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Nobel Prize Winner Says DNA Performs Quantum Teleportation
HJED writes "TechWorld is reporting that the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008, Luc Montagnier, is claiming that DNA can send 'electromagnetic imprints' of itself into distant cells and fluids which can then be used by enzymes to create copies of the original DNA. This would be equivalent to quantum teleportation. You can read the original paper here [PDF]."
I am no geneticist, biophysicist, or organic chemist, but...this sounds wacky, even by Nobel laureate (who tend to go for the fringe ideas after they win) standards.
God sent his seed into Mary via Quantum Teleportation! That's how Jesus came to be! But don't give in to Quantum Temptation...or you'll end up in Hell!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I did not know my DNA was doing that :)
Quite honestly, I don't possess the science background to really critique the paper and have to rely on the man's credentials to find this believable. While the idea that cells can somehow send and receive signals about their DNA sequences is beautiful and could explain a lot, this sounds like the reasoning of a scientist biased by living in a wireless culture. Like, this would be Tesla's explanation for transsubstantiation - it's marvelous and at the same time very connected to other technological innovations in the world around us.
Winning a Nobel Prize does not give you a lifetime immunity from saying anything idiotic. It doesn't even prevent you from putting idiotic things into the arxiv. One might think there were a negative correlation between being smart enough to win a prize and stupid enough to say something idiotic in public, but the data suggests otherwise. Winning the Nobel seems to give some of these guys the confidence they need to make complete asses of themselves.
I am a particle physicist, and needless to say, the theory proposed in this paper is laughably stupid. The authors have no understanding of quantum field theory, and their observations are a sad combination of wishful thinking and poor experimental design.
From the freaking paper: "Some bacterial and viral DNA sequences have been found to induce low frequency electromagnetic waves in high aqueous dilutions. This phenomenon appears to be triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency. We discuss this phenomenon in the framework of quantum field theory."
/rantover
In other words, scientists observed something that makes them say "hmm... that's strange," which leads them to say "hmm... I wonder what could be causing this?" These researchers tried to explain the phenomenon using the best tools that they thought that had: quantum mechanics. (classical EM theory is pretty useless for fields this weak) The linked article is behind a wall, but the title seems to start with "Scorn over claim of teleported DNA"
Again from the paper: "In this paper we have described the experiments showing a new property of DNA and the induction of electromagnetic waves in water dilutions. We have briefly depicted the theoretical scheme which can explain qualitatively the features observed in these experiments." Crazy observed phenomenon explained by theories that aren't fully accurate? No way!
The current scientific media seems to increasingly favor sensationalist titles that enable their readers to go "hah, those stupid eggheads, I know better than them that X/Y/Z is impossible! I are smarts!" and this seems to be no different. There is not, has not, and likely will not, be any claims that DNA teleports. However, there has been, is, and likely will be, evidence that DNA interacts with factors beyond easy and simple comprehension. These interactions seem to resemble "phase-locking regime[s]" observed in "two superconducting samples or in the arrays of Josephson junctions," which is pretty far from quack science.
Signatures are the new names.
they figure out a way to connect my WiFi to my DNA so I can use my body to connect to the internet and stop paying these ridiculous 3G prices.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
"Honest! My DNA teleported into her. I never touched her. I swear it."
I am anarch of all I survey.
My background is strictly biology, so a lot of the physics stuff goes over my head, but I can decipher the sciencey jargon well enough to read the paper. Anyway, here's what they saw:
bacterial DNA in tube 1 -> water tube surrounded by 7hz field -> tube 2 containing PCR ingredients minus template -> recovery of bacterial DNA sequence from tube 2
The explanation, as you may have guessed, is super complicated. It involves the hypothetical creation of so-called water nanostructures (water memory anyone?), but apparently the ~7hz field is important and recapitulated in the math somehow that's opaque to me.
So that's the paper for dummies, so to speak. If anyone can elaborate or correct in simple terms I'd be happy to read it; this is cool stuff.
