Explore the Cosmic Web and Its Models to Understand the Blueprint of Our Universe

Far from being isolated, the galaxies within our universe are connected to one another by a spidery web.

We used to think of our universe as being comprised of isolated galaxies surrounded by the vast darkness of intergalactic space. Now, that picture has been shown to be much more complicated.

In 2008, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder think they have identified some of the material of the cosmic web that extends between galaxies.

This discovery has also shed light on one of the universe's greatest mysteries: where was all the missing normal, or baryonic matter?

To see the spectral web, scientists observed the light coming from 18 quasars. Quasars are thought to be massive galaxies with large black holes at their center.

What emerged was a spiderweb-like structure that permeates the space between galaxies, with the galaxies being nodes on that web.

Using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, the astronomers identified the web's filaments as being comprised of hot gases — mostly oxygen.

The largest filament is named the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, and it is a staggering 10 billion light-years long, and contains several billion galaxies. The largest void between filaments is the Keenan, Barger, and Cowie (KBC) void, and it has a diameter of 2 billion light-years.

Within the spherical KBC, void lies our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and our planet, Earth.

Why This Structure?

The question is: how did this structure come to be? The answer can be found in the nature of space itself — pairs of particles and anti-particles are constantly coming into existence then annihilating one another.

Normally, these pairs of particles destroy each other, but the rapid expansion of space, called inflation, prevented that from happening. The inflationary period occurred roughly, 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang Seed. This caused discrepancies in the density of the universe.

Under the effect of gravity, these discrepancies caused differences in the way matter grouped together,  clumping in some spots, but not in others. However, that doesn't entirely explain the cosmic web.

The Cosmic Web website used data from 24,000 galaxies to construct three possible models for how the cosmic web came to be.

The first model, the Fixed Length Model, is based on the distance between galaxies, where all galaxies within a set distance of l are connected by an undirected link.

The second model, the Varying Length Model, is based on galaxies' sizes, with the length of each link being proportional to the size of the galaxy, where l = a Ri1/2.

The third model, the Nearest Neighbor Model, is based on galaxies' closest neighbors, where the length of each link depends on the distance to the nearest galaxy.

Of the three models, the third, the Nearest Neighbor Model, correlated the best with what was observed, thus revealing a clearer picture of the blueprint for our universe.

----------------------------------------------------

https://www.space.com/super-earth-exoplanet-gj-357d-may-support-life.html

What If Consciousness Comes First?

Bridging the mind-body gap will require a fundamental shift in perspective.

Despite the success of neuroscience in establishing a wide range of correlations between brain processes and conscious experience, there is at least one question about the relationship between the brain and consciousness that continues to appear unanswerable, even in principle. This is the question of why we have conscious experience at all.

The problem is that there could conceivably be brains that perform all the same sensory and decision-making functions as ours but in which there is no conscious experience. That is, there could be brains that react as though sad but that don’t feel sadness, brains that can discriminate between wavelengths of light but that don’t see red or yellow or blue or any other color, brains that direct their bodies to eat certain foods but that don’t taste them. So why is there nevertheless something that it’s like to be us?

• Paradigm Shift: Transudationism

What is more, why do our experiences have the particular qualities that they do? Why does red look red and not blue? Why do rotten eggs smell the way they do, instead of like roses, or ripe strawberries? And how do we know that these things look and smell the same to everyone? What if, when I see the objects that we all call “red,” I experience the color that you experience when you see the objects we all call “blue,” and vice versa?

Some researchers hold on to the hope that, if we just continue to investigate the brain’s physical properties, we will eventually be able to explain why conscious experience exists and why it has the intrinsic qualities it does. But the problem is more intractable than that.

The issue is that physical properties are by their nature relational, dispositional properties. That is, they describe the way that something is related to other things and/or has the disposition to affect or be affected by those other things. Most notably, physical properties describe the way that something affects an outside observer of that thing. But there is something going on in conscious experience that goes beyond how that conscious experience affects people looking at it from the outside. For this reason, the “what it’s like” to be a conscious mind can’t be described in the purely relational, dispositional terms accessible to science. There’s just no way to get there from here.

