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How To Be Spiritual In A Material World
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30 Sep 2024
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Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a Seventh of Nine ‘Planetary Boundaries’ That Support Life

 

Our planet has not passed its latest health check-up. A new assessment of Earth’s life-support systems shows that six out of nine of these crucial processes have crossed their “planetary boundary.” These boundaries are not tipping points—it’s possible to recover from passing them—but they are thresholds signifying we’ve entered higher-risk territory.

On another worrying note, scientists found the planet is close to breaching a seventh planetary boundary: ocean acidification.

In its first edition, a report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) used years of data and assessments to evaluate the nine planetary boundaries. These life-support systems make Earth resilient and stable. Alarmingly, six of those boundaries have already been crossed, as a similar assessment last year also concluded. The new report adds to that finding, suggesting these six metrics are now moving further into the “red zone,” or what the researchers consider a high-risk zone.

“The overall diagnostic is that the patient, Planet Earth, is in critical condition,” says Johan Rockström, PIK director and pioneer of the Planetary Boundaries Framework, in a statement.

Boundaries that have already been exceeded have to do with climate change, freshwater availability, biodiversity, land use, nutrient pollution (such as phosphorus and nitrogen) and the introduction of synthetic chemicals and plastics to the environment.

Ocean acidification is one of the systems that has not yet crossed its planetary boundary, along with ozone depletion and aerosols in the atmosphere. But while ocean acidification is still in the “green zone,” the new report finds it’s trending in the wrong direction. Scientists now say this metric is on the brink and may cross out of the safe zone in the next few years.

Earth’s oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, providing a valuable carbon sink as humans burn fossil fuels. But this process also makes the oceans more acidic, which can disturb the formation of shells and coral skeletons and affect fish life cycles, per the report.

 

 

As ocean acidification approaches the boundary, scientists are particularly concerned about certain regions, like the Arctic and Southern oceans. These areas are vital for carbon and global nutrient cycles, “which support marine productivity, biodiversity and global fisheries,” the report says.

“Looking at the current evolution, I’d say it’s really, really difficult to prevent that [boundary] crossing,” says Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at PIK and an author of the report, to Mongabay’s Sean Mowbray.

Other recent studies indicate the current conditions are already affecting some marine organisms, Caesar said in a press briefing, per the Guardian’s Damien Gayle. As a result, it might be necessary to re-evaluate “which levels can actually be called safe,” she added.

Levels of acidification are different across the world’s oceans. Colder waters, like those in the polar regions, may become more acidic more quickly, because they absorb more carbon dioxide. For some scientists, this suggests that perhaps the boundary has already been breached.

“When you start to think of the nuances of how the ocean works and the importance of some regions over others, I don’t necessarily agree that we’re still in a safe place,” says Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England who was not involved in the report, to Mongabay.

The Planetary Health Check is the first in a series of annual reports led by PIK and organized by the Planetary Boundaries Science initiative. It builds on years of research to inform solutions on how to improve the planet’s health. The health check will also serve as a “mission-control center” for decision-making, per the statement, by using satellite data, A.I. and multiple scientific disciplines—as well as the wisdom of Indigenous peoples, which is something the researchers hope to incorporate more of in following editions.

Even if it is close to its tipping point, ocean acidification is only one of the nine boundaries necessary for regulating the planet. Each process is woven together with the others. To protect the planet, it will take a holistic approach—and according to the team, considering the boundaries all together is the best way to identify the most effective actions to lessen humanity’s impact on the Earth and urgently restore it to a safe state.

“Indeed, one of the main messages of our report is that all nine planetary boundaries are highly interconnected,” Caesar said, according to the Guardian.

 

 

Original article here

14 Aug 2024
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Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

 

In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s issue of Nautilus, which looks at the concept of flow through various portals in science, we revisited our 2014 video interview with Tegmark (transcribed below for the first time), in which the professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains why the feeling of time is one thing and the math quite another. That Tegmark, also the author of 2017’s Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, takes the keenest pleasure from peering into the world through the kaleidoscope of his physics toolbox is amply clear. During our interview, leaning out of his chair, waving his arms, pouring his water bottle onto the carpeted hotel floor to drive home a point, he was in a constant state of animation, much like the objects (both microscopic and gargantuan) that he studies.

You say time doesn’t flow, but our subjective perception is that it does. Where do we go wrong?

It certainly feels to us like time is flowing. Yet that’s not the only way of looking at this reality. I could say that 10 to the power of 29 particles constitute me, and they are moving around in some very complicated patterns. Einstein pointed out that the most elegant way of describing this mathematically is to say, Let’s look at where each particle is in the three-dimensional space at each time, and draw this in a four-dimensional spacetime, where time is the fourth dimension.

If I have a particle that is part of my knee, which hasn’t moved, that particle corresponds to a line. At all times, it’s at the same place. If I look at a particle that’s part of a red blood cell, which has been constantly orbiting around my circulatory system, it’s making a super fascinating shape in spacetime. If I look at all my red blood cells together, they would make a braid pattern, making this incredible tangle in spacetime. If you look at the electron in my brain while I’m thinking, it’s even more complicated. But it’s still just a four-dimensional pattern. So I can either say that reality is a complicated pattern of four dimensions, or I could say it’s this stuff that feels like it’s changing and moving around. Which is more fundamental? Which is more correct? These are just two different ways of describing the same thing.

 

It’s funny how physics, like any field, has a small number of hot-button issues that people get very emotional about

 

Is it part of the scientist’s job to explain why things feel the way they do?

We’ve seen a lot of examples of how things feel very different from the way they look in the equations. I would argue that almost all of the big breakthroughs in physics have this as their most difficult element. If you rewind to when Einstein came up with special relativity, you would find people like Lorentz and Minkowski had already written down a lot of the math. But Einstein was the guy who managed to figure out what it was going to feel like. He said if these are the equations, the way it’s going to feel is if you go near the speed of light, you’re going to feel time slowing down. And people said, Whoa, that’s really weird! Then they did the experiment and it’s correct. I had a fun conversation with physicist David Wineland. He told me that he’d built two atomic clocks that are super precise, and put one of them one foot below the other, and was able to measure that it runs slower!

Then quantum mechanics came along. It’s so complicated people still argue about it 100 years later! The math, though, is beautiful and clean. Randomness is fundamentally an illusion because there is no randomness in the math, even though it might feel random. I’m saying the same thing about time. Even though the flow of time is fundamentally an illusion, there is nothing flowing about the math, the equations aren’t changing, there is just a single four-dimensional pattern, albeit a very complicated and beautiful one, in spacetime. If you study it carefully, you’ll realize it’s going to feel like a flow of time. As physicists, that’s ultimately what we need to explain: Why does everything feel the way it does? We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that things will always feel the way they actually are, because the history of physics is a long sequence of examples of where we realize that the ultimate nature of things is very different from how they feel.

If time doesn’t flow, how do we understand the second law of thermodynamics, which says that time flows in the direction of increasing entropy?

