Sun's solar maximum: coronal mass ejections

(Beyond the Obvious) The Sun is about to do something it hasn't done in 12,000 years

(Flash Discovery) Apollo astronaut finally admits the truth: why we stopped going to the Moon

See six planets align in the sky (June 2024)

Six planets are going to align in the sky. Here's how to see them

(The Secrets of the Universe) May 26, 2024, Planet Parade: Look towards the east just before sunrise and witness an amazing sight: a parade of six planets, with three visible to the naked eye. In early June, Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune, and Saturn will align in a straight line near a thin crescent moon. Remarkably, all seven other planets are going to be in the same part of the sky in the first week of June, and we have an opportunity to catch glimpse of a few of them. However, plan ahead. Timing is crucial as are dark skies and a clear view of the horizon.

🎼 Music: Envato Elements 🎥 Footage: Envato Elements, StoryBlocks, NASA, Miguel Claro, and Pond5 💻 Created and Produced by: Rishabh Nakra 🎙️ Narrated by: Jeffrey Smith 🌌 Night Sky Emulators: 🌒 Sky Guide: https://apple.co/3Igtwx9 🌙 Stellarium: https://bit.ly/3IoXm2h 🌐 Sky Maps: Dominic Ford, in-the-sky.org

• Crystal Q., CC Liu, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The brain's perception deception (NOVA)

NOVA PBS Official, May 17, 2023; CC Liu, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Your Brain: Perception Deception | full documentary | NOVA | PBS

Buddha's Brain (Dr. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.)

(NOVA PBS Official) Is what we see real? Join neuroscientist Heather Berlin on a quest to understand how our brain shapes our reality, and why we can’t always trust what you perceive.

In the first hour of this two-part series, learn what the latest research shows about how our brain processes and shapes the world around us, and discover the surprising tricks and shortcuts our brain takes to help us survive.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Introduction
• 03:59 The Science of Optical Illusions and Blind Spots
• 13:48 Is the Dress Blue and Black or White and Gold?
• 21:06 Yanny or Laurel? Auditory Illusions
• 24:46 Is Pain an Illusion?
• 30:28 What is Consciousness? Blind Spots and Babies
• 41:35 How is Consciousness Measured?
• 45:32 How the Brain Affects Memories
• 50:14 Conclusion

Official website: to.pbs.org/3Ic9dRS | #novapbs

• Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius)

© 2023 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved.  This program was produced by GBH, which is solely responsible for its content. This program is made possible by viewers like us. Support our local PBS station: pbs.org/donate. Enjoy full episodes of favorite PBS shows anytime, anywhere with the free PBS App: to.pbs.org/2QbtzhR. Stay up to date on the latest science discoveries, full episodes, articles, videos, and more by signing up for NOVA's newsletter.

FOLLOW: NOVA YouTube: novaonline Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NOVApbs ​ Twitter: https://twitter.com/novapbs ​ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/novapbs/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@novapbs PBS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PBS/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/PBS/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PBS/ YouTube: / pbs TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbs Shop: https://shop.pbs.org/ #brainscience #perception #neuroscience #illusion #illusionvideo #illusionvideo #opticalillusion #consciousness

Cave in Canada frozen since Ice Age (video)

This cave has been frozen since the last Ice Age

(NOVA PBS Official) Feb. 19, 2020. This cave in Canada remains frozen every summer — as it has for every summer in the last 10,000 years. It was the last Ice Age when it went into a deep freeze it has yet to emerge from. What can it tell us about the earth's future climate?

• Stream Polar Extremes online to learn more: pbs.org/wgbh/nova... 

PRODUCTION CREDITS

• Polar Extremes Director: Lucy Haken
• Assistant Producer: Sacha Thorpe
• Digital Production: Angelica Coleman
• © WGBH Educational Foundation 2020

Changing heart towards pain: Pema Chodron

Changing our heart towards pain: Pema Chodron

(Sounds True) Aug. 31, 2022. With The Freedom to Love, Pema Chödrön invites us to start wherever we are — with any challenges, frustrations, or fears we may be facing — and use them as the launching pad to awaken the natural and boundless capacity of our heart. #Buddhism

Do you suppose things will fall apart again?

