Blog Post of the Week #6: Humans in Space and Hierarchy

Hierarchy - a series of ordered groupings of people or things within a system

The hierarchy exists everywhere. From animate to inanimate objects. Mental and Physical. It's everywhere. The point of this though, is that there is a hierarchy in the biosphere. There are levels for everything, like the food chain. At the top of all of  these levels though, are us. Humans. We are the apex predators. The ultimate inhabitants. We top and trump every other animal before us. We are number one.

Yes, I love this picture.

Now, 

We are number one today. Tomorrow? I don't know, that's another discussion. What about before today though? What about (as far as we can tell) before 10,000 years when we "discovered" agriculture and became farmers? What topped those lists then?

Velociraptor

There can't be nothing. There has to be a species at the top, there is no other way to put it. Us modern human beings have only been on this Earth for a few million years, give or take. Pre-Human Hominids have been around much longer, but were not at the top. Sure they could use tools, but they were not as widespread or dominant as the Homo Sapiens. 

Before us? Well if we go back to the time of the dinosaurs, the velociraptor had one, if not the highest brain mass to body ratios but was it the most dominant dinosaur?

As far as we can tell? No.

So what was? The answer is unknown, some would say the obvious Tyrannosaurus Rex, Others would say any one of the numerous species of Sauropods (The long neck giraffe looking dinosaurs). Whatever the answer is, being the most dominant was not due to intelligence. 

What that was? Probably the dinosaurs with the most sheer strength and aggression mixed with high birth rates and survivability of their young. 

Does that make sense though? How can some "dumb" dinosaur rule the Earth? 

It seems to me that the only way to truly dominate the Earth is through intelligence.

always been one in the same

These two ships may have >>>>

So because something had to top the list, then there must be the possibility that Humans have always existed on the Earth, since the Earth could support life at least.

Here is my theory now.

Humans have always dominated and controlled the Earth. 

Why? Here are a couple points that I have been thinking and though out.

1. We are constantly discovering new human remains that are shattering previous records with age and tool use. E.g - The 700,000 year old remains of humans using boats to get to Crete.

2. Can evolution really explain how a 5 foot 9 inch 170 pound hairless monkey evolved from a rodent smaller than my hand? No.

3. Although we have tried and may have succeeded in reproduced "imagined" scenarios in which life started on Earth, we can not be sure that it did infect originate here. Meaning my theory doesn't seem so off now does it? Okay, it might.

Okay, so we have established the possibility that we have always controlled the Earth, so you now ask why aren't we more advanced? 

Well, in the billions and billions of years that we may have dominated the Earth, there have been many drastic changes to it. Land moving, Volcanoes erupting, Ice Ages plaguing  the land. 

If you think about any new age doomsday scenario, they are all the same. Nuclear bombs go off, block out the sun, cause a nuclear winter, humanity is in ruins but has survivors and those survivors attempt to rebuild.

So, a massive volcano erupts, sending the Earth into a one hundred year ice age. Most humans die off, small pockets remain, we rebuild and recover. Boom, another global event, rinse and repeat. 

You might be asking now, if we were sent to the Earth, where is the "mothership"? Well, take a look as NASA's plans with the 100 year spaceship. They propose sending a small colony on a one-way trip to Mars. Perhaps what the space humans did was send out a group of a few thousand humans to Earth, to colonize, populate,  dominate and then eventually do the same to another planet? (e.g Mars?).

When you put all these things together, and combine them with our current plans, situations, and scenarios then it seems all too likely that we were in fact placed on this planet, alone, naked, and primitive.

It must be a coincidence that
 all these boat remains showed up
 in Crete 700,000 years
 before they were invented.
Yeah, that is all it is.

 What we must do now is prepare for our ancestors return. Haha, just kidding. Or am I?

Thanks,

Dillon Wheeler.

Blog Post of the Week #5: Post-Thoughts on The Universe

***Okay, this really isn't long or elaborate enough to warrant a blog post of the week, but it seemed to make more sense than saying blog post of the week #4 part 2, so here we are, the fifth featured post.***

So after writing the last post,  I decided to think about a few more things on the universe like: 

Maybe the universe is only a few hundred years old. 

