Are Pulsing Quasars Binary Black Holes?

Pulsing Light May Indicate

Supermassive Black Hole Merger
University of Maryland, April 20, 2015

As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies’ supermassive black holes will form a “binary,” or two black holes in such close orbit they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries.

We believe we have observed two supermassive black holes in closer proximity than ever before,” said Suvi Gezari, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland and a co-author of the study. “This pair of black holes may be so close together that they are emitting gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.”

The study was published online April 14, 2015, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The discovery could shed light on how often black holes get close enough to form a gravitationally bound binary and eventually merge together.

Black holes typically gobble up matter, which accelerates and heats up, emitting electromagnetic energy and creating some of the most luminous beacons in the sky called quasars. When two black holes orbit as a binary, they absorb matter cyclically, leading theorists to predict that the binary’s quasar would respond by periodically brightening and dimming.

The researchers conducted a systematic search for so-called variable quasars using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS1) Medium Deep Survey. This Haleakala, Hawaii-based telescope imaged the same patch of sky once every three days and collected hundreds of data points for each object over four years.

In that data, the astronomers found quasar PSO J334.2028+01.4075, which has a very large black hole of almost 10 billion solar masses and emits a periodic optical signal that repeats every 542 days. The quasar’s signal was unusual because the light curves of most quasars are arrhythmic. To verify their finding, the research team performed rigorous calculations and simulations and examined additional data, including photometric data from the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey and spectroscopic data from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey.

“The discovery of a compact binary candidate supermassive black hole system like PSO J334.2028+01.4075, which appears to be at such close orbital separation, adds to our limited knowledge of the end stages of the merger between supermassive black holes,” said UMD astronomy graduate student Tingting Liu, the paper’s first author.

The researchers plan to continue searching for new variable quasars. Beginning in 2023, their search could be aided by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is expected to survey a much larger area and could potentially pinpoint the locations of thousands of these merging supermassive black holes in the night sky. 

“These telescopes allow us to watch a movie of how these systems evolve,” said Liu. “What’s really cool is that we may be able to watch the orbital separation of these supermassive black holes get smaller and smaller until they merge.”

In addition to Gezari and Liu, study authors included UMD astronomy research associate Sebastien Heinis and University of Hawaii astronomer Eugene Magnier, both of whom contributed to the photometry data used in the study.

https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/2969

Picking Up Space Junk

A Blueprint for Clearing the Skies of Space Debris
RIKEN, April 17, 2015

An international team of scientists have put forward a blueprint for a purely space-based system to solve the growing problem of space debris. The proposal, published in Acta Astronautica, combines a super-wide field-of-view telescope, developed by RIKEN's EUSO team, which will be used to detect objects, and a recently developed high-efficiency laser system, the CAN laser that was presented in Nature Photonics in 2013, that will be used to track space debris and remove it from orbit.

Space debris, which is continuously accumulating as a result of human space activities, consists of artificial objects orbiting the earth. The number of objects nearly doubled from 2000 to 2014 and they have become a major obstacle to space development. The total mass of space debris is calculated to be about 3,000 tons. It consists of derelict satellites, rocket bodies and parts, and small fragments produced by collisions between debris.

Because the debris exists in different orbits, it is difficult to capture. The objects can collide with space infrastructure such as the International Space Station (ISS) and active satellites. As a result, developing remediation technology has become a major challenge.

The EUSO telescope, which will be used to find debris, was originally planned to detect ultraviolet light emitted from air showers produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays entering the atmosphere at night. "We realized," says Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, who led the effort, "that we could put it to another use. During twilight, thanks to EUSO's wide field of view and powerful optics, we could adapt it to the new mission of detecting high-velocity debris in orbit near the ISS."

The second part of the experiment, the CAN laser, was originally developed to power particle accelerators. It consists of bundles of optical fibers that act in concert to efficiently produce powerful laser pulses. It achieves both high power and a high repetition rate.

The new method combining these two instruments will be capable of tracking down and deorbiting the most dangerous space debris, around the size of one centimeter. The intense laser beam focused on the debris will produce high-velocity plasma ablation, and the reaction force will reduce its orbital velocity, leading to its reentry into the earth's atmosphere.

The group plans to deploy a small proof-of-concept experiment on the ISS, with a small, 20-centimeter version of the EUSO telescope and a laser with 100 fibers. "If that goes well," says Ebisuzaki, "we plan to install a full-scale version on the ISS, incorporating a three-meter telescope and a laser with 10,000 fibers, giving it the ability to deorbit debris with a range of approximately 100 kilometers. Looking further to the future, we could create a free-flyer mission and put it into a polar orbit at an altitude near 800 kilometers, where the greatest concentration of debris is found."

