COSMOLOGY

"The psychohistorical legacy of ancient Mexico, to which the peoples of the Americans are the main heirs, could determine the fate of human life on the planet, for the better or worse. The 2012 end-time may be the point of no return for the Western way of excess and exploitation. It may also be the moment of opportunity for some people in the West to set a course correction for the entire planet."

~ John Lamb Lash in "The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies & Possibilities"

Cosmology

by K. Lauren de Boer

Some call it a dance. Many call it reason for a new faith in the human prospect. More often, it's called a story, a grand, unifying narrative that points to the awakening of the human to meaning and wonder in a cosmos that had become increasingly impersonal and purposeless under the sway of Western science and the classical humanist tradition. However it's referred to, the new cosmology (also called the new story, the Great Story, the Universe Story) is energizing hearts and minds the planet over...

Cosmology

Editor's Note from Robert Eugene Miller: In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy. Its existence is inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter and gravitational lensing of background radiation, and was originally hypothesized to account for discrepancies between...

Cosmology

TedTalk: In clear, nontechnical language, string theorist Brian Greene explains how our understanding of the universe has evolved from Einstein's notions of gravity and space-time to superstring theory, where minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe... 

Cosmology

by Michael Dowd

According to evolutionary evangelist Michael Dowd, the Gaia hypothesis provides a new foundation for understanding the place of the human in the history and future of Earth. Dowd suggests that, seen through the lens of the New Cosmology, “we are Gaia and . . . Gaia’s story is our common sacred story...”

Cosmology

Editor's Note from Robert Eugene Miller: With the news from CERN (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) that there are neutrinos appearing to travel faster than the speed of light, it seems appropriate we consider the concept of time itself. This video is from a conference at the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen, Denmark on August 30, 2011, featuring David Eagleman, Paul Davies, Tim Maudlin, Raissa D'Souza and moderator Jennifer Ouellette.

Cosmology

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

Cosmology

by Drew Dillenger

the sun
incandescent sphere
permanent explosion
its core
pouring itself out for us
source    
to a hamlet of planets
asteroids and comets
human trajectory
unfolds in this orbit
between wandering stars
and the invincible Sun

Editor's Note: This is a gorgeous poem... click "read more" to be opened to beauty.

Cosmology

by Norriss S. Hetherington and W. Patrick McCray

The Greek worldview was the most long-lived in the history of scientific cosmology. Closely tied to the ancient practice of astrology, it continued from ancient Greece through medieval Islamic civilization to seventeenth-century Europe...

Cosmology

Editor's Note from Robert Eugene Miller: The beginning of my term as Co-Editor of Cosmology.
 

Cosmology

 by Mary Catherine Bateson

The Gaia hypothesis is not a simple assertion that could easily be proved or disproved. Instead it is a complex statement with multiple levels of meaning, like a work of art. At the simplest level, it asserts that this planet is characterized by the capacity for self-correction that characterizes living organisms, the maintenance of continuity by corrective variation. The composition of the atmosphere and the temperatures of the planet over time, for instances, are not accounted for by the laws of chemistry and physics alone, but apparently by processes of self-regulation within those laws. The Gaia hypothesis deepens the sense of the planet as developing, as having a history. Wiggling...

Cosmology