The Cosmic Heart

All is Love The Universal Language of Love

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:30:00 +0000

SATURN SQUARES PLUTO November 15,09 kicking off unprecedented global and human transformation

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:18:00 +0000

From an astrological perspective a potent SATURN-PLUTO SQUARE is exact November 15, 09.

Although its opening "power window" started in mid-October and lasts thru mid-March. It challenges us individually, and the world at large, to release any and all structures, relationships and things which have outlived their usefulness.

This aspect kick-starts an unprecedented multi-year period of global transformation which, while undeniably challenging, can ultimately usher in a new era of peace, love, compassion and planetary harmony

But we will persevere as the big tear-down is all part of the extraordinary planetary upgrade that is paving the way for humanity to learn and embrace the universal language of love!

This planetary upgrade is also affecting the transformation of humanity as well. You may also feel that on a personal level that old ways of being in your own life no longer serve you, or you may feel a sense of loss or death has occurring in your own life structures which may be transforming or changing to make way for a new structure or new way for you to be in your life so the whole world to emerge.

For some people it could be a combination of external transformation being precipitated by an internal transformation on an energetic level allowing you to release old patterns of programming or conditioning that no longer serve you.

If you have aches and pains, or old injury’s coming to the surface that is because there is a release of old energy that has been dormant and now wanting to release from your physical and etheric body. To Make room for the new energy of uncondtional love to enter and anchor in your physical and etheric body.

The etheric body is the first of the levels of being beyond the physical body is the formative-field body or what the Theosophists call the "Etheric" body.

This "Etheric Body" is the subtle life-force body, which sustains the life of the physical body, and serves as the mould or matrix for physical metabolic functions.

The term "etheric body" can have several different possible meainings. Apart from the fact that with some New Age/theosophical/esoteric belief systems the "etheric" is use to define a high or even the highest spiritual body.

In any case the Etheric body is the repository of the life-force or vitality principle (variously called ch'i, ki, prana, vayu, pneuma, orgone, libido, etc) for the entire psycho-physical organism.

This Etheric body holds the energy that is your divine connection to the universe the cosmos the unconditional love that resides within each and every one of us this is the very energy that currently lies dormant in some people and is in the process of awakening to the universal language of love.

I believe that bringing awareness into your physical body and your etheric body will help in the assistance of your transformation or ascension process during this time.

Please note you may experience old fears coming to the surface to be released or old patterns or ways that were self defeating wanting to come to the surface to feed off your energy as a source of vitality but unable to take hold because of the new vibration you are attaining, and sustaining.

Remember when you elevate in consciousness old patterns, conditioning and ways being will not resonate with your new vibration frequency because the old ways of being have nothing to stick to on your physical or etheric body within you to like in the past. I am sure you are relieved to hear this and what a sign of relief that you no longer have to be bound by limiting patterns that have been running your life for millennia.

If any of this information resonates with you and you would like some assistance in getting a clear understanding of what is happening for you and how to bring yourself in to balance so that you have the strength to enjoy the human and global transformation then please contact me at: Cosmic facilitator at:

Thecosmicheart@gmail.com, We have monthly gatherings and I offer private consultation to support you along your journey of self exploration and healing while being in service to humanity during this time of glorious transformation.

Believe when I say it is an awesome time to be alive!

All Love is the Universal Language of Love

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:50:00 +0000

The universal language of love resides within each and every being in this physical world however most of us have forgotten that the universal language of love resides within it is the very essence of who we are. Never ending always and forever we are one with the divine.

The universal language of love is you it is me it is our planet it is the universe.

The universal language of love is all that exists. We are all on the verge of awakening to our true self. It is our divine right, it is our natural inheritance. We must all come to know the truth of who we are.

The physical self in the physical world is covered by a thin veil or mist of forgetfulness. However the language of unconditional love is felt with every breath you take. It is what moves and inspires you to do good things it is the joy, inner peace that you feel in each and every moment. It is the love that you radiate.

The universal language of love is always present it never goes away it can’t it is the undeniable truth that moves through all of who you are it is ever present.

Fear on the other hand comes and goes that is why it is not real and only an illusion. You see fear keeps you from who you really are which is unconditional love and once you can stand firm and be the container of the unconditional love that you are nothing will stand in your way.

You must come to know that there is never a shortage of unconditional love it is always present in abundance there is enough and more for everyone. You are never wanting when you are in alignment with who you are as unconditional love is always there ready for you when you are ready to take your next breath and breathe into your heart.

The language of universal love is an ancient language that resides in each and every one of us. It is activated through your DNA and once activated the language of love is able to flow through your being it becomes a natural part of your essence then you can begin to learn the universal language of love on a deeper level because up until now, you have been conditioned to live your life from fear and survival, and now you have the opportunity to learn to live life from love, joy and abundance which is your natural inheritance. You will come to know this trust me because it will feel natural to you eventually remember unconditional love is your natural inheritance.

If you often wonder why you are so dissatisfied with your current life it is because there is a part of you that knows there is more to life then what you are experiencing, there is more to life then what you are told and not told or what you are given access to.

The current physical world system will never complete or fill all your needs and desires because it is not design that way. It is only set up to keep you wanting seeking and needing beleive when I say it is a bottomless pit or vortex and it is designed to keep you from the truth of who you are which is unconditional love that is the only purpose of the physical world to keep you from learning or knowing your true self, unless you search for the truth and wake up like so many are right now.

There has never been an opportunity like there is in history for humanity to awaken it is a wonderful time to be alive.

Once we learn this and know it to be true then we have the power to change our world believe me when I say this, mother earth and the universe yearn for and are waiting patiently for us to co –create the world we so long for.

Please remember this truth the physical world system was only set up to keep humanity from knowing that they are unconditional love and that it is their natural inheritance it is time to stand up and take back what belongs to us let the yearning stop breath love is only a breath away.

Join Me as We Explore the Universal Language of Love?

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:45:00 +0000

The universal language of love resides within each and every being in this physical world.

However most of us have forgotten that the universal language of love resides inside each of us.

The universal language of love is you, it is me, it is this planet, it is the universe.

The universal language of love is all that exists.

We are all on the verge of awakening to the universal language of love, awakening to our true self.

It is every human beings divine right to know the truth of who they are, unconditional love is our birthright it is our natural inheritance.

We all yearn to know the truth of who we are. Are you willing to take the next step on this wonderful journey?

Will you join me as we awaken, to the universal language love. Let us embrace this language we have forgotten so that we can co- create the world we want?

Please join me every 2 weeks, where we will explore the universal language of love, and how to recognize the unconditional love that is within you.

Contact me at Kerrace@telus.net if you would like to participate and I will provide you with the next online gathering. I look forward to hearing from you.

Artwork By Timothy Helgeson

About Love and How The Universal Language of Love is Activated Through your DNA?

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:29:00 +0000

The universal language of love is no not so much the creation of a new language as the remembering of an ancient language, when we lived in sync with the pulse of the cosmos instead of, as we do now, with artificial rhythms of manmade time.

The universal language of love lies dormant in your DNA until it becomes activated.

The activation process in many people is well underway and at different stages of activation. Some people will experience this transformation process and some will not it is a matter of preparing oneself physically, mentally and emotionally and bringing yourself into balance in all three areas. A good way to start this process is by working with the pain body.

