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Nature of Reality Media Articles

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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A mysterious source has been sending radio signals to Earth from space for decades
2023-07-24, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/mystery-radio-signals-earth-space-b238063...

An unknown source has been sending radio blasts towards Earth since at least 1988, scientists say. For 35 years, the source has been sending out regular 20-minute blasts of energy that vary considerably in their brightness, researchers say. The emissions appear something like the blasts that come out of pulsars or fast radio bursts, which last for milliseconds to several seconds. But the newly discovered source sends radio signals that pulsate on a period of 21 minutes – something previously thought impossible by expected explanations. Pulsars are neutron stars that spin around quickly, throwing out radio blasts as they do. When one crosses Earth, the emissions can be picked up very briefly and brightly, like being in the path of the light from a rotating lighthouse. Scientists believe that process can only work if the magnetic field of the pulsar is strong, and it is rotating quickly enough – if not, there would not be enough energy to see the pulsar from Earth. That has led to the development of the “pulsar death line”, which suggests that sources must be spinning fast and strong enough to be detected. The newly discovered object named GPMJ1839-10, however, is way beyond that death line. If it is a pulsar, then it seems to be operating in ways that scientists thought impossible. It could also be a highly magnetised white dwarf or magnetar, an extra kind of neutron star with incredibly strong magnetic fields. But they do not tend to send out emissions of this kind, researchers believe.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Plants aren’t silent. They make clicking sounds, a study finds
2023-03-30, CNN News
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/world/plants-make-sounds-scn/index.html

Plants make popping sounds that are undetectable to the human ear, according to recordings made in a new study — and they make more sounds when thirsty or under other kinds of stress. The research shakes up what most botanists thought they knew about the plant kingdom, which had been considered largely silent, and suggests the world around us is a cacophony of plant sounds, said study coauthor Lilach Hadany. To figure out whether plants actually were emitting sounds, Hadany and her team commissioned soundproofed acoustic boxes. The researchers placed tobacco and tomato plants in the boxes, rigged with ultrasonic microphones that record at frequencies between 20 and 250 kiloherz. (The maximum frequency that a human adult’s ear can detect is about 16 kilohertz.) Some of the plants had cut stems or had not been watered for five days, and others were untouched. The team found that the plants emitted sounds at a frequency of 40 to 80 kilohertz, and when condensed and translated into a frequency humans can hear, the noises were a bit similar to the pop of popcorn being made or bubble wrap bursting. A stressed plant emitted around 30 to 50 of these popping or clicking sounds per hour at seemingly random intervals, but unstressed plants emitted far fewer sounds — around one per hour. “When tomatoes are not stressed at all, they are very quiet,” Hadany said. The researchers don’t know exactly how the sounds are made.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It
2022-10-06, Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-a...

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking. “Local” means that objects can be influenced only by their surroundings and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead the evidence shows that objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings, and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. Blame for this achievement has now been laid squarely on the shoulders of three physicists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They equally split the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” From about 1940 until as late as 1990, studies of so-called quantum foundations were often treated as philosophy at best and crackpottery at worst. Today quantum information science is among the most vibrant subfields in all of physics. It links Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. It dictates the design and function of quantum sensors. And it clarifies the often confusing nature of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that is pivotal to modern materials science and that lies at the heart of quantum computing.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


'Ways of Being' Review: Whole Earth Network
2022-06-17, Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ways-of-being-book-review-whole-earth-network-11...

The artist, writer and technologist James Bridle begins "Ways of Being" with an uncanny discovery: a line of stakes tagged with unfathomable letters and numbers in thick marker pen. The region of [Greece] is rich in oil, we learn, and the company that won the contract to extract it from the foothills of the Pindus mountains is using "cognitive technologies" to "augment ... strategic decision making." The grid of wooden stakes left by "unmarked vans, helicopters and work crews in hi-vis jackets" are the "tooth- and claw-marks of Artificial Intelligence, at the exact point where it meets the earth." "Ways of Being" sets off on a tour of the natural world, arguing that intelligence is something that "arises ... from thinking and working together," and that "everything is intelligent." We hear of elephants, chimpanzees and dolphins who resist and subvert experiments testing their sense of self. We find redwoods communicating through underground networks. In the most extraordinary result of all, in 2014 the Australian biologist Monica Gagliano showed that mimosa plants can remember a sudden fall for a month. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have been used to analyze, conquer and control. But "Ways of Being" argues that they can equally be used to explore and augment connection and empathy. The author cites researchers studying migration patterns with military radar and astronomers turning telescopes designed for surveillance on Earth into instruments for investigating the dark energy of the cosmos.

