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posted on 2004-2-10 at 20:22
Life(This is not a board game thread)
During my little time off, I was really thinking. Thinking about life, why we were placed here and what we were sent to do. The afterlife, life on
other planents and shit like that. Put away all of that crap they teach you in religion, speak what you believe. Let's try to make this thread a
bit more serious boys and girls.
Speak on anything you want to regarding humans, the afterlife and shit along those lines. Hopefully we can get something like the 'Music as an
Art' thread.
one last show.
Reivax
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posted on 2004-2-10 at 21:41
I used to really consider myself a christian - I went to church, catechism, I did proffesion of faith, I went to a christian grade school and so on. I
really try to have a little faith in my life, but I find it just is depleting as I get older. I want to be able to believe in God and Heaven, because
it gives a little more purpose in why we ARE here. And I know when I didn't question so much in it, it really made me feel pretty good.
Through my teen years I have seen my family deteriorate, I have seen family members nearly die through self inflicted wounds, I have seen friends
loose people that should not be gone. Basically, I have seen some horrible shit in the past years. I have also personally went through alot. I have
suffered from incredible anxiety attacks, I have been so paranoid about leaving my house that I would actually throw-up from being so scared OF
throwing-up. I missed nearly an entire year of school from being scared to go to school. I was always getting medication for depression and so on.
(I am NOT looking for sympathy at all..I know alot of you have been through alot worse shit)
That's enough about my history...what I am really getting at, is that after seeing all these things HOW can I believe that there is someone
"watching over me" and "protecting me". It sounds like a whole load of shit really. When I was a little bit younger, I felt
like the only people that really, truly believed in God were those rare people that have been blessed with a stable family and a stable head. I have
some friends like this and they are the few friends of mine that really still believe in the bible.
Then again, sometimes I think that maybe all of it is a test. A test to the faith. If I could make it past all of this and still believe in God, then
I have somehow proven to God that I belong in his family. God tested people alot in the bible, why would he stop now?
I guess I will always have a little faith and I am glad, because I do know that one day I would like to be able to believe in the bible the way that I
did when I was younger.
Most people tend to fixate on all the negative things in life, letting the negative outweigh the positive. I have been blessed with alot of things. I
still have all my family in my life, I have a wonderful, beautiful finacee, I have seen and done alot of great things in life that alot of people
don't get a chance to do. And I have also been able to get over alot of the anxiety and paranoia. I haven't had a true anxiety attack for
years.
I think I have really lost my train of thought hear, so I will close up. I will post on some of the other thoughts laster. Seeing as I only really
stuck with the "christian" theme here.
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 03:33
Just Like 90% of the population, as a newborn I was placed under a religion because of my parent’s decision. A forum…I was introduced to it and
followed it’s cultures and ways; going to church, praying etc. but as years go by you do less and less of these things tell one day you stop. I no
longer go to church unless it’s wedding or funeral. I haven’t been to “mass” in a long time and I don’t plan to go anytime soon. I was brought up to
follow the church and believe in God…heaven…but as the years go by shit happens, families break up, people die, life changes. You begin to see the
world as for what it really is instead f what your parents filter out. I am truly curious as to where God is throughout these times? If he were truly
there would he not stop and help? Throughout the entire Holocaust the people prayed for God to put it to an End…but did he? No, they were killed and
suffered an horrible horrible death…only to be burnt and used for soap.
As for the Bible…well I believe they are just exaggerated stories. They weren’t really written by these disciples but by men a long time after that.
These stories were written as remembered from person to person…being a very poetic population it wasn’t altered that much. (You have to think of it as
a song that goes through the family…arpeggios and strumming patterns may change…yet the lyrics stay somewhat intact).
The first bible (sorry don’t know what you call it in English…being French and all) was originated and written for the Jewish population…and there
culture was very poetic and used lots of symbolism. It’s the new bible (*apologizes again*) that was meant for us the Catholics.
Growing up your parents tell you about the “Easter bunny”, “Santa clause” and al that stuff but they also tell you about “God”. After a certain age
you figure out that they were all “white” lies…so naturally as a child you question God. In the end I believe God was an image created by Mankind to
keep us under control…If God really gave us “choice” as they call it…there would be no Ten Commandments. These laws were made up by humans to keep us
in control…so we don’t feel insignificant and useless. As I agree with these commandments…there just laws. So in all, this religion thing is what’s
keeping some sort of peace all through the world…even though it may be causing wars.
So in the end…I believe that this is all just a lie that’s been coaxed up by man kind to keep us going and trying to be better then what we are…and I
don’t know about you but I don’t need that to push me.
Nick.