It’s funny how physics, just like any field, has a small number of hot-button issues that people get very emotional about. Time and specifically the so-called second law of thermodynamics is one of them. It’s a simple statement that on average things keep getting messier. That lets you define the direction of time. But there has been a lot of controversy about it. On the one hand, there are people like Arthur Eddington, who tend to view this as almost a holy principle. It’s sacred and shouldn’t ever be questioned. He has this famous line where he says, Well, all sorts of things might turn out to be wrong, but if some theorist ever challenges the second law of thermodynamics, then too bad for that theorist, because there’s no hope for him other than the utmost humiliation! On the other hand, a lot of other people say, Look, we shouldn’t have any holy cows in physics, everything must be questioned, including the second law of thermodynamics.

 

It’s like the ending of Life of Brian, where they say, “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost?”

 

What’s questionable about the second law of thermodynamics?

It’s turned out you can derive the second law of thermodynamics from more fundamental things. Let’s say I did something clumsy like spill water on the carpet. If I played a video of it backward, and you saw the water come off the carpet and go into the bottle, it would look totally wrong. But if you just zoom in and look at the motion of the particles flying through the other particles of the air, it would look perfectly reasonable backward, just like a bunch of bowling balls bouncing the other way. After 100 years of thinking about this, we’ve come to realize the explanation is surprising. It has to do with what happened 13.8 billion years ago. The reason our universe keeps getting messier is because it started in a tidy state yesterday, which was even tidier the day before, and even tidier 13.8 billion years ago.

Why did the universe start in such a tidy state?

What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium; de Sitter space, as we call it—there will be no sense of time anymore. There will nothing you can do to determine whether time is going one way or the other. Time will then have un-emerged again. It will be like the poem, This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

What if I looked at my wristwatch then? Would it tick forward?

There wouldn’t be a wristwatch because all the atoms, or all the protons in your wristwatch, would’ve decayed. All the particles that had decayed would’ve left the cosmic horizon. If there were a wristwatch, and it’s functioning, there will be a sense of time and change. But just like there hasn’t always been a wristwatch, there will not necessarily always be one.

How is measuring time related to the existence of time?

It sounds crass to say that time is what we measure with a clock. But it is a very deep fact that if there are no clocks—bearing in mind that every atom is a clock, in the sense that something is going around something else, which you can think of as a clock—then it’s not change which has gone but the whole ability to define time, and the whole ability to perceive time will also be gone. So in that way, time could’ve emerged from nothing, and might also go back to nothing. It’s like the ending of one of my favorite movies, Life of Brian, with Monty Python, where they say, “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!” Well, we’ll see!

 

 

Original article here

10 Aug 2024
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Why You Can Smell Rain

When those first fat drops of summer rain fall to the hot, dry ground, have you ever noticed a distinctive odor? I have childhood memories of family members who were farmers describing how they could always “smell rain” right before a storm.

Of course rain itself has no scent. But moments before a rain event, an “earthy” smell known as petrichor does permeate the air. People call it musky, fresh – generally pleasant.

This smell actually comes from the moistening of the ground. Australian scientists first documented the process of petrichor formation in 1964 and scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology further studied the mechanics of the process in the 2010s.

Petrichor is a combination of fragrant chemical compounds. Some are from oils made by plants. The main contributor to petrichor are actinobacteria. These tiny microorganisms can be found in rural and urban areas as well as in marine environments. They decompose dead or decaying organic matter into simple chemical compounds which can then become nutrients for developing plants and other organisms.

A byproduct of their activity is an organic compound called geosmin which contributes to the petrichor scent. Geosmin is a type of alcohol, like rubbing alcohol. Alcohol molecules tend to have a strong scent, but the complex chemical structure of geosmin makes it especially noticeable to people even at extremely low levels. Our noses can detect just a few parts of geosmin per trillion of air molecules.

During a prolonged period of dryness when it has not rained for several days, the decomposition activity rate of the actinobacteria slows down. Just before a rain event, the air becomes more humid and the ground begins to moisten. This process helps to speed up the activity of the actinobacteria and more geosmin is formed.

When raindrops fall on the ground, especially porous surfaces such as loose soil or rough concrete, they will splatter and eject tiny particles called aerosols. The geosmin and other petrichor compounds that may be present on the ground or dissolved within the raindrop are released in aerosol form and carried by the wind to surrounding areas. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the petrichor scent can travel rapidly downwind and alert people that rain is soon on the way.

The scent eventually goes away after the storm has passed and the ground begins to dry. This leaves the actinobacteria lying in wait – ready to help us know when it might rain again.

 

 

Original article here

03 Aug 2024
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Can Humanity Address Climate Change Without Believing It? Medical History Suggests It Is Possible

 

Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change.

While researching for a new book about the history of emerging infections, I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming.

Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, both reveal how people with different beliefs and interests can still agree on key policies and practices for tackling a global problem.

What You Can’t See Might Hurt You

Seeing is believing, and until the mid-19th century, it was very difficult to see the tiny organisms responsible for our so-called “fever” diseases.

Although the indirect evidence was compelling, many people remained skeptical of “animalcules” – as microorganisms were once called – until the microscope was sufficiently developed. Even then, acceptance was gradual. The once-dominant ideas about disease-causing gases, called miasmsas, persisted for several decades before most people acknowledged that the fevers had a living cause.

Climate change presents similar challenges of visibility. Although everyone can see and feel the weather, it is often difficult to observe its larger patterns and longer trends without the aid of technical charts.

 

 

Even when people acknowledge the bigger picture, the case for human responsibility is complicated by the fact that the carbon emissions from our engines, like the germ infections within our bodies, are unseen by the naked eye. It is hard to achieve human solutions when the evidence of human cause is invisible.

Economics Can Outweigh Evidence 

Adding to these challenges, economic interests often confound scientific recommendations.

In the case of germ theory, early recommendations to prevent the spread of infection included reinstating quarantines at shipping ports and border crossings, thus impeding the international flow of trade.

In the case of climate theory, recommendations to slow global warming include reducing the consumption of carbon-based fuels, thus reducing the flow of oil. These strategies can threaten livelihoods as well as profits, so it is not surprising to find labor unions divided over green initiatives and energy executives spreading misinformation about climate science.

Beliefs And Interests Need Not Coincide

But people’s beliefs and interests need not align if everyone finds some benefit in the recommendations.

This was the case in the latter decades of the 19th century, when germ-denying surgeons nevertheless adopted the antiseptic techniques of Joseph Lister.

They did so mainly for the practical reason that their patients fared better under the new methods. But if an explanation was needed, many of these die-hard skeptics claimed Lister’s methods prevented the transmission of miasmas rather than living organisms.

 

Responding to these claims, Lister stated:

 

If anyone chooses to assume that the septic material is not of the nature of the living organisms, but a so-called chemical ferment destitute of vitality … such a notion, unwarranted though I believe it to be by any scientific evidence, will in a practical point of view be equivalent to a germ theory, since it will inculcate precisely the same methods of antiseptic management.”

 

Lister was more concerned with saving lives than winning arguments. As long as the surgeons adopted his methods, Lister cared little about their justifications. When it came to preventing infection, it was the behaviors rather than the beliefs that counted.

 

 

Changing Behaviors Through Complementary Interests

The same could be said for global warming: Changing behaviors is more important than changing beliefs.

Case in point, there is a large and growing environmentalist movement among evangelical Christians. Organizations such as Green Faith and the Creation Care Task Force cite Biblical scripture to promote environmental stewardship as a sacred duty.

While many of these groups acknowledge human-based climate change, some of their core beliefs contradict the evolutionary theories that my colleagues and I employ as scientists. But we need not agree about fossils to wean the world off fossil fuels.

The same goes for priorities and economic interests.

A recent national Pew survey found that a large majority of Americans support the development and use of renewable energy. This includes a slight majority of Republicans, though their motives tend to differ from those of Democrats.

 

 

Republicans are more likely to prioritize the economic benefits of renewable energy than Democrats, who tend to list global warming as their driving concern.

The economic benefits could explain why red states produce the largest share of America’s wind energy and why three of these states are among the nation’s top five producers of solar energy. Their adoption correlates with the geography of the wind and sun belts, where farmers see favorable returns for producing power and a stable source of income to buffer the price fluctuations of weather-sensitive crops. Livelihood is a powerful motivator.

 

 

Finding Common Ground Could Change The World

None of these examples address climate change on all its fronts. And among Democrats as well as Republicans, there are different opinions about how fast and how far the transition to renewable energy should go.

But we can take another hopeful lesson from the 19th century: Although people did not agree on all disease-preventing actions, they nevertheless found enough common ground to achieve the greatest mortality decline in recorded history.

 

Original article here

 

09 Jul 2024
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Why Being Near Water Really Does Make Us Happier

 

Every time my brother crosses the Sagamore Bridge from mainland Massachusetts to Cape Cod, we all know where he’s headed: a sandy spot off an ocean road on the Nantucket Sound, home to the little beach club my family has belonged to for over 30 years. On clear days, you can see the shores of Martha’s Vineyard in the distance. That’s his water.

If you talk to Wallace J. Nichols, Ph.D., a marine biologist and the author of Blue Mind, a book about the physical and psychological benefits of water, for long enough, he’ll eventually ask you what your water is. And as it turns out, nearly everyone has an answer.

Since humans started exploring the planet, we’ve followed the water. Crossing oceans gave way to new discoveries and changed the course of history; chasing rivers opened our horizons. As travelers, we seek waterways on vacation, driving new coastlines in search of wild surf spots. We return to familiar “blue spaces” we grew up around. Month after month, water graces the covers of travel magazines like ours.

The immeasurable sense of peace that we feel around water is what Nichols calls our “blue mind”—a chance to escape the hyper-connected, over-stimulated state of modern day life, in favor of a rare moment of solitude. Research has long found that humans are pulled toward Mother Nature’s blue for, in part, its restorative benefits. Take the Victorians for example: Doctors in that era prescribed “sea air” as a cure for all sorts of issues, from pulmonary complications to mental health conditions.

More recent studies—including those out of a UK-based project called Blue Gym—have found that people who live near the coasts are generally healthier and happier. Other studies find that when shown photographs of natural green spaces, people’s stress levels drop, but the more blue spaces in the photos, the more people prefer them. Nichols, who has spent the last 25 years studying our relationship to water, has heard of everything from a drop of dew on a flower to the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, providing a sense of calm.

Real estate data even suggests a water view tacks a 116.1 percent premium on a property; and real-world figures suggest we’re willing to pay 10 to 20 percent more for the same room with a sea view in a hotel. For the ultimate in luxury, we seek out overwater bungalows in the Maldives, and underwater hotels all around the world. And even in places where water isn’t always a given, such as urban metropolises like Pittsburgh and Austin, crowds frequent refurbished river ways and gather in fresh water pools. Paris, too, now has its long-anticipated canal swimming pools, where tourists and locals alike can take a dip.

Our love of water is pervasive, and the reasons behind why we travel—and rack up vast credit card bills—to be by the water can be hard to articulate. “You’re paying for a feeling,” Nichols tells Condé Nast Traveler. “When you ask people to describe that feeling, it’s hard for them to describe other than to say they really like it, need it, and are willing to pay a lot of money for it.”

Take travelers by their own words. Cassie Abel, 34, a communications manager in Sun Valley, ID grew up on Vashon Island, WA, the largest island in the Puget Sound. “I love the water because it’s so much bigger and more powerful than anything else on Earth,” she says. “It’s moody—sometimes it’s the most calming presence, sometimes the most turbulent.”

 

 

Lara Rosenbaum, a 38-year-old writer and editor based in landlocked Nashville shares a similar sentiment. “Water pulls on me the way the moon pulls on it. It’s just in my blood and bones. It makes me feel alive in a deep, calm way. It sort of brings me in.”

Rosenbaum isn’t wrong, either. While water makes up about 70 percent of the human body (and about 70 percent of Earth), it also comprises 31 percent of our bones. “When we are by the water it…cuts us off from the rattle and hum of modern society,” says Nichols. “Moving water is expert at masking noise, especially the sound of the human voice,” he says, noting that the human voice is considered the number one source of workplace stress.

Offering us an auditory break, water even helps us fall asleep. “There is some research that says people may sleep better when they are adjacent to nature,” explains W. Christopher Winter, M.D., author of The Sleep Solution. “No wonder sleep machines always feature the sounds of rain, the ocean, or a flowing river.” One small study out of Northwestern University found that people who fell asleep listening to “pink noise”—sounds like rushing water or rain falling on pavement—not only slept more deeply but the experience also boosted their memories.

Jim Tselikis, co-founder of Cousins Maine Lobster, grew up in a small coastal town in Maine where everything from the rising and lowering of tides to the smell of fresh salty ocean air plays a role in the everyday. He remembers a fog horn from Portland Head Light, a mile from his bedroom. “The sound was so soothing. It represented the ocean, where I loved to be on muggy summer days, when I wanted to get away from the stress of school or work, or where I wanted to find peace.”

Currently living in Los Angeles, Tselikis says: “Every time I drift asleep I think of that fog horn back home and my need to someday return.”

 

 

When we physically enter the water, our body can rest muscles used every day, and work others that are used far less frequently. Not only that, but we give up gravity, something that’s somatically a break for your brain. For some, time spent in the water is an opportunity for insightful thinking, creative output, and quality conversations.

“If we are close to someone, they join us in that private bubble and conversations become more intimate; an intimate conversation while walking the beach with waves nearby becomes more private,” Nichols says. “People a short distance away can’t hear our words, and 180 degrees or more of our surrounding is open blue space.”

