This probably is not very scientific...

[ronin001]

If science fiction has taught us nothing else, it is that Matter can be converted into other matter or even into energy. So Man / woman will one day be able to teleport themselves from place to pace. If this ever becomes a reality they it will be simple to figure out a mode of both forward and reverse time travel

Unless you want an 1980s short cut method

 

[185248]

How about a pretty blue one

 

[deleted931509]

Quantum mechanics has a theory about twin particles, which has a real possibility to transfer information over infinite distances. Admittedly the technology is not developed yet. If we can transfer information, then we can transfer the details of all your atoms - so teleportation is a possibility if you accept that your original body will be destroyed.
As a bonus you will be able to create a copy of your exact body, so you can literally go fuck yourself!

 

[185248]

One of my neurology instructors was fond of saying that the human brain is a rats nest of evolution. He compared it to a hospital which starts as a single building to which wing after wing is added. The final (or current) result is a hodgepodge of architectural and functional styles clumped together which seemed appropriate at the time but are messy now. It's likely that more wings will be added in the future but right now we have no idea where, what they will look like or what their function will be.

Still our brains work within those constraints. It may not be the most efficient brain we could have but it's sufficient. There are 7.3 billion of us. Not bad for a large animal... and perhaps too successful given our population pressure on the planet.



True. We would first have to determine what 100% is before measuring what we don't use. Right now we're nowhere close. Brain science is in its infancy and will be for a long time to come.



I know you weren't asking me, but it's your supposition to prove and test to failure. Whoops! I forgot this wasn't scientific.






Yep. Nerve transmission speeds are well known. Nothing goes faster than light with the possible exception of space itself. Einstein's speed limit is for light in a vacuum, but the vacuum--spacetime itself--might not be constrained by that rule.

Neurologically we live in the immediate past. Yesterday I burned a finger on a saucepan lid. It did not feel hot when I first grabbed it. The milliseconds it took to travel up my arm to my brain and back again were discernible to me. I held onto it for about a half second (500 milliseconds) before dropping it. What seems like instant reflexes aren't.

Sometimes things occur in our minds as a flash. Our mind not quite comprehending it's meaning. Yet if our bodies electrical connections, which should work at the speed of light (or close too), should be able to process it.

I understand that the electrical function takes time to transmit to bodily function...to muscles etc for reaction to danger for example. Yet if a portion of the brain produces memory flashes which another portion of the brain captures and partly processes before understanding is fully downloaded, it could mean one part of the mind or brain is moving or processing faster than another part to process understanding. Yet again, I maybe in contradiction of myself..:

 

[halcyondays]

Sometimes things occur in our minds as a flash. Our mind not quite comprehending it's meaning. Yet if our bodies electrical connections, which should work at the speed of light (or close too), should be able to process it.

I understand that the electrical function takes time to transmit to bodily function...to muscles etc for reaction to danger for example. Yet if a portion of the brain produces memory flashes which another portion of the brain captures and partly processes before understanding is fully downloaded, it could mean one part of the mind or brain is moving or processing faster than another part to process understanding. Yet again, I maybe in contradiction of myself..:

Even if a memory flashes "instantly" you're still considering it after it happens. Your brain is always processing a ton of stuff you're not consciously aware of. You would be overwhelmed if you had to process it all consciously. Different areas of the brain are processing different information at the same time--no surprise there.

Since you bring up memory: the amygdala is the clearing house for memories, acting both like switchboard and assigning their emotional importance. If you have any traumatic emotional memories, your amygdalae (one in each hemisphere) assigned that importance when it first processed the experience and sent it elsewhere for storage as memory. Trauma victims--like soldiers with PTSD--can thank the amygdala for never letting them forget the horror. But the same is true of "happy" trauma--like the experience of holding your child for the first time or the first time you had sex or the first time you saw/met/dated the love of your life or when someone sprang a pleasant surprise on you. Happy or not, indelible memories are made such by the amygdala.

