed.
Fig 6: The Whirlpool Galaxy M51 (courtesy NASA).
Since the universe contains ~100 billion spiral galaxies, this result is not conclusive. Using new telescopes, about 300 spirals should be observed to statistically rule out Density Waves. Density Waves is apparently limping, but it cannot yet be completely ruled out.
If observations from Gaia indicate that Parenago’s Discontinuity is a galactic phenomenon rather than a local phenomenon, some astrophysicists will attempt to develop explanations that are alternatives to Volitional Stars. As discussed in Ref. 13, this will be challenging. The only reasonable galaxy-wide explanation might be a collision between the Milky Way galaxy and another large galaxy in the distant past. While such a collision might have produced a galaxy-wide “starburst” episode of rapid star formation, simulations indicate that the ultimate result of such galaxy smash-ups is a giant elliptical galaxy, not a spiral such as the Milky Way.
Volitional Star Kinematics
In my June 12, 2012 contribution to this blog, I considered methods that a volitional star could use to adjust its galactic velocity. One possibility was stellar jets.
Many infant stars eject high-velocity matter streams (Fig. 7). Surprisingly, some of them are unipolar or unidirectional, ejecting more material in one direction than others [16]. In April 2015, Paul Gilster e-mailed a link indicating that solar winds from mature stars like the Sun
enter interstellar space in a complex system of jets [17]. The complexity of these jets is at least partially due to solar galactic motion and the interaction between the solar and galactic magnetic fields. Uni-directional matter jets from infant and young stars are discussed in greater detail in Chap. 15 of Ref. 12.
Fig 7: A Jet of High-Velocity Material Ejected From an Infant Star (courtesy NASA).
If Gaia observations reveal that Parenago’s Discontinuity is a galaxy-wide phenomenon, attention might turn to these unidirectional stellar jets. Are they generally aligned to accelerate molecule-bearing stars in the direction of their galactic motion? Since star galactic revolution velocities generally increase with distance from the galactic center, do jet velocities increase as well?
Although unidirectional material jets from infant and mature stars is one method that a volitional star could use, there is another possibility. This is the admittedly very controversial possibility of a weak psychokinetic (PK) force. Much has been written about the investigation of PK and related paranormal phenomena funded by US intelligence agencies.
As I have described in my earlier treatments of this subject, this is the only scientific controversy that I am privileged to know participants on opposing sides. On one hand are the physicists who claim that Uri Geller, the alleged psychic who scored best on their screening tests, could not possibly have cheated on these tests. On the other hand, I met a retired Time-Warner editor at a cocktail party years ago who demonstrated that Geller’s signature fork bending could be duplicated as a magic trick, and who also claimed to have enlisted a magician The Amazing Randi, to further investigate Geller.
Many web sources conclude that Geller is indeed a trained magician. When my friend Dr. Eric Davis of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (Texas) mentioned (while reviewing a draft copy of Ref. 12) that there is no confirmation of Geller actually having attended a magician’s college, I decided to check what I consider the best reference available on the Geller-Randi controversy. I carefully checked a book by MIT physics professor David Kaiser on this topic and learned that Dr. Davis is apparently correct [18].
Eric Davis also sent me an electronic copy of a report he authored for the US Air Force in 2005. Many countries other than the US have investigated PK and related phenomena in studies funded by government agencies. Some of the results are positive and have reportedly been replicated [19, 20].
As discussed in Refs. 9 and 12 and my June 12, 2012 submission to this blog, a PK force required to accelerate a Sun-like star by 20 km/s during a ~1-billion-year time interval is many orders of magnitude less than that required to bend a kitchen utensil. Perhaps it is time for experimental physicists to put the Geller-Randi controversy aside and perform a new set of carefully controlled experiments to test the existence or non-existence of a weak PK effect.
One possibility discussed by others is to include professional magicians on the experiment design team. Another possibility, raised by a responder to my June 12, 2012 contribution to this blog, is to perform PK tests on the interaction between human subjects and an Einstein-Bose condensate. As further discussed in Ref. 12, an Einstein-Bose condensate is a macroscopic state of matter in which all of the particles share the same quantum state. A human subject might be instructed to see if he or she could “will” the condensate to climb the enclosure wall repeatedly to the same level. This would test not only the validity of PK but the assumption that consciousness is related to quantum phenomena.
Conclusions: A Learning Experience
Since 2011, I have spent a large fraction of my creative time investigating whether the Volitional Star hypothesis can be considered scientific. As reviewed in Ref. 12, it is certainly a venerable concept. Shamans, astrologers, philosophers, mystery-cult members, poets, and fiction authors have considered this possibility for millennia.
It is also interesting that at least a few scientists have walked this path before me. Although the concepts of stellar or universal consciousness are certainly not in the scientific mainstream at present, scientific speculation along these lines is becoming more respectable.
One creative group that apparently welcomes these concepts is fine artists. The chapter frontispiece art in Ref. 12 created by C Bangs has been presented in several artistic forums, including the Arts Program at the 9th IAA Symposium on the Future of Space Exploration, which was held in Turin, Italy in July 2015. A version of one of these images is presented as Fig. 8. Modifications of 18 of these images on 11″ X 14″ panels painted on both sides in the form of an accordion book are on display at the Manhattan gallery that C Bangs is affiliated with: Central Booking Art Space, 21 Ludlow Street.
Fig 8: Modified Version of C Bangs Chapter frontispiece from Starlight, Starbright.
Recently, with my assistance, C prepared an Artist’s Book entitled Star Bright?. In July 2015, Star Bright? was collected by the Prints and Illustrated Books division of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
It is of course very premature to claim that the work presented here has proven the case for volitional stars. The toy model of proto-panpsychism is certainly too simple to have much traction in the theoretical world. But it is not impossible that this work might move panpsychism from the realm of deductive philosophy to the realm of observational astrophysics.
References
1. E. H. Walker, “The Nature of Consciousness,” Mathematical Biosciences, 7, 131-178 (1970). Also see E. H. Walker, The Physics of Consciousness, Perseus, Cambridge, MA (2000).
2. B. Aldrin and J. Barnes, Encounter with Tiber, Warner, NY (1996).
3. L. Margulis, “The Conscious Cell”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 929, 55-70 (2001).
4. S. Hameroff, “Consciousness, the Brain, and Spacetime Geometry”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 929, 74-104 (2001) and R. Penrose, “Consciousness, the Brain, and Spacetime Geometry: An Addendum”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 929, 105-110 (2001).
5. H. Genz, Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space, Perseus, Cambridge, MA (1999).
6. B. Haisch, The God Theory, Weiser, San Francisco, CA (2006).
7. G. F. Gilmore and M. Zelik, “Star Populations and the Solar Neighborhood,” in Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities, 4th ed. A. N. Cox ed., Springer-Verlag, NY (2000), Chap. 19.
8. J. J. Binney, W. Dehnen, N. Houk, C. A. Murray, and M. J. Preston, “Kinematics of Main Sequence Stars from Hipparcos Data,” Proceedings of the ESA Symposium Hipparcos Venice
’97, SP-402, Venice, Italy, 13-15 May 1997, pp. 473-477 (July, 1997).
9. G. L. Matloff, “Olaf Stapledon and Conscious Stars: Philosophy or Science?”, JBIS, 65, 5-6 (2012).
10. E. Chaisson and S. McMillan, Astronomy Today, 6th ed., Pearson-Addison/Wesley, San Francisco, CA (2008), Chap. 19.
11. R. S. DeSimone, X. Wu, and S. Tremaine, “The Stellar Velocity Distribution of the Stellar Neighborhood”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 350, 627-643 (2004).
12. G. L. Matloff and C Bangs, Starlight, Starbright: Are Stars Conscious?, Curtis Press, UK (2015).
13. G. L. Matloff, “The Non-Locality of Parenago’s Discontinuity and Universal Self Organization”, IAA-FSE-15-06-03. Presented at 9th IAA Symposium on the Future of Space Exploration, Turin, Italy, July 7-9, 2015. Published in Conference Proceedings.
14. R. L. Branham, “The Kinematics and Velocity Ellipsoid of GIII Stars,” Revisita Mexicana de Astronomia y Astrofisica, 47, 197-209 (2011).
15. K. Foyle, H.-W. Rix, C. Dobbs, A. Leroy, and F. Walter, “Observational Evidence Against Long-Lived Spiral Arms in Galaxies,” Astrophysical Journal, 735 (2), Article ID = 101 (2011), arXiv: 1105.5141 [astro-ph.CO].
16. F. Namouni, “On the Flaring of Jet-Sustaining Accretion Disks”, Astrophysical Journal, 659, 1505-1510 (2007).
17. I. O’Neill, “Sun May Blast Two Jets of Plasma into Interstellar Space”, news.discovery.com, (March 4, 2015). Also see “A New View of the Solar System: Astrophysical Jets Driven by the Sun”, bu.edu (February 19, 2015).
18. D. Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics, Norton, NY (2011).
19. E. W. Davis, “Teleportation: Mind and Intelligence”, Report to the US Air Force Future Technology Branch, Future Concepts and Transformation Division Workshop, Mitre Corporation, McLean VA (Oct. 21, 2005).
20. E. W. Davis, “Teleportation Physics Study,” Final Report AFRL-PR-ED-TR-2003-0034, Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, Edwards AFB, CA (2004): https://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf
Fascinating ideas in this article! Abundant experimental evidence for PK exists (although denied by skeptics), much of it nicely summarized in books by Dean Radin, Russell Targ, William Braud, Stephen Braude, and others. And most scientists who worked with Geller concluded his abilities were/are genuine.
Maybe you’re already aware but Nicolai Kozyrev’s lab in Russia attempted psychic contact with stars, although I don’t know the outcomes.
Three cheers for the Sun God, Ra, Ra, Ra!
Three cheers for the Fun God, Ha, Ha, Ha!
2 critiques and a question:
1. The arrow in the model between “Molecular matter” and “Consciousness” might as well be labeled “And a miracle happens”.
2. Why should directional mass emissions of stars be interpreted as volitional rather than some simple natural physical phenomenon? Is volition the only explanation?
Question:
Suppose we accept that stars have volition. What other phenomena might be seen that would depart from physics and that can be testable? We might also want an explanation of the behavior of differential velocity. We have a lot of data about our sun, what phenomena might be better explained by volition?
As regards psychic phenomena. Randi has an outstanding $1 million prize for anyone demonstrating a paranormal effect. It has yet to be claimed. While this doesn’t disprove psychic effects exist, it does suggest that it must be difficult to demonstrate, as Randi has exposed all those who have tried so far as charlatans.
Sorry about the unclosed italic tag. Hope this fixes it.
Must be in Greg’s OP.
Randi himself is the charlatan, unfortunately. He is selective about who he allows to take the challenge (this article outlines that and other faults: https://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/randis-million-dollar-challenge/), and his books (e.g., on Geller) have been found to make unsubstantiated claims and falsehoods (Jonathan Margolis’s 1999 book on Geller covers Randi’s weirdly obsessive behavior about/toward Geller–it’s very interesting). Unfortunately the public still see Randi as a “defender of rationality.”
Someone brought up the big question – why would speed of motion equate with consciousness. Consciousness increased in biological life as it struggled to survive; compete for food, mates, shelter and not being eaten. What would be the pressing factor of stars speeding up? If stars were conscious that their lives could be extended by staying small, they might steer themselves out of rich sources of hydrogen. If they wanted to propagate themselves and new universes, they might want to feed themselves into black holes. If any of them were conscious, we should observe some of them relocating by directing their solar discharges. Such behavior would soon let us determine their goals – until our own sun decided to bug out. Consciousness might exist outside of biological organisms, I have always thought that strange UFO sightings and creatures might be the creation of this alternative intelligence.
@Eric. I don’t find the Weiler Psi blog article convincing at all. He is hardly an unbiased observer either.
If psychic powers were demonstrated and published in a scientific journal, you can be sure it would make headlines. Apart from one, IIRC published last year for precognition [?] and debunked, it’s been crickets. He brings up Ted Serios’ mental photography, which AFAIK has been demonstrated to be reproducible by trickery, so why would Randi need to duplicate that?
The tests for psychic powers seem to be in a similar boat to the EM and Cannae drives. A tiny effect in the noise regime. If psychics need large numbers of repetitions in order to demonstrate a statistical effect, something is wrong. Predicting the outcome of a coin toss or reading the mind of the observer of a hidden toss should be demonstrable with 10 throws.
Now that we know that we can read the pattern of firings in the visual cortex and that these firings are invoked by imagining the images, it should be possible to devise experiments that separate this effect from the mechanism of psychic reading and therefore testing the idea that the brain is somehow reading the thoughts of others.
Feynman said “The easiest person to fool is yourself”.
And relevantly, Sagan has said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
Why would stars develop consciousness? It’s not like it would confer a reproductive advantage, since stars don’t reproduce as such. And even if the anomalous motion of these stars weren’t natural, why assume the star itself is conscious? If we start moving comets and asteroids around, would it be reasonable for a distant observer to speculate that these objects were themselves conscious? I’m not a scientist by any means, but this sounds like an interesting thought experiment–What if Stapledon’s idea of conscious stars were true?–pushed way beyond the breaking point.
@Alex. I don’t want to hijack the discussion of this article, but I’d simply invite you to familiarize yourself with the very large and very interesting literature on psi — many hundreds of studies, but excluded from mainstream journals for complex cultural/ideological/history-of-science reasons. In fact, psi is VERY taboo (I say this as an anthropologist), and only makes news in a joking context. The large studies/small effect sizes are partly an effect of trying to elicit psi in controlled circumstances in a lab setting; high emotional/personal salience is crucial, and produces big effects but typically spontaneously, so hard (although not impossible) to replicate. Also the lack of a theoretical framework has been a problem (and much of what has been studied as “telepathy” and “remote viewing” in the past is probably actually precognition). Even with these caveats, some of the literature is quite striking.
You might visit the archives of the Journal of Parapsychology, for example, but there are many other journals publishing this work (Journal of Scientific Exploration, etc.); plus excellent recent books by contemporary researchers like Dean Radin, James Carpenter, Edwin May, etc, summarizing the data. If you’re interested I’d be happy to discuss further and recommend sources via email (eric.wargo[at]gmail.com).
I have a science fiction question between Olaf Stapleton and The Starchild Trilogy by Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson were than any sentiment star stories? The Starchild Trilogy is the three novels :
The Reefs of Space (1964)
Starchild (1965)
Rogue Star (1969).
I don’t count Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud (1957) , tho methinks Hoyle was influenced by Stapleton.
Maybe conscious stars can explain stellar motions. Maybe conscious laundry can explain why my socks go missing in the washing machine.
Why would conscious stars want to behave like this?
Why would this dreck be featured on Centauri Dreams twice?
speaking as a Duel aspect theory supporter, I have to ask why would consciousness imply PK? sure maybe it exists but if it has never been conclusively demonstrated in humans what hope for it in the stars?
I find the notion of volitional stars no less credible than the notion of dark matter, perhaps it is more credible as some observational data has been provided.
Birds of a feather flock together, perhaps the same is true of stars?
The notion of magnetic acceleration in the direction of galactic rotation sounds like a worthy investigation, although electric universe concepts may be considered even more taboo than psi.
@Al Jackson – Mad Mind trapped in a Black Sun in Clarke’s The City and the Stars was sentient, albeit a mix of the two.
In Clarke’s short story Castaway a sentient being of ions is ejected from its home in the sun. Here the sun is not conscious, but it has inhabitants that are.
I’m sure someone else wrote a story about sentient stars but my memory fails me.