How a Pain Body is formed

When the ego experiences something it cannot process, something so horrific or over-whelming, it usually places the negative energy of the experience somewhere in the body. The ego will try and hide it as it is something which it cannot resolve, so it convinces the mind there is no reason to have it. Yet it stays unresolved in the mind.

These unresolved issues can come from generations past and usually do. Eventually, they become so many that they are dislodged from the body, creating room for more. They are anchored but not part of the body matrix. They form a field of unresolved possibilities – the pain body. This energetic field is therefore not even entirely yours, it is historical.

When we become aware that we even have a pain body and learn how the pain body works, we can begin the process of releasing energetic patterns or traumas that continue to impact our lives. By becoming conscious of and releasing old patterns and traumas we create a doorway for unconditional love to enter allowing us to feel the wellspring of love that is always accessible when we are open to loves presence.

Workshop November 14, 09 Discover the truth of who you are through the universal language of love

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Online – Workshop- November 14th, 2009 12:00PM- 1:30 PM PST on Skype. Cost to attend this event by Donation. Space on Skype is limited so sign up early. Please feel free to share this event with your friends who may be interested in attending.

Topic:

Discover the truth of who you are through the universal language of love

In this 90 minute workshop we will explore the meaning of physical love based on fragmentation and separation and universal Love based on unconditional love experienced when we connect with our being, oneness, awareness are some of the many names it is given.

Physical Love- fragmentation and separation seeing the world through the lens of fear, guilt and unworthiness.

Universal Love- wholeness, oneness, unity experiencing the world through the lens of unconditional love.

We will also discuss Conscious evolution – where we are in the process of consciously evolving on an individual and collective level.

Then we will finish the workshop with a discussion as to how we move from a physical world view of love to a real world view of unconditional love.

Kerrace Alexander adult educator, founder and principal facilitator for BigFish Strategies Inc., a Canadian spiritual intelligence firm, Kerrace works with individuals to develop and grow from the inside out. Born in New York City, she now lives and works in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Kerrace is an avid student on the topic of thought Awareness, and spiritual intelligence and basis this work on her personal journey of self-exploration and healing. She says: “My deepest passion is exploring the inner life and assisting people to awaken to the truth of who they are.”

Online – Gathering- November 14th, 2009 12:00PM- 1:30PM PST on Skype.
Space is limited so sign up early. Please email me once you have made a donation at the top right of the blog with your Skype name so I can put you on the list at: thecosmicheart@gmail.com
If you sign up and cannot attend please let me know so we can make the space available for someone else as Skype has a group limitation.

Artwork by Timothy Helgeson

Just love is Humanities Next Evolutionary Step

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:32:00 +0000

The next step in humanities evolution is to learn the universal language of unconditional Love.

There is a universal language of love that permeates all that exists. It is subtle yet it is pure to its core which gives it an undeniable strength that can never be tainted or penetrated. All that exists come from this source of love without conditions.

Humanity at this particular time in history is being asked to learn this universal language of love as the next step in it’s evolutionary process.

The universal language of love can only be experienced as the conscious entity within each and every human being and emanates from the human heart. Once you experience the truth of who you are from the human heart which is unconditional love on an individual level then the universal language of love can be remembered, learned, and integrated on a collective level allowing the physical world to come into balance through the heart of the world and then the world can come into alignment with the cosmic heart of the universe.

The accessibility to learning the universal language of unconditional love has traditionally been available to saints, mystics, such as Buddah, Jesus. but is now available to all of humanity at this time it is a part of the physical world’s evolutionary cycle. You see unconditional love is our natural inheritance yet it has never been available to be experienced in the physical world on a massive scale up until now, so you could say it is a wonderful time to be alive.

The language of love in the physical world we currently live in is a love based on separation and fragmentation which does not allow for the full interpretation of love to be explored or experienced from a physical perspective.

This is why the physical language of love has become difficult for it to maintain its integrity in the physical world and that is why our world is going through a re-birthing process as part of it’s evolutionary cycle. This evolutionary cycle is a natural process of evolution in order to bring all the fragmented pieces of the physical language of love together into wholeness.

The current state of our external reality is a reflection of the process that we are currently undergoing. This can be seen by the many fragmented individual and world views, social conditioning, breaking down of individual, social, economic and governmental structures and systems, greed is becoming a construct in the fabric of the physical culture and world structure for example, national and international agendas in the accumulation of power and wealth and the acquisition and depletion of rich and poor countries natural resources.

It is not that the pieces of love are not present in the physical world to make the change needed it is that we have not learned how to use the real world language of love as a catalyst for change. We have not learned the real world language of love to solve our problems.

In order to help the physical world consciousness begin to bring the pieces of fragmented love held in physical world consciousness together, Universal Intelligence is attempting to communicate with individuals who live in the Earth. This communication is extremely advanced, and it will take some time for physical world consciousness to begin to communicate at this level but the process is currently underway.

The purpose of advancing physical communication to a universal level is to end separation, and to bring the fragmented pieces of love that exist within physical consciousness into wholeness.
When we learn how to speak the language of love at a universal level we will be able to co-create a world that supports the earth and it’s inhabitants in order to build a sustainable future.

The thoughts that surround the fragmented pieces of physical Love are beliefs. These beliefs are projected through the lens of fear. The primary purpose in the evolution of humanity at this time is to learn that fear is not useful, and that it is not real. Once fear is exposed physical world consciousness can begin to realize there is another way.

When fear is not used for protection, there is no need for war, conflict, hate, weapons, protecting children, disease, depression, and etc., when we see the world though the lens of love, this new beginning is the one that ushers in global peace. Because peace is the conductor of Love, and because only Love is real, then consciousness evolves, as does the Earth.

The purpose of a universal language of love is not to destroy belief, but to help it evolve into a new understanding. A new understanding will allow the world access to a way of being together and co-creating a world that it can only guess at, because the physical intellect and it’s current belief system does not have access to this language of love because all belief in the physical world is dependent on fragmented love for its reality, therefore it is impossible for the whole purpose of Love to be understood by individual belief or collective fragmented belief in this physical world.

Please know that the universal intelligence that governs this universe understands that without whole Love understanding, the Earth will not survive. Faulty, or partial understanding will not protect the future of the Earth. Because the Earth and its inhabitants are One, the Love that is needed to evolve both are being universally provided.

The re-education of physical world consciousness is a global plan and although individuals will be used to support the implementation of the plan, the interpretation must come from a universal source. This is because the Universe has the ability to see the whole picture without external interruption.

Because words are the source of physical language, the purpose of words will shift to take on a new understanding in physical world consciousness. As the individual and physical world belief advances towards a new understanding without fear, the Earth will begin to reflect this new understanding.

Old patterns of belief will be broken apart, and will begin to shift and merge together to form a whole purpose. This purpose will reflect a whole interpretation of Love. This will give new purpose for communication, as well as a new world and individual value system for it.

Please remember it is not difficult, and it does not take a lot of skill. What it does take is a desire to move beyond what is old to grasp something new. This is what is called dimensional learning. Because the mind is multi dimensional, it is entirely possible to learn and communicate at a Universal level.

This is an exciting time as the ability to communicate at a Universal level provides many opportunities for humanity. Individuals who wish to open their heart and learn how to communicate at a new dimension are being offered the opportunity at this time. If you are willing to take the first step, the whole Universe will bend to give you the support that is needed to overcome any obstacle.

