The only known recordings of a brilliant physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in the basement of his rock star son’s flat. The tapes document how Hugh Everett, a quantum physicist, developed his idea at the age of 24, while a graduate student at Princeton University in 1957. Everett’s theory gave rise to the concept of a multitude of universes, or a ‘multiverse’, where all life’s possibilities play out. It means that somewhere Elvis is still rocking, the Nazis won the second world war and England qualified for Euro 2008. The recordings are believed to have been made in 1977, after a physics conference at which Everett’s parallel worlds theory was resurrected after being shunned for two decades. The tapes were thought lost after his death at the age of 51 in 1982. They were found during the making of a TV documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist’s son and lead singer of the US band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father. The programme, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, airs on BBC4 this evening. The tapes record a conversation between Everett and Charles Misner, a physics professor […]
By agreeing to purchasing a $7.5 billion stake in the faltering banking giant Citigroup, the secretive, government-controlled Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is breaking with tradition. As the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with assets estimated at $650 billion, it poured money in the past into low-return, low-profile investments or small emerging market deals, unlike its flashy emirate neighbor, Dubai. But a falling dollar and a growing cash pile are spurring Abu Dhabi to change strategy, according to analysts, economists and deal makers, who said that more big-ticket deals might be ahead. Flush with cash from its oil exports, Abu Dhabi turned to Wall Street, using a complicated transaction late Monday to buy 4.9 percent of Citigroup, acquiring high-yield, convertible stock that must be exchanged for common stock between March 2010 and September 2011. Abu Dhabi is the largest oil producer of the seven United Arab Emirates and is eager to spend its petrodollars. ‘They’re watching them depreciate, and that’s driving their anxiety,’ said Marc Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco who has worked with other emirates. Abu Dhabi also has an interest in making sure the U.S. economy does not slow […]
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia’s participation in the U.S.-sponsored talks on Middle East peace was seen as a diplomatic coup for the Bush administration but the kingdom has made clear there will be no handshakes with Israeli officials. ‘We are not here for theater. We are here for the serious business of making peace. We are not here to give an impression that everything is normal,’ Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters on Monday, on the eve of the conference to be held in Annapolis, Maryland. ‘We will not do anything that will divert from the seriousness of the occasion, (such as) shaking hands to give an impression of something that is not there,’ he said. Saudi Arabia had been noncommittal until last week over whether it would attend the Annapolis conference. The kingdom, which is the birthplace of Islam, has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested he would not be offended by the lack of handshake, nor would he push the issue. ‘I won’t extend my hand to whoever isn’t ready to shake the hand of the people of Israel,’ Olmert said, referring to the Saudi foreign minister. […]
A compound found in cannabis may prove to be effective at helping stop the spread of breast cancer cells throughout the body. The study, by scientists at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, is raising hope that CBD, a compound found in Cannabis sativa, could be the first non-toxic agent to show promise in treating metastatic forms of breast cancer. ‘Right now we have a limited range of options in treating aggressive forms of cancer,’ says Sean D. McAllister, Ph.D., a cancer researcher at CPMCRI and the lead author of the study. ‘Those treatments, such as chemotherapy, can be effective but they can also be extremely toxic and difficult for patients. This compound offers the hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results without any of the painful side effects.’ The researchers used CBD to inhibit the activity of a gene called Id-1, which is believed to be responsible for the aggressive spread of cancer cells throughout the body, away from the original tumor site. ‘We know that Id-1 is a key regulator of the spread of breast cancer,’ says Pierre-Yves Desprez, Ph.D., a cancer researcher at CPMCRI and the senior author […]
A Food and Drug Administration panel on Tuesday will review reports of abnormal behavior and other brain effects in more than 1,800 children who had taken the flu medicine Tamiflu since its approval in 1999, including 55 in the USA. Twenty-two of the U.S. reports were considered ‘serious,’ with symptoms such as convulsions, delirium or delusions, says Terry Hurley, spokesman for drugmaker Roche Laboratories. None of the U.S. cases resulted in death. But in Japan, Hurley says, five deaths have been reported in children under 16 as a result of neurological or psychiatric problems. ‘Four were fatal falls, and one was encephalitis in a patient with leukemia,’ he says. In addition, in people ages 17 to 21, there were two deaths in Japan, one a ‘fatal accident with abnormal behavior,’ Hurley says, and the second as a result of encephalopathy, a brain infection. Seven adult deaths attributed to neuropsychiatric problems also have been reported in Japan. But Hurley says there is no evidence Tamiflu caused the episodes and notes that similar symptoms have been reported in flu patients who had not taken Tamiflu. He says clinical studies have found no increased risk for psychiatric or neurologic […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