Note: Read a thought-provoking article featuring a video interview with artist and technologist James Bridle as he explores how technology can be used to reflect the innovative and life-enhancing capacities of non-human natural systems. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Scientist discover all ingredients necessary for DNA in meteorite for first time
2022-04-26, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/dna-meteorites-origins-life-b2065837.html

Exactly how regular matter first transmuted into the organised self-replicating assemblies of molecules that we call life on Earth is the focus of ongoing scientific research. But a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications strengthens theories that hold the basis of life came from outer space. Using new techniques of chemical analysis, Japanese researchers have now shown all the amino acids necessary to form DNA and RNA, the genetic basis of life can be found in small meteorites that fall to Earth. These “nucleobases” are not examples of extraterrestrial life, but instead the result of chemistry taking place on asteroids while in space, which may then have seeded Earth with the necessary prebiotic material to help the development of life. That material, the study authors write, may have “contributed to the emergence of genetic properties for the earliest life on Earth.” “The absolute abundance of nucleobases of extraterrestrial origin could be enough for further chemical reactions on the early Earth,” said Yasuhiro Oba ... the lead author of the new study. Scientists running simulations of the chemistry taking place on interstellar asteroids seemed to find more evidence supporting the idea that genetic material could form in space, according to Dr Oba. He believes it’s likely the prebiotic chemistry from multiple sources was important to the origins of life — it’s possible terrestrial and extraterrestrial chemistry made their own contributions.

Note: Explore a highly intriguing essay by WTK founder Fred Burks on alien involvement in our world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Study challenges evolutionary theory that DNA mutations are random
2022-01-12, Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220112121512.htm

Findings, published January 12 in the journal Nature, radically change our understanding of evolution and could one day help researchers breed better crops or even help humans fight cancer. Mutations occur when DNA is damaged and left unrepaired, creating a new variation. The scientists wanted to know if mutation was purely random or something deeper. What they found was unexpected. "We always thought of mutation as basically random across the genome," said [paper lead author] Grey Monroe. "It turns out that mutation is very non-random and it's non-random in a way that benefits the plant. It's a totally new way of thinking about mutation." Researchers spent three years sequencing the DNA of hundreds of Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress. Sequencing of those ... plants revealed more than 1 million mutations. Within those mutations a nonrandom pattern was revealed, counter to what was expected. Instead of randomness they found patches of the genome with low mutation rates. In those patches, they were surprised to discover an over-representation of essential genes, such as those involved in cell growth and gene expression. "These are the really important regions of the genome," Monroe said. "The areas that are the most biologically important are the ones being protected from mutation." The areas are also sensitive to the harmful effects of new mutations. The findings [reveal] that the plant has evolved to protect its genes from mutation to ensure survival.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Aliens Created Our Universe in a Lab, Scientist Suggests
2021-10-15, MSN News
https://web.archive.org/web/20220521022547/https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tec...

Could our universe have been created in a petri dish? Avi Loeb seems to think so. The Harvard astronomer posits that a higher "class" of civilization may have conjured up our universe in a laboratory far, far away. "Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling," Loeb writes in an op-ed published by Scientific American last year. This theory, he suggests, would unite two seemingly opposite notions: the idea that a higher power might be driving our fate, and the secular concept of quantum gravity (a field of physics that seeks to work gravity into the theory of quantum mechanics–something that, to the bane of physicists everywhere, we haven't been able to do yet on Earth). Primarily, this theory hinges on a far-off advanced civilization's ability to meld both quantum mechanics and gravity and subsequently identify and recreate all of the universe's ingredients. Loeb ... has devised a framework that breaks advanced civilizations down into classes based on their ability to "reproduce the astrophysical conditions that led to its existence." Earthlings would fall into class C because ... we would not be able to recreate our current conditions should the sun suddenly die. A class A civilization, like our proposed creators, would be able to, say, generate large amounts of dark energy and, as Loeb suggests, create "baby universes" ... that could potentially spawn life.