This opportunity is the first of its kind. Never before has physical world consciousness been invited to become a part of evolving the Earth. You will be delighted and excited to learn just how much you already understand when you open your heart and awaken to the truth of who you are.

Atrwork by Timothy Helgeson

The Pain Body - A definition

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:34:00 +0000

A pain body is an energy form that exists in our own energy field. It is not part of our original construct or energetic self, but exists very much intertwined within our own energy field. For most it is inherited.

When a baby is born the mother will pass on the pain body to the child, thus a pain body can be passed from generation to generation. This definition is commonly interpreted as karma.

Unconditional Love Cannot be Found at the Shopping Mall

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:21:00 +0000

The energy of the 13th chakra is that of unconditional Love. The 13th chakra is about an arm’s length outside the body, but the energy of it is experienced in the heart.

Unlike the seven major centers of the body, this one cannot become blocked. What can become blocked however, is our awareness of it.

This center is like a beacon of love and light that is eternally shining on us, delivering to us bliss and well being at every moment of our existence. It is our interconnectedness to All That Is, to our Source.

The 13th chakra has been symbolized in the image of a Rose. Throughout history, myth and religion, this symbol appears to represent the energy of Love, or God, or the Light (which are essentially all one and the same). If the Rose spoke, it would say one thing: "You are Loved."The truth contained in the awareness of this energy center is what everyone is looking for.

However many people have the belief that happiness lies outside themselves, and that it is something to be pursued, purchased, found in a mall, a restaurant, a relationship, or a pill. And so we go from store to store, from person to person, or perhaps therapist to therapist, seeking the elusive Bliss that calls to us.
We get lost in addictions that whisper lies to us about happiness. From Heroin to Sugar to Online Catalogue Shopping.

We answer that whisper and fall headlong into the temptation of the short-lived high, only to find ourselves on the desolate beach of the inevitable crash soon after or lost at the mall.

Once you start to do the inner emotional and spiritual work you will awaken to the unlimited abundance of love that resides within your being. Allowing you to let go of your impulses to go to the mall, because your addictions no longer drive you there, because the reservoir of unconditional love is giving you all that you need and desire in each and every moment.

All Love is Discovering The Truth of Who You Are

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:05:00 +0000

Discovering the truth of who you are through the universal language of love. The universal language of love is a living knowledge ancient and yet ever new and is activated and released from within every cell of your body once you awaken to the truth of who you are.

In this 90 minute introductory workshop we will explore the meaning of physical world view of love which is based on fragmentation and separation and universal world view of Love based on unconditional love experienced when we connect with the human heart which is the essence of who we are.

Workshop Dates: November 7th, November 14, 2009 12:00 PM- 1:30PM PST on Skype.

In this workshop we will discuss how:

Physical Love- causes fragmentation and separation and only allows you to see a physical world through the lens of fear, guilt and unworthiness.

Universal Love- creates wholeness, oneness, unity allowing you to experience the world through the lens of unconditional love.

We will also discuss conscious evolution – where we are in the process of consciously evolving on an individual and collective level.

Then we will finish the workshop with a discussion as to how we move from a physical world view of love to a real world view of unconditional love.

Kerrace Alexander adult educator, founder and principal facilitator for BigFish Strategies Inc., a Canadian spiritual intelligence firm, Kerrace works with individuals to develop and grow from the inside out. Born in New York City, she now lives and works in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Kerrace is an avid student on the topic of thought awareness, and spiritual intelligence and basis this work on her personal journey of self-exploration and healing. She says: “My deepest passion is exploring the inner life and assisting people to awaken to the truth of who they are.”

The nominal fee I charge for this workshop and the value you will get, is my way of giving back to those on a journey self exploration and healing.

Online – Introductory Workshop- November 7th,and November 14 2009 12:00PM- 1:30PM PST on Skype.

Space is limited so sign up early. Cost $25.00 US per person. Please email me once you have made payment using the donation buttonat the top right of the blog with your Skype name so I can put you on the list at: thecosmicheart@gmail.com.

If you sign up and cannot attend please let me know so we can make the space available for someone else as Skype has a group limitation.

Artwork By Timothy Helgeson

Your consciousness as a stress reliever

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:11:00 +0000

What do I mean by this? You have a most powerful tool to experience what you desire through the way you think. You can either let your thoughts take you on a journey into anxiety and stress or calmness. Consciousness is the most powerful tool we humans have that differentiates us from most other creatures on earth. There is the collective consciousness and the selfconsciousness.

It is interesting that the word "consciousness only exists in singular, and not only in the English language but in every other as well. Your consciousness makes you unique and decides how you experience the world around you. But it also affects the chemistry in your body. What do I mean by that?

Let us say that you have balanced your brain chemicals, your pH and food intake for the best nutritional building blocks your body requires, but you are still in a state of anxiety. What can you do? You have to look at your thought processes. What do you focus on? Do you worry about the future? Do you occupy yourself with events from the past? There is a part of you that knows the silliness of such behaviour, but you still do it, which creates anxiety and stress. The past is gone and has no relevance beyond having had a chance to learn and grow from an experience or choice. The future has not happened yet and is unknown anyway.

Worrying about the future is like paying duty on something you have not yet received, and may never arrive. Do you see how senseless this is? But you do it anyway? Well, no wonder you live in anxiety. You can do something about that, and the first step is becoming aware of your thought processes.

Our bodies are equipped with a highly sensitive alarm system that works automatically; it is called appropriately our "autonomic nervous system." It regulates your heartbeat, your breathing and many other systems in your body. It is a primal response that regulates your "fight or flight response".

You may have heard about situations when, in great danger, a woman or man was able to display enormous strength or power. We are able to become "super heroes" in acute stress; this usually only lasts for a short time, or as long as the acute situation is present. It in built into every one of us through our sympathetic nervous system, which is like the "gas peddle" in a car. Your adrenalin shoots up and gives you unusual power to either run like the wind to escape danger, or stay and fight like a warrior. When the danger has past, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to calm everything down; it steps on the brakes so to speak. This is how it is designed by nature and has assured our survival throughout the ages.

Today we live in a world without mostly without natural predators that chase us and we also live in a world of social order. So these extreme situations do not challenge our "fight or flight' response that much anymore. How come then that so many of us experience constant stress and anxiety? In our complex world we create it with the way we think. We worry about almost everything, which triggers a high output of adrenalin until our adrenal gland is exhausted. It is like driving a car while pressing down on the gas pedal and brakes at the same time, or, even worse, using "overdrive" for long periods and unnecessarily. You know what that does to your car, it breaks down the engine in no time. Well, it is similar in your body. Your nervous system can only take so much "overdrive" until it goes into an uncontrolled tailspin, and you loose control.

The sooner you take back your control and repair your "brakes," the better. The first step is becoming aware that you are in control. To regain it means to use your conscious mind to see clearly what you do. You have to become an observer of your automatic responses. I know it is not always easy to change a habit. Thinking in a particular way, even if de-structive or contradictive to what you want to achieve, is like a computer software that runs more or less automatically. Awareness, and taking small steps to replace a negative thought with a positive one, brings a gradual change for the better.

I highly recommend surrounding yourself with positive people. Taking up a regular exercise program, listening to harmonious music (I like the old classic masters like Mozart and Beethoven), reading good books that inspire, and giving a bit of your free time to a cause that moves your heart. Other powerful tools for conscious stress relief are praying, meditating, breathing exercises, and gentle stretching of your body to bring awareness to areas of tension and consciously releasing them. Yoga is a centuries old system that accomplishes this by bringing your body, mind, emotions and spiritual awareness together as one.