If this is true, then medical quacks and new age groups are going to have a field day using this as the justification for everything mystical and magical. I bet they will make a lotaf money by quoting this Nobel Laureate.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
The paper is in Arxiv, and has not been peer-reviewed. They refer to Craig Venter as "G. Vinter." I won't hold my breath until these results are replicated by third parties.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
And you think that spamming this 3 or 4 times on slashdot is going to help? GTFO.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I just read the original article, and it is not claiming quantum teleportation.
It is claiming that electromagnetic resonances are set up around polymers in water solution, and if the water contains the right building blocks (monomers), then the resonances can reconstruct copies of the original polymers. This apparently occurs even if there are physical barriers separating the polymers from the monomer solution.
The article relies on quantum mechanics only to the extent that certain quantum mechanical models of water molecule behavior (coherence domains) are used, since "classical" models that rely on energy levels are not sufficient. There is no claim of teleportation that I could see.
to the transporters!
When I first read this story I misread the first line and though the scientist had won the Nobel Prize for this research. Later I realized I recognized his name. Luc Montagnier, FWIW, won the Prize in 2008 for being the first to isolate HIV (at a time when its exact role in AIDS was unknown). He's since remained pretty prominent in HIV/AIDS research.
This other research, however, seems a lot more fringe-y and questionable, and now that I know the Nobel Committee has not endorsed it I will view it with a serious dose of skepticism until his findings can be repeated.
Breakfast served all day!
If you want to make sense of the Unified Field and you want to know who John Hagelin is
...then you need to read more James Randi and less new age crackpottery.
Seriously - this is a guy who claims that if enough people in a city do TM meditation, crime rates will fall and a Vedic Defense Shield will prevent them from war.
John Hagelin appeals to people who think What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret were science documentaries.
Advice: on VPS providers
After reading this article, one word comes to mind. I think it sums up all 10 pages, and especially the slashdot summery quite well.
BULLSHIT.
To put it simply, this is BS, on all levels. The summary is just wrong, teleportation doesn't even appear in the article on arXiv. But then the arXiv article is ridiculous. It's a thinly veiled attempt to play with homeopathy: "high dilutions", "mechanical agitation between each dilution", and low frequency EM taking the place of "concussing", "water nanostructures" formed on the DNA which can be used to recreate the DNA sequence? And the paper is totally amateur hour. In summary: It's BS.
Seriously - this is a guy who claims that if enough people in a city do TM meditation, crime rates will fall
This could easily be true. The criminals are too busy meditating to be able to commit the crimes...
That's an interesting claim. Most of the DNA molecules would somehow have to be in sync to get audio-frequency waveforms out. How's that supposed to happen?
I can't speak for the physics, but the experimental setup seems bogus. See Fig. 1. They have a coil with a test tube inside it. The coil is connected to an audio amplifier and then to the audio input on a laptop, where some frequency analysis takes place. They claim that a solution of DNA in water emits signals which can be read by that setup.
A setup like that is enormously sensitive to any electric or magnetic fields in the vicinity, mechanical vibration, and even mechanical motion of conductive objects, like fan blades. Like most low-level RF experiments, something like that has to be conducted in a electrically and mechanically quiet area. (RF engineers use either RF-shielded rooms or wooden boxes/sheds in open fields.)
The history of "polywater" is relevant here. There, it was for a while thought that water could somehow polymerize and change properties. It turned out to be a contamination problem. Here, the authors talk about previously unknown "nanostructures" in water.
Full details of the experiments are not yet available, but the basic set-up is as follows. Two adjacent but physically separate test tubes were placed within a copper coil and subjected to a very weak extremely low frequency electromagnetic field of 7 hertz. The apparatus was isolated from Earth's natural magnetic field to stop it interfering with the experiment. One tube contained a fragment of DNA around 100 bases long; the second tube contained pure water.
After 16 to 18 hours, both samples were independently subjected to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method routinely used to amplify traces of DNA by using enzymes to make many copies of the original material. The gene fragment was apparently recovered from both tubes, even though one should have contained just water (see diagram).
DNA was only recovered if the original solution of DNA - whose concentration has not been revealed - had been subjected to several dilution cycles before being placed in the magnetic field. In each cycle it was diluted 10-fold, and "ghost" DNA was only recovered after between seven and 12 dilutions of the original. It was not found at the ultra-high dilutions used in homeopathy.
