Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Headphone Cord Container

The audacity of life

I will now provide two times the statements in the room that are very closely linked. How - that you learn at the end of this paper. 1: Nylon stockings for breakfast to eat, tastes awful. No. 2: We are certainly not the only life form in the universe.

Confused? And rightly so. But I promise that two paragraphs later, the matter is resolved. There is no more and no less to the old question of whether we're alone in the universe "or whether there are other life forms. No, I do not (only) the green creatures with antennae on his head, get out of flying saucers. But in general the question of whether life in all its complexity, we can observe on earth (our brain is demonstrably the most complex object that people have ever seen), a unique exception in the dreary cold darkness out there.

Although we will probably never know for sure - the exchange of information in the universe is limited by the speed of light and therefore due to the incredibly huge distances in space far too slowly - we can try for example the probability. On the one hand, the chances for such ideal conditions, as we have on Earth, is rather limited (read more here ). On the other hand, even if the probability, so to grab a 5-star spa hotel as our earth is only 0.0001%, one must remember how incredibly, incredibly there are many stars. A popular saying among astronomers is that already in the known, observable universe, there are more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. And even if not nearly every star has planets at all, it is among the billions of stars certainly be quite a plethora of favorable constellations.

And if the conditions are acceptable or less, are making life not long in coming. You can see very well in the history of our planet. A billion years after the formation of the Earth, the surface is fairly cool, and the constant bombardment by meteorites stopped slowly. About the same time already created primitive life forms. Life was So, as soon as circumstances allowed reasonably, fairly quickly there and has since not get rid of the blue planet. Where were the so-called extremophile life forms not found it - in boiling hot springs (up to 113 ° C), sulphate of mud holes, underground oil drains, oxygen-free and dark mountain caves or highly concentrated brine. This microbe survived the 1000 times the lethal dose for humans radioactivity by using its DNA completely torn to pieces composed just like a puzzle again. Even in the hostile vacuum of space to survive these comrades here. There are now even bacteria, which - as promised tension closes! - Feed on nylon . And if those are related to gourmets everywhere before our eyes - then can not escape the thought that the chemistry of life is such a way that it takes many forms and adapt to all possible living conditions. And we can also relate only to the carbon-based nukleotidvererbende life as we know it - the sky with respect to other biological concepts are no limits.

Life seems to be quite cheerful, cheeky and also tough. Alone in the universe - what an arrogant idea!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Doenlod Vido Bangbros

The end of the world

"Some say, the world will end in fire, some say - in ice" Robert Frost once wrote and thus to the current state of research not so wrong. The end of the world, the moment when everything, absolutely everything we know ceases to exist, has engaged the people a long time. songs were written about in religious end-time scenarios, the most terrible things disclosed . Most of the world goes in a huge disaster in, the fantasy adventure of all animals, not pain is sadistic, not a battle tableau to gigantomanic. In ice is rather rare among the world (a rogue, while the higher the narrative action of the fire inferno compared to the boring cooling assumed). Fascinating the end of the world was in any case always. Doomsday cult members committed suicide in droves even voluntarily so they escaped the earthly apocalypse, could start a new life on distant planets with their astral bodies. We now know pretty much what will the drain end of the world - depending upon what is defined as the end of the world, he is free after Robert Frost, very hot or icy cold.

If we leave on our Earth, then we should get in about five years Miliarden a good sunscreen. For then shall the sun due to changes in nuclear fusion processes to "red Giant inflate swallow , Mercury and Venus and the Earth will fry. With evaporated oceans and surface temperatures over 1000 degrees can survive difficult.

shocking? No, not yet. So far it is that is does not come. Just two billion years before it will prevail by a capital collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy ( here an animation). you can fly at the time pretty much each other. stars will collide, gravitational waves shatter the space-time, the career of the sun and distort planet and plunge the Earth into either the sun or move away from the sun, so they of flying asteroid collisions and other waste can be taken.

fire, fire everywhere - what about the ice? Well, then we have to wait real end of the world - the end of the whole universe. The mysterious "dark energy" that preceded whips the expansion of the universe ever, suggests the conclusion that it will expand more and more and more. At the end there is the Kältetod . The last stars are extinguished, the atoms fall apart, a dark, empty, infinite gauge on the absolute zero (-273 ° C) to meet us yawn. So the world ends in the ice. But until then, we still have a lot of time at each other weapons of mass destruction to slaughter, to pollute the earth beyond endurance and succumbing to new generations of viruses. So let's enjoy the happy prospect!

Oh - the next date of would-be prophets of doom for the expected end of the world currently is the year 2012 . Gaudeamus igitur!

