Tag: change

Stable universe. Unstable thoughts…

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According to legend, when Damocles declared that his king, Dionysius, must have a posh and easy life, Dionysius offered to trade places with Damocles. There was only one catch. Dionysius decreed that a sword be suspended over the throne by a single horse hair, so that Damocles would always know the peril of being king. Since then the Sword of Damocles has come to represent a threat of doom that could strike without warning.

Let’s now go to quantum systems. A long-known property of quantum mechanics, that quantum systems don’t always have to settle in their most stable configuration. They can instead find themselves in a locally stable state (known as a metastable state).

Could we live in a universe which is stable, but just LOCALLY stable? scientists wonder (1)

But why should we care?

Is there ANYTHING which is eternally “stable”?

Stable…

What does that even mean?!?

Everything changes.
And this is the best proof that nothing changes at all…

Stop worrying.

You are here.
And you will be here for ever.
Ever changing.
And yet always the same…

Cells change. Cells change?

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers created new nerve cells in the brains and spinal cords of living mammals without the need for stem cell transplants to replenish lost cells. More specifically, scientists in UT Southwestern’s Department of Molecular Biology first successfully turned astrocytes — the most common non-neuronal brain cells — into neurons that formed networks in mice. They now successfully turned scar-forming astrocytes in the spinal cords of adult mice into neurons. The latest findings are published today in Nature Communications and follow previous findings published in Nature Cell Biology. (1)

We believe things can be different.
We believe things can change from one thing to another.

And now we celebrate our ability to “change” things into something different, as if Parmenides never existed…

Seeking the past in a Blue Lake…

Imagine a lake that’s never been affected by climate change or any other man-made influences. Australian scientists say they have found just that—a remote lake whose crystal-clear waters seem to be in the same chemical state as they were about 7,500 years ago. [1] (even though I might ask: How do you know it is in the same state as 7,500 years before – Do you know for sure how it was 7,500 years ago?)

Oh why is it that we wish to find things untouched by time?
Why do we seek to find the past?

We live now. But something inside us, makes us connect to everything that today “is not”… Maybe because it has never stopped being…

Learning, DSB, DNA…

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered that a certain type of DNA damage long thought to be particularly detrimental to brain cells can actually be part of a regular, non-harmful process. [1]

Scientists have long known that DNA damage occurs in every cell, accumulating as we age. But a particular type of DNA damage, known as a double-strand break, or DSB, has long been considered a major force behind age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s. Today, researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Lennart Mucke, MD, report in Nature Neuroscience that DSBs in neuronal cells in the brain can also be part of normal brain functions such as learning – as long as the DSBs are tightly controlled and repaired in good time.

Learning entails the notion of destruction. Every time you learn something new, what you knew up to then is destroyed. Literally. And this applies even to learning completely new things: replacing “nothing” with “something” is equally “destructive” as a process. What you once knew, what you once were as a human being, is destroyed to give place to your “new self” – ready and equiped with new knowledge and understanding.

Say goodbye to your old self. Say hello to your new “you”.

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