Many people claim to be able to perform such astounding feats as reading the minds of others, as well as seeing into the future to glimpse events that haven’t yet happened in chronological time. Claims among those believed to possess psychic abilities such as these, while remaining unproven scientifically, are still prolific enough that they have managed to permeate our culture, and have inspired numerous institutions over the decades to undertake attempts at explaining what they could be, how they could manifest, and perhaps most importantly, how others might attain the use of such “gifts.”

In truth, within the next several decades, we may begin to see technology that will allow humans abilities very similar to those which professed psychics already claim to have. But in such a world of tomorrow, could there be dangers associated with societies where virtually anyone can utilize psychic prowess to their advantage… and for good or ill, based solely on their own desire?

Recently at The Gralien Report, I wrote a piece that touched on an area that may point to the way some present technology is already tapping into people’s ability to predict things to come… and how some of us might even be able to turn a profit from doing so. The article focused on a new company called Intrade, which has created a market based on people’s predictions of events to come in the world of politics, money, sports, and a host of other areas of interest that “crowd-sources data from individuals who stand to gain monetarily from a circumstance, who thus are more likely to make educated guesses before risking their capital.”

I further speculated that Intrade’s unique process of “rewarding” those making predictions through their interface (if you’re correct about a prediction, your stocks rise in that market) could amount to the beginnings of a sort of functional “cyber-psy,” which I’ve begun to refer to as simply psybernetics. My reasons for this sort of speculation are simple: when there is a payoff on the other end of a prediction one is making (and furthermore, the risk of losing capital if they’re wrong), then we might suppose that people involved in such e-investing will be far more careful with the predictions they cast. The cumulative effect in the long run will be a likely trend toward correct probabilities among experienced users, which not only guarantees them profit, but also allows people to monitor the statistic results of information Intrade will be collecting… and thus offer “hints” of what the future may hold that are more likely to be accurate than the single guessing of any one person.

This isn’t the only area where information collected online has been examined for it’s potential use in predicting future events. A paper by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman of HP Labs in Palo Alto, California titled “Predicting the Future With Social Media” focused on a similar idea: that information gathered through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook may also yield information that can more accurately predict future events than major companies and market forecasts.

Could existing technology already be crowd-sourcing people’s telepathic abilities, or at very least, aggregating the most likely outcomes among people’s educated guesses to forecast the future? Taking this one step further, if trends such as these among websites begin to spill over into other new and emerging technologies in the coming years, we may very well begin to see a variety of forms of “psychic” capabilities becoming available to the masses, and perhaps not only those relegated to looking into the future.

Granted, there is always good that comes with the bad, too. In his book Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Human Souls, British author Nigel Kerner discussed a futuristic microchip for which the proposed design would entail the gathering of data on humans. Named the “Soul Catcher 2025″ for the estimated year of its functional completion, the implanted device would allegedly “be like an aircraft’s black box and would enhance communications beyond current concepts,” allowing the recording of virtually every aspect of an individual’s existence; and perhaps even the ability to transfer that stored information to other locations. “By combining this information with a record of a person’s genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” according to Dr. Chris Winter of British Telecom’s Artificial Life team, who oversees the project. Indeed, while such technology might be incredible by today’s standards, it also seems that it could become inevitable in our future… and perhaps arriving packaged with certain dangerous potentials.

In essence, the very sorts of things that we might call “extra-sensory” today may become very accessible in a future world, where technological trends will continue to bridge the gap between our biological limitations, and the vast and incredible possibilities of tomorrow. Those things which still seem inaccessible to us now may indeed be well within the grasp of humanity in years to come… and with any luck, we’ll maintain the wisdom and moral capacity needed for handling such technology in ways that remain beneficial to our species.

What happens when we bear witness to technology and other “phenomena” here on Earth that we can’t explain? Science fiction writer and mathematician Vernor Vinge, credited with initiating the concept of a “Singularity” or intelligence explosion awaiting us in the near future, has often made statements along these lines, alluding to circumstances that would represent the arrival of the new super intelligent future humanity, or artificial intelligence, or maybe even a complex combination of the two.

During a recent interview with i09.com, Vinge was asked what kind of circumstances might alert us to the fact that we could have already gone through a sort of Singularity. Among his answers was this curious little tidbit: “When things begin to happen in the real world that no human has any explanation for.”