When Jenn Lawson, a 33-year-old member of San Francisco’s South End Rowing Club starts her days swimming in the Bay, she says, “Everything pulls into perspective—my divorce, work worries, anxieties about the future. The world focuses down to the next breath, the feel of the water on my skin, the glimpses of the foggy skyline, or the Golden Gate bridge glowing with the morning sun. In the water, everything becomes clear.”

The Science of Wanderlust

Are some people genetically predisposed to travel? Science says maybe.

Marie Stanislaw, a 69-year-old who lives on Vashon Island, WA adds: “Swimming in lakes and oceans, the water encompasses me…I can float for long stretches in salt water and feel totally peaceful.”

Charlie MacArthur, of Aspen Kayak & SUP in Aspen—who grew up surfing in Southern California and Hawaii, but moved out to Colorado for the snow—says that in his early days in the landlocked state, he returned to the coast when the snow melted. “I could not fathom living inland during the summer.” Then he discovered mountain rivers and started raft guiding in 1983. “Soon I was teaching kayaking for the Aspen Kayak school. I also took my surfboard on the river to surf big standing waves that would form during the spring floods,” he says. MacArthur has since traveled the world—New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Peru—paddling and surfing new rivers and oceans.

 

 

So, what do we miss when we miss out on water? Ask Andrew Gray, a 25-year-old from Oklahoma City. Growing up in a landlocked state, he didn’t see the ocean for the first time until college.

“I had watched so many movies, documentaries, and shows and was always fascinated with the idea of not being able to see land on the other side of the water,” he says. “I think the fact that there is this feeling of being ‘trapped’ in a land-locked state just made that desire so much stronger to breathe in the ocean air and lose yourself in its vastness.”

That’s why he signed up for Semester at Sea during college, a four-month-long study abroad program that takes place on a globe-roaming ship. While drifting out of the port of Southampton, England he finally saw the sea up close. “It had such a still and calm presence, but there was this overarching feeling of being in awe and feeling completely tiny and helpless—that there was this force of reckoning beneath my feet. I was completely speechless, just staring off the aft of our ship for about 30 minutes,” he remembers. “It was very humbling, I will never forget it.”

Without water, then, we miss a part of ourselves, perhaps.

A California resident, Nichols recalls natural disasters such as the state’s multi-year drought. “Simple things like taking a shower made you feel bad,” he says. “But if your shower or bath was your moment of solitude and clarity and disconnect—if that was your ‘blue mind’ moment—it was taken away. It became a source of guilt and stress and fear and anger.”

‘Our oceans, waterways, and the life they contain are so much more than their ecological, economic, and educational value. They have vast emotional benefits. They make life on earth possible, but also worth living,’ says Nichols.

Issues like pollution, oil spills, and droughts don’t just have ecological and economic costs, then, but emotional ones, too, Nichols argues. “Pollution shatters our ‘blue mind’ experience—even in beautiful places,” he says. “The beach can become sad. The ocean can make you angry or frustrated.”

During a U.K. study last year, researchers observed people during a visit to the aquarium: Participants watched an empty tank of water, a partially-stocked tank (home to fish, crustaceans, and plants), then a fully-stocked tank, containing double the number of species. Other experiments involved measuring people’s heart rates and blood pressure while watching either an empty, partially-stocked, or fully-stocked tank. As it turned out, even just looking at an empty body of water at an aquarium proved to be relaxing. But the experience grew boring after time. The antidote? Biodiversity.

As wildlife, flora, and fauna increased in the tank, so too did the therapeutic benefits of standing there. With more wildlife, people’s blood pressure and heart rates dropped; and the longer they wanted to stay. It’s a poignant argument for keeping our planet healthy.

“Our oceans, waterways, and the life they contain are so much more than their ecological, economic, and educational value. They have vast emotional benefits. They make life on earth possible, but also worth living,” says Nichols. “I like to imagine the world would be a better place if we all understood just how true that is. Water is medicine, for everyone, for life.”

 

 

Original article here

27 Jun 2024
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Do you find the 21st century overstimulating? Try ‘longstorming’

 

Our experience of time is changing. For the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the early 21st century has left us ‘whizzing without a direction’. Our world is shaped by the restless, disorienting rhythms of near-term deliverables, social media impression counts, technological obsolescence, shallow electoral cycles, rapid news cycles, frenzied culture wars, sudden stock market shifts, gig economy hustles, and occupational burnout. Though it all seems exhausting and unmanageable, the whizzing isn’t slowing: digital platforms now bombard us, minute by minute, with fragments of information that fail to cohere into meaningful narratives, and algorithms that hijack our neurochemical reward systems.

As the treadmill of post-industrial society speeds up, some of us have become so addicted to the stimulation that we struggle to imagine another way to live: psychological research shows that most people would rather receive electric shocks than sit quietly alone with their own thoughts. In his book The Scent of Time (2017), Han borrows a concept from Marcel Proust – une époche de hâte – to describe our overstimulated moment. The ‘age of haste’ has arrived. And its problems are pervasive.

When time whizzes by, individual moments blur together and we stop contemplating how each fits into broader arcs of history. We forget, Han laments, to engage in slower-moving forms of cognition such as wonder, curiosity and introspection. We forget how to reflect and be still. But what can we really do about the age of haste? For many of us, a slower, more contemplative life often feels unattainable. You may feel trapped by the directionless whizzing of the 21st century – trapped on an accelerating treadmill. Can you forge a new relationship with time?

Perhaps your first impulse is to find ways of escaping the age of haste. This is a mistake. We cannot simply break free by ‘exiting’ the world we inhabit. Confronting time requires moreengagement with the wider world. This world, however, is not the one defined by near-term deliverables and neurochemically disrupting algorithms. It is the one that reveals itself when you glimpse the Milky Way on a cloudless night. It is the world that becomes clear when you gaze upon a mountain.

 

Venturing into breathtaking outdoor spaces helps us step back, slow down and think in the long term

 

Encountering spectacular natural environments can cause a radical shift in how we think about ourselves and the world. According to the psychologist Dacher Keltner, feelings of awe, especially those inspired by natural scenery, can make us feel more collaborative, less egoistic, more altruistic, and more open to social connection. Over the past two decades, Keltner tested this idea through a series of experiments that examined how a person’s attitudes and behaviours change after experiencing awe-inspiring places or things. He found that natural splendour seems to put us in a headspace that lets us reflect on our short lives as ephemeral organisms dwelling on a fragile planet floating in a vast cosmos. This way of thinking can be transformative, but its power is not a recent discovery. Greco-Roman Stoic philosophers, for instance, encouraged retreats into the countryside to proactively ponder life. Venturing into breathtaking outdoor spaces seems to help us step back, slow down and, most importantly, think in the long term. I call this style of thinking ‘longstorming’ because encounters with sublime geophysical and ecological environments can invite the mind to brainstorm about our long-term futures and pasts.