Do we want to love and connect with others more deeply but need a little help? Struggling with matters of the heart? This is the place to bring them through six sessions of intensive learning and practice.

This beloved and gifted American Buddhist teacher guides us through Buddhism’s traditional awakened heart training...with a difference. She might have named this course “Working with the Hard Stuff” — because here she shows us how to use the principles of The Four Immeasurables (Brahma Viharas or Divine Abidings) in our most challenging situations, relationships, and emotional states.

• Check out the online course The Freedom To Love: bit.ly/3QeGspl.
• Subscribe to Sounds True for more: bit.ly/2EAugMf

ABOUT: Sounds True was founded in 1985 by Tami Simon with a clear mission: to disseminate [spread the seeds of] spiritual wisdom. Since starting out as a project with one woman and her tape recorder, the project has grown into a multimedia publishing company with more than 80 employees, a library of more than 1,500 titles featuring some of the leading teachers and visionaries of our time, and an ever-expanding family of customers from across the world. In more than three decades of growth, change, and evolution, Sounds True has maintained its focus on its overriding purpose, as summed up in its mission statement. Connect on Facebook, Instagram, or website.

Betrayal: Catholic Chuch sex abuse (video)

The Fifth Estate, Oct. 3, 2016; Seth Auberon, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Betrayal: Abuse in the Catholic Church in Nova Scotia

Betrayal tells the story of childhood sexual abuse [including rape] victims in Nova Scotia, who continued to feel profound hurt and damage as adults. Searching for restitution for their suffering, some launched or joined in lawsuits against the Catholic Church. Their partial victory has had an unexpected outcome: In order to settle those lawsuits, the Church has begun selling of some Church property in Nova Scotia -- property that local Catholic people helped build and pay for over many generations. Betrayal highlights the consequences of abuse that continue to echo throughout the Catholic Church and in communities across Canada, the U.S., and Europe. 

Original broadcast date: Octl 1, 2010. Subscribe for more videos from the Fifth Estate (bit.ly/25W8cpn), connect at the website (bit.ly/1d0FBxq), Facebook (bit.ly/1UO9B8S), Twitter (bit.ly/237VM8P), Instagram (bit.ly/25W8SLs). ABOUT: For four decades The Fifth Estate has been Canada's premier investigative documentary program. Hosts Bob McKeown, Gillian Findlay, and Mark Kelley continue a tradition of provocative and fearless journalism. The Fifth Estate brings in-depth investigations that matter to Canadians -- delivering a dazzling parade of political leaders, controversial characters, and ordinary people whose lives were touched by triumph or tragedy.

"Cracking the Maya Code" (video)

Nova (pbs.org via C. Â-Re, 9/2/15); Xochitl, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

NOVA: Cracking the Maya Code

The Aztec Calendar is NOT the Mayan Calendar of moving gears (adeptexpeditions.com).

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This 2008 PBS documentary explores the journey of archeologists to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics.
 

Song in this video: "El Dorado: Part II. Soledades" by artist John Adams, licensed to YouTube by WMG; Imagem Music (publishing) US, and 3 Music Rights Societies.

Forgotten Genius: Black scientist Percy Julian

NOVA (PBS); CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

The Man Who Made "the [Birth Control] Pill" Possible - Chemist Dr. Percy Lovan Julian

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899-April 19, 1975) was an African American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants (Darlene R. Stille, Percy Lavon Julian: Pioneering Chemist).

I really like science!

He was the first person to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol.

His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills [WGBH-PBS, People and Discoveries: Percy Julian, 1899-1975, WGBH-PBS, 1998; Giants of the Past: Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975). A Forgotten Pioneer in Soy," USDA; "Lipid Library: Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975)"].

Nik, did you realize blacks could be geniuses, too? - Of course, Al . Who do you think...

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The future black British Princess Markles

Julian later started his own company to synthesize steroid intermediates from the wild Mexican yam.

His work helped greatly reduce the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical companies, helping to significantly expand the use of several important drugs (NOVA: Forgotten Genius, NOVA (TV series), W. M. Cobb, "Medical History: Percy Lavon Julian, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D., L.H.H.D., 1899– ," Journal of the National Medical Association, March 1971; Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 143-150, PMC).

"Let's look in this closet." Aha! The Pill!

Julian received more than 130 chemical patents. He was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry.

He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted (behind David Blackwell) from any field (ibid.) More

"Earth From Space" (video)

PBS.org/NOVA; Wisdom Quarterly (LINK)

Venture on an epic quest to discover the invisible forces and occurrences that sustain life on planet Earth. For the first time see these processes in action in EARTH FROM SPACE. 

 

This sweeping two-hour special reveals the Earth's deepest mysteries, captured in breathtaking detail, raising profound questions and challenges the old assumptions of how it all works.

 

Using the latest CGI technology, and joining NASA and the world's foremost Earth scientists, EARTH FROM SPACE transforms raw satellite data into a visible spectrum, offering viewers authentic, high-definition moving images that vividly illustrate these processes. 

In consultation with more than 220 scientific experts from 18 international Earth sciences research agencies and academic institutions, highlights from EARTH FROM SPACE reveal:

• A hurricane, observed from the inside, is an intricately-organized structure. It bonds water to atmosphere and releases heat into space, cooling parts of the Atlantic Ocean by 4C.
• The Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the Earth's fresh water. Where does all this water go and what is its effect on air circulating around the planet and life across the globe?
• See how solar storms puncturing great holes in the magnetic field raise new questions about the disruptive effect they have on life on a microscopic level.
• Data shows that the top three meters of the ocean stores more heat than the entire atmosphere -- overturning long-held assumptions about how the ocean controls weather and climate.

Q: Where did Egyptians come from? A: Punt

Wisdom Quarterly, NOVA, History Channel, Coast to Coast with guest Frank Joseph Hoff

Atlantis has definitively been discovered...in Asia (Frank Joseph Hoff/Coasttocoastam.com)

  
The Land of Egypt's Ancestors
Peter Tyson (NOVA)

The female Pharaoh Hatshepsut told us more about Punt ("Poont") than anyone else in ancient times. But even she was silent on its exact location. The ancient Egyptians left mountains of evidence for Punt, none more so than Pharoah Hatshepsut, whose 3,500-year-old temple at Deir el-Bahri near Thebes contains a book in stone describing Punt. She and other pharaohs sent huge expeditions to Punt -- flotillas of robust, seagoing ships with thousands of men. But neither she nor anyone else from ancient times left a map, directions, or distances. More 

• Expedition to Punt

Where were they going? According to researcher Frank Joseph Hoff, they were going to the remnants of Atlantis.

  

Atlantis in Indonesia with huge war elephants and odd "bells," Borobudur (Tropen Museum)

Locating Atlantis

Coast to Coast, July 5, 2012

Researcher of ancient mysteries Frank Joseph Hoff discussed the unusual work of Brazilian professor and nuclear physicist Arysio Santos on the true location of Atlantis. He also gave an update on his plans for an excavation in Indonesia. Dr. Robin Harger, Ray Pillai , and Saunthara Subramaniam joined the conversation. 

   

Referring to such sources as ancient Hindu texts and the writings of Plato and his contemporaries, Prof. Santos was able to "reverse engineer" the location of Atlantis -- a submerged subcontinent in Southeast Asia, where the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and the Pacific Ocean all come together, Hoff asserts, adding that Indonesia is part of this land mass still visible today (as pictured on the cover of Santos' book).

• Indonesia's "time traveling Buddha bells": Die Glockes in Borobudur
• How far is Egypt from Indonesia?

Hemp Oil Heals (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, Rick Simpson, RevolutionNews.US
(Marijuana420medicine)

The Buddha spoke of Five Precepts as a means of avoiding suffering for ourselves, others, and society. The fifth precept is, "I undertake the precept to abstain from intoxicants." There are strains of the cannabis plant people abuse as an intoxicant.

This makes it all the more remarkable that the plant has legitimate medicinal properties. Its seed is a healthy protein and its oil is a miracle. Neither are intoxicating. Both are available at every health food store in the country. Now a mixture of the plant and its oil has been found to heal cancers and other ailments. But this is not a new discovery.

In the past doctors carried Cannabis indica (Indian hemp) in their black medical bags and used it liberally as a safe cure for treatment for many ailments. People will go on abusing this plant, just as they abuse far more toxic substances without concerning themselves about the physical and spiritual harm they are doing.

This is no reason to continue to criminalize and ignore a substance even Harvard University has to admit heals disease.

(IAMHEMP420) Cannabis oil cures cancer, according to Rick Simpson.

• For more proof, watch "Run From the Cure"
• Hemp oil is healthy, but cure needs whole plant
  

This is the oil, protein, and fiber without the THC (healthfulpursuit.com).

What Harvard Found
(RevolutionNews.US) Researchers at Harvard tested one of the active substances in cannabis, THC, in both lab and mouse studies. They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound actually activates naturally produced receptors to fight off lung cancer.

The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

Although a synthetic substitute of THC, known as Marinol, has been used as an appetite stimulant for cancer patients and other similar treatments, few studies have shown that THC might have anti-tumor activity.

The interesting part is that the only clinical trial testing THC as a treatment for cancer growth was a recently completed British pilot study. For three weeks, researchers injected standard doses of THC into mice that had been implanted with human lung cancer cells.

They found that tumors were reduced in size and weight by about 50 percent in treated animals compared to a control group. There was also about a 60 percent reduction in cancer lesions on the lungs in these mice as well as a significant reduction in protein markers associated with cancer progression. PhoenixTears.ca

(healthfulpursuit.com)

Cannabis stops cancer (Harvard). Cannabis stops breast cancer (UCSF). Cannabis grows brain cells in mice (Princeton). Cannabis is a cousin of the hemp plant.

Hemp cannot get anyone high, yet it is illegal. Hemp is illegal because it is the most useful plant in the world. Before petroleum it was recognized and used in England and the Colonies (the nascent United States) as the strongest and most versatile fuel, medicine (Cannabis indica) paper, fiber, food, shelter...

The first US flag was made of hemp, and hemp paper was used for an early draft of our constitution. But since corporations cannot patent a plant, it was systematically discredited and criminalized.

"Hemp can't get you high unless you smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole!" according to Dr. Ron Paul.

No one should get high or use a craving for intoxication as an excuse for promoting this plant. It has legitimate medical uses the chemical-medical industry does want people to have. It is time for a new American Revolution? ♥☠✿☮❀

Exploring the material world (PBS)

(PBS) Invisibility cloaks. Spider silk that is stronger than steel. Plastics made of sugar that dissolve in landfills. Self-healing military vehicles. Smart pills and micro-robots that zap diseases. Clothes that monitor your mood. What will the future bring, and what will it be made of? In NOVA's fascinating new four-hour series "Making Stuff," popular New York Times technology reporter David Pogue takes viewers on a thrilling tour of the material world. He also looks at the world that may lie ahead, offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at scientific innovations that are ushering in a new generation of materials that are stronger, smaller, smarter, and cleaner than anything ever seen.

• NOVA "Making Stuff" program overview
• Wednesdays, beginning Jan. 19, 2011

Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica: DJ Spooky

(SubliminalSpooky) This is a trailer for DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller)'s new large scale multimedia performance work (now being performed): It is an acoustic portrait of the rapidly changing Antarctic continent. "Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica" transforms Miller's first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up that land mass.

• DJ Spooky: An Antarctic Expedition in Sound
  Musician and artist Paul Miller — aka DJ Spooky — decided to get to the core of the phenomenon. LISTEN NOW

Miller's field recordings from a portable studio -- set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms -- reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with visual material from Getty Images' vast collection, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a 70 minute performance, creating a unique and powerful moment around the human relationship with nature.

Garden of Eden drying out

GARDEN OF EDEN (Hor al-Hammar), Iraq — A severe drought is threatening Iraq's southern marshes -- the traditional site of the biblical [Christian, Judaic, and Islamic] Garden of Eden -- just as the region was recovering from Saddam Hussein's draining of its lakes and swamps to punish a political rebellion.

Marshes that were coming back to life a few years ago with U.N. help are again little more than vast expanses of cracked earth. The area's thousands of inhabitants, known as Marsh Arabs, are victims of the debilitating drought that has ravaged much of Iraq and neighboring countries the last two years. More>>

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VIDEO: Drought leaves marshes in jeopardy (AP)

Devas expelling humans from an earthly paradise (Wiki)

• Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
• Body of a Man, Lung of a Tree?
• Another Eden: Seychelles off India (NOVA)