Happy End of Time

Failing that, may it be merry.
Failing even that, may it be the end of something. (Preferably of something bad.)

Meanwhile, keep your heart upright and light, like a plant reaching for the Sun. 
See you on the other side of Time.

Don't be too surprised if it looks remarkably similar to this side. ;)

On the "Mystery Spot" of Lake George

A reader contacted us yesterday clamouring for the inclusion of a story on a "mystery spot" on Lake George, New York. He found the mention of this apparent anomaly on another website and thought we should investigate it.

Thank you, reader, and we mean it.
Time-space anomalies are indeed what we like the most. Well, at any rate we like the subject enough to maintain this blog about them.

We are presently nowhere near Lake George or its mysterious spots, but in this WWW-age some investigation can be conducted via the internet.

But first, read the story, by a Dr. Seymour O'Life, plucked (gratefully, needless to say) from the very same website where our reader found it. 
After you have read it - preferably ALOUD - perhaps you will venture a guess about the conclusions to which our brief investigation led us.

A number of years ago, while at a round table discussion of Acoustical Anomalies and Decibel Equations in Munich, I had the good fortune to met Professor Gregory Mauch. Mauch is well known for his radical theories on Atomic Distillation and the accompanying Gravitational Tempest. But during dinner he told me of a spot in New York State that the known laws of spatial time and acoustics did not apply.

“Balderdash,” I exclaimed!

Mauch smiled and poured another tequila.

He insisted that not only had he heard of such a place, but could give me the exact location. I was all inebriated ears. After telling me the coordinates, and I did the calculations, I realized that not only was this place in New York, but actually in downtown Lake George. I was stunned. This past year, following the tipsy bar napkin scribblings of Professor Mauch, the I went in search of this amazing spot. And, believe it or not, found it.

How could we miss? Walking up to the spot I saw a compass cut into the ground. A huge circle, it was obvious where one was to stand. Being the brave guy that I am, I told my friend to walk into the center first.

 “Do you feel anything strange?” I asked. “If you do, get the hell out of there.”

“I don’t feel anything—wait, holy s%$t!, she blurted. “Come in here. You gotta hear this!”

I walked into the center and asked her what she’d heard, then I heard it as well. A glorious echo filled my ears. I yelled at the top of my lungs. A huge echo returned. Those standing outside the circle just heard my voice. The mysterious echo could only be heard from the center of the ring. How wonderful. Professor Mauch was right. Son of a gun!

I have done some research, but no one in Lake George is talking about this spot. Local Indian legend says that it was the spot that an ancient god called Katchalototail had appeared at a long time ago and since then his wisdom still echoes around the lake. Indian gods, spatial displacement, weird acoustics...whatever causes this strange ringing reverberating sound, it is pretty amazing.

So if your ever in the Lake George area, take a walk to the Mystery Spot. To find it you just have to head to where Canada Street and Million Dollar Beach come together. Walk east, along the lakeside of Million Dollar, for about a hundred feet or so and turn into the left, where the small stone wall offers a view of the lake. Look on the ground and you’ll see a giant ring that has a compass etched into it.

Walk to the center and start yelling your head off. –Dr. Seymour O’Life 

Now, where would you start your armchair investigation if you were us?
Perhaps by trying to find out more about the erudite, tequila-drinking Dr. Mauch?
Or the no less erudite, whimsically spelling Dr. Seymour O'Life himself?
Perhaps you would try to gather more information about said round-table discussion in Munich?
Surely, at the very least, you would investigate the mythical life and times of that endearingly named god, Katchalototail?

If you're from the area of Lake George, or are planning to visit it, by all means try and find as many mystery spots as you can - and if you'd like to, you are welcome to report about them here.
Even if you don't find any mystery spots, you will find plenty of beauty spots there, and that should be enough to feed the same sacred flame of wonder.

Meanwhile you can enjoy this story as a little joke, written with obvious talent and sense of humour. 
We did. ;)

An Experiment With Time

Finally! One of the seminal books on the mysteries of Time of the 20th century is available - free of charge - in the Internet Archive (bless them!).

