What I Am Reading:
Scientists Destroy Illusion That Coin Toss Flips Are 50–50
“We can be quite sure there is a bias in coin flips after this data set,” Bartoš says.
What happens to the brain during consciousness-ending meditation?
There’s a meditative state described in ancient Buddhist scriptures that is hard to imagine because it is not something – but nothing. Referred to as nirodha-samāpatti, it roughly translates as ‘the cessation of thought and feeling’, and it is the highest meditative state possible in Theravada Buddhism.
This vibrating diet pill may trick the stomach into feeling full
Device cuts food consumption in pigs by 40%, but some experts say it’s unclear whether it will work for humans
In “Strange Metals,” the Flow of Electricity Is Equally Strange
In normal metals, electricity flows in the form of charged particles. Now scientists may have found the first direct evidence that in so-called strange metals, electricity may flow as a mysterious fluid instead. In a paper published in Science, researchers suggest this electronic fluid could possess extraordinarily low viscosity, potentially leading to unusual applications
A Few Thoughts on Spending Money
Spending money can buy happiness, but it’s often an indirect path. The big, nice house might make you happier, but mostly because it makes it easier to spend time with friends and family, and the friends and family are actually what are making you happy.
What I am Watching:
How we're reverse engineering the human brain in the lab
Neuroscientist Sergiu P. Pasca has made it his life's work to understand how the human brain builds itself -- and what makes it susceptible to disease. In a mind-blowing talk laden with breakthrough science, he shows how his team figured out how to grow "organoids" and what they call brain "assembloids" -- self-organizing clumps of neural tissue derived from stem cells that have shown the ability to form circuits -- and explains how these miniature parts of the nervous system are bringing us closer to demystifying the brain.
What I am Listening To:
Sadhguru - Of Mystics and Mistakes: Youth and Truth
Sadhguru was at Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru on Sep 12, 2018, where he interacted with the students as part of the Youth and Truth movement. Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.
White Holes by Carlo Rovelli
Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. We slip beyond its horizon and tumble down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we see geometry fold. Time and space pull and stretch. And finally, at the black hole’s core, space and time dissolve, and a white hole is born. Rovelli has dedicated his career to uniting the time-warping ideas of general relativity and the perplexing uncertainties of quantum mechanics. In White Holes, he reveals the mind of a scientist at work. He traces the ongoing adventure of his own cut