Physicists in Montagnier's team suggest that DNA emits low-frequency electromagnetic waves which imprint the structure of the molecule onto the water. This structure, they claim, is preserved and amplified through quantum coherence effects, and because it mimics the shape of the original DNA, the enzymes in the PCR process mistake it for DNA itself, and somehow use it as a template to make DNA matching that which "sent" the signal (arxiv.org/abs/1012.5166).
All I can say is, pretty spooky action at a distance!
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
John Hagelin appeals to people who think What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret were science documentaries.
Hey now. Scoff all you like, but The Secret helped me manifest a twelve inch pianist.
Depends on if the criminals are doing TM meditation too, I guess. Hard to stick up a liquor store and meditate at the same.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Okay. I'll try. So, like, a really, really long time ago, the life force we call Chi permeated the universe. The Green Chi generated a great upwelling of life across the cosmos. Electromagnetic Panspermia Theory anyone?
I believe that is spelled penis, and I doubt it.
A beowulf cluster of water sprites, performing genetic algorithm computation using genetic material.
-kgj
[silence] ...-quantum!
Dilbert:
Ashok: aaaaaaaa! [jumps out of window]
Pointy haired boss: I like it!
Beam me up, Scotty!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is what happens when you roll a marijuana cigarette using your Nobel Prize paper.
The word "teleportation" does not appear anywhere in the original article. Seems like another case of media misinterpreting scientific articles to fit popular pseudoscience notions. The findings are about electromagnetic "signals". The signals may remotely affect other DNA molecules, causing them to emulate the original molecule. How is that teleportation?
Hey now. Scoff all you like, but The Secret helped me manifest a twelve inch pianist.
I believe that is spelled penis, and I doubt it.
But if you stop and think about it, the 12" pianist claim does seem a lot more believable, doesn't it?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
...how I got her best friend pregnant.
...as if a million bat-scat crazy homeopaths and refused to be silenced.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Looks like I've got some new ammo for those paternity test results. Those little quantum-tunneling buggers! Nothing in space-time could have held them back!
Except the point is that if enough people meditate regularly -- the original idea was 20 minutes, twice a day -- then you can live an otherwise normal life, but it'll lower crime.
I grew up in Fairfield, IA. I was somewhat disappointed when I checked out the skepdic entry on TM only to find that the strongest debunk was James Randi calling up the Fairfield Police Department and asking whether the influx of meditators had reduced crime. Nope, crime rates had increased if anything, but were pretty typical either way.
It's a good argument, but I'm kind of disappointed. I'm going to have to deconstruct it sometime. It seems to get either respected or ignored, never seriously challenged other than people saying, "You think people can fly?" and laughing hysterically. It's not really a threat, so I can see why other absurdities would be a bigger target, but it also means the meditators themselves never have to really think hard about why they believe what they do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So... erm... Let's see the evidence. Having skimmed the paper, I just don't see it claiming what Hagelin claims.
I was a meditator for years. I grew up in it. I'm better off without it now, but I'd still very much like to be proven wrong, if only because it'd be really cool to know how humans can levitate, if, in fact, they can.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
DNA was only recovered if the original solution of DNA - whose concentration has not been revealed - had been subjected to several dilution cycles before being placed in the magnetic field.
I thought the point of publishing was that we could replicate your experiments? Is it normal to withhold information like this?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
arXiv is NOT peer-reviewed, and anyone can put anything up there. (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it lacks the intrinsic rigor of a peer-reviewed journal.) It's the Wikipedia of science papers.
While arXiv is filled with some neat (and some not-so-neat) ideas for science fiction writers, I'd be reluctant (to put it mildly) to give credence to anything that sounds weird that resides there. Seriously, I know some cool stuff appears there, but we've been through this before. When is /.'s staff going to stop citing arXiv papers as being somehow more plausible than the Dean drive?
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
For some reason, people like being kinda stupid and magicy with science. I remember that one movie, the "what the bleep.." atrocity. It feels like that. Or like any time someone magics up cold fusion with a stick of metal and another stick of metal.
