Some Qs. people asked me on science and my replies to them - Part 90

                                                             Interactive science series

Q: Dr. Krishna, I am a spiritual guru. Your article science-and-spirituality

is really engaging. But have you ever achieved a state of higher consciousness while dealing with science? Is it even possible?

Krishna: Hah! A spiritual guru's visit to this network and his getting engaged with its content is really heart-warming. Welcome to the world of Science, Sir!

 Some spiritual gurus told me a higher state of consciousness will lead you to a more Self-Empowered state of being. It will let more love flow easier to your Heart. It will get you in motion to a journey where you won’t play the victim anymore. It will lead you to listen to your Higher Self. It will give you infinite energy.

If that is what you achieve with higher state of mind, my answer is an emphatic "YES, I HAVE"!

I am highly empowered, I don't depend on anybody or anything for mental support.  "Critical thinking, thorough and fact dependent analysis of everything" brings peace and stability to my mind. Scientific investigation of everything brings satisfactory and the right answers to all my questions and problems. Problems don't seem problems anymore. I truly feel I am not a victim of circumstances but a higher self that is made to test and emerge victorious all the time. My love for all living entities is universal and doesn't stop at the boundaries of my home, city, region, state or country and is universal in nature. I am not afraid of anything anymore! I conquer fear with my rational thinking.

Understanding the scientific principles this universe is based on made me realize I am one with the universe and is not a separate entity from it and that there is no difference between me and the other forms - either living or non living - in this universe!

My expansive scientific knowledge brought me keen perception that combines innumerable perspectives at one instance. I can also sense how others are interpreting the world, how others feel based on their view points. Their judgments become very clear to me. And that doesn't bother me much if it involves me. 

I feel I have infinite energy in my body which makes me do things both mental and physical and multi task. I can feel and reach my higher potential. This energy made me a polymath too.

I always have new insights into things and thoughts and see things completely different from those aspects of others and in several different ways. 

Strangely sometimes I feel I am 'others' I am watching and what they are undergoing is actually me undergoing it! I feel one with others around and that we are not separate! I am both the beings who is enjoying life and who is suffering. And that I am everything and everybody in this universe! I am one with the universe. I deeply empathize with other living beings around.

Whenever I am out in the Nature's lap, watching mountains, streams, or stars in the night sky an overwhelming feeling engulfs me filling me with unexplainable experience. I feel a vast presence of energy and knowledge which is just infinite and pretty mind-blowing and surprisingly it completely fills me too.  My mind and  body become different and new entities then! 

I no longer fear death because I feel I cannot die - I can still live other lives, take other forms ( the atoms and energy in my body can get recycled ), and I can live others' - who are actually me too - lives!

I am totally free, highly independent, completely satisfied, very empowered and truly peaceful. If that is what spirituality brings, to my surprise, science too brought all these things into my life!

This is really enchanting and interesting. 

But my scientist friends told me they don't feel the same way as I do. Maybe their approach to scientific way of life is different from that of mine. And I am glad to say I stepped on the right path! That is why I succeeded in reaching these heights.

Science and Spirituality

Q:Do enlightened people know everything about the universe?

Q: In your opinion, does race have a genetic or scientific basis?

Q: What happens in a  dying brain?

Krishna: Scientists say (3) those closing moments of consciousness during death could be powered by something amazing and mysterious taking place inside your brain. In 2013, researchers at the University of Michigan found (1) that after clinical death occurred in rats, their brain activity actually flared, revealing electrical signatures of consciousness that exceeded levels found in the animals' waking state.

 If near-death-experiences  (2) stem from brain activity, neural correlates of consciousness should be identifiable in humans or animals even after the cessation of cerebral blood flow.

And that's exactly what it was detected, with anaesthetised rats displaying a surge of highly synchronised brain activity within 30 seconds of an induced cardiac arrest, consistent with patterns you'd see in a highly aroused brain. The phenomenon detected was a revelation, to the extent it may disprove the notion that just because blood flow has ceased as a result of clinical death, the brain must necessarily be rendered simultaneously inert. This study tells us that reduction of oxygen or both oxygen and glucose during cardiac arrest can stimulate brain activity that is characteristic of conscious processing.

If human brains somehow behave in the same way, it could help to explain the sense of awareness reported by many people who are successfully resuscitated in medical emergencies.  The phenomenon was only reported by 2 percent of patients and scientists think it probably is an illusion. That 'illusion' could be borne out of a neurological response to physiological stress during cardiac events. In other words, a cognitive experience preceding – not following – the clinical death itself, and which is later remembered by the patient.

Q: If human beings were not created, nobody would have known the truth about the universe. What would have been the use then? 

Krishna: The universe would have existed still but nobody would have known about it. Before the evolution (not creation) of human beings, life existed on Earth ( and also on planets of other solar systems). But that life on Earth didn't know anything about  the universe! That is why presence ( as a consequence of evolution ) of conscious beings with intelligence is highly important in knowing and understanding the universe and its working principles. 