You are so much more powerful than you think. Unfor-tunately the way you think works either for or against you. Your thoughts create reality no matter if they are truth or fiction, or good or bad. Your body says "yes" to everything you think and creates the appropriate environment to reflect just that.

Which environment do you want to live in; calm strength or chaotic stress?

Choose wisely!

No More 2012 Solar Maximum for Cycle 24? How Small Will Solar Cycle 24 Be?

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:38:00 +0000

For twelve years, NASA has had a satellite positioned a million miles in front of Earth with the sun about 92 million miles beyond. Its mission has been to study particles that come near Earth from our sun, the solar system and the galaxy. The satellite is called Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE, and some of the highly energetic particles ACE has been monitoring are cosmic rays.

The number of cosmic rays reaching Earth are lower when the sun is active and has a strong, turbulent magnetic field that interferes with cosmic ray travel. But when the sun is not active, more cosmic rays reach Earth. The sun is supposed to be in an increasingly active period of Solar Cycle 24 with a solar maximum originally expected in 2011 to 2012. But the sun has been abnormally quiet. Scientists have not seen such a persistently low sunspot number for at least a century. Further, the magnetic field of the sun is at the lowest strength measured in at least 50 years.

Beginning six months ago, ACE satellite data showed a rise in cosmic rays reaching Earth from the Milky Way galaxy. By now, cosmic ray intensity has increased 19% because our sun is so quiet that its reduced magnetic field isn’t deflecting cosmic rays like it has the past few decades. If our sun remains quiet, there could be a 30% increase in cosmic rays reaching Earth in the next year or so – an intensity not seen since 1960. Increased cosmic rays can damage electronic systems and even DNA in living creatures.

What has happened to our sun? NASA’s Heliospheric Team Leader, David Hathaway, says he cannot find another solar minimum in the past that has acted quite like this one that has put out only a few sunspots since Solar Cycle 24 officially began at the end of 2008. Our sun is so quiet that solar physicists from around the world gathered in September to discuss whether we are entering a period similar to the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when for 70 years the sun was spotless and there was a mini-ice age. There was no ACE satellite then, but measurements of beryllium concentrations in ice layers indicate that during the Maunder Minimum, cosmic rays were 2.5 times what they are now. Dr. Hathaway points out that Earth scientists did not start measuring cosmic rays until the beginning of the modern Space Age in the early 1960s, and that for the past five decades, our sun might have been unusually active.

David Hathaway, Ph.D., Heliospheric Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama: “In the 50 years or so we’ve been making the (cosmic ray) measurements – yeah! this is by far the highest level of galactic cosmic rays that we’re seeing at Earth and we know exactly what is causing it. It’s the sun’s weakened magnetic fields and weakened solar winds that are all related to this Solar Cycle 24 minimum.

Beryllium is produced in the Earth’s upper atmosphere by cosmic rays striking nitrogen in particular and you find it in ice cores. If you look back at the record, there are significant changes. But, the amount that you see also depends on the strength and variations of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Periods like the Maunder Minimum occupy about 15% of the time. If you looked over thousands of years of Beryllium 10, it looks like 15% of the time, the sun is in this quiet state where it’s not producing sunspots. Given that, we’re about due. And I think that’s what comes up and why people are actively talking about grand minima like the Maunder Minimum is that if you go by percentages and the fact it has been so active, then we’re about due (for a long minimum).

We don’t have records prior to 1874 that give us details about the sun. Compared to the past 130 years, our sun now is unprecedented as far as how slow this Solar Cycle 24 is taking off - or not taking off!

Understanding the Peculiar
2008 - 2009 Solar Minimum
The number of days in 2009 without sunspots
as of October 29, was 232, or 77% of the time the sun was blank.

WHEN YOU GET TOGETHER NOW WITH YOUR SOLAR AND HELIOSPHERIC COLLEAGUES, DO YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT THE ODDS ARE RIGHT NOW THAT WE COULD BE GOING INTO ANOTHER MAUNDER MINIMUM?

It comes up in conversations all the time! (laughs) There is no doubt about it - it’s in the back of our minds!

Certainly the Maunder Minimum comes up. We recently had a meeting of 60 or 70 solar and heliospheric physicists from around the world who met on Mount Desert Island in Maine back in late September.

The title of the meeting was “Understanding the Peculiar Solar Minimum” – meaning this one! (laughs) The interesting thing is that at one point during that meeting, we took a vote amongst ourselves about how many thought that this Solar Cycle 24 is so peculiar that it would have a name attached to it, like Maunder Minimum or Dalton Minimum. It was a small minority that thought that it was that peculiar.

The vast majority felt that this is a significant minimum. It’s smaller than anything we have seen in the 50 years of the Space Age. But it does look like you can go back 100 years or so and find other similar minima.

Now, science is not done by voting! (laughs) So, it remains to be seen about what actually does happen in this Solar Cycle 24.

These were some of the world’s experts in these areas that concluded – yes, this is a deep solar minimum, but at this point, we’re not quite ready to say this is so weird that we need to give a name to it – that it’s something we haven’t seen in 200 years.

HOW DID YOU VOTE?

I didn’t think it was that peculiar. The only peculiar thing I see about it is that it’s so reluctant to get going.

Others are talking about the cosmic rays are through the roof. The number of spotless days is more than we’ve seen in a hundred years. The sun’s poles are weaker than we’ve seen in 30 years. Boy! We have a lot of things we’d like to do that require sunspots on the sun to help us understand how the sun and solar activity work. And without sunspots, we’re kind of shut down! (laughs)

And we also know that at some point, the sun is going to go into another minimum like the Maunder Minimum, but predicting when – I’m not sure I’m ready to go out on that limb. (laughs)

What Happened to 2006 Predictions
of Huge Solar Cycle 24?

ISN’T IT ESPECIALLY STRANGE FOR YOU BECAUSE THREE YEARS AGO, ALL THE PHYSICS OF THE SUN THAT YOU AND NASA AND EVERYBODY ELSE WAS USING WERE ANTICIPATING THAT THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SOLAR MAXIMUM ON RECORD?

There were indications back then. I am writing a paper – it’s on my computer as we speak (laughs) – basically saying that I made a big mistake – myself and Bob Wilson – when we wrote a paper in 2006, suggesting Solar Cycle 24 was going to be a huge cycle based on conditions at that time. The problem we had with our prediction was that it was based on a method that assumes that we’re near sunspot cycle minimum.

We had just previously gone through three or four sunspot cycles that had been only ten years long each, so for the one in 1996 to 2006, it seemed like a reasonable assumption. But as we now know, we were off by at least two years. And if we take conditions on the sun now, it’s a completely different story. The conditions now – using even that same technique from 2006 – says that the next sunspot cycle is going to be half what we thought it was back in 2006.

Another big prediction in 2006 was based on a dynamo model – a model for how the sun produces magnetic fields - and it suggested a huge cycle.

But there also were people back at that time saying otherwise. A group of colleagues led by Leif Svalgaard, Ph.D., were looking at the sun’s polar fields and saying even at that point, the sun’s polar fields were significantly weaker than they had been before and those scientists back then predicted it was going to be a small cycle.

How Small Will Solar Cycle 24 Be?