Still: tick-tock, tick-tock. The brain operates in time. It takes time to process. It has run time. You may not be aware of it but it's happening.

 

[185248]

Even if a memory flashes "instantly" you're still considering it after it happens. Your brain is always processing a ton of stuff you're not consciously aware of. You would be overwhelmed if you had to process it all consciously. Different areas of the brain are processing different information at the same time--no surprise there.

Since you bring up memory: the amygdala is the clearing house for memories, acting both like switchboard and assigning their emotional importance. If you have any traumatic emotional memories, your amygdalae (one in each hemisphere) assigned that importance when it first processed the experience and sent it elsewhere for storage as memory. Trauma victims--like soldiers with PTSD--can thank the amygdala for never letting them forget the horror. But the same is true of "happy" trauma--like the experience of holding your child for the first time or the first time you had sex or the first time you saw/met/dated the love of your life or when someone sprang a pleasant surprise on you. Happy or not, indelible memories are made such by the amygdala.

Still: tick-tock, tick-tock. The brain operates in time. It takes time to process. It has run time. You may not be aware of it but it's happening.

The human brain can be stimulated to indicate which areas light up, then those zones are designated a region and name. Just like the Universe.

Of-course the brain never stops functioning on a conscious or subconscious level. Yet science has not reached a place yet on reading or placing into understanding of those thoughts. One day it may be able to place into pictures what a human mind stores, or imagines. Not sure if I want it too Do you?

I go back to my original post. If one day we work out where human imagination and creation comes from. It may come to pass this is how we explore the Universe, with our minds, not our bodies and physically so to speak. It's why I think about thoughts in the mind travelling at the speed or faster than light. It's also the way science indicates portions of the brain are functioning, with light. The way we observe the Universe and things around us, light, and time.

We at this point in time, and everything revolves around time, are still trying to establish how things work here. We know very little about the planet on which we live. Yet we encroach upon it's survival every day. We are told science has the answers to ensure our survival, yet in truth it does not. Science can't predict earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, or any other natural or man made occurrence to a degree it will prevent destruction. How does one predict, or is able to predict the emotional outburst of an unstable human? The planet is the same, it moves, it shifts.

Nor can it predict when an asteroid, or some other body from space will appear to end all life. Even if it could, there is nothing which could be done to move us out of the way .

I believe all the answers are right here under our feet. Yet as usual, we always look beyond to find answers.

Ps, thanks for the Star Trek link. Human imagination at it's best and worst...on occasions, as seen from the here and then to attempt to predict a future.

 

[185248]

Ever se the movie Minority Report? There was a huge hole in this film from the beginning. Why weren't the memories of the accused placed as evidence? Instead they were silenced through a hallow device.

If they were not silenced, then it would be proved Tom Cruise was investigating a premonition from the beginning of the movie which led to the supposed guilty premonition being discovered and proven false.

Yet, this answer, solution was left till the end of the picture. When the agent chasing Tom realised something was wrong, then murdered by the bad guy. Yet, there was no "precog" of this because Tom had possession of the prime Precog.

What a load of bull

But, human imagination and creation has flaws in plotting a money making movie, as well as science and religion plotting humankinds destiny. Adjust a bit here, move a little there, theorise something, and wait for the facts to roll in, which can be changed at any time due to exploration.

The point is, human imagination. Where is it's beginnings? Cause there are no endings.

Not one person on this planet has the answers. It's the best guess has the day. Apologies...educated guess.

 

[halcyondays]

I go back to my original post. If one day we work out where human imagination and creation comes from. It may come to pass this is how we explore the Universe, with our minds, not our bodies and physically so to speak.

Our brains are our bodies. Every thought, feeling and perception you have is biochemistry in your brain. This includes your imagination.

I don't understand why anything would travel faster than light in the brain. Bioelectric signals racing across the brain by the trillions are produced by biochemical reactions in nerve tissue. Those reactions take time--maybe only milliseconds or microseconds but still time.

