What Is The Most Epic Song Ever? Requiem For a Dream Lux Aeterna vs. Star Wars Battle of the Heroes: Videos

I enjoy finding and listening to the most epic music ever written. I’ve always loved music and I absolutely love how a composer can write music down on a piece of paper that invokes the utmost power, energy and adventure. I’ve narrowed it down to 2 songs that I believe are the 2 most epic songs ever written… “Lux Aeterna” from Requiem for a Dream and “Battle of the Heroes” from Star Wars III. PS: If you don’t have a good quality sound system then you will not get near the full effect of these songs, a good bass is vital. Awesomely epic songs none-the-less. Also, if you believe there to be a more epic song out there, feel free to post it in the comment box below.

 

Where Do Humans Get Their Life Value? Life and Death… I Can Tell You.

It is a very basic question to ask, one that I don’t believe very many people question that often… if ever. Where do we get our life value? This is a separate question from ‘what is our purpose’, which is more of the root question. But when you ask about strictly “value”, you get into a hotbed of all sorts of ideology. “Who are you to judge me and put a value on my life?!” You might say. Fair enough. But who are you to not question it about yourself?

I’ve asked this question to several friends of mine and they all seem to spit out the same answer; family, friends, and religion are pretty much the exclusive three responses. But this still isn’t going deep enough (inception anyone?). Jokes aside, the value of your life is NOT family, friends or religion… because I could see someone in the world living a very happy life without any of those three items. So I’ll ask you again, what is the one true thing in every single human life that makes everyone worth something?

And no the answer is not that it’s different for everyone. The answer is time, or lack there of of it. Seems simple and mundane and almost cliché which is why some of you probably stopped reading after the end of that last sentence, but hear me out.

 

Everything great in this world, EVERYTHING, is great because we die. Am I being pessimistic, no, I’m being the opposite. Think about it on the extreme side. If we were impervious to death, what would be exciting? Where would the value come from in accomplishing something great when you virtually have an unlimited amount of time to accomplish it? What would the level of love be towards your family if you knew they were always going to be around? What about looking back on years past, you wouldn’t be able to quaintly remember the carelessness of your childhood or the years of your college prime because the aging process would not exist. Exist, that’s a funny word, because without death, all you would be doing is existing… instead of living.

Time is the currency of life. And that cannot be refuted.

The reason we have value in our lives is solely because our head is ‘on the chopping block’, so to speak. Because our time is limited on this planet means that every decision we make will unequivocally alter the path and the final position of our lives. It doesn’t mean that there is no room for mistake in your decisions, it just means that every decision is an important one… even the ones that seem terribly mundane like if I should ride my bike to work or drive to work. Or if I should call that girl I’ve been thinking about or wait. Or if I should apologize to a friend for borrowing his book without asking.

Obviously, religion is a huge factor in how people view life and death. For many religious, the purpose and meaning of life is to worship the lord. Which is a completely valid purpose if that is what you believe in. On the other hand, atheists and agnostics believe that they are more at peace with knowing there is nothing after death. To them, it puts more worth on life itself because the end of life is more (shall we say) “final”. Which brings my argument to greater light… humans, in general, find worth in life the more they realize time is against them.

 

Take a terminally ill patient, for example. How many stories/movies/books/magazines/tv shows/etc. have you seen that depict a terminally ill patient going out and having the time of their life? The list is endless, I think the show House probably has 15+ episodes with just such a story line. Why do people have the urge to go out and make something of their life? Because they have a heightened sense of imminent death. Can you imagine what you would do with your life and what you might accomplish if you had such a heightened sense of imminent death? It would be unbelievably rich. The time you spend with your family, friends, partner, would be beyond simply love. Everything exciting you do would be infinitely more cherished. The little things in life would already mean more to you than ever before.

Every person has stakes in the game of life and it all revolves around the time you have on Earth. Every person believes in their own reason or purpose for existing but until you understand the value of it and why the value of your life only exists because you will eventually die, then you might as well not have a purpose. If I were given the option to live forever, or even simply to live well into the future, I would politely decline; It would suck the value out of the actual living part of existing. Death is more connected to life than anything else, so live it up, and make yourself worth something. So use the time you have such that when you get to the dying part of life, you’ll be able to look back and say, “yup, that was worth it”.

Please, leave a comment if you agree or want to share your views on where we get our value.

Scientists Discover Body of Water That Could Supply Our Galaxy 28 Times Over.

(FastCompany.com)

Scientists have found the biggest and oldest reservoir of water ever–so large and so old, it’s almost impossible to describe.

The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as desolate and desert dry, but it’s turning out to be pretty lush.

Researchers found a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water–20,000 times over. Yes, so much water out there in space that it could supply each one of us all the water on Earth–Niagara Falls, the Pacific Ocean, the polar ice caps, the puddle in the bottom of the canoe you forgot to flip over–20,000 times over.

The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knockinghydrogen and oxygen atoms together.

The official NASA news release describes the amount of water as “140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans,” which isn’t particularly helpful, except if you think about it like this.

That one cloud of newly discovered space water vapor could supply 140 trillion planets that are just as wet as Earth is.

Mind you, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 400 billion stars, so if every one of those stars has 10 planets, each as wet as Earth, that’s only 4 trillion planets worth of water.

The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water.

Truly, that is one swampy patch of intergalactic space.

Equally stunning is the age of the water factory. The two teams of astrophysicists that found the quasar were looking out in space a distance of 12 billion light years. That means they were also looking back in time 12 billion years, to when the universe itself was just 1.6 billion years old. They were watching water being formed at the very start of the known universe, which is to say, water was one of the first substances formed, created in galactic volumes from the earliest time. Given water’s creative power to shape geology, climate and biology, that’s dramatic.

“It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” says Matt Bradford, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of one of the teams that made the discovery. (The journal article reporting the discovery is titled, without drama, “The Water Vapor Spectrum of APM 08279+5255: X-Ray Heating and Infrared Pumping over Hundreds of Parsecs.”)

It is not as if you’d have to wear foul-weather gear if you could visit this place in space, however. The distances are as mind-bogglingly large as the amount of water being created, so the water vapor is the finest mist–300 trillion times less dense than the air in a typical room.

And it’s not as if this intergalactic water can be of any use to us here on Earth, of course, at least not in the immediate sense. Indeed, the discovery comes as a devastating drought across eastern Africa is endangering the lives of 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. NASA’s water discovery should be a reminder that if we have the sophistication to discover galaxies full of water 12 billion light years away, we should be able to save people just an ocean away from drought-induced starvation.

The NASA announcement is also a reminder how quickly our understanding of the universe is evolving and how much capacity for surprise nature still has for us. There’s water on Mars, there’s water jetting hundreds of miles into space from Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, there are icebergs of water hidden in the polar craters of our own Moon. And now it turns out that a single quasar has the ability to manufacture galaxies full of water.

But it was only 40 years ago, in 1969, that scientists first confirmed that water existed anywhere besides Earth.

Charles Fishman is the author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, published by Free Press / Simon & Schuster. © 2011, Charles Fishman.

It’s too bad it is 12 billion light years away, and would take us that long to get there if we flew in that direction at the speed of light. If this black hole still exists today, in actuality there is 10 times that amount of water out there… although this is unlikely. This is one incredible find. There is no way we have access to such a thing but it proves how limitless the universe is; there could easily be places similar to this that are much closer to home. 

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• Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence–In Space (fastcompany.com)

How To Easily Train Your Brain For Increased IQ and Memory With “N-Back Test”

Professor John Jonides of University of Michigan talks about the latest research into brain training. This is the first time we have seen consistent improvement in a person’s IQ and memory across all ages and all types within a matter of days. Take a look at the video, here is a link to begin your n-back training: http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-back.aspx

Striking Video of the International Space Station Flying Over Earth

It really doesn’t get much cooler than this. This is a time lapse video of the International Space Station flying over Earth. Watch for the lightning as well as the plasma refracting off Earth’s atmosphere out on the horizon.

A Tribute To The Space Shuttle: High Definition Super Slow Motion Launch Footage Narrated by Aerospace Engineers

Any person inclined by science, intrigued by power or curious about what goes into getting into space will be completely and totally awe-struck by this series of videos. In a previous post of mine I talk about humans perception of size and time. These series of videos show the shear size and power (not to mention level of engineering) that goes into placing our bodies into orbit… as mentioned in my other post, the layer of our atmosphere is no thicker than the comparative thickness of paint on a school globe and the Space Shuttle orbits just millimeters above that globe. We are still tiny and primitive creatures yet the videos show the direction of achievement we are capable of. It’s too bad NASA has no immediate replacement for the now decommissioned Space Shuttle.  I would take 10 years off my life just to go into space and walk on the moon. Please, maximize the screen, turn off your lights, sit back, relax and enjoy the view…