North Korean 'Ghost Ships' with Skeletons Turning Up on Japanese Shores

'Ghost Ships' with human skeletons have been landing on Japanese shores since the beginning of November with only a few clues to their origins. 

The most recent was a 23-foot long wooden boat found with eight skeletons on board that washed up in Oga, Akita Prefecture shore (facing North Korea), according to the Japan Coast Guard. Investigators found a North Korean cigarette pack and unused life jackets with Korean lettering. For the bodies to have decomposed down to skeletons means they've been drifting around at sea for a long time. 

This one was first spotted by a 68-year-old woman who reported the strange old boat to authorities.

“I was surprised to see the boat in such a bad condition. I watched authorities use stretchers to carry bodies off the boat," she said.

Two other boats had some people found still alive among other dead bodies aboard. Another vessel carrying eight fishermen landed in the same prefecture on Friday last week, while two more ships were found adrift on November 19 and 13 in the ocean further north. Two capsized boats were found on November 15 and 17 off the coast of the Noto Penninsula by Japanese coast guard. 

Eleven survivors were sent back to North Korea after they supposedly said they wanted to return, authorities said. Eight of them were North Korean squid fishermen and told Japanese authorities their engine lost power leaving them stranded for a month. 

A Japanese expert on North Korea, Satoru Miyamoto, told CNN these 'ghost ships' may be from Kim Jong Un expanding fisheries to provide more money for the army.

'They are using old boats manned by the military, by people who have no knowledge about fishing. It will continue,' he said.

International sanctions were placed on North Korea by various countries for pursuing it's nuclear missile advancement and threatening neighboring countries and the United States with nuclear strikes. North Korea's communist dictator's policies have caused their citizens to suffer even more during these poor times.

President Trump announced that many North Koreans don't have plumbing or electricity with some even starving to death. 

In 2015, more such boats were found on Japanese shores with both living and dead people on board. They were said to be desperate fishermen that explored too far looking for food during the famine. Others believe they were refugees escaping the grim and fearful life living under North Korean tyranny. 

North Korean Capital, Pyongyang, denies any of its fishermen were trying to flee the country, saying all deaths were due to navigational errors. 

Escaping North Korea

During North Korea's terrible famine of the mid-1990's, 30,000 North Koreans have escaped to China, South Korea, and Japan and tell stories of violent punishments for honest political speech, being sent to forced labor camps for watching American movies, and simple starvation. Many don't even survive their escape attempt and those who are captured are severely punished.

According to Vice, “the North Korean penal code states that defectors face two years of hard labor if they are caught crossing the border,” though punishments can vary.

Radio Free Asia reported that North Korean officials warn citizens near the Chinese border that if they help people escape, they would be put to death and their family will be imprisoned or exiled to remote regions.

Despite all these threats and dangers, North Koreans flee by the hundreds.

Earlier this month, a North Korean soldier made an epic escape like out of an action movie. He raced a jeep towards the border then sprinting on foot through the border while being chased and shot at by his former comrades. Hit with 5 bullets he was rescued by South Korean soldiers who flew him in a helicopter to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery. It was a miracle he survived. 

Upon examining him, his doctors discovered some symptoms of his horrible life in communist North Korea. He had hepatitis B, tuberculosis, and parasitic worms nearly a foot long in his intestines. These are evidence of the poor health conditions people suffer through over there.

This story of a young North Korean girl is heartbreaking. Please share:

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Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5125089/Six-North-Korean-ghost-ships-wash-Japan.html#ixzz4zkq7TKiJ 

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/28/clues-point-to-n-korea-in-ghost-ship-mystery/

Copper Detected in Ancient Egyptian Ink

Courtesy University of Copenhagen

Recent test of Egyptian papyrus shows black ink filled with copper. 

According to Cosmos report, this metal-filled ink was used in Egypt from 200 BC to 100 AD. This is 400 years earlier than previously known. 

Thomas Christiansen of the University of Copenhagen and his team of scientists used X-ray microscopy at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. They scanned papyrus from 88 BC and 200 AD. 

They believe the charcoal used to make these inks contained traces of copper left over from the process of separating copper from other ores. Specifically, the copper was found in the form of cuprite, azurite, and malachite minerals. 

