Swiss Engineer Michele Angelo Besso was a close friend of Einstein’s. Upon his death, the father of relativity said, "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us ... know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
We often think of the afterlife as a spiritual or religious belief, when in a way, its pursuit is also somewhat familiar to science. Robert Lanza, M.D. takes things one step further. He thinks we start out with a wrong assumption, that we have it all backward. It isn’t the universe which is supreme, but life. In fact, life and in particular consciousness are essential to the makeup of the universe, he says. Through the theory of biocentrism, he believes he can prove that space and time do not exist, unless our consciousness says they do.
This is an all-encompassing theory which in Greek means “life center.” Though radical, if one day proven correct, it could have ramifications for the study of physics, biology, consciousness, the brain, and even AI. Consider a blade of grass. Your brain through your eyes tells you its green. But what if a neuroscientist could reconnoiter that part of the brain where the concept registers, and make it indicate red or yellow instead? Lanza reminds us that all reality is sensory information interpreted by our brain.
It’s our consciousness that puts our reality together. For instance, space-time in physics is different from how we experience these, separate concepts in real life. Science treats the space-time continuum as a solid principle. According to Lanza they are “simply tools of our mind.” Death too in his view “cannot exist in any real sense.”
Dr. Robert Lanza in his laboratory, 2009.
Notice how, for instance, when you are a child, days and weeks seem to drag on, while when you get older, they fly by. Time itself hasn’t changed, just our perception of it. Whether the universe actually works the way in which we perceive it isn’t readily known. One of the fundamental laws of Newtonian physics is that energy isn’t created or destroyed, it simply takes another form. The energy trapped in our brain must take another form then, even when a person dies. Meanwhile, our senses tell us that it’s their end. But where does this energy go? In a world with endless space and time, could death really exist? If not, is immortality a phenomenon which occurs within space-time or outside of it?
Dr. Lanza isn’t some newfangled guru. He’s a biotech Zion, and currently, the Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He’s studying stem cells and their application for treating disease. Previous to this, he did some research on embryonic stem cells and in cloning, both with animals and humans. Lanza is also an adjunct professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina.
In quantum physics, particles can be observed in several different states at the same time. This is called superposition. They in fact, exist in all possible states simultaneously. In terms of predicting what a particle will do, nothing is absolute. Each state has its own range of probability. In Lanza’s view, each corresponds with a different universe.
This coincides with the “many worlds” theory, also known as the multiverse. Each universe is thought to operate with its own physical laws. Anything that can occur does, with one possibility playing out in each realm. Our life, Lanza believes, at one stage or another, is occurring across many universes simultaneously. Yet, your life on one world wouldn’t influence your life in another.
What are the chances that death is a portal into another universe?
What has long plagued particle physicists is that observation affects reality. Consider the famous double-slit test. In this classic experiment, physicists observe a particle passing through two slits in a barrier. When the phenomenon is observed, it behaves like a particle, a little cannonball shooting directly through the slits. If it isn’t observed, it performs like a wave, gliding through both openings at once. This shows that energy and matter are made up of both particles and waves, and that one’s mere observation changes its form.
Such inconsistencies don’t prove the existence of the multiverse, however. Yet, through the scaffolding of biocentrism or this new “Theory of Everything,” the physics begins to take shape. Consciousness is an essential force in the universe, according to this theory, which shows why the properties of energy, matter, space, and time, depend on whether or not a conscious mind is observing them. Lanza uses other research to support his view.
A 2002 study of photons or light particles, showed that they communicated with one another. When one photon was guided to a certain place, it was picked up by a detector. Researchers used a scrambler to force it to remain a particle rather than a wave. After one was sent out and reached its destination, the second photon crossed the same space instantaneously. It was as if it knew where it was going, and the knowledge must have traveled back to it faster than the speed of light. Another supporting factor in an entirely different category, is the Goldilocks principle. This is the theory that the universe was made just right for supporting life.
Photons being smashed at the CERN large hadron collider. By ESO/M. Kornmesser [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Critics argue that unexplained phenomena in physics only occurs on the quantum level. They also point out that there is no direct evidence of the existence of other universes. Several physicists have told Forbes that Lanza’s writings look more like works of philosophy rather than science. The doctor himself states that he is healing a glaring rift, and applying innovative methods from biotech to physics. He also admits his theory lacks a mathematical basis. As such, Lanza’s working on the supporting mathematical structure. Papers are expected to follow in scientific journals.
Another competing theory accounts for inconsistencies in quantum physics by stating that the universe is an illusion. It could be for instance, a projection created by a highly advanced quantum computer. Though still entirely theoretical, biocentrism offers those of us who want to hold onto a comforting afterlife scenario, without giving up a devotion to science, an avenue to explore. In this vein, Lanza wrote, “Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality; it's like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.”
