totally404ed
Monday, September 6, 2010
Lucid Dreaming Info
Found this site, tons of great info
http://www.consciousdreaming.com/lucid-dreaming/how-to-lucid-dream.htm
There are many techniques and methods that you can use for inducing lucid dreams, but there is an underlying process behind most, if not all of them. I have broken this underlying process down into six basic steps to serve as a foundation for your lucid dream training. Once you absorb these steps and start following them, it is only a matter of time before you have your first lucid dream.
In case you are wondering how long it will take for you to have your first one, just follow through with the steps and have faith that you will have one. Statistically, the time it takes for someone to have their first lucid dream averages from three weeks to two months, but yours may be tonight, but don't be discouraged if you try for a while and don't succeed. There seems to be an obsession in our society for instant results. If you are one of these people, realize that this is one of your first obstacles to overcome. Only one thing is certain: If you never stop trying, you are guaranteed to succeed.
http://www.consciousdreaming.com/lucid-dreaming/how-to-lucid-dream.htm
Parallel Universes!
Scientists supersize quantum mechanics
Largest ever object put into quantum state.
A quantum drum has become the first visible object to be put into a superposition of quantum states.A. Olsen/iStockphoto
A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.
Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical 'ground state' — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.
The work is simultaneously being published online today in Nature and presented today at the American Physical Society's meeting in Portland, Oregon1.
According to quantum theory, particles act as waves rather than point masses on very small scales. This has dozens of bizarre consequences: it is impossible to know a particle's exact position and velocity through space, yet it is possible for the same particle to be doing two contradictory things simultaneously. Through a phenomenon known as 'superposition' a particle can be moving and stationary at the same time — at least until an outside force acts on it. Then it instantly chooses one of the two contradictory positions.
The paddle is around 30 micrometres long.O'Connell, A. D. et al.
But although the rules of quantum mechanics seem to apply at small scales, nobody has seen evidence of them on a large scale, where outside influences can more easily destroy fragile quantum states. "No one has shown to date that if you take a big object, with trillions of atoms in it, that quantum mechanics applies to its motion," Cleland says.
There is no obvious reason why the rules of quantum mechanics shouldn't apply to large objects. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, was so disturbed by the possibility of quantum weirdness on the large scale that he proposed his famous 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment. A cat is placed in a box with a vial of cyanide and a radioactive source. If the source decays, it triggers a device that will break the vial, killing the cat. During the time the box is shut, Schrödinger argued, the cat is in a superposition of alive and dead — an absurdity as far as he was concerned.
Wonderful weirdness
Cleland and his team took a more direct measure of quantum weirdness at the large scale. They began with a a tiny mechanical paddle, or 'quantum drum', around 30 micrometres long that vibrates when set in motion at a particular range of frequencies. Next they connected the paddle to a superconducting electrical circuit that obeyed the laws of quantum mechanics. They then cooled the system down to temperatures below one-tenth of a kelvin.
At this temperature, the paddle slipped into its quantum mechanical ground state. Using the quantum circuit, Cleland and his team verified that the paddle had no vibrational energy whatsoever. They then used the circuit to give the paddle a push and saw it wiggle at a very specific energy.
Next, the researchers put the quantum circuit into a superposition of 'push' and 'don't push', and connected it to the paddle. Through a series of careful measurements, they were able to show that the paddle was both vibrating and not vibrating simultaneously.
"It's wonderful," says Hailin Wang, a physicist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who has been working on a rival technique for putting an oscillator into the ground state. The work shows that the laws of quantum mechanics hold up as expected on a large scale. "It's good for physics for sure," Wang says.
So if trillions of atoms can be put into a quantum state, why don't we see double-decker buses simultaneously stopping and going? Cleland says he believes size does matter: the larger an object, the easier it is for outside forces to disrupt its quantum state.
"The environment is this huge, complex thing," says Cleland. "It's that interaction with this incredibly complex system that makes the quantum coherence vanish."
Still, he says, there's plenty of reasons to keep trying to get large objects into quantum states. Large quantum states could tell researchers more about the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity — something that is not well understood. And quantum resonators could be useful for something, although Cleland admits he's not entirely sure what. "There might be some interesting application," he says. "But frankly, I don't have one now.
I stole this from: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
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