Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.26

Series 1

III - 8: The Axle of Nothingness

Mind is a tangled web.

Use it to catch the world.

Try to comprehend the infinite complexity of it all…

…elegantly embedded in the fabric of space and time.

Open your eyes in amazement.

Be Aware.

See.

Genetics: Viral Gene

A viral gene embedded in the sheep genome plays an essential role in the growth of the animal's placenta. The result strengthens the case that similar viral genes play the same role in mice and people. Up to 10 percent of a mammal's genome is made up of DNA captured from retroviruses, which insert their DNA into the host genome and sometimes lose the ability to get back out of the cell. Most of this genetic material seems to be gibberish, but in humans there are signs that one viral gene is still kicking. Genetic studies of post-birth placentas spotted activity from a gene that would once have produced part of the protein envelope coating a circulating retrovirus, now extinct. Researchers identified envelope genes from other viruses active in the placentas of mice, primates and sheep. The viral gene products cause cultured cells to fuse together as they would in the placenta, suggesting they play a considerable reproductive role in these various mammals.

Think.

Quantum Physics:

Entanglement in Superconductors

Learn.

Quantum computers would take advantage of a particle or other quantum system's ability to exist simultaneously in two states—namely, a superposition of 0 and 1. Combining many such quantum bits, or qubits, into a working quantum computer would allow its operators to perform feats impossible even on today's supercomputers, such as breaking gold-standard encryption schemes or conducting complex searches quickly. To get qubits working together, they must be entangled, meaning that their quantum states have to be linked so that when one qubit is 0 the other is 1, and vice versa. Researchers had made strides in entangling multiple qubits made from ions, which have long-lasting superpositions but must be shuffled around to coordinate many qubits. Another kind of qubit consists of a current in a superconducting metal wire. Such qubits could easily be linked by fashioning wires between them, but their superpositions are relatively easy to disturb, so researchers had yet to definitively show they could entangle two superconducting qubits. Now for the first time researchers have made a direct measurement showing they can forge a crucial quantum link between currents flowing through ultracold, superconducting wires. Superconductors are likely to become very competitive with ions.

Imagine.

Understand.

Biology:

Nitrogen-breathing Organisms

The earth is full of locales seemingly inhospitable to life. In areas like that deep beneath the ocean's mud floor, oxygen cannot penetrate. In such anoxic environments, the simple cellular precursors of all life—bacteria and archea—thrive, but the single-celled ancestors of more complex life-forms, known as eukaryotes, were thought to suffocate. Now new research has shown that at least one eukaryotic species—a shelled, amoebalike creature called a foraminifer—can prosper without oxygen by respiring nitrogen instead. A team of marine ecologists investigated the flora in a sediment core from Gullmar Fjord, Sweden. Deep into the mud, the researchers found a pool of nitrate that seemed to correlate with foraminifera abundance. This foraminifer—Globobulimina pseudospinescens—also contained nitrate concentrations at least 500-fold higher than the surrounding sludge. Accumulating nitrate requires energy and therefore is unlikely to be undertaken unless it benefits the organism in some way. Archaea and bacteria benefit by breathing the stuff in the surrounding mud, turning nitrate into dinitrogen gas and getting rid of their organic waste in the process, a chemical reaction known as denitrification. In the lab, G. pseudospinescens consistently respired the nitrate, and close examination of the eukaryote's makeup showed that it did not contain any bacteria that could assist in this process. Rather, the organism used its own cellular machinery to control the process, storing as much as a month's worth of nitrate. The finding marks the first time that more complex animals have been proved to play a role in denitrification, a crucial part of the nitrogen cycle, and have shown an ability to proliferate in anoxic environments.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Physics: Superlenses

Using "superlenses" that can amplify rapidly decaying light that normal lenses cannot, light microscopes can now see details smaller than a wavelength of light buried below a surface. Researchers say their new method could help peer into artificial or biological structures and scan the molecular compositions of objects. Normally light microscopy can at most resolve details roughly half the wavelength of the light used. If light is squeezed past this limit, it flares out from an aperture as two portions: a far-field part that spreads out, and a near-field fraction that remains close, decaying rapidly once emitted. Conventional lenses can capture far-field light, but they lose all the information about details smaller than a wavelength contained in near-field light. Metal probe tips scanning over a surface can detect this near-field light, but until now they could only "see" what they touch and not below. To get a better glimpse of features below the skin of an object, a team of physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsreid, Germany, used superlenses. These novel devices exploit a property called permittivity, which describe a substance's ability to transmit an electric field. Specifically, the superlenses combine materials with negative and positive electric permittivities, so that internal electric fields align in opposite directions from each other in response to external fields. The result: superlenses can recover near-field as well as far-field light.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Alternate Energy:

Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

Plants are the most efficient converters of sunlight into usable forms of energy, namely, sugar. And our industrialized society benefits from their efforts over the past few billion years: organic products, trapped in the passage of time deep below the earth, were transformed into the oil, coal and natural gas that largely powers our modern world. Cutting out the middle men—plants and tectonic processes—seems like a good solution to providing our energy needs. But man-made cells used to harvest light—so-called solar photovoltaics and other technologies—lose more of the sun's energy than they absorb, and they require tremendous amounts of energy to manufacture. One alternative, known as dye-sensitized solar cells, offers similar energy capture and lower cost but had relied on potentially toxic liquid components, preventing its widespread use. Chemist Michael Graetzel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne developed these dye-sensitized cells more than a decade ago. Made from cheap, abundant components, these cells use a titanium dioxide dye to turn 11 percent of incoming light into electricity—close to the efficiency of standard solar cells used by homeowners today. Even so, these cells did not find widespread use, primarily because they contained toxic liquids that easily evaporated if not contained. But Graetzel and his colleagues recently discovered that by substituting ionic liquids—liquids made up of charged particles, imidazolium iodide in this case—they could maintain the efficiency and pose no risk of evaporation. This new discovery points to possibilities for a more bountiful light harvest.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Paleontology: Dinosaur Diversity

Penetrate.

To paraphrase Shakespeare: there are more dinosaurs in earth and rock than dreamt of by modern paleontology. Revising an earlier estimate based on discoveries to date, anatomist Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania and statistician Steve Wang of Swarthmore College predict that 71 percent of dinosaur genera—the organizational grouping into which individual species fall—still remain to be discovered. Over the course of the last decade, the pace of dinosaur genera discovery nearly tripled as new fossil beds and researchers entered the field. Since 1990, an average of 14.8 genera have been described annually, compared with 5.8 genera annually between 1970 and 1989 and 1.1 genera annually between 1824 and 1969. Dodson and Wang plugged those numbers into a statistical method known as an abundance-based coverage estimator, which has been used to estimate successfully the diversity of other animals. Their calculation reveals that dinos should have 1,844 genera—up from 1,200 genera that Dodson estimated in 1990. But less than 600 genera have been discovered so far. This statistical method relies on numbers of rare genera—those with fewer than 10 species extant as culled from the literature by the researchers—to estimate the total relative abundance of all genera. The numbers also seem to show that diversity was not declining as dinosaurs approached their inevitable end, instead it remained relatively stable as eons passed. And extrapolating forward, the researchers predict that we are entering a golden age of dinosaur genera, with 70 percent to be found over the next century or so.

Wonder…

But Beware!

Don't get caught in the mighty maze of your own mind.

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

I am not trying to take you anywhere, I am simply trying to bring you here. It is not a question of there — there is no there. It is only a question of being here, present.

Truth is so convincing, it is self-evident; it need not ask for any belief. Only untruth asks for belief. Truth only says don't be entangled by belief or doubt; remain open and available.

That urge to explore is enough. Let me be your adventure. Not an anchor, but an adventure. A prison for you I don't want to become, I want to become your freedom.

You waste your energy unnecessarily, for no purpose. Dissipating energy you go on — a thousand and one leaks you have in your boat.

When you are powerful, only then can you become a medium of God. A vehicle you can become.

At the very core of life there is death. This is how things are, existence is through contradiction.

Existence continuously contradicts itself, and out of contradiction is born the energy to live. Out of the tension between the contradictions is this whole play, the game.

Continuously, everywhere, the game is based on the very foundation of paradox. If you don't understand this, a life of misery you will live.

Misunderstanding is what your misery is. Understanding is bliss, the cause of misery misunderstanding is.

10.

If a man looks withinwards he finds there, at the very core, just pure nothingness.

11.

The wheel of all moves on the axle of nothingness. So, afraid of the inner nothingness, we go on rushing into the world.

12.

Death is there, and at the very core of your being there is just emptiness. There is no self, there is no being, there is no 'I'.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

It has happened many times that a man is accidentally wakened up. Then he goes mad, he is bound to go mad. He will not be able to absorb that much. Sometimes it has happened. There are many people around the world, even at this moment, who are mad because they stumbled upon something which they were not yet ready to absorb. Sufis know about them. In India they are called MASTAS, mad people — very beautiful people but very disoriented. The world is gone, the old nightmare is no more, but the dawn has not happened either.

- Osho