Krugman's economic views are coherent, not terribly deep, and potentially wrong, yet he does a more credible job of putting his ideas forward than the people who hate his ideas most (of putting their own ideas forward).
In this context, "potentially wrong" is a merit point, as distinct from ideological views, which are never wrong.
I see no reason to lump Krugman in with a flagrant quack. One of his least deep observations is that "fiscal restraint" in government does a lot more to serve the mid to long term interests of the financial elite than it does to help out a family having trouble paying their mortgage during a recession caused by excesses of the aforementioned elite. Or maybe this is so obvious it can only be seen with bifocals.
Unfortunately, the rhetorical temperature in Washington permits a dancing gorilla to wander around the basketball court without the general public cluing in. Krugman speaks against this, which makes him dumb by association.
Occasionally there can be a few genuine findings, just by the infinitive improbability times infinite number of postdocs.
Overall the field is not really science. That's not a problem. But among biology researchers there are too many bad apples, it's a shame.
This is pretty nonsensical. At 7 Hz the wavelength for sound in water would be hundreds of meters and light would be many order of magnitude more. How would such an em field be involved in forming nanometer resolution structures in water?
This is yet another case of wild extrapolation from measurements that are at or beyond the limits of the tools being used.
I would like to be the first to welcome our new quantum teleporting overlords...
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
To point out that Luc Montagnie is a Nobel Prize winner is just setting up for an argument from authority. I am reminded of Linus Pauling and his Vitamin C mega-dosing.
I would have more faith in this experiment if the genetic testing of the "receiving tubes" was done by a person other than the one who ran the experiments on them. Maybe he found what he was looking for because he expected it to be found.
"They laughed at the Wright Brothers... They laughed at Einstein ... they also laughed at Bozo the Clown!"
-attributed to Carl Sagan
This Hagelin fellow is intruiging.
He used to work on pretty sophisticated and legitimate science where he did some valuable research and now he working for the Maharishi trying to link things like meditation with actual physics.
What has caused such a dramatic change?
Seems that after he joined the Maharishi movement, he still did some things that were actually scientific and his approach to politics is still a lot more scientific than the ruling political parties in the US.
I'd just like to know how he can combine these two polar opposites in his mind.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I don't meditate and I don't believe in any of the supernatural benefits is has other than it simply being a way of relaxing a bit.
But in what way are you better off without meditating? Did it harm you in any way or cause problems?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Well, people can levitate. To understand how, a separation of mysticism, mythology, and technology must be maintained.
You can watch a magician (mysticism) make a human float, and he/she will have the audience believing exactly what they saw.
You can hear and read about how a religious figure (mythology) floated.
And then you can be taught (technology) hundreds of ways to make a person levitate. theatrical flying harnesses, forced air, glass floor/ceiling and perspective. How about not just a person, but an entire train full of people? Even something as simple (and expensive, and stupid) as hanging from a rope under a helicopter (ala Robert Downey Jr in Air America).
Illusionists by a variety of names have been making people believe in impossible things. All it takes is an audience to believe the mysticism or mythology, before asking to understand the technology. Too many people are willing to believe the "miracle" answer, without understanding the technological answer.
If I read your comment right, you've grown beyond the mysticism answers. If we can only drag a few billion other people past the threshold, humanity would be in good shape.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'm better off with, conservatively, 40 minutes of extra time per day.
And that's just the meditation itself -- it's not just that I've stopped meditating. I've left the Movement. This means I no longer have, as a goal in life, meditating to achieve enlightenment so as to break the cycle of reincarnation and become one with the universe. It means I no longer believe in Vedic astrology, or levitation, or any of the dozens of other crazy things I used to believe.
It also means I speak my mind, instead of always being careful to "speak the sweet truth."
And I'm certainly better off with the $5k or so I didn't spend getting the Sidhi program.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
there are no flies in the vicinity when you try it
No no, you got it all wrong. Criminals will do crime still. However, other people will be too busy meditating to report the crime. The same goes for war, people will be too busy meditating to fight for freedom, so they will just be dominated. No fighting, no war.
Hey now. Scoff all you like, but The Secret helped me manifest a twelve inch pianist. I got a cat who wouldn't pay for a round of drinks...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
you've both got it wrong, it's a plan to introduce thought police.