I’ve come around to that view now. I think there is little doubt in my mind now that we’re in for a small cycle. The big question now is how small? I think most of us are predicting small cycles. I think even the techniques I’m using now are suggesting HALF the size of the last three or four solar cycles, but my fear is that even that might be too big just from the fact that it’s taken so long for this Solar Cycle 24 to really get off the ground and start producing sunspots.

I have no doubt at this point that it’s going to be a little cycle. My current prediction is that it’s going to be about half of what we’ve seen in the last four solar cycles or so. But in my gut, I feel it’s going to be smaller than that! (laughs) It’s just so slow in taking off and the indicators that we see – both the polar fields and the geomagnetic indicators are lower than anything we’ve seen before.

No More 2012 Solar Maximum for Cycle 24?

ISN’T IT IRONIC THAT THERE HAS BEEN ALL THIS ANTICIPATION OF 2012 BECAUSE OF THE CLOSING DOWN OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE EXPECTATION THAT POSSIBLY SOMETHING ON OR FROM THE SUN OR RELATED TO THE SUN MIGHT IMPACT THE EARTH DURING SOME LARGE SOLAR MAXIMUM IN 2012. BUT RIGHT NOW, DOES IT SEEM LIKE THE SUN WILL BE ESPECIALLY QUIET IN 2012?

Indeed. In fact, when we came out with the prediction of a big cycle back in 2006, I got lots of emails from folks. If it was going to be such a big cycle, it should have started in 2006 so by 2012, it ought to be at its peak.

And at this point, it looks like, ‘No, I don’t think so!’ (laughs) Not at all! I think it’s going to be a small peak and it’s not going to be in 2012. It’s going to be in 2013. So, I think any connection that people might try to make between solar activity and the end of the Mayan calendar cycle is problematic.

IN FACT, IN 2012, THE SUN MIGHT BE THE QUIETEST IT HAS BEEN AT A SOLAR MAXIMUM FOR 130 OR MORE YEARS?

Yes, indeed! It might be. The Mayans never said there were going to be disasters. It’s just that it’s the end of that cycle and you start another one.

IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT THE SUN IS BOTH PECULIAR AND UNPREDICTABLE?

Yeah, I’d buy that! (laughs) Most definitely!

Our Variable Sun

WHICH IS KIND OF EERIE FOR EARTH LIFE DEPENDENT ON THAT SUN.

Yeah, the good thing is that when you look at what we really depend upon, which is the radiant energy from the sun – even over the full extent of the sunspot cycle, that only varies by 1/10th of 1%. So, we’re lucky in that regard. It’s a small change. If it were big, I think in terms of evolution, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. But the fact is when it comes to variable stars, our sun’s variability is tiny. Any big solar variations could really wreak havoc on our climate and survivability.

Our Middle Age Sun Is Getting Brighter

In fact, in the much longer picture looking over billions of years, the sun is getting brighter. The sun now is some 30% brighter as far as the energy it puts out than it was 3.5 or 4 billion years ago. This is just part of how stars work. As they burn up the hydrogen in the core to make helium, the core starts to collapse a bit and heat up and that expands the outer layers and makes the sun brighter.

IN THE EVER-INCREASING BRIGHTNESS OF OUR SUN, IT IS HEADED TO BECOMING A RED GIANT AT ITS DEATH, ISN’T IT?

Yeah – we’ve got a long time to wait for that – another 4.5 to 5 billion years! But the sun is quite erratic and really hard to predict. I know from very personal experience!” (laughs)

The Financial Crisis from a Spiritual Perspective

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:07:00 +0000

What I share with you is just that a sharing of my own knowledge and experience none of this is based on any religious belief or scriptures.

Since the beginning of the financial crisis I have kept abreast of some of the most prominent alternative thinkers and experts on the subject over the past 1 ½ years since the crisis began.

I must admit in the beginning I found myself deeply ingrossed in the programming that I was being bombarded with on a daily basis. A lot of negative and repetitive information and I often found myself being pulled into a web of fear about the future and feeling a sense of helplessness and despair.

However as the months went on something started to shift in me. I realized that the fear I was feeling was that I may lose everything I own and my ability to take care of myself should the crisis get really bad. It felt like my identity was being threatened everything I built my life on could potentially be at stake.

For the first time I realized that the physicalworld system that had taken care of me for most of my life was in the midst of it’s demise and that I could possibly be it’s next victim.

Well I have to say that something very profound began to happen to me. The more I continued to read and listen to news and events surrouding the financial crisis the more I found myself in fear and having to surrender, and the more I began to surrender the less fear I began to feel.

Then I began to find myself becoming more and more detached from what was happening and started to realize that the events taking place where external to me and that they did not have power over me and that I can take responsibility for myself and that everything would be fine.

The more I surrendered the more the news and events surrounding the financial circus started to read and sound like a well scripted and well directed movie coming up for an academy award.

The sad part is that many people may not have the same opportunity that I have been given to detach from the events of the financial crisis and see it from a spirtual perspective. People are really caught in the drama of the financial crisis to the point where therer are protests going on around the world.

Unfortunately that is exactly what this financial crisis is designed to do to get people out in the streets and that is why it is a manufactured crisis in order to act as a diversion tactic from what is really happening. You see there is a spiritual war going on and all the other crisises are just diversion tactics being waged on humanity so that we do not do the work necessary to awaken to the truth of who we are which is unconditional love.

You see the identity that I have built up over the years is not who I really am it is and has always given me a false sense of who I am keeping me in a perpetuating cycle of fear, unconscious guilt and unworthiness all the things that make for a excellent victim of a financial crisis in the making.

I am not certain about the financial crisis, but I am sure about one thing it has been the catalyst to get me do some of the most intense work around my ego or false self and come to terms with who I really am which is unconditional love.

Let me just say that this has been a very intense 12 years of self exploration and healing truly a hero's journey and that being able to experience unconditional love is not something that has happened overnight, but my point is that the financial crisis that is going on right now is a clear sign to me that it is more of an opportunity for spiritual awakening and self empowerment then those who have orchestrated it would lead you to believe.

This financial crisis is very symbolic because what it is really saying is if you continue to focus on this financial crisis we will be successful in denying you your spiritual inheritance your right to unconditional love.

But you see people are not there they don’t get it and I often say it is fascinating to watch how we can be so deceived as a people. I mean really who really knows the truth about anything? But really most people don’t know the truth or they don’t want to know what is going on and you can see that by what people focus on.

Don’t get me wrong there is plenty of information out there to inform people but a lot of it is very fragmented and honestly it is designed that way the more people think they know the more overwhelmed and the less inclined they feel about doing anything. Unfortunately so much in the physical world is built on separation and fragmentation the very ingredients to keep people in perpetual fear, guilt, anger, disoriented and in survival.

I think it is time for humanity to wake up and really hold a witness position to what is really happening there is no financial crisis, the world is not going to end it’s all an illusion I know I hate it when people tell me that but it’s true only if you make it so in your mind.

Honestly between you and me humanity is being asked to spiritually and consciously evolve did you hear me consciously evolve as the next step in its evolution in order to create a world that is inclusive of everyone built on a foundation love, but in order to this each person must take responsibility for their own personal evolution.

Do You know what my work is? I am a spiritual activist and I am here to assist individuals who are on a journey of self exploration and healing, to get clear about who they are, what there purpose in life is and how to achieve all that they desire.