An  Experiment With Time

It is the most influential work by J. W. Dunne, a very interesting author who wrote, among many other things, a "note" - a sort of foreword - to the book An Adventure (1911) by Misses Moberly and Jourdain.

Enjoy.

Tips for Changing the Past

Trying to change the past - or at least thinking about it - seems to be quite a trend these days.
It says a lot about the world we live in - the world that is becoming.


Whether you believe that it can be done or not, if you're interested in the subject I challenge you to find a better compilation of practical tips than this one:

Tips for Changing the Past

They are from one of our favourite and oft-mentioned "reality shifting" authors, Cynthia Sue Larson.


Just think about it...
Simply by doing that, by being open to the idea, you may already be helping build a world where it IS possible.

What IS the "God particle"?

Yet another unexpected and unplanned post...
But hey, such are the times we live in.

As you may have heard by now, researchers from CERN have announced that they have reached a 99.99995 % (or "at 4.9 sigma significance", as they put it) of certainty that they have found the Higgs boson, also known as "the God particle".

What is the Higgs boson?
And why is it called "the God particle"?

To put it very, very simply - but then, all the greatest things in the world are simple - the Higgs boson (called after Peter Higgs, the British physicist who was among the first physicists to theorise about its existence around 1964) is a mysterious subatomic particle that imparts the components of every atom their mass.
They need mass to stay together and form an atom, in the first place, or they would be dispersed, buzzing around and forming nothing.

In other words, the Higgs boson could be seen as a spark of the cohesive force - the "eros" - that permeates the universe and makes it stick together and BE.
That, I am assuming, is why it is called "the God particle".

It gives an extra meaning to the saying God is love, doesn't it? 

Think about eros.
It's not just porn, you know. :)
In fact, it is the cohesive force of everything that is.

About those magnetic portals...

We weren't going to post anything in the near future (unless some of our readers send us more delightful stories :)), but we've had a few emails yesterday and today, from people asking about the "magnetic portals" that supposedly have been discovered recently.


Magnetic portals connecting the Earth to the Sun - or flux transfer events - are not a new discovery. Their existence had been established by 2008.

What is new is that apparently a NASA-funded researcher from Iowa has found a way to chase them down. (We'll try and find a reliable source of information after sunset, when it cools down a little bit, all right? :))


This story has been making the rounds in the "alternative" media in the past 48 hours or so.
Predictably but irritatingly, most of these stories start with allusions to various science fiction films. Here is a good example, complete with videos.


This is only irritating because there is no logical continuity with what follows next - the description of these magnetic portals. In other words, there is no evident reason to jump to the conclusion that these magnetic portals would do any of those neat tricks we're familiar with from sci-fi films - like wormholing us to other universes, or serve as shortcuts for extraterrestrial holiday-makers to and from Earth.


What DO those magnetic portals do?
Well, for one thing, they form every eight minutes, and that's enough to seriously tickle my mind. Like, why EIGHT? What happens or ceases to happen during those eight minutes?

The implications of their activity, I don't yet understand.
Maybe you will.

Here is the original NASA text from 2008:

During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

Read the rest of it here.

Radio Recuerdo: Sounds from the past

As promised, here is another story from our reader Renata. 
This you gotta hear. ;)

Ok, this is another thing that happened to me, also in Germany, but the year was 2008.

This is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me and I am so glad I have a witness so I know it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me.

I went to Germany for the first time back then to practice my German with my German class. We were a bunch of people from Mexico staying at some hostel in some small town in Thüringen [Weimar].

We had been there for 3 weeks already and this is the kind of place (well, I guess most hostels are like that) where you can cook your stuff in the kitchen and then you're supposed to wash the dishes and all that. I mean, it's nothing like a hotel or something like that, in case you're not familiar with hostels. 

The radio was always on in that kitchen and there was always a man talking in German about politics and stuff ALL THE TIME. We, of course, didn't pay attention to that. 

That was our very last day in this town, we were staying in a building that had been built on the XVII century, it was very old.