According to Ebisuzaki, "Our proposal is radically different from the more conventional approach that is ground based, and we believe it is a more manageable approach that will be accurate, fast, and cheap. We may finally have a way to stop the headache of rapidly growing space debris that endangers space activities. We believe that this dedicated system could remove most of the centimeter-sized debris within five years of operation."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/r-abf041715.php

Magnesium Ion Batteries?

Beyond the Lithium Ion – a Significant
Step Toward a Better Performing Battery
By Jeanne Galatzer-Levy, University of Illinois Chicago, April 17, 2015

The race is on around the world as scientists strive to develop a new generation of batteries that can perform beyond the limits of the current lithium-ion based battery.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have taken a significant step toward the development of a battery that could outperform the lithium-ion technology used in electric cars such as the Chevy Volt.

They have shown they can replace the lithium ions, each of which carries a single positive charge, with magnesium ions, which have a plus-two charge, in battery-like chemical reactions, using an electrode with a structure like those in many of today’s devices.

“Because magnesium is an ion that carries two positive charges, every time we introduce a magnesium ion in the structure of the battery material we can move twice as many electrons,” says Jordi Cabana, UIC assistant professor of chemistry and principal investigator on the study.

“We hope that this work will open a credible design path for a new class of high-voltage, high-energy batteries,” Cabana said.

The research is part of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a Department of Energy Innovation Hub led by Argonne National Laboratory, that aims to achieve revolutionary advances in battery performance. The study is online in advance of print in the journal Advanced Materials.

Every battery consists of a positive and negative electrode and an electrolyte. The electrodes exchange electrons and ions, which are usually of positive charge. Only the ions flow through the electrolyte, which is an electric insulator so as to force the electrons to flow through the external circuit to power the vehicle or device.

To recharge the battery, the exchange is reversed. But the chemical reaction is not perfectly efficient, which limits how many times the battery can be recharged.

“The more times you can do this back and forth, the more times you will be able to recharge your battery and still get the use of it between charges,” Cabana said. “In our case, we want to maximize the number of electrons moved per ion, because ions distort the structure of the electrode material when they go in or leave. The more the structure is distorted, the greater the energy cost of moving the ions back, the harder it becomes to recharge the battery.”

“Like a parking garage, there are only so many spaces for the cars,” Cabana said. “But you can put a car in each space with more people inside without distorting the structure.”

Having established that magnesium can be reversibly inserted into electrode material’s structure brings us one step closer to a prototype, said Cabana.

“It’s not a battery yet, it’s a piece of a battery, but with the same reaction you would find in the final device,” said Cabana.

-          See more at: http://news.uic.edu/beyond-the-lithium-ion-a-significant-step-toward-a-better-performing-battery#sthash.TL85HQYN.dpuf

Huge Dolphin Brains

The Cetacean Brain and Hominid

Perceptions of Cetacean Intelligence

Captain Paul Watson, 22nd August 2014

the species that dwells peacefully within its habitat with respect for the rights of other species the one that is inferior? Or is it the species that wages a holy war against its habitat, destroying all species that irritate it? Paul Watson questions man's monopoly on advanced brain power, and finds a planet suffused with a far deeper intelligence than our own.

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!"
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The human species may not be the paragon of animals as Hamlet so eloquently described to us. There is another group of species on this Earth perhaps more deserving of such lofty praise.

It is ironic that science, in its pursuit of knowledge, may soon lead us to understand that we are not what we believe or desire ourselves to be, that we are not the most knowledgeable life-form on the planet. Biological science is provoking us to shatter our image of human superiority. Confronted with new realities, we may be forced to change our perceptions.

For the first time in our history, a small group of scientists stands on the threshold of communicating with a non-human intelligence. Probing the oceans instead of deep space, they are searching for an alternative terrestrial intelligence. (ATI)

Astronomers devoted to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) keep our collective inquisitive ears tuned for signs of sentience from space. At the same time, cetologists observe, document, and decipher evidence that points to a profound intelligence dwelling in the oceans.
 

Comparison of a human and dolphin brain showing the 4th lobe and more complex convolutions upon the neo-cortex of the dolphin as opposed to the human brain. Image via Paul Watson / Facebook.

An ancient intelligence in the ocean

It is an intelligence that predates our own evolution as intelligent primates by millions of years. Furthermore, it is an intelligence that may prove to be far superior to us in terms of complex associative, linguistic, and survival abilities.

Dr. John Ford's patient monitoring of the speech of orcas off British Columbia has revealed distinctive dialects between orca populations, so distinctive that it is possible to link a captive animal of unknown origin with its long-lost family in the wild.

In the cold waters off Patagonia, Dr. Roger Payne thrilled the world with his recordings of the songs of the humpback whale. Behind the aesthetic value of whale music, Payne's research has revealed fascinating insights into the complex and highly sophisticated language of whales.