Classical signs of propaganda and miss-director, will allow an extra page added to the bill to outlaw free-thinking, but covertly due to the legal requirement of meditation.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I was confused by this paper until I got to the sentence "clinical trials in
West and South Africa to test new therapeutics is planned" and remembered that the study organism is a "close relative of HIV"
I for one am looking forward to the investment opportunities that will no doubt present themselves to invest in miracle magnet wrist bracelets. We should all be taking this research very seriously. I think they're on to something big!
That's correct, the article is a disaster. Poor Max Planck. Most people don't listen to what he said.
Slashdot fooled again!
I'd just like to know how he can combine these two polar opposites in his mind.
I'd just like to know how you know they're polar opposites without scientific study.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As much as we want to believe that the magician has actually caused someone to float, we know he hasn't. That person is still following every last law of physics. The magician is inherently deceptive. The idea of meditating to cause levitation, then, either is also deceptive, or has nothing to do with magicians.
I would never be late again!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You're spot on. Any guru starting to focus on levitation, is fooling both themselves and others. It has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality.
A real guru will make you realize yourself, without resorting to tricks or deceit. There's nothing advanced or hard about it.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Was he able to prove it without a doubt?
I can say that the world is flat, until I am proven wrong, I can say what ever I want, if I dare not prove myself.
Teleportation is a long shot, more like networking, you use one cell to carry a message to the next until it reaches its intended cell target.
So if an "armchair quarterback" isn't really a quarterback, does that mean your armchair layman is *really* a scientist, just pretending to be a layman from the comfort of his armchair?
"Well, I'm no layman, but even I can tell. . ."
you've grown beyond the mysticism answers.
Or maybe he was just too selfish, impatient and materialistic to stick with the programme.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"You were right to take the bicycle, the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's a play on an old joke, which I will probably mangle because it's been a long time since I heard or relayed it.
A guy is drinking in a bar, and in front of him sits a tiny piano and a tiny man playing it. The bartender says "wow, where did you get him from?"
The guy replies, well, I found a bottle on the beach, and a genie came out and granted me a wish for freeing him. Unfortunately, he was hard of hearing and misunderstood me."
"What did you wish for?"
"A twelve inch penis."
Free Martian Whores!
my mind is vibrating at 7Hz
Isn't that the resonant frequency of a chicken's skull ?
no inference intended about parent AC, but hey, make what you want with it
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
When I see a real guru fly in a way unexplainable by technology, magic carpet or otherwise, I'll agree with you. There are plenty of people who have dedicated their lives to such pursuits. Most of them say that they aren't worthy, therefore were not able to accomplish it, or they'll tell you that it happened.
I've been around quite a bit, and I have yet to see anyone floating without a technological method to accomplish it. And no, saying "it doesn't work because you don't believe" doesn't hold water. I am open minded. I would love the opportunity to observe all the factors related to such an action. Just like a stage magician, any such performance is well controlled, if not a completely fabricated tale.
I'll leave it up to you to prove me wrong. And no, online videos don't cut it. I've watched Superman withstand being shot, blown up, vehicles being thrown at him, and turning back time by countering the rotation of the Earth. I've watched Bruce Willis blow up an asteroid. I've seen the dead walk, the vampires fly, werewolves morph. I've seen countless alien invasions devastate the Earth. I've even seen the stones of Stonehenge move and control the annihilation of the earth (BTW, don't bother watch "Stonehenge Armageddon"). On more simplistic methods, I've seen "proof" of "ghosts" through tricks of the camera (many YouTube videos) and less convincing methods (the numerous Ghost Hunter shows, which are purely theatrical presentations with no special effects).
Any and every "impossible" feat has a rational explanation. Well, unless you give in to the idea that you must have faith. Faith works well for con men and cults. It has no place in rational society.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
In the dark ages when something could not be rationally explained, it was attributed to sorcery. In the middle ages, it was attributed to witches. Now, if something can't be explained, it's quantum mechanics and string theory, both of which especially the latter are close to being thrown out. This is almost like the church asking catholics to just believe.