Maybe even more frighteningly, the universe is only as old as you are.

I say this because they say that the universe is thirteen-point-whatever billion years old, yet the universe is over 150 billion lightyears in diameter. How can the universe be that large if light can not have even traveled that far in the time since the universes creation? If you say the universe is expanding like a balloon, after thirteen billion years, light expanding on opposite sides would only get 26 billion years apart and sure it may be an area that is unobservable, but astronomers have found a galaxy 42 billion lightyears away from the Earth. 

How do you explain this? 

Does this mean that time isn't always forward moving in the universe and that we are simply looking into the future to see this galaxy? Therefore, what are we? How do we see into the future? Can we see the end of the universe if we look hard enough?

For the universe being as old as you are, maybe we all live in our own separate universes, created when we were born and linked together by a higher power. When we die, that part or more simply, your own universe is simply shut down. Allowing for you to be gone, but for everyone you know to still exist in the web of connected multiverses. Kind of like a real-life matrix.

I had a more elaborate explanation to the last point, but as I thought about it and tried to write it down my mind erased it. Is that weird or what? (Thanks William Shatner).

Thanks,

Dillon Wheeler

Blog Post of the Week #4: The Universe and The Reality of It.

As I sit here thinking, I found that one thing I, myself, am having trouble comprehending, is just how LARGE the universe really is. 

We see the Earth as very large, the outer planets as insanely large and the sun as almost incomprehensibly large, but what about the universe itself? Our galaxy, the milky way is composed of an unimaginable amount of stars, just like our own, it seems like it is almost infinitely huge, now, the milky way is only one of countless galaxies. Billions of Trillions must exist out in the universe, if there even is a finite number to the amount of galaxies out there. So now, here we are, the milky way, in its unimaginable size, it is merely a speck on the grand scale. The universe is said to be over 13 billion years old, but that is not its size. Scientists have discovered that the universe is over 50 billions lightyears large. In fact, they have found two galaxies about 42 billions lightyears away from the Earth, one on each side, meaning that the two are 84 billion lightyears away from each other. 84 billion lightyears is such a distance, that I can not even comprehend how far that is. Even that infinite distance isn't much. That distance, is only the distance of the observable universe. What we can't see, is much larger than what we can see. The universe is so large, the diameter of the universe is over 150 billion lightyears and it is still expanding. 

As vast as this distance is, what I want to understand is what is beyond this distance? How is it possible that open space expands from nothing? The universe in which we are contained is our limitation to space. What happens on the outside of our universe? 

By this, the possibility of multiverses is probable. I see no way in which there can not be multiple universes, Each containing it's own matter and energy, just like our own. 

The only way I can put any sort of understanding to all of this is to think of it like J. J. Thomson thought of atoms, though his was the raisin bun model. 

So say the universe is a single chocolate chip (universe) , inside of a muffin (infinity) and the other chocolate chips are other universes. There they all are, placed inside of this muffin. Now as you bake this muffin, the chocolate chip melts inside of the muffin, expanding, spreading out but losing density (amount of particles in one area), much like the universe is doing now. So as the muffin (infinity) is baked, the chocolate chip (universe) expands, though neither one of the chocolate chips touch each other. After a certain time, the chocolate chip will no longer expand and that will be the end of the universe, similar to the theory of heat death of the universe.

So if you can picture this chocolate chip muffin and understand what I am saying, I will introduce the parts that I am having trouble understanding:

1. What would happen if the chocolate chip (universe) were to melt and touch another  chocolate chip (universe)?

2. What is the space that the universe is sitting in made of? What is this infinite realm inaccessible to anything in the universe, and incomprehensible to humans?

Regarding the first question, the only thing I can think of is dark flow, the force written in my other post.

Regarding the second question, the only thing I can even try to think of is maybe black holes are tears in the chocolate chip (universe) and lead to the muffin(infinity), that itself sounds sketchy. 

I guess the only way we will ever know anything is if someday we possess the technology to exceed the speed of light by many, many times and reach the edge of the universe, then figure out a way to take the plunge over and into another realm.

Last question: What started it all? What started the realm that is beyond the universe?