In the realm of zoological study, no other family of species has had such a profound impact upon human researchers. A few brilliant researchers have even been accused of losing their scientific objectivity simply because their study of cetaceans revealed knowledge about themselves.

"You see", wrote Dr. John Lilly, "what I found after twelve years of work with dolphins is that the limits are not in them, the limits are in us. So I had to go away and find out, who am I? What's this all about?"

Dr. Paul Spong, who came to the study of cetology as a psychologist, found himself transformed into a devout advocate of dolphin freedom.

"I came to the realization", says Spong, "that at the same time I was manipulating their (orca) behavior, they were manipulating my behavior. At the same time I was studying them and performing experiments on them, they were studying me and performing experiments on me."

Both men have taken to heart an advice: eloquently expressed by novelist Edward Abbey that, "it's not enough to understand the natural world, the point is to defend and preserve it."

Intelligent? But dolphins just eat fish ...

Other scientists have told me that they understand this effect that cetaceans have on people and resist the tendency to become 'involved' with their subjects only from fear of ridicule from other scientists.

Knowing something is so does not mean that others will accept it or even be open-minded enough to ponder it. Some things are just not on the table for serious scientific debate, and the idea that humans are subordinate in intelligence to another species is one of them.

Ingrained anthropocentric attitudes dismiss the very idea that a dolphin or whale could be as intelligent as a human being, or more. In this respect, science is dogmatic and intransigent, differing little in attitude from the Papal pronouncement that the Earth could not possibly revolve around the sun.

Human imagination can instantly recognize intelligence in a blob of purple protoplasm or an insectoid extraterrestrial if it steps from a space ship dressed in a metallic suit and armed with a fantastic proton-plasmodic, negative-charged, ionic-cell destabilizer-blaster. Dolphins, on the other hand, just eat fish.

We willingly accept the idea of intelligence in a life-form only if the intelligence displayed is on the same evolutionary wavelength as our own. Technology automatically indicates intelligence. An absence of technology translates into an absence of intelligence.

Dolphins and whales do not display intelligence in a fashion recognizable to this conditioned perception of what intelligence is, and thus for the most part, we are blind to a broader definition of what intelligence can be.

Evolution molds our projection of intelligence. Humans evolved as tool-makers, obsessed with danger and group aggression. This makes it very difficult for us to comprehend intelligent non-manipulative beings whose evolutionary history featured ample food supplies and an absence of fear from external dangers.

Thinking like a whale, or a Neanderthal

I have observed whales and dolphins in the wild for fifty years, seeing varied and complex behavior that has displayed a definite pattern of sophisticated social interactions. They have exhibited discriminatory behavior in their dealings with us, treating us not like seals fit for prey but as curious objects to be observed and to be treated with caution.

They can see beyond to the manifest technological power that we have harnessed, and they can adjust their behavior accordingly. It is a fact that there has never been a documented attack by a wild orca on a human being. Perhaps they like us. More likely they know what we are.

The interpretation of behavior remains subject to the bias of the observer; one observer can classify behavior as intelligent, and a second observer will dismiss the same behavior as instinctive. There is also the tendency to be anthropomorphic - to attribute human feelings and motives to the behavior of non-humans.

Until we can actually talk with a non-human, it is difficult, if not impossible, to do anything but speculate on what is being thought or perceived. We cannot even understand with any certainty what a human being from a different culture, speaking a different language, may be thinking or perceiving.

Even among people of our own culture, language, class, or academic standing, it is a formidable task to peer inside the workings of the brain. In this respect all brains other than our own are alien, and I might venture to add that the inner workings of our individual brains are still a mystery to each of us that possess one.

It is a great tragedy for our development as a species that we have been alone among hominids for the last 30,000 years. Imagine Homo neanderthalensis existing today as a separate intelligent species of hominid primate. Our perception of the nature of intelligence would be profoundly different.

Homo neanderthalensis is an example of a species that possessed both technology and media communication. This tool-maker created haunting images of its experiences and environment. Some Neanderthal tools, artifacts, and cave art from the Chatelperonian period have survived and remind us that we are not the only species capable of material artistic expression.

Neanderthal ivory and bone carvings were used for adornment in addition to more practical purposes. Symbols carved on antlers relating to the movement of animals in relationship to the seasons indicate that Neanderthals may have invented 'writing', and carried a hunting almanac around with them.

I have often heard lectures and read articles on the art of early humans. Yet seldom have I heard it said that it was not Homo sapiens alone but Homo neanderthalensis who also left us that legacy. Another species created something that we believe we alone created.

The layers of the mammalian brain

We perceive reality based on how we preconceive it. In other words, we see what we want to see. Let's take a close look at the anatomy of the brain. This is an organ that the human organism shares with most species above the invertebrate order. More specifically, we should look at the mammalian brain that is an organ composed of three distinct structures.