Note: Explore a highly intriguing essay by WTK founder Fred Burks on alien involvement in our world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


The people who believe plants can talk
2021-08-31, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210831-the-people-who-believe-plants-can...

Laura Beloff's plant seemed to be clicking. She had rigged its roots up to a contact microphone in order to detect faint, high-pitched clicks in the soil. With the help of software she had written for her computer, the frequency of the clicks had been lowered, making them audible to humans. Beloff first had the idea of listening to her plants' roots after reading about experiments by Monica Gagliano. Over the last decade or so, Gagliano, at the University of Western Australia, has published a series of papers that suggest plants have an ability to communicate, learn and remember. She has long argued that scientists should pay greater attention to the fact that plants can transmit and retrieve information acoustically. In a 2017 study, Gagliano and colleagues showed that plants appear to be able to sense the sound of water vibrating via their roots, which may help them to locate it underground. And Gagliano has also raised eyebrows with claims that, in non-experimental settings, she has heard plants speak to her using words. She says that this experience is "outside the strictly scientific realm" and that a third-party observer would not be able to measure the sounds she heard with laboratory instruments. But she is quite certain that she has perceived plants speaking to her on multiple occasions. "I have been in situations where not just me but several others in the same space heard the same thing," she says. But the precise mechanisms through which plants might perceive or sense sound remain mysterious.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


England's crop circle controversy
2021-08-23, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210822-englands-crop-circle-controversy

South-west England is the world capital of crop circles. They are particularly concentrated in the county of Wiltshire, where a treasure trove of ancient history includes the Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Avebury – both crop circle hotspots. Reports of mysterious patterns appearing in wheat, barley and corn fields in the area began to circulate in the 1970s, but it was in the late '80s that the phenomenon exploded. Circles began to appear more frequently and became far more ornate: some resembled trippy fractals; others rune-like hieroglyphs; others stylised animals recalling those of the Nazca Lines in Peru. The intricacy and size of the formations, coupled with the fact that they would appear overnight, seemingly out of nowhere, baffled locals and farmers alike. In 1996, a crop circle appeared opposite Stonehenge depicting a mathematical fractal called a Julia set; a similar formation that emerged on Milk Hill in 2001 was one of the largest ever, stretching 900ft. A 2008 formation near the Iron Age hill fort of Barbury Castle required decoding by an astrophysicist, who concluded that it was a geometric representation of the first 10 digits of pi. The phenomenon peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s, but continues today; an average of 30 crop circles appear each year in the UK, around 80% of them in Wiltshire. Formations reported in 2021 have included a hexagonal pattern overlaid with spirals in Avebury, and a pattern of concentric "bubbles" in Tidworth Down.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


'Tantalizing' results of 2 experiments defy physics rulebook
2021-04-07, ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/tantalizing-results-experiments-d...

Preliminary results from two experiments suggest something could be wrong with the basic way physicists think the universe works, a prospect that has the field of particle physics both baffled and thrilled. Tiny particles called muons aren’t quite doing what is expected of them in two different long-running experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results — if proven right — reveal major problems with the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level. “We think we might be swimming in a sea of background particles all the time that just haven’t been directly discovered,” Fermilab experiment co-chief scientist Chris Polly said. “There might be monsters we haven’t yet imagined that are emerging from the vacuum interacting with our muons and this gives us a window into seeing them.” The rulebook, called the Standard Model, was developed about 50 years ago. The United States Energy Department's Fermilab announced results Wednesday of 8.2 billion races along a track outside Chicago that ... have physicists astir: The muons' magnetic fields don't seem to be what the Standard Model says they should be. This follows new results published last month from the European Center for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider that found a surprising proportion of particles in the aftermath of high-speed collisions. If confirmed, the U.S. results would be the biggest finding in the bizarre world of subatomic particles in nearly 10 years.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


My quest to understand the giant Bigfoot trap I found near the Calif. border
2021-03-20, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
https://www.sfgate.com/california-news/article/Bigfoot-Humboldt-State-Norcal-...

