Physics’ Split Personality: Is the Dark Side Winning?

By Deepak Chopra, MD, and Menas Kafatos, PhD

 

Every Sentiment Being is a universe

For some time now most of the universe has gone dark. This startling news was brought to popular attention in a June Op-Ed piece in the New York Times called “A Crisis at the Edge of Physics.” It began, “Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories?” In other words, once you work out a theoretical explanation for how Nature works, do you need evidence to prove it?

 

The answer seems like an obvious yes. If someone had a theory that unicorns live at the center of black holes, no one would believe it without evidence. But for a hundred years, ever since the quantum revolution, mathematics has often substituted for empirical data. The quantum world is too far removed from the everyday world for empiricism to guide the way. There have been famous validations of arcane theories, as when astronomers used a total solar eclipse in 1919 to verify Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that light can been bent into a curve by strong gravitational forces.

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How the Universe Pulled a Vanishing Act

Universe2By Deepak Chopra, MD

The issues facing modern physics are so baffling that they’ve crossed a threshold and now fascinate the general public. We laymen have very little at stake, personally speaking, when scientists argue over the Big Bang—without advanced mathematical training, it’s all but impossible to follow the arguments. But we do have a stake when the universe starts to disappear, as it is doing right this minute.

 

The cosmic vanishing act began, approximately, when dark matter and dark energy showed up on the radar of cosmology. “Dark” is a misleading term, because the space between the stars is pitch black, but it isn’t dark in the way that dark matter and energy are. They are dark as in totally mysterious. No light is given off by them, or any known form of energy we associate with the universe. They cannot be measured, and so far as anyone can guess, dark matter is probably not constituted of anything resembling atoms or subatomic particles.

 

The reason that dark matter and energy are important is arcane to the layman, having to do with the fact that instead of moving apart at a constant rate or slowing down, the galaxies are accelerating as they move away from each other. This acceleration defies gravity, so at the very least dark energy is some species of antigravity (to put it in very general terms—the actual nature of this unknown force is complex, arcane, and much speculated over).

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Five Spiritual Mysteries: #1 Is Karma Fair? (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Screen shot 2011-04-04 at 5.37.27 PM

Even at a time when religion is declining in the West, most people remember the Biblical saying “As you sow, so shall you reap.” they cling to a belief taught in childhood, that good is rewarded and evil punished. In the first post we started to look at the possibility that what was learned in childhood is correct. The universe balances right and wrong, good and evil. In the Indian spiritual tradition this simple notion was developed into the Law of Karma. But common experience offers endless examples of good that isn’t rewarded and evil that is never punished.  So is karma really fair or not?

 

In his famous encounter with Albert Einstein in 1930, the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore argued against the random universe of quantum physics in favor of a “human universe” where harmony prevailed despite the evidence of unruly passions and bad deeds. Tagore meant this quite literally, not metaphorically. The universe was an expression of divine consciousness, and human beings, who express the same cosmic consciousness, belong within the grand scheme. In fact, the universe mirrors human destiny and vice versa.

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Hidden Truths: Going Beyond Common-Sense Reality (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, MD, Menas  Kafatos, Ph.D., and Subhash Kak, Ph.D.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Although everyone as a practical matter accepts “reality as given” – the world presented by the five senses – that common-sense version of the world was radically undermined over a century ago with the advent of relativity and quantum theory.  Equally dramatically, results from neuroscience show that mind creates representations of reality as in the phantom limb phenomenon. The trail from this ongoing revolution leads to current theories about a conscious universe, one that displays all the attributes of mind. In other words, mind precedes matter. The first post in this series introduced this concept, which if true would revolutionize everyday life. Reality itself, as explored by cutting-edge theories in physics, cosmology, and neuroscience, is giving us hints that we should look at the world through fresh eyes.

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