Thanks,

Dillon Wheeler

Blog Post of the Week #2: Dark Flow

By:

Dillon Wheeler

NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 55,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light- years away from Earth.

Spiral Galaxy

Think about that, sixty MILLION light-years! Thats about the time since the dinosaurs went extinct. Jesus Christ!

Various Dinosaurs

Evolution of Man

If you were in a theoretical ship that is capable of travelling at the speed of light, you would have to have left Earth at a time when dinosaurs were roaming the Earth, and you would only now be arriving at the outer edges of this galaxy. Thats not even to the other side of it, that would take another 55,000 years. How vast is the universe, that just some "typical" galaxy is that far away, and that is not even a big distance in terms of the universe. Wow, try to honestly, clearly, wrap you head around that. Wow. It truly is amazing, and now I have just learned about Dark Flow. Which, scientists believe, is an external force pulling on the UNIVERSE! Sucking entire galaxies into another realm that we can not see. How (expletive) is that. Wow, it is so complex, that we can't even imagine how complex it is.

Now more on Dark Flow, Wiki says it is a term that describes a particularly odd velocity of galaxy cluster. As in, whole galaxies are moving towards something, at relative speeds.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/A. Kashlinsky, et al.

Scientists are now suggesting that whole galaxies are being pulled towards something, but not just being pulled somewhere, but into a universe invisible to us. Think about that. They are suggesting that there is not just a single universe, but a multiverse, if you will.

One we can not see.

They say the gravity from this other universe is pulling our "resources" towards it. Why? Well as I just said, for resources. 

There was a controversial statement, stating that it is not something natural, that something uniform is causing this. As in, some intelligent beings are pulling these things into their realm.

Sentient beings, far more advanced than we can dream. I have a few ideas about why this is being done. 

1. Simple, Resources.

They have used up everything in their realm, and are now taking ours.

2. A Natural Phenomenon.

Perhaps there is nothing intelligent doing this, maybe it is just an anomaly of the very existence of everything.

3. Creation.

Maybe this is how universes are created? Everything just slowly moves from one realm to the other.

Lastly. 

4. Natural Selection.

If we think of the universe as an entity. A living organism of sorts. We have to first understand how something stays "alive". 

Simply, consumption.

Every living thing must consume something to continue living. It's the way of the world (and possibly everything else)

Timeline of the Universe (credit NASA WMAP)

Even non living things need to consume to appear alive. Prime example, Fire. Fire must consume oxygen in order to "live on" and burn. Take away the oxygen, you "kill" the fire.

So, how does this relate. Well, there is a finite amount of material in the universe. Eventually this limit will be reached, now let's say this other universe has been around far, far longer than our own. 

Then it would be safe to say, it has reached this limit. It would also be safe to say, that it is in a "dying" stage, that is, no more consumption, nothing. Just a slow, prolonged, death. 

Now, these beings do not want their home to die, that will, essentially, be the end of them swell. 

So what do they do? 

They do what we would. They (and I will get to this in a moment) use their advanced technology to create the Dark Flow. Sucking out our resources, in order to prolong the survival of their own universe, or realm.

How do they do it?

Well, Nobody on this Earth will know this, but I have a few ideas.

People were afraid of the very real possibility of creating a miniature black hole at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). So if, we, humans, have become so advanced that we have (not saying we can) the possibility of creating a black hole, then think about a civilization far ahead of our own.

They may have the technology to create black holes. Not just any black holes though, the kind that only consumes matter from our universe, and spits it out on the other side. 

Hell, that might even be the cause of regular Black Holes. 

Black Hole

So the Dark Flow, maybe this flow, is a result of a massive massive insanely massive undetectable Black Hole. Just raging and consuming everything in its wake, and forcing entire clusters of Galaxies towards it. 

It could be the result of all their technological advances, perhaps it is not even a single species. Maybe it is the result of their entire universe, a collaboration, coming up with the best technology possible to create and sustain this Black Hole.

It sounds like fiction I know, but you have to question things to get anywhere. For the majority of civilization people thought the Earth was flat, and sat atop a giant tortoise, which in turn sat atop a giant tortoise and so on all the way to the bottom, of what? I don't know. They were flawed. Anyone with or close to the correct theory though, was shunned and/or killed. So, just question things people. 

