Up At The Ranch And Beyond

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Johnnycomelately (here)
For anybody who trusts that locks will secure their person or their property, alas. Lock picking is a fountain of OOF!

Fun movie trivia: In this well-known scene from Terminator 2, actress Linda Hamilton, playing Sarah Connor, learned how to pick a lock with a paperclip and did this on camera for real.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ni6mw6Mwfqw

[Bluegreen]

NASA Initiative to Study the Moon's Environment





NASA Announces Three New Scientific Payloads That Will Head to the Moon

If we’re going to the Moon to stay this time, according to space exploration intentions; astronauts, engineers, and scientists will need to understand the day-to-day environment on the lunar surface. Now, NASA has announced the selection of three scientific payloads to do just that.





These projects will hitch rides aboard various commercial lunar landers in the coming years as part of NASA's new Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) initiative. The payloads will study environmental hazards and critical resources, as well as scout out possible sheltered regions on the Moon. The goal is to lay the groundwork for a future human outpost on the Moon.

The first of the three selections is the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS). The goal of this payload is to document seismic events, including micrometeorite strikes, and follow the evolution of volatiles released just above the lunar surface.

Developed and built by the University of Maryland, the LEMS package is about the size of a small suitcase. Apollo astronauts have previously left similar seismic stations on the Moon that were powered by radioisotope heaters. LEMS will instead use innovative insulation technology to preserve its modern solar-powered batteries through the long lunar night.




In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts installed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (center) to, among other things, measure seismic activity on the Moon.

Next is the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation (GIMLI). This exciting project will examine the pit in Oceanus Procellarum to see if it is in fact an opening to a larger subterranean lava tube. If so, the Maruius Pit could provide a ready-made site for a future lunar base, providing natural shelter from meteoroid strikes and ionizing radiation. An underground habitat would also be more thermally stable than the surface. GIMLI is fielded by the Planetary Science Institute.




The location of the Marius Hills Pit, with a close-up view

The final selection is Depth Imager with Spectral and Color Optics (DISCO). DISCO will look for lunar ice hidden away in micro-cold traps on the lunar surface, with an eye toward future resource utilization. DISCO will also look at the overall stability of the lunar surface, including how rocket exhaust disturbs landing sites. NASA’s Ames Research Center aims to design and build DISCO.

“NASA Science is building the ultimate interplanetary survival guide to ensure that science goes first to the lunar surface to provide our future astronaut crews with the vital information, resources, and safety precautions needed ahead of time to survive the night on the Moon,” says Nicky Fox (NASA Science Mission Directorate) in a press release.

Published 13th October 2026 by: David Dickinson - Sky & Telescope
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronom...s-environment/

[Bluegreen]

The Night Sky

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14

■ As twilight fades down, catch the crescent Moon low in the southwest. Can you make out twinkly Antares very close to its right? They'll be about 1° or 2° apart depending on your location (in North America).






THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15

■ Cassiopeia lies astride the winter Milky Way. So it offers lots of open star clusters for telescopes, including some within range of binoculars depending on the quality of your sky. Three of my favorite Cas clusters are NGC 457 (the Owl or ET cluster, which includes 5th-magnitude Phi Cassiopeiae); M103, dominated by a tiny line of three stars 0.1° long, magnitudes 7.2, 8.2, and 7.5; and fluffier NGC 663.

■ In 7 x 50 binoculars NGC 457 looks to me like a subtle little windblown candleflame, being blown northwestward from its base of Phi Cas and Phi's 7th-mag binocular companion.

■ The visibility of these subtle little cluster-glows will depend, of course, on your light pollution and your instrument. I have no trouble with them using 10x50 binocs under my fairly light-polluted suburban sky.


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16

■ As soon as the sky is fully dark, spot the thick crescent Moon low in the southwest. Tonight it's in the Sagittarius Teapot, which is made of 2nd- and 3rd-magnitude stars. The Teapot is now steeply tilted to pour. Its triangular spout is below the Moon, and its four-star handle is to the Moon's upper left (at the times of nightfall in North America).

■ Mars, Jupiter, and Regulus continue to draw together high in the southeast before and during early dawn. If you get up early, keep an eye on them. Mars and Jupiter will pass each other by 1.2° exactly a month from now, and then the three will bunch up most closely around November 25th.





SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

■ Now the Moon shines a little upper right of the Teapot's handle right after dark (for North America).