The foundation of the mammalian brain is the paleocortex, sometimes called the 'reptilian' or 'ancient' brain. The paleocortex segment reflects the primordial fish-amphibian-reptile structure. This basal combination of nerves is called the rhinic lobe (from the Greek rhinos, for nose) because it was once believed to be the area that dealt with the sense of smell.

The poorly developed rhinic lobe is overlaid by the slightly more advanced limbic lobe (from the Latin limbus, for border). On top of this lobe is overlaid the third and much larger segment called the supralimbic lobe.

Draped over these three lobes is a cellular covering called the neocortex, meaning 'new brain'. This is the instantly recognizable, fissured, convoluted layer that envelops the other two more primitive segments. The neocortex is a bewilderingly complex community of intertwined axonal and dendritic nerve cells, synapses, and fibers.

The mammalian brain is a complex layering or lamination of evolutionary processes that reflects hundreds of millions of years of progressive development. The billions of electrochemical interactions within this complex organ define consciousness, awareness, emotion, vision, recognition, sound, touch, smell, personality, intuition, instinct, and intelligence.

The first factor in determining the mammalian stages of development is the number of brain laminations. The layering of the neocortex differs greatly between humans and other land animals. The expansion of the neocortex is always forward. This means that neocortex development can be used as a fairly accurate indicator of the evolutionary process of intelligence.

We cannot assume, however, that the determining factor in comparative intelligence is neocortex mass. The other factors considered in the equation are differentiation, neural connectivity and complexity, sectional specialization, and internal structure. All these factors contribute toward interspecial measurements of intelligence.

Comparing intelligence among species

Interspecies comparisons focus on the extent of lamination, the total cortical area, and the number and depth of neocortex convolutions. In addition, primary sensory processing relative to problem solving is a significant indicator; this can be described as associative ability.

The association or connecting of ideas is a measurable skill: a rat's associative skill is measured at nine to one. This means that 90% of the brain is devoted to primary sensory projection, leaving only 10% for associative skills. A cat is one to one, meaning that half the brain is available for associative ability. A chimpanzee is one to three, and a human being is one to nine.

We humans need only utilize 10% of our brains to operate our sensory organs. Thus the associative abilities of a cat are measurably greater than a rat but less than a chimp, and humans are the highest of all.

Not exactly. The cetacean brain averages one to 25 and can range upward to one to 40. The reason for this is that the much larger supralimbic lobe is primarily association cortex. Unlike humans, in cetaceans sensory and motor function control is spread outside the supralimbic, leaving more brain area for associative purposes.

Comparisons of synaptic geometry, dendritic field density, and neural connectivity underscore the humbling revelation that the cetacean brain is superior to the human brain. In addition, the centralization and differentiation of the individual cerebral areas are levels higher than the human brain.

Many of us may remember our lessons from Biology 101. We were shown illustrations of the brain of a rat, a cat, a chimp, and a human. We listened as the instructor pointed out the ratio of brain to body size and the increased convolutions on the neocortex of the human over the chimp, the cat, the rat. The simplistic conclusion was an understanding that humans were smarter.

Of course, it was a human demonstration of intelligence, and the conclusion was arrived at by discrimination based on the selection of the examples. When the brain model of an orca is inserted into the picture, the conclusion based on the same factors places the human brain in second position.

But the cetacean brain is very different

Unfortunately for the pride of humankind, this simple comparison is elementary compared to a truly astounding fact: whereas the human brain shares three segments with all other mammals, the cetacean brain is uniquely different in its physiology.

Humans have the rhinic, limbic, and supralimbic, with the neocortex covering the surface of the supralimbic. However, with cetaceans we see a radical evolutionary jump with the inclusion of a fourth segment.

This is a fourth cortical lobe, giving a four-fold lamination that is morphologically the most significant differentiation between cetaceans and all other cranially evolved mammals, including humans. No other species has ever had four separate cortical lobes.

This well-developed extra lobar formation sandwiched between the limbic and supralimbic lobes is called the paralimbic. Considering neurohistological criteria, the paralimbic lobe is a continuation of the sensory and motor areas found in the supralimbic lobe in humans.

According to Dr. Sterling Bunnell, the paralimbic lobe specializes in specific sensory and motor functions. In humans, the projection areas for different senses are widely separated from one another, and the motor area is adjacent to the touch area. For us to make an integrated perception from sight, sound, and touch, impulses must travel by long fiber tracts with a great loss of time and information.

The cetacean's paralimbic system makes possible the very rapid formation of integrated perceptions with a richness of information unimaginable to us.

Technology, or evolution?

