The Promise of a New Unknown 4 comments

16 Apr 2003 @ 14:59, by Craig Lang This weekend, my wife and I went to the OmniFilm festival at the Science Museum of Minnesota. While there, I noticed an interesting map projection - a world-map design built into the tiles of the lobby floor. It was a physical map of the earth, and showed suggestions of the regions of the continental shelves. While I had seen this before, I had never really thought a whole lot about it. But this day, it provided a perspective that made me think - alot... I had recently read some more about the experiments which suggest that the the age of the Spinx may be far greater than is currently accepted by mainstream archaeology. In fact, it appears to be at least as old as the oldest known civilizaton - of any type. The date appears to be 10 to 12 thousand years (and that's conservative), which takes it back well into the last ice age. As I looked at the map, I began to think about how at that time, sea level was far lower than it is today. This means that considerable land was exposed that is not exposed today. Furthermore, this land would have largely consisted of coastal plains, the type of land which today supports the majority of our population. It would have been fertile land, and any civilization would probably have been located there. The implications are mind boggling. If true, this means that there is a whole layer of human (pre)history that archaeology has not even begun explore. A whole era of human history has been out of reach of archaeologists, largely forgotten about by the present civilization. (For example see "Underwater Archaeology in Black Sea Proves Plato Was Right" in 21st Century Science). And this is just one area of science which is just beginning to open up. We are on the verge a whole new universe to explore. In astronomy/physics/cosmology, the expansion dynamics of the universe are turning out to be quite different than what was predicted by big bang theory. While the big bang theory seems to fit most of the data, there are some areas which - well - not quite... Instead of slowing down, which would be expected by the standard model, it turns out that expansion of the universe is actually accellerating. There is another force/agent that is causing this to happen. And science doesn't yet have a clue as to what this is... In this arena, ideas such as dark matter, dark energy, zero point energy, all take on new importance - even to the conservative science mainstream. As a result, many of the paradigms of physics begin to find themselves in chaos. And this is were the real fun is - as science tries to build a framework of understanding for this new data. Another area, consciousness studies, is also beginning to open up - incorporating anomalies such as field consciousness. It is turning out that quantum effects may need to be factored in to the understanding of this (see www.consciousness.arizona.edu for interesting on-going developments on this). Several theories have been posed to understand field consciousness. And most of these are, at their core quantum-based. While the mathematics are relatively well understood, there actually is very little understanding of just what quantum theory is. To me, this implies that there is a whole new world opening up for exploration here too. We have so much to learn - and it's great fun... In history, this has happened on many occasions, always with amazing results. Imagine the reaction when Aristarcus did his initial measurements of the circumference of the earth - and got a huge number. At the time, contemporary Greeks and Phonecians thought that they pretty much knew the boundaries of the world. But this experiment showed that what was known was only a few percent of the actual world. There was so much more to explore. It must have been a truly intriguing thing to discover. And then, in the 1890's, it was felt that physics was nearly all wrapped up. There were just a few loose ends to tie up. One of these was an experiment to confirm the dynamics of the ether. This became known as the Michelson-Morley Experiment. When this experiment was performed, it ended up turning physics on its ear. And once again, there was a whole new layer of the onion to begin peeling away - a whole new world of physics to explore. So now we find ourselves at this same fun and fascinating place once again - our first views into whole new realms of exploration. It is wonderful new glimpse into the unknown, and it promises the next generation a whole lot of mystery and fun.

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