Good science begins with a simple question like: under what conditions can the speed of light be exceeded? But I don't know if that's what you're asking. From what we know now I have to say it would be exceedingly unlikely in the human brain.

Scientists do sometimes explore the universe using only their minds. Einstein is a prime example of this. He asked a simple question: under what conditions do the (Newtonian) laws of physics not apply? In his thought experiments he saw that the answer was at the speed of light and it depends where you are in a gravity field. The result was Special Relativity (S for speed of light) and General Relativity (G for gravity). It was a brilliant set of mathematical equations and so far they have held up.

Another example is Alan Guth's discovery of hyperinflation during the Big Bang, another brilliant set of equations which continue to hold up.

Science can't predict earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, or any other natural or man made occurrence to a degree it will prevent destruction.

This isn't entirely true. Mt. St. Helens in Washington State was predicted to erupt in 1980 and the exclusion zone created around it saved many lives. This has happened at several volcanoes around the world since.The 2011 Tohuku earthquake off northern Japan wasn't predicted but the tsunami was and their warning network saved far more lives than the waves took. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was far more deadly because nations around the Indian Ocean basin did not have a warning network like Japan's. Tornado warnings from the weather service here in the US regularly save lives if people pay attention and take cover.

As for asteroids striking Earth a handful of identification and monitoring programs beginning with Spacewatch in the 1990s have identified and continue to track thousands of potential impactors. It missed the Chelyabinsk asteroid in 2013 but to be fair that rock was so small it exploded 30km (20mi) up doing little more than shattering windows. It was too small for the monitoring programs to pick up. Ironically astronomers were all watching another much larger (dangerous) space rock pass close by Earth from another direction the same day! We now know with some reliability that we should be safe from the close approach asteroid Apophis in both 2029 and 2036 and it's only 300m across. Most of the larger space rocks are monitored and we will continue to find new ones.

True, timing and destruction might be impossible to predict. Entropy rules. Maybe the best we can do is get people out of the way. And people do stupid things like rebuilding again and again on hurricane coasts or in floodplains, landslide, avalanche, earthquake and wildfire regions, or ignore orders to evacuate.

We are told science has the answers to ensure our survival, yet in truth it does not.

How do you know you haven't been saved by science already? I'm old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox which killed 500,000,000 people in the 20th century and the last case was in 1977. By comparison World Wars 1 & 2 killed 65,000,000. If you had the full spread of vaccination jabs as a child there's a high probability you're alive because of them. If you have ever travelled outside your country I'm sure you've had the jabs necessary to protect you from diseases to which you are not normally exposed. I won't even go into antibiotic, cardiac, diabetes and chemotherapy medicines... or surgery.

We're mortal animals. Science cannot ensure our survival. It can increase our odds individually and collectively. It can extend life, buying us time. I'm not at all convinced it will save our species from going extinct eventually.

In my view it's not the job of science to predict everything. Warnings are based on probabilities. Yet given its infancy and the tiny amount of funding it gets I think science has done a decent job so far... and it's only going to get better.

But who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe we'll learn to stimulate the human brain in some way which allows us to perceive the universe in ways we haven't before. If not that then in a way which allows all our brains brilliant insights like Einstein's so we don't have to wait a century or two for someone like him to come along.

 

[palakaorion]

Mankind's abilities have already exceeded our wisdom. It's just a matter of time until we do something catastrophically foolish and earn the Ultimate Darwin Award.

 

[halcyondays]

Ever se the movie Minority Report? There was a huge hole in this film from the beginning. Why weren't the memories of the accused placed as evidence? Instead they were silenced through a hallow device.

If they were not silenced, then it would be proved Tom Cruise was investigating a premonition from the beginning of the movie which led to the supposed guilty premonition being discovered and proven false.

Yet, this answer, solution was left till the end of the picture. When the agent chasing Tom realised something was wrong, then murdered by the bad guy. Yet, there was no "precog" of this because Tom had possession of the prime Precog.