That day, me and a friend were doing the dishes in the kitchen, listening to the same radio station, the German man talking and talking and talking when suddenly something strange happened. 

Suddenly we both heard what it seemd to be STATIC, the German man's voice was gone and then we heard the strangest thing ever. 

It was a jingle that we had never heard before BUT this is the strange thing about it: 

1)the jingle was in SPANISH, our mother tongue 

2) the voices sounded to me like voices from long time ago, don't know how to explain, the melody and everything, sounded like something from the 50s 

3) we realized this was a jingle from OUR COUNTRY! since the very last word they sang was the name of a city in Mexico, the city of "Monterrey" (we're not from this city, though).

The jingle said something about "your memories' station". 

When the jingle was over the static was gone and the German man was back. He didn't mention anything about what we just had heard, like nothing had really happened. Me and my friend stared at each other and we were like DID YOU HEAR THAT?? omg, we didn't know how to explain it.

The weirdest thing is that I don't think we actually cared very much about it after that. We forgot about it, maybe talked it over with some friends and then just forgot about it. (Now I wonder why we forgot about it, I mean, it wasn't something normal AT ALL).

Well, the years passed and last February I was surfing the net when, by complete accident, I found a jingle on youtube. Yeah. IT IS the same one!

This is the link: 

I could remember it as soon as I heard it again. It was the same melody, the same old-fashioned voices, the word "recuerdo" (memory) and the name of the city of Monterrey.

I did some research and this was indeed a very popular radio station in this city back in the 50s and 60s but it's no longer on the air, according to some friends I have in Monterrey. It hasn't been on the air for a couple of decades now.

So WHY ON EARTH did we hear this thing in a faraway country like Germany? Why did we hear something from our country, and from the past, when we were just doing the dishes? And nobody else seemed to have heard it.

I have friends in Germany that don't understand what happened either, cause of course, they say there is no reason why such a jingle would be heard in their country. I agree.

This has got to be one of the most endearing stories ever published here. :)
I don't know why, but stories about sounds that appear to be coming from the past always get to me. (Perhaps because I had an inexplicable event featuring singing once.)


Based on this and the previous story, I could speculate that Renata has the uncanny ability to conjure up images and sounds removed in time/space.
How? 
What am I - Einstein?
But it isn't as implausible as it may appear. After all, there is some evidence that visions perhaps can be shared. (See The Ultimate Tourist and We'll always have Paris... or whatever that was.)
Why not auditory events too?


But why a jingle she had never heard before, so she couldn't have cared for it?
Again, no idea. I have no insight into the inner workings of the cosmic jukebox. :)
Just thinking aloud here.
Maybe there had been some other person in that building, perhaps someone from Monterrey or someone who loved that jingle, who kept remembering that tune. And we all know that old walls - apparently - can "remember" things... :)


Or... I have no idea.
And that is, I suspect, what we love the most about such events, don't we?
The fact that we don't know. Faced with the mystery of the universe, we rejoice in our unknowing. Because it gives us hope that we are wrong about our fears, after all, and that perhaps even the wildest of our wildest dreams can come true. 




P.S. I love that jingle. 
Please, mister speaker, could you tell me what time it is....? 
Thank you very much!
Priceless. :)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it was 12:49.
On which date of which year, that's what I'd like to know!

The mysterious cat

This is a personal account - the kind we like best :) - from one of our readers, Renata. It is reproduced here verbatim.

This is a strange, yet explainable thing that happened to me about 2 months ago. 

Last May I was in Berlin visiting a friend. That was a relaxing day, we were tired and decided to do some grocery shopping and then stay home.

We went to the grocery store which was about 10 blocks from her street and we went by foot. 

On our way back, we were talking about my cat Irene and I was telling her about how much I was missing her and that I wanted to go back home to see her cause seriously, my cat is my EVERYTHING,believe it or not, and she was my only thought that day. 

We were already on my friend's street when I noticed that there was a black cat crossing the street, about 10 meters from where we were. 