They also found out that the ancient Egyptians' blue ink contained scraps of copper most likely from metal workshops near the temples. Their alchemical knowledge was more advanced than they're commonly credited for. 

Sources:

https://www.archaeology.org/news/6101-171115-egypt-copper-ink

New Silver Nanowire Makes Printed Electronics 4,000x Better

Silver nanowires conduct electricity 4,000x better than nanoparticles and don't require heat. 

To get good electrical signal conductivity, engineers use to heat nanoparticles until they melted together, which would burn up thinner materials like paper, fabric, etc. This meant only thicker, heat resistant, and more expensive materials could be made into electronics. 

Thanks to researchers from Duke University, now flexible electronics can be made much cheaper, more effective, and on almost anything. Ironically, the solution turns out to be rather simple. Simply changing the shape of the nanoparticles in the ink eliminated the need for heat.

They tested silver nanosphere, short and long nanowire, and microflake exposed to different temperatures to create the best conductive films from the ink compounds. Tests on the different films them showed that electrons flowed easier through films made of silver nanowires than those made of nanospheres or microflakes. 

The "Aha!" moment wasn't the finding the best form but in learning how much more conductive nanowires were to nanoparticles: 4,000 times greater! 

They’re currently studying whether silver-coated copper nanowires, a cheaper alternative to pure silver nanowires, will deliver the same effect as a part of that effort, and they’re also experimenting with aerosol jets as a method of printing silver nanowire inks in usable circuits.

Silver + Graphene = WOW

Even better than silver plating copper, is balancing the weaknesses of silver with the strengths of graphene. Other researchers have been experimenting with combinations of super conductive silver nanowires and super thin yet extremely durable graphene. 

It is the strongest material ever tested, efficiently conducts heat and electricity, and is nearly transparent. However, it is also very expensive to make, so a hybrid combo seems to be a great solution.

"The addition of graphene to the silver nanowire network also increases its ability to conduct electricity by around a factor of ten thousand," says Alan Dalton, head of the team behind this new material. "This means we can use a fraction of the amount of silver to get the same, or better, performance. As a result screens will be more responsive and use less power."

"One of the issues with using silver is that it tarnishes in air," says Matthew Large, lead researcher on the project. "What we've found is that the graphene layer prevents this from happening by stopping contaminants in the air from attacking the silver. What we've also seen is that when we bend the hybrid films repeatedly the electrical properties don't change, whereas you see a drift in the films without graphene that people have developed previously. This paves the way towards one day developing completely flexible devices."

Endless Silver Nanowire Possibilities

Duke University researchers are excited to develop technologies with these super conductive silver nanowires. They expect these to improve photovoltaic solar cells, touch-screens, pressure sensitive devices, LEDs, batteries, and even bio-electric devices. They will be exploring aerosol jet 3D printing of such metal foams for uniquely customizable and versatile applications. 

Using nanowires as building blocks, the silver aerogels don't have traditional rigid limitations. They even have tunable densities, controlled pore structures, improved electrical conductivity and mechanical properties, making them uber practical for any application.

"The high porosity and excellent mechanical/electrical properties of these silver nanowire aerogels may lead to enhanced device performance and open up new possibilities in fuel cells, energy storage, medical devices, catalysis and sensors," said Fang Qian
 

Sources:

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-ultralight-silver-nanowire-aerogel-boon.html#jCp

https://newatlas.com/graphene-silver-tougher-smartphone-screen/51923/

VANTABLACK: The Darkest Material in the World Makes Things Disappear

 

This latest advanced material can make anything vanish into a black hole.

Thanks to Surrey Nano Systems, you can now spray paint any object and it will disappear into what looks like a flat black hole. They've achieved the impossible using a unique material made of carbon nanotubes called Vantablack. It is so unimaginably black that the human eye actually has trouble processing what it is seeing. 

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VANTA stands for Vertically Aligned NanoTube Array and is made by “growing” carbon nanotubes on a metal surface. One nanotube is a billionth of a meter thick, or the width of three gold atoms. Light is trapped between the tubes, bouncing around until it’s absorbed (up to 99.96%) instead of reflecting back to our eye. So the only thing we can see is, literally, nothing. Visually, this can make 3D objects appear a flat black... blacker than black.

The possibilities of this new material have excited British architect Asif Khan who has decided to create an unmatched display in the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, plunging spectators into a "schism of space."