Q:  If science was perfect from the beginning itself, there wouldn't have been so many religions and  conflicts in the world. What do you think?

Krishna: For anything to develop or evolve, it takes time. It cannot be done overnight. Human intelligence took time to evolve too. In the initial stages of this evolution, people founded religions with their primitive understanding of the world. Science came later with the evolution of human mind and the  consequent knowledge development. 

But when we have science, why do some people still stick to religion and primitiveness? Why can't they abandon untested and untried imaginative stories that have no evidence? 

Science or no science, human mentality follows its own course when people refuse to abandon fear and develop courageous and realistic outlook.

Q: What are the bad effects of science?

Krishna: There are no bad effects of science. Some people complain that science also brings with it a few bad things like commercial GM crops, nuclear bombs etc. along with the good it does to the mankind. But according to the scientific community – science is like a knife. A knife can be used to cut throats and spill blood. It can also be used for good purposes like cutting fruits and vegetables. It depends on the person who uses it. Likewise science can also be used for the benefit of living beings as well as for their destruction. Which way it goes is in the hands of the person who uses it. The choice is definitely yours, Homo sapiens.

Choice is Yours

Art work by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa

http://www.kkartfromscience.com

Q: How would you feel if I use telepathy to expose your good and bad secrets?

Krishna : Go ahead and do it. You have my full consent. :)

Shall I tell you why I confidently gave you my consent?

1. It is because nobody can do that unless they take the help of science.

Brain-to-brain interfaces: the science of telepathy

2. I don’t have any secrets I am ashamed of.

Q: How can firms like Cambridge Analytica manipulate things?

Krishna: If you are not a determined person, your mind can be manipulated. Pure and simple.

‘Psychographic targeting’  is the technique used by these tech masters to control things. 

Facebook  offers advertisers and campaigners numerous ways to send particular messages to particular audiences. It segments its users by demographic information such as age, gender, education or interest in specific issues. But psychographic marketing — which many firms around the world now claim to do — targets people on the basis of their personality traits.

In 2013, psychologists David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski reported that that by examining which posts or pages a user ‘liked’ on Facebook, it was possible to accurately predict sensitive information such as sexual orientation and personality traits. The academics, then both at the University of Cambridge, UK, gave 58,000 volunteers a test to measure their openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism: five aspects of personality that researchers view as consistent and stable across languages and cultures. (This kind of personality test is known as the Big Five scale.) Then they correlated these traits with the volunteers’ Facebook likes.

The Big Five chart is fairly broad-brush but a machine-learning algorithm could pull out correlations between likes, answers to a personality test and other aspects of a person’s digital footprint, to create a fine-grained personality profile.

So any firm that built a model correlating likes with personality could try to send advertisements to Facebook users according to their inferred personalities, and could tailor their adverts to people with particular traits. And once they had built a model, the firm would not need to store any Facebook data.

There is evidence that consumers respond more favourably to marketing messages that reflect their personality. In experiments conducted, people shown ads tailored to match their presumed personality trait bought significantly more goods than those shown mismatched ads.

It is possible to build a picture of someone’s Big Five traits using solely their Facebook data.  Psychographic targeting can increase persuasion compared with no targeting at all. However, differences in Big Five and other commonly studied personality traits do not explain all the differences in how people respond to targeting.

Cambridge Analytica  admits that it uses 'psychographic marketing'. Advertisers can mine other aspects of people’s digital footprints for correlations with personality such as Twitter feeds, browsing histories and phone-call patterns. Research suggests that these data can be predictive of personality, albeit with varying results. 

 Some companies use psychological profiling, too — built on personality quizzes taken by 40 million people. Some firms also claim to use a database that includes demographic information and data on voting histories, TV viewing habits and buying patterns.

You must have noticed big companies like Amazon send you very often 'survey questions'. When you answer them correctly, you have shown them some of your personality traits! They also ask you to download their apps.   These things on your smart phones or PCs will gather data on your surfing preferences and send them to these big companies. And they target you using that data.  

So technology is manipulating and controlling you and your mind! Do you have a free will now, if you are on social media?

Be careful about what you are saying and doing on the net if you are worried. Don't download apps like mad. Don't give correct answers to their surveys, if you want to be smart. Be careful while  you click on 'like' or 'up vote' something or share it, update your status, post pictures, mention about your locations and vacations. And, most important of all, be very firm and determined and don't get distracted by their manipulative techniques. 

Q: What is the difference between proving and scientific proving?

Like you take the help of DNA finger printing to nail a criminal. Or to prove a child is definitely somebody’s.

That a bullet was fired from a particular gun.

How can a bullet be traced to a particular gun?

Scientific evidence is the best and most accurate, provided it is not manipulated.

On other hand, lawyers ‘prove’ something in courts by using logic, witnesses etc. These can definitely be manipulated if science is not used.

For example, lawyers argued and told told judges ‘astrology’ is science and SC ruled in favour of those astrologers who fought the case saying that when stars and their charts ‘re used, it is science. Hah!

