Biocosmology - A New Generation

I have just produced the 2015 Edition of my foundation paper Biocosmology.

It contains an overview of all the latest developments in understanding how life is a product of the cosmological symmetry-breaking at the origin of the universe and includes all the latest discoveries from the chemistry of interstellar dust grains, though to the emergence of RNA, with all the new molecular pathways and metabolic processes leading to replicating RNA and the genetic code and on to LUCA the last universal common ancestor of all life today.

Kitten's Cradle and the Entanglement

This is about the physics behind the song "Kitten's Cradle" whose lyrics were in the last post, but before I explain this - please note a remastering.  I have just spent another couple of days improving the string levels to do justice to Charmian and Sophia's performances.

I have thus replaced the high quality mp3 version at: http://dhushara.com/nino/catparadox.mp3

and re-produced the video with the improved sound track at a new link:
http://youtu.be/1c_wGAkktUI

Now to the physics. 

As noted, you can read about this in detail at: http://dhushara.com/stc/ct.htm

None of us know how or why we are conscious sentient beings, despite our subjective experience being the only access we have to the world around us, from birth to death. In the words of philosopher Jerry Fodor neither do any of us have the slightest notion of what it would be like to have a theory of how the brain makes the mind or what form such a theory could possibly take..

Enter quantum reality. In the quantum world two very weird things happen. Firstly if a cat is given a 50-50 chance of being killed, by a radioactive scintillation breaking a flask of cyanide, it is neither dead nor alive, but both in a shadowy double existence. In our ongoing consciousness we split the wave function and find the cat is alive or dead not both. This has made physicists think consciousness plays a pivotal role in bringing the real universe about from a host of multiverses - making history actually happen rather than just a shadowy superposition of all possibilities. 

Now another weird thing about quantum reality. Particles caught together in the same wave function become entangled, so their behavior is connected across space-time instantaneously. In entanglement, and in fact in every wave function, the past and future handshake together, and both influence one another, so the future can also affect the past, not just the past and present determining the future. This is completely counterintuitive to our idea of causality and the linear arrow of time, but doesn't mean that the future is necessarily predetermined.  On the contrary, it could explain how consciousness came about, in the following way. 

If the brain uses entangled states, in a certain way using weak measurements which don't collapse the waves, it may be able to have an intuitive sense of things that are about to happen. I have a lot of prescient experiences, particularly dreaming, but really it is obvious that the central role of being conscious is anticipating reality and any threats to our survival - jumping out of the way of the tiger. Brain waves look very much like quantum wave functions and phase coherence is the basis of both the brain distinguishing noise from attended signal and is the basis of quantum uncertainty.

This would explain why consciousness evolved, beginning with the first chaotically excitable cells which became sensitive to their environment anticipatively using the butterfly effect and the effect flowed on into our multicellular brains, making consciousness fundamental to cellular life, or at least the life of eucaryotes (protists, plants, animals, & fungi).

This the the very core of the existential dilemma being cracked here. It's a much deeper and harder problem than the theory of everything about the big bang although we can see the two are opposite ends of the same enigma.

So that's why I decided to write the song after producing a paper explaining this. I figure this is deeper than religion. It's deeper than ego, deeper than personal suffering and deeper than science itself because it goes right to the core of our spark of awareness. And it needs to be expressed in creative ways which evoke the mystery in a way which can unravel the dyed in the wool notions of traditional religions and mechanistic science, both of which reduce us to a doomed clockwork.

This piece, with the instrumentals, the refrain and the conscious beings who participated in it, are counting out in their awareness-in-flight something utterly mysterious that humanity needs to come to terms with to understand our own brief moment in the light on the dew on the lawn of time before we are whisked away again into eternity. We need to sing and dance about it because it is our first and and last tango entangled in one enigmatic reality.

Cat Paradox Music Track

Cat Paradox (mp3 download)
Song of the unrequited quantum physics of love

Have we all been running around in circles?

Thinking time is linear, caught in the kitten's cradle,

when all our pasts, and all of our futures

are woven together in the entanglement.

I thought I saw you dancing, spiraling all around me,

but now I have realized it was just some smoke on the wind.

