Lifeboat Foundation

Note that this is very far away from a return to an anthropocentric worldview, to pre-Copernican times when the Earth was the center of Creation. (I call it biocentric to make the distinction clear.) Biocentrism is necessarily post-Copernican. I am saying that we are unique and important — but not for having been created by a god, or for being the result of a purposeful cosmic directive.

We are unique and important for being self-aware living entities capable of asking questions about their origin and future. We may not be the measure of all things as Protagoras of Abdera proclaimed long ago, but we are the things that can measure. We experience the world, we measure it, and we tell stories about what we see and what we feel. And what we are finding out is that we may very well be the only ones asking such questions — or, at the very least, the only ones we know of, which effectively amounts to the same thing. Even if “they” exist and tell stories, their stories will not be ours. There is only one human voice in the cosmos. And if we ruin our project of civilization, the Universe will once again become silent.

Continue reading “Why we are the only humans in the Universe and why it matters for our collective future” »

The Universe is swarming with galaxies, billions upon billions as far as the eye can see. And among this multitude, some galaxies really stand out in a spectacular way.

These are the quasar galaxies. Powered by an active supermassive black hole guzzling material at such a tremendous rate, they blaze with some of the brightest light in the Universe, lighting up the galactic center right across the electromagnetic spectrum. For decades, astronomers have wondered why some galaxies have such extreme activity and others do not.

Now they think they’ve cracked it. By making a careful study of nearby quasar and non-quasar galaxies, a team led by astrophysicist Jonny Pierce of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK concludes that, in a majority of cases, quasar activity is triggered when two galaxies start the process of colliding and merging.

Astronomers have captured the first direct image of a black hole as it blasts out a powerful jet.

The new photo features the monstrous supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), the first black hole ever directly imaged by humanity.

The supermassive black hole has a mass billions of times that of the sun and is around 55 million light-years from Earth. Scientists used data gathered from more than a dozen telescopes worldwide to compile the picture.

A video about the Webb telescope making it seem like there was no big bang. This is by Mikio Kaku.

We’ve always wondered about life out there. But what if we told you that the possibility of more lifeforms has become surer than ever? Six shocking galaxies have been discovered that defy all explanations. Join us as we discuss Michio Kaku breaking his silence on the James Webb telescope’s clearest image in history.

The possible levels of information mastery in the future of technology.

This series focus will be on the Information Mastery version of the Kardashev scale. In his book, The Cosmic Connection, Carl Segan proposed an alternative approach to the Kardashev Scale. He added another dimension to the original scale in addition to the pure energy usage that was first used to characterize different civilizations. Sagan believed that the amount of information available to a civilization should be an important criterion when trying to come up with a useful metric to measure different types of civilizations. So he assigned a lettered scale from A-Z where each letter meant an order of magnitude increase in the volume of information a civilization can hold. This information, he proposed, could be described in terms of bits, the number of yes or no statements concerning different civilizations, and the universe that such civilizations occupy.

The Big Bang Theory is widely accepted as the explanation for the origin of the universe, but it doesn’t tell us what came before it. The idea of a universe before the Big Bang may seem impossible, but recent scientific discoveries suggest otherwise. In this article, we’ll explore the strongest evidence for a universe before the Big Bang.

The Big Bang Theory is the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of the universe. According to this theory, the universe began as a singularity, a point of infinite density and temperature. But what caused the Big Bang? And what came before it? These questions have puzzled scientists and philosophers for centuries.

Astronomers have discovered two new black holes that are the closest ones to Earth known, and also represent something that astronomers have never seen before.

The black holes, designated Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2, were discovered in data collected by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia spacecraft.

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If I have a visual experience that I describe as a red tomato a meter away, then I am inclined to believe that there is, in fact, a red tomato a meter away, even if I close my eyes. I believe that my perceptions are, in the normal case, veridical—that they accurately depict aspects of the real world. But is my belief supported by our best science? In particular: Does evolution by natural selection favor veridical perceptions? Many scientists and philosophers claim that it does. But this claim, though plausible, has not been properly tested. In this talk, I present a new theorem: Veridical perceptions are never more fit than non-veridical perceptions which are simply tuned to the relevant fitness functions. This entails that perception is not a window on reality; it is more like a desktop interface on your laptop. I discuss this interface theory of perception and its implications for one of the most puzzling unsolved problems in science: the relationship between brain activity and conscious experiences.

Continue reading “Is Reality an Illusion? — Professor Donald Hoffman, PhD” »