When old thoughts meet new thoughts...beginings end and endings begin.
armour_guitarist
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 06:07
Well, i grew up with out religion. i dont think i have ever been to church except for marriges and funerals. from the start, i was never really
convinced by the whole god thing... part of it is that i am a very litteral and critical person by nature. so naturally, time to time i would come up
with philosophies of my own. and i have a current one that i believe in.
ok, this is going to sound a load of sci-fi shit, but it is all on more of a meta-physical/mental level. I believe that each person is living their
own life in thier own little "dimension" (for lack of a better word). and our dimension overlaps with every person that we interact with
in any way in our lives's own dimension. but the twist is that i think that we are living the same lives over and over and over again, in the
exact same way. and so each person has infinate ammount of "dimensions" living the same way over and over, but each one is at a different
time. so in other words, i have a single dimension for every moment of my life as does everyone else. in fact, every single person or thing that ever
lived is currently living it's life over and over again, but because we don't ever come in contact with 99.99% of those things/people, we
are oblivious to thier existance.
another point to add to this is that this theory or belief of mine explains deja vu. because you have been living the exact same life over and over,
you sometimes remember somthing as it happens... people dont understand it, but it is just because it has happened before, and will happen again, an
infinate amount of times.
it also means that while you think that you have the power to make a choice on your own, you dont. you feel as if you are making that choice on your
own, as you have every time before, but you aren't, it has already been decided for you by yourself.
this is not to say i dont wish i believed in this, it just is... it is the way that i percieve the way that i live, and i just accept it.
i know that must have been confusing, because i dont completely understand it, but i hope you got the just of it.
Some things take more than a lifetime.
Pure_Ibanez_Sound
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 17:58
Great post Nick! Alot of the new members, Dobs and Nick in particular seem to be incredibly smart. You'll fit in well man.
Anywho,
I was thinking about what we were really placed on this earth to do. There is no apparent reason or logical idea(s) as to why we are here. Infact, us
humans who have built this great place to what is now, are infact destroying it all within the same punch.
By putting up new factories and building and creating bigger and faster cars, we are destroying our enviroment. Were destroying hopes for our children
to live in a clean world. Not only will people never breathe the same again, but with the depletion of the O-Zone layer, children will no longer be
able to experience the joys of winter. Just hot summers, all year round.
Then again, when we die, what happens to us? If "god" created us, couldn't he contol us, our minds, our bodies and even kill us as
well?
I always confuse myself to think about what it would it would be like if I was never born. If I had never touched Earth's soil, if I never swam
in it's water's. If I was never created at all. Think about it.
Back to the after life. I'm a strong believer in life after death. I don't believe that people go to heaven or hell. I truly believe that
one's spirt exits the body and stays on this earth. Either by haunting others or doing good things. Prime example,
Here's a diary I wrote during my time off. I'll type it out so you don't have to read my lousy handwritting. It'll sound fake
as hell when you read it. But I assure you, this all happend. None of it is fake. I can remember everything about it. The time, the place and what
happend before and after this all took place. Here it is.
Wednesday January 4, 2004
Dear Diary:
I have just experienced something that I never thought possible. I've travelled to both ends of the world, explored the Oceans, but I never
thought that I would do this. I was overly tired, so I decided to go to bed. But last night, I experienced the horrors of sleep poralisis, followed by
the warm hands and ill-tempered feelings of the Old Hag.
I was listening to a radio show on Mojo Radio. They were having open lines, anyone could call in about what ever. Maria was the next caller. She
called in asking about sleep poralisis, it's effects and why it happens. He couldn't explain what it was, so I knew it had to be bull.
I turned my radio off radio off and nearly seconds later my body began to freeze. I could no longer begin to move. My eyes were open, but no moving. I
was breathing, I could not speak but I could think clearly. My body began to heat up as if I was in an oven, it was the worst fever ever. I heard
children laughing in my head. It was extremely fucked. Shortly after, the laughing stopped. Silence. I began to be able to move my fingers, my eyes
and my toes. I then became extremely cold, and the rest of my body un-froze. I was normal again, except for one thing.
Muscle spasms have occoured in my body quite frequently, since I took up basketball. Nothing like ever before. I felt one occouring in both of my
legs. They stopped. Started again, but soon they were haulted after. I looked over to the left side of my bed, there she was. The Old Hag was standing
right beside me, massaging my legs.
She was a spirit, dead, and very old. Not hundreds, more likely thousands. Her body had no skin, just flesh. She had her full set of teeth, and a
substantial amount of long grey hair. I turned my light on, she didn't move. But I sat up, looked at my clock, it was 2:30 AM. I looked back,
she was no where to be found. Weird huh?
I can't sleep any longer. This shit has freaked me out to much. I'm gonna grab my dog from Kevin's room, probably watch her sleep
and stay awake for the rest of the night. Basketball in 4 hours. Yippie.
_________________________________
I wrote for the rest of the night, but it's not relavent to my discussion. What's up with me? Any one know?
one last show.
Nick
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 22:46
I too must add...that although I do not believe in God, I do believe in after life and spirits. I have been blessed with 2 spiritual events throughout
the course of my life. I really don’t care weather people believe me or not…but I know it’s true.