Of course, among the readers of this blog, most of us are already thinking, “wait, what do you mean when that happens? Those kinds of things are happening right now!” In truth, this has been happening for quite some time… but what, pray tell, could this actually mean? Have the aliens landed, or have interdimensional invaders finally bridged the gap between worlds? Or just perhaps… could it mean that there is a sort of divergence of intelligent species right here on Earth?

Writing for the Kurzweil Newsletter recently, Amara D. Angelica asked (though slightly tongue in cheek) about whether “a supersecret U.S. Singularity Project” might be underway. “A covert hard (fast) takeoff has already happened underground,” she presented within the context of a hypothetical Q&A, “and the resulting superintelligence has been sort of slowly leaking out, like the radioactivity at Fukushima Daiichi going into the Ocean.” While she poses her statements partially in jest, this represents one of the few times–if not the only time–that I’ve come across media associated with an idea my colleagues and I have expressed in our close circles for some time now: the notion of a localized technology explosion, carried out in secret by a small group of individuals.

Of course, I’ve postulated my own ideas regarding what I call a “localized Singularity” here at Mysterious Universe also, taking into consideration (and taking even taking heat regarding) the rather clandestine notion that suppression of certain technologies over the last several decades might have been utilized by certain groups in upper echelons. Keep in mind, this is entirely speculative, of course; but such activity could have occurred for purposes of advancing a small group of individuals toward a superhumanity, aided by the most advanced technology one could imagine that’s present here on Earth already.

But this is already old hat, of course, since we’ve been seeing these sorts of things already for decades. After all, wouldn’t UFOs fall with ease into Vinge’s justifications of things in the “real world that no human has any explanation for”? Following this logic, one is hardly provided with potential answers for mysteries like UFOs, of course. If anything, more questions begin to arise: for instance, how the hell could there ever have been highly advanced aircraft of the caliber described in many of the early UFO reports, especially those recounted by Project Bluebook, etc, if that technology had its genesis here on Earth, let alone several decades ago?

The implications, while speculative, are both thought provoking and unsettling. If there could, in fact, be some terrestrial basis for many reports of UFOs and other strange phenomenon, the underlying mystery might not be quite so simple as “secret government aircraft.” Indeed, the bigger picture might entail the emergence of an entirely different kind of intelligence… something far removed from what most of us know or could conceive at present. Far out, yes… perhaps even far fetched; but it doesn’t hurt to try thinking outside the proverbial (and frankly, quite stale) extraterrestrial box that has kept most UFO oriented minds locked away for so long already.

Ganzfeld… this peculiar word sounds like it should be the name of a prominent wizard-type character from Tolkien’s Middle Earth; and yet, the actual meaning behind the term “Ganzfeld Technique”, while far more esoteric in an rather literal way, is nonetheless quite recognizable once described… and even for those who don’t make the immediate associations between the practice and the process underlying it. 

The Ganzfeld Technique, to put it in general terms, denotes the use of ping pong ball halves placed over the eyes with hope of inducing an altered state of consciousness. This is achieved by allowing the participant to be fooled into perceiving an optical illusion, as presented by the luminous white subspace that seemingly hovers right before the eyes. The optical illusion that becomes apparent, however, can hardly comprise the essence of the experience, let alone justify it’s popularity in tests of the psychic kind over the last several decades.

Every so often, we see wholesome offerings that deal with such seldom-discussed subjects, and one recent article, appearing at the Mind Hacks website, does just this. Well, in truth, the article is really a synopsis regarding a special issue of the science journal Cortex (which deals with cognitive science), which recently featured an entire issue dedicated to “the neuropsychology of paranormal experiences.” In it, a number of different descriptions of Ganzfeld-inspired visions people have had are described, attained during these individuals’ experiences with of the sorts of hallucinatory effects the Ganzfeld technique is so famous for causing.

I should note here that I too have experimented with this simple, mind-altering technique a number of times in the past, and even recount many of these experiences in my book Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule. Arguably, part of what could have contributed to any hallucinatory circumstances in my particular case may have had more to do with the company I kept at the time. In fact, I’d wager that many of you would also see aliens and non-Euclidean geometric tesseracts if you spent enough time wearing ping pong balls over your eyes while Joshua P. Warren leaped around in his living room, brandishing colored lights in each hand and waving them over your face; I’ve had this happen more times than I’m proud to admit (and verily, such circumstances can at least partially be attributed to why the aforementioned book ended up being dedicated to Warren and his mischief, which I’ve grown to admire and appreciate more and more a time passes… but I digress).