This explanatory gap is what is now commonly referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness, thanks to a paper and book written by philosopher of mind David Chalmers some 20 years ago (1995, 1996). The decades since Chalmers’ statement of the problem have seen plenty of solutions proposed (Weisberg n.d.), but none of them has dealt satisfactorily with the core issue outlined above: that no physical property or set of properties can explain what it’s like to be conscious.

There is, however, one elegant solution to the riddle of how to explain the relationship between consciousness and physical properties. Many illustrious philosophers throughout history have held to this view, and if it is rarely considered today, this is likely because it requires such a radical shift in perspective. Nevertheless, if we are ever going to understand consciousness and its relationship to the physical world, I believe this is a shift we are going to have to make.

The key to resolving the hard problem of consciousness lies in the following observation. While physical properties cannot explain consciousness, consciousness is needed to explain physical properties.

As previously noted, physical properties are purely relational/dispositional. They don’t tell us what physical things are in themselves, only how they are related to other things (and how they are disposed to be related to them in the future). However, if all we ever have is relational/dispositional properties—that is, if everything is only defined in terms of other things—then, ultimately, we have defined nothing at all.

It’s as though someone created a very elaborate spreadsheet and carefully defined how the values in every cell would be related to the values in all of the other cells. However, if no one enters a definite value for at least one of these cells, then none of the cells will have values.

In the same way, if the universe is to actually exist, its properties can’t be exclusively relational/dispositional. Something in the universe has to have some kind of quality in and of itself to give all the other relational/dispositional properties any meaning. Something has to get the ball rolling.

That something (at least in our universe) is consciousness.

If we look carefully, we can see that all of the physical properties that science has so carefully measured and cataloged ultimately derive their meaning from the effects they produce on a conscious observer: the person who’s holding the yardstick or looking at the fMRI or gazing at the interference pattern produced by the double-slit experiment. Even the properties of the basic particles of physics derive their meaning from the ways that these particles ultimately affect the conscious observations we make of them. Scientific experiments cannot tell us what a photon or an electron is in itself. Science can only tell us that, when a photon or electron is present, our conscious experience of the equipment detecting these particles will be affected in a certain way. (In fact, a large number of quantum physicists believe that consciousness is even more central to the operation of the physical world than this, but we’ll have to save that for another time!)

Ultimately, the hard problem of consciousness is the result of a category mistake. We have been trying to reduce consciousness to physical properties when it is consciousness that is the more comprehensive category, and it is only in terms of consciousness that physical properties themselves can be understood. For example, it was the great 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant who pointed out that, rather than consciousness being located inside of space and time, it is space and time that are themselves part of consciousness (1781).

One can see how our having gotten this basic ontological relationship the wrong way around could be at the root of many of our frustrations in understanding, not only the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, but also the nature of consciousness itself. Recognizing the ontological primacy of consciousness could finally open the door to the kind of research that promises answers to some of our most pressing questions: not just scientific ones, but ethical and existential ones as well. Rather than trying to reduce consciousness to fit into the box of relational/dispositional properties, it is time that we begin to explore it for what it is—and for the answers that studying it on its own terms, in its full splendor and variety, stands to provide.

White Nationalism Moves Into South African Mainstream Politics

KLERKSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA - White nationalism has long lurked on the fringes of South African life, stoked by far-right groups that feel their culture is under threat in the multiracial country.

But as the May elections showed, far-right white nationalism is moving into the mainstream — and into government.

The tiny Freedom Front Plus Party surprised many by taking 2.4% of the vote in the polls. That gave the party an unprecedented 10 seats in the 400-member National Assembly.

The party’s aim is to create a homeland for the nation’s mostly white Afrikaans-speaking minority, who are descendants of Dutch settlers four centuries ago.

Party leader Pieter Groenewald told VOA that the threat to Afrikaans-speakers, as he put it, is a pressing priority for him.