In late February, I walked into a Bigfoot trap in Siskiyou National Forest a few miles north of the California border with Oregon. Posing for a photo inside pretending to be an oversized cryptid, I raised my own overly large foot for effect. A year ago I moved to Arcata — a veritable epicenter of Sasquatch sightings — where Bigfoot-themed businesses, adornments and paraphernalia are commonplace and undoubtedly a tourist draw and economic boon to the area. A scrap metal Bigfoot sculpture stands on a walking path in my town. The sheer concept of Bigfoot is fascinating, which is why I hiked to that trap, and why, when a friend recently mentioned an “Intro to Bigfoot Studies” online class with an instructor from Humboldt State University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, that seemed like fun. Here’s something not fun: having to question your own grip on reality. And actually, that’s part of why some people have a tough time acknowledging the possibility Bigfoot could be real, according to course instructor Steven Saint Thomas. “It's a natural human tendency to want to be comfortable,” Thomas says. “So information that makes you uncomfortable is information you prefer to ignore.” And here’s what many Bigfoot enthusiasts do think proves the existence of the creature: the Patterson-Gimlin film. It was shot by two cowboys near Bluff Creek in 1967, capturing what appears to be a female Bigfoot striding across the forest, turning toward the camera in what has become an iconic stance, and disappearing forever.

Note: Watch the video footage which made bigfoot an international phenomenon on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Sir Martin Rees says a physics experiment could swallow up the entire universe
2018-10-26, NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/sir-martin-rees-fears-physics-experiment...

Sir Martin Rees, Britains dapper astronomer royal, issues a dark warning in his new book, "On the Future." While assessing various threats facing our species, he turns his attention to particle-accelerator experiments designed to probe the laws of nature. Some physicists raised the possibility that these experiments might do something far worse destroy the Earth or even the entire universe, he writes. In one current or future scenario that Rees describes, the particles crashing about inside an accelerator could unleash bits of strange matter that shrink Earth into a ball 300 feet across. In another, the experiments could create a microscopic black hole that would inexorably gnaw away at our planet from the inside. In the most extreme scenario Rees describes, a physics mishap could cause space itself to decay into a new form that wipes out everything from here to the farthest star. These doomsday events are unlikely, Rees concedes, but "given the stakes, they should not be ignored. Is he right to sound the alarm? Rees follows in a long tradition of experts cautioning that modern technology could lead us to disaster. How serious are the risks, really? A team of physicists ... evaluated the possibility of a disastrous mishap in 2003, and they returned to the issue in 2008. Both times they found the risks inconsequential.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Earth could shrink to 100m across if particle accelerator experiments go wrong
2018-10-02, New Zealand Herald
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12135674

Professor Lord Martin Rees has revealed the "worst case scenario" for particle accelerators - and they could mean the end of Earth as we know it. He warns that if things went wrong, they could result in a black hole being formed, or the Earth being turned into a "hyperdense sphere". Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider shoot particles at incredibly high speeds, smash them together, and observe the fallout. While they have led to massive breakthroughs ... they also carry a high risk, Rees says in his new book On The Future: Prospects for Humanity. "Maybe a black hole could form," he writes. "The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets. Under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth. Many of us are inclined to dismiss these risks as science fiction, but give the stakes they could not be ignored." Cern writes on their website "The LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern. Whatever the LHC will do, nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies."

Note: Why aren't any other media reporting on this vitally important topic? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the nature of reality.