I do meditate (not daily), but I don't believe in any of the supernatural benefits either. I was prescribed yoga lessons by a physician for spinal arthritis about thirty five years ago, and it was the only prescription I ever got that was better than over the counter analgesics. But it isn't magic. Yoga is about relaxing, stretching, breathing. Nothing supernatural about its effects on arthritis.
As to levitating and that other nonsense, I can't figure out how people can possibly believe any of it. Although I can see how yoga or non-yoga meditation might be beneficial for some mental illnesses, and perhaps even some physical ailments. Yoga does in fact work on arthritis, although simple meditation doesn't.
Free Martian Whores!
They claimed their controls had an effect on EMS transmission; they didn't say whether those control reactions had any effect on whether DNA was found in tube 2, or if they even checked for DNA in their control reactions, or if they checked for non-target DNA in ANY of their reactions. It was contamination, like the biologist says.
At any rate - why was PCR one of the biggest technological advances (and one of the biggest series of patent lawsuits) in the life sciences if all we need to copy DNA is a doorbell chime? Let's get Montagnier and Mullis (nobel laureate inventer of PCR, also pretty wacky) on a stage to fight this out.
no, he spelled it correctly, It was a reference to a very old, and very funny joke.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Magic is not mystisim, it's technology, math and science presented in unique and hopefully entertaining ways.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha, except some people actually believe they are performing things outside natural laws, seen when they are repeatedly told otherwise.
Penn Jillette as talked about it several times.
This is why I am on the magician should always admit it's a trick, and never hold the pretense beyond the stage.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
someone who doesn't really understand electronics.
NO a very good paper at all, and he doesn't have any good controls for the equipment.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the old saying that any publicity is good publicity is, i think, borne out by modern psychological studies; even negative news can be good publicity
Is that a piano in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?
That's a horrible punchline. at no point should anywhere in that joke should penis be mentioned, it's implied.
Short version*--
A man walks into a bar. On the bar the is a foot tall man playing a tine piano.
The man asks the bartender: "Where did you get him?"
The bartender says: "I found a broken magic lamp."
"Broken? what do you mean?"
"Do you really think I wished for a 12 inch pianist?"
*The long version builds a lot me suspence and misdirection.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...you don't know what quantum teleportation is.
None of this has anything to do with what TM claims, which is that anyone sufficiently enlightened can close their eyes and meditate, and through that act alone, levitate.
They're not claiming they can fool you into thinking the person levitated -- and after all, believing something doesn't make it so.
They're not claiming people once floated, mythologically, because they were so enlightened. Or they are claiming that, but I'm not disputing that these myths exist. I'm disputing that the events they describe actually happened.
But the claim they're making is that the only technology you need to levitate is to be sufficiently enlightened, and then you can fly unaided.
In reality, what they do is close their eyes, sit cross-legged (lotus position, actually), and hop around on their asses, claiming this is the first stage of three stages, where stage 2 will be actual levitation, and stage 3 will be Superman.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Or too skeptical, inquisitive, and logical.
Here's the problem: I wanted to believe what The Movement was telling me. But when it came right down to it, there were absurdities in their metaphysics and very few real answers when I actually had a real question.
For example, if Yogic Flying is actually flight of any sort other than hopping around on your ass, why not measure it? Why not, say, put pressure plates under a yogic flier and do some calculations to see if there's any component to it other than them exerting a muscular force on the ground in order to hop?
Or if people can actually fly like Superman, where are all the people flying like Superman? I haven't seen one. You'd think if Maharishi's goal was to make the whole world enlightened, a trivial way to get a giant head-start would be to start flying. How many people would've tried TM if he actually did fly? (Never mind the trivial grab of James Randi's million dollar prize.) I mean, he only needs one percent of the population meditating, supposedly -- that's, what, 70 million people? Surely a single act of flying could convince 70 million people to start meditating.
Or let's try the square root of one percent doing the Sidhis. That's under ten thousand people. Fly in front of the President, the Joint Chiefs, even a few high-level officers, and you'll easily get that many soldiers ordered to do it.