The first time I experienced such an event was at the age of 9, when I under went a accident in which I cracked my C-7 (it’s a bone in your upper
vertebrae… in your neck…). It was an 8mm crack, the doctor said I was lucky I was not paralysed from neck down. This incident occurred on the 28th of
December of 1995 where my family and friends decided to go sledding together on Burnaby Mountain (near Vancouver). Before leaving for the hill my
parents were debating whether or not I should wear a helmet…fortunately they came to the conclusion that I should not for I’d be the only one…what
they didn’t know is that it saved my life by not wearing one. I was having a blast with the kids my age… until my mother offered for me to go to the
car and get some chocolate milk…or follow the rest of the kids to a off course hill. As much as I liked chocolate milk…I followed the others to this
bigger hill. I don’t know but something inside kept telling me it was a bad idea and that I should go for the chocolate milk…but I didn’t listen…I was
9! When I got to the top of the hill I sat down on this “sled” A.K.A flying saucer (circular disk used for sledding) and started going down. Not too
far down I noticed I had set off course and was heading towards a forest…just then I saw my great grand-mother standing in front of this forest. My
great grand-mother who had passed away about two weeks before then…I closed my eyes and somehow I found myself on my stomach 15 metres away from my
sure death, surprisingly stopped. Although I had missed this forest, I ended up headfirst into this huge tree...thank fully I wasn’t wearing a helmet
for the extra weight on my head would have paralysed me permanently. The truth is, if I had gone into that forest chances are I’d be dead…but Granny
saved me…and I’ll always be thankful for that.
Less then a year ago my grandmother on my mother’s side passed away. It was really depressing but there’s nothing I could really do but let it pass.
One Wednesday night my mother had been in Ottawa and I at home with my dad and brother. I had closed my door and had my chair pointing towards the
opposite wall. During the Night I woke up but didn’t move…I felt as if someone had just walked in, the chair turned around and came next to me…I fell
asleep. That Night I slept better then I have in a long time, and when I got out of bed I noticed that the chair had moved next to my bed. Well, I was
curious as hell as to who entered my room and sat on that chair during the night. I asked my father and brother and both of them swear they hadn’t
come in during the night…so I let it be. That Friday my mother had returned from her trip and told me later that same night that on Wednesday late
night her mother had sat on her the edge of her bed…was this just a coincidence…I don’t think so.
When old thoughts meet new thoughts...beginings end and endings begin.
Jeff K
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 22:50
There is NO meaning to life. Once you realize this, and only when you realize this, can you start living life to the fullest possible degree.
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 23:05
Great story Nick. Too bad your grandma wasn't super strong. She might've been able to stop you. I know what it feels like to loose a
grandma though.
Anyways, I did some research on sleep paralysis and 'The Old Hag', here's what I found:
Sleep paralysis happens to us everytime we sleep, if it didn't we'd all be acting out our dreams in our beds, something that could be bad
for us and our sleeping partners. The impulses are still generated in the brain when you move a limb in a dream or lucid dream but that impulse is
stopped from transmitting the action to the limb. Basically the body is put on reserve power and only the most primitive and basic functions required
for life (breathing etc.) are switched on. The only thing the mind can still exert control over are the eyes in dreaming REM (rapid eye movements)
track the dreaming objects people etc you are looking at and is the reason lucid dreaming was first proved by using predetermined eye movements to
signal to the outside world that lucidity had begun.
The Old Hag:
Sleep paralysis happens to us everytime we sleep, if it didn't we'd all be acting out our dreams in our beds, something that could be bad
for us and our sleeping partners. The impulses are still generated in the brain when you move a limb in a dream or lucid dream but that impulse is
stopped from transmitting the action to the limb. Basically the body is put on reserve power and only the most primitive and basic functions required
for life (breathing etc.) are switched on. The only thing the mind can still exert control over are the eyes in dreaming REM (rapid eye movements)
track the dreaming objects people etc you are looking at and is the reason lucid dreaming was first proved by using predetermined eye movements to
signal to the outside world that lucidity had begun.
What's happening is a similar thing to lucid dreaming, the dreamer may "think" they have woken when actually they are having a lucid
dream about waking in their room and being paralyzed. Alternatively they could have really woken in there bed but the paralysis from sleep is still
present their eyes can open but the mind overlays hallucinatory hypnagogic images of the terror that the mind perceives as it cannot work out what has
happened to the body and deep seated fears fill the mind.
one last show.
Reivax
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posted on 2004-2-11 at 23:37
Strange stuff.
This brought back a memory of my childhood that I wish I didn't remember - When I was about 6 or 7ish I used to wake up in the middle of the
night with millions of voices in my head and/or alot of just loud noises. I would walk upstairs shaking my head trying to get the noises out, and
normally it would only last about a minute or two until it went away. I would also have reoccuring dreams of myself in a gigantic white room, with all
the same loud noises and voices and people would be standing over me, but I couldn't really make out anyone. Alot of the times I would wake up
from this continue to hear the voices for a while...
God, I could cry thinking about this. It really was hell. But I was such a scared little kid that I never told anyone...or maybe I just never
remembered at the time. It was like I was dreaming the whole time, but I was clearly awake.