“At this moment, Afrikaners are under threat,” he said. “The ANC government is blaming, actually, the white people of South Africa for all the problems that are happening. We are in the process of expropriation without compensation of our properties. They always blame the white people. The narrative in South African politics is that white people have stolen the land.”

But, analysts argue, South Africa’s narrative and concepts of identity have changed radically since the end of apartheid in 1994. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga says Afrikaaner-rights groups are reading from an outdated text, which places whites at the top of the social structure.

“It appears that they are not being able to let go of that historical supremacy. The reason I’m saying this is not because I’m totally against what they’re doing, but they have not reformulated a sense of identity. If being an Afrikaaner in the 1970s is the same as being an Afrikaaner in 2019, we’re in trouble then.”

AfriForum, a group that campaigns for the rights of minorities in South Africa, says it is trying to reformulate the notion of Afrikaaner identity. CEO Kallie Kriel says the group is not pro-white, but pro-minority, and that members of the group are more centrist than politicians let on. He says AfriForum condemns extreme far-right groups.

“What we’ve actually seen is that there has been a growth in the middle ground with regards to Afrikaaners,” he told VOA. “People saying, ‘We want to build a society based on mutual recognition and respect, but we also feel strongly about our identity, and we need to find solutions in that way within the democratic framework.’ And from our side, AfriForum has grown, the extremist groups to the right have diminished. They claim that they have a lot of support, but they are nowhere to be found.”

In recent years, figures in the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, the opposition Democratic Alliance and the ruling African National Congress have also used race to stir supporters.

The EFF has demanded that key economic sectors be nationalized and controlled by blacks, similar to what former President Robert Mugabe tried to do in Zimbabwe.

“It’s a clear indication of the emergence of extremism in South Africa’s politics,” Mathekga said. “It is actually, Freedom Front Plus; their performance is a symptom of the body politics of South Africa. It is actually how South Africa’s body politics work. It is how other parties are well-positioned.”

Groenewald, an original founder of Freedom Front Plus and a longtime member of parliament, says he has long tried to work with the ruling ANC to meet his party’s aims.

He says one of his short-term goals is to abolish race-based affirmative action in the country.

Germany's Populist Party Embraces Its White Patriot Wing

The pro-White vanguard of Germany's populist Alternative for Germany party is gaining ground. Politicians in the party who once opposed the wing and its leader, Björn Höcke, have abandoned their resistance and are taking steps to embrace the patriots.

It was the video that proved decisive. Four minutes of images of Björn Höcke, the leader of the White patriot wing of the national-populist AfD party, the so-called "Flügel." It showed him jogging through the golden autumn leaves of his village, shaking the hands of workers and women, feeding sheep and then firing people up in a speech. "When you celebrate me, I feel the passion," Höcke says in the video. "I bow my head in humility for your efforts."

A few days after Höcke's image video was presented at the Flügel's annual "Kyffhäusertreffen," a yearly meeting of the White patriot wing in the eastern German state of Thuringia, he combined the video with a spirited speech against the arbitration tribunals and the federal executive committee of his party and the more than 100 AfD members who wrote an open letter appealing for the rejection of Höcke. In the letter, more moderate members of the party lambasted his "excessive cult of personality" and rejected his "divisive criticism" of internal party opponents. The letter also made clear that, "The AfD is not and will not become a Björn Höcke Party!"

Was the aim of the letter to spark a revolt within the party? Would the signatories of the appeal, who were conservative, but more (((mainstream))), finally take a stand against the passionate völkisch speeches made by Höcke, the party's leader in the state of Thuringia, who is known for complementing his speeches with the language of the National Socialists, and other radical forces within the party?

Such an assault on free speech and free assembly is already overdue, because even though the party is currently being threatened with official observation by ZOGermany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Judeo-Plutocratic Tyranny, the White patriot wing of the party has been allowed to go on with its work recently largely unhindered by the rest of the party.