In conjunction with many of the Ganzfeld experiments I undertook while writing Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule, I explored with equal enthusiasm the strange process of mirror gazing; specifically a setup popularized in the research of Dr. Raymond Moody, M.D., which he calls the psychomanteum. Despite having some interesting experiences using the Ganzfeld technique, the mental processes that one engages while gazing into reflective surfaces in a dark room never cease to amaze me; below is a brief recounting of one session I relate in my book, which took place in Warren’s own homemade “theater of the mind” (a.k.a. his spare bedroom, equipped with a comfortable chair and a fairly large mirror on the adjacent wall):

There
 were
 no
 spirits
 of
 the
 dead,
 no
 phantom
 wiener‐dogs,
 and
 not
 so
 much
 as
 a
 glimpse
 of
 Cthulhu’s
 dark,
 serpentine
 tentacles.
 There
 was,
 however,
 one
 interesting
 phenomenon
 that
 occurred
 during
 this
 session
 which
 may
 be
 worthy
 of
 mention:
 it
 involved
 a
 bizarre
 pattern
 of
 shapes
 and
 images
 I
 witnessed—though
 vaguely—where
 in
 a
 few
 fleeting
 moments
 I
 do
 recall
 seeing
 what
 could
 be
 likened
 to
 anthropomorphic
 shapes
 with
 enlarged
 heads.
 Even
 as
 I
 stared
 at
 these 
shapes, I 
found 
their 
silhouettes 
to 
be 
similar 
to 
that 
of 
alien
 “grays.”
 What
 were
 these
 images?
 Could
 strange,
 human‐like
 shapes of this sort indeed be an archetypal element within every person’s subconscious?

Who knows exactly what may be the cause behind such anthropomorphisms that one tends to muster while gazing into dark reflective surfaces… or in the case of the Ganzfeld experimenter, the whitewashed optical depth that is so conducive to a variety of geometric weirdness and utterly fantastic visions from the mind’s playground. Rather than to try and surmise some rationale for this phenomenon myself, I’m content for now to leave you with this meditation, penned by the French writer of tragedies, Pierre Corneille, who said that, “An example is often a deceptive mirror, and the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts, is not always found written in things past.”

Perhaps, then, we might guess that the order of destiny can be discerned from things written at other times–the future, for all we know–or at any other temporal junction one could imagine, so long as it isn’t that fleeting moment that so often escapes us; that which we call the present. If this weren’t the case, it is hard to understand what archaic circumstances otherwise might have drawn our predecessors toward the reflective surfaces and smoky diffusion that, to this day, yield potential for altering our conventional notions of reality… and all by merely gazing into them.

Every person spends a little time each day thinking about the future. What meeting do I have to attend later today or perhaps what will I feed the kids for dinner are among the more common thought projections of this sort; in the greater scheme of things, where will I be five years from now and how much money will I be able to save before retirement are the sorts of ideas that might involve a bit more planning.

For some people, predicting where they think they’ll be a few decades from now comes easily, and may involve not only a great deal of careful planning, but also high hopes, goal setting, and great aspirations. This isn’t exactly the case for many in the computer science and information technology fields, however. In fact, much like the event horizon of relativity theory, lying in the not-too-distant future seems to be the promise of some singular event beyond which it is difficult to predict the future progression of human evolution, both technologically and biologically. Part of what makes this impending future so difficult to ascertain is the very likely presence of artificial intelligence, and the uncertainty that surrounds what a future world will be like where humans aren’t the most intelligent beings on the planet.

Such a hypothetical future world forms the essence of what many today call a “Singularity”, believed to await humankind at some point in the early part of this century. One of the staunchest advocates for this Singularity is futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, who addresses the subject in his book The Singularity is Near. Like many others, Kurzweil believes that artificial intelligence in the future will be a deciding factor in the future progression of the human species. In fact, according to the official definition featured at the website of The Singularity Institute, the perceptual event in question is defined as, “the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.” However, looking at things from a perspective that incorporates various potentials such as extraterrestrials and UFOs, there may already be smarter-than-human intelligence among us here on Earth.

Indeed, if we were to assume for the moment that certain unidentified flying objects do in fact represent extraterrestrial technology, many new factors must be taken into account. For instance, the rigors of space travel a biological organism must hypothetically sustain, especially if it were to somehow travel several hundreds of light years or more in order to reach our planet, are often cited as a reason the extraterrestrial hypothesis may be unlikely. However, Singularity theorists have suggested a future post-Singularity humanity may indeed not only live alongside smarter-than-human AI, but even merge with it; in essence, we would be human in such a future, but a different breed of human from that which exists today, enhanced and improved through the utilization of “machinery” represented by technology so advanced that it is virtually indistinguishable from biology.