Khan wants visitors to fully experience Vantablack’s unique properties and is creating a building for this in the Olympic Park with four curved walls. With tiny lights as stars, the effect will feel like floating in deep space.

“It will be like you’re looking into the depths of space itself. As you approach the building that star field will grow to fill your entire field of view, and then you’ll enter as though you’re being absorbed into a cloud of blackness.”

Blacker than Black Ops

Since it's development over 3 years ago, Vanta Black has been attracting aerospace engineers, architects, artists, electrical engineers, and more. The possibilities for new stealth drones, microchips, touch screens, ultra-light wiring, heat absorption, etc. are endless. This kind of new material gives innovators the kind of resource they've only been able to dream of before.

One of Surrey Nano Systems' founders and the chief technology officer, Ben Jensen, of Surrey NanoSystems said, 

"It’s almost like an alien material from “Star Trek.” Imagine a drinking straw, closed at one end, with a wall one-atom thick. This straw is one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, but it is 10 times stronger than steel, and 10 times better at conducting heat than copper. It’s been known to exhibit what is called 'ballistic transport;' electrons travel through it with almost no resistance. Vantablack packs billions of these straws together."

I'd love to have a Vanta Black ninja suit but Ben says...

"When I read about making black ninja suits and black aircraft, I just laugh. It’s not a reasonable application."

Okay, I'll settle for a unicorn head trophy.

An object coated in Vantablack appears 2-dimensional and is difficult to perceive. Image Credit: Surrey NanoSystems

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Sources:

www.surreynanosystems.com

https://www.livescience.com/58561-spray-on-vantablack-coating-is-blackest-material.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/garden/what-you-can-do-with-vantablack-the-darkest-material-ever-made.html

Theorist Suggests Seeding Life on Exoplanet 12,000 Years Away

With the concept of colonizing Mars and the Moon are becoming more popular, some scientists are even considering a type of Hail Mary play: seeding life on planets way, way out there. 

Doomsday Hedge vs Panspermia

To hedge against A.I. taking over the Earth, a backup colony on the Moon or Mars may still be close enough and vulnerable to attack. So, successfully starting something far away may have higher chances of survival albeit at a higher risk of failure getting there. 

German theoretical physicist, Claudius Gros, from Goethe University believes seeding life is more important than building colonies and that we have the technology to do it.

Well, why not try both? The closest viable exoplanet would take us about 12,000 years to get there, so we could have colonized our entire solar system by then right? 

Gros proposes using laser propulsion technology, like Stephen Hawkins' Breakthrough Starshot probe, which can travel up to 100 MILLION miles per hour, but instead using a much heavier 1.5-ton spacecraft traveling much slower. With this payload capacity, we could orbit an exoplanet by dropping "mini-labs" to grow genes and cells to kickstart human life. Gros' target is TRAPPIST-1 but the recently discovered Ross 128b is also an option.

Hypothetical Problems

Riding a laser beam with a light sail to get there fast is fine but what about stopping? To actually slow the spacecraft down enough to fall into planetary orbit, Gros proposes a magnetic drag sail. Acting like a parachute in space catching just photons of light. 

“The reason for the magnetic sail is to create a magnetic field without loss of energy. You don’t want to expend energy, so you generate the field once, and then with a superconducting loop, the current stays forever, and the magnetic field stays forever.” Claudius Gros, German theoretical physicist

The above depicts an ionized proton (blue) undergoing deflection via magnetic field (magenta). Image credit: Journal of Physics Communications

The sail would need to be 31 miles in diameter to stop the 1.5-ton ship but it would require the entire journey to take 12,000 years! 

After the 12,000-year trip, "any life would take many billions of years to mature," Gros said. 

I don't know about you guys, but that's a deal-breaker for me. Why don't we reverse engineer UFO technology and travel through time-space dimensions instead? Blink 182 band member, Tom DeLonge, just announced he's partnering with key former members of our "secret" space program to build such a craft from scratch in 8 years. (ToTheStarsAcademy.com)

Investing in advancing transportation technologies may be a much more viable and practical solution as it can make the impossible possible. Such energy technologies could be very clean and efficient, thereby replacing dirty inefficient technologies. This could lead to a total paradigm shift, or rather require completely stepping outside the box of our preconceived notions limiting our exploration towards higher-level sciences. 