Brainstorming is a technique that was developed by the advertising executive Alex F Osborne in the 1950s. This technique, as Osborne explains in his book Applied Imagination (1953), involves generating a stream of new ideas by riffing about bold plans or even proposing outlandish hypotheticals. Osbourne’s goal was to help employees come up with creative proposals for advertising campaigns, but brainstorming has since become a widely used tool for generating new ideas in all types of contexts. Brainstorming also works well – perhaps even better – out in the wilderness, under vast constellations of stars, where the mind is calibrated to contemplate the deeper timescales of our planet and universe.

I believe that purposefully longstorming can help us retool how we relate to time itself. Outdoors, in a headspace better suited to imagining possible scenarios in hypothetical past and future worlds, we can find a way beyond the immediacy of the age of haste.

In this case, a ‘scenario’ is created by weaving together ideas about trends (social, ecological, economic), possible events (the creation of new species, the movement of tectonic plates), and potential detours (such as the unexpected asteroid that collided with Earth 66 million years ago). The scenarios we imagine need not even be scientifically accurate. The simple act of temporally extending the intellect across time is enough to change how we experience the here and now.

 

Towering above the canyon like silent guardians, I saw the tallest living things on Earth: coast redwoods

 

I recently tried longstorming while hiking through Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Northern California. Standing inside the canyon itself, which a tiny stream had carved out over aeons, I thought about the fern species covering the 15-metre-high stone walls beside me. The ancestors of these leafy plants dated back 325 million years. Climbing over the tangled roots of a downed redwood tree, itself several hundred years old, I watched the rays from our 4.6 billion-year-old sun filter through the foliage, casting a soft dappled light. As I walked, I saw a tiny waterfall sprinkling over pads of moss as it fell from the high canyon walls. Towering above the canyon like silent guardians, I saw the tallest living things on Earth: coast redwoods. The ancestors of these trees have been growing in the region for about 20 million years, and their relatives thrived in the Jurassic period, roughly 160 million years ago. The scene felt like a portal to an earlier world – a reminder of the vast chain of life, and of my fleeting moment within it.

As I longstormed, I envisioned other moments from the past. Imagining how the nearby waterway would have looked hundreds of years ago, I pictured the redwood-plank homes built on its banks by the Indigenous Yurok peoples, who were some of the earliest inhabitants in the region. My mind drifted even further back. Tens of millions of years ago, redwood forests grew from Greenland to Alaska, France to the Czech Republic, England to Svalbard. The redwoods bear witness to the depths of time.

As I wandered, the canyon’s sprouting ferns and trickling water proceeded at a slow, deliberate pace. This invited me to ponder Earth’s ongoing dance of creation and erosion, growth and decay. Boundaries between the natural landscapes of the national park and the inner landscapes of my thoughts blurred. I thought about the impermanence of human endeavours, and how soon the digital equipment I had with me – phones, cameras – would become obsolete. I thought about the redwoods absorbing our emissions from the atmosphere, taking in carbon dioxide as they continued to grow. I pondered how climate change could reduce the coastal fog upon which the trees depend, or how reduced snowmelt could someday hinder the redwoods’ access to water. And I thought about my own life, my ancestors, and the intergenerational chains of connection that bind us to Earth and each other.

When I left the redwoods, and stopped longstorming, I found myself in a different frame of mind than when I arrived. I felt more tranquil and open to time. And I’m not the only one. In 1969, Claudia Alta ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson, then the First Lady of the United States, noted a similar experience in a Californian redwood forest. What she describes is a simple form of longstorming:

 

One of my most unforgettable memories of the past years is walking through the redwoods last November – seeing the lovely shafts of light filtering through the trees so far above, feeling the majesty and silence of that forest, and watching a salmon rise in one of those swift streams – all our problems seemed to fall into perspective and I think every one of us walked out more serene and happier.

 

Sublime outdoor spaces, such as a redwood forest, can offer a temporal perspective that is rare in contemporary consumer societies. Longstorming acts on this by creating a contemplative headspace in which the fleetingness of the present and the vastness of deep time mingle in harmony. This underscores the importance of conserving outdoor spaces not just as charismatic ecosystems or natural resources, but also as ideational resources for connecting our minds with the deeper timescales of our planet. For some, contemplating these settings may evoke a sense of planetary connection that makes the restless whizzing of our daily lives less oppressive, less urgent. For some, this may also be confronting, as we realise how insignificant our daily concerns are in the grand timelines of the universe. For others, it may shed light on hopes, fears, dreams, anxieties and desires.

By longstorming, your mind becomes a theatre for viewing possible planetary events across time. This is similar to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud’s concept of ‘timefulness’. Thinking about geological events on Earth, she writes in her 2018 book, can help us become more ‘mindful that this world contains so many earlier ones, all still with us in some way – in the rocks beneath our feet, in the air we breathe, in every cell of our body.’ Longstorming is also related to the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s concept of Robinsonner, in reference to Robinson Crusoe, from his poem ‘Romance’ (c1869-71). This invented French verb denotes the act of daydreaming by wandering mentally to distant places and times. Such plays of temporal imagination are essential to resisting the pressures of our age of haste.

 

Metals found in smartphones, such as gold and copper, were formed billions of years ago among distant stars

 

Anthropologists and geologists have long advocated that we focus on long-term horizons. In the 1970s, Margaret Mead warned against the modern, Western, hyper-individualistic pathology of being too rigidly rooted in one’s own cultural concept of time – a phenomenon that the anthropologist Robert Textor later termed ‘tempocentrism’. Bjornerud has diagnosed consumer society with ‘chronophobia’: the time denial associated with lives of instant gratification. In my book Deep Time Reckoning (2020), I caution against ‘shallow time discipline’: the way that socioeconomic pressures for short-term gains have created incredibly short-term rhythms in our lives. Tempocentrism, chronophobia and shallow time discipline are all ways of diagnosing our ever-accelerating relationship with the world, which we experience as a hyperactive whizzing that spins us, faster and faster, toward death.

Fortunately, you do not need to visit charismatic ecosystems, like redwood forests, to begin longstorming. Walking down any city street or a country road, you can attune to how the rocks beneath your feet have multimillion- or multibillion-year geological histories. You can attune to how the air you breathe is altered by decades of carbon emissions. You can attune to the evolutionary histories of the chirping birds or even the cells in your body. Contemplating the passage of time is, at some level, available to anyone willing and able to longstorm – to begin wondering about the longer timelines of the universe. When you return to your smartphone afterwards, you might even look differently at the device itself: less attuned to the newsfeeds and pings, and more attuned to the ancient geological histories of the elements and minerals that make it up. After all, many of the metals found in smartphones, such as gold and copper, were formed billions of years ago among distant stars.

That said, certain geophysical features (like mountain vistas or idyllic countryside), certain activities (like hiking or backpacking), and certain mental states (like awe or calm) tend to draw out more enriching temporal experiences than others. This has an unfortunate implication: opportunities to have life-transforming brushes with the deep time of our planet and cosmos are not evenly distributed across society. Not everyone is capable of leisurely neighbourhood walks, let alone treks up to mountaintop vistas. Not everyone has the resources to make such a trip, let alone the time. If we want all of society to resist the age of haste, we first need to reform its entrenched structures of poverty – temporal or otherwise.