Despite Biology 101, brain-to-body ratio is not an indication of intelligence. If this were so, the hummingbird would be the world's most intelligent animal. Brain size in itself, however, is important, and the largest brains ever developed on this planet belong to whales.

More important is the quality of the brain tissue. With four lobes, greater, more pronounced neocortex convolutions, and superior size, the brain of the sperm whale at 9,000 cc or the brain of the orca at 6,000 cc are the paragons of brain evolution on the Earth. By contrast, the human brain is 1,300 cc. And by point of interest, the brain of a Neanderthal was an average 1,500 cc.

Apart from our collective ego as a species, the idea of an Earthling species more intelligent than ourselves is difficult to swallow. We measure intelligence in strictly human terms, based on those abilities that we as a species excel at.

Thus we view hand-to-eye coordination as a highly intelligent ability. We build things; we make tools and weapons, manufacture vehicles, and construct buildings. We use our brains to focus our eyes to guide our hands to force our environment to conform to our desires or our will.

Whales cannot or do not do any of the things we expect intelligent creatures to do. They do not build cars or spaceships, nor can they manage investment portfolios.

Cetaceans do have built-in abilities like sonar that put our electronic sonar devices to shame. Sperm whales have even developed a sonic ray-gun, so to speak, allowing them to stun prey from a head filled with spermaceti oil to amplify and project a sonic blast.

However, we expect an intelligent species to arrive in a spaceship armed with laser rayguns, bearing gifts of futuristic technologies. This is a fantasy that we can understand, that we yearn for. For us, technology is intelligence. Intelligence is not a naked creature swimming freely, eating fish, and singing in the sea.

The whale is an organic submarine. A whale may not arrive in a spaceship, but it is itself a living submersible ship. All of its technology is internal and organic. We do not accept this. The human understanding of intelligence is material. The more superior the technology, the more superior the intelligence.

Intelligence is adapative, not abstractive

Yet intelligence is relative; it evolves to fulfill the evolutionary needs of a species. All successful species are intelligent in accordance with their ecological position. In this respect, the intelligence of a crocodile or a whale, an elephant or a human is non-comparable.

A complex intelligence exists within every sentient creature relevant to its needs. We as humans cannot begin to compare our elaborate intelligence to the complex intelligence of other creatures whose brains or nerves are designed for completely different functions in radically different environments.

Most modern humans believe that we are vastly more intelligent compared to our ancestors of 75,000 years ago or even 10,000 years ago. Our technology is proof, is it not? The fact is that the brain of a person living today is identical in size and composition to that of our kind from tens of thousands of years ago. If you were to set Einstein's brain beside the brain of a cave-dweller of the Paleolithic era, you would not be able to find a single difference in size or complexity.

Our technology is cumulative, the end product of millennia of trial and error. It is also exponential, and we now live in the time of the most rapid exponential growth. Individually, the average cave-dweller of the past could match the average citizen today in associative intelligence and would be as capable of learning.

Our intelligence is also cultural, and the vast amount of information that we have at our disposal lies outside of ourselves as individuals. Apart from the community, we are severely limited in understanding or manipulating technologies.

Left to our own resources on an undeveloped island, most of us would have absolutely no idea how to survive. We do not even have the knowledge to construct rudimentary stone tools or weapons. In this respect stone age humans would be our intellectual superiors.

Physiological measures

If we look at the comparative intelligences of species strictly on a morphological basis, judging all aspects on cortical structural development alone, we can assign an average associative score relative to human intelligence. Let's assign the average human brain a score equal to 100. This is the number we consider average on human Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests.

Based on associative skills as defined by the physiological structure of the comparative brains, we will find that a dog scores about 15, and a chimpanzee around 35. These are scores that are comfortably within our understanding of intelligence.

Based upon comparisons of cortical structure alone, a sperm whale would score 2,000.

The truth of the matter is that we know absolutely nothing about what goes on in the brain of a whale or a dolphin. In our ignorance, we resort to the arrogance of denial and dismissal. We deny the physiological evidence and in general we have denied that other animals can think or even feel.

We forget that all mammals have climbed the evolutionary ladder with us, and some, like the whale, started climbing that ladder tens of millions of years before we evolved from that apelike ancestor that we shared with the Neanderthal, the chimp, and the mountain gorilla.

The whale has evolved in a different manner, its natural physical abilities giving it little cause to desire material baggage. The spear was not needed to get food - the whale is one of the most efficient hunters in natural history. The whale's ability to travel, to communicate, to care for its young, and its complex social systems are all separate from external material acquisition.

Whales have biologically evolved what we utilize technology to achieve. Technology is something that the whales have never needed. They contain all the assets needed for survival and development within their massive bodies and formidable brains.

Humans are big-brained manipulators. Cetaceans and elephants are big-brained non-manipulators. The hominid brain grew in size from 450 cc to 1,300 cc over a period of only 5 million years. Cetaceans had already reached 690 cc in brain size some 30 million years ago and had developed to their present capacity well before our own evolutionary jump in brain development.