I understand that it sounds crazy, but just give it some thought. Nobody knows if what I said is true or untrue because we can't know. So if some how we figure this whole thing out, and what I said turns out to be true, then maybe we should all start to be worried because, on the universal scale, this dark flow is dangerously close to our galaxy and at the moving rate of millions of kilometres per hour, it is only a matter of time before they reach us.

Here are two of the links I have based my post on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081105-dark-flow.html

Next week is a post on memory, and how we are all being deceived by not only others, but as well as ourselves! Stay tuned.

You've been warned,

Dillon Wheeler

Blog Post of the Week #1: The Incident

By:
Dillon Wheeler


***Note*** After multiple attempts at fixing the odd spacing and font sizes later on in this post. I have, effectively. Given up.

Okay well, I had planned for a Monday blog update, but, well you know good ol’ procrastinator me, and look at the bright side, TWOSday is twice as good! I didn’t get around to it Monday, Sorry but, I do have a good one for you today though! Awesome! Even comes with an original picture of my hero I took today! How about that!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010 4:17 PM GMT -0800

It begins.

You may ask what begins exactly. I get it, perfectly logical question, so I will tell you. First though, let me fill you in on a bit of the backstory.

I had just finished my last lab for my Earth and Atmospheric Sciences course, hurray! I know, great right? So completed it was, this by the way was around about 4:00 PM. So I finished up, said some goodbyes, thanked the teachers, and left. I made my way towards the subway system, like usual, you know? I got on the train, it was full so I was forced to stand up, no big deal. 

So here I am, standing up, moving along underground. I do the logical thing, put my headphones on and start listening to music, you know, it’s a long ride, over twenty minutes with sweaty people.

And so it begins.

4:17 and all is fine. Songs are playing, emotions are at a high, excitement even higher, stress low.

Then, a familiar song plays. 

“Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters. 

I hadn’t heard the song in a very long time, so okay, I go along with it, I like the instrumental intro.

Then it happens, now to preserve what happened and display the truth, I will repeat what I had wrote during the events. Word for word consecutively, no edits. 

#1

“Either I have been drugged, or something is not right with reality, this is definitely not normal, wow.”

I wait it out a bit, not too sure of what is happening.

#2

“I can’t be sure if what I was hearing was real, but how could it not be?

Still confused myself, I let it continue.

#3

“The music is repeating itself and playing backwards, with heavy static and stuff, I can’t explain it and I can’t be sure of anything, I do not know what the (expletive) is happening, but I do not it can not be something to do with my iPhone.

Now, In reality, It could have definitely been my iPhone, which is less than two months old and such an incident has never occurred prior.

I begin to reason at this point.

#4

And before I blame it solely on myself, maybe some paranormal interference (expletive) stuff up, like influenced the sound waves.

What I mean, is an external force. Unseen.

#5

I’ve replayed the song over and over and it is seemingly random occurrences, I can not make a conclusion to anything other than that I am being (expletive) with.

Then, After the ordeal, I recap the entire incident, in an attempt to make more sense to myself and others.

#6

So to recap - playing in reverse, heavy static, repeating one part perfectly, high pitched ringing noise, distorted voice/instruments.

All of which seemingly occurred at random, sometimes together, sometimes singular

Upon numerous replays, it has now ceased completely, with the exception of the occasional ringing,

My theory - I have no (expletive) idea what just happened, visual input remain changed throughout, it was only the auditory senses “misinterpreting?” what was happening.

So there you go, unedited (except for curse words of course), raw information, I myself, documented during and after the incident.

Still confused? Well, I was on the train, listening to music, when all of a sudden, it would repeat itself. 

Yes, the song would repeat a part I had just heard. 

What did I do? The logical thing, I took my iPhone out, inspected it, played with the headphones, then restarted the song. 

All was good.

Then boom, the good ol’ chap Dave Grohl, lead singer of the Foo Fighters would you know, deepen his voice, to oh let’s say, to Demon levels? Yeah thats right, It sounded like Lucifer himself was telling me that “It’s times like these where we learn to live again”. I KNOW, FREAKY!