The Cosmic Heart is Now Accepting Donations

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

The Cosmic Heart blog has been in operation since the fall of 2007 and we have had close to 19,000 visitors to date.

I never thought to ask for donations until now. If you feel so inclined to donate your offering is welcome! At the top right of this blog.

This blog has always been a wonderful vehical for me to make sense of the world we live in while I have been going through a very intense period of spiritual awakening.

I have always been very much in what I would call a spiritual closet keeping my professional life seperate from my spiritual work and up until recoently it has served me. However, for the past 12 years I have been preparing for the next part of my journey on this earth and that is to assist those I come in contact to awaken to the truth of who they are and live life from a foundation of love rather then fear.

My lifes work and calling has always been to be a spiritual teacher, I have had a full career in business and now wish to be of service to humanity during this wonderful transition in the evolution of consciousness.

I will be sharing more of my upcoming gatherings, workshops, consultations, writings and direction for my work over the next little while so stay tuned while the universe works through me to share the universal language of love.

Artwork By Timothy Helgeson

Consciousness and the unified field Part 1

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Consciousness and the unified field Part 2

The world we live in is an illusion. The non-physical world is the real world

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:24:00 +0000

This world we live in is a illusory world and the real world is the non –physical or spirit world we do not see. We live in what is a dualistic world based on dualistic principles for example. we experience thoughts of fear and love, past and future these thoughts are known in this reality.

However in the non-physical world there only exists love, love permeates all that exists and fear does not exist in the non-physical world and the same goes with past, and future everything only happens in the present moment there is no such thing as time in the non-physical world.

With the dawn of a new age and the evolution of consciousness we are awakening to the fact that we come from and we go back to the non-physical world and that the purpose of existence on earth is to awaken to the truth that we are unconditional love living life on earth in the physical manifestation known as matter, and to let go of all dualistic principles that have kept us from this truth.

When we re-integrate the whole self into this singular principle of our being as unconditional love united with our creator it allows the layers of all dualistic thinking to dissolve so we no longer live from dualistic principles of right and wrong, love and fear, past and future, but in union with our creator in the singular principle of unconditional love.

When this happens there is an instinctual initiation that is activated in our DNA where we yearn to be responsible for our lives here on earth, allowing each of us to become conscious creators of the life that we desire rather then living the life that we have built based on our cultural conditioning.

Just love is Who Are You?

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:57:00 +0000

By Cosmic Facilitator,

What arises in your being when I tell you that you are unconditional love?

What arises in your being when I tell you that unconditional love is your natural inheritance it is your birthright?

What arises in your being when I tell you that all your pain and suffering only arises because the human being that is you has forgotten the truth of who you are which is unconditional love.

What if I told you that once you experience the truth of who you are which is unconditional love that peace arises throughout your whole being overriding any fear, lack or sense of limitation.

The time has come for you to awaken to the truth of who you are. You deserve to fully live your life as it was meant to be. You as the creator of your life experiencing all that you are with reverance.

In remembering who I am, I remember who you are unconditional love.

What is Causing you Pain and Suffering in your Life? Your Negative Thoughts

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:15:00 +0000

It is your negative thought patterns that cause a lot of the pain and suffering in your life. Negative thought patterns arise from your beliefs about yourself.

However what happens is you project your beliefs about yourself onto others which externalizes your pain and suffering, and so you think it is the person who is external to you that is causing your pain and suffering when in fact it is you who is causing the pain and suffering and by externalizing your negative thoughts and beliefs it allows the cycle to continue, that is the pain and suffering survival mechanism of the ego or false self.

The ego or false self does not want you to know that this is one of it’s modes of operation and continuously hides the fact by getting you to externalize your pain and suffering by getting you to externalize your negative thoughts and beliefs outside of yourself. This is how the ego or false self protects itself from your real self which is love.

You see your negative beliefs and thoughts are not in alignment with who you really are, and that is why you have so much pain and suffering in your life. Once you come into alignment with the truth of who you are, which is love you then have greater control over the thoughts and beliefs you have. Then you have the control to create a new thought pattern that is in alignment with who you really are which is love, and then what naturally happends is all negative thoughts reside outside of loves presence and they become insignificant they no longer run your life.

When you are in alignment with the universe which is love you see your world for what it is a figment of your imagination used as a tool to bring you back home to your true self. All your life experiences, thoughts, emotions and states provide an opportunity for you to learn who you truly are while you are on this earth so that you can witness the death of the ego the false self before you leave your physical body and truly live your life from your true self which is love.

Once you learn the truth of who you are you have learned the biggest secret of all, your pain and suffering diminishes this is what you can look forward to but you must experience it to know the truth it is not something you can read in book or understand it on an intellectual level you much experience it so that you can anchor yourself in the very foundation or fabric of who you are making you unstoppable forece self reliant and self responsible.

When you live life from your true self it become simpler to see the world for what it is and not get caught up in the drama that continues and will continue to play out in order to keep you and the rest of humanity from the truth that we are love manifested into matter.

Artwork by Timothy Helgeson

Out of your head: Leaving the body behind

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:03:00 +0000

The young man woke feeling dizzy. He got up and turned around, only to see himself still lying in bed. He shouted at his sleeping body, shook it, and jumped on it.

The next thing he knew he was lying down again, but now seeing himself standing by the bed and shaking his sleeping body. Stricken with fear, he jumped out of the window. His room was on the third floor. He was found later, badly injured.

What this 21-year-old had just experienced was an out-of-body experience, one of the most peculiar states of consciousness. It was probably triggered by his epilepsy (Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, vol 57, p 838). "He didn't want to commit suicide," says Peter Brugger, the young man's neuropsychologist at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland. "He jumped to find a match between body and self. He must have been having a seizure."

In the 15 years since that dramatic incident, Brugger and others have come a long way towards understanding out-of-body experiences. They have narrowed down the cause to malfunctions in a specific brain area and are now working out how these lead to the almost supernatural experience of leaving your own body and observing it from afar. They are also using out-of-body experiences to tackle a long-standing problem: how we create and maintain a sense of self.

Dramatised to great effect by such authors as Dostoevsky, Wilde, de Maupassant and Poe - some of whom wrote from first-hand knowledge - out-of-body experiences are usually associated with epilepsy, migraines, strokes, brain tumours, drug use and even near-death experiences. It is clear, though, that people with no obvious neurological disorders can have an out-of-body experience. By some estimates, about 5 per cent of healthy people have one at some point in their lives.

People without any obvious neurological disorder can have an out-of-body experience
So what exactly is an out-of-body experience? A definition has recently emerged that involves a set of increasingly bizarre perceptions. The least severe of these is a doppelgänger experience: you sense the presence of or see a person you know to be yourself, though you remain rooted in your own body. This often progresses to stage 2, where your sense of self moves back and forth between your real body and your doppelgänger. This was what Brugger's young patient experienced. Finally, your self leaves your body altogether and observes it from outside, often an elevated position such as the ceiling. "This split is the most striking feature of an out-of-body experience," says Olaf Blanke, a neurologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Surprisingly pleasant
Some out-of-body experiences involve just one of these stages; some all three, in progression. Bizarrely, many people who have one report it as a pleasant experience. So what could be going on in the brain to create such a seemingly impossible sensation?