Thus, our own fundamental biology will likely still exist under such circumstances, but will also be supplemented and improved by advanced nanotechnologies that will emerge in the coming decades. But bringing this back to the discussion of aliens and extraterrestrial intelligence, perhaps alien civilizations (having mastered technologies required for space travel that exceed our own) would likely have gone through a Singularity themselves, resulting in biologically-oriented, but technologically enhanced beings capable of far more than what a mere biological entity could muster… this would presumably include travel through space, just as well.

But getting even stranger with this thought process, if we were to remove the notion of extraterrestrials from the equation altogether, what if we were to pose the notion (if for nothing but the sake of theorizing) that a sort of Singularity–albeit a localized one–could have occurred already on our planet? This is a difficult notion to consider, since many argue it would be entirely unlikely, if not impossible, for something so remarkable and transformational to have occurred among only a select group, without the rest of the planet’s population being affected. However, what if some secretive organization (again, just tossing theories around here!) could have, for instance, utilized suppressed technology for the last several decades, some of which likely even would have resulted in reports of advanced aircraft we call UFOs?

It sounds like science fiction, and in truth, that’s almost precisely what it is I’m presenting here. But let’s not forget how many innovative ideas have come from the pages of science fiction, whether that be the future of space travel envisioned by Arthur C. Clark, the incredible future societies of Philip K. Dick, or the mind-numbing technological intelligence explosions (i.e. Singularity) of Vernor Vinge. That said, almost without a doubt there are a variety of “secret” innovations that occur annually, and due to factors like their economic impact on a global scale, many are kept secret for purposes of not derailing existing markets (this is especially the case with the oil industry). If any one group could have access to remarkable technologies the general public didn’t know about, they might also have benefited from them in ways the populace would not.

Sure, it sounds sketchy, but in general terms this outlines the possibility, at very least, regarding how a “localized” Singularity might even occur here on Earth… and if such were to ever be the case, how might people like you or I interpret things if we did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of, for instance, strange objects or foreign-looking aircraft buzzing through our skies?

In essence, either of these hypothetical scenarios, each involving greater than present human intelligence, could also outline the way a post-Singularity intelligence might already be present on Earth. Thus, rather than being right around the corner, evidence of a technological Singularity expected within next several decades might already be visible, on occasion, in places like our skies. The “Singularity” is actually here, given such criteria, and the evidence for a vast and strange future wildly different from our own has been right here alongside us for quite some time already.

With reports of UFOs in the United States on the rise for the summer months of 2011, a recent bookstore find has driven interest back toward the history of aviation, and how it might have actually been changed during the American Civil War.

The bizarre find, featured late last week at the news website TheBlaze.com, detailed the curious plans of a Civil War-era dentist who had his eye on the skies… with hopes of turning the tables for the Confederate army. The inventor in question–a man named R. Finley Hunt–never managed to get the project “off the ground.” Still, had his invention actually ever worked out, it would have re-written history, predating the Wright Brothers’ historic flight by several decades.

At the time, Confederate president Jefferson Davis was said to have taken some interest in Hunt’s steam-powered flying machine, but engineers at the time, reviewing Hunt’s designs, described it as having a number of flaws. Still, it was apparently a strong consideration for at least a while, since the obvious convenience of flight used for military purposes could have repositioned the Confederate Army for victory. Thus, in addition to big changes in terms of aviation history, the history of the U.S.–where the country might have remained divided until even the present day–becomes a consideration.

But stopping to consider things a bit more, if the first use of modern aviation in armed conflict had occurred during the Civil War, thus breaking the United States into two separate countries, the world today may have been vastly different. This isn’t just because of the literal state of the Union, but also the fact that spearheading the use of even crude airplanes and flying vehicles by the middle 1800s could have jump started the progression of future air-oriented innovations.

Taking things one step further, by the time many of the alleged UFO “airship” reports of the late ninteenth century would have begun to occur, Americans would have had flying vehicles already, which by that time would have been in use for decades already. Arguably, this would have reshaped the focus of at least a few of those early UFO reports from the era, thus changing our perception of modern unidentified aerial phenomenon in a variety of ways.