What a load of bull

But, human imagination and creation has flaws in plotting a money making movie, as well as science and religion plotting humankinds destiny. Adjust a bit here, move a little there, theorise something, and wait for the facts to roll in, which can be changed at any time due to exploration.

The point is, human imagination. Where is it's beginnings? Cause there are no endings.

Not one person on this planet has the answers. It's the best guess has the day. Apologies...educated guess.

Yes I saw Minority Report. I was as disappointed as you. It reminds me how Agatha Christie was criticized for hiding too much evidence from her readers in her detective novels. Few could work out whodunit yet she remains the top-selling author of all time. Arthur Conan Doyle did the same. I always thought it was a bit unfair but ate up the novels anyway.

I have to disagree that science plots the destiny of our species. It certainly doesn't claim to know our destiny except to give a "best guess" that we will eventually go extinct like 99% of all species which have ever lived.

Religions do plot our destiny. Every theology has an eschatology. Most expect some end time judgment/restoration/utopia. The Jewish faith has been waiting 2800 years for the messianic restoration. Christians have been waiting 2000 years for the second coming of Christ. Hindus have been waiting 2500 years for Kalki, the10th and final incarnation of Vishnu. Buddhists have another 2500 years to go before a bodhisattva named Maitreya will come and restore the Buddha's teachings which will have been lost by then. Islam awaits a redeemer named Mahdi who will appear and rule a few decades before judgement day.

My opinion is .

Something tells me a million years from now those myths will not have come true.

Meanwhile the centuries pass by.

 

[185248]

Our brains are our bodies. Every thought, feeling and perception you have is biochemistry in your brain. This includes your imagination.

I don't understand why anything would travel faster than light in the brain. Bioelectric signals racing across the brain by the trillions are produced by biochemical reactions in nerve tissue. Those reactions take time--maybe only milliseconds or microseconds but still time.

Good science begins with a simple question like: under what conditions can the speed of light be exceeded? But I don't know if that's what you're asking. From what we know now I have to say it would be exceedingly unlikely in the human brain.

Scientists do sometimes explore the universe using only their minds. Einstein is a prime example of this. He asked a simple question: under what conditions do the (Newtonian) laws of physics not apply? In his thought experiments he saw that the answer was at the speed of light and it depends where you are in a gravity field. The result was Special Relativity (S for speed of light) and General Relativity (G for gravity). It was a brilliant set of mathematical equations and so far they have held up.

Another example is Alan Guth's discovery of hyperinflation during the Big Bang, another brilliant set of equations which continue to hold up.



This isn't entirely true. Mt. St. Helens in Washington State was predicted to erupt in 1980 and the exclusion zone created around it saved many lives. This has happened at several volcanoes around the world since.The 2011 Tohuku earthquake off northern Japan wasn't predicted but the tsunami was and their warning network saved far more lives than the waves took. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was far more deadly because nations around the Indian Ocean basin did not have a warning network like Japan's. Tornado warnings from the weather service here in the US regularly save lives if people pay attention and take cover.

As for asteroids striking Earth a handful of identification and monitoring programs beginning with Spacewatch in the 1990s have identified and continue to track thousands of potential impactors. It missed the Chelyabinsk asteroid in 2013 but to be fair that rock was so small it exploded 30km (20mi) up doing little more than shattering windows. It was too small for the monitoring programs to pick up. Ironically astronomers were all watching another much larger (dangerous) space rock pass close by Earth from another direction the same day! We now know with some reliability that we should be safe from the close approach asteroid Apophis in both 2029 and 2036 and it's only 300m across. Most of the larger space rocks are monitored and we will continue to find new ones.

True, timing and destruction might be impossible to predict. Entropy rules. Maybe the best we can do is get people out of the way. And people do stupid things like rebuilding again and again on hurricane coasts or in floodplains, landslide, avalanche, earthquake and wildfire regions, or ignore orders to evacuate.