I don't know if this really has to do with the topic, but since everyone was sharing their fucked up shit, I thought I would to.
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posted on 2004-2-12 at 02:23
O I just realized I posted the same shit twice. Oops.
So if most of us don't believe in god, how were we created? Do you believe that the earth was created due to the Big Bang Theory? What about the
other planets, stars and various galaxies?
Has there ever been life on other planets? What about in other galaxies?
I always think about if there is other galaxies with a planet just like earth. It could have a whole different race of 'things'
inhabbiting it. With various other planets, stars and no knowledge of the unknown like us. Your thoughts on this.
one last show.
Nick
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posted on 2004-2-12 at 03:51
Just felt the urge to say that this is a really cool thread! Great topic!
I believe that maybe some sort of meteoroid hit are planet and had some kind of microorganisms frozen on it…on impact with the ozone maybe it heated
up and unfroze by luck. Landed on the planet and adapted. These organisms must have passed through some sort of cycle and begun there evolution, later
on becoming us. As for the planets…well maybe it’s just like Earth. In the beginning there was just one really really big island…and it separated for
different reasons…creating the earth as we know it today. Just like America and Africa move apart from each other something like 3 cm a year. Maybe at
some point the universe was in one place and some sort of sudden change forced movement and separated all these planets.
As far as other life goes, there’s no way in hell that within all that space there is not another life form out there. I believe it may just be
another life form that evolved and adapted to their planet…it’s how everything is…it adapts. As for the sightings of U.F.O’s and related things… they
scare me shitless because I don’t understand it. I guess such a thing is plausible but who’s to tell what’s real and what’s fake…it’s a very touchy
subject. The government would never admit such a thing because of people like me who would go crazy. Then again if the government does know
something…wouldn’t sharing this delicate information help are society’s open their eyes to knew possibility’s and reasoning for all sorts of
unanswered questions. Although I may be scared, I can’t wait tell the day where we finally figure out the truth…until then I’ll wait on the sidelines,
scared shitless waiting for answers.
When old thoughts meet new thoughts...beginings end and endings begin.
SideO_JR
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posted on 2004-2-12 at 04:06
i agree with you nick, thinking that the aliens from movies, such as signs, could be real scares the shit out of me. I think if i ever saw anything,
such as a ghost, or an alien, i would go into shock. I am not sure why but just thinking about it makes me paranoid sometimes, what if there was
something walking around my house right now that could come into my room at any moment. I'm really not that affraid i guess but i can imagine
that if i did see one i would be.
I have my days when i could talk for hours about my theories, but i don't really feel like getting into it today.
How do you communicate those emotions that are so intense that no physical expression or series of words can even scratch the surface?
armour_guitarist
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posted on 2004-2-12 at 06:24
well, i do think that the big bang did happen, but i do not think it was the beginning. i believe that the universe is fluxuating, but there was
never a beginning or an end. the big bang occured however many billion years ago, tht universe is currently expanding, but eventually it will begin to
shrink, untill all the energy, mass and everything that makes up the universe is compacted into somthing smaller than a grain of sand. but at some
point, there will be so much pressure in such a small area that it will explode again (the big bang), and the cycle will begin all over again.
this theory also ties into my theory for our lives. the universe will then re-live it's own "life" in the exact same way, and so
when our little moment of life comes, we will live over and over.
the thing that really gets me is when i think that if the universe is expanding, there must be something beyond the edge of the universe... but
what... could it be that "nothing" itself resides there... oh fuck, it's so confusing.
oh, Reivax, your story reminds me of something that happened to me when i was little. every once in a while, i would start to hear this soft,
high-pitched noise, and i would hear a song, only it wasnt really a song, and it sounded as if it were in slow motion. and i would hear this voice,
saying nothing in understand, just talking, but not with words. and then, my whole life seemed to slow down by a few seconds. and it scared the shit
out of me, and made me feel very uncomfortable. i used to hide under my covers, closing my eyes, and clamping my hands over my ears, but it
didn't do any good. i just had to wait for it to pass. once it was over i was fine, but it happened a few times a year, untill about grade 3.
then it stopped happening.
[Edited on 12-2-04 by armour_guitarist]
Some things take more than a lifetime.
Sin Ogaris
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posted on 2004-2-14 at 16:32
I'm on the fence over whether God exists or not, I don't believe he created the Universe, I believe in the Big Bang for that one. However
I can't see how that could create a "life", or a soul. That's where I figure God comes into it, but I always question how can
something simply "be" there? How can God just exist? Things have to come from somewhere, whether this means there is a city of God's
outside our Universe each with their own little ball of blackness to play with or whether there is no God at all remains to be seen.
One thing I would never take from anyone is faith, frankly I couldn't give a damn what people believe in so long as they believe in something.
See, I may not fully believe in God, and if he did exist you can be damn sure I wouldn't like the guy, but that doesn't mean I have no
faith. I actually have faith in the people I care about whether it be my family or my closest friends, I have faith that they will acheive everything
they set out to. That's what keeps me going every day.