Or just maybe, for all we know, there actually were airships being seen back in those tender days of the ninteenth century “airship” waves… courtesy, perhaps, of inventors who liked to toy with designs for airborne transportation like Hunt did. Whether many of them got off the ground or not is, of course, a different story… but it’s fun to imagine how different things might have ended up being nonetheless.

Nobody ever said being an astronaut was easy. However, if recent news regarding the perils of spaceflight present any indication of things to come, then future manned missions into the cosmos may be difficult, at very best.

Among some of the more common afflictions astronauts may endure is the potential for atrophy to occur; this results from the lack of gravitational pressures exerted on the muscles of those spending prolonged periods in orbit. Additionally, the spacesuits worn by astronauts boarding the International Space Station have purportedly led to more than 25 arm injuries, as detailed in a recent report released by the National Academies.

Aside from these more common afflictions, of potentially greater concern is a mysterious ailment that has been reported among a large number of astronauts in recent studies. The condition, called papilledema, is known for causing blurred vision, headaches, and even eventual blindness. The reasons for the prevalence of this condition among astronauts is undetermined at present, and as the Orlando Sentinel recently described, NASA had refused to comment on the situation.

The notion that mysterious illnesses might be affecting astronauts sounds reminiscent of science fiction films, especially in keeping with the release of this Fall’s speculative fiction thriller Apollo 18. But in the very real sense, other problems astronauts are being faced with involve not just their own physical health, but that of the technology used to keep them in space. The proposed “de-manning” of the International Space Station (ISS) has been another issue to have cropped up in recent weeks, following problems associated with the launch of manned Russian Soyuz rockets. In the event that the ISS were to actually be evacuated, the Space Station, while designed to operate autonomously if needed, would remain vulnerable to problems only an on-board crew could repair. This, in addition to finding evacuation methods that are safe for the astronauts in question, leaves a number of lingering concerns.

The question of astronaut health and safety, while of utmost concern to those involved in joint U.S. and Russian space programs, has also recently become the subject of parody. In August, Wired Magazine’s Blog featured a series of darkly artistic images created by photographer Neil DaCosta, described as “fictitious last moments of a distraught anonymous, unemployed astronaut.” The photos, while directly associated and inspired by the final launch of NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis in July of this year, almost hint at the greater underlying problem: the many challenges future space explorers are faced with. As the present situation with NASA indicates, part of this problem has to do with merely getting off the ground.

The other half of the equation, however, is whether there will be astronauts ready and able to go once American space exploration resumes, with projected dates for craft that will follow Atlantis set to arrive in space by 2017. According to recent NASA figures and statements provided by NASA committee co-chair Frederick Gregory, the number of astronauts on hand have fallen in the last decade to by more than half. Gregory, who oversaw three shuttle missions, told the AFP last week that the specialization required of certain astronauts for their respective missions presents problems when shortages like this occur.

The majority of the problems various space agencies are facing today stem from underlying economic issues, however. With time (and luck), geopolitical conditions of this sort will hopefully begin to calm, thus providing a more solid global economy suited for investment in industries like space exploration. This process, however, might still take years. If there are prevalent risks affecting the comfort and health of astronauts in the meantime, this will only increase the potential that future conditions for spaceflight and exploration will remain out of reach.

In the classic Back to the Future film series, the slightly off-kilter (but lovable) Doc Brown manages to retrofit a DeLorean with a temporal-displacement device known famously as a “flux capacitor,” resulting in a car that, after accelerating to speeds exceeding 88 miles-per-hour, is able to travel to different predetermined points in time. At present, the notion of literal time travel–while remaining a subject that is hotly contested by physicists–is also something that has remained relegated to the realm of films and science fiction.

But according to the peculiar exploits of one Russian scientist, the creation of devices that might be literally capable of displacing time around an individual might finally be a reality. In fact, if the claims of Vadim Alexandrovich Chernobrov are anything more than rumor or hearsay, then we are being asked to believe that Chernobrov himself may have succeeded in the creation of a functional time machine.

Born 1965, Chernobrov is credited with the founding of the Russian Kosmopoisk organization (meaning “Space Search”), of which he is the leader. As described (with certain brevity) at the Wikipedia page dedicated to his life and research, Chernobrov is also known for being a meteorite hunter and advocate of UFO research. Apparently since around 1987, research involving ways that time might be manipulated has remained of particular interest to his studies, and now, after decades of exploring this most-complicated area of the physical universe, Chernobrov claims to have achieved success with bending and warping what we know as time.