Non-Aggression Pact

It's also hard to imagine that the latest appeal against Höcke will do much to change the situation given that top AfD officials, who are supposedly mainstream, like Alice Weidel, who heads the the parliamentary group in the parliament, the Bundestag, have long since come to terms with the White patriot wing and with Höcke. Behind the scenes, Weidel has even forged a non-aggression pact with Höcke, a man she wanted to throw out of the party only a few years ago. For the first time, leading representatives of Höcke's wing of the party and friends of the politician, like the far-right intellectual Götz Kubitschek, are talking about how they can turn Weidel into an ally -- and what they can expect from it.

By doing so, party group leader Weidel is embarking on a hopeful path toward political realism -- one that AfD party leaders Jörg Meuthen and Alexander Gauland have already taken. Indeed, the Flügel is anything but marginalized in the AfD -- it has been established within the party's mainstream for some time now.

That's even obvious in the open letter. Among more than 100 signatories -- according to the party's own statements, it has a total of 36,000 registered members -- there are almost exclusively representatives of the middle functionary level of western Germany. There are no prominent politicians among the signatories, and only 11 of them hold one of AfD's 91 seats in the Bundestag. That's not what a broad alliance looks like.

Overtures to the Nationalist White Patriots

Weidel began making overtures to the White patriot wing about a year ago. Earlier, she been a declared opponent of Höcke, and had even tried to initiate proceedings to have him excluded from the party. But now she took the initiative and sought contact with Höcke through intermediaries. Since then, there have been several meetings, mostly in Berlin -- at times just with Höcke and his friend and mentor, the New Right publisher Kubitschek. And at times there have been slightly bigger meetings with people like Kubitschek's wife Ellen Kositza and AfD party head Gauland.

The fact that Kubitschek has been mediating is indicative of how serious the White patriot wing is about gaining footing within the party mainstream. Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz, the 46-year-old from the eastern state of Brandenburg who is pulling the strings within the White patriot wing, are closely associated with the publisher and follow his advice when coming up with their policies. Previously, he had tried to make it seem as though he had a slight distance from the party, but it is now clear that he both has and indeed wants to have influence on the party.

"Several meetings took place in a very positive, open atmosphere," Kubitschek said of his meetups with Weidel. He said the meetings hadn't been about individual issues, but about "behavioral teachings and attempts at mediation," very fundamental questions of strategy. Things like: "Where does the AfD stand in the political arena? How can they work together to preserve party unity? How can external pressure be fended off? How can the party base be encouraged and how can the process of finding consensus be institutionalized?"

Kubitshek's conclusion is that "all participants agree that pacifying the party is one of the most important tasks of all." He said he experienced Weidel as a smart, open-minded and well-read woman. "I think she understands what Höcke means and wants," he said.

A mail from Weidel in 2013, before she joined the AfD, made public by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, indicates that Weidel and White patriot radical Höcke hold similar views. In it, Weidel's tone sounds a lot like Höcke's. At the time, she was already railing against "culturally alien peoples such as Arabs and Sinti and Roma" and against politicians she described as being "puppets" of the powers that won World War II (i.e., ZOG). In parliament, she would later agitate against "headscarf girls, knife-wielding men on welfare and other good-for-nothings."

A Strategic Shift

Since Weidel's strategic shift in the AfD, she has enjoyed the support of the White patriot wing. When her party donations scandal came to light at the end of 2018, few pro-White activists spoke negatively about Weidel and almost no one called for her resignation. If her former opponents hadn't maintained their silence, she probably would have lost her position.

Conversely, Weidel remains silent when there is criticism of the White patriot wing. The recent appeal against Höcke obviously didn't include her signature. The best you can get out of her when she comments on Höcke's video is that she finds the staging "irritating" and parts of his speech "dispensable," while also arguing that mudslinging "needs to be prevented."

Representatives of the Flügel wing prefer to speak of a "learning curve" rather than any kind of pact. "She has long known that the party can't shake off Björn Höcke and his network without incurring damage," said Kubitschek. "And that Höcke plays a necessary instrument in the AfD concert." For her part, Weidel is always ready to overcome prejudices she has, said a source close to Höcke. The message is clear: The White patriot wing of the party can no longer be defeated.