We shared the same illusion, we were on the same wavelength,

but with uncertain momentum, and the energy to collide.

I will always remember. I will always be thinking of you

in the overlapping waters flowing through the tides of history,

among the tangled threads, in the webs of our communion,

beyond the furthest reaches of the trackless wilderness,

in the halls of the mirrors of our recollections 

I will always be seeking the paths to reunite.

Although we've been thrown apart in the recoil of interaction

skittering on a tangential, parabolic arc.

I know that we will come sweeping back together 

like comets with shining tails blazing across the sky.

I know that we shall always be entwined with one another

in the cosmic wave function enclosing the universe.

So this is the sacred braid of our enchantment.

Schrodinger's cat paradox of the tanged tale of life.

Even in our seasons of long-forsaken loneliness

love echoes on together from end to end of time.

reverberating in superposition, hidden in uncertainty,

entwined in our entanglement, enveloped in our correlation,

neither dead nor alive, are we bound just to be free?

Deus ex Machina and the Conscious Cosmos

Deus ex Machina and the Conscious Cosmos Chris King Feb 2014

The concept of “god in the machine” evokes all the paradoxes of nature and existence, from religious creationism to mechanistic atheism. We use this evocative notion to escape from the contradictions of current world views and to discover the roots of our transformative consciousness.

Space, Time and Consciousness

Space, Time and Consciousness Chris King Feb 2014

This paper presents a potential mechanism for the conscious brain to anticipate impending opportunities and threats to survival through massively parallel weak quantum measurement (MPWQM) induced by the combined effects of edge of chaos sensitivity and phase coherence sampling of brain states. It concludes that the underpinnings of this process emerged in single-celled eucaryotes.

Here's the link to my latest studio-produced music track completed  today
http:dhushara.com/nino/ride.mp3

The Long Ride - aka a 40 year conjugal affair - following on from the remastered "Love" see: http:dhushara.com/nino/

As usual it's about truly loving the one you're with, but it's also about time and the way life flashes past before our eyes before we know what's happened, so its a warning to all of us not to become fixated on our neuroses and negative attitudes towards one another - because life is too short!.

The Long Ride

Have we been slumbering in the dreamtime?
As life hurtles on before our eyes.
Shooting through it in a state of sheer distraction.
A mortal condition with which we all can sympathize.
Can we still catch the living moment?
And open the gates of time and tide?

Did we gaze upon eternity
in fleeting moments we seldom recognize?
Did we become entangled in one another
just to discover the truth in how time flies?
You know our hearts have not been broken,
so we have to know we've been in for the long ride.

Do you remember - the first time we met?
We lay all night in your little tent together
making passionate love as if the morning would never come.

Wandering the streets - of old Penang
taking a bus from Medan to Lake Toba
fireflies in the monkey forest, small bats flying over.

Living on our land - of Opuhi.
Crouching together in the smoke of the meeting house.
Walking with the children down to the school bus

Staring across the gulf -  at the islands.
Listening in the moonlight to the call of the Morepork,
little breezes shivering, crickets making small talk.

Decades have passed. Our children - have had children.
Biding our times, abiding whole seasons.
The cry and the smile of love beyond reason.

My gratitude to you - is  ever flowing.
As long as we journey the good life together
you always will be my perennial lover.

Through many long years I've been loving you
You've always been standing by my side
In times of separation and togetherness.
Through the very flux and change we are entwined.
So this is a song of recognition
to acknowledge the tortuous journey of our lives.

Apocalypsia movie released with key

I have just released the 5-hour movie "Apocalypsia" of our millennial vigil in 2000 onto YouTube with a 30 minute key introduction. The movie covers our entire journey from the Amazon to Jerusalem via Varanasi and Rome. At the very least it makes a unique travel movie, but it also has paradigm shifting implications.  The introductory key explains what it was all about in a 30-minute impromptu account out of nowhere 13 years on.

You can find it on my YouTube channel

The individual 30-minute key and one hour sections are at the following links:
Apocalypsia Key
Apocalypsia 1 
Apocalypsia 2
Apocalypsia 3
Apocalypsia 4
Apocalypsia 5