Reality Crowd

The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign is having a lot of trouble getting their message out. The original campaign was to start in Bloomington, Indiana, but the town decided they would not allow “You Can Be Good Without God” posted on the side of their buses. Recently, the campaign was approved to start running the ad on buses in South Bend, Indiana, however, there is a delay because of the “controversial message.” RealityCrowd would like the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign to have all the publicity it can. Please send this post to your friends!

Trouble in Bloomington:

Original Campaign Launch:

I enjoy this discovery because it reminds me of a concept I learned while studying music. Playing very high notes or very low notes (especially on wind instruments) is difficult. Players spend years trying to stretch that one half-step further or gain the ability to play just a little louder or keep control at the very softest tone. Stretching your ability that far, though, has more value than just being able to finally hit that high C. The benefit also lies in the fact that all the notes you play in between—the notes you have played for years—become stronger as you expand your total range.

This gamma ray burst is like that high C, and understanding it will bring the benefit of better understanding all the galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects in between that we have been “playing” for years. Our understanding of physics will become more refined as scientists may now have a glimpse into the very first generation of stars (with undoubtedly different properties from stars we commonly study today). For a more detailed description of this event and its implications, view the NewScience article here.

Please comment what this discovery means to you (even if you don’t see why a little yellow smudge could get people so excited)!

Every morning I wake up, and I still feel like me. My conscious experience feels stable, natural, consistent, and singular (me). However, as Jill Bolte Taylor, our speaker and brain scientist describes, the two halves of our brains have distinctly separate experiences. They function very differently from one another and care about different things entirely. Having a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain and having left-brain functions individually shut down gave to her unique insight to her mind. She describes in vivid detail how her unaffected right hemisphere became more and more responsible for her entire conscious experience as her left-brain failed. She describes a profound awakening experience as she came to know pure right-brain thought and the hemisphere’s personal experience. She gives insights to the mind on a scientific level and even reaches into—dare I say—a spiritual realm offering her own words of hope for the experience of the human race.

Now for the fun part! Test your own hemispheres with this optical illusion.


Timelapse: Nightscapes from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.

Sometimes our view of the world around us is held back by our own perceptional limitations. When we use technology to work around those limitations a whole different view of our surroundings is opened to us. Check out these timelapse shots of the night sky. Amazing.

If we can’t travel to the beginning of time to observe the Big Bang, then we will just have to make our own miniature Big Bang right here on Earth. It may sound a little far-fetched and maybe even a little dangerous. (It’s neither.)

After 10 years of construction and about $8 billion invested in the cause, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has given rise to the Large Hadron Collider. This astounding technological marvel (a ring 27 kilometers in circumference) is constructed for the purpose of recreating conditions that only existed within the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang—unimaginable measures of heat and density—by literally smashing bits of matter together near the speed of light. Recording particles present in this not-since-the-dawn-of-time formation, will give us insight to the very fabric of our universe and further the pursuit of answering arguably the biggest questions human beings have ever set out to answer.

Read the rest of this entry »

“People will then often say “But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?” This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would chose not to worship him anyway.)”

- Douglas Adams in an interview with American Atheist

Have a seat and enjoy your free virtual reality haircut (with headphones). Enjoy the amazing ability of your brain to perceive the location of a sound by calculating input from both ears.

Researchers now say they have strong evidence to suggest that the area of the brain responsible for this discerning ability is the planum temporale. Read this Science Daily article here discussing recent findings of the planum temporale and the brain’s amazing ability to locate sounds in three-dimensional space.

We have seen robot walkers before, but nothing like this. Watch what happens when the developers try to knock over the Big Dog. It suddenly seems very much alive! This has all sorts of applications, from offroad transport to our soon to be invented robot overlords (pray they have mercy on us!)

Thanks Laughing Squid for the link!

More content is on it’s way soon from RealityCrowd.com, but we just wanted to take a minute to showcase a new service that we have signed up for. It’s called Tipjoy and it’s a way to show your appreciation for content that you enjoy. The idea is actually incredibly simple… you just enter your email in the box below and tipjoy will create an account for you on their site and start a running total of your tips. When you feel up to it you can go to the tipjoy site and pay off your balance using paypal (credit card and amazon functionality are coming soon) or if you are having tippers remorse you can simply not pay.

We highlight this service not simply because we like money (hint hint) but also because you can use tipjoy to send a tip to any email address or website (even if they have not yet signed up for the service). So you can send tips to any site that you enjoy. It is a simple and effortless way to show content creators that you appreciate their work. Any questions? Check out the Tipjoy FAQ.

Thanks for your support!
~The Reality Crowd team

University of Sydney scientists have discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is twice as wide as previously thought. It seems very strange that this could be the case, doesn’t it? Scientists have peered billions of light years into the cosmos. They have made observations and calculations of mass and distance of a multitude of celestial objects and even of the universe itself. But right here at home, our own galaxy we calculated to be about 6,000 light-years thick, and these scientists now claim that in reality, it is 12,000 light-years thick. It is fascinating to learn that these scientists did not even make any new observations; they simply used data already collected that was available on the Internet! This surprising result has elicited mixed emotions from the scientific community. From the University of Sidney article:

“Some colleagues have come up to me and have said ‘That wrecks everything!’” says Professor Gaensler. “And others have said ‘Ah! Now everything fits together!’”

Here at RealityCrowd, we often cite ways in which science and religion are opposed. This event is a beautiful example of how in the scientific community, new evidence can change even a long-held belief. If assertions are supported by evidence, then those assertions must be taken seriously. However, religion, as many readers realize, does not change in the light of new evidence, and this is why we incessantly hear unsupported claims from many Christians such as the age of the universe being only about 6,000 years. Not even the mountain of evidence to the contrary will convince a true Bible believer. This unwavering stance may be comfortable for those who need the universe to be predictable and simple, but those of us with open and inquisitive minds will celebrate these times that we can say, “Hey, we were wrong!”

Read the entire University of Sydney article here.