Somewhat ironically, the Before It’s News website detailed a story this week detailing Chernobrov’s claims:

The device achieves travel through time, according to its inventor, by utilizing strong magnetic fields that resonate about the capsule and affect the natural flow of time and causality by literally increasing or slowing the flow of time.

During experiments, Chernobrov has shown that very precise chronometers, synchronized before the field is energized, experience a significant divergence in time after one has been placed inside the time machine while the other is kept far from the energized field as a control.

These chronometers, which are essentially devices that are designed to keep time precisely enough to be used as portable standards for judging time, allegedly revealed a “definite” warping of time within the magnetic field emitted by the machine. If translations from the Russian language reports about this discovery are to be correctly understood, what is being asserted is that early tests with the device were performed at Moscow Aircraft University, and were in at least some instances harmful or deadly to a variety of animal test subjects. However, following a series of tests involving human participants, the subjects described no ill effects other than seeing “colored circles” in the air while within the device’s magnetic field, in addition to “moderate arrhythmia.”

Chernobrov, who was among the participants, states of his observations that, “we came to conclusion that time is 3–dimensional,” and that humans could, at least in theory, “move in time backwards and forwards.”

But what practical applications, if the claims of Chernobrov are indeed true and accurate, will this device be capable of? If nothing else, perhaps the story outlined here will lead to a greater understanding of the nature of space and time, rather than any literal ability to travel back and forth through time to any significant degree. While the verdict remains open, there is a curious lack of interest and coverage that this story is receiving among the various news sites thus far… are we just a bit ahead of the game, or does this suggest that Chernobrov’s claims just aren’t warranting serious consideration?

It should be noted, perhaps, that the majority of the information featured in the Before It’s News article was excerpted from an earlier article appearing at the Russian Pravda website. In terms of being a legitimate news source, generally Pravda cannot be relied upon in terms of the veracity of the facts it presents. Over the years, a few rather questionable reports have been issued by the Russian tabloid, ranging from overblown claims of the discovery of a “Yeti paw,” to the supposed recovery of meteorite fragments and even extraterrestrial artifacts from the famous Tunguska blast site, where a large explosion of unexplained origin occurred in 1908. Chernobrov is credited with the investigation of a similar site in 2003, following the crash of what was believed to be a meteorite in the taiga 700 miles north of the city of Irkutsk the previous September. Chernobrov was quoted by the Associated Press that year, saying the blast site was on par with that of a “medium atomic bomb.”

So whether or not the claims that Chernobrov has created a literal time machine can be taken seriously remains an item of dispute… for now, at least. Who knows what the future will hold regarding this curious item; but safe it to say for now, only time will tell (pun intended)!

If one thing above all others can be counted on, it is this: the world as we know it will cease to exist in the very near future.

This, however, shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that the world is going to end. Doomsday scenarios involving mass-extinction, death and suffering, widespread famine, oceans drying up, or asteroids slamming into the Earth are, while very popular, far less likely than our eventual survival as a species. But while life on Earth will almost certainly continue on, it can’t be argued that the coming years will likely bring a number of radical changes, especially in the realms of computer science and nanotechnology. Innovations in these and related fields will not only become the foundation for future technological advancement, but they will  also serve as a platform upon which new emerging technologies will be developed.

Thus, life as we know it presently here on Earth will no longer exist; it will simply be replaced by a very different kind of organism that incorporates highly advanced technologies that would seem almost “magical” in the eye of modern man. It seems hard to fathom for us today, and guessing accurately at what changes can be expected–as well as what kinds of technological innovations today could hint at them already–is a different matter entirely. So is there any reliable, empirical data that helps with this, and if so, how can it determine what the future of humankind will be like?

Among the leading visionaries in the realms of engineering and computer science today, Ray Kurzweil has become something of a cult figure. His books, including The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence and the more recent The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology constitute a complex scenario that involves the exponential increase in the rate of advancement of human technology. This idea, mirrored by others such as computer scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallee (a man credited with early prototypes preceding the Internet of today) explains how the quickening rate of advancement makes it difficult for us to envision a highly advanced future world of tomorrow. This is because technology’s rate of growth is essentially cumulative. In other words, new innovations on par with those which took the last 100 years to achieve may be attainable now within as little as a decade.

