Brain
Tampering by Humans and the Cygnus Constellation
It is quite possible, and we do believe, that we Homo Sapiens
have been blessed, and tormented, with the most complex, adaptable,
creative, and problem-solving brain in the known universe. We can
even understand, date, and manipulate the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
that controls it. We also have discovered that it has been improved
at least three times by celestial radiation that we have traced to
the Cygnus constellation. But let us first sample human tampering.
Transhumanism is a term used to encompass the beliefs
that our race has and can still evolve beyond its current physical
and mental capabilities and that we can team up with Artificial
Intelligence to enhance and speed up the journey. Today we have world
research groups excite and alarm us with knowledge of their progress
in developing mind-affecting tools including microscopic electrodes
that can be inserted to read and alter DNA activity.
How helpful or dangerous is this? Can we trust ourselves when
it is so evident that we have large influential numbers among us who
lack empathy and are blind to current disasters in order to pursue
greed to maintain and increase their profits?
Tampering with human DNA is prohibited by law in over 40
countries, and by a binding Council of Europe international treaty.
In non-Western countries controls have been much more lax. In
November 2018, at the second International Summit on Human Genome
Editing scientific meeting in Hong Kong, Chinese scientist, He
Jiankui, revealed he had used CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the DNA of two
female twin embryos to make them resistant to HIV. They were born
healthy. This has been widely condemned even by China who has ordered
a halt to the previously unregulated procedure, but in a country that
on a wide scale brainwashes its Muslim Uyghur minority, what
assurance do we have that genetic tampering will never be used for
ulterior motives? China is a world leader in research, spending in
2018 alone 1.76 trillion yuan (US$254 billion). The USA spent $167
billion in 2018. Many other countries are also pursuing mind altering
research. He disappeared but not before tampering with a third woman.
CRISPr stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic
repeats, a family of DNA sequences and enzymes.
Genome editing promises enormous benefits in eliminating
currently incurable diseases but considerable regulated humanitarian
research is essential. Critics contend that, in blocking HIV, He
Jiankui has deprived the girls of other immunities which will be
passed on to future generations.
Thousands of researcher in hundreds of research
universities worldwide were and are employed in brain research. To
name a few:
Richard Canton (1842-1926), was a British physician, physiologist
and Lord Mayor of Liverpool who was crucial in discovering the
electrical nature of the brain. In 1875 he had used a galvanometer to
observe electrical impulses from the surfaces of living brain in
rabbits and monkeys. Following him was Jans Burger, (1873-1941), a
German physicist who, in 1942, invented electroencephalograph (EEG),
a means of recording brain waves.
Founded in 2016 in San Francisco, Elton Musk’s
Neuralink Company announces brain-computer interfaces (BCI) with
immense, and dangerous, implications. This has already been used on
monkeys.
Research on Brain-Computer Interface started in the
1970s at the University of California. The focus continues to be
primarily on neuroprosthetics applications that can help restore
damaged sight, hearing, and movement. The mid-1990s saw interface
devices used. They require deliberate conscious human thought, while
prospective future applications are expected to work effortlessly.
Present research is focused on non-invasive BCI, unlike the
traditional BCI model that requires implanting a mechanical device in
the brain, which then tends to control it as a natural part of the
body. BCIs are directed at augmenting,assisting, or repairing
sensory-motor or human cognitive functions. They combine technologies
from the fields of electrical engineering, computer science,
biomedical engineering, and neurosurgery.
Based on brain imaging technology, such as magnetic resonance
imaging and electroencephalography, BCI looks for patterns of
activity in the brain in real time.
In 1998 Philip Kennedy, at Emory University, Atlanta,
Georgia, implanted the first brain computer interface object into a
human being using his own brain.
In 2001 John Donoghue’s team at Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island, formed Cyberkinetics, to commercially
design a brain computer interface called BrainGate. Its first
commercial product was NeuroPort which enabled researchers at
Columbia University Medical Center, New York, to identify
micro-seizure activity prior to epileptic seizures among patients.
June 2004 marked a significant development in the field
when Matthew Nagle became the first human to be implanted with a BCI,
Cyberkinetics’s BrainGate.
In December 2004, Jonathan Wolpaw and researchers at New
York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center came up with a
research report that demonstrated the ability to control a computer
using a BCI. Patients wore wear a cap that contained electrodes to
capture EEG signals from the motor cortex – part of the cerebellum
governing movement. By 2050, BCI could become a magic wand, helping
humans control objects with their minds.
Noted for its excellence in neuroscience, McGill
University in Montreal has its dark side when it spent many years
working with the USA Central Intelligence Agency on mind control, a
study that is still secret. Groundbreaking work at McGill has been
done by Wilder Penfield, 1891-1976, who mapped the functions of brain
areas and expanded surgery methods, and Donald Hebb who discovered
the Hebbian synapse in 1949. “His neurons that fire together wire
together” is known as Hebb’s Law. Hebb’s model for the working
of the mind led to machines that mimic the biological working a
living nervous system.
One of his students, Brenda Milner, is a founder of the
field of clinical neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Of the 400 neuroscientists that Wikipedia lists, 245 are
women from 35 countries.
THE CYGNUS CONNECTION: Accumulation of knowledge of
universe and human evolution reveals the value of human peaceful
co-operation. Serbia gave us Milutin Milankovic (1879-1958) who
discovered the earth’s 100,000, 41,000, and 23,000 year climatic
cycles due to changing tilt, orbit going from circular to
spherical,and precession. The UK contributed Charles Darwin (1809
-82), Andrew Collins (1957-) present author of the Cygnus Mystery,
and Dennis Montgomery, anthropologist who spent many years in Africa.
The United States provided Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Russia gave us
Iosif Shklovski (1916-1985 astrophysicist who, in 1962 wrote
“Intelligence in the Universe”.
Finding in the 1920’s that radiation can cause
gene mutations led to speculation that cosmic rays may have
influenced human evolution. Cosmic rays tend to break up when they
collide with oxygen and nitrogen nuclei producing a variety of
charged particles including beryllium 10 that accumulates in ice.
Ice core drillings at the Russian Vostok base in Antarctica and by
the USA in Greenland revealed a puzzling increase at 60,000, 35,000,
and 17,000 years ago, each period lasting about 2,000 years and
matching timings of marked improvements in human abilities. Similar
findings are found in a stalagmite from a blue hole in the Bahamas.
Carl Sagan blamed a neutron star. A Soviet-American team computed a
supernova explosion 150 light years away in Cygnus whose radiation
was dispersed cyclically by solar winds and could well have been the
sourced of our genetic improvements. We owe Andrew Collins and Dennis
Montgomery for keeping alive our Cygnus donor. We are indeed one with
our universe.
Cygnus, this Swan or Summer Triangle constellation has been
important to humans since antiquity. It was depicted on the walls of
the Lascaux Cave in southern France first occupied 17,000 years ago.
Some 12,800 years ago its Northern Cross was also depicted as a swan
in Church Hole Cave in Derbyshire, England. The Gobekli Tepe stone
temple in Southeast Turkey, 11,500 years ago was built oriented
towards Cygnus.
I was also attracted to Cygnus. During WWII, I used the 3
bright Cygnus vortex stars, Deneb, Altair, and Vega as navigational
aids. I carried a sextant with a built in bubble to maintain a level
horizon, and a clockworks mechanism to average 60 star-elevation
shots over a 2-minute period to counter aircraft vibrations. Using 3
large volumes of spherical trigonometry I could compute a 2-star fix.
All this would take 5 minutes so it would tell me where I was 15
miles back as our groundspeed averaged 180 knots.
Deneb is our 19th brightest star with a luminosity 54,000
times the Sun, a diameter 110 times the Sun, and a surface
temperature of 8525 Kelvin (8252 Celsius or 414,885 Fahrenheit). It
is the farthest-known first-magnitude star from Earth about 1,550
light years away.
We are all one with the universe. Enjoy, and make good
compassionate use of your current time with it. We may have only a
tiny part of it but we are learning how to take care of it and, if we
do, we may be rewarded with a longer welcome.
Ye
Olde Scribe