Quickly, I unsheathed my iPhone from the constraints of my pocket, and checked it once again, nothing out of the ordinary, so I did the natural thing to do, restarted it once again!

This time, however unreal it may sound, I got to the point where Dave Grohl says his first word, I believe it is “I”, and completes the sentence. At which point, the lines started to play backwards. Now I can write backwards, idk, I guess, fluently? Not sure if that is the correct term, but I can do it. So, during my courses of writing backwards, I am able to recognize words being played backwards.

Okay, thats complete bogus, everyone can recognize a song being played backwards, just thought it sounded better throwing that in lol.

So it plays backwards, but that is not all, there is heavy, heavy, and I repeat! Heavy! Static in the background, I quickly checked the headphones once again, nothing. I wiggled the chord, no homo, and it did not change whatsoever, still extremely static-y.

At this point, I began writing the notes you read earlier.

I repeated the song multiple times over. Again producing variations between the distortions. Then at once, it stopped. Completely. Shoe-Bam Done. Yes, I create my own sayings. 

So, now we get to the good stuff. The juicy part. I have a few theories as to why this has happened. Let me start off with oh I don’t know, the most basic of them.

1. My iPhone

Now, everyone knows how Apple is, their products are designed, displayed and portrayed (rhyme please) to be flawless, perfect, redundant, beautiful pieces of technology. If they weren’t made of special alloys and glass you would probably eat them, or at least, you know, take a little nibble. I mean, how could you not? They are beautiful! 

As beautiful as one device can be. Those devices can fail. Perhaps it was a glitch in the system. A re-occurring bug, destroying my music experience. I don’t know. Seems the most logical.


2. Me, Myself, and I

Not the terrible song by some pop musician, I really mean myself on this one. I will admit, it is possible I was “hearing” things, and trying to interpret things as I would like have to believed them as being, but really were not. The Human Mind is a complex being. Not even itself can understand well, itself. 

Moving on.

3. The train and/or being underground

Getting slightly less logical here, but there is a chance of this. Perhaps, while being underground, there were some sort of signals being sent around, that interfered with my iPhone? It being solid concrete and all the signals would bounce easily enough and the train could have acted as a sort of receiver. Or, maybe it was the train itself emitting these signals?

4. Aliens

Yay! Aliens! Logical, no. Fun to talk about and ponder, yes! Maybe Aliens, have some sort, well okay, for sure they do. Maybe Aliens had decided that they did not want me listening to music, or thought they would send a message and began toying with me. Okay, please don’t stop reading. It was just a joke!!!

5. Brain Signals

Never count out the brain baby. That beast is capable of anything. You know there are toys out now that use brain signals to operate a fan and move a ball up in the air? The more strong-minded you are, the higher the ball! So, perhaps in all my subconscious glory, I had unknowingly messed with the signals. Distorting the information. Curious thoughts George.

6. Drugs

Though I had not taken any, or consumed anything, without my knowledge of course. Maybe I was somehow injected, or breathed in a psychoactive drug?

7. Reality itself

Maybe, just maybe reality is all subjective. Maybe the music I was hearing, was not music but the product of my mind? Perhaps, we are all being controlled, a la The Matrix and there was an error made, distorting the musical goodness I was receiving. Idk. What I do know though, is that if a very large African American confronts me, and tells me to take a pill from one of his hands, I am running as far away as fast as I can, thats how real nightmares begin, well, doesn’t have to be an African American, could be just plain African. No, I am just kidding. Some people from all races are a little deranged, there we go, diversity!

Okay, so in conclusion, maybe I don’t know what it was, I threw those possibilities out there. No doubt it could have been something else that I did not mention. If you have any ideas or have experienced the same thing, please, don’t hesitate to let me know. Until then I think I’ll go with the Alien theory, That way I can have some fun as I get to wear a tinfoil hat and sit in front of a television watching static! Oh joy...

Thanks,

Dillon Wheeler

Response to: Shaping Our Identity

By:

Matt Gallagher

The idea of a unified identity is very intriguing. I would actually liken it to the way the mind processes ideas and concepts. Lets take a cup for example. It is safe to assume almost anyone knows what a cup is; its properties. The cup holds items, holds liquids, is used for consuming. Everyone with the "idea" of the cup would define it as such but one's mental picture of it would be quite different from that of another's. When i say cup to you, you may picture a glass entity, elongated in shape, yet simplistic,whereas my "idea" of the cup may be round, stout, and ceramic. Although very different, both ideas of the cup are correct because the properties remain constant.

