From the YT page

"The sound is recorded with special contact elements, mounted in different ways on the pylon. Different sounds is heard depending on the national power consumption, but the nature itself also influence the timbre. Wind, birds and insects can be heard on the recordings."

I'd tend to believe its mechanical noise, if it was electromagnetic the 50 cycle noise from EMI would be all over the recordings.

That's mechanical vibration of the structures, not an electromagnetic source, right?

http://www.doobybrain.com/2008/02/03/electromagnetic-fields-cause-fluorescent-bulbs-to-glow/

Oh my gosh what a terrible documentary.

The bit where the "aliens" cropped a picture of themselves into a field along with some reply to information we sent out to space made me laugh. COME ON. Aliens travel billions of miles across the Universe and pick up our radiowaves. So they pop down and instead of, you know, replying with the same radiowaves, they use Microwaves and Electromagnets and shiz to knock down patterns in our crops before disappearing off into the night sky. Yep, definitely sounds plausible, but hey, maybe thats how how they communicate with each other on Xen, how the fuck should I know.

I think there was one rational mind in the whole thing: the journalist towards the end. It could have been an interesting documentary about REAL evidence for cropcircle phenomena, if indeed any exists at all, instead they trotted out these people with ridiculous claims and beliefs which overshadowed any real evidence there might be. If there isn't any evidence? Well, find some evidence for the man-made theory and give the documentary a different spin. Documenataries full of claims and without any fact are just awful.

My main concern would be power usage of idle electronics. As far as i understood, this technology functions by constantly emitting a high-energy electromagnetic frequency which nearby electronics just hook into.

However, this seems like a one-way exchange, with the electronics being able to react and absorb the frequency, but the frequency emitter would not recieve any feedback about whether the frequency is actually being used. This essentially makes it emit a constant high-energy electromagnentic field, emitting WiTricity and consuming electricity even though no electronics are recieving the signal.

This seems rather wasteful. I'm sure they are considering solutions to this, but I was rather disappointed that he didn't adress such an obvious problem.

Refreshness on theoretical physics should be always welcome , however to be technically careful with new proposals is mandatory !
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"Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 6:02PM GMT 14 Nov 2007
Comments 596 | Comment on this article

The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.
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Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

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In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
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The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."
And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
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What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.
The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.
"The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.
"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

We do not have to win 1000 lotteries and on specific days. The universe does. And with each planet being a ticket, the metaphorical(?) probability you're proposing seems easily obtainable, if not a given.



>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..
Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.
Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.


Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..

Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.

Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.


Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)

It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.

It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

A little history on the origins of the theory...

Georges Le Maitre: Catholic Priest and Astronomer who proposed the idea of the "primeval atom." His idea was actually considered to be absurd by the scientific community as it indicated a moment of creation. At the time scientist preffered the Static Universe.

Edwin Hubble: Of course you know this guy. He proved that the universe was expanding, providing evidence that supported the Big Bang Theory

CMB: A form of electromagnetic radiation filling the universe that must be explained by a model of the universe. From the wikipedia entry: "Although many different processes might produce the general form of a black body spectrum, no model other than the Big Bang has yet explained the fluctuations."

These are just some places to start researching of course...

The possibilities that Dr. Levin speaks of are just possibilties right now. They have not yet been given the status of Theory. All we know is that the Big Bang certainly happend... and it blows my mind every time I think about...

Ahem - let me correct some of this attempted nerditry.
Yes hard drives do contain powerful magnets but they are shielded pretty heavily to prevent data corruption via electromagnetic fields. The way data corruption would occur is either on the silicone of the motherboard (or other cards) OR through the ide/sata cables (in both cases they are shielded but not as much as the hard drive and thus are more susceptible to EMF)

>> ^Payback:
Obviously Michael Jackson has been reincarnated as Clippy.


Now i'm going to have "Smooth Criminal" stuck in my head all night. Thanks a lot, jerk.

>> ^quantumushroom:
I'm more shocked by the sight of an apparently EMPTY train car IN JAPAN.


Well that seals it then. The clip is fake!

Your video, Paperclips respond to electromagnets under train floor, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^schmawy:
Travel tip: Keep your laptop in your lap!


That is exactly the first thing that came to my mind... I wonder if that field is strong enough to damage a hard-drive?

It's obvious you're niether a medical professional nor have ever had acupuncture. So keep trying to make sense by agreeing that it works but not to your satisfaction... how would YOU know?

This sounds pretty plausible to me, rather than the rantings of some random idiot.

It's not based on smoke and mirrors, and spirits and "humours"... but results.. and results are results. Everyone's body is different, and we dont even fully know how it all works yet. I'm not going to get acupuncture but i'm not going to rule it out because you're being a spaz.

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


Several processes have been proposed to explain acupuncture's effects, primarily those on pain. Acupuncture points are believed to stimulate the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) to release chemicals into the muscles, spinal cord, and brain. These chemicals either change the experience of pain or release other chemicals, such as hormones, that influence the body's self-regulating systems. The biochemical changes may stimulate the body's natural healing abilities and promote physical and emotional well-being.13 There are three main mechanisms:




Conduction of electromagnetic signals: Western scientists have found evidence that acupuncture points an strategic conductors of electromagnetic signals. Stimulating points along these pathways through acupuncture enables electromagnetic signals to be relayed at it greater rate than under normal conditions. These signals may start the flow of pain-killing biochemicals such as endorphins and of immune system cells to specific sites that are injured or vulnerable to disease.14,15


Activation of opioid systems: research has found that several types of opioids may be released into the central nervous system during acupuncture treatment, thereby reducing pain.16


Changes in brain chemistry sensation, and Involuntary body functions: studies have shown that acupuncture may alter brain chemistry by changing the release of neurotransmitters and neurohormones in a good way. Acupuncture also has been documented to affect the parts of the central nervous system related to sensation and involuntary body functions, such as immune reactions and processes whereby a person's blood pressure, blood flow, and body temperature are regulated.3,17,18
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It sounds to me like a very refined method of manipulating bio chemistry. I suppose you think meditation and exercise are useless as well. Stay in school.