Why Our Thoughts and Actions are Essential to Any Model of the Universe

Today’s stories include: Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking--A new theory of embodied consciousness, Why aliens are likely to be AI, and more...

Why the standard model of cosmology is a jumbled mess--Cosmologists are largely still in the dark about the forces that drive the Universe, reports Adam Frank for Big Think. "The standard model now cobbles together a number of new, different ideas that match up very well to observation. But do they create a coherent model, or merely an ad-hoc placeholder?"

A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics--So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of complex quantum systems, reports Quanta.

Physics forgets we are part of reality--Why our thoughts and actions are essential to any model of the universe, reports Jenann Ismael for iAi TV. "Rather than imagining that we are somehow outside of the universe that physicists model, they should see our embedded intelligence as a central part of reality and as critical to what happens. Doing so can help make sense of the passing of time and our experience of free will."

Weird dark matter waves seem to warp the light from distant galaxies--Ultralight dark matter particles that behave like waves, called axions, seem to be a better match for gravitational lensing measurements than more traditional explanations for dark matter, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist. 

Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking--A new theory of embodied consciousness, reports iAi TV. "Neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio propose that feelings are the source of consciousness. Long dismissed as secondary to reason, feelings are where consciousness begins. Without them, consciousness is impossible, they argue – with radical implications for the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness and the future of AI."

AI astronauts: Why aliens are likely to be AI, reports Dirk Schulze-Makuch for Big Think. Perhaps we should be searching for “other Mercurys” rather than “other Earths.” "In fact, it is just about inconceivable for any advanced civilization, particularly a spacefaring one, to exist without AI. Crossing interstellar space would take them a very long time — so much time that it makes little sense to send short-lived, perishable organic bodies."

BBC: Alien mothership might be spying on us from orbit, says top Harvard scientist--Prof Avi Loeb claims we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that we have already been visited by extraterrestrial life. "144 UAP reports were made between 2004 and 2021 mostly from military personnel." “I think the government is puzzled. They don't know what to make of it. They are not scientists,” says Loeb, “I say let's just figure it out, let's not have any prejudice, just collect better data. That's the scientific method. That's the way science is done.”

Mars Rovers Might Miss Signs of Alien Life, Study Suggests--The hunt for Martian life focuses on detecting organic molecules that could indicate its past existence. Are our instruments up to the task? asks Derek Smith for Scientific American.

Inside the New Missions to Jupiter’s Moons--Spacecraft will explore hidden oceans and the possibility of life on the moons of Jupiter, reports Scientific American.