How do you know you haven't been saved by science already? I'm old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox which killed 500,000,000 people in the 20th century and the last case was in 1977. By comparison World Wars 1 & 2 killed 65,000,000. If you had the full spread of vaccination jabs as a child there's a high probability you're alive because of them. If you have ever travelled outside your country I'm sure you've had the jabs necessary to protect you from diseases to which you are not normally exposed. I won't even go into antibiotic, cardiac, diabetes and chemotherapy medicines... or surgery.

We're mortal animals. Science cannot ensure our survival. It can increase our odds individually and collectively. It can extend life, buying us time. I'm not at all convinced it will save our species from going extinct eventually.

In my view it's not the job of science to predict everything. Warnings are based on probabilities. Yet given its infancy and the tiny amount of funding it gets I think science has done a decent job so far... and it's only going to get better.

But who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe we'll learn to stimulate the human brain in some way which allows us to perceive the universe in ways we haven't before. If not that then in a way which allows all our brains brilliant insights like Einstein's so we don't have to wait a century or two for someone like him to come along.

With the advancement of laser communication and virtual reality I was thinking there could be a concept here for combining the two, maybe not now, but in the future sometime. It may or may not be in the works now.

What of the idea of beaming a laser into space, to planets in our solar system then attaching the mind through a link to travel along this beam to experience space travel. Maybe something like this is not so far away? The mind does not need eyes to imagine or recall memory, it's basically a data collector, processor, and storage facility a complicated one. But it also may give the experience of travelling at light speed.

The beam would eventually degrade to a stage that mind travelling along it would not be possible. Whether it would be possible to mind view outside the confines of a beam of light, I don't know (trying to imagine with my eyes closed viewing space from a beam of light ), as long as the beam is being transmitted there is the continual flow energy and connection to the place of origin. Whether you would experience a panoramic view, or none outside the beam.

I'm not a scientist, although I enjoy science fact and fiction. Sometimes I blur the lines, but that is what makes it fun.


Arrrghhhhhh...I don't know. It's just fun to think about stuff like that.

There were some other points in your post I wish to comment on...but time to stop imagining for the moment

 

[halcyondays]

With the advancement of laser communication and virtual reality I was thinking there could be a concept here for combining the two, maybe not now, but in the future sometime. It may or may not be in the works now.

What of the idea of beaming a laser into space, to planets in our solar system then attaching the mind through a link to travel along this beam to experience space travel. Maybe something like this is not so far away? The mind does not need eyes to imagine or recall memory, it's basically a data collector, processor, and storage facility a complicated one. But it also may give the experience of travelling at light speed.

The beam would eventually degrade to a stage that mind travelling along it would not be possible. Whether it would be possible to mind view outside the confines of a beam of light, I don't know (trying to imagine with my eyes closed viewing space from a beam of light ), as long as the beam is being transmitted there is the continual flow energy and connection to the place of origin. Whether you would experience a panoramic view, or none outside the beam.

I'm not a scientist, although I enjoy science fact and fiction. Sometimes I blur the lines, but that is what makes it fun.


Arrrghhhhhh...I don't know. It's just fun to think about stuff like that.

There were some other points in your post I wish to comment on...but time to stop imagining for the moment

Great idea for a sci-fi story! Write it.

Astronomers use feedback from lasers beamed up through the atmosphere to cancel out atmospheric distortion at large ground-based telescopes which use adaptive optics. It's not a huge stretch to imagine other information coming back down a laser beam as they become more advanced in the future. It'd be a boring way to travel to the nearest star--taking four years to get there--but exciting to explore the solar system in a few hours.

 

[palakaorion]

If you're somehow travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, your "view" will be limited to stuff directly ahead. Light from other directions would either not "catch" you or would be so Doppler shifted it would be at wavelengths invisible to human perception.

 

[185248]

If you're somehow travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, your "view" will be limited to stuff directly ahead. Light from other directions would either not "catch" you or would be so Doppler shifted it would be at wavelengths invisible to human perception.

But, taking into account the virtual reality of technology now, and the improvement of laser tech as well. Expand upon this. Just imagine if at some point humankind were able to find a way to accelerate light?

I know it's a bit of a leap. But I do not think Earths resources will allow us to build the huge Starships portrayed in our Science Fiction movies. All well and good we build huge aircraft carriers, huge buildings, but they are not launched into space. I have ideas on how we can do this with the technology we have now. Maybe it's my construction and wee bit of science background which helps me imagine this.

But, with the brains in charge, the arrogance and ego, there is no hope f outside ideas forming.

Me thinks the mind, attached to at some point data waves upon light beam will be our first exploration into deep space. If at some point in the future we can bend light, accelerate it, we may find ourselves venturing further than we ever thought possible. Then if we find a place habitable, if we survive we may build at some point, if we still have the resources to physically build the ships we imagine now in our science fiction fantasy to transport us there.

We may even using laser and mind meld technology be able to explore Black Holes. Of which we know fuck all. We for some reason view life of a human as paramount, yet we continue to waste it, and try to extend it at the same time. I and those my age have seen technology expand in ways, the modern day generation take it for granted, in some ways, many ways dangerously. Yet fail to imagine further than what google can link imaginations too.

Google will not imagine for you, it will take from your imagination. My ideas, and millions of others are stored, sorted and placed into categories.. Nothing is for free. Yet, I don't care.

Next time you read the privacy statement...read it

One thing we are given and no machine will take the place of, is human imagination and possibility. Yet there will always be those who wish to profit from it. That comes first.

 

[185248]

Our brains are our bodies. Every thought, feeling and perception you have is biochemistry in your brain. This includes your imagination.

I don't understand why anything would travel faster than light in the brain. Bioelectric signals racing across the brain by the trillions are produced by biochemical reactions in nerve tissue. Those reactions take time--maybe only milliseconds or microseconds but still time.

Good science begins with a simple question like: under what conditions can the speed of light be exceeded? But I don't know if that's what you're asking. From what we know now I have to say it would be exceedingly unlikely in the human brain.

Scientists do sometimes explore the universe using only their minds. Einstein is a prime example of this. He asked a simple question: under what conditions do the (Newtonian) laws of physics not apply? In his thought experiments he saw that the answer was at the speed of light and it depends where you are in a gravity field. The result was Special Relativity (S for speed of light) and General Relativity (G for gravity). It was a brilliant set of mathematical equations and so far they have held up.

Another example is Alan Guth's discovery of hyperinflation during the Big Bang, another brilliant set of equations which continue to hold up.



This isn't entirely true. Mt. St. Helens in Washington State was predicted to erupt in 1980 and the exclusion zone created around it saved many lives. This has happened at several volcanoes around the world since.The 2011 Tohuku earthquake off northern Japan wasn't predicted but the tsunami was and their warning network saved far more lives than the waves took. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was far more deadly because nations around the Indian Ocean basin did not have a warning network like Japan's. Tornado warnings from the weather service here in the US regularly save lives if people pay attention and take cover.

As for asteroids striking Earth a handful of identification and monitoring programs beginning with Spacewatch in the 1990s have identified and continue to track thousands of potential impactors. It missed the Chelyabinsk asteroid in 2013 but to be fair that rock was so small it exploded 30km (20mi) up doing little more than shattering windows. It was too small for the monitoring programs to pick up. Ironically astronomers were all watching another much larger (dangerous) space rock pass close by Earth from another direction the same day! We now know with some reliability that we should be safe from the close approach asteroid Apophis in both 2029 and 2036 and it's only 300m across. Most of the larger space rocks are monitored and we will continue to find new ones.

True, timing and destruction might be impossible to predict. Entropy rules. Maybe the best we can do is get people out of the way. And people do stupid things like rebuilding again and again on hurricane coasts or in floodplains, landslide, avalanche, earthquake and wildfire regions, or ignore orders to evacuate.



How do you know you haven't been saved by science already? I'm old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox which killed 500,000,000 people in the 20th century and the last case was in 1977. By comparison World Wars 1 & 2 killed 65,000,000. If you had the full spread of vaccination jabs as a child there's a high probability you're alive because of them. If you have ever travelled outside your country I'm sure you've had the jabs necessary to protect you from diseases to which you are not normally exposed. I won't even go into antibiotic, cardiac, diabetes and chemotherapy medicines... or surgery.

We're mortal animals. Science cannot ensure our survival. It can increase our odds individually and collectively. It can extend life, buying us time. I'm not at all convinced it will save our species from going extinct eventually.

In my view it's not the job of science to predict everything. Warnings are based on probabilities. Yet given its infancy and the tiny amount of funding it gets I think science has done a decent job so far... and it's only going to get better.

But who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe we'll learn to stimulate the human brain in some way which allows us to perceive the universe in ways we haven't before. If not that then in a way which allows all our brains brilliant insights like Einstein's so we don't have to wait a century or two for someone like him to come along.

I switch on a light, yet, anticipation or not, my mind perceives the light going on quicker than the electricity through the circuits and copper wiring. Ok, bit of a stretch. But I am thinking the human mind with the little which has been "fully" explored, has the possibility of moving faster than can be plotted at this point. The human mind has the ability naturally to leap over damaged circuitry. (how?) If the mind were able to be plotted, and we knew all, we would not keep finding ourselves in the same dire consequences we always do 10 centuries or more on, technology and it's improvements or not. It's greed.... . Not human need for knowing and knowledge. We know nearly nothing. Yet want to know it all...............

The problem being, some want to own it all.


I hope we make it through the next leap.

.

 

[palakaorion]

We'll never know.

Science:

"The mind" is basically highly organized biochemical states. Maintaining that organization takes energy (nutrients and oxygen) to operate the biological neural matrix (brain) upon which those states exist. Our bodies exist and operate to keep the brain "on". When our bodies or brains malfunction or fail those states can become disorganized or lost.

Thermodynamics laws state that the universe trends towards more entropy (less organization, loss of information etc.). Smaller areas can become more organized but at the cost of larger areas becoming less organized.

Special relativity laws state that the speed of light (zero mass, huge energy state) in a vacuum is constant and cannot be exceeded, period.

General relativity laws state that spacetime itself changes shapewhen to accommodate mass, what we perceive as gravity. Time dilation occurs in the presence of mass/gravity and also at velocity. Time only flows one direction (forward) and information is always from the past.

Empirical evidence of all this Einstein stuff is GPS. The math to determine where you are based on the signals you hear from 4 satellites has to account for all the relativity stuff: clocks on the ground tick slower than clocks on the satellites due to gravity; clocks on the satellites tick slower than clocks on the ground due to their speedy orbits; the signals themselves are Doppler shifted due to relative motion.

Metaphysics:

Presupposing that our "self" is separable from our body (aka a soul) we can't know whether souls who have left a body can send information back into the physical realm.

Many people have had convincing experiences (myself included). But those can also be adequately explained by other means, most significantly the mind creating the experiences it needs/wants purely in the software with no physical inputs to support them.

Conclusion:

Experiences that defy physical laws (aka supernatural or meyaphysical) may exist, but there is no way to either prove or deny them.

 

[halcyondays]

The human mind has the ability naturally to leap over damaged circuitry. (how?)

The brain is plastic but not instantly so. In most cases of brain damage due to stroke or injury there is no leap. Instead it takes patients months or years of physical rehab to regain lost motor control. Same goes for speech, vision, hearing, balance, touch, memory, etc. depending on where in the brain the damage occurred.

It isn't instant because the brain is physical tissue whose neurons and synapses slowly rewire and link new pathways to restore function.

 

[185248]

The brain is plastic but not instantly so. In most cases of brain damage due to stroke or injury there is no leap. Instead it takes patients months or years of physical rehab to regain lost motor control. Same goes for speech, vision, hearing, balance, touch, memory, etc. depending on where in the brain the damage occurred.

It isn't instant because the brain is physical tissue whose neurons and synapses slowly rewire and link new pathways to restore function.

