Phantom Regret Surrenders to Life

    The Weekend's latest album Dawn FM is a masterpiece, with a very special ending that is dear to my heart. Not since M83's Outro off Hurry Up, We're Dreaming has a concluding song moved me this much. Phantom Regret is a poem rehearsed by Jim Carrey, the album's acting DJ, as music is played in the background, along with some lovely vocal instrumentation by The Weeknd. 

    When the song opens, and as the first lines are spoken, I imagine being a trucker on some lonely country highway at night, with the stars out in full bloom and the city lights far away. I imagine needing to pull over to take in the overwhelming beauty of the words and music, a special juxtaposition from multiple artists. I wouldn't know it's Jim Carrey, one of the most famous movie comedians of all time, just some recluse on the radio who is probably avoiding humanity but yearns to connect. And the radio is the only way he knows how. 

    I look back on the things I thought I owned, only to realize they will pass through my possession once I am gone, that they will return to the Earth as they always were in some form, whether it was constructed for my consumption or not, as all things eventually return to the dust from which they are made, for the possession of material objects is only an illusion, as we borrow what we need only for as long as it can be passed on to the next person. It feels like death is imminent as the poet speaks, though I do not feel like I am physically dying, only reaching some climax or revelation about life, similar to the way the Cloud Atlas trailer did as Outro was playing 10 years ago. All life is transitory, says the music as it pulls me along, releasing my grudges and reflecting on how I behaved when I wasn't wanted, a recent flood of rejection swarming my heart as it has done many times in the past. 

    Life hums a tune that I forever yearn to synchronize. I have not always been in sync with it- such a rarity for anyone not to regret the decisions they made, since often a decision can go both ways, benefiting one aspect of their self and others while harming another. Decisions are simultaneously creative and destructive, balanced on a fulcrum of divine awareness. Those we made that let us down a dark path can rarely be amended as we search for the antidote, the scream to the sky that made us question why we did not follow our heart or our passion, however many long years we spent chasing things the universe did not intend for us. Trust is the demon that haunts us, cynical derivations crunched by a system that evacuates soul. Reconciling our desires with a world that isn't available for them is a lifelong journey for many of us, and one that I must determine very soon, as the deadline of servitude approaches. 

    Grace is the answer, spinning wheels of nuance capturing vacancies in the spectrum, like the James Webb Telescope recovering data from the most distant of galaxies, regardless of our inability to see them. The purple rain reveals nurseries far more efficient than previously thought, indicating how prolific star formation was at the dawn of time, just as our choices bred more births of lives we could have led the younger we were, so that as God ages, we age too, in a miniature carousel off the beaten path. Grace is all that will remind us that we can look and act beautiful without even trying, that by humming the right tune we can fully integrate the universe's plan, primping our hearts for the celestial showroom. 

    The caveat is that our dream must be in the service of others, for it is a rare event that God answers the prayers of those who only wish for themselves. Life is chaos, she can't make everyone happy, even for those who are suffering the most, for what is suffering other than the greatest of selfish attentions. You want to be heard and recognized, but nobody will pay attention because your motives are unclean, even the universe, which alienates those seeking a personal heaven, those whose spirits are bound by regret, decisions haunted by their lack of trust and community. To live is to give, not to take, and that is why achievement is an unclimbable mountain. We are limited by the limitless, prisoners to our own evolutionary command, that dictates we must help each other or face extinction. 

    The middle of nowhere, the crest of the wave, heaven within reach, at its closest, bliss constrained by the present. Our hearts are broken because we were innocent, benevolent, unblemished before the pain sank our ships. Heavy from hurt, we face the music feeling slighted, that life wasn't fair, that we had to dismember others for what happened to us. But those who did not turn inward, the saints of the choir, chose freedom from blame, who took their lives into their own hands, did not let the darkness consume them. They, the elevated, castrated regret from the symphony, diluted the misgivings with grace and sanctity, transforming leaden grudges into ardent gold. They who wept for forgiveness took the first step towards dawn's warming light, illuminated by fragments of the poet's dream, softened by the redeeming conductor of heaven. 

    I sit back, let the tears pour out, drops of peace for the sea of uncertainty turned happy, a long, slow surrender to the hidden energy. The choice becomes clear, the road leads home, slightly more focused from the light of the gas station. As the world called, in a previous life, so does responsibility in this one. Two roads diverged, Frost once wrote, the one less traveled is often the blessed, so I may relent as the poet finishes, the lark silenced, all senses converging on the moment, foresight marbled into confidence, the music stops, oh, now it is certain, what I must do, who I must become, what the plan was all along, that I must serve Earth and those living on it and whatever shape or form it molds me.

Electron Whirlpools

    Physicists have seen electron whirlpools for the first time. I didn't know this was possible, though I should. Suddenly galactic filaments make more sense to me. The recent evidence could suggest the structure of galaxies are maintained by enormous electric whirlpools that give these filaments their shape. Though they are thought to be made primarily of dark matter, the fact that they are magnetic, coupled with the possibility of macro-scale electron vortexes, could be the best explanation for their existence that we know at this point.

Center of Gravity, The Machine of Science

Rachel,

About gravity, yes, it would have to be a very dense object to settle in the core, and would probably take some time to get there.  Physics kind of breaks down at the center of really large objects (black hole, anyone?).  Nothing could ever hover in the center though.  Depending on the mass of the object, it will stop at an appropriate distance from the center of gravity, via Newton's law of gravitation.

If you really want a better on grasp on science, try going to a university.  Science is a machine with vast connections between theories, which really only create the likeliest of realities.  It is incredibly hard to push your own theories on ones that are already established.  Everything has a specialist that is backed up by rigid research and peer review.  It has a life of its own, if you think about it.  Humanity has been building on centuries of research which is why it has become so hard for "Renaissance men" to break through like they used to.  Nobody will take you seriously these days without any credentials.  I learned that the hard way!

The History of Earth's Gravity, Evolutionary Arms Race

Hi Rachel,

    Thank you for presenting such an interesting problem in paleontology. A theory like yours, if validated, would totally upend the scientific community. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that gravity has ever significantly deviated from is present quantity. A significant impact would have had to occur for gravity to restrict evolutionary growth the way you describe- far greater than Chixculub, which supposedly ended dinosaur evolution (with the exception of birds).
    Applying Occam's Razor to the issue, a more likely explanation is that because CO2 levels were much higher during the Triassic, there was an overabundance of plant life that allowed the herbivorous dinosaurs to consume the astounding quantities of energy needed to support the metabolism of large bodies. Larger bodies are advantageous because it is harder to kill them. Likewise, carnivorous dinosaurs would have needed to evolve larger bodies along with them, to help bring them down for consumption. As one columnist put it, it was an evolutionary arms race. 

     But the biggest inconsistency in your theory is that while there were many gargantuan dinosaurs, there also some very small dinosaurs- far smaller than humans. There were also small mammals, small insects and amphibians- all on the same level as today's sizes. In fact, many of today's species have survived since the Mesozoic: crocodiles, nautilus, jellyfish, bees, and the platypus, to name a few. If gravity really has been changing, you'd think there'd be a shift in the fossil record during this period.

    I think we are underestimating the ability of life to reach the greatest of extremes in any given environment. Life evolves because doing so is advantageous, otherwise it dies out. Long necks, long tails, huge horns, spines, and jaws took millions of years to co-evolve because there was an overabundance of competition in the Mesozoic. Reptiles were especially capable of doing this because their body plan allowed air sacs and hollow bones. There have been giant snakes and turtles at other periods in history. Even insects and mammals like the wooly mammoth grew to pretty large sizes before we ran them off the planet. We are their replacement. What we lack in size we make up for in intelligence. Without us, some of the largest species would still be around. After we're gone, if there aren't any intelligent species to take our place, large animals will again take up the vacant niches we possessed.

    A greater mystery to me is the Faint Young Sun paradox, which is the contradiction between a weak sun in Earth's early history and the relatively warm global conditions at the time. In early Earth history, solar output was about 25-30% less than it is now, but there is no evidence that the Earth was frozen during this time. Earth has managed to maintain its "Goldilocks" status ever since it was born, which to me suggests it might be regulating its own atmosphere. And that's as close to a crackpot theory as I will venture.

Race and Exploitation: What If the U.S. Had Remained a British Colony?

    Two of the books I'm reading are about the subjugation of foreign people as a colonial power takes over. One is called Open Veins of Latin America, a nonfiction book about resource extraction and the history of exploitation of pretty much every Latin American country. Trinity is a fictional book about the quest for Irish independence when it was occupied by Britain. 

    What strikes me is how similar the story of Ireland is to the various countries of Latin America that were taken over, raised for natural resources, sucked dry by a foreign conqueror (some had multiple), and fought a successful war for independence. The most important thing it tells me is that race is hardly a factor when it comes to exploiting people; whites and blacks have been exploited through history. If the Native Americans had looked white like us, the same thing would have happened. A better question is, does race increase the likelihood of civil rights violations during such exploitation? History's answer is a resounding yes. The people in Trinity were not enslaved, executed en masse, or forced into dangerous resource extraction. Most were not raped and their villages weren't pillaged. 

    The situation in Ireland was more along the lines of the American Revolution, which saw the colonies have lesser rights and unfair tax laws. But their situation was far worse, for they couldn't defend themselves against the British for decades. Ireland is somewhere in between; it's what would have happened to the US if it had lost the Revolutionary War. However, because the citizens of the colonies were mostly white, the US got off relatively easy compared to Latin America and Africa, and was able to defend itself sooner.