What music inspired the great Ray Bradbury?
We went searching for clues in old newspaper profiles, biographies and his immortal short stories. We built a list of classical and classic music that the great science fiction novelist loved.
Now you can listen to our free Ray Bradbury playlist on Spotify. If you have more songs to add, just mention them in the comments section…
Did you ever feel like you accidentally stepped into another universe?
Maybe that déjà vu feeling of “I’ve been here before” means you are picking up signals from another universe.
Some physicists believe we are part of a multiverse, a mind-bogglingly huge collection of universes with different properties. Over at Open Culture, writer Colin Marshall wondered if déjà vu could be an everyday sign that we are living in a multiverse.
What if mystical experiences from around the world all shared the same revelation for human beings?
Philosopher W. T. Stace spent many years studying similarities between mystical philosophies from around the world.
In 1960, he published Mysticism and Philosophy, collecting seven characteristics shared between mystical experiences from around the world.
The primary example from his “common characteristics of extrovertive mystical states” was the idea that “All Is One.”
What if you could trace the seemingly endless chain of events that led you to this exact moment?
In 1908, an author (or authors) published The Kybalion under the pseudonym of “the Three Initiates.” The book explores the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus—a legendary author who passed down centuries’ worth of wisdom about alchemy. The Kybalion was published anonymously by a person or persons
The book explores the concept of “THE ALL,” a conception of a “universal, infinite, living mind” underlying reality–another way of thinking about the ancient mystical belief that “all is one.”
What if plants were intelligent, exploring and analyzing the world with a sophisticated system of senses?
Over at Reality Sandwich, a long essay outlines a growing body of research about the intelligence of plants.
Increasing numbers of researchers, in a multiplicity of fields, are beginning to acknowledge that intelligence is an inevitable aspect of all self-organized systems—that sophisticated neural networks are a hallmark of life.
What kind of life could have risen and fallen on a six billion year old planet?
NASA scientists discovered Kepler-452b, a planet 1,400 light years away from our planet. It has the potential to be “Earth 2.0,” a planet orbiting within the “habitable zone” of a star that resembles our sun.
In the image above, you can see how Earth (left) measures up beside Kepler-452b.
What if you could artificially simulate a mystical experience at home?
Brazilian researchers recently re-created the so-called “God Helmet” experiment carried out by Dr. M. A. Persinger.
You can read their results at the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research (PDF link).
What would happen if we could think like wasps?
In other words, what if we could access the collective power of all our minds instead of just our limited, solitary brain?
Scientists at Drexel University have been studying the idea of “distributed cognition,” or the ways hive organisms can pool brain power.
What if you could explore the microscopic world around you with your phone?
Researchers around the world have developed inexpensive lenses that can change any smartphone into a powerful scanning microscope.
This technology could revolutionize medicine in places without proper medical resources, but it will also give amateur scientists powerful new ways to explore and manipulate the world around them.
What if we could create robots with the flight and flexibility of birds?
Scientists at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Weihai, China and UCLA have created a “dielectric elastomer rotary joint” that responds to electricity and recreates the motion of a flapping bird’s wing.
Instead of building flying machines with hard, inflexible wings, this technology could create more efficient, flexible and powerful wings.