■ Algol, the prototype eclipsing binary star, should be its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 9:52 p.m. EDT.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronom...bserving-news/

[Bluegreen]

Bright Green Fireball Over Northern Germany



This spectacular celestial display aligns perfectly with the current astronomical calendar, as both the Orionids (October 2 to November 7, peaking on October 22) and the Southern Taurids (September 20 to November 20) are currently active—with the latter being particularly known for producing frequent, impressive fireballs.

Published 3rd October 2026 (1:16)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d18V__Y6Ld0

[Bluegreen]

____________

Healthy Coral Reversed Sickness in Its Neighbor With Just 1 Week of Contact

Corals cannot survive long without the algae that live inside their bodies. But under stress from factors like heat, pollution, and UV exposure, these algae can become toxic to the coral, which evicts them.

Without their algal symbionts, corals turn white, in what is known as coral bleaching. A 'bleached' coral has limited time to acquire new algal symbionts before it starves to death.

With the threat of coral bleaching events growing each year, Stanford scientists have found a technique that could help rescue corals on the brink of death.

"While bleached corals may be dying, they are not dead yet," says Stanford marine scientist Danny Collins. "The question we wanted to answer is, once a coral has bleached, what can we do?"

A clue came from his colleague Steve Palumbi, who had noticed something interesting in a lab tank.





Two pieces of Pocillopora damicornis coral collected from the same colony had fallen onto each other. One was bleached, and the other was healthy. But at the point where they were touching, color was returning to the bleached fragment.

The healthy coral was transferring its symbiotic algae to its neighbor.

"What we've found is that if we put a healthy coral in contact with a bleached coral, the healthy coral actually sends over algal symbionts and nutrients to the bleached coral, fully recovering it in a short period of time," Collins says.

"I was blown away watching the actual color of this healthy coral slowly spread over into this bleached coral."





"Their tissues are growing and creating a nutrient bridge, allowing for the flow of nutrients and symbionts between those cells," he says.

"The healthy coral can jump-start the recovery of the bleached coral, by sending over these symbionts… We can take away the healthy coral, and the bleached coral can now recover itself."

Just one week of contact with healthy coral was enough to jump-start a complete recovery in the bleached pieces, which took up to seven weeks in total. This is an order of magnitude faster than recovery times seen in wild bleached populations.

"These new insights into how corals can naturally recover give us hope for the future," says marine ecologist Fiorenza Micheli.

"They open the door to what's possible and may lead to the breakthrough we need to accelerate reef restoration."




Published 15th October 2026 by Jess Cockerill – Science Alert
https://www.sciencealert.com/healthy...eek-of-contact

The Super El Niño is Cooking Coral Reefs

Can lullabies and probiotics save them?

Researchers are trying everything they can to help coral reefs to survive severe heat stress from climate change, including playing sounds underwater.




Coral reefs in the Philippines are still recovering from the last El Niño, even as another one gains strength. Credit: Alex Mustard

It’s peak spawning time for coral in the Caribbean Sea and there’s something new in the water this year. Underwater speakers at several locations are serenading clouds of floating larvae as they search for a place on the reef to permanently settle. Sounds recorded at vibrant reefs — such as the clicks of snapping prawn and the thrum of fish — fill the water at spots where coral reefs are struggling because of high temperatures, pollution and other stresses.

The hope is that these sea songs will lure floating coral larvae into settling on the degraded reefs and help them to recover. This project, run by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, relies on the discovery that coral larvae can sense sound and use it as a cue to follow as they search for a permanent home.

“Healthy reefs are naturally broadcasting sound all over the place,” says Aran Mooney, a marine bioacoustician at WHOI who leads the project. He’s part of a small army of researchers stepping up their efforts to save threatened corals. In addition to playing lullabies to restore damaged reefs, they are implementing other emergency measures, such as moving corals from shallow locations to deeper, cooler water and inoculating reefs with protective microorganisms.

The planet’s corals need all the help that they can get. This year’s record-breaking ocean temperatures, resulting from human-caused climate change and a super-strong El Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean, have spurred fresh alarm about the future of coral reefs. Elevated water temperatures can cause coral bleaching, which happens when the usually richly coloured organisms expel the symbiotic algae that they rely on for nutrients; this can ultimately kill the coral.




Researchers test a system in Dominica that plays sounds of a healthy reef to help corals grow

As of late August, coral bleaching had been observed in corals around Florida, the Pacific coast of Panama and Kiribati in the Central Pacific. The Coral Reef Watch of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that, in large swathes of the oceans, the water had reached temperatures that placed corals at risk of bleaching and heat mortality. Temperatures are expected to rise even further in 2027 as the El Niño reaches its full strength, and that will raise the risks for corals.

Coral reefs can recover from bleaching and their ability to bounce back has often surprised scientists. But recovery takes time and corals can’t catch a break: this year’s bleaching event comes less than a year after the last global one ended in 2025.

Michael Sweet, a coral biologist at the University of Derby, UK, says that, despite the depressing outlook, many researchers are focusing on what they can do to help. “You swing between almost giving up, to going, ‘I’m going to fight to my dying breath to try and make things a bit better’.”

Published 30th September 2026 by James Dinneen – Nature.com
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02965-9

[Vicus]

Red Sprites from the thunderstorm between the Balearic Islands and Barcelona on September 16th 2026, photographed by Florian Riou from Corsica.

https://florianriou.com/redsprites-farfadets/

https://florianriou.com/

[Bluegreen]

Thx Vicus, a spectacular, in the dictionary sense of the word, moment in time
And a shout-out to Ewan, as it took me days to get the joke

[Bluegreen]

Space Rock | Abakus





(3:41:40)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eDa9NXZ1abM

Tracklist:

01. 00:00 - “Dreamer”
02. 06:52 - “A Whole New Way of Looking At the Day”
03. 10:24 - “Otherworlds”
04. 14:32 - “We Need Those Papers”
05. 17:44 - “Storm”
06. 22:12 - “California Sunshine”
07. 28:23 - “Rocket”
08. 33:07 - “Silent Geometry“
09. 38:59 - “Let Go“
10. 44:11 - “Igmatik”
11. 49:57 - “Diametric”
12. 56:05 - “Evolutions”
13. 01:00:37 - “Liberated from the Negative”
14. 01:05:41 - “Night Walker”
15. 01:10:49 - “The Trojan Ballerina”
16. 01:16:58 - “The Beginning”
17. 01:23:21 - “Circles”
18. 01:30:00 - “Tale of the Moon”
19. 01:33:38 - “Hydoglyphic”
20. 01:38:01 - “Lost Myself“
21. 01:43:04 - “That Much Closer“
22. 01:48:03 - “Tears Me Apart”
23. 01:52:41 - “Beyond the Fields”
24. 01:58:52 - “Laser Bass”
25. 02:03:53 - “Cloud & Sun Friends ReUnited“
26. 02:07:57 - “I Had a Dream Last Night“
27. 02:12:37 - “Nightdub”
28. 02:17:39 - “Embrace”
29. 02:20:25 - “The Sleeper Must Awaken”
30. 02:25:40 - “Chips Challenge“ / “K-Hole“
31. 02:32:25 - “3D Love Affair”
32. 02:37:25 - “Shape Shifting Slowely”
33. 02:40:37 - “Dynamite”
34. 02:45:41 - “Duotechnolique“
35. 02:49:58 - “May the Dub Be Told“
36. 02:54:07 - “Wasted Feeling”
37. 03:01:44 - “Resurrection”
38. 03:07:49 - “Telepathy”
39. 03:14:53 - “Evolving Light Geoms“
40. 03:19:55 - “Fleeting Memory“
41. 03:20:58 - “Duotech“
42. 03:25:59 - “Bubbles”
43. 03:36:51 - “Sudden Rush”

[Bluegreen]

1,000 Mile Long Cloud on Mars Forms and Vanishes Every Day

Obeys 'exotic physics' never seen on Earth





A 1,000-mile-long (1,600 kilometers) Martian cloud that emerges and then quickly disappears from the Red Planet's sky nearly every day is even weirder than scientists realized. New simulations suggest that the eerie apparition can only be explained using "exotic physics" that have been theorized but never seen on Earth or anywhere else in the solar system.

The mysterious floating mass, dubbed the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC), frequently emerges above Arsia Mons, a 12-mile-tall (20 km) extinct volcano located in the Tharsis region, just south of the Red Planet's equator. The water vapor cloud was first spotted in 2018 by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and has since appeared nearly every morning throughout Mars' spring and summer, when increased solar radiation triggers strong surface winds. But it lasts only a few hours each day, before fully evaporating.