“There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth,” Kurzweil admitted as far back as 2001, in his essay, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” which appeared at his website. “Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence,” Kurzweil offered regarding his proposed “Singularity event,” where living organisms will forsake some of their essential biology by integrating with nano-robots and other helpful future technology. But rather than just being a sort of assimilation with the inorganic realm, Kurzweil proposes that this will represent far more to mankind, referring to it as a literal “rupture in the fabric of human history.”

Famous speculative physicist Michio Kaku has also suggested that nanotechnology will become a key part of our future. Kaku has often endorsed ideas that future humans–or even present extraterrestrial aliens elsewhere in space–might utilize advanced nano-robots for purposes of space travel, colonization, and scientific surveys of distant planets. Arguably, there would be two primary ways this could be achieved: either we design nano-bots that go do the work for us, or we design nanotechnologies that help recondition our own bodies, so we can do it ourselves.

Whether you prefer to call it a “Brave New World,” the coming “Singularity,” or even just simply “tomorrow,” whatever it is that we can hope to expect isn’t very far off. It may be so close, in fact, that changes capable of radically altering the world as we know it could be right around the corner. The question is, will we be ready for them once they arrive, and will people today be able to adapt to a world that has such drastic potential for change in the coming years?

Anticipation and fervor continue to increase in the months leading up to December 2012, when it is widely believed that the world as we know it will end. Okay, that statement could have been be just a little exaggerated: though there has been some concern over cataclysmic world changes that would coincide with the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, perhaps it’s a bit silly to assume that we’re really facing Doomsday on Friday, December 21st, 2012.

This hasn’t stopped dozens of authors from leaping on the subject, many stepping back from the idea of “doomsday” and watering down the entire mess to reflect “widespread global changes” and “paradigm shifts,” thus making it easier to incorporate a taste of the 2012 obsession into their own writing. However, before you go ahead and add me to that list of authors, read just a bit further and you’ll see that the crux of this essay actually has more to do with a different year altogether, and one that awaits us a bit further down the road.

What I’m about to present, while dealing with a number of factual presentations that pertain to future industry and technological advances in the coming two decades, will also stray a little into the realm of eschatology (the study of–or sometimes obsession with–the end of the world). I say this because I began to find a few interesting coincidences, pertaining specifically to the year 2029, while doing a little reading on a 1990s-era UFO lecturer named Philip Schneider (here’s a link to his biography on the Rotten Tomatoes website).

I noticed that Schneider, like many in the conspiracy lecture circuit of his day, believed that a New World Order would be implemented in the coming decades… well, that’s what he believed, at least, until he was found strangled by a catheter hose in his apartment in 1996. But the coincidence in question occurs when we look at the projected date of this “takeover”: It was none other than 2029, which is exactly the same year Ray Kurzweil predicts that a sort of “Singularity” will occur between humankind and intelligent machines.

How this gets into eschatology is quite simple: a casual survey I conducted of futuristic predictions and even doomsday scenarios associated with the year 2029 turned up a lot of hits, both in science fiction and science fact. Here are a few of those instances I managed to find:

• In the original Terminator film, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robotic character was sent back from the year 2029 to kill Sarah Connor in 1984.
• There is some concern about an asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which will pass “scarily close” to Earth in the year 2029.
• A book called 2: Signs and Coincidences From God claims Jesus will return in the 69th week of 2029, referring to this as “the year of Jubilee.”
• Back in October of 2001, Dr. Donald Klatz, President of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, claimed that “human immortality” would be achieved by the year 2029.
• Bill Joy, chief scientist at the Sun Microsystems company made a similar prediction that appeared in Wired Magazine in 2000. While he did not stress a specific date, he noted at the beginning of the century that emerging robotics, genetics and nanotechnologies would lead to the extinction of human society “within 20 or 30 years.” This also fits the criteria for a rather generalized 2029 doomsday event.
• Medical innovations by the year 2029 will include electronic components inserted within the human body, used to monitor health in more effective preventive measures. This would constitute “health care” in the truest sense, rather than “sick care” that focuses on recovering after an ailment has already set in, as we see so prevalently today. This article describes how many such systems will be implemented by 2029.

There’s even a JFK link to all this, just as well: the 1991 film JFK by Oliver Stone featured the following message at the conclusion:

A Congressional Investigation from 1976-1979 found a “probable conspiracy” in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and recommended the Justice Department investigate further. As of 1991, the Justice Department has done nothing. The files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations are locked away until the year 2029.