Yet so far, I see nothing about the Movement which isn't equally well explained -- better, in fact -- as an interesting and mostly harmless cult which is only really still alive because of a few very wealthy contributors (David Lynch, etc). About the only thing that separates this from Scientology is the "mostly harmless" part.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, that's what I was trying to describe.
The simplest definition of mysticism is "belief in the mystery", or a leap of faith to believe what is shown, rather than wanting to learn the truth.
Magic is mysticism for the audience. They see someone hover, a girl cut in half, or disappear from a sealed box, to the audience it was a mystery. To you or I, we try to get a glimpse of how the illusion was created. Depending on the skill and method of the artist, we may never get a hint of how it was done.
If we were allowed to know the technology behind it, many people would be disappointed to know that the magic was just technology. Others, like you and I, would appreciate how they did it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
While I enjoy the magazine, it's commonly "out there". It's like the Popular Mechanics of science magazines - lots of cool stuff that probably won't ever happen/exist.
All you have to do is run PCR in the absence of a target to invalidate the experiment. Although the amplification if target is hugely preferential, spontaneous noise also occurs. This is why you run controls to eliminate the noise. It is not surprising that there would be something that resembled a 100 Dalton example at all. It happens all the time. Ratios are king in anything related to the tools of molecular biology- not absolute values. This is a big reason why there are so many 15-minutes of fame handed out to one hit wonders in the field of molecular biology that later turn out to be retractions.
you can grow a big crystal, by taking a small piece of another crystal and placing it .. it will grow.
into the same conditions as the first one
for DNA, the conditions seem to be: water, 7 Hz and then some?
I'm gettin' with Natalie Portman right now.
Half the references are to papers coauthored by E del Giudice, himself a coauthor of the paper. Here is one of his works: http://www.isi.it/progetti/workshop-complexity09/pres_DelGiudice.pdf, looks very much like the work of a crackpot. An he often is a coauthor of M Fleischmann of cold fusion fame. Also I do have some training in QED, but what those guys are writing looks like junk to me, and particular it looks much different to typical QED computations. Heaps of fancy words without meaning in between. How they got Montagnier to coauthor the paper escapes me.
One of the co-authors (Del Giudice) has published cold fusion papers in the past.
In fact, ref 19 in TFA includes the infamous Martin Fleischmann as a co-author of Del Giudice.
Hardly a good track record of reliable, reproducible, and serious science.
Eh, whatever blows your skirt up. Just don't go thinking correlation == causation.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Speaks the voice of experience ?
Did the liquor store have a video camera recording when you tried this ... unusual ... stick up? That would make for an interesting, not to say amusing, video.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Where am I thinking that?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sounds like a cheap pussy?
A few billion people can probably be dragged, but they will be dead eventually. You'll have to keep dragging a few billion people all the time.
Like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or Nithyananda, I'd rather prefer selling snake oil and mysticism.
Get a bunch of labs to try and replicate the experiment. Having an opinion before then is pretty silly. Either the experimenters stumbled onto something (regardless of their armwaving attempts to explain it) or they screwed up the experiment. Until it's been replicated (or failed to be) in multiple reputable labs, there's not much point in saying either "OMG what if it's right?!?!" or "Well OBVIOUSLY it must be wrong."
It's supposed to be frickin' SCIENCE. Just do the damn replicability experiments, publish the data, and only then start speculating wildly.
If you read the original paper in a Terence McKenna voice, it sounds really cool.
or a tight one! ;)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
DNA existing in electromagnetic form was preposed a long time ago by Thomas Bearden. I've argued against evolutionists that an alternative theory is better and that the DNA coding for every living thing that was or every will be already exists in the the 4 space field. How exactly it goes from that form to living creatures I don't know.
what about the soul and what about the memories ?
if soul and memories are ok then could it be used to cure the entire body in the process ?
Give the guy a half chance. Most of you people live in a box that was design by elusive facts and propaganda. The truth has yet to be revealed. There are many things that will defy physics and many of the laws (theory) of relativity, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. We are an ignorant race who has just opened the book of science and are beginning to learn. Many of the scientific truths are withheld from us by the elite. The world would be a very different, and better place, if control was removed from the hands of a few (elitists). So stop thinking in the box. Stop accepting the paradigm. Trust your intuition. And listen and learn.