Arsia Mons is the second-tallest volcano on Mars behind Olympus Mons, but is twice as tall as Mount Everest. (Photo: NASA Odyssey Orbiter)

The AMEC can stretch up to 1,100 miles (1,800 km) long, around one-twelfth of Mars' circumference. For context, that is roughly twice the length of the U.K. or the distance between New York City and Miami.

Although the Red Planet is no stranger to giant dust clouds and occasional "iridescent streaks" of carbon dioxide, it is almost completely devoid of atmospheric water vapor. That makes it extremely rare for puffy, Earth-like clouds to form there, let alone ones so vast. As a result, scientists have struggled to explain this wacky weather.

But in a new study published Oct. 7 in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers used Mars Express data to create new simulations in an effort to finally explain the AMEC. Initially, the team struggled to recreate the puzzling phenomenon. But when they abandoned traditional meteorological principles in favor of a more out-of-the-box explanation, they were eventually successful.

"To create the AMEC in our modelling, we found that we needed to include some exotic physics … physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature," study first author Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at the University of the Basque Country in Spain who was affiliated with Sorbonne University in Paris at the time of the study, said in a statement. "Once we included this physics in our simulations, the AMEC emerged just as we hoped."

"Wholly unexpected"

The AMEC is an orographic cloud, meaning it forms as strong winds push water vapor up and over a raised structure, such as a mountain. Similar clouds also exist on Earth, including the "Levanter" cloud, which occasionally forms above the Rock of Gibraltar in southern Europe. However, the Martian equivalent cannot be explained by the same processes that occur on our planet.




Mars Express has been closely monitoring the AMEC since 2018. These photos show the cloud appearing over consecutive days.

On Earth, clouds form via a process called heterogeneous nucleation, in which moist air cools and condenses into ice crystals that form around tiny atmospheric particles, such as dust, salt, pollen or soot. But while Mars has plenty of atmospheric dust, that's not what's happening there.

"For the AMEC, it seems that cloud formation takes place without needing any of this 'stuff' [in the air]," said Hernández-Bernal, who has been studying the AMEC for the past six years. "Water vapour turns directly into icy cloud particles without any middle step. It's akin to droplets of condensation appearing in the middle of a room, rather than on a window."

The researchers call this "homogeneous nucleation" and say it has never been seen before in a planetary atmosphere. "It's wholly unexpected," added Hernández-Bernal.

Published 9th October 2026 by Harry Baker – Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/space/ma...-seen-on-earth

[Bluegreen]

There's a Surprisingly Simple Way to Remove Microplastics in Your Drinking Water





Tiny fragments of plastic are making their way deep inside our bodies in concerning quantities, particularly through our food and drink.

But recent research suggests there is something you can actually do about it.

Scientists in China found a simple and effective means of removing them from water – and it starts with something already sitting on your stove.

Back in 2024, the team ran tests on both soft water and hard tap water (which is richer in minerals). They added nanoplastics and microplastics to the water before boiling the liquid and then filtering out any precipitates.

The tests showed that boiling and then filtering the water can make a significant difference to the plastic contaminants you might otherwise ingest.

"Tap water nano/microplastics (NMPs) escaping from centralized water treatment systems are of increasing global concern, because they pose potential health risks to humans via water consumption," the researchers explained in their published paper.





Of course, the huge benefit is that most people can do it with what they already have in their kitchen.

"This simple boiling water strategy can 'decontaminate' NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption," said biomedical engineer Zimin Yu from Guangzhou Medical University.

Published 16th October 2026 by David Nield - Science Alert
https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-...drinking-water
https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article-...uman-Intake-of
______

DIY WATER FILTER



Don't skimp on the charcoal and sand.

(3:24)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=60Big9Ut6Mc

[Bluegreen]

Saturday Morning Cartoons



"Poachers From Outer Space!"

Redneck bros Randy & Sid have an unusual experience in the woods.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ROOpi4Z11y0

[Bluegreen]

Happy Birthday

... to the crossword puzzlers' favorite astronaut, Mae Jemison, October 17, 1956

[Bluegreen]

Green, Pink and Purple

Astronomers reveal the surprising true colors of white dwarf stars




Stellar remnants called white dwarfs ‪appear to come in a rainbow of colors

Stellar cores called white dwarfs come in an astonishing array of colors, including what scientists say is the first known green star and the reddest star ever found, new research reveals.

A white dwarf star is the dense, cooling core that remains after a low- to medium-mass star runs out of fuel. The new study, published Oct. 15 in the journal RAS Techniques and Instruments, shows that white dwarfs come in far more colors than their name suggests.

White dwarf stars got their moniker because the first known examples glowed in either white or pale blue. The new study, however, suggests that "white" dwarfs also emit visible-light colors like pink, green, cyan, purple and yellow.

"Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like 'perfect radiators,' so their colour is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs," Mark Hollands, an astronomer at the University of Warwick in the U.K. and first author of the study, said in a statement. "It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colours nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me."

The variety of colors is possible due to white dwarfs' densities compared with main-sequence stars, the study suggests. Cooler white dwarfs have a density of about 1 gram per cubic centimeter, much like flowing water on Earth. The density of these white dwarfs is also millions of times denser than the sun's visible surface, or photosphere, leading to unusual conditions.

"Any trace elements that may be present, such as carbon, calcium and sodium, interact with the surrounding dense helium plasma and absorb light across a wider range of colours than they would at lower densities," the researchers said in a statement. "This shifts a star's colour away from the orange, white and blue [typical] of a perfect radiator."

Published 16th October 2026 by Elizabeth Howell – Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/space/as...ew-study-finds




Color-accurate simulated images of white dwarfs. The varying amounts/compositions of accreted material and white dwarf temperatures allow for a diverse array of colors. 

[Bluegreen]

Hello!



Estate Sale Purchase Turns Out To Be Box Of Live WWII Grenades

Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Police responded in Texas when an estate sale shopper going through their purchases discovered a box was filled with live grenades dating from World War II.

The Austin Police Association said on social media that officers responded to the "unusual call" on Monday when "a resident bought some boxes at an estate sale and, while going through them, found what appeared to be World War II-era grenades."

The Austin Police Department's bomb squad arrived on the scene and confirmed the box contained live and active grenades.

Police said the grenades were safely seized and removed from the scene.

"Handling 80-year-old explosives with unknown stability is dangerous, precise work," officials wrote.

"Not your typical estate sale find," they added.

Published 14th October 2026 by Ben Hooper – UPI
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/10...6091791999348/

[Bluegreen]

Newest Images From Space



Quick Look: NASA's Chandra Breaks Down 'Treble Clef's' Galaxy Cluster Collision

Published 14th October 2026 (0:46)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NB7TKIxQEuc

[Johnnycomelately]

Surf’s Up,
Up in Heaven!

RIP Rubberman





Larry passed Oct 10, 2026, age 71.

https://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/...-skateboarding

Larry Bertlemann spent the 1970s showing surfers that a wave could be ridden in ways they had barely imagined.

Link has this vid embedded, posted 2 years ago, L = 19:27.


Larry Bertlemann: The Visionary Behind Surfing's Radical Transformation

Real Surf Stories
30.7K subscribers

Oct 26, 2026

Dive into the revolutionary world of the roots of high-performance surfing with our spotlight on Larry Bertlemann, the Hawaiian innovator who transformed the sport in the mid-70s. Discover how his unique low-carving style, influenced by street moves, reshaped surfing techniques and set the stage for iconic figures like Tony Alva and the Dogtown Z-Boys leading to aerials skateboarding, then surfing. Join us as we explore the legacy of Bertlemann's shredding revolution that echoes through the surfing community today!

Music:
Soulites
Niebiezco Czarni
Modo
Gotique

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mGThavFiNgA

[Bluegreen]

Orionid Meteor Shower

Wednesday, October 21

Sunrise: 7:17 A.M.
Sunset: 6:11 P.M.
Moonrise: 3:56 P.M.
Moonset: 2:15 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous (81%)





The Orionid meteor shower peaks October 21-23 — the perfect time to watch for shooting stars, as Earth turns into the meteoroid stream of dusty debris responsible for the show. 

The best time to do some meteor-watching is between 2 A.M. local daylight time and dawn, as the radiant in Orion rises higher and the Moon has already set. Around 5 A.M., the Hunter stands above the southern horizon, his famous three-star Belt easy to find.

Meteors in the Orionid shower appear to originate just to the upper left  (northeast) of Betelgeuse, the bright red giant that serves as one of Orion’s shoulders. Once you’ve found this star, cast your gaze some 40° to 60° to either side, away from it — that’s where you’ll see meteors with the longest trains. 

This year’s shower is expected to produce some 15–18 meteors per hour in the early-morning hours. And if you aren’t able to get out in the morning, you can try again late tonight after Orion rises and overnight into tomorrow morning. Even though the peak has passed, meteor rates will still be higher than the sporadic six or so per hour that are visible even without any showers active.



www.astronomy.com

[Bluegreen]

SpaceX Just Delivered Some Very Strange Cargo to the ISS




SpaceX Dragon docks at the ISS Harmony module

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station at 10:27 a.m. EDT on October 15, docking at the space-facing port of the station's Harmony module. The spacecraft delivered more than 6,300 pounds of food, essential supplies, and scientific equipment for the Expedition 75 crew.

The arrival marks SpaceX's 35th commercial resupply mission to the orbiting laboratory under its contract with NASA. Along with everyday necessities for the astronauts, Dragon brought an unusual collection of scientific experiments that could help researchers develop new medical treatments and better understand how materials behave in space.

Among the most important items aboard Dragon is the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays, known as IROSAs. These solar panels are designed to expand the station's ability to generate electricity, providing additional power for its operations and scientific research. Installation is planned for later this fall.

The spacecraft also delivered equipment for manufacturing artificial retinas in microgravity, the condition of near weightlessness experienced aboard the space station. Researchers hope that producing these structures in space could eventually lead to technologies that help restore vision for people on Earth.

Other experiments include 3D heart tissue models, which recreate important features of human heart tissue. Scientists plan to use these models to advance methods for testing large numbers of potential drugs during future space missions.

Published 16th October 2026 by NASA – Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1016070628.htm

[Bluegreen]

Scientists Find a Bizarre Pattern in Over 1,000 Cases of Alleged Human Reincarnation





Over 30 percent of Americans believe in the concept of reincarnation, the notion that people who die will be reborn again in this world.

While there's no firm scientific evidence suggesting that it actually happens – nor of what happens to our consciousness after we die – the study of reincarnation, and our beliefs about it, is still a serious focus of scientific research.

For decades, in fact, researchers have investigated what's known as Cases of the Reincarnation Type (CORT) – instances in which people, predominantly children, appear to report memories and details of somebody else's life.

Since the 1960s, researchers at the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies have collected information on thousands of these strange cases, representing the largest dataset of its kind. Now, a new analysis of that trove of data has revealed a striking pattern in these mysterious episodes.

In cases where the identified deceased individual died suddenly or unexpectedly, the "intermission time" – the amount of time between their death and the birth of the child recalling their life – was significantly shorter than in cases where the death wasn't unexpected.

The findings, reported in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, can't really be explained, researchers say.

"This is the largest systematic study to date of temporal patterns in reported past-life memories," says lead author and cognitive neuroscience researcher Saeedeh Sadeghi from the University of Virginia. "Individual cases can leave room for different interpretations, but patterns across many cases are much harder to explain as exaggeration, fantasy or fabrication."

"The effect remained even after we accounted for several cultural and psychological factors, and it was actually stronger in families whose religions did not support reincarnation," added social psychologist Philip Cozzolino of the University of Virginia.


https://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...-reincarnation
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...7%2Fcns0000493
https://med.virginia.edu/clinical/ps...eptual-studies

[Bluegreen]

Why We Probably Live In A Multiverse





The once-fringe quantum Many Worlds theory now seems much more likely

Quantum mechanics, which recently turned 100 years old, ranks as the most successful theory in the history of physics. Yet on a fundamental level, we still don’t understand what quantum mechanics is saying about how the world works.

Any standard textbook will tell you that the dynamics of quantum mechanics are based on two axioms—mathematical rules that allow us to theoretically compute the outcome of an experiment.

Surprisingly, these two axioms are self-contradictory. They present one of nature’s deepest mysteries: the quantum measurement problem—the fact that the quantum rules describing an object to be measured don’t seem to apply to the object doing the measuring. This disturbing contradiction suggests that different physical laws apply to the observer and the observed.

One proposal to resolve the paradox is the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Many Worlds demands that our universe actually be a multiverse. The idea is often considered fringe, even silly. Lately, however, experimental progress has been changing the situation. Scientists have been able to measure quantum effects in larger and more complex systems and over great distances, blurring the line once thought to separate the scale of observer and observed.

These signs that quantum rules might cross over into the macroscopic realm are making many physicists reconsider Many Worlds ...

Much more by Philipp Strasberg and Clara Moskowitz – Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...um-multiverse/