Onward and upwards.

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Sources:

https://futurism.com/scientist-plan-send-building-blocks-life-distant-exoplanets/

Microbots Swimming Among Our Cells Could Prevent and Cure Diseases

Think brain-computer interface is mind-blowing? Dive deep into the world of microbot technology. 

To enable versatile mobility inside a living organism of moving tissues and cells, these tiny robots are actually made of algae, the spirulina platensis used as a dietary supplement. The lead of a research team, Li Zhang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has discovered how these can potentially be life-changing, literally.

Cancer Killing Magnetic Micro-Armor

Coating these spiral spring-shaped algae with iron oxide nanoparticles allows them to be guided to their target by magnetic fields from a doctor's device. With this magnetic micro-armor they actually destroy 90% of tumor cells they contacted for 48 hours in a petri dish experiment. Depending on how thick this iron oxide coating determines how long these algae will survive in our body before biodegrading, ranging from hours to days. 

Doctors can monitor them by seeing their fluorescence or using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging tool for when the algae travel deeper into the body's tissues. So these little guys broaden the possibilities of healing methods for the doctors of the future. 

Distant Future?

Joseph Wang, nanoengineer developing other microbots said, "It's still not ready for a doctor to use." He thinks it will take another 10 years before it will be in doctors' hands. 

Ray Kurzweil, Google chief engineer expects such nanobots will start being used by 2030. It seems the challenges are the technical difficulties of powering and controlling these super tiny devices as they interact with the living bio-computer that is the human body. Differentiating the signals and traversing the every-changing interior landscape at the cellular level is no easy task. 

As always, beware the dangers of such invasive technologies that can be controlled remotely and may have unintended consequences. Coupled with Artificial Intelligence could compound the issue beyond our control. 

Instead of spending millions on artificial tiny robots to search and destroy negative cells in our bodies, why not embrace the natural remedies that purify and strengthen our body's functions and defenses? Perhaps there's a far simpler and more effective solution, like with the example of the United States developing a pen that can write in space's zero gravity, while Russian astronauts used a pencil instead. 

Sources:

https://futurism.com/organic-microbots-change-medicine-decade/

A Stable Plasma Ring Has Been Created in Open Air For the First Time Ever

Plasma occurs naturally as lightning and is made of charged particles, ions, and electrons. We've already been able to harness this power into small handheld plasma torches that cut through metal. Although scientists haven't developed a real lightsaber yet, they've created something even more mind-blowing: a floating plasma ring.

Engineers in California Institue of Technology (CalTech) have "essentially captured lightning in a bottle but without the bottle."

So how did they create a ring of lightning in a lab? Well, it's rather less dramatic than you might expect: they shoot water at a crystal. Actually, it's a super high powered ultra thin stream of pure water at a smooth quartz or lithium niobate crystal plate. The water jet is thinner than hair at  85-microns in diameter and hits the crystal plate at 1,000 feet per second with a pressure force of 9,000 pounds per square inch! 

Basically, the impact creates an electric charge whose electrons ionize surrounding gas molecules to form a toroidal plasma ring. 

While it looks pretty cool, it currently has no commercial application except for maybe storing energy like a battery in the future. 

“We were told by some colleagues this wasn’t even possible. But we can create a stable ring and maintain it for as long as we want, no vacuum or magnetic field or anything,” Francisco Pereira, a Caltech visiting fellow Marine Technology Research Institute in Italy, said.

Pereira is a co-author of the study published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, together with Caltech’s Morteza Gharib.

Besides potentially storing energy, Gharib's team discovered radio frequencies emitted by the plasma ring. “That’s never been seen before. We think it’s because of the piezo properties of the materials that we used in our experiments,” Pereira explained.

Can't wait for a plasma car.

Sources:

https://futurism.com/stable-plasma-ring-created-open-air-first-time-ever/

http://www.caltech.edu/news/engineers-create-stable-plasma-ring-open-air-80367

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-11-stable-plasma-air.html

5 Most Mysterious Books Ever Written

Books exist to tell stories, and that’s what most books do. They make us laugh, cry, and scream in frustration. But some books are just plain confusing. They’re not trying to tell stories, but instead are trying to send some kind of message about the unexplained, extraterrestrial, or even divine. Books are also a form of documenting history, so could the writers of these books really have witnessed such strange sights? Here are the 5 most mysterious books ever written.

Book of Soyga 

In the 16th century, a mysterious book about magic called the Book of Soyga was found by John Dee, an Elizabethan mathematician, and occultist. After the book was found, it was lost again for hundreds of years. Finally, a scholar found the book when he was browsing through the British Library, and inside the book were different magic spells, ways to summon demons, etc. 

The 197 page Book of Soyga had over 40,000 letters that were arranged in code-form, and no one knew how to read or understand it besides the parts of the book that were written in Latin. These randomly distributed letters were incomprehensible, so imagine how frustrated John Dee felt when he obtained the book. It was like he had all the answers, but didn’t know what any of it meant. A spirit-medium named Edward Kelly actually offered John Dee the chance to talk to Archangel Uriel about the book and its contents. Apparently, Uriel said that the pages of the book were shown to Adam by the “good angels of God” in the garden of Eden and that the only person who knew the books’ secret was Archangel Michael. 

In other words, since the Garden of Eden is where the creation of the world began, the Book of Soyga is pretty much a representation of the universe. Don’t be so quick to solve the mysteries of the book though, because the book is rumored to be cursed. If you decode the language of the book and obtain the book’s knowledge, you will die within two and a half years. Is knowing the secret to the universe worth dying for?

Illuminated Manuscript

Another mysterious book is known as the Smithfield Decretals or the Decretals of Gregory IX. Gregory IX was a pope in the 13th century who was in charge of writing the laws for the church and its members.  Decretals were common back in the day, but the strange thing about these decretals is the drawings that appear in some of them. The style of the Decretals was one that had letters, calligraphy, and illustrations. This was called Illuminated Manuscript and was a very long, annoying process. But that’s not the strange part because the illuminated manuscript was quite common. The weird thing is that the illustrations aren’t like the ones people normally see in religious texts. 

Within the pages of text, you can see illustrations of gigantic snails attacking with their antennae, huge homicidal rabbits, dogs riding rabbits, rabbits riding humans in snail shells, bears attacking unicorns, strange creatures, and get this: there’s even a medieval Yoda. Yes, there is an illustration of a creature that looks JUST like Yoda. Could this be another case of time travel? Or did the creator of Star Wars happen to see the Smithfield Decretals? I mean, they look the same.  The only thing we know is that these illustrations make no sense whatsoever. Could there have been a time when giant animals dominated 

Rohonc Codex

Next, we have the Rohonc Codex, which was first discovered in Hungary in the 1800s and was thought to have originated from medieval times. Sadly, even to this day, no one can decipher or understand the script at all. The mysterious text has been in discussion for more than 200 years and has led many scholars to study the text even though their efforts have been put to waste. The text is still undecipherable to this day, and no one knows where it came from or who wrote it. 

The codex is one of the most mysterious books of all time, consisting of 448 pages of strange text and watermarked pages that look like an anchor within a circle. The watermarks date back to 1529-1540 AD, but the book is written much earlier than the watermark. The illustrations in the codex include things like military battles, landscapes, and even religions like Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. This could mean that whoever wrote the codex was a supporter of all three religions, or wanted the three religions to coexist in peace. Many theories have been created by people who studied the codex. 

One theory is that the text is a variation of Brahmi script, from India, and that it should be read left to right, top to bottom. This is known as the Brahmi-Hindi hypothesis. Another theory is that the text is Intended to be read right to the left, bottom to top and that it is written in the Vulgar Latin dialect of Dacia. This is called the Daco-Romanian hypothesis. Even though many theories have been many, none of them have been fully agreed upon, and the codex remains a mystery to humankind.

Nostradamus

Fortune telling is real and it exists in a certain book that seemed to have prophesied many events that happened hundreds of years later. The book is called ‘The Prophecies’ and the writer of the book was a French physician and astrologer named Michel de Notre Dame, also known as Nostradamus. 

Nostradamus just may be one of the greatest prophets in history because he was able to predict some of the biggest events that have occurred in the world. In his book ‘The Prophecies’ written 400 years ago, he had more than a thousand four-line verses that seemed to predict the future. How was he able to have such accurate visions? Apparently, he gained visions by staring into a bowl of water. Some of the prophecies made in the book are so accurate that they’re scary. 