The first substantial clues came in 2002, when Blanke's team stumbled across a way to induce a full-blown out-of-body experience. They were performing exploratory brain surgery on a 43-year-old woman with severe epilepsy to determine which part of her brain to remove in order to cure her. When they stimulated a region near the back of the brain called the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the woman reported that she was floating above her own body and looking down on herself.

This makes some kind of neurological sense. The TPJ processes visual and touch signals, balance and spatial information from the inner ear, and the proprioceptive sensations from joints, tendons and muscles that tell us where our body parts are in relation to one another. Its job is to meld these together to create a feeling of embodiment: a sense of where your body is, and where it ends and the rest of the world begins. Blanke and colleagues hypothesised that out-of-body experiences arise when, for whatever reason, the TPJ fails to do this properly (Nature, vol 419, p 269).

More evidence later emerged that a malfunctioning TPJ was at the heart of the out-of-body experience. In 2007, for example, Dirk De Ridder of University Hospital Antwerp in Belgium was trying to help a 63-year-old man with intractable tinnitus. In a last-ditch attempt to silence the ringing in his ears, Ridder's team implanted electrodes near the patient's TPJ. It did not cure his tinnitus, but it did lead to him experiencing something close to an out-of-body experience: he would feel his self shift about 50 centimetres behind and to the left of his body. The feeling would last more than 15 seconds, long enough to carry out PET scans of his brain. Sure enough, the team found that the TPJ was activated during the experiences.

Insights from neurological disorders or brain surgery can only take you so far, however, not least because cases are rare. Larger-scale studies are required, and to achieve this Blanke and others have used a technique called "own-body transformation tasks" to force the brain to do things that it seemingly does during an out-of-body experience. In these experiments, subjects are shown a sequence of brief glimpses of cartoon figures wearing a glove on one hand.

Some of the figures face the subject, others have their back turned (see diagram). The task is to imagine yourself in the position of the cartoon figure in order to work out which hand the glove is on. To do this, you may have to mentally rotate you own body as one image succeeds another. As volunteers performed these tasks, the researchers mapped their brain activity with an EEG and found that the TPJ was activated when the volunteers imagined themselves in a position different from their actual orientation - an out-of-body position.

The team also zapped the TPJ with transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive technique that can temporarily disable parts of the brain. With a disrupted TPJ, volunteers took significantly longer to do the own-body transformation task (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 25, p 550).

Other brain regions have been implicated too, including ones close to the TPJ. The emerging consensus is that when these regions are working well, we feel at one with our body. But disrupt them, and our sense of embodiment can float away.

This does not, however, explain the most striking feature of out-of-body experiences. "It's a great puzzle why people, from their out-of-body locations, visualise not only their bodies but things around them, such as other people," says Brugger. "Where does this information come from?"

One line of evidence comes from the condition known as sleep paralysis, in which healthy people find their body immobilised as in sleep despite being conscious (see "The twilight zone"). In a survey of nearly 12,000 people who had experienced sleep paralysis, Allan Cheyne of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, found that many reported sensations similar to out-of-body experiences. These included floating out of their body and turning back to look at it.

Cheyne suggests that this might be the result of conflicts of information in the brain. During sleep paralysis, it is possible to enter a REM-like state in which you dream of moving or flying. Under these circumstances you are conscious of a sensation of movement, yet your brain is aware that your body cannot move.

In an attempt to resolve this sensory conflict, the brain cuts the sense of self loose (Cortex, vol 45, p 201). "It resolves by splitting the self from its body," says Cheyne. "The self seems to go with the movement and the body gets left behind." Perhaps similar sensory conflicts cause classic out-of-body experiences.

The brain resolves sensory conflict by splitting the self from the body. The body gets left behind Brugger, meanwhile, has a suggestion for how someone might see things even though their eyes are shut, based on one of his patients who reported an out-of-body experience. According to this patient's father, who was sitting by the bedside, he had his eyes closed. Yet he later reported seeing, from a perspective above his bed, his father going to the bathroom, returning with a wet towel and towelling his forehead.

The patient presumably heard his father walk to the bathroom and run some water, and must have felt the wet towel on his head. Brugger speculates that his brain converted those stimuli into a visual image, not unlike what happens in synaesthesia. This still does not, however, explain the external vantage point. "It's not clear how the brain constructs that," says cognitive philosopher Thomas Metzinger of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Metzinger does have a suggestion. Imagine an episode from a recent holiday. Do you visualise it from a first-person perspective, or from a third-person perspective with yourself in the scene? Surprisingly, most of us do the latter. "In encoding visual memories, the brain already uses an external perspective," says Metzinger. "We don't know much about why and how, but if something is extracted from such a database [during an out-of-body experience], there may be material for seeing oneself from the outside."

Whatever the mechanism, the study of out-of-body experiences promises to help answer a profound question in neuroscience and philosophy: how does self-consciousness emerge? It's abundantly clear to us that we have a sense of self that resides, most of the time, in our bodies. Yet it is also clear from out-of-body experiences that the sense of self can seemingly detach from your physical body. So how are the self and the body related?

To address that question, Metzinger has teamed up with Blanke and his colleagues in an experiment that induces an out-of-body experience in healthy volunteers. They film each volunteer from behind and project the image into a head-mounted display worn by the volunteer so that they see an image of themselves standing about 2 metres in front. The experimenters then stroke the volunteer's back - which the volunteers see being done to their virtual self. This creates sensory conflict, and many reported feeling their sense of self migrating out of their physical bodies and towards the virtual one (Science, vol 317, p 1096).

To Metzinger, these experiments demonstrate that self-consciousness begins with the feeling of owning a body, but there is more to self-consciousness than the mere feelings of embodiment. "Selfhood has many components," says Metzinger. "We are trying to fill them in, building block by building block. This is just the beginning."

What Drives Our Genes? Researchers Map The First Complete Human Epigenome

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:58:00 +0000

ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2009) — Although the human genome sequence faithfully lists (almost) every single DNA base of the roughly 3 billion bases that make up a human genome, it doesn't tell biologists much about how its function is regulated. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute provide the first detailed map of the human epigenome, the layer of genetic control beyond the regulation inherent in the sequence of the genes themselves.

"In the past we've been limited to viewing small snippets of the epigenome," says senior author Joseph Ecker, Ph.D., professor and director of the Genomic Analysis Laboratory at the Salk Institute and a member of the San Diego Epigenome Center. "Being able to study the epigenome in its entirety will lead to a better understanding of how genome function is regulated in health and disease but also how gene expression is influenced by diet and the environment."

Their study, published in the Oct. 14, 2009 advance online edition of the journal Nature, compared the epigenomes of human embryonic stem cells and differentiated connective cells from the lung called fibroblasts, revealing a highly dynamic, yet tightly controlled, landscape of chemical signposts known as methyl-groups. The head-to-head comparison brought to light a novel DNA methylation pattern unique to stem cells, which may explain how stem cells establish and maintain their pluripotent state, the researchers say.

The emergence of epigenetics has already changed the way researchers think about how disease arises and how physicians treat it. Epigenetic changes play a crucial role in the development of cancer and some drugs that directly interact with the epigenome have been approved for the treatment of lymphoma and lung cancer and are now tested against a number of other cancer types. "Unless we know how these drugs affect the entire epigenome, we don't really understand their full mechanism of action," says Ecker.