This general concept can be applied to the human identity. In Dillon's post, he brings up the notion that identity may be a constant or an imprint. Id like too introduce the possibility that what changes our identities is our idea of them; our subconscious projections of our identities. And it is not our identities that change with influence but our projections. With this concept one can then suggest the results of removing an identity. If for instance a man lost his memories or simply his identity, he could, in effect, resort back to the "definition" of identity; the general identity applied at birth or written into our "code".

I’m interested in getting others opinions on this. Post some comments.

thanks for listening,

Matt

Shaping Our Identity

By:

Dillon Wheeler

In this post, I mention identity a lot, and I just wanted to say, by identity I mean our conscious, way we act, think, our intelligence, memory, every brain process that is unique to each Human Being after a certain point. With that said, lets begin, shall we?

This is how we are physically identified,

but how do we identify our minds?

Over the past week, I have begun to wonder something. Something about reality. Something about Us. I began to wonder if we all start off exactly the same, and our identities are shaped by internal and external environments.

I mean, as soon as we are conceived, are we all equal? Equal in the sense that we have no identity? Again, I don't mean like eight months in the womb, I mean as soon as we are conceived, at the very moment when life has begun.

This is conception.

And if we are all the same, do we exist individually or are we everyone and everyone is us? Like a singular collective mind?

A collection of videos, like the higher collective

mind, if all humans were one.

But the question is, how would we know? If everyone was identical, what would we be?

As I sat on the daily train ride home, I looked to the man sitting across from me. I watched him for a brief time (I'm not a creeper…. I think) and I imagined myself being that man, and in truth, it was not that hard to imagine. There exist the distinct possibility that I could have been him and he could have been me, us being each other, "mentally" of course, and under the right circumstances.

Circumstances.

Let me give you an example, say twins are born at the exact same moment. By some occurrence, their parents gave them up for adoption, so both children are given up for adoption at the exact same time, and are both adopted by different people.

So here we are, with two infant human beings. Could we say that these babies have identities? Maybe, but most likely the answer would be No (refer to what I mean by identity at the top). So now lets believe these babies have grown up, one became a good man and the other an evil man. What is there that leads us to believe that these men were destined to become good and evil?

The Fictional Good Man - His parent treated him with care, gave him attention, encouraged and loved him.

The Fictional Evil Man - His parent mistreated him, gave him no attention, showed no love towards him.

There is a fine line between

good and evil.

So the environment that these twins grew up in, influenced their identity, it shaped them to become what they are now. So then we reverse their environments, the good twin is placed in the abusive home, and the evil twin is placed in the loving home. When they grew up, would the good twin still become the good twin, and the evil twin become evil? Or would their roles be reversed? It is likely that their roles would indeed become reversed, and so we could say that the two twins started off with "blank slates".

So if everyone starts off with blank slates, does that mean we can choose our identity? Does that mean that I chose who I am?

What if there is a singular identity and that everyone is a representation of that single identity? Would that identity be God's identity? Or does that mean something else, like the existence of reality all together?

Contemplate this, perhaps we were all created by God's vision (Im not very religious by the way) and subtle variations in the "formula" for identity made us all what we are now. Subtle variations meaning the environment I illustrated in the example above.

God's vision.

If this "formula" made us all what we are now, can we say that therefore we are all God himself? To make it clear, what I mean is that perhaps we all started off as God had intended (A vision of himself, or Adam if you will) but then, along the way, we morphed and mutated into what and who we are through the internal and external environments.

I am not a firm believer in God, though I do believe in a higher power, although not what you would think (maybe i will get into it in a future blog post?) and to conclude, sorry, but I do not know the answer to the questions I posed.

Oh, and if you like the blog and enjoy reading my writing, follow the blog, or drop a few comments telling me what you think, the feedback, good or bad would be much appreciated,

Thank You,

Dillon Wheeler