Nostradamus was able to predict events like the rise of Adolf Hitler, the great fire of London, the atomic bomb drops in Japan, September 11, and the French Revolution. All of them have been completely accurate, which makes us wonder: what about the his predictions about 2016 or the near future? His book predicts that very soon there will be a World War III, the largest earthquake to ever hit the US, and the downfall of the global economy. People have been linking natural and manmade disasters to Nostradamus’s book for centuries, and so far most of his predictions have been accurate. 

Some people, however, believe that his prophets have just coincidentally matched up to events that have happened in our world and think his predictions are false. Whether he was really an amazing prophet is up for discussion, but what is undeniable is the fact that I myself would do anything to be able to see the future.

Voynich Manuscript

Finally, we have one of the most mysterious manuscripts of all time, the Voynich Manuscript. This manuscript was said to have dated back to the early 15th century (1404-1438) in northern Italy. It was first discovered in 1909 by a polish book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich, which is who the book is named after. Voynich bought the book in 1912 and was fascinated by the content. 

The book contains 240 pages of text and illustrations with some pages missing.  The book seems to be a herbal manuscript that resembles the ones released in the 1500s, but when you look closely, you will see that the plants drawn are completely unknown to mankind. The language of the text is also unknown, which makes the book an absolute phenomenon. 

Cryptographers have tried and failed to decipher the script, but they claim that the book is trying to tell readers a message. Some people claim that the book is actually a puzzle while others just claim that the book is an unbreakable mystery. For the curious minds out of there who want to try cracking the code, the entire manuscript can be found online. 

Could this be a person’s documentary of his travels on a different planet where he was introduced to a whole new species of plants? We’ll never know.

6 Clues That May Prove, We ALL Have Souls

Have you ever wondered if you were something or someone else in your past life? Or if you had a past life in the first place? 

A chief question for many philosophers and scientists alike is whether or not humans have souls. A soul is the spiritual, immortal part of a human being that pre-exists the body and stays alive after death. It is the reason why people are able, if possible, to reincarnate and start a new life in a different body. 

Although many people do believe that they have souls, others are skeptical and want real evidence of the existence of such spiritual entities. So without further ado, here are clues that may prove we all have souls.

#1 - Soul Captured on Photo & Video

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Sometimes we see photos that seem to capture images of ghosts or an always blurry bigfoot so it would make sense that cameras may be able to capture souls as well and regardless of whether they are real photos or not, they are always interesting and sometimes very hard to explain. 

For example, in Powell County, Kentucky there supposedly was a horrible motorbike crash, and a guy named Sal Vazquez took a picture of the incident while driving by in his truck. Vazquez posted his picture on Facebook to share the devastating news, but what he received in the comments wasn’t what he expected. People who saw the picture claimed that Vazquez had captured the dead man’s soul leaving his body. They shared the post, and eventually, it became viral. The picture shows a translucent, human-shaped figure leaving the body of the man who passed away.

Next, we take a look at a video posted in a Chinese hospital. Which showed the body of a deceased woman lying on a stretcher. The body was covered by a sheet, and the room was dark, and you can clearly see a ghostly figure begins to exit the body of the deceased woman. Now if this were real, I would just hope that this is something that can only be captured on camera because can you imagine seeing this in real life. I’m glad this was in a hospital because I would definitely have a heart attack.

#2 - Near Death Experiences

We all know the story, someone almost dies and is brought back to life, they then talk about a white light and probably heading towards it. But that's the thing, you've heard about it before because it happens a lot and the stories all seem to be pretty similar. 

For example, after the horrific Tang Mountain Earthquake in 1976, doctors brought many victims back from the brinks of death with most of these individuals recounting similar experiences of floating above their own bodies and instead of pain and fear they felt very much at peace. And although according to a 2011 study in which researchers say near death experiences are just biological reactions, a Harvard Neurosurgeon named Dr. Eben Alexander disagrees.

Dr. Alexander didn’t believe that souls existed. But one day, Dr. he fell into a coma for a week due to bacterial meningitis. During that time, he claimed to have a surreal journey into the afterlife in which he experienced something so real that it made the human world seem artificial in comparison. He also said that the afterlife was filled with love and that communication in that dimension was telepathic. 