In the age of haste, longstorming should be a necessity, not a luxury. Without a deeper attunement to planetary time, the therapies of the 21st century will deliver healing that soothes us only in the moment. The age of haste requires healing of a different kind: longer, slower, planetary.

 

 

 

Original article here

04 May 2024
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Just This Moment

I am having one of those days where my thoughts are leaning towards anticipating negative scenarios and engaging in the “what if’s” the mind is so compelled to do. And while, at this point, I know enough of the machinations of the mind to not go down those rabbit holes, it still can nag away at me as it was doing on this particular day.

While I have many techniques I use to bring my mind back into balance, something happened quite naturally on this day that really struck me. After a walk with my husband where I had laid out my potential what if’s, we made our way over to gather eggs and look at what was happening with the starts and seeds we had recently planted.

It took no time at all for my anticipating mind to tune into something life-giving, shifting me out of a chaotic mind to one quite naturally and easily at peace — a mind at ease as it found itself immersed in the bigger picture of life. All of this with no effort on my part, other than to be in relationship with something greater than myself, while spontaneously repeating over and over, “just this,” as I moved through the garden.

The “just this” was my way of focusing only on what was right before me — whether that was the lettuce I was picking, the conversation I was having or the observations I was making of the seedlings, — in effect, immersing my mind in the right now versus the “what if” future.

We take whatever we think to be true as something to believe in and act on, even when all signs point to the fact our minds have gone off the rails with fear, anxiety and judgment. And while in this day and age there is no end to solutions for an imbalanced mind from medication to meditation, we often skip right over the most accessible and effortless of approaches to healing our minds — the natural world.

Our very home and all the elements and conditions and living beings that we have co-evolved with since we first appeared on the planet are the clearest reflection of who we are, where we come from, and what we need. Why would we go anywhere else to gain perspective and to ground ourselves in truth?

We have been conditioned to believe that our well-being resides in a screen, a pill, more stuff, more prestige, more likes, etc. We have come to experience ourselves as separate from, and therefore not needing the support and the tutelage of what Earth has to offer us. Unfortunately, many of us have strayed so far and for so long, we have come to see the natural world as foreign, dark and scary, an enemy as opposed to an ally.

We are nature herself. We are created and sustained by the same force. To know this is to tap into the good news that even if we have forgotten, even if we never learned to begin with, all we have to do is to put ourselves in the presence of the natural world for it to do its work on us.

Find a reason every single day to linger, even for one minute, somewhere outside. Go without agenda. Go and be a listener. Go and allow yourself to get lost in the breeze, a bird singing, some fragrance, a starry night, the feel of rain on your skin. And say to yourself, “just this.”

 

 

Original article here

15 Mar 2024
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What’s Up Universe? Episode 1

I have been pals with the Universe for quite some time now. It wasn’t always that way, but it sure has been over the last 30 years after discovering that all kinds of super intelligence dwelt in the spaces between the stars.

So the Universe and I would like to pass along some greater understanding of what’s happening with the majestic Earth right now. Why? Because there are many views of what’s occurring now on Earth, ranging from climate crisis to healing the Earth to dealing with karma … but none of those match up with the power and beauty of what is actually going on that involves us all.

You see, the Earth and all Life upon it is in the throes of an upgrade, a quantum leap, a burst of becoming the likes of which we may never have seen before.

All of Life has become Source Sentient.

All Life, including the Earth as a sentient Source being, is discovering the unleashing of a new miraculousness. Inside this miraculous unfolding, the Earth is bursting forth in a new kind of Glory. Green is GREENER than ever before. Flowers grow taller and more luxuriant with COLOUR that shouts of wonder unfurling into our senses.

Infinite intelligence is now available to all living beings … and that includes all the life forms here with us. Oceans, forests, mycelium networks, the animal kingdoms … all showing us new possibilities of Life as an intelligent emergence.

And on top of all of that, a reunification has just happened. Every being sent forth from the original Source of Creation has just been called back into unificence, sharing their aeons of journeys, knowledge & wisdom into a new collective intelligence that surprisingly seems to have simultaneously embedded itself into our deep inner cores.

This reunification is about to lead to yet another quantum leap of intelligence, super powers, abilities, genius & connection here on Earth.

For we are no longer products of our pasts, our genetics, our learning and our experiences. We are quantum possibilities unfurling into an ever increasingly wondrous becoming. We are a new quantum future bursting into being!

 

About the Author

 

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13 Feb 2024
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The ’20-5-3′ Rule Prescribes How Much Time to Spend Outside

The herd of 400-pound caribou was running 50 miles an hour and directly at me. The 30 animals had been eating lichen in the Arctic tundra in Alaska when something spooked them. I was sitting in their escape route. The ground began to vibrate once they cracked 100 yards. At 50 yards, I could see their hooves smashing the ground and kicking up moss and moisture. Then they were at 40 yards, then 35.

I could hear their breathing, smell their coats, and see all the details of their ornate antlers. Just as I was wondering if the rescue plane would be able to spot my hoof-pocked corpse, one of the caribou noticed me and swerved. The herd followed, shaking the earth as they swept left and summited a hillcrest, their antlers black against a gold sky.

That moment when those caribou shook the earth also shook my soul. It was transcendent, wild as a religious experience. And it’s not even the most intense thing I did in Alaska. I experienced savage weather, crossed raging rivers, and faced a half-ton grizzly. My brain was feeling less hunkered down in its typical foxhole—a state I’d compare to that of a roadrunner on meth, dementedly zooming from one thing to the next. My mind felt more like it belonged to a monk after a month at a meditation retreat. I just felt . . . better. The biologist E. O. Wilson put what I was feeling this way: “Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction.”

When I returned from the wild, my Zen-like buzz hung around for months. To understand what was happening, I met with Rachel Hopman, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Northeastern University. She told me about the nature pyramid. Think of it like the food pyramid, except that instead of recommending you eat this many servings of vegetables and this many of meat, it recommends the amount of time you should spend in nature to reduce stress and be healthier. Learn and live by the 20-5-3 rule.

20 Minutes

That’s the amount of time you should spend outside in nature, like a neighborhood park, three times a week. Hopman led a new study that concluded that something as painless as a 20-minute stroll through a city botanical garden can boost cognition and memory as well as improve feelings of well-being. “But,” she said, “we found that people who used their cell phone on the walk saw none of those benefits.”

Other research discovered that 20 minutes outside three times a week is the dose of nature that had the greatest effect on reducing an urban dweller’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

In nature, our brains enter a mode called “soft fascination.” Hopman described it as a mindfulness-like state that restores and builds the resources you need to think, create, process information, and execute tasks. It’s mindfulness without the meditation. A short daily nature walk—or even a walk down a tree-lined street—is a great option for people who aren’t keen on sitting and focusing on their breath. But turn off your phone—alerts from it can kick you out of soft-fascination mode.