Maybe conscious laundry can explain why my socks go missing in the washing machine.
But where does the sentience reside? In a malicious washing machine or dryer, or is it the socks that want to escape? And why does only one of a pair do so, not both? ;)
Since the star doesn’t have a structure like a neural net, it is hard to think about what the cognitive structure would be, how it would learn, etc. (Far easier for a planet though). Which pushes us into the mind/body duality that has been almost completely rejected. Is this being resurrected for sentient stars? It is almost easier to imagine a sentient rock based on crystal structures with impurities than a roiling incandescent sun.
By this sort of reasoning, I can conclude that my old truck may be conscious because I cannot explain why it breaks down sometimes. When I finally do figure it out, does that desrtoy its consciousness?
If there had been a physics teacher like you, Greg, when I was in high school, I might have gone wandering off in the direction of cold fusion, or some such stuff. It’s nice to find someone who does not insist on squelching the imaginings of other people.
Is the Universe conscious? Is it a collective consciousness? If our organic material (body) is held in a coherent form by electromagnetism and decays back into its elements when we die, what happens to that electromagnetism? Is that where ghosts exist? If this Universe is one of many, and everything in it is essentially organic, does that make it a biosphere? Can this biosphere be destroyed in some way?
If there are no coincidences, someone please explain Robert Heinlein’s 1956 description of how Mother Thing’s beehive-shaped ship got from one place to another (it didn’t move – space moved past it) in the blink of an eye (back to the day and time Kip and Peewee left Earth) , when Miguel Alcubierre hadn’t even been thought of, never mind born.
I note that there are a few curmudgeons in the crowd. Oh, ye of cramped imagination! I have seen things happen that have no logical explanation. They just happen.
I enjoyed this article and look forward to more.
In Clifford D. Simak’s ‘The thing in the Stone” originally published in Worlds of If, March 1970, the main character listened to the conversations between the stars.
Low mass stars move around the galactic center faster than high mass stars. Therefore, stars are conscious. There seem to be a few logical steps missing from this argument.
I like his ideas for testing the possibility of PK interactions with quantum events – I think we may have already seen some of that with the statistical evidence that correlates general population stress with the outcome of electronic random number generators.
But wouldn’t a better explanation of the disparity of stellar velocities be that hotter stars’ heliospheres would have more pressure, be larger, and subsequently interact more strongly – have more drag, basically – against the galactic magnetosphere?
Dear Greg,
A most courageous post – in general in the right forest even if looking for the wrong trees. Are you aware of the autobiography of John C. Lilly, M.D? It was simply titled “The Scientist”. Although John preceded me at Caltech by 40 years, I was quite well informed of his life and work during my student days and it was on the right track despite the shambolic methodology. Of course, serious work in the investigation of metaphysics has progressed far beyond John’s reckless early experiments with entheogens. Unfortunately, the more metaphysics one knows, the less one is inclined to talk about it in public. You might check out the Newton institute (Michael not Isaac) if you are inclined to take the plunge into the deep water.
Best, Joy
Living cells attempt to stabilise or decrease entropy within them by increasing the entropy outside, Stars on the other hand create entropy by the bucket load without any attempt to stabilise it or reduce it. For me stars are no more sentient than a rock or bowl of water.
Haisch and Davis have some flakey ideas. Hameroff is quite simply wrong. Geller is a known charlatan.
Matloff is getting into some weird territory here. As much as I love Stapledon, I can’t see any of this working out.
While I am very fascinated by Gregory Matloff’s article (and his intitial Centauri Dreams article on stellar consciousness), I am not surprised. Since the 1930s, when the famous quantum physics photon/slit interference experiments showed that an experimenter’s mere attention to the experiment affected its outcome (this phenomenon is called the Observer Effect), it has been apparent that consciousness is a larger factor in the scheme of things than just what goes on inside our heads. Other brave scientists, who have (and do) bucked against the cultural taboos in our society, have obtained observational and experimental data that support Dr. Matloff’s hypothesis. Even his acquaintance Carl Sagan wrote, in his book “The Demon-Haunted World,” that sufficient evidence for psychokinesis (PK) exists to warrant further scientific investigation of the phenomenon. Since the pan-psychism hypothesis posits a universal phenomenon, evidence of local manifestations of it suggests that stellar consciousness would be “merely” examples of distant, larger-scale manifestations of the same phenomenon. Now:
The British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (his website “sheldrake dot org” contains links to his scientific papers, experiments, interviews, and articles) has consistently obtained positive results to his experiments involving the sense of being stared at (when the subject does not see the “starer,” of course), extra-sensory perception (ESP) between human subjects, and ESP between humans and other animals. All of these effects–as well as *why* the laws of nature (physics, electromagnetism, etc.) are as they are–are predicted by his theory of morphic resonance, in which consciousness is a non-local phenomenon. (Regarding the sense of being stared at, I have known military personnel who avoided looking at “enemy” soldiers during search-and-destroy training exercises–even when they were completely hidden under foliage–because they had discovered that their adversaries could detect someone’s gaze, even with their backs turned to an observer; many police officers report the same phenomenon, and avoid looking directly at subjects whom they are following.) Dr. Sheldrake has also said that he thinks the Sun is conscious in some way, but that the nature of stellar consciousness would likely be very unusual from our point of view. (Imagining an intelligent Mayfly–which would live for just one day–trying to comprehend human consciousness would convey some idea of the differences between human and stellar consciousness.) Also:
Dr. Matloff correctly pointed out that shamanic peoples (and modern shamanic practitioners) consider the natural world (including other animals, plants, mountains, rivers, planets, stars, and galaxies) to be not just our environment, but family. Indeed, contact with the Sun is not unknown in shamanic practice. Anthropologist Dr. Michael Harner–who also became a shaman himself, after being introduced to the field almost in spite of himself–has written about this relationship between inanimate objects (which he found are not without consciousness, but are of a quite different order of it than are living things) and living things, including humans. Having engaged in shamanic practice myself, both with a local shamanic practitioner (who was trained by Dr. Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies) and on my own, I know that it is real and works, and that the incredible-sounding notion of stellar consciousness, while extremely interesting, is not unusual or strange at all. Plus:
I must add that shamanism is most emphatically *NOT* a religion or a belief system (as the “ism” in its name may imply), but is instead a methodology (a collection of techniques) that was developed experimentally. Since it was developed empirically, it is entirely scientific. *Anyone* can use these techniques, as I and millions of people have for thousands of years. The only barrier, for many modern Westerners, is finding the humility to accept that “primitive” peoples–including some Europeans in more isolated areas, such as Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish Lapland–know something that they don’t. The study of meteorites, which scientists refused for centuries to accept as non-terrestrial rocks that fall from the sky (even when witnesses *gave* them actual meteorites), was long delayed because of this same attitude: Since the fall reports and stones came from uneducated peasants and rustics, they couldn’t -possibly- have known something that their scientifically-educated betters did not…except that they *did*…
Dear colleagues
Thanks for the great response so far. I learned yesterday from Neil Shuttlewood, the publisher of Ref. 12 at Curtis Press that this book is now available on the UK Amazon and will soon be up on the US Amazon. Also, Roger Malina will discuss this book in one of his forthcoming podcasts. This is exciting–Roger’s farther co-founded JPL and Roger has been working for years at the interface of science and art,
Now I will respond to all of your comments so far. I apologize if I have left anyone out. As I emphasize in the new book and elsewhere, the rapidity and thoughtfulness of response to entries on this blog is amazing!
Dear Eric
I very much try to pursue a balanced approach to PK in the new book and elsewhere. I also try to remain neutral in the Geller-Randi controversy. We must het beyond this. I also agree with Alex. PK may be a threshold phenomenon. If so (as Carl Sagan said), extraordinary evidence may be necessary to prove it.
Dear Abelard
Astrophysics must be fun or it is not worth doing. I would be very happy to help prove a simple herding or flocking mechanism in stars–I don’t know how to demonstrate god-like properties.
Dear Alex,
The same “and then a miracle happens” phrase has been invoked in critiques of complex-neuronal-network theories of consciousness. At least panpsychism applies a universal field interacting with matter–perhaps not unlike gravity.
Of course there are alternative explanations to the evidence presented, as is always true in science. If you have a new alternative, please present or publish it. What I try to do in the blog entry, book, and scientific papers is to demonstrate how the volitional star hypothesis fits theater and respectfully compare it to other hypothesis.
Thanks for the info about Clarke’s “Castaway”. You might wish to check out the novel “If the Stars are Gods”, authored by Greg Bangor (a physicist) and Gordon Eklund. I discuss other sic-fi sources in the new book.
I believe that there is a dark-matter elf in my washer-dryer who requires an occasional sock to replenish his/her supply of dark energy. This creature may be in a strange dimension reputed to exist by one of the many fathers of string theory. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have sufficient experimental or observational evidence that supports this being’s existence and appetite.
Other people have speculated on stellar sentience. I recommend Jantsch’s book, a paper by Penrose cited in my new book, and a paper by Maude in that classic 1962 volume “The Scientist Speculates”.
Dear Al
How nice to hear from you. C and I look forward to seeing you at the next Tennessee Interstellar Workshop. I do refer to Hoyle’s book in the sic-fi chapter in my new book. If Hoyle was influenced by Stapledon, he is in good company–so was Clarke and Dyson.
Dear Andy
Your humor is appreciated. LOL. But may I remind you that it is the duty of a scientist to present his/her results and interpretations even if these oppose mainstream thinking–even at the cost of his life (as was the case with Giordano Bruno). Anomalies are building up at an alarming rate and ancient paradigms may require adjustment.
Dear Brian
PK is not necessary since uni-directional matter jets have been observed in some young stars. But it should not be ruled out based upon our reluctance to repeat the Geller-Randi affair.
Dear Project Studio,
Your “birds of a feather” analogy is great! It is much prettier than my slime-mold-amoeba analogy. The link from Paul that I mention indicates that particle emissions from even our mature Sun may be partially directional. Those who study stellar kinematics in depth may wish to seriously consider electricity and magnetism as alternatives or supplements to dark matter.
REGARDS TO ALL. ONCE AGAIN, THANKS.
Greg
@ Alex Tolley
Whipping Star by Frank Herbert (1970) has sentient stars in it.
Herbert did write other SF after Dune that was not Dune related.
Poor Herbert he had written non-Dune SF before Dune and some after but really chaffed under his publishers hog tying him with Dune sequels.
Dear Colleagues
Wow. Just as I finish answering some of you, a lot more surface. How wonderful. I wish that my “conventional” work on solar sailing attracted such attention. My next series of responses follows:
Dear Joy
Thanks for the encouragement and information.
Dear Michael
Please check out Jantsch’s book “The Self-Organizing Universe”, or my discussion of his work in my forthcoming book (Ref. 12) for speculations on the boundary between sentience and non-sentience.
Dear Bowers
You are, of course, welcome to your opinion. But here is some data:
(1) Haisch is a respected physicist.
(2) Penrose/Hameroff are now supported by replicated experiments, as I discuss in the book. Hammered is working on a clinical application, as I also discuss.
(3) Consult Kaiser’s well researched and objective”How the Hippies Saved Physics” regarding the Geller-Randi and controversy. It is hard to say with certainty who is right and who is wrong in this regard. But it is essential that we get beyond it and do physics.
(4) I believe that you are the responder who mentions Randi’s prize. I discuss this in my chapter on the pros and cons of PK.
Dear Jason,
As always, I thank you for your well thought out, instructive, and positive comments. Thanks for the information about Sheldrake and Shamanism. A person C and I interviewed for our chapter on the ancient roots of stellar-consciousness speculation is Donna Henes, a NYC-based shaman. It is interesting how ancient the concept is.
REGARDS TO ALL
Greg
Dear JBE
Sorry if I left you out in my last response. No logic steps are missing.
(1) I decided to evaluate Stapleton’s core assumption.
(2) I developed a simple model to test his concept.
(3) I searched for data to falsify it or verify this model.
(4) I found and reported supporting data.
(5) I compared my hypothesis to competing explanations of these results.
(6) I reported predictions of current research that will support or falsify this work.
This is what a scientist does. If I am wrong, so be it. But so far, it looks pretty good.
Regards, Greg
Dear Bowers
In my previous response, I left out Davis. I know both Paul Davies and Eric Davis. They both have unconventional ideas. But science does not advance by sticking to the mainstream, particularly in a time when the mainstream has “misplaced” 99% of the universe. Today’s “flaky” idea might be tomorrow’s relativity. Experiment and observation will reveal scientific truth.
Regards, Greg
Several posters seem to equate consciousness with intelligence, or to balance the two traits equally. While this may be so, I think its possible for the two to be possessed by an entity in less equal proportions.
With respect to volitional stars, such stars, if they exist, could alter their trajectories without following a process of goal setting. These may simply act, or be acted upon, within the framework of reflex or reaction to stimuli.
On the poetic side, literature sometimes imbues objects with thought (including the Earth); sometimes literally.
I am glad that this discussion is taking place. A true scientist is willing to test things which others scoff at; to risk ridicule rather than leave the comfort of “the orthodoxy”. It will be interesting to see the results of such observation and testing as is being discussed.
A fascinating post…
Onward to John Bell and his non-localism…
Einstein believed…“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”
So what is the space time continuum expanding into?
Greg,
Essentially you are claiming smaller stars have volition because they are moving faster than larger stars and that other explanations are ruled out, e.g. galactic magnetic fields (ref 4 of original post).
I haven’t seen the data, but one possible explanation not covered is that as stars gravitationally interact during close proximity, the smaller star is more likely to increase in velocity than larger stars as momentum transfer takes place. If that is true, then the direction of the smaller, faster stars is likely to be fairly random. How might this model explain the velocity discrepancy? [Parenago’s Discontinuity, if correct, would seem to rule out this explanation, although the data in your figure 2 would seem to disprove the PD observation with a simpler, linear relationship].
Another hypothesis. Stars have magnetic fields, so one might expect that emissions are more likely at the poles. Interaction with the galactic field might align the poles in the direction of rotation. Smaller stars, especially red dwarves, are known for intense flares. Putting this all together, might smaller stars emit more matter per mass than large stars, and that this might be emitted at a pole that is aligned so that acceleration is higher than large stars.
Alternatively, the longer lifetime of small stars allows a longer period of acceleration, so the observation is simply a result of age and acceleration periods of small vs large stars. If so, we would expect the velocity difference to be linearly related to the age of a star.
Highly speculative thought below — most probably a bunch of moonshine, but still…
What if these anomalies are the manifestation of a widespread, colonizing “meta civilization” of Type II civilizations, that operate in the interiors of stars. Maybe this is a better niche for a civilization to use a star’s output – occupy the star itself, not the surrounding matter.
What physical form would these beings be? Machines or organic beings? No, probably some kind of high energy process that interacts with propagating energy at high densities. Organized dark matter, maybe? Some kind of standing wave, lasting a microsecond? Some kind of quantum entanglement / coherence of photons (would de-cohere awful quick inside a star, but maybe…)
What if this is a better niche for intelligence. Sure, organic beings might travel from star to star…but it’s rare and slow and ultimately unsustainable. Might be easier to reorganize themselves (as computer uploads??) into some kind of high energy process in the heart of a star.
They would have little interest in the likes of us, and obey Schroeder’s Law (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature).
By the way, Dr. Matloff’s idea of conscious stars, though highly speculative, is also something we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/
He has all the latest in publications-Hameroff that is and the Huff Post is a good read on front. He seems to love a good debate.
Tiplers criticism on one of Penroses Books was that it made the resurrection more difficult….now that I have raised the athiests blood pressure………
(1) Haisch is respected by some, not by others. He was involved in a long edit war to remove the terms ‘fringe’ and ‘pseudoscience’ from his wiki article. This hs still not been resolved. Penrose/Hameroff get little or no support for their ideas in the mainstream. Many of their ideas have been apparently falsified as well. But even if they are right there is no possible connection with stellar mentation except wishful thinking.
You’ll never be able to do proper physics while a trickster like Geller is around. Magic is entertainment, and a different magisterium to science entirely.
———————
However, on another level, you may be correct. The idea of conscious stars is an intriguing one, and might explain Parenago’s Discontinuity as well as some other interesting features of the galaxy. But this need not be a naturally evolved phenomenon – it could be the result of activity by an advanced civilisation, one which emerged in a planetary (or at least anon-stellar0 environment. A sufficiently advanced civilisation could perhaps induce consciousness in a star where it did not exist before.
A lot of this quantum/consciousness nonsense is the fault of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, with its ill-defined “measurement” that seems to require some kind of conscious observer independent of quantum physics itself to collapse the wavefunctions.
The Copenhagen interpretation is not the only possible way to interpret the mathematics of quantum mechanics. In particular, the de Broglie/Bohm pilot wave interpretation appears to be consistent with experiment (in fact the famous Schrödinger equation was initially derived in the context of the pilot wave model) without introducing the problematic metaphysics of the Copenhagen interpretation or requiring spinning the infinite parallel universes of the many-worlds interpretation. Not sure if I’m convinced by it (though it does have certain intriguing properties, particularly when relativity comes into play) but it does show up the Copenhagen interpretation as being a load of self-inconsistent pseudo-mystical mishmash.
If the 1927 Solvay conference had happened differently, we might have avoided a lot of quantum/consciousness woo.
Mike Towler has a good set of lecture course slides about pilot wave theory available on his website.
I have has some psychic experiences, possibility precognition or maybe better described as remote viewing or one-way telepathy. I don’t really discuss these matters. It is too difficult to frame them in everyday terms: it seems to me that language is a series of metaphors related to shared experiences. Early in my life I decided that spiritual matters have no influence on the physical world, are not subject to proof, and are best kept to oneself. I can understand and see the possibility of ESP, but I cannot believe in PK because PK is in the physical realm and violates proven science.
Now, about sentient stars . . well, I suppose, maybe, somewhat. . but proving it? Highly doubtful. Maybe if one of them should write a book. . . .
@Ed – it would indeed be ironic if the stars were being driven by intelligences using some sort of drive, and we have simply seen the effect as natural. But if so, why the size effect (the manufacturer only makes 1 stellar unit sized thrusters?).
Dr Matlof
Thank you for a thought provoking article.
There would seem to be three main areas to consider
a) the variations in velocity
b) can a star be conscious?
c) PK effects
In thinking about the velocity anomaly I also (as Alex Tolley) am wondering if the much greater average age of small stars may be a factor, with more opportunity for scattering events sending high velocity stars out from orbits closer the galactic centre, and perhaps modifying their actual velocities? This could potentially be tested as it should show as increases variance with age.
In terms of consciousness…we do not understand it enough yet to rule out panpsychic models at this time, so I’ll keep an open mind on that one, but I worry about the complexity of life compared to stars and entropy.
PK…controversial but there is good evidence for PK at the quantum level, less so at macroscopic scales. The reaction against it is partially on the lack of a convincing model ( even allowing for non locality) and sociological reasons ( plus national security as psi phenomena have been operationally used for decades so it is perhaps best if most people choose the believe it doesn’t work for now)
Anyway…hope I’m wrong about the above and best wishes!
Dear Colleagues
I am glad that I arose early. It seems like this will be a busy day for responses to responses. These follow:
Dear Dispatcher
Thanks for pointing out the difference between consciousness and intelligence and for your comments on the role of a scientist. Do not be too hard on “establishment” scientists and their apparent reluctance to embrace new ideas.
Some of these people keep a low profile out of necessity because the grants they receive are necessary to fund young researchers. At least one of them has fed me information relevant to this subject, while requesting that his anonymity is preserved.
In the forthcoming book, I discuss the stellar and universal images of some poets. Walt Whitman is very influential.
Dear James Stilwell
Thanks for the Einstein quote. A similar critique of strict reductionism is given by Freeman Dyson on pp 6-8 of “Infinite in All Directions.”
Dear Alex
Alternative explanations are certainly welcome, although they must be submitted to the same observational tests as current ones. Regarding the first of your well-thought-out suggestions, stars are only in very close proximity during the ~100 million year life of their birth nebula. If that were the proper explanation, the discontinuity would show for younger stars.
Regarding the second, dark-matter theorists may find it necessary to reconsider their rejection of EM effects in light of the fact, transmitted to me by Paul, that even our mature Sun puts out a partially uni-directional jet.
In considering the third suggestion, longer lifetimes might increase velocity dispersion of cooler stars, but why galactic velocity?
Anyway, please keep plugging. The next few years should be exciting as GAIA data comes in.
Dear Ed
Great stuff. I agree with you!
Dear David
Having once met Tipler and having read his books, I also wonder how an end-time universal consciousness would pull off “soul” resurrection. It all seems a bit biblical.
Dear Steve Bower
I first did a bit of research on Haisch. According to Google Scholar, he has many publications in “mainstream” journals that have been widely cited by others. I think the controversy regards around his affiliation with Journal of Scientific Exploration. Yes, some critique it as fringe in Wikipedia. But on the editorial board are people including Steven Dick of US Naval Observatory, Yervant Terzian of Cornell and N. C. Wickramsinghe of Cambridge. All are noted astronomers, the last was a collaborator of Sir Fred Hoyle. Of course, it is possible that that journal was stung by criticism and decided to broaden its editorial base.
Regarding Penrose/Hameroff, I first wonder about the term “mainstream”. Both of these people are well known, established, and well cited. Sir Roger is considered by some to be the second-best mathematical physicist in the world, after his former student Steven Hawking.
The only scientific criticism of their theory that I could uncover was the published critique by Tegmark that quantum events were unlikely in the warm, moist environment of the brain. But I cite in the forthcoming book two experiments by different groups indicating that such events do indeed occur.
I agree with you about the vulnerability of PK (and other paranormal) experiments to tricksters. That is why I mention the idea (suggested to me a long time ago) that experiments in this field should include a trained magician.
Regarding Uri Geller, I can come up with three hypothesis:
(1) He is a talented psychic,
(2) He is a skilled magician,
(3) He is both.
Since I cannot prove any of these suggestions or proceed further than the statements of the witnesses I mention, I have nothing to add. I also see no reason to pursue this controversy after so many years.
Finally, I am glad that you recognize the possible significance of the Parenago-related data. Thanks again.
REGARDS, GREG
mmmm.. I am not surprised by the higher velocity of smaller stars after all during an interaction with a larger massed star they are more likely to be flung about as they are less massed. If you look at a binary star system the smaller star always gets flung about faster. These smaller massed stars may just be picking up more momentum on their journeys around the galaxy at each interaction and in addition smaller stars live longer and so can get more velocity increasing reactions per lifetime burn.
What about Steven Strogatz’s ideas on the science of sync:
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync?language=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df3a-nX1ClE
And this:
http://phys.org/news/2010-11-milky-stars-mysterious-ways.html
. What about conscious asteroids?
On Sep 18, 2015, at 8:17 AM, Brian Josephson wrote:
Here is one of the papers quoted:
Icarus
Volume 210, Issue 2, December 2010, Pages 968–984
at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103510002812
The scaling of physical forces to the extremely low ambient gravitational acceleration regimes found on the surfaces of small asteroids is performed. Resulting from this, it is found that van der Waals cohesive forces between regolith grains on asteroid surfaces should be a dominant force and compete with particle weights and be greater, in general, than electrostatic and solar radiation pressure forces.
The question maybe is what is meant by ‘rapidly rotating’, and also there’s the size of the asteroid. The Nature article itself is
Nature 512, 174–176 (14 August 2014)
doi:10.1038/nature13632
https://centauri-dreams.org/?p=33995
ii. “Contrary to what many of us learned in high school chemistry, the Van der Waals forces that hold the atoms in molecules together are not purely electromagnetic. Some of this attraction is due to the so-called Casimir Effect [5]. Vacuum is not truly empty. Instead, in tiny intervals of space and time, there are enormous fluctuations of energy and matter.”
The above sentence is not quite correct.
1) Casimir force is a boundary effect on virtual photons primarily (small virtual electron positron influence)
2) The enormous vacuum energy seems to be missing at least in the large scale IR limit – this is the cosmological constant problem e.g. Lenny Susskind’s pop books etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant
iii. With astrophysicist Bernard Haisch [6], I assumed that a proto-consciousness field operates through vacuum fluctuations or is identical to these fluctuations.”
Bernie’s idea does not make sense without more details. The vacuum fluctuations are random white noise in orthodox quantum field theory. Bernie must show how to get non-random modulations of it that would be the “qualia” of the “hard problem” (David Chalmers). We need Antony Valentini’s “signal nonlocality” and my post-quantum back-reaction – they are two sides of the same coin.
From ljk’s phys.org reference:
The RAVE database has the radial velocity and size of stars (mass and temp) that could be used to further test Parenago’s Discontinuity.
stars are only in very close proximity during the ~100 million year life of their birth nebula. If that were the proper explanation, the discontinuity would show for younger stars.
That cannot be entirely true as we have a star coming within the close proximity of our own sun and calculations show this is not that rare. Therefore it is possible that long lived small stars can accumulate velocity after a number of interactions.
Secondly. as I and Micheal point out, small mass stars will acquire more velocity that large stars when interacting. After all, in extremis, we have rogue planets that are thrown out of stellar systems, but not rogue suns that are ejected from their planetary system. Therefore size, rather than age is the criteria.
The number of data points in figs 2 and 4 is very small, and fig 2 is also made up of 2 smaller data sets, each of which can be interpreted as linear relationships. I’d like to see a lot larger data set to show the discontinuity.
Dear Michael
Hipparcos researchers including Binney et al reject this one, as I do. Stars are only close enough for such interactions in the birth nebula. And these don’t last long in cosmic terms. Also, such interaction might alter dispersion from average velocity for less massive stars, but it won’t greatly affect average velocity. But keep trying!
Regards, Greg