People didn’t need to speak to each other to understand what they were trying to say. When he regained consciousness seven days later, he was healed of his meningitis and was so intrigued by his otherworldly experience that he wrote an entire book on it called “Proof of Heaven.”

    
#3 - Bioelectric Photographs

Next, we have an experiment done by Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, who photographed a person using a special bioelectrographic camera at the time of his death. Korotkov teaches physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University and is famous for his research on human energy fields. The bioelectrographic camera creates a high-intensity electric field and produces a flow around the object. Once, Korotkov photographed a person at the moment of his death, and the pictures showed him the soul leaving the body. He explained that the life force (in blue) first left the core, then the head, and lastly the heart and groin.

#4 - Brain Activities

Canadian Neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield is responsible for a lot of what we currently understand about our brains and is widely considered the father of neurosurgery. For years Penfield though that the brain could explain all human behavior, but after decades of research, he changed his mind. For example in one experiment Penfield conducted. He wanted to observe the brain activity of one of his subjects, so he set up a system that would monitor all the subject’s brain activities. 

He first told the subject to raise his hand, and when he raised his arm, a certain part of his brain was activated. When he took his arm down, that same part of the brain was deactivated. At the same time, Penfield asked the subject did you raise your arm, which the subject replied, "Yes I did."

Then, Dr.Penfield used a machine to activate that part of the brain again but this time artificially. The arm rose up. Then, he deactivated that part of the brain, and the arm fell down. When asked again if he raised his arm the subject said No it went up by itself. This simple experiment is really amazing because in the second case, it was Penfield who triggered the brain to cause the arm to go up, but in the first case who or what triggered the brain? 

Because of this Penfield concluded that: “The brain is a computer, but it is programmed by something outside of itself.”

He also said in his last book The Mystery of the Mind, “I came to take seriously, even to believe, that the
consciousness of man, the mind, is NOT something to be reduced to brain mechanism. 

#5 - Ghosts

I ain't afraid of no ghosts... well actually that’s a lie, I am deathly afraid of ghosts. Personally, I think ghost hunting is one of the worst things that you can do. I mean what are you doing? You don't have a proton pack, what are you gonna do when a ghost attack? Throw your iPhone at it.  Oh, there’s the ghost, oh it's getting close, and now it's chocking me, and now I'm dead... But seriously, we all know there are countless pictures and videos and testimonials out there that are evidence that ghosts may in fact exist and ghosts are suppose to be lost souls so this is also evidence that we do indeed have souls. 

#6 - Reincarnation

Throughout history there have been countless cases of people remembering their past lives, some cultures even treat reincarnation as fact. 

Professor Ian Stevenson formerly of the University of Virginia and his successor Dr. Jim Tucker spent decades researching claims of reincarnation by children and is said to have investigated over 3000 cases. In many of these cases like the people, mainly children were able to remember incredibly specific details of their previous lives. 

For example one of the cases was a boy known as Sam, Sam was four years old when his grandmother died. His father brought an old photo album home from her house when he cleaned it out. To Sam’s parents’ knowledge, Sam had never seen a photo of his grandfather.

When they were looking through the album, Sam pointed to a photo of a car, and said: “That’s my car.” It was his grandfather’s first car. Sam’s mother was skeptical, so she showed him a photo of his grandfather as a young boy with other boys of the same age. Sam pointed to his grandfather and said, “There I am.”

Testing it further, Sam’s mother asked if he remembered anything else from his past life. Sam said someone “turned my sister into a fish.”
When asked who, Sam replied “Bad men.”
It turns out The grandfather’s sister had been murdered, and her corpse was dumped in a body of water.

Personally, I believe that we all have souls and that’s why I'm kinda scared of this whole cloning or making machines more and more lifelike. I personally do believe that the soul is what makes us who we are and I really don't think that when we die, its just over, I mean that’s kind of depressing. 

But there is so much evidence out there that we do all have souls, I think this is especially true in the case of past lives or reincarnation. There are so many documented cases of reincarnation, and even if you don't believe it, you can't really explain it. I mean how can you explain a little kid remembering accurate details of another person who died before they were born. 