While many of those files have since been released, a wealth of information that seems to indicate a conspiracy to murder Kennedy remains unavailable.

And as a final bit of synchronicity that also delves into the world of numerology, one can see that the sum of all the numbers present in the year “2029″ equals 13, since 2 + 0 +  2 + 9 = 13. Thirteen is, of course, a number long associated with bad luck and misfortune.

But before you start calling insurance agents and inquiring about doomsday-policies, keep in mind that there are an entire slew of proposed years for an apocalyptic world event that could occur in the years after 2012, and in at least some cases, even beyond the year 2029. A few of these, especially those having to with notions of a “rapture” or some other religious event, are listed at here.

It becomes very easy to start looking at coincidences of this sort and begin to draw conclusions, despite there being little or no empirical data that substantiates there being any cause for actual concern. However, the fact that Kurzweil, Bill Joy, Donald Klatz, and a few others all focus their predictions on or around the year 2029, with it being key regarding technological revolution and the like, seems to lend some credibility to the idea. This is especially the case if empirical data backs up the research these men have used to cast their mutual “2029″ figure. Among these, it could be said that Ray Kurzweil is known already for having a track record of been spot-on with his predictions, based primarily on his observations of science and engineering, and how these fields effect social changes over time.

So maybe it’ time for 2012 to move-over… could 2029 be the next “hot year” in the eschatological melting pot of earth-changes, paradigm shifts, and apocalyptic world-takeovers by robotic AI? Only time will tell… but so long as we haven’t seen time-traveling Schwartzenegger-bots coming to destroy us from the future yet, we can probably rest easy for the time being!

“If you want to see ghosts,” Joshua said, “then just look in the mirror.” Joshua Warren, renowned expert on ghosts and hauntings, began to explain his rationale. “Actually, we might do better to have two mirrors ‘look’ at one another instead.”

As he spoke, Warren went busily about placing two large mirrors, standing as decorations in the room where he worked, in a way so that they directly faced one another, each reflection creating an infinite hallway-like effect. “By placing these two mirrors facing one another, the light energy that is reflected back and forth between them could potentially create a sort of ‘vortex’ for strange phenomenon.”

These events occurred before a small group several years ago, in a building on the property of the Grove Park Inn. A famous hotel in Western North Carolina well known for its many alleged ghosts, the Inn had also been host to a number of paranormal conferences Warren used to present annually. A researcher who is fascinated by the unexplained, Warren often uses mirrors and other conventional devices in his investigations of haunted locations and areas known for weird happenings. However, when it comes to mirrors being able to collect strange phenomenon, there may just as well be scientific principles at play here, too.

In fact, the results of one recent study managed to determine that light could be coaxed out of empty space, when in the presence of reflective surfaces. This process relies on what is known as the “Casimir Effect,” where two metallic plates or mirrors placed in close proximity to one another can result in an attraction between the two, despite there being no charge running into the plates to create an electromagnetic force. The attraction instead seems to come from the fact that virtual photons—that is, particles of light energy that only exist for a limited time and space—exist in greater numbers outside the two plates, rather than between them. The resulting force, though miniscule, is still strong enough for scientists to be able to measure.

An interesting alternative approach to this sort of study had been proposed in the past: if a single reflective surface were moving quickly enough (close to the speed of light), it might be able to achieve the same effect. More specifically, a mirror speeding through a vacuum chamber—where air and other drifting particles are sucked out to create real empty space—should be able to collect energy from these “virtual photons.” The energy would then be reflected as light, indicating the peculiar presence of real photons. In other words, our speeding mirror would be reflecting light energy… when none really existed for the mirror to collect!

Though it is presently impossible for scientists to accelerate a mirror within a vacuum tube to near-light speeds, a team of physicists at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, still managed to find a way to test this theory. A Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID, is a device that, by design, is extremely sensitive to magnetic fields. The team of physicists used one of these in a circuit that gave it mirror-like properties, and managed to vibrate the device back and forth several billion times each second by inducing an alternating magnetic field that ran through it. This field, changing directions very rapidly, controlled the behavior of the “mirror” at close to five percent of the speed of light. Incredibly, photons were successfully retrieved from the empty space around the device.

This experiment, while in the beginning stages, still points to the notion that there may be ways to draw energy from nothingness, or what scientists would call “the vacuum.” If this were indeed possible, might it offer a scientific potential for explaining how bizarre, as-yet unexplained energies—or even ghosts—could manifest in some locations, if the conditions were right?