I was excited to see a cat (thing that hardly happens in Germany, at least you don't see cats on the streets often) and I asked my friend if she had also seen her, but she said she didn't.

It was weird cause I know I saw that cat. I saw he was black and I saw his tail and everything.

I remember I noticed that the cat walked towards the building where we were going to, and I saw him "enter" some door (or I thought there should be a door over there, cause the cat just vanished, as if he had crossed through the wall). When I got closer, I realized that there wasn't a door over there, nor a window. There weren't bushes or anything around. Only the building where my friend lives, which has 5 floors, by the way.

I swear to God, I saw that cat entering the building but I was surprised to find out there was no way that this cat could have just crossed the wall like that.

Don't know if I can explain myself here cause English is not my first language.

I think I was thinking SO HARD about my cat Irene on that day, that she for some reason wanted me to see "her" (although she's not a black cat, she's a calico cat) in that cat. All I know is that I called home right away to ask about her. She was sleeping peacefully. 

Marcel-Louis Baugniet, Black cat in profile, cca 1924

Cats are odd creatures. They appear to know things beyond human comprehension; and perhaps they do. Maybe that's why they seem to perform things that seem impossible - that are "impossible" to us, humans, with our limited perception of the inner workings of the world.
And I sometimes wonder... did the old saying that a cat has "nine lives" really originate simply from cats' ability to save themselves from impossible situations?
Or is it maybe that people before us, in ages gone, when science was not so advanced, but individual observation of the world was, noticed cats they knew had died being alive (as I seem to have)?

Whatever it is, all creatures deserve not only to be treated with the utmost respect, but also "listened" to, so we can perhaps learn from them about the mysteries of this wide wonderful world - mysteries that purely rational thought cannot even fathom, let alone unlock. 


This story is also available - in Spanish - on Renata's own blog.
And do stay tuned because there is another story from Renata coming very soon. ;)

What are parallel universes like?

Here, knock yourself out.
(Which, by the way, may be a very real possibility if you take these people seriously.
We do.
Which should explain a LOT. :))

But aren't multiple universes simply a theory, a fancy?
A theory, yes, but not really a simple fancy.

Here's what Aurelien Barrau, a particle physicist at CERN, has to say about it:
"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models".

And it is to a parallel universe that Michio Kaku speculates humankind will migrate at the end of our earthly history.


Finally, here is a fabulously interesting (if not exactly brand new) documentary about it. Don't miss it.
(If you've watched it before, re-watch it. 
Even if you don't believe in watches. :))

Scientists say the darnest things...

You've probably read it by now: a group of scientists from Spain is predicting that time will come to a halt in the future (billions of years from now, I am afraid).

Scientists predict time will stop completely

Why exactly this is making headlines now, I am not sure, as it is not a novel concept. Maybe it's the identification of the purported cause or underlying process what makes it novel. In a nutshell:

Observations of supernovae, or exploding stars, found the movement of light indicated they were moving faster than those nearer to the centre of the universe.

But the scientists claimed the accepted theory of an opposite force to gravity, known as dark energy, was wrong, and said the reality was that the growth of the universe was slowing.

Professor Jose Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raul Vera from the University of the Basque Country and the University of Salamanca said the deceleration of time was so gradual, it was imperceptible to humans.

Their proposal, published in the journal Physical Review D, claimed dark energy does not exist and that time was winding down to the point when it would finally grind to a halt long after the planet ceased to exist.

But what caught my eye was this snippet of their statement:

Professor Senovilla told the New Scientist: "Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, for ever." 

It appears to be a quote, therefore it is safe to assume those are his exact words.

Either prof. Senovilla has a very good sense of humour - perfectly possible, for all I know - or... Well, I am not sure about the alternative.

Duration is time.

Time is the name we give to duration.

It is clear that either prof. Senovilla cannot speak outside the framework of time-defined language (and language is a time-defined framework for thought), or he thinks the readers cannot.

Both is true.

But it does have some bearing on the theory itself, wouldn't you say?

Think about it.

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE: The End of Time?

(In fact, it would be a good idea to visit it even if you did not like this.)