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/us/spirit-leaving-body-photo-trnd/index.html

http://study.com/academy/lesson/dr-wilder-penfield-biography-research.html

http://www.korotkov.eu/

http://www.iisis.net/index.php%3Fpage%3Dian-stevenson-semkiw-childhood-memories-reincarnation-past-life-lives

10 DELICIOUS Foods That Can Actually KILL You

In this day in age of convenient grocery stores and restaurants, most people only care how good the food tastes and don't even consider if it's poisonous or not. Maybe we should not take our food safety for granted because a lot of the foods we all love to eat could kill us.

1. Cherries

These innocent, delicious berries can be used in a lot of ways. You can eat them raw, bake them, cook them, make juice out of them, but whatever you do, do not suck or bite down on a cherry pit. That’s because if you damage the pit even a little, it will produce hydrogen cyanide which in large enough quantities can cause headaches, vomiting, breathing difficulties, and even kidney failure.

2. Apples

Like cherries, apple seeds also contain cyanide. So if you eat enough apple seeds, you may end up like Snow White... without the dwarfs and the prince and the whole coming back to life thing.

3. Mushrooms

Mushrooms are nutritious and delicious, but out the world's 38,000 different types of fungi, about 5% (1,900) are actually poisonous. 

While some toxic mushrooms are easy to spot because of their bright colors, most of the deadliest mushrooms appear very unassuming and the most deadly of them all the Death Cap even looks just like common edible mushrooms and if you eat it, it will begin killing you before you even realize something is wrong. It's poisonous symptoms typically won’t manifest for hours when you eventually experience abdominal pain, severe dehydration, and diarrhea.
The Death Cap mushroom will destroy your liver and, without treatment, you can experience rapid organ failure, coma, and death.

4. Nutmeg

Remember the whole cinnamon challenge? Well, just be glad there’s no nutmeg challenge because nutmeg is a hallucinogen and just a teaspoon can lead to convulsion, seizures, and vomiting that can last for days. And if you eat an entire nutmeg, then you'll enter what's called “nutmeg psychosis,” which can lead to death.

5. Potatoes

If you ever looked at a potato and noticed that it’s a bit green, that isn't because it's not ripe yet, it’s because of the naturally occurring toxin found in the leaves and stems that can build up in potatoes when left out too long. This glycoalkaloid poison acts as natural pesticide and fungicide to defend against animals, insects, and fungi.

Eating green potatoes can cause cramps, diarrhea, and even death so make sure to discard any potatoes with green sprouts or greenish skin.

6. Almonds

Did you know almonds are not nuts but are actually seeds? Almonds are one of the most popular ingredients in the kitchen and come in both sweet and bitter varieties, with the bitter ones being the most aromatic and flavorful... and poisonous.

If left untreated, bitter almonds are full of, again, cyanide. Eating 7-10 raw bitter almonds could kill a child and eating around 20 could kill an adult!

7. Rhubarb

Rhubard is very versatile. It can be made into jams, drinks, and baked in pies but its leaves contain oxalic acid which can form kidney stones. Eating about 10 pounds of rhubarb could kill you.

8. Lima Beans

Raw lima beans contain high levels of that pesky cyanide again so it should always be cooked for at least 10 minutes without a lid so the poison can escape as a gas. The water cooking the beans should be thrown away because just a handful of raw Lima beans can make someone violently ill.

9. Cassava

Cassava is also known as tapioca, yup, that’s the stuff in your bubble tea. Cassava is widely consumed in South America and Africa and is the third largest source of carbohydrates in the world. Just like almonds, there are two varieties of cassava: sweet and bitter. The bitter kind is up to 8 times more toxic because cassava’s cyanide content is very high. Just two cassava roots contain enough poison to kill an adult, and a pound could drop a cow.

10. Puffer Fish of Fugu

This fish is so poisonous chefs who want to prepare it,  must go through years of rigorous training and at the end, there is a test where the chef must prepare the fish and eat it. But as dramatic as that sounds, the chefs who fail the test (about 70% of them) don’t die.  They could fail even before the eating part of the test and, even if they ate the unsuccessfully prepared fugu, they are only eating the flesh that is less poisonous.

If the fish is prepared correctly, you can even eat some of the organs which are the most toxic parts of the fish but the most lethal organ, the liver, cannot be sold. This puffer fish is even banned in Europe.  

Some people actually want a little poison on their fish because they would get a tingling sensation on their lips. Umm, not judging here but if you want a tingling sensation on your lips, go eat a peppercorn, not a poisonous fish!