Using radio telescopes at the South Pole, astrophysicists have have captured evidence of expansion just a fraction of a second after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. The theory is that the Universe burst from smaller than an atom to 100 trillion trillion times that–and did it faster than the speed of light. Oooh. They say that their findings open “a new window” on physics. They also somehow support the idea that “our known cosmos makes up just a fragment in a much larger, unknown frontier that extends far beyond the reaches of light” (LA Times [3/18/2014]). Of course…
[ Read More → ]News has been going around that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, has ordered the execution of 33 Christians. Christians are the most persecuted demographic of North Korea, but this event stands out in how specific it is. They were helping South Korean missionary church planter Kim Jong Wook, who himself was arrested and imprisoned (though some reports say the North Koreans kidnapped him and set him up). These Christians reportedly started up to 500 churches! An astonishing feat–probably why Kim Jong Un got so ticked. On one hand I weep for these believers, and countless others, for what they…
[ Read More → ]Back in the 1980s Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve.” Industry Tap writes, “Until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. . . . But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months.” And that rate will increase exponentially. IBM theorizes it could someday become every 12 hours. Makes me tired just thinking about it. The Renaissance genius Sir Francis Bacon was thought to be the last person who…
[ Read More → ]Pollsters for the annual Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index interviewed 176,000 people in every state of America. They wanted to find which state had the happiest people. Best results ever. They asked questions related to five areas: 1) purpose and sense of happiness in what you do, 2) healthy, supportive social networks, 3) financial security and freedom from stress, 4) community safety and liking where you live, 5) having health and energy. If we think the way the media and advertisers would have us think, the top states would be places like Hawaii and California, or maybe Florida. No way. If…
[ Read More → ]A major leap in computer technology may be on the horizon, or not. Time Magazine says, “It promises to solves some of humanity’s most complex problems” and that “it operates at 459° below zero. And nobody knows how it actually works.” Welcome to the world of quantum computing. Wired.com writes: “Quantum computers harness the weird quirks of the subatomic world to run algorithms at extremely quick speeds and solve problems that stymie our current electronic devices. That’s because classical computers rely on transistors that hold memory in the form of zeros and ones. A quantum computer, by contrast, uses subatomic…
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