The six biggest mysteries of our solar system

ONCE upon a time, 4.6 billion years ago, something was brewing in an unremarkable backwater of the Milky Way. The ragbag of stuff that suffuses the inconsequential, in-between bits of all galaxies - hydrogen and helium gas with just a sprinkling of solid dust - had begun to condense and form molecules. Unable to resist its own weight, part of this newly formed molecular cloud collapsed in on itself. In the ensuing heat and confusion, a star was born - our sun.

We don't know exactly what kick-started this process. Perhaps, with pleasing symmetry, it was the shock wave from the explosive death throes of a nearby star. It was not, at any rate, a particularly unusual event. It had happened countless times since the Milky Way itself came into existence about 13 billion years ago, and in our telescopes we can see it still going on in distant parts of our galaxy today. As stars go, the sun is nothing out of the ordinary.

And yet, as far as we know, it is unique. From a thin disc of stuff left over from its birth, eight planets formed, trapped in orbit by its gravity. One of those planets settled into a peculiarly tranquil relationship with its star and its fellow planets. Eventually, creatures emerged on it that began to wonder how their neighbourhood came to be as it is - and could formulate the following six enduring mysteries of our familiar, and yet deeply mysterious, solar system.

How was the solar system built?

Looking at our neighbouring planets, you could be forgiven for thinking that if they do belong to the same family, it is by adoption rather than kinship. Not so: they are blood siblings

Why are the sun and moon the same size in the sky?

The sun is about 400 times as wide as the moon, but it is also 400 times further away. The two therefore look the same size in the sky - is it more than a coincidence?

Is there a Planet X?

Lurking in the solar system's dark recesses, rumour has it, is an unsighted world - Planet X, a frozen body perhaps as large as Mars, or even Earth

Where do comets come from?

These cosmic apparitions have had humans pondering their nature for millennia, yet theories of where they originate still don't stand up

Is the solar system unique?

Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star in 1992, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified - but most look quite unlike ours

How will our solar system end?

Since the ructions that created the planets in the first 100 million years, nothing much has been happening. But something unpleasant is bound to shatter this comfortable calm

ISRAEL IS OUTGASSING ITS UNHEALED TRAUMA

In Gaza, a role reversal has taken place – the Jewish people, the victim of unresolved trauma that they suffered not only during the Second World War, but throughout their history, have now become the perpetrators. One of the things unique about trauma is that in the process of integrating and healing from trauma, we are compelled to unconsciously act out the role of the abuser. Israel, to the extent it hasn’t dealt with its own trauma, has split-off from and at the same time internalized the abuser, while unconsciously identifying with its original aggression, which is a common characteristic of the traumatized soul. To dissociate from and be unconsciously identified with the sadistic aggressor who perpetrated the original trauma is to become possessed by this figure, to be lethally compelled to act out its violence in a terrorizing, malevolent and life-destroying way. In an appalling reversal of the golden rule, Israel is doing unto others what was done unto it. In the open-air death camp by the sea which is Gaza, the Jewish people have re-created their experience in World War II, with the Palestinians playing the roles that the Jews played in the Warsaw ghetto. ... more >>

Recent Articles by Paul Levy

• We Are All Shamans-in-Training
  In 1981 I spontaneously went into such an ecstatic state that I was hospitalized by what I call the "anti-bliss patrol." The authorities had become alerted because I was simply unable to restrain my enthusiasm at the "good news" that was beginning to reveal itself to me about the nature of reality.
• The Artist as Healer of the World
  The artist allows themselves to get "dreamed up" by the field to become the "medium" through which the spirit of the age moves and inspires them to creatively express itself. Speaking about this process, Jung said, "At such moments we are no longer individuals, but the race; the voice of all mankind resounds in us."
• The Wounded Healer, Part I
  An encounter with something greater than our limited ego, what Jung calls the Self, is always a wounding experience for the ego. The event of our wounding is initiatory, as our wounding originated in and potentially introduces us to "something greater than ourselves."
• The Wounded Healer, Part II
  Any one of us accessing the healing power hidden in our wound could be, in Jung’s words, "the makeweight that tips the scales," precipitating an evolutionary quantum leap in human consciousness, which literally can change everything.
• The War on Consciousness
  We are truly in a war. It is not the war we imagine we are in, which is the way our true adversaries want it. It is not a foreign war against a foreign enemy. It is a war on consciousness, a war on our own minds.
• The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis
  George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times in which we live. It is an illness that has been with us since time immemorial.

www.awakeninthedream.com

Decision creates a contradiction

So what we are trying to do is to feel out the totality of action. There is no action without the background of thought, is there? And thought is always choice. Don't just accept this. Please examine it, feel your way into it. Thought is the process of choosing. Without thought you cannot choose. The moment you choose, there is a decision, and that decision creates its own opposite - good and bad, violence and nonviolence. The man who pursues nonviolence through decision creates a contradiction in himself. Thought is essentially born of choice; I choose to think in a certain way. I examine communism, socialism, Buddhism; I reason logically and decide to think this or that. Such thought is based on memory, on my conditioning, on my pleasure, on my likes and dislikes, and any action born of such thought will inevitably create contradiction in myself and therefore in the world; it will produce sorrow, misery, not only for me but for others as well.
JKRISHNAMURTI
(Collected Works, Vol. XI - 164)

THE STATE OF THE UNSTABLE ECONOMY

“Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it”

--Ronald Reagan
Every ponzi\pyramid scheme must eventually collapse under the weight of its own greed. Just ask Bernie Madoff. Unconscionably, many of the corporate and political elite make millions of dollars before the criminal enterprise is revealed. Our fraudulent monetary system is no exception. But the present problem is with all the band-aid bailouts. It's just a continuation of the corrupt system of feeding the rich at the expense of the middle class. Let the system completely collapse - let the corporate criminals and local, state, and federal governments file for bankruptcy. Only after a total economic meltdown can the Phoenix rise once again - hopefully with a more people-friendly plan.
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1) Retailers Unravel
"More stores could go out of business."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1014328132&play=1
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2) U.S. recession knows no borders
"Our recession is spreading across the Pacific Ocean to the booming Asian economies." http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/us-recession-knows-no-borders-29457
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3) Mountains of Doom "Discussing the stimulus and the disaster that is the world economy."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1015456793&play=1
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http://www.pagenews.info

Russian Professor Predicts the USA Disintegrates

Meditation Is Essential to Life

To understand this whole problem of influence, the influence of experience, the influence of knowledge, of inward and outward motives - to find out what is true and what is false and to see the truth in the so-called false - all that requires tremendous insight, a deep inward comprehension of things as they are, does it not? This whole process is, surely, the way of meditation. Meditation is essential in life, in our everyday existence, as beauty is essential. The perception of beauty, the sensitivity to things, to the ugly as well as to the beautiful, is essential - to see a beautiful tree, a lovely sky of an evening, to see the vast horizon where the clouds are gathering as the sun is setting. All this is necessary, the perception of beauty and the understanding of the way of meditation, because all that is life, as is also your going to the office, the quarrels, miseries, the perpetual strain, anxiety, the deep fears, love, and starvation. Now the understanding of this tot al process of existence - the influences, the sorrows, the daily strain, the authoritative outlook, the political actions, and so on - all this is life, and the process of understanding it all, and freeing the mind, is meditation. If one really comprehends this life then there is always a meditative process, always a process of contemplation - but not about something. To be aware of this whole process of existence, to observe it, to dispassionately enter into it, and to be free of it, is meditation.
JKRISHNAMURTI
(The Book of Life - December 31)

How Television Affects Your Brain

Fooled by globalization

The big banks wanted it...the huge industrial
cartels wanted it...agribusiness wanted it...
all the "policy experts" pushed it...and White
House criminals like Bill Clinton and George Bush
railroaded it.
Who didn't want it?
Labor unions...small farmers...citizens concerned
about the sovereignty of their own countries...human
rights activists.
Well, we're economically "globalized" now.
And here's what one of the leading mathematicians
in the world and one of the currently most successful
options traders in the world has to say about the
potential consequences.
Make sure you're sitting down and don't operate
heavy machinery right after watching this.
Details:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/542.html
P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and
videos with friends and colleagues.

Being in Global Consciousness

Global Consciousness Project
Trans-Humanity Awakening To Reality
You may not be aware of the fact, but decades of studies have actually demonstrated that mind can affect matter – specifically, random event generators have been shown to be affected by human consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project has linked a series of these generators together around the world, creating a plentiful supply of data which has revealed fluctuations in the nature of randomness itself. These alterations occur in waves that manifest across the entire Earth – at the very least – and indicate interconnectedness between all beings, in a unified field of mind and consciousness – the ‘noosphere’.
- R.A.
The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) was created in 1998 by a small team of researchers working in boundary areas of physics and psychology, and has grown today to include some seventy-five individuals around the world. The purpose of this Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)-based project is to study the possible efficacy of human consciousness on a global scale. In June 2002, an interdisciplinary team convened for the first time at the IONS campus in order to move the project forward in the areas of research design, data analysis, and interpretation of results.
Under the direction of Dr Roger Nelsonat Princeton University, the team maintains a network of electronic instruments connected through the Internet. These random event generators produce data that may be affected by human consciousness under special conditions. The hypothesis of the GCP is that the continuous streams of data from these instruments will show anomalous deviations associated with events of mass human interest. Effects are predicted to occur when there is large-scale ‘mental coherence’, or a resonance of feelings generated by deep reactions to major news events. During the first four years of the GCP, the number of websites hosting these instruments (which are bemusingly dubbed ‘eggs’, a nickname for electro-Gaia-grams) has grown to more than fifty, with locations from Alaska to Fiji, on all continents, and in nearly every time zone.
Nelson and the team reported that as of late 2002, formal predictions have been made for more than one hundred world events. These included predictions for celebrations such as New Year’s Eve, shocking events such as the beginning of bombing in Yugoslavia or the September 11 disaster, natural tragedies, such as the great earthquake in Turkey and the typhoon in Orissa, and large-scale meditation and prayer events like the Kumbha Mela in India. The overall statistics for the project, after nearly four years of data accumulation, indicate a probability of about one in ten million that the correlation of the data with the specified global events is merely due to chance (see http://noosphere.princeton.edu). A technical report summarizing these data and the technical details of the research is now in preparation.
Researchers don’t yet know how to explain the correlations between events of importance to humans and the GCP data. The results do suggest, however, something akin to the image held in almost all cultures, that a unity or deep interconnection exists between mind and matter that is in some way fundamental to life and to reality as a whole. Our efforts to understand these complex and interesting data may contribute insight into the role of mind as a creative force in the physical world.
- Intro by Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, vice-president for Science and Education at IONS

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/