Marilu Henner, the Former Taxi Star, Doesnt Need a Grocery List
2018-08-23, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/style/marilu-henner-broadway.html

Marilu Henner had her last bite of cheese 39 years and one day ago. I celebrated my health birthday yesterday, said Ms. Henner ... as - inevitably - the details began flooding back. August 15, 1979, I gave up dairy products. It was a Wednesday. The weather that day was beautiful. And I went to see a doctor who told me, You have to give up dairy products. Youre not going to be healthy unless you give up dairy. Ms. Henner is famous for playing the cabby Elaine Nardo in the 1970s sitcom Taxi. She has also written 10 books (mostly about health and well-being); starred in another TV series, Evening Shade; and appeared in several movies and Broadway shows. But thanks to a 60 Minutes segment in 2010, Ms. Henner has become famous for what neuroscientists call highly superior autobiographical memory the ability to recall past life experiences, including day of the week and date, with remarkably vivid detail. You dont know for how many years people have been talking about my memory, Ms. Henner said. And then theyll ask me about something from two weeks ago and I tell them, You can go a little further back than that. Back, say, to when she learned about being cast in Taxi. It was June 4, 1978, a Sunday.

Note: Explore more on this unusual woman in this ABC News article. Watch an excellent 14-minute segment from Australia's 60 Minutes on numerous individuals with the gift of perfect memory. How is this possible?


Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
2018-07-25, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44952710

Researchers have found evidence of an existing body of liquid water on Mars. What they believe to be a lake sits under the planet's south polar ice cap, and is about 20km (12 miles) across. Previous research found possible signs of intermittent liquid water flowing on the martian surface, but this is the first sign of a persistent body of water on the planet in the present day. Lake beds like those explored by Nasa's Curiosity rover show water was present on the surface of Mars in the past. However, the planet's climate has since cooled due to its thin atmosphere, leaving most of its water locked up in ice. The result is exciting because scientists have long searched for signs of present-day liquid water on Mars, but these have come up empty or yielded ambiguous findings. It will also interest those studying the possibilities for life beyond Earth. Following the water is key to astrobiology - the study of potential life beyond Earth.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the nature of reality and UFO phenomena.


From fake news to fabricated video, can we preserve our shared reality?
2018-02-22, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2018/0222/From-fake-news-to-fabricated-v...

People tend to trust video evidence as an arbiter of truth. But that faith could soon become quaint, as machine learning is enabling ordinary users to create fabricated videos of just about anyone doing just about anything. Earlier this month, the popular online forum Reddit shut down r/deepfakes, a subreddit discussion board devoted to using open-source machine-learning tools to insert famous faces into pornographic videos. This episode represents just one of the many ways that the this technology could fuel social problems, particularly in an age of political polarization. Combating the negative effects of fabricated video will require a shift among both news outlets and news consumers. When you see something, or when you believe that youre seeing something and hearing something, it has a much more visceral impact ... than when its something that youre just reading about, says Henry Farrell, a professor of political science. Professor Farrell warned that this technologys implications for democracy are eye-opening, in a Feb. 4 New York Times op-ed. Democracy assumes that its citizens share the same reality, the op-ed concluded. Were about to find out whether democracy can be preserved when this assumption no longer holds. When mixed with confirmation bias the tendency to process information in a way that conforms to ones preexisting beliefs [the technology] could become an increasingly destructive social influence, one that corrodes even good-faith efforts to tell the truth.

Note: Read more about producing fake video with machine learning programs. While governments have long been developing technologies to produce very convincing illusions, and it has become trivial to edit video footage of a person talking to change their words and facial expressions, this emerging technology makes it possible to manipulate mass media in previously impossible ways.


Where Do You Go When You Die? The Increasing Signs that Human Consciousness Remains After Death
2018-02-10, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/where-do-you-go-when-you-die-increasing-signs-human-c...

Clinically, we understand death to mean the state that takes hold after our hearts stop beating. Philosophically, though, our definition of death hinges on something else: the point past which were no longer able to return. Those two were more or less the same until about 50 years ago, when we saw the advent of CPR. Modern resuscitation ... blew apart our understanding of what it means to be dead. Without many people returning from the dead to show us otherwise, it was natural to assume, from a scientific perspective, that our consciousness dies at the same time as our bodies. Over the last few years, though, scientists have seen repeated evidence that once you die, your brain cells take days, potentially longer, to reach the point past which theyve degraded too far to ever be viable again. People who survive medical death frequently report experiences that share similar themes: bright lights; benevolent guiding figures; relief from physical pain and a deeply felt sensation of peace. Because those experiences are subjective, it's possible to chalk them up to hallucinations. Where that explanation fails, though, is among the patients who have died on an operating table or crash cart and reported watching ... as doctors tried to save them, accounts subsequently verified by the (very perplexed) doctors themselves. How these patients were able to describe objective events that took place while they were dead, we're not exactly sure. But it does seem to suggest that when our brains and bodies die, our consciousness may not.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on near-death experiences. Then explore our near-death experience resource center for lots more fascinating, reliable information on this vital topic.


Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
2018-02-02, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/plants-consciousness-anesthesia.html

Your houseplant salutes the sun each morning. At night, it returns to center. You probably dont think much of it. But what about all the signs of plant intelligence that have been observed? Under poor soil conditions, the pea seems to be able to assess risk. The sensitive plant can make memories and learn. And plants can communicate with one another and with caterpillars. Now, a study published recently in Annals of Botany has shown that plants can be frozen in place with a range of anesthetics, including the types that are used when you undergo surgery. Insights gleaned from the study may help doctors better understand the variety of anesthetics used in surgeries. But the research also highlights that plants are ... perhaps less different from animals than is often assumed. Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices, said [study co-author] Frantisek Baluska, a plant cell biologist. Plants ... take in information from their environment and produce their own anesthetics like menthol, ethanol and cocaine, similar to how humans release chemicals that dull pain during trauma. Our anesthetics work on plants too, the study confirmed, although what exactly theyre working on is unclear. The electrical activity that moves across neurons is thought by some scientists to contribute to human consciousness. If electrical activity is being disrupted by anesthetic in plants, too, causing them to lose consciousness, does that mean, in some way, that they are conscious?

Note: Don't miss a time-lapse video of a pea plant responding to an anesthetic at the link above. And check out a fascinating video of plants making music. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Earth's Magnetic Poles Show Signs They're About to Flip
2018-01-30, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-poles-signs-flip-exposing-humans-radia...

Historically, Earths North and South magnetic poles have flipped every 200,000 or 300,000 yearsexcept right now, they havent flipped successfully for about 780,000 years. But the planets magnetic field is at long last showing signs of shifting. Although theres no way to know yet for sure, it could be gearing up to flip once more, according to Undark Magazine. And that possibility is raising new speculation about what that means for planetary life. Our planets magnetic field protects us from lethal levels of radiation from phenomena like solar rays. The Earths magnetic field extends out from electrical currents created by the metals in its core, generating invisible lines that touch back down at the planets opposing magnetic poles. Cosmic radiation expert Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that the next pole reversal could likely render some areas of the planet unlivable. Because we havent reached that point yet, scientists are using imagery from satellites to track the magnetic fields movements. Since 2014, Swarm - a trio of satellites from the European Space Agency - has allowed researchers to study changes building at the Earths core, where the magnetic field is generated. Their observations ... could indicate that the field is preparing to flip. A weakened field might allow more radiation into our atmosphere than were used to, but it wouldnt be deadly, according to NASA.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality.


Sally Quinn has cast 3 hexes, and worries they worked
2017-09-08, USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/09/08/sally-quinn-has-cast-3-hexes-a...

In her new "spiritual memoir" titled Finding Magic, veteran journalist Sally Quinn ... the widow of legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee ... describes her lifelong belief in the occult and worries that hexes she once put on three people may have worked. "My family were Scots," [said Quinn]. "They all believed in Scottish myths and mysticism and the stones and psychic behavior and ghosts and astrology and palmistry and all that. And then of course we all went to church. So I had this kind of two-pronged religious upbringing. I would say my prayers to God and Jesus every night ... but I also believed in all this other stuff. When I was in my late 20s and early 30s, there were three people who hurt me in some way, or (hurt) somebody I loved, and so I decided to put a hex on them. I had never done it before. What I wanted to have happen was for them to feel what I had felt. I didnt mean for them to die." One person died right away, another person got fired immediately and then died, and then the other one died. Ive never done it again. And believe me, since (Donald) Trump was elected, and since the election, I cant tell you how many friends have asked me to put a hex on Donald Trump, and I wont do it. I just said no. I dont do that anymore." The environment right now is more toxic and more poisonous than Ive ever seen....(But I have) still been able to pull away and still find a sense of faith and joy and magic in the world."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.