D FONG– Basic Concepts of Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ Philosophy of Nonviolence from the APT Nonviolence Trainer’s Manual.

I. “Sat” – which implies openness, honesty, and fairness: Truth.

A) Each person’s opinions and beliefs represent part of the truth.

B) In order to see more of the truth we must share our truths cooperatively.

C) This implies a desire to communicate and a determination to do so, which in turn requires developing and refining relevant skills of communication.

D) Commitment to seeing as much of the truth as possible means that we can not afford to categorize ourselves or others.

Continue reading about Satyagraha- Gandhi’s Philosophy of Nonviolence.

Photo by flickr user Ben Sutherland

LA TIMES– Imagine that you’re a science-fiction writer on a tight schedule. You’d like to play in the vast expanses of the universe, but you have too much scientific integrity to conjure up a warp drive or a DeLorean out of thin air.

You’re also concerned that your audience would get bored in the thousands of years that it would take for a spaceship to realistically travel the distances between stars. What you really need is a wormhole — a shortcut through time and space. Best of all, unlike most science-fiction tropes, wormholes might very well be real.

Seventy-five years ago today, Albert Einstein and his collaborator, Nathan Rosen, submitted a paper to the Physical Review with the goal of unifying gravity and electromagnetism. Although they failed to discover a theory of everything, they did something arguably more much important: By creating the first theoretical model of a wormhole, Einstein and Rosen allowed science-fiction writers — including Arthur C. Clarke, Madeleine L’Engle and the writers of “Babylon 5″ and “Doctor Who” — to explore vast stretches of space and time in the blink of an eye.

From the outside, an Einstein-Rosen bridge, as wormholes were originally known, looks a lot like its cousin, the black hole. And I risk having my official Physics Badge revoked if I don’t tell you, ideally in a spooky voice, that “nothing can escape from a black hole — not even light.”

Continue reading about Time Travel? Maybe.

© 2010, Los Angeles Times

Photo by flickr user Uberto

Dave Goldberg is the author, with Jeff Blomquist, of “A User’s Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty.” He is an associate professor of Physics at Drexel University. His Web site is usersguidetotheuniverse.com.

DIGITAL JOURNAL– Author of “A Brief History of Time” Stephen Hawking is wrong when it comes to contact with aliens, according to former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer who believes extraterrestrials have contributed to human technological advancements.

Digital Journal reported last week that Professor Stephen Hawking stated the thought of alien life as “perfectly rational” to him but urged caution seeking out extraterrestrials for fear that they might raid us for our resources, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

According to CNET News, Hawking stated this week that time travel is possible and that one day we will have spaceships that are so fast that 650 million miles per hour would be similar to one year on planet Earth.

Eventually, says Hawking, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity will one day be obsolete. In theory, humans will be able to “colonize the future” and maybe even repopulate the Earth if a disaster were to occur on the planet and cause the human species to die off, reports the Times Online.

“Time travel was once considered scientific heresy and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank, but these days I’m not so cautious,” said Hawking.

Continue reading about Canadian Politician Defends Aliens, Says Stephen Hawking is Wrong.

© Digital Journal, 2010

Photo by flickr user Miki Yoshihito

DISCOVERY NEWS– For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there’s no reason alien life couldn’t already be lurking among us — or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.

Davies said the variant life forms — most likely tiny microbes — could still be hanging around “right under our noses — or even in our noses.”

“How do we know all life on Earth descended from a single origin?” he told a conference at London’s prestigious Royal Society, which serves as Britain’s academy of sciences. “We’ve just scratched the surface of the microbial world.”

The idea that alien micro-organisms could be hiding out here on Earth has been discussed for a while, according to Jill Tarter, the director of the U.S. SETI project, which listens for signals from civilizations based around distant stars.

She said several of the scientists involved in the project were interested in pursuing the notion, which Davies earlier laid out in a 2007 article published in Scientific American in which he asked: “Are aliens among us?”

So far, there’s no answer. And ever finding one would be fraught with difficulties, as Davies himself acknowledged.

Continue reading about Alien Life May Already Be on Earth, Scientist Says. 

© Discovery Communications, LLC, 2010

Photo by flickr user Kaibara87