But if you ask scientists, they will tell you why astrology is not real science but pseudo-science. I would have argued, proved scientifically that astrology is not real science and won the case, had they invited me. How? Like this:

Debate between scientists and people who practice pseudo-science - ...

Q: What type of evidence is accepted in science?

Krishna: Evidence is of several types and not all are equal. The evidence pyramid shows what lies at the bottom and what at the top of evidence [ RCTs= Randomized controlled trials - a study in which people are allocated at random (by chance alone) to receive one of several clinical interventions like in medical research. One of these interventions is the standard of comparison or control. The control may be a standard practice, a placebo ("sugar pill"), or no intervention at all.]

While anecdotal evidence stays at the bottom as it is weak and is difficult to accept without some sort of skepticism, meta analysis of several studies is given the top most place in scientific methodology. So 'one report' is not clear cut evidence even if it is done in a purely scientific way. Only if it is confirmed by several further studies - which is reasserted through meta analysis, it becomes an evidence based fact of science.   

                              Evidence pyramid showing the hierarchy of evidence

(Picture Source: https://openi.nlm.nih.gov/detailedresult.php?img=PMC3168054_IJSTD-3... )

Q: How do scientists tell or give their new theories or law to the world?
Krishna: By publishing their work in peer- reviewed papers. That is the most authentic way of doing things in the world of science.

Q: What forces would act on a bullet fired from the top of a building to the ground?

Krishna: This is what physicists say...

1.  Centrifugal force. In the rotating frame of the earth there “appears” a force that keeps objects going around in a circle. When you are near the equator, the acceleration needed to keep rotating with the earth is about 0.03 m/s/s, while the surface of the earth moves at about 460 m/s. When you fire a bullet due East, the muzzle velocity adds to the velocity of rotation of the earth, and the apparent acceleration due to gravity will be lowered. If you shoot due West, the rotational velocity will be reduced (unless the muzzle velocity is greater then 920 m/s in which case you are once again “rotating” faster than earth by in the opposite direction).

This effect can change the apparent acceleration due to gravity by almost 0.7%. A drop of 1 m takes about 0.44 seconds, and a change in apparent acceleration of 0.7% will slow down the flying bullet by 1.5 ms.

 2. Quadratic drag. This is the horizontal motion actually increases the vertical drag. For a 9 mm round fired at 340 m/s muzzle velocity, the drag force is about 2.7 N. Just before hitting the ground, the bullet will make and angle with the horizontal of about 1 degrees. That means the vertical component of drag will be about 0.02 N at this time. This is a significant force on a bullet with a weight of 0.075 N, and it means the bullet fired from the gun will hit the ground about 30 ms later. This does assume the barrel was perfectly horizontal: even a change in launch angle of 0.1 degree will change the result significantly (adding about 60 ms to the flight time). This shows that it will be very hard to do this experiment accurately.

3. Gyroscopic influence of rotational mass acting as a gyroscope and the direction of rotation of the bullet in relation to the direction its being fired N-S-E-W. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force )

4. Magnus effect : the super sonic forces and cavitation :Cavitation . These are combination effects of the properties of a bullet and the atmosphere its in contact -  Atmospheric or air drag

5. Gravity 

6. Viscous forces

7. Coriolis force: an effect whereby a mass moving in a rotating system experiences a force (the Coriolis force ) acting perpendicular to the direction of motion and to the axis of rotation. On the earth, the effect tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern one.

8. Other effect can be the upward thrust vectors the bullet picks up every time it bounces off the bottom of the barrel during the rifling. 

Q: Are Vedas science or are they just philosophical treatises?

Krishna : Vedas are not science according to modern definition. Anything that has to be marked as science should  strictly adhere to modern scientific methods and methodology.
While vedas can provide insights based on the thinking process of the times they originated, must say somewhat highly enlightened, they still fall short of modern scientific thoughts that stand on evidence based facts. 

Q: How many states of matter are there?

Krishna: Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma are the common ones we hear about. 

There are also other known "extreme" states of matter.  These occur under incredibly low or incredibly high energy scenarios.  It is impossible to find them without experimental causation or under very rare and extreme events in the universe.  These include: Superfluid, Bose-Einstein condensate, Fermionic condensate, Rydberg molecule, Quantum Hall state, Strange matter, Photonic matter, Dropleton, Degenerate matter, Quark-gluon plasma, Color-glass condensate, and Black hole singularity.

There are other proposed states too ... super-solid, string-net liquid, super glass and dark matter.

Q: Is our world a simulation by our offspring?
Krishna: By our offspring? How can anybody’s children simulate his or her world?
I think you got confused. Some people think that this universe is a simulation of more intelligent entities. In that case, people joke, a teenager playing a game up above could be your ‘creator’.
It just is another human thought and imagination.

Q:Does science recognize human as composed of spirit, soul and body? If yes, why is there no spiritual science? 

Citations: 

1. http://www.pnas.org/content/110/35/14432

2. http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/how-science-expl...

3. https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/could_a_final_su...