On the topic of the meaning of life, I don't think there is one. I also don't think people should ponder "What is the meaning of
life?" instead, people should ask themselves "What is the meaning of MY life?" if you can answer that, if you can have, in your
mind, a plan, something that you feel you must do before you die then what does it matter what life as a whole is doing? If you then fulfill your
dream, no matter how big or small it may be, you HAVE contributed to the workings of the World, because not only have you done what you have set out
to do, you have possibly pushed other people closer to their goals. Unfortunately for Humanity we're a little too cruel and heartless for our
own good, and too often the atrocities of man hinder us in more ways than I think anyone could imagine. Such is life I guess.
Jeff K
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posted on 2004-2-14 at 19:07
I'm going to make two posts. The first is my experience with sleep paralysis. This phenomenon is also called the "Incubus" or
"Subcubus," as some people believe they are spirits. The previous explanation of them is correct as they are just lucid dreams.
When I was like 13 or 14 I would be sleeping then it would seem to me as if I had woken up. I'd be lying on my side staring at my bookcase.
The thing was I couldn't move a muscle. This was extreemly terrifying for me as it felt like someone was holding me down (Which explains why
some people view the phenomenon as spirits.) Eventually I'd be able to break from my paralysis and would wake up thoroughly scared. It was
fucked. Happened to me like 4 times, each time being less intense than the last.
Some dream researchers think that alien abduction can be explained as a related phenomenon to sleep paralysis. They think that people are just having
very realistic lucid dreams and can make themselves believe whatever they dream.
The posts on the big bang got me thinking. I feel this will be a pretty challenging article for people on here to wrap themselves around. I think a
lot of people will like it for that reason. This is from February issue of Discover Magazine (Vol 25. No. 2.)
The Catholic Church , which put Galileo under house arrest for daring to say that Earth orbits the sun, isn't known for easily accepting new
scientific ideas. So it came as a surprise when Pope Pius XII declared his approval in 1951 of a brand new cosmological theory - the big bang. What
entranced the pope was the very think that initially made scientists wary: They theory says the universe had a beginning, and that both time and space
leaped out of nothingness. It seemed to confirm the first few sentences of Genesis.
Eventually, astrophysicists followed the pope's lead, as evidence for the Big Bang because too powerful to ignore. They accepted the notion
that the entire observable universe - 100 billion galaxies, each stuffed with 100 billion stars, stretching out more than 10 billion light-years in
all directions - was once squashed into a space far smaller than a single electron. They brought the idea that the cosmos burst into existance
precisely 13.7 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. But even now, many astrophysicists are still uncomfortable with the implication
that the Big Bang marked the beginning of time itself. And the theory has yet to yield a satisfactory answer to a key question: What made the Big
Bang go bang?
Cosmologists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have a radical idea that could wipe away these mysteries. They theorize that the cosmos was never
compacted into a single point and did not spring forth in a violent instant. Instead, the universe as we know it is a small cross section of a much
grander universe whose true magnitude is hidden in dimensions we cannot perceive. What we think of as the Big Bang, they contend, was the result of a
collision between our three-dimensional world and another three-dimensional world less than the width of a proton away from ours-right next to us, and
yet displaced in a way that renders it invisible. Moreover, they say the Big Bang is just the latest in a cycle of cosmic collisions stretching
infinitely into the past and into the future. Each collision creates the universe anew. The 13.7 billion-year history of our cosmos is just a moment
in this endless expanse of time.
The hidden dimensions and colliding worlds in the new model are an outgrowth of superstring theory, an increasingly popular concept in fundamental
physics. Scientists currently rely on two mutually incompatible theories-relativity and quantum mechanics-to describe the most massive objects in the
universe on the one hand and subatomic particles on the other. For nearly a century, theorists have attempted to come up with a single model and a
single set of equations that melds the two views of physics. Superstring theory is an evolving attempt to do just that: explain matter, energy,
space-time, and the basic forces of nature in one framework.
String theory is hellishly complex. In order to make it work, theorists have to assume that space isn't merely three-dimensional, the way it
appears to our puny human sense, but rather that it has up to 10 spatial dimensions. Just as a bedsheet hanging on a clothesline appears to be a
two-dimensional object hanging in a three-dimentional world, all of space-time would be suspended in a higher-order space. In keeping with this
two-dimensional analogy, string theorists describe our observable universe as a membrane - "brane" for short - flapping in the breezes of
the actual 10-dimensional cosmos.
Physicists are just beginning to poke and prod at the big implications of superstring theory. That's what Burt Ovrut of the University of
Pennsylvania was doing during a 1998 cosmology conference at the Newton Institute of Mathmatical Sciences in Cambridge, England. He asked: If we live
on a brane that's wafting through multidimensional space, why shouldn't there be other such branes floating around out there? Nothing in
the theory ruled out the possibility. And if other branes exist, they could interact. It would be fascinating, Ovrut proposed during his talk, to
consider what might happen if they did.