Another major difference between the cetacean and human brain is the shape. The cranium of the whale evolved over millions of years to conform to the need for streamlined movement through the water.

This need has shaped the brain, making it higher, but shortening the length front-to-back slightly. And this shape has resulted in a relatively thinner layering of the cortex that is more than compensated by the much greater surface area of the neocortex due to the tremendous in-folding of the convolutions.

According to Pilleri and Gihr, dolphins, toothed whales, and primates have the most highly differentiated brains of all mammals, and Krays and Pilleri showed through electroencephalographical studies that the Amazon River dolphins have the highest degree of encephalization, much higher than primates.

Construction of the cortex was found to be equal or superior to primates. Cetaceans are the most specialized mammalian order on the planet, and we see intelligence in dozens of species. By contrast, Homo sapiens are the sole surviving hominid.

Making, or thinking?

Humans may be the paramount tool-makers of the Earth, but the whale may be our paramount thinker. We can only imagine how a dolphin perceives the stars, but they may well do so better than we. Indeed, if the power of such an awesome brain could be utilized, travel to the stars might have already been achieved. The mind can travel to realms that rockets can never reach.

Or perhaps they have already discovered that the ultimate destination of a voyager is to arrive back where it belongs - in its own place within the universe. The desire to travel to the stars could very well be an aberration, a need within a species that has been ecologically deprived.

Intelligent species here or else where in the universe may have determined that space travel is not the ultimate expression of intelligence. It may only be the ultimate expression of technology: technology and wisdom may be widely diverse expressions of different forms of intelligence.

Intelligence can also be measured by the ability to live within the bounds of the laws of ecology - to live in harmony with one's own ecology and to recognize the limitations placed on each species by the needs of an ecosystem.

Is the species that dwells peacefully within its habitat with respect for the rights of other species the one that is inferior? Or is it the species that wages a holy war against its habitat, destroying all species that irritate it?

What can be said of a species that reproduces beyond the ability of its habitat to support it? What do we make of a species that destroys the diversity that sustains the ecosystem that nourishes it? How is a species to be judged that fouls its water and poisons its own food?

On the other hand, how is a species that has lived harmoniously within the boundaries of its ecology to be judged?

A moral responsibility is upon us

It is an observable fact that whales and dolphins hold a special place in the hearts of human beings. We have had an affinity with them for years, recognizing in them something that it has been difficult to put a finger upon.

What we do know is that they are different from other animals, apart from them in a manner that suggests a unique quality that we can intuitively recognize. That quality is intelligence.

Recognizing this quality has profound moral responsibilities. How can humans continue to slaughter creatures of an equal or superior intelligence? The path toward the reality of interspecies communications between cetaceans and humans may lead us to the recognition that we have been committing murder.

Utilizing the computer technology of our species in company with the linguistic and associative skills of cetaceans, we may be able to talk with these beings some day soon. The key is in understanding the different evolutionary developments within two completely different brains with uniquely developed sensory modalities.

Imagine being able to see into another person's body, being able to see the flow of blood, the workings of the organs, and the flow of air into the lungs. Cetaceans can do this through echo-location. A dolphin can see a tumor inside the body of another dolphin. If an animal is drowning, this becomes instantly recognizable from being able to 'see' the water filling the lungs.

Even more amazing is that emotional states can be instantly detected. These are species incapable of deception, whose emotional states are open books to each other. Such biologically enforced honesty would have radically different social consequences from our own.

Sight in humans is a space-oriented distance sense which gives us complex simultaneous information in the form of analog pictures with poor time discrimination.

By contrast, our auditory sense has poor space perception but good time discrimination. This results in human languages being comprised of fairly simple sounds arranged in elaborate temporal sequences. The cetacean auditory system is primarily spatial, more like human eyesight, with great diversity of simultaneous information and poor time discrimination

A language more like music

For this reason, dolphin language consists of very complex sounds perceived as a unit. What humans may need hundreds of sounds strung together to communicate, the dolphin may do in one sound.

To understand us, they would have to slow down their perception of sounds to an incredibly boring degree. It is for this reason that dolphins respond readily to music. Human music is more in tune with dolphin speech.

Utilizing their skill at echo-location with elaborate detailed mental images of what they 'see' through auditory channels, dolphins may be able to recreate and transmit images to each other.

In other words, whereas our language is analog, cetacean language is digital. With the invention of the computer, we are now communicating with each other digitally, and this may be the key to unlocking the doors of perception into cetacean communication.

The possibilities are fantastic. Instead of communicating across the vast expanse of space, we may be able to bridge the chasm between species. But we will not be able to say that "we come in peace." The tragic reality is that we will be speaking with species that we have slaughtered, enslaved, and abused. We can only hope that they will be forgiving of our ignorance.