Monday, January 28, 2008

Herpes Outbreak For A Month

The non- too free will

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Decide now ask whether you want to read this text!
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Decided? And if so - of free will? want to think



who have their own thoughts and decide on their own decisions come quickly into trouble. So the old question of "free will" of the people is much debated, but until now not been solved last authentic. The free will of the people were ready when it came despite the supposed goodness of the alleged God to explain the atrocities in the world, he was also regarded as an essential difference between the "divinely inspired" people and "stupid", instinct-driven animals . The latest findings in brain research shed some more light on the debate and may the hassle out of merely theoretical and abstract discussions of the last centuries, a little place on the earth.

to do something is the most natural thing in the world. (There is a fun to do a macabre way disease , really because of the people nothing more - and they do not interfere). However, there is first the surprising finding that our "will" is far less active than we think. Too many processes are automated, caused in part by quirky little things. Thus, John Bargh shown by the Yale University in an experiment that students who when age-related words like "wrinkles, gray, tired, sick," read, after it went slower than a comparison group. They set out to just read the attributes appropriated, without whose will also be aware in the slightest. People looked to by a poster (!) A pair of eyes, behaved unconsciously honest than usual, it was found in another attempt . Almost Charlie Chaplin-worthy the experiment , in man, during a cartoon show a pencil held horizontally with the mouth (ie like a smiley) the cartoon were funnier than those in which it like a lollipop forward stood out. People who put themselves into a professor in had performed better at Trivial Pursuit off than those who have a football hooligan hatten.Wir front of ourselves that is already in general much less under control than we think.

But when the man comes time to decide to be aware of, and the decision is "free" should be, this assumes, first, that it is subject to the decision not perceived by him constraints - are in it, everyone agrees. If he wants, he can lift the right finger - or the left. Commit a crime - or remain law abiding. Is that enough already for the adoption of free will? Or rather, the decision free from any restrictions yes causes, arise from a kind of autonomous, independent Black Box? Probably not - because the universe is subject to causal processes. A decision as an electrochemical process in the human brain must be strict causal criteria also. A 'decision' in which leaves the brain power "free will" the laws of physics and non-causal and therefore, as it randomly chooses, would be anything as my own. It would be a non-decision, one springing from the vacuum process, which I would watch in amazement. A decision is only "free" if it is through me (through my recent experiences, traits, current mood, etc.) reasons. Condition of freedom, so understood (or rather self-determination) is thus ironically determination.

interested Wen neurophysiology, dare a look at the circus in our skull. Firstly, there were the experiments of Benjamin Libet, who in the early eighties has shown that precede any conscious impulse Will unconscious brain activities in the tenth-second range. Awareness therefore not really take the decisions, but is the prior decisions only "informed" and formed into place, it would have even decided. Its not enough: 10 years later, Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues clearly demonstrates that one can make people willing puppets. They generated magnetic fields in the area of the brain responsible for movement of the left or right side. Then they asked the subjects who knew nothing of all this, move the right or left finger, as they want to. Depending on the stimulation of moving subjects corresponding exactly to the magnetically treated brain finger. However, this worked only when - surprise, surprise - the stimulation of the decision was preceded by exactly the Libet measured by tenths of a second range. The subjects were, however - even after they have been informed of the magnetic fields - which adamantly convinced themselves and decided to have "free". Stimulation of various brain areas resulted in one subject in a further attempt to marry the experimenter "voluntarily" to do. Also in other experiments people were manipulated, without that they felt manipulated.

Eckart von Hirsch Hausen aptly put it - the awareness is not the government, rather it is the government spokesman, dress of the decisions already taken in beautiful words and must be represented to the outside. This also makes sense from the evolutionary point of view: an awareness that the unconscious is completely under control, no right to exist. Because the area of the brain responsible for consciousness (cerebral cortex or cortex), is to hundreds of millions of years later emerged as the primary, unconscious instinct-driven "reptilian brain". That the "newbie" like control of the whole "store" would assume - as in real life - not very likely.

And now? So we are all robots, dolls and bio-mechanisms? To some degree already. Our decisions are determined - even if we insane because of the complexity of the human brain can predict with certainty can never be. This makes But nothing - we have a will, we subjectively - would be free call - quite rightly. Allowing a person make a decision and then you rewind the clock back 100 times, there are good reasons to believe that he is 100 times choose exactly the same - in full awareness, to act freely. That's confusing, but still compatible with one another contradiction between the first and the third-person perspective. "While we can have to do what we want, but we can only do we want to necessarily because of our experience": to the great Schopenhauer easy to modify.

(See here on the effects of the missing Anders-action-ability of the criminal law)