5 Hours

The minimum length of time each month you should spend in semi-wild nature, like a forested state park. “Spending more time in wilder spaces does seem to give you more benefits,” said Hopman.

A 2005 survey conducted in Finland found that city dwellers felt better with at least five hours of nature a month, with benefits increasing at higher exposures. They were also more likely to be happier and less stressed in their everyday lives.

The Finnish government then funded another study in 2014 in which the scientists dumped people in a city center, a city park, and a forested state park. The two parks felt more Zen than the city center. No shocker. Except that those walking in a state park had an edge over the city-park people. They felt even more relaxed and restored. The takeaway: The wilder the nature, the better.

Nature has these effects on the mind and body because it stimulates and soothes us in unusual and unique ways. For instance, in nature you are engulfed in fractals, suggested Hopman. Fractals are complex patterns that repeat over and over in different sizes and scales and make up the design of the universe. Think: trees (big branch to smaller branch to smaller branch and so on), river systems (big river to smaller river to stream and so on), mountain ranges, clouds, seashells. “Cities don’t have fractals,” said Hopman. “Imagine a typical building. It’s usually flat, with right angles. It’s painted some dull color.” Fractals are organized chaos, which our brains apparently dig. In fact, scientists at the University of Oregon discovered that Jackson Pollock’s booze-and-jazz-fueled paintings are made up of fractals. This may explain why they speak to humans at such a core level.

Nature lifts us in other ways, too: Think smells and sounds. The feeling of the sun’s warm rays. Or just the fact that you’re getting out of the stress of your home or office. “It’s probably a mix of a lot of things,” said Hopman. Environments like cities, with their frenetic pace, right angles, loud noises, rotten smells, pinging phones, and to-do lists, don’t offer this.

3 Days

This is the top of the pyramid. Three is the number of days you should spend each year off the grid in nature, camping or renting a cabin (with friends or solo). Think: places characterized by spotty cell reception and wild animals, away from the hustle and bustle.

This dose of the wildest nature is sort of like an extended meditation retreat. Except talking is allowed and there are no gurus. It causes your brain to ride alpha waves, the same waves that increase during meditation or when you lapse into a flow state. They can reset your thinking, boost creativity, tame burnout, and just make you feel better.

This is likely why one study found that three days in the wild boosts creativity and problem-solving abilities and another found that U. S. military vets who spent four days white-water rafting were still buzzing off the wild a week later. Their PTSD symptoms and stress levels were down 29 and 21 percent, respectively. Their relationships, happiness, and general satisfaction with their lives all improved as well.

When I returned from Alaska, my wife and I moved to the edge of the desert in Las Vegas. She wanted a shorter commute, and I wanted more access to nature. I now walk my dogs through red-rock trails for at least 20 minutes daily and on Sunday do a long trail run deep into the canyons to rack up my five-hour quota for the month. This summer, I’m planning a weeklong backcountry fly-fishing trip in Idaho’s Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness Area. Hoping I’ll return less frazzled, fitter, and feeling more alive.

 

 

Original article here

05 Feb 2024
Comments: 0

What was it like when the last antimatter disappeared?

 

Things happen fast in the earliest stages of the Universe. In the first 25 microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang, a number of incredible events have already occurred. The Universe created all the particles and antiparticles — known (as part of the Standard Model) and unknown (including whatever makes up dark matter) — it was ever capable of creating, reaching the highest temperatures it ever attained. Through a still-undetermined process, it created an excess of matter over antimatter: just at the 1-part-in-a-billion level. The electroweak symmetry broke, allowing the Higgs to give mass to the Universe. The heavy, unstable particles decayed away, and the quarks and gluons bound together to form protons and neutrons.

But that only gets us so far. At these early stages, there may be protons and neutrons in the Universe, as well as a high-energy bath of photons and neutrinos-and-antineutrinos, but we’re still a long way from the Universe as we recognize it today. In order to get there, a number of other things must occur. And the first of those, once we have protons and neutrons, is to get rid of the last of our antimatter, which is still incredibly abundant.

 

You can always make antimatter in the Universe, so long as you have the energy for it. Einstein’s most famous equation, E = mc², works two ways, and it works equally well for both applications.

  1. It can create energy from pure matter (or antimatter), converting mass (m) into energy (E) by reducing the amount of mass present, such as by annihilating equal parts matter with antimatter.
  2. Or it can create new matter from pure energy, so long as it also makes an equivalent amount of the antimatter counterparts for each matter particle it creates.

 

These annihilation-and-creation processes, so long as there’s enough energy for creation to proceed smoothly, balance out in the early Universe.

Early on, when the Universe was very hot, this process easily allowed us to create all of the particles and antiparticles contained within the Standard Model, as even the most massive particle (or antiparticle) known — the top quark — can be created quite easily: so long as there’s more than ~175 GeV of energy (the rest-mass energy of the top quark and antiquark) available for new particle (or antiparticle) creation with each typical collision that occurs.

So that’s how the hot Big Bang starts off: with this hot particle-antiparticle soup made up of all allowable species. In the earliest stages, it’s the heaviest particle-antiparticle pairs that disappear first. It takes the most energy to create the most massive particles and antiparticles, so as the Universe cools, it gets progressively less and less likely that the quanta of energy that interact can spontaneously create new particle/antiparticle pairs.

By the time the Higgs gives mass to the Universe, this primordial particle/antiparticle soup is too low in energy to create top quarks or W-and-Z bosons. Shortly thereafter, it becomes no longer possible to spontaneously create:

  • bottom quarks,
  • tau leptons,
  • charm quarks,
  • strange quarks,
  • or even muons (in that order).

 

Right around that same time that muons and antimuons annihilate and decay away, quarks-and-gluons bind together into neutrons and protons, while antiquarks bind together into antineutrons and antiprotons.

While there was plenty of energy available to create free up/anti-up and down/anti-down quarks, the onset of what we call “confinement” (or the hadron era) in the Universe means that such interactions are no longer possible; you must create whole protons/antiprotons or neutrons/antineutrons, which are much more massive that the quarks that compose them. The energy available in the Universe is far too low for that to occur, so all the antimatter, in the form of antiprotons and antineutrons, annihilates away with as much matter as it can find.

However, since there is somewhere around 1 extra proton (or neutron) for every 1.4 billion proton/antiproton pairs, we’re left over with a small excess of protons and neutrons.

All of the proton/antiproton and neutron/antineutron annihilations give rise to photons — the purest form of raw energy — along with all the prior annihilations that gave rise to photons as well. Photon-photon interactions are still going strong at this early, energetic stage, and they can spontaneously produce both neutrino-antineutrino pairs and electron-positron pairs. Even after we make protons and neutrons, and even after all the antiprotons and antineutrons have disappeared, the Universe is still rife with antimatter: in the form of antineutrinos and positrons.

It’s important to remember, even at this relatively late stage in the game (tens of microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang), how hot and dense things still truly are. The Universe has had just a fraction of a second go by since the Big Bang, and particles are packed tighter everywhere than they are, today, within the center of our Sun. The ambient temperatures would have to be measured in the trillions of degrees: more than 100,000 times as great as in the Sun’s core. And perhaps most importantly, there are a slew of interactions constantly occurring that can transform one type of particle into another.

Today, we’re used to the weak nuclear interactions occurring spontaneously in one context alone: that of radioactive decay. Higher-massed particles, like a free neutron or a heavy atomic nucleus, emit daughter particles that are less massive, giving off some energy in accord with that same equation Einstein put forth: E = mc². But at these stages of the Big Bang, even after the electroweak symmetry breaks, the weak interactions continue to play a more important role than simply being responsible for radioactive decays for some time.

 

 

In the hot, dense, early Universe, there’s a second role for the weak interaction to play, enabling protons and neutrons to convert into one another. So long as the Universe is energetic enough, here are four extreme reactions that occur spontaneously:

  1. p + e– → n + νe,
  2. n + e+ → p + νe,
  3. n + νe → p + e–,
  4. p + νe → n + e+.

 

In these equations, p is for proton, n is for neutron, e– is for electron, e+ is for positron (antielectron), while νe is an electron-neutrino and νe is an electron-antineutrino.

You’ll also notice that, when it comes to these four equations, equations #1 and #3 are simply the inverse of one another, while equations #2 and #4 are also the inverse of one another. This is an indication to us that these reactions can proceed either forward (e.g., where protons and electrons interact, resulting in a neutron and neutrino) or backward (e.g., where neutrons and neutrinos interact, resulting in a proton and electron), so long as the weak interactions and the amount of available energy both allow these reactions to proceed.

 

 

So long as temperatures and densities are high enough, all of these reactions occur spontaneously and at equal rates. Under these conditions:

  • the weak interactions are still important,
  • there’s a strong enough coupling between protons/neutrons and electrons/positrons/neutrinos/antineutrinos,
  • there’s enough matter and antimatter for these reactions to occur frequently,
  • and there’s enough energy to create higher-massed neutrons out of lower-massed protons.

 

While protons/neutrons form and the excess antiprotons/antineutrons are all gone only a few tens of microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang, the aforementioned conditions are all met for about the first full second after the Big Bang. During this time, everything is in equilibrium, and the Universe interconverts protons-and-neutrons at will, giving us about a 50/50 split between protons and neutrons while this is the case. Each time you convert a proton into a neutron, it’s just as easy to convert a neutron into a proton, and these reactions happen at about the same overall net rate.

But this doesn’t remain the case forever, or even for that long. As the energy inherent to each particle drops, it becomes just a little bit more energetically favorable to produce a proton than a neutron from these interactions. The neutron, remember, is just a little bit more massive than the proton, and is even a little more massive than a proton and an electron combined. As a result, when the temperature of the Universe drops to a value that corresponds to that energy difference, the proton population begins to slightly dominate the neutron population. This occurs right around the time the Universe reaches an age of one second after the Big Bang.

But then, at that moment, two additional things happen in rapid succession, forever altering the course of the Universe.

The first is that the weak interactions freeze out, meaning that the proton-neutron interconversion interactions stop occurring. These interconversions required neutrinos to interact with protons and neutrons at a certain frequency, which they could so long as the Universe was hot and dense enough. When the Universe gets cold and sparse enough, the neutrinos (and antineutrinos) no longer interact, meaning that the neutrinos and antineutrinos we’ve made at this point simply ignore everything else in the Universe. They should still be around at present, with a kinetic energy that corresponds to a temperature (assuming neutrinos are massless, which they aren’t quite) of just 1.95 K above absolute zero.

On the other hand, the Universe is still energetic enough that when two photons collide, they can still spontaneously produce electron-positron pairs, and where electron-positron pairs annihilate into two photons. This continues for just a tiny bit longer: until the Universe is about three seconds old (as opposed to the one second freeze out for neutrinos). This “second additional thing,” occurring just slightly after the weak interactions freeze out, means that all the matter-antimatter energy that was tied up in electrons and positrons goes exclusively into photons, and not into species of neutrinos-and-antineutrinos, when they annihilate.

This annihilation, of electrons and positrons into photons, represents the Universe losing the last of its antimatter. After this event, only antineutrinos, which already stopped interacting with the other particles in the Universe something like ~2 seconds ago, remain and persist up through and including the present day.

This has a big implication for the temperature of the leftover photon background — known today as the Cosmic Microwave Background — that it should be exactly (11/4)1/3 times hotter than the neutrino background: a temperature of 2.73 K instead of 1.95 K. Believe it or not, we’ve already detected both of these backgrounds and measured their temperature (for photons) or temperature-equivalent (for neutrinos/antineutrinos), and they match with these explicit predictions from the Big Bang perfectly.

The Cosmic Microwave Background, although it was first detected in 1964, required a very high precision set of measurements to determine its temperature. Although many efforts and improvements occurred throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the CMB’s temperature was only first measured to this incredible precision back in 1992, with the first data release of NASA’s COBE satellite.

However, the neutrino background imprints itself onto the CMB and in the large-scale structure of the Universe only in a very subtle way, and the evidence for that neutrino background and its properties wasn’t first detected until 2015. When it was finally discovered, the scientists who did the work found a phase shift in the Cosmic Microwave Background’s fluctuations that enabled them to determine, if neutrinos were massless today, how much energy they’d have at this early time.

Their results? The Cosmic Neutrino Background had an equivalent temperature of 1.96 ± 0.02 K, in perfect agreement with the Big Bang’s predictions. Later work, in 2019, found additional evidence for the Cosmic Neutrino Background imprinted in the Universe’s large-scale structure, but with less precision than the CMB method.

You might wonder why it’s worth belaboring such a tiny detail in the early Universe, and the answer is profound. Because of the brief amount of time that:

  • the weak interactions were important (during the first ~1 second after the hot Big Bang),
  • and antimatter also persisted (during the first ~3 seconds after the hot Big Bang),

 

the Universe is not evenly split, 50/50, between protons and neutrons any longer. Rather, the split has shifted substantially: to be more like 85/15, in favor of protons over neutrons. With the neutrinos and antineutrinos completely decoupled from all the other particles in the Universe, they simply move through space freely, at speeds indistinguishable (but slightly lower than) the speed of light. Meanwhile, the positrons (i.e., antielectrons) are all gone, and so are most of the electrons.

When the dust clears, what’s left over are exactly as many electrons as there are protons, keeping the Universe electrically neutral. There are over a billion photons for every proton or neutron, with another background of about 70% as many neutrinos-and-antineutrinos as photons. The Universe is still hot and dense, but it’s cooled tremendously in just the first 3 seconds. Now that all the antimatter is gone, the raw ingredients to begin building the Universe as we know it are finally in place.

 

 

 

Original article here