To learn more about biocentrism, click here:
Meet ANITA. ANITA stands for "Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna." It seeks out cosmic rays from space as while hanging from a balloon suspended over Antarctica. In the last two years, though, it has twice detected cosmic rays coming from a direction no one expected: inside the earth. According to the Standard Model (SM) of physics, this shouldn't be possible.
ANITA, foreground, and its balloon, background(NASA)
And guess what? ANITA’s not alone
In September, a paper was submitted for peer review by astrophysicists at Penn State led by Derek Fox. "I was like, 'Well this model doesn't make much sense,'" Fox tells Live Science, "but the [ANITA] result is very intriguing, so I started checking up on it. I started talking to my office neighbor [and paper co-author] Steinn Sigurdsson about whether maybe we could gin up some more plausible explanations than the papers that have been published to date." Lacking any, they looked for other similar events and found three. They'd been detected by a surface-based Antarctic neutrino detector called, sensibly enough, IceCube. And when the data from ANITA and IceCube when combined, the Penn State scientists started getting excited. They calculate that whatever kind of particle is flying up and away from Earth has a less than 1-in-3.5 million chance of being any of the particles predicted by the Standard Model. Obviously, this has physicists scratching their heads trying to figure out what on earth is going on.
IceCube
How cosmic rays are supposed to behave
First of all, of course, cosmic rays are supposed to come from out there somewhere, not here. The earth is bombarded with them all the time. The suspicion is that the newly detected particles are cosmic rays slamming into the earth on one side and somehow making it out the other.
Cosmic rays, though, are high-energy particles with relatively wide cross-sections that lead to their demise by causing them to crash into matter inside the Earth. They're "mainly (89%) protons — nuclei of hydrogen, the lightest and most common element in the universe — but they also include nuclei of helium (10%) and heavier nuclei (1%), all the way up to uranium particles," according to CERN. Low-energy neutrinos, on the other hand, can pass through the earth's rocky mass, but they're not involved with cosmic rays.
Both ANITA and IceCube track neutrinos indirectly by detecting their remains, if you will. They detect the particles neutrinos produce when they decay post-collision. Since neutrinos can't get through the earth, though, something else is producing these particles. But what?
Artist rendition of cosmic rays
(koya979/Shutterstock)
They could be a new kind of particle…
One candidate put forward as responsible for the event is the elusive "sterile neutrino," first hinted at by evidence captured in the mid 1990s at the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at Los Alamos. The data was interpreted as suggesting a weird kind of high-speed neutrino that simply passes through matter without any interaction. No one else was able to reproduce the result, and the idea fell out of favor. Until this last spring, that is, when MiniBooNE at Chicago's FermiLab captured new signs that it might exist. The sterile neutrino would break the Standard Model if confirmed, which is one of the things that make MiniBoonE's data exciting. "That would be huge," says Duke physicist Kate Scholberg, who wasn't involved with the research, "…that would require new particles ... and an all-new analytical framework."
Others have suggested that it could be a product of dark matter. Cool as either of these ideas would be, perhaps the strongest reason for the detected upward cosmic rays is even more thrilling.
…or they could be long-sought supersymetrical particles
According to the Standard Model, every particle has a symmetrical partner, but the particles we know about don't match up. To resolve this apparent imbalance, a class of thus-far-hidden "supersymmetrical" particles has been proposed. It was hoped that the Large Hadron Collider could detect these mysterious — and so far just theoretical — particles, but no. Since 2012, when the last known particle predicted the Standard Model, the Higgs-Boson, was detected, nothing new's been found.
Until, maybe, now.
What the Penn paper proposes
The Penn State paper suggests these South Pole upward cosmic rays could be our first sign of supersymmetricals, specifically the partner of the Standard Model's tau leptons. With a a couple of "S"es added to signify supersymmetry, they'd be stau sleptons.
Others agree that they could be the first actual evidence of supersymmetry. Los Alamos physicist Bill Louis tells LiveScience, "I think it's very compelling," though he adds that the pinpointing of a stau slepton is "a bit of a stretch."
Fox admits he certainly can't be sure, but that, "From my perspective, I go trawling around trying to discover new things about the universe, I come upon some really bizarre phenomenon, and then with my colleagues, we do a little literature search to see if anybody has ever thought that this might happen. And then if we find papers in the literature, including one from 14 years ago that predict something just like this phenomenon, then that gets really high weight from me." And, guess what, he did find a prediction from 2003 of stau sleptons showing up just like this.
An Armenian priest circles the Edicule, which marks the place where tradition holds Jesus was buried. The structure is located straight under the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
On a ledge over a church door in Jerusalem stands a simple cedarwood ladder. It's been there for perhaps three centuries. Since nobody remembers who put it there, nobody knows who is authorized to remove it. If anyone would try, there'd be immediate trouble with whomever would feel slighted — and there are plenty of candidates. This is the Immovable Ladder, and it is a fitting symbol for the deeply-entrenched divisions within Christianity, and within that church building itself.