Have been doing some reading lately on neuroscience, dreams and the like. Different pages of research though but along the same lines, so to speak.

With the discoveries of how the mind works, dreams etc..I think our discoveries in this regard will outstrip other discoveries in prolonging life.

We all know at some point there needs to be an end. It is the end, how each of us approach it, what lies beyond it. Will it be painful, will it be peaceful..so human questions has as many questions about the ending, as we do about the beginning. We know we are born...but where will our ending lay.

Anyway, What if a persons facing the end of life with pain...dreams or subconscious could be stimulated in a way, without drugs..where they would dream of flight, being free of gravity and soar with the eagles so to speak....instead of being drug induced, dreamless.

I just had a dream last night of flying...it was shorter than usual...but spreading arms, to feel weightless wind in your face and the overwhelming freedom is priceless.

I have not looked at the research regarding brain activity at the point of closure under drug inducement. Maybe you could shed some light here hal?

Hope I make a bit of sense

 

[halcyondays]

Have been doing some reading lately on neuroscience, dreams and the like. Different pages of research though but along the same lines, so to speak.

With the discoveries of how the mind works, dreams etc..I think our discoveries in this regard will outstrip other discoveries in prolonging life.

We all know at some point there needs to be an end. It is the end, how each of us approach it, what lies beyond it. Will it be painful, will it be peaceful..so human questions has as many questions about the ending, as we do about the beginning. We know we are born...but where will our ending lay.

Anyway, What if a persons facing the end of life with pain...dreams or subconscious could be stimulated in a way, without drugs..where they would dream of flight, being free of gravity and soar with the eagles so to speak....instead of being drug induced, dreamless.

I just had a dream last night of flying...it was shorter than usual...but spreading arms, to feel weightless wind in your face and the overwhelming freedom is priceless.

I have not looked at the research regarding brain activity at the point of closure under drug inducement. Maybe you could shed some light here hal?

Hope I make a bit of sense

I wrote a reply to your query a month ago but deleted it because it was very long and didn't answer your basic question. I'm not sure this one will either.

In short there are a variety of ways to scan brains which tell us some of what's going on--you can find these all over the internet and youtube including scans of dead and dying brains, but they don't yet shed much light on dreams and visions people may be having as they die. Nor do I know of any near death brain studies which look at the effect of painkillers, anesthesia or other drugs on brain scans of the dying or reports of their dreams and visions when revived.

We don't know why some people have visions near death and others don't. It could be hypoxia (lack of oxygen) but I expect that every brain of a dying person goes hypoxic and yet only a minority of patients who are revived report seeing anything. It could have something to do with how quickly a brain becomes hypoxic, which drugs used or not used, whether the brain is naturally entering a dream cycle at the time or any number of unknown ways the visual cortex might be stimulated.

The point I want to make is that as awesome a set of tools our current brain scan technology is--and the many doors of research they are opening to us--they pale before the complexity of the brain. In the future our current technology will be seem very crude indeed.

The brain has 5 trillion (that's 5,000,000,000,000) neurons. A mere 300,000,000 connect left and right hemispheres through the corpus callosum. Dendrites (neural branches) form more synaptic connections than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. We are only beginning to map how some of these communicate with each other in real time, at what speed and what the communication does or means.

I expect neural death is the end of us. What will it be like? It will be like before you were alive--which is to say before your earliest memory: nothing you perceive or remember because it takes a living developed brain to do those things.

As for life extension I think genetic engineering will extend our lives far more than brain research. Theoretically if we can stop our telomeres (the ends of our DNA strands) from shrinking we can stop the aging process and live forever unless killed by accident or illness. And we may well eliminate most disease by manipulating our DNA.

As exciting as our advances have been I am extremely jealous of those who will be living decades, centuries and millennia from now. To them our current knowledge will be barbaric.

 

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Without getting TOO scientific, this is very insightful...

This video explains why we cannot go faster than light

The Universe has a speed limit and it seems there is no way around it

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170228-why-cant-we-go-faster-than-light