The idea intrigued Steinhardt, a professor at Princeton University who was sitting in the audience. If the interaction between branes was a
collision, it would trigger a fantastically powerful reaction, Steinhardt guessed, given the immense amounts of matter and energy in each one. The
crash would release so much energy, in fact, that it might be comparable to another energy release he was already quite familiar with: the Big
Bang.
Meanwhile, Turok, a professor at Cambridge University, was sitting in the same audience having similar thoughts. Another the lecture both men
approached Ovrut to discuss their ideas. "It was clear that a collision of branes would be a dramatic event," Turok says. "People
had talked about it in a mathmatical way before, but nobody had thought of it as a real, physical process."
Steinhardt, Turok, and Ovrut, along with Steinhardt's graduate student Justin Khoury, decided to see what implications coliding branes might
have for cosmology. They wern't driven by idle curiosity alone. Steinhardt, in particular, had been growing increasingly disenchanted with the
conventional Big Bang model. The problem wasn't just that the theory required that time and space have a beginning but also that the more
cosmologists tried to refine their model, the messier it seemed.
The original Big Bang model was simple: a hot dense knot of energy burst outward, congealed into matter, and kept expanding. But by the 1980's,
astrophysicists had embraced a more complex elaboration of the Big Bang known as inflation. Ironically, one of the theorists who developed this idea
was Steinhardt. Inflation theory postulates that in the first hundred-millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second of its life,
the universe expanded as though it were turbocharged, swelling much faster than the speed of light, before settling down to a more sedate rate of
growth. The only way that could have happened is if there had been some incredible energy source pervading the newborn cosmos and blowing it apart.
We don't see anything like that int he universe today, however, so cosmologists had to assume the potent energy field existed for only a
fraction of a second after the Big Bang, then vanished.
Conjuring up new, unknown energy fields goes against both common sense and one of the most cherished scientific doctrines. A principal known as
Occam's razor says the simplest possible explanation is usually right. Perhaps the best-known example is the Earth-centred cosmology of
Ptolemy, which dominated Western science for 1000 years. When Ptolemaic theorists discovered that the planets did not appear to be moving in a simple
pattern around Earth, they added epicycles-tiny circular movements on top of the grand orbital circles. Closer examination showed that this
didn't quite explain observations either, so the theorists added epicycles on top of epicyces until the model did work. The final result was
also very complex. Then Copernicus came along with the idea of a sun-centred cosmology, and Johannes Kepler realized that planets actually move in
ellipses. Suddenly, planetary motions made sense without the complexity of epicycles, and the old theory was dropped.
Inflation seemed like a necessary complexity. Without it, the universe would look very different-for instance, galaxies on one side of the universe
would be distributed differently from galaxies on the other side, which they don't appear to be. As inflation caught on, however, some
cosmologists grumbled about epicycles. Then the Big Bang got even more complicated. Starting about five years ago, astronomers measuring the
expansion rate of the universe discovered that billions of years after the Big Bang-long after inflation had died out-cosmic expansion started
speeding up again. The theorists invoked another unknown energy field, called dark energy, to account for that cosmic acceleration. "This
wasn't really predicted at all," says Steinhardt. "We can fit it into the model, but we don't know what this s-called dark
energy is. The standard model is definantly becoming more encumbered with time. It may still be valid, but the fact that we have to keep adding
things is a bad sign."
Astronomical evidence clearly indicated that the observable universe has been expanding for the past 13.7 billion years. In the inflationary Big Bang
model, the universe was hot and dense at the outset, and then immediately went through a period of hyperexpansion. Steinhardt and his colleagues
considered a very different possibility: What if the universe actually started out cool and vacuous?
If that were the case, the idea of branes colliding in a hidden dimension might provide a simpler explanation for the ongoing expansion. To find out
whether the idea made sense, the pair took on the daunting task of mastering the equations of super string theory and applying them to their theory.
For simplicity, the researchers assumed that the branes were flat and parallel to each other. They also assumed that the branes contained no matter.
That didn't mean the branes were voids: Quantum theory asserts that even the total vacuum of empty space is seething with "virtual"
subatomic particles that constantly wink in and out of existance. In aggregate, these virtual particles add up to a huge amount of latent
energy-which, according to Einstein's theory of special relativity, is equivalent to an astounding amount of mass. So a crash between two empty
branes would still be a collision of gigantic proportions.
Whether that crash would create a fireball that led to a universe like ours was unclear. If it didn't, there was no point in continuing with
the calculations. "We spent a year and a half working on the theory incommunicado," says Turok, "and to be honest, we full expected
the whole idea to fall apart." They kept at it because if their theory did hold together, it would upend 40 years of cosmological studies, not
to mention enshrine Steinhardt, Turok, and company in the pantheon on astrophysical giants. Besides, physicists say that if a theorist doesn't
turn out to be wrong at least 50 percent of the time, he isn't being creative enough.
The idea didn't fall apart. After an intensive 18 months of higher math, the researchers learned that colliding branes could create a universe
like ours. In the moments before a collision, their equations suggest, forces between two flat branes would cause them to ripple, as though the
mirrorlike surface of a calm lake were suddenly covered with tiny waves. As a result, the two branes wouldn't collide all at once. Instead,
the peaks of the ripples would hit first. This uneven crash would produce a correspondingly uneven burst of energy - a fireball with about the same
intensity everywhere but a bit hotter where the peaks had been, a bit cooler in the valleys.
That's exactly what the universe looked like before the first stars ignited and the first galaxies formed. We know that because the Wilkinson
Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, recently revealed the pattern of hot and cold spots in the heat left over from the earliest days
of the universe. In the Big Bang/Inflation model, the hot spots are generated by quantum noise that is magnified by the inflationary energy field.
"Much to our surprise, after doing these enormous, intricate calculations, we found out colliding branes would produce exactly the same pattern
of temperature fluctuations," says Turok.
"It seemed almost miraculous to us that it turned out this way," says Steinhardt. The new idea was dubbed the ekpyrotic universe .
Ekpyrosis means conflageration in Greek and refers to an ancient Stoic cosmological model in which the universe is caught in an eternal cycle of fiery
birth, cooling, and rebirth.
The research team subsequently turned its attention to what would happen in the branes after a collision. Calculations suggest that the crash would
generate a universewide fireball of pure energy within each brane. That blast would drive the two branes apart again. Then, as the fireball
suffusing our brane began to cool, its underlying energy would undergo a phase transition, like water freezing into ice. This transition would
unleash a force that would make the universe start to expand. The hot spots of the fireball would congeal into clumps of matter that would eventually
become clusters of galaxies. The cold spots would become the empty voids that lie between the clusters.
This theorizing agrees with what we can see in our universe now. The ekpyrotic model leads to a scenerio a lot like the fireball of the Big Bang, but
there is no episode of inflation. From the outset, the cosmos experienced just one force that accelerated the expansion. That force is still at work
today, which means that instead of coasting to a stop, the universe is expanding faster today than it was a billion years ago and will be expanding
faster a billion years from now. In short, that one force would also explain the enigmatic force that astronomers have recently named dark energy.
Further calculations by Steinhardt and Turok suggest we're at the beginning of a very long process that will eventually result in what appears
to be an empty universe. Trillions of years from now, matter will be so widely spread out that its average density will be much less than a single
electron per quadrillion cubic light-years of space. That's so close to zero density that there's no meaningful difference.
Again, this scenario echoes the predictions of conventional Big Bang cosmology, except that in the model proposed by Steinhardt and Turok, the story
does not end there. In the far future, another three dimensional world still lurks nearby, similarly emptied out after its encounter with ours,
invisible and imperceptible to us. Although the bounced apart after collision, the two branes will exert a force on each other that's analogous
to gravity, and they will ultimately meet in another crash, triggering another Big Bang. The cycle of such collisions would be eternal.
"Cyclic-universe models were popular in the 1920's and 30's," Steinhardt says. "But they were based on the iudea of a
Big Bang followed by a Big Crunch followed by another Big Bang." In these models, the same matter is endlessly recycled, so the entropy of the
universe-its tendency toward disorder over time-increases from one cycle to the next. "The result is that each subsequent cycle gets
long," Steinhardt says. "And if you go back into the past, each cycle gets shorter. Ultimately, you still have to have a
beginning." In principle, scientists shouldn't care. In practice, most have a very human tendency to abhor the idea of a beginning to
time. And most find the prospect of a universe that will end someday to be rather grim. In this new cyclic model, the universe starts essentially
empty each time. That means virtually no matter gets recycled. So entropy doesn't increase, and there is no beginning or end to time.
The model works so well that one might expect cosmologists to embrace it wholeheartedly. Actually, the reception has been lukewarm. One reason is
that at the moment of collision, the extra dimension separating the two branes goes from vanishingly small to literally zero. That creates what
physicists call a singularity, a point at which the laws of physics break down. Although superstring theory might help explain what happens in a
singularity, it hasn't done so yet. "The problem is very difficult," Turok admits.
That, says some physicists, is an understatement. "I don't think Paul and Neil come close to proving their case," says Alan Guth, a
cosmologist at MIT who is a founding father or inflation theory. "But their ideas are certainly worth looking at." Nathan Seiberg, a
string theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is also cautious. "I don't know yet whether their model is right or
wrong," he says.
Joel Primack, a physicist and cosmologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, isn't even all that interested in whether it's
right or wrong. "I think it's silly to make much of a production about this stuff," he says. "I'd rather spend my time
working on the really important questions observational cosmology has been handing us about dark matter and dark energy. The ideas in these papers
are essentially untestable."
Steinhardt and Turok respond that their theory could gain credence from LISA, a proposed space probe that would look for gravity waves from the early
universe. Gravity waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time that were predicted by Albert Einstein. So far, they are theoretical. But by 2020,
the LISA experiment-pairs of free-flying satellites that would move apfart and together with each passing wave-could either find confirming evidence
of inflation or find nothing and thus tip the scales toward ekpyrosis. Inflation theory posits that the entire mass of the universe accelerated to
many time the speed of light in a fraction of a second and should have set the entire cosmos ringing with gravity waves. Ekpyrosis, by contrast,
which involves a very slow collision between universes, wouldn't generate observable waves. "If we're right," says
Steinhardt, "it will be terrifically exciting. If we turn out to be wrong, that'll be dissapointing, of course, but it's still
important to challenge inflation with alternative theories so we can see how robust it really is."
David Sperfel, a Princeton astrophysicist and a mamber of the WMAP satellite research team, agrees. "Cosmology has to be tied in with
superstring theory sooner or later," he says. "There are several ideas out there competing with inflation, and they may all turn out to
be wrong. But I'd say this one has the best chance of being right." If it is, we need to rethink our lace in the universe - in fact, we
need to rethink the universe itself. In the ekpyrotic view of reality, everything that astronomers have ever observed is just a speck within the
higher dimensions, and all of history since the Big Bang is but an instant in the infinity of time. This view of creation is far grander than the
universe of traditional cosmology or the universe of the Bible.
So far, the pope hasn't weighed in.
Maybe someone wants to post this at the top since I took so much time typing it out?
Posts: 2109
Registered: 2003-5-5 Location: fuuuuu Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 18:05
can't be bothered to read that one, to be honest
ta bi
kaitlynn
Posting Machine
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Registered: 2003-5-12 Location: pickering Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 18:22
yeah, me neither.
-Kaitlynn*
"I dreamed a dream of days gone by, I dreamed a dream a life worth living. I dreamt that love would never die. I dreamt that life would be,
forgiving...But the tigers come at night, with their voices loud as thunder. As they tear our dreams apart, as they turn our dreams to shame."
-Fantine
(oh the the lifelong sorrows)
Lucy
New Member
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Registered: 2003-8-17 Location: Hamilton Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 18:59
I would have to say that the meaning of life would be coming down to earth to gain knowledge. If you are on the Other Side and everything is perfect
you wouldn't know what it's like to go through hard times and what not, so then you come down here and learn all that knowledge. Life is
hard, but when things go wrong or whatever you learn from it. If life was that easy what would be the point of coming to earth in the first place? As
for the Bible, it is different depending on how it was translated. People went back and researched everything and put it in writing, just because they
sought out the information from other people doesn't make it false.
The sleep paralysis happens when you have travelling dreams. Everyone has them just no one remembers them. Everytime you have a dream where you are
flying or when you wake up and feel like you were at a certain place and it felt so real, it's probably because you were there when you were
sleeping. Your soul is leaving your body and travels to wherever it pleases. Because people are taught that you die when your spirit leaves your body,
they go into like a state of shock because you soul is re-entering your body.
Chris
Moderator of Death
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 19:08
quotation:Originally posted by Jeff K
There is NO meaning to life. Once you realize this, and only when you realize this, can you start living life to the fullest possible degree.
hey, that was so my post :<
ta bi
tremendous
Administrator
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Registered: 2003-4-15 Location: Vancouver, BC Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 19:13
That's weird stuff about travelling dreams there Lucy. I read your article Jeff. Damn interesting stuff although I can't see it has
anything to do with "humans, the afterlife and shit along those lines".
mi
Über Poster
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Registered: 2003-5-6 Location: streetsville Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-15 at 19:16
Lucy... that sounds like the stories of astral projection... . And dream wandering. Some people are able to control their dreams. Both are very
interesting
the act of sacraficing bitter memories
i cant bring myself to fogive you, i cant force myself to fogive you, i cant bring myself to forgive you
Jeff K
Posting Machine
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posted on 2004-2-16 at 01:48
You guys are the stupidest sacks of shit for not reading my incredible article.
Posts: 1557
Registered: 2003-5-13 Location: Australia Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-16 at 02:29
I wonder if that could be put on a resume. McDonald's would snap you up in a second.
1lilrockerchic
Oh Dear
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Registered: 2003-5-7 Location: Ont, Can-a-da Member is offline
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posted on 2004-2-16 at 03:43
see i dont know what to believe not many people know this cause i only go to church to keep my mom happy and prevention of being kicked out of the
house.
i dont know if i can believe if there is a god cause of all the shit thats going on in my life right now if this starts to make no sense please
forgive me but im in tears cause someone who is very close to my heart could die if they dont relax and get rid of a bunch of stress and if there was
a god why would he do this me and to this person. and if there is a god i hate him so much for doing this to me!
i used to believe in god but ahh im goin insane
.::Lullaby::.
xX*I am sorry now (but will I ever let you go…)
Things seem so wrong (I had something worth living for)
I cant go on, but its something we’re suppose to do
My heart is crushed, now that I’m without you
I’m without you *Xx