The most sacred place on Earth
Those religious divides matter here more than anywhere else because this is the most significant church in the world. For Christians of any denomination this is the most sacred place on Earth. This is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and according to tradition, it contains both Golgotha (or Calvary in Latin; both mean "skull"), the place where Jesus died on the cross. Just a few feet further is the tomb (a.k.a. sepulcher) where his body was laid to rest and where according to the faithful he was resurrected three days later.
Yet despite its supreme religious importance, there is no single authority managing this holiest of church buildings. The care over the sprawling, multi-level complex is divided between various denominations.
The church's history goes back to the fourth century, when Roman emperor Constantine, newly converted to Christianity, sent his mother Helena to Jerusalem to locate places and things associated with the life and death of Jesus. This is the spot where she found the True Cross, a sign that this must have been Golgotha. The place of Jesus' burial was identified nearby. Constantine razed the pagan temple built here by his predecessor Hadrian, and a church on this spot, the first commissioned by a Roman emperor, was consecrated in the year 335.
In continuous use for 1700 years
The church has survived earthquakes, fires, invasions, and demolition by decree. It has been in continuous use for nearly 1700 years, even if the building standing there today is mostly a renovation and reconstruction dating to Crusader times. Over the centuries, various Christian traditions latched on to the church. Ownership became a constant source of dispute.
In 1852, the Ottoman Sultan decreed that the church was to be managed by the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic churches and apportioned parts of the building to each denomination. Over time, smaller parts of the building came under the authority of three smaller Orthodox denominations: the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian churches.
- Most of the building is under control of the Greek Orthodox church (in blue on the map). They manage the Katholikon (which is slightly ironic), the North Transept, the Seven Arches of the Virgin, a small Orthodox monastery, and various chapels, among other bits.
- The Latins (a.k.a. Roman Catholics, in purple) manage the Franciscan Monastery on the north side (which includes the Chapel of the Apparition and the Chapel of Mary Magdalene), the Grotto of the Invention of the Cross, a small area north of the Parvis, and a tiny space between the Katholikon and the Rotunda.
- The Armenians (in yellow) manage the Chapel of St. Helena, the Chapel of St. James, and the Armenian Gallery next to the Rotunda.
- The Copts (in red) have the care of various chapels near the Rotunda, including a small annex to the Edicule (i.e., the Holy Sepulcher) itself.
- The Ethiopian monastery is spread out on the roof, and the Ethiopians also manage an area called Deir al-Sultan, the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures, and the Chapel of St. Michael (all in orange).
- The Syriac church has the smallest part (in green): the Chapel of St. Nicodemus. But at least it's very close to the Sepulcher.
The Ottoman edict is the basis for the status quo, which is scrupulously maintained. A complex set of rules determines how the church is managed — such as who is allowed where and when, who cleans and repairs which parts of the building, and which areas are held in common (by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians but not by the other three).
- The Rotunda is common territory, as is a chapel to the north.
- The Parvis (i.e. the courtyard at the entrance) is also common, as is an adjacent part of the church that contains the Stone of Unction (where according to tradition, Jesus' body was prepared for burial).
But some of the rules are disputed, and conflicts occasionally erupt. Two examples:
- The Copts have a long-standing claim over part of the roof, which is occupied by Ethiopian monks. To maintain their claim, Coptic monks take turns to sit on a chair on the roof. But on a particularly hot day in 2002, when a Coptic monk moved the chair a few inches into the shade, the Ethiopians interpreted that move as a violation of the status quo. The ensuing fight sent 11 monks to the hospital.
- And in 2008, Greek and Armenian monks got into a violent argument over the procedure of a religious procession. The brawl was caught on camera and pasted all over the news.
Can't we all just get along?
In recent years, however, the churches seem to be getting along a little bit better, although partly out of necessity. Significant parts of the building are in extreme need of repair. In 2017, the three main denominations (Catholic, Greek, and Armenian) agreed to fix the Edicule, which was in danger of collapsing. And in 2019, the three churches signed an agreement to renovate parts of the church's infrastructure (floor, foundations, and sewage pipes) and even to share ownership of any archaeological artifacts that might turn up during the work. However, the agreement excludes the three other denominations, which under the status quo have no say in the management of shared spaces.
Which brings us back to the Immovable Ladder. Despite its nickname, it has proven to be very movable indeed. It was stolen twice in the 20th century. Both times, it was soon recovered by the police and returned to its original position. In 2009, it was moved again, this time with the agreement of all relevant denominations, in order to accommodate scaffolding for renovations.
Upon completion of the works, it was again put back. And there it will remain until, as Pope Paul VI suggested in 1964, the divisions between the various Christian denominations are resolved. Or until Christ returns — whichever happens first.
Meanwhile, the keys to the church building itself will remain where they have been for centuries: in the possession of the Joudeh and Nuseibeh families, who by virtue of their Muslim faith are accepted by all Christian denominations as neutral guardians of the entrance to the church.
Strange Maps #1081
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