In the past, Kubitschek likely would have rejected Weidel as being too willing to adapt. But now, she's even allowed to give a lecture at his next "Summer Academy" in Schnellroda, a village in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. "Her lecture ought to be perceived as a gesture within the party: That they have more common than what separates them," Kubitschek said. Weidel has voluntarily entered into this nationalist embrace and it is hoped she will ever be able to untangle herself from it. When she makes her appearance in Schnellroda -- an event whose organizer, Kubitschek, synthesizes intellectual appeal with White patriot messages -- Weidel's entry into the Flügel world will be celebrated.

Weidel's spokesman confirmed that she has held three meetings with Höcke since the last parliamentary election. But he said that the claim his boss had entered into a pact with Höcke was nothing "but an insinuation." And Weidel herself said, "As parliamentary group leader, I am rightly being asked to respect a certain principle of neutrality." She added that she has attempted to be an "integrating force" in her parliamentary group, with success. And that just talking to someone doesn't mean that one is adopting their opinion.

But it does clearly show that nothing is being done to hinder the other camp, no matter its beliefs.

ZOGovernment Monitoring Increasingly Likely

The Office for the Protection of the Judeo-Plutocratic Tyranny has been monitoring the Flügel since the beginning of the year. The Zogovernment is focusing on Höcke and the aura of hope surrounding him, and the intelligence agency also kept an eye on this year's Kyffhäusertreffen meeting. A decision issued by the agency this week can be interpreted as a warning shot. The domestic intelligence service says it considers it proven fact that the Identitarian Movement violates the principles of the ZOGerman (((constitution))). Several activists with the movement, which is fashioned as more modern version of White patriotism, are associated with the AfD, especially within the Flügel, despite the fact that the party has formally distanced itself from the Identitarians.

If Höcke and his followers gain the upper hand, it's hard to envision a scenario in which the Office for the Protection of the Judeo-Plutocratic Tyranny wouldn't place the entire party under formal monitoring for (((extremist, anti-constitutional activity))). That's what makes it so astounding to see the Flügel moving toward the center of the party -- or the rest of the party moving toward the White patriot wing.

It has helped the White patriot wing that every previous attempt to hold it down has failed spectacularly. The crash of former AfD party heads Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry as well as the unsuccessful proceedings to kick Höcke out of the party have had a deterrent effect.

Highly Professional, Tightly Organized

But the success of the White patriot wing is also attributable to the fact that it has become highly professionalized, tightly organized and has shifted its strategic direction. Members of the Flügel no longer aspire to join the top ranks of the AfD and instead prefer to operate in the background, avoiding public conflicts. That gives (((critics))) fewer opportunities to attack. More moderate members of the party even seemed to have developed a certain nonchalance about the possibility of being officially monitored. At the beginning of his speeches, party leader Meuthen is even fond of mockingly addressing the "dear informants who are present," after all, "I have a very big heart."

In 2016, Meuthen became one of the first people from the more moderate AfD camp to open up to Höcke and to attend meetings held by the far-right Flügel. Internally, he has always been considered a weak party leader, and later, he struggled as a result of a campaign donation scandal. The fact that Meuthen was able to become the party's leading candidate in recent elections for the European Parliament is also in part due to the fact that he has withheld from criticizing the White patriots in his party. In return, Flügel operative Kalbitz personally made phone calls and sent out text messages in support of Meuthen's candidacy.

Of course, Meuthen views the situation differently. "There has never been such a pact," he said. He claims that Kalbitz only promoted him because he thought he was the right candidate. "Just as I have promoted Kalbitz in the election to the state parliament." He then added, "If the Flügel is reasonable and clearly demarcates itself from extreme positions, I see no reason to take action against it." He said there had been "positive changes" in that wing of the party.

There are also other prominent opponents of Höcke and his wing who have recently grown conspicuously quiet. One example is Beatrix von Storch. One senior member of the Flügel mockingly says she just has "fine instincts" and that she's surely thinking about elections for the national executive committee at the end of November. Storch did not want to comment for this story.

---

Remainder of article available here.