If so, the future holds a place for the exchange of knowledge, the secrets of the seas, alternative philosophies, and unique and different perspectives. I can envision the words of the whales translated into books.

Instead of just listening to the music of whale song, we will be able to understand what the songs convey. This may open up new horizons in literature, poetry, music, and oceanography.

In return, Moby Dick by Herman Melville might serve to show the whales that our species has come a long way toward peace between humankind and whalekind. The whales will learn the mysteries of the land and will be able to negotiate the release of members of their families that have been held captive for human amusement.

A universal right to dwell in peace

Perhaps we can convince them that our species is not uniform in its evolution toward morality and understanding. If so, we may be able to convince them that our whalers are aberrations, throwbacks to our more barbaric origins and a collective embarrassment to our species.

Most importantly, we will learn the lesson that we cannot presume to judge intelligence based upon our own preconceptions, prejudice, and cultural biases.

In so doing, we will be able to understand that we share this Earth with millions of other species, all intelligent in their own manner, and all equally deserving of the right to dwell in peace on this planet that we all call our home - this water planet with the strange name of Earth.

"They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent."
- D.H. Lawrence, Whales Weep Not.

 http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2526670/the_cetacean_brain_and_hominid_perceptions_of_cetacean_intelligence.html

Shamanic Psychology

"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:

 

1. When did you stop dancing?

 

2. When did you stop singing?

 

3. When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

 

4. When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

 

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves."

~~ The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary

New Way to Attack Viruses

Shape-shifting Molecule Tricks Viruses
Into Mutating Themselves to Death
By Steve Koppes, University of Chicago, April 14, 2015

A newly developed spectroscopy method is helping to clarify the poorly understood molecular process by which an anti-HIV drug induces lethal mutations in the virus’ genetic material. The findings from the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could bolster efforts to develop the next generation of anti-viral treatments.

Viruses can mutate rapidly in order to adapt to environmental pressure. This feature also helps them become resistant to anti-viral drugs. But scientists have developed therapeutic anti-viral agents for HIV, hepatitis C and influenza using a strategy called lethal mutagenesis.

This strategy seeks to extinguish viruses by forcing their already high mutation rates above an intolerable threshold. If viruses experience too many mutations, they can’t properly manage their genetic material.

“They can’t replicate and so are quickly eliminated,” said Andrei Tokmakoff, the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry at UChicago. “In order to make this work, you need a stealth mutagen. You need something sneaky, something that the virus isn’t going to recognize as a problem.”

Tokmakoff and his associates at UChicago and MIT reported new details of the stealthy workings of the anti-HIV agent KP1212 in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Supporting data were collected with two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy, an advanced laser technique that combines ultrafast time resolution with high sensitivity to chemical structure.

Critical Tools

“Two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy will be critical on the path ahead. It lets us look at the structures that exist in aqueous solution, which is the natural milieu of cells,” said study co-author John Essigmann, MIT’s William and Betsy Leitch Professor of Chemistry, Toxicology and Biological Engineering. Essigmann is co-founder of a pharmaceutical company that is developing mutagenic inhibitors of HIV.

“We also have done nuclear magnetic resonance, which is very informative, but those studies were done in organic solvents that probably do not as accurately provide a view of what happens in cells as did the infrared studies done by the Tokmakoff group,” Essigmann said.

Scientists design lethally mutagenic molecules such as KP1212 to resemble natural DNA bases, the adenine-thymine, cytosine-guanine base pairs. “These analogs can bind to the wrong base partners and therefore lead to genetic mutations,” said the study’s lead author, Sam Peng, who was a visiting graduate research assistant at UChicago.

KP1212 is a cytosine variation, which normally would pair with guanine during replication. But biochemical experiments and clinical trials have shown that KP1212 induces mutations by pairing with adenine. A leading proposal suggested that KP1212 derived its mutagenicity by shape shifting—converting into a different molecular structure by repositioning its hydrogen atoms on nitrogen and oxygen atoms.

Scientists call this shape-shifted structure a tautomer. James Watson, SB’47, and Francis Crick proposed this tautomer hypothesis in 1953 when they announced the discovery of DNA’s double-helical structure. “The shuffled hydrogen positions in rare tautomers alter the hydrogen bonding patterns, resulting in incorrect base paring,” said Peng, who completed his doctorate at MIT in 2014 and will become a postdoctoral scientist at Stanford University later this year.

Rapid Measurement

Most experimental tools would have difficulty distinguishing between the normal and shape-shifted structures because they interconvert very rapidly. With two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy, the UChicago team was able to distinguish between the two structures. The team also was able to measure how rapidly the shape shifting occurs under physiological conditions: in 20 billionths of a second.

The research team expected to find only two dominant tautomers, but their experiments showed that many more exist. In addition to taking on different forms as a neutral molecule, KP1212 also could accept an extra proton, giving it a positive charge at physiological levels of acidity—pH of approximately five and a half to seven—that made possible even more rearrangements and tautomer structures. “The number of possibilities exploded,” Tokmakoff said.

The experiments also showed that both the protonated and non-protonated forms facilitated the viral mutation rate. Even in the absence of the protonated form, the virus still mutated, just at a lower rate.

“We found that under physiological pHs, KP1212 is significantly protonated and this protonated form induces even higher mutation rates, reaching approximately 50 percent,” Peng said.

The finding that the molecule could become protonated both surprised and delighted Essigmann. The work taught his team how to create even more potent shape shifters—by decorating the KP1212 scaffold with groups of atoms and molecules that further raises their ability to capture protons.

“KP1212 is about 20 percent of the way toward being an ideal therapeutic mutagen. The hints given to us by the spectroscopy guide us toward even better mutagenic molecules,” Essigmann said.

Although Essigmann and Tokmakoff have known each other for years, they pursued seemingly far-removed research specialties until now. Tokmakoff’s biological research involves proteins, not DNA. But together their research teams were able to fruitfully undertake one of the first two-dimensional infrared spectroscopic studies of the therapeutic mechanism of an anti-viral drug.

“This is how basic research works,” Tokmakoff said. “This is how so often you get transitions from basic research to real applications. They can’t be predicted.”

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/04/14/shape-shifting-molecule-tricks-viruses-mutating-themselves-death

A Primer on Amorality

Amorality is an absence of, indifference towards, or disregard for morality.  Amorality is an intrinsic property of an object because while morality is determined relatively to a moral code, amorality can exist independently, especially by default in the absence of morality.

Morality and amorality in humans and animals is a subject of dispute among scientists and philosophers. If morality is intrinsic to humanity, then amoral human beings either do not exist or are only deficiently human.  If morality is extrinsic to humanity, then amoral human beings can both exist and be fully human, and may be amoral either by nature or by choice.

Amoral should not be confused with immoral, which refers to an agent doing or thinking something he or she knows or believes to be wrong.

Non-human Manifestations

Any entity that is not sapient may be considered categorically amoral. For example, a rock may be used (by rational agents) for good or bad purposes, but the rock itself is neither good nor bad. In ontological philosophy, the ancient gnostic concept that the material world was inherently evil applied morality to existence itself and was a point of concern in early Christianity in the form of Docetism, as it opposed the notion that creation is good, as stated in The Book of Genesis.  In modern science, however, the matter of the universe is often observed amorally for objective purposes.

      Animals

Animals have long been thought to be amoral entities. However, research into the evolution of morality, including sociality and altruism in animals, has sparked new debate amongst many philosophers. Many animals display behavior that is analogous to human moral behavior, such as caring for the young, protecting kin, and sharing the spoils of the hunt. Generally speaking, if this behavior is a voluntary response to ethical norms, then animals do have morality; if animals are involuntarily following innate instinct, then they are amoral.

     Legal entities

Some people consider corporations to be intrinsically amoral entities.

Human Amorality

Human morality appears in adults and even children from a young age. However, some humans may be considered amoral. There is some debate as to whether the infant human being develops a moral sense—is moral education cultivated (from within) or implanted (from without)?

• Young humans
• Newborn human infants, like some animals, do not display any sense of empathy with their fellow creatures, nor answerability to obligation, nor guilt or remorse.

• Cognitive Disorders
• Cognitive disorders and psychopathologies like antisocial personality disorder may be examples of human beings without morality.

• Rejection of Morality
• Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche argue further that rational human adults may even be able to choose to be amoral by rejecting the morality. If morality is bad, then it should be discarded. Yet if morality is bad, even asserting that it is bad invokes a kind of morality. Therefore the truly amoral argument would reject morality for non-moral reasons.

Humans may discard codes or systems of morality that have been purely socially constructed by their native cultures. If a rational human being can in any way override the capacity to establish notions of right and wrong, it is arguable that human beings have the ability to become amoral.

• Suspension of Morality
• At times human beings willingly suspend consideration of moral values, although in a limited domain. For instance, a lawyer may choose to be amoral with regard to his client in order to avoid judging his client's guilt or innocence before the trial is complete. This is different from a complete rejection of morality if the lawyer continues to abide by moral laws and take into account moral considerations when he is out of the courtroom.

Amorality in Literature and pop culture

The narrator John Steinbeck's East of Eden suggests that Cathy Ames is born without a conscience.

The Joker in Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke is portrayed not as immoral or misguided, but rather as amoral in spite of his madness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorality