This physicist has built a supercomputer from old PlayStations

Image: yum9me/Flickr

This physicist has built a supercomputer from old PlayStations

A home-made PlayStation 3 supercomputer is 3,000 times more powerful than any desktop processor, and is being used to study black holes.

Next time you upgrade your gaming console for the latest model, there may be a better option than simply throwing the old one away - you can use it for science instead.

Guarav Khanna, a black hole physicist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in the US, has managed to build a powerful and extremely cheap supercomputer using old PlayStation 3s (PS3s), and he’s used it to publish several papers on black holes.

His research focusses on finding gravitational waves, which are curvatures in space-time that ripple out from a violent astrophysical event, such as two black holes colliding. They were first predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, but no one has been able to observe them.To try to work out more about the mysterious waves, Khanna needed a supercomputer - a system that can crunch numbers at least 10 times better than a regular computer - to model what happens when black holes smash together, but unfortunately supercomputers are getting increasingly costly. So back in 2009, Khanna decided to make his own instead, as he told Laura Parker from the New York Times.

“Science has become expensive,” Khanna told Parker. “There’s simply not that much money going around, either at the university or the federal level. Supercomputing allows scientists to make up for the resources they don’t have.”

In theory, a supercomputer basically involves linking many standard computers together via a network. But instead of using regular laptops, Khanna decided to go a cheaper option, and link up PS3s. Their main benefit was that they allow users to install their preferred operating system on the console, and they retail for around US$250.

To help with his research, Sony donated four consoles to the experiment, and Khanna and the university bought another 12.

All 16 were then loaded up with Linux and linked over the Internet - the result was a processor that could speed up calculations by a factor of nearly 10 compared to an ordinary computer. He published the results of the make-shift supercomputer in thejournal Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems in 2009.

He used that first device to model the behaviour of gravitational waves and publish several papers on the phenomenon, but since then he's now made an even more powerful model, as Parker reports.

In 2010, the US Air Force Research Laboratory in New York found out about Khanna’s PS3 supercomputer, and decided to make their own out of 1,760 consoles, pictured below, in order to process radar image surveillance. 

US Department of Defense

As a thank you, the US Department of Defense donated 176 additional PS3s to Khanna and his team. They now house their supercomputer in a refrigerated shipping container, designed to carry milk. This model is as powerful as 3,000 desktop computers, and only cost around US$75,000 to make - a ridiculously cheap amount for a supercomputer.

Although PS3s have their limitations - the memory is much smaller than traditional supercomputers, for example - their supercomputer is continuing to grow in power and has helped not only Khanna with his research, but other scientists around the university. The team will add another 220 PS3s to the system by 2015. 

The next project Khanna wants to work on is creating a supercomputer out of PC graphics cards, which are equally low-cost but as powerful as around 20 PS3 consoles.

“The next supercomputer we’re going to build will probably be made entirely of these cards,” Khanna told Parker. “It won’t work for everything, but it will certainly cover a large set of scientific and engineering applications, especially if we keep improving on it.”

HEALING, INSPIRATIONAL, MEDITATION, NEWS, SPIRITUALITY, THOUGHTS

10 REASON’S WHY A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY WILL IMPROVE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE

Lets face it. Living day by day in the average human environment is not a very fun one. Working Jobs, Commuting, Traffic, McDonalds…. It’s not just boring, but sad and depressing. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is to go on a journey or a quest of sorts to cleanse your spirit, mind and body, and to become One with the nature that you are.

10 Ways A Spiritual Journey Might Change Your Life

1. Jobs Can Sometimes Make You Forget The Beauty In Life

At the point where you walk outside and you don’t notice the sun is shining perfectly in the sky, you need a RESET. If we all had life the way we wanted it, we would have much less “jobs” and have much more inspired creation. This shift and transition can happen right now. What are you waiting for? Perhaps you don’t know what you want to create, perhaps you feel stuck or trapped. Getting out of your environment might be just what you need to make a transition into finding what gives you lasting happiness.

2.Life Just Got Stale

You know how sometimes if you eat something over and over again it gets really old.. especially if that food is just starches and fats with no nutrients at all? Perhaps it’s time to change that intake valve to something a little more free! No one wants a life more stale than a 1998 bag of Lay’s potato chips.  Going on adventures make the heart feel fresh and new again.

3. It’ll Inspire You To Have Better Relationships with others
Going to travel around the world or even somewhere nearby often allow your mind to reset. When this happens, you can observe your relationships in a new way and come back to the table with a fresh outlook. Also – if you go somewhere WITH someone, that can be a tremendous way to grow together and strengthen your relationship, regardless of what that relationship is.

4. Redefines the Relationship You Have With Yourself

Everyone needs “Alone Time” sometimes, and so taking some time just to be with yourself can be a powerful meditation to be at peace without constantly engaging with those who don’t get you. Just remember not to pull away too far, for isolation from loved ones if stretched too far can leave stretch marks that take a long time to heal if not properly cared for.

5. Journeys Provide You New Prospectives For Your Education

Getting out into the world, you’ll find new people that resonate with your highest potential. When you are in your normal environment, its very much like being “inside the box”, in that it is not very often subject to change.  However our true potential for our life path is never found inside of any box, even if, figuratively speaking, we find a post card that points to our dreams, we will never reach that magical place from the comfort of our boxes. Most people inside the box want the education and careers the box promotes but once we allow our minds to expand, we can quickly find out where we want to place our energy.

6. You May Receive A Fresh Prospective On Your Priorities

Lets just be honest, life can be hard sometimes. Ok…. scratch that… life can be hard most of the time as we grow and become more responsible. However, just because we have a lot of responsibilities doesn’t mean we have them prioritized. Getting out of the old environment even for a little while allows your mind to shuffle and sort whats truly important to you and what needs to be done for the benefit of everyone and everything.

7. You’ll Become Better At Navigating Your Perception Of Drama

When things get dramatic, there is usually for a reason for it. Whether there is a problem between you and a loved one or a disagreement in the workplace – when things are in a panic it can become difficult to be on-point and do the right thing. Sometimes taking a step outside of the house for an afternoon of reflection can make all of the difference in the world. For me, I climb the tree in the front of the house and meditate for a while, engaging fully with the task at hand in order to come to a more complete understanding and resolution to the problem.

8.  Gain Mental Clarity In Your Life

Is life looking dense, thick and sticky like walking through muck? Going on a Spiritual Journey will cut through the density like a knife through Wonder Bread. The more earthly experience you have, the more angles of reflection you have for making better decisions. By practicing mindfulness to all of these, we can “go with the flow” with a lot more care than the stuck-ness we face when we do not.

9. Overall Optimism will increase.

Yep, you guessed it! Trees, Rivers, Grass, Temples, Foreign Languages, and limited access to bathrooms seems to play a huge role in the increase of appreciation and an overall more positive outlook on the blessed life you have. A positive outlook on life can make all the difference in your creativity.

10. Spiritual Journeys Promote Mindfulness About Your Physical Health

Healthwise, a lot  comes down to resource management when you are taking a real spiritual journey. Most of us will typically eat much healthier while on a journey of some sort or at least have a better sense of how to keep the body in a better state of holistic comfort.

So yeah, Go on a journey! Create something new for yourself, and create something new for your friends and family. You are a reflection of them after all, and any adjustments you make to your auric field will have an impact on them, whether you are aware of it or not.

Harvard Study Unveils What Meditation Literally Does To The Brain:

Numerous studies have indicated the many physiological benefits of meditation, and the latest one comes from Harvard University.

An eight week study conducted by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) determined that meditation literally rebuilds the brains grey matter in just eight weeks. It’s the very first study to document that meditation produces changes over time in the brain’s grey matter. (1)

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day. This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.” – (1) Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School Instructor in Psychology

The study involved taking magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the brain’s of 16 study participants two weeks prior to participating in the study. MRI images of the participants were also taken after the study was completed.

“The analysis of MR images, which focused on areas where meditation-associated differences were seen in earlier studies, found increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion and introspection.” (1)

For the study, participants engaged in meditation practices every day for approximately 30 minutes. These practices included focusing on audio recordings for guided meditation, non-judgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind.

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life. Other studies in different patient populations have shown that meditation can make significant improvements in a variety of symptoms, and we are now investigating the underlying mechanisms in the brain that facilitate this change.” – (1) Britta Holzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany

How To Meditate

A common misconception about meditation is that you have to sit a certain way or do something in particular to achieve the various benefits that it can provide. All you have to do is place yourself in a position that is most comfortable to you. It could be sitting cross legged, lying down in a bed, sitting on a couch etc, it’s your choice.

Another common misconception about meditation is that you have to “try” to empty your mind. One important factor I enjoyed reading from the study mentioned above is that participants were engaged in “non-judgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind.”  When meditating, you shouldn’t try to “empty” your mind. Instead, try to let your thoughts, feelings and whatever emotions you are feeling at the time flow. Don’t judge them, just let them come and go and be at peace with it.

I also believe that meditation is a state of being/mind more than anything else. I feel that one does not have to sit down for half an hour and “meditate” so to speak in order to reap the benefits of it, or to be engaged in the practice itself.  One can be engaged in meditation while they are on a walk, for example, or the time they have right before they sleep. Throughout the day, one can resist judging their thoughts, letting them flow until they are no more, or just be in a constant state of peace and self awareness. Contrary to popular belief, there is more than one way to meditate.

“You will have to understand one of the most fundamental things about meditation: that no technique leads to meditation. The old so-called techniques and the new scientific biofeedback techniques are the same as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a byproduct of any technique. Meditation happens beyond mind. No technique can go beyond mind.” – Osho

Proof That Consciousness Creates Reality: Welcome To The Matrix

Proof That Consciousness Creates Reality: Welcome To 

The Matrix 

By Steven Bancarz| Does consciousness create the material world?  Before we answer this question, it’s important to first go into what the material world is actually composed of at a fundamental level.  “Reality” is not simply made of tiny physical pieces, like a bunch of marbles or tiny little bowling balls.  Molecules are made out of atoms, and atoms are made out of subatomic particles such as protons and electrons which are 99.99999% empty space and electrical spin. These are then made out of quarks, which then are a part of a Superstring field which consists of vibrating strings that give rise to fundamental particles based on the nature of their vibration.

We interact with a world of physical objects, but this is only due to the way our brains translate sensory data.  At the smallest and most fundamental scales of nature, the idea of “physical reality” is non-existent.  From the Nobel Prize winning father of quantum mechanics Neils Bohr, “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.  In quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you yet, you don’t understand it well enough.” When you touch your hands together, it is really just empty space touching more empty space, with the slightest ingredient of energetic spin of these minuscule particles.  The constituents of matter have absolutely no physical structure.

This is important to understand, because if we think of the world of quantum physics as being a world of bowling balls and and marbles, then the idea of consciousness creating reality doesn’t really make sense.  But understanding that reality is a cosmic concoction of non-localized energy and empty space, it becomes clear that our thoughts and the signals they register in the brain also have these same properties at their smallest level.  Our thoughts are also an activity of the universe, and all activities take place within the same quantum realm prior to manifesting in physical reality.

Consciousness is one of the hard problems in science.  There is no way to explain how something as material as chemical and physical processes can give rise to something as immaterial as experience.  There is no reason why subjective experience exists at all, or how sentience evolved.  Nature would operate just as well without subjectivity, and when we actually try to scientifically investigate the origin and physics of consciousness, we get hints that maybe consciousness and reality are not as separate as material science would have us think.

Here are some principles in quantum mechanics, taken from the book “The Self-Aware Universe” written by former professor of theoretical physics for 30 years at the University of Oregon, Dr. Amit Gozwami:

1) Wave-Function

A quantum object (such as an electron) can be at more than one place at the same time. It can be measured as a wave smeared out in space, and can be located at several different points across this wave. This is called the wave property.

2) Discontinuity

A quantum object ceases to exist here and simultaneously appears in existence over there without have EVER traveled the intervening space. This is known as the quantum jump.  It essentially teleports

.

3) Action-At-A-Distance

A manifestation of one quantum object, cause by our observations, simultaneously influences its correlated twin object, no matter how far apart they are. Fire an electron and a proton off of an atom. Whatever happens to the electron, the exact same or exact opposite will happen to the proton. This is called quantum-action-at-a-distance.  Einstein called this “spooky” action at a distance.

4) The Observer Effect

A quantum object cannot be said to manifest in ordinary space-time reality until we observe it as a particle.  The quantum object exists indefinitely as a non-local wave until it is being observed directly. Consciousness literally collapses the wave-function of a particle.

This last point is interesting, because it implies that without a conscious observer present to collapse this wave, it would remain physically un-manifested in a state of potentiality .  Observation not only disturbs what has to be measured, it produces the effect.  This was verified in what is known as the double-slit experiment, where the presence of a conscious observer changed the behaviour of an electron from a wave state to a particle state.  This is known as the “observer effect” and completely shakes what we assume to be true about the physical world.  Here is an easy to understand cartoon rendition of the experiment:

The findings of this experiment were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, in which the scientists summarized saying “The introduction of a which- path (welcher Weg) detector for determining the actual path taken by the particle inevitably involved coupling the particle to a measuring environment, which in turn results in dephasing (suppression of interference).”  That’s quite a mouthful, but it basically means that the measurement system used to detect the activity of the particle effected the behaviour of that particle. 

These findings provide huge implications regarding how we can understand our interconnectedness with the external world.  “We create our reality” is used to refer to the fact that our thoughts create the perspective we have of the world, but we now have a more concrete and literal understanding of this phrase.  We actually give rise to the physical universe with our subjectivity.

“I  regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” – Max Planck, Nobel Prize winning originator of quantum theory, as quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931).

Quantum physics and consciousness:

WHAT HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IS REALLY DOING TO YOUR BODY

We need to be real with ourselves about what we put into our body. Check the ingredients when you go to the store, you might be surprised at how many things contain High Fructose Corn Syrup. Here’s some of the dangers of what it can do to our bodies if we’re not careful.

Do dogs really miss us when we're gone?

Do dogs really miss us when we're gone?

Do our dogs really notice how long we've been away? The latest episode of BrainCraft investigates the science.

Anyone with a dog knows that it's hard to leave them every day. They always want to come with you, and look so sad when they realise you're going out without them.

But are they really missing you, or do they just want to explore the outside world?

As the latest episode of BrainCraft explains, there's neuroscientific evidence to show that dogs really DO miss us - just like we'd always hoped.

BrainCraft's creator Vanessa describes a very cool recent study, where a scientist trains a dog to lay still in an MRI machine, so they could study its brain activity.

During the research, the team found that dogs really do understand what their owners are saying. But it also tested whether they miss us, by exposing the dog in the MRI machine to five different scents - its own, the scent of a familiar and unfamiliar dog, and a familiar and unfamiliar human.

Interestingly, when the dogs smelt a familiar human, the caudate nucleus of their brains lit up - a region associated with positive expectations and rewards.

Another study looked at how dogs behaved with people of varying levels of familiarity - their owner, a stranger and a familiar human - and found that dogs clearly miss their owners more than anyone else, and will wait behind the door they left through in anticipation of their return. Aw.

Although it's still unclear whether dogs are aware of the length of time they're left alone for, research suggests that they're more excited to greet their owner if they're left alone for two hours than 30 minutes. But between two and four hours there's not much difference.

But we do know that dogs process images faster than our slow human eyes do.Watch the episode above to find out more, and see what dogs are really doing while you're away - no wonder our phone bill is so high.

And find out more about whether dogs really understand what we're saying in the episode of It's Okay To Be Smart below.

Russian Navy UFO records say aliens love the ocean

The Russian navy has declassified its records of encounters with unidentified objects technologically surpassing anything humanity ever built, reports Svobodnaya Pressa news website.

The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplainedincidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, the website says. Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.

On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.

Many mysterious events happened in the region of Bermuda Triangle, recalls retired submarine commander Rear Admiral Yury Beketov. Instruments malfunctioned with no apparent reason or detected strong interference. The former navy officer says this could be deliberate disruption by UFOs.

Vladimir Kremlev to RT-

“On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, of 400 kph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development,” Beketov said.

Navy intelligence veteran, Captain 1st rank Igor Barklay comments:

“Ocean UFOs often show up wherever our or NATO’s fleets concentrate. Near Bahamas, Bermudas, Puerto Rico. They are most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle, and also in the Caribbean Sea.”

Another place where people often report UFO encounters is Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water body in the world. Fishermen tell of powerful lights coming from the deep and objects flying up from the water.

In one case in 1982 a group of military divers training at Baikal spotted a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits. The encounter happened at a depth of 50 meters, and the divers tried to catch the strangers. Three of the seven men died, while four others were severely injured.