Recognizing the central role of the epigenome in many areas of biology and medicine the National Institutes of Health launched a five-year Roadmap Epigenomics Program in 2008. The San Diego Epigenome Center, headed by Bing Ren, Ph.D., Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and head of the Laboratory of Gene Regulation at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, is an integral part of the five-year, $190 million push to accelerate research into modifications that alter genetic behavior across the human genome.

The current study, to which Ren and additional members of the Center located at the University of Wisconsin and the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, Wisconsin, also contributed, is not only the first complete high-resolution map of an epigenome superimposed on the human genome, but also the first study to be published as a direct result of the Roadmap Epigenomics Program.

"This paper exemplifies the goals of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research's Epigenomics Program," said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the NIH institutes funding this program. "The science has matured to a point that we can now map the epigenome of a cell. This paper documents the first complete mapping of the methylome, a subset of the entire epigenome, of 2 types of human cells - an embryonic stem cell and a human fibroblast line. This will help us better understand how a diseased cell differs from a normal cell, which will enhance our understanding of the pathways of various diseases."

Epigenetic signals can tinker with genetic information in at least two ways: One targets histones, the "spools" around which DNA winds and which control access to DNA. The other is DNA methylation, a chemical modification of one letter, C (cytosine), of the four letters (A, G, C, and T) that comprise our DNA. In the last couple of years, Ecker's laboratory started to zoom in on genomic methylation patterns, which are essential for normal development and are associated with a number of key cellular processes, including carcinogenesis.

Perfecting the technique in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant whose genome is 25 times smaller than the human genome, Ryan Lister, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Ecker's lab and co-first author on the current study, developed an ultra high-throughput methodology to precisely determine whether each C in the genome is methylated or not, and layer the resulting epigenomic map upon the exact genome it regulates.

He then put the brand new technology to work to map the epigenomes of differentiated fibroblast cells and human embryonic stem cells (hESCs.) "We wanted to know how the epigenome of a differentiated cell that's programmed to perform a specific job differs from the epigenome of a pluripotent stem cell, that has the potential to turn into any other cell type," Lister says.

Just as expected, in fibroblast cells the majority of Cs followed by a G carried a methyl-group, a pattern often referred to as CG-methylation. But much to the Salk researchers' surprise, in embryonic stem cells about a quarter of all methylation events occurred in a different context.

"Non-CG methylation is not completely unheard of -- people have seen it in dribs and drabs, even in stem cells. But nobody expected that it would be so extensive," says postdoctoral researcher and co-first author Mattia Pelizzola, who along with Lister undertook the extensive task of extracting and analyzing the epigenome data from these vast sequence datasets. "The whole field had been focused on CG methylation, and non-CG methylation was often considered a technical artifact."

To confirm their finding, the authors then targeted several regions in a second hESC line, as well as in fibroblast cells that had been reprogrammed into so called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. "They both had the same high level of non-CG methylation, which was lost when we forced them to differentiate," says Pelizzola.

Being able to create high resolutions maps of the human epigenome, Ecker's group will now begin to examine how it changes during normal development as well as examining a variety of disease states. "For the first time, we will be able to see the fine details of how DNA methylation changes in stem cells and other cells as they grow and develop into new cell types," he says. "We believe this knowledge will be extremely valuable for understanding diseases such as cancer and possibly even mental disorders. Right now we just don't know how the epigenome changes during the aging process or how the epigenome is impacted by our environment or diet."

This work was supported in part by grants from the Mary K. Chapman Foundation, the NIH, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Program and the Morgridge Institute for Research.

Researchers who also contributed to the work include Robert H. Dowen and Joseph R. Nery in the Genomic Analysis Laboratory, Gary Hon, Leonard Lee, Zhen Ye, Que-Minh Ngo and Lee Edsall at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California San Diego, Julian Tonti-Filippini and A. Harvey Millar at the ARC Center of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology in Crawley, Australia, Jessica Antosiewicz-Bourget, Ron Stewart, Victor Ruotti and James A. Thomson at the Morgridge Institute for Research and at the Genome Center of Wisconsin, both at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Artwork by Timothy Helgeson

Placebo effect starts in the spine – not just the mind

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:54:00 +0000

If you thought the placebo effect was all in the mind, think again. Scientists have solved the mystery of why some people benefit from remedies that do not contain any active pain-relief ingredients.

Research suggests that placebos work, in part, by blocking pain signals in the spinal cord from arriving at the brain in the first place.

When patients expect a treatment to be effective the brain area responsible for pain control is activated, causing the release of natural endorphins.

The endorphins send a cascade of instructions down to the spinal cord to suppress incoming pain signals and patients feel better whether or not the treatment had any direct effect.

The sequence of events in the brain closely mirrors the way opioid drugs, such as morphine, work — adding weight to the view that the placebo effect is grounded in physiology.

The finding strengthens the argument that many established medical treatments derive part of their effectiveness from the patients’ expectation that the drugs will make them better.

The latest studies on antidepressants suggest that at least 75 per cent of the benefit comes from the placebo effect. GPs also observe that patients report feeling better only days after being prescribed antidepressants, even though the direct effects take several weeks to kick in.

In the study, published today in the journal Science, the spinal cords of 15 healthy volunteers were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The scan homed in on an area called the dorsal horn, which transmits pain signals coming up through the spinal cord into the pain-related areas in the brain.

During the scan, the volunteers received laser “pinpricks” to their hands. The volunteers were told that a pain-relief cream had been applied to one of their hands and a control cream to the other. But unknown to the volunteers, an identical control cream was administered to both hands.

When people believed that they had received the active cream, they reported feeling 25 per cent less pain and showed significantly reduced activity in the spinal cord pathway that processes pain.

Previously, it has been shown that placebo causes the release of natural opioids in areas of the brain involved in pain control, such as the rostral anterior cingulate cortex. However, it was not known whether the natural opioids acted on the spinal cord in the same way as artificial painkillers or whether they simply changed people’s tolerance or interpretation of pain.

“We’ve shown that psychological factors can influence pain at the earliest stage of the central nervous system, in a similar way to drugs like morphine,” said Falk Eippert, of the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, who led the study.

Until now, the difficulty of obtaining MRI images of the spinal cord, because of its small size and its being surrounded by airways and pulsating arteries, prevented this question from being addressed. However, advances in image processing allowed the Hamburg team to obtain high resolution scans of the region.

The advance in imaging techniques is likely to have important applications for drug development.

Pharmaceutical companies are working to develop new anaesthetic drugs that target the pain pathways in the spinal cord. Being able to image this area of the body provides a direct way of testing whether the drugs are working as intended.

The findings will continue to fuel debate over the prescription of “sugar pill” cures. In a study in 2005, 48 per cent of Danish GPs admitted having prescribed a placebo at least ten times in a year. A variety of placebo cures, such as Obecalp pills for children, are also available on the internet.

A spoonful of sugar

• The children’s medicine Calpol contains a little paracetamol but is generally seen as a sugar cure

• Scientists have shown that placebo surgery can be as effective as real surgery for conditions ranging from heart disease to arthritic knees

• Thanks to its strong placebo effect, spiritual healing is available on the NHS to cancer patients

• Placebos aren’t limited to medicine — giving people decaffeinated coffee, but telling them it has caffeine in it causes them to perk up and similarly alcohol placebos can cause intoxication

• Some studies of placebo cures for animals show pets getting better, but it might just be owners anxiety that is being cured

IBEX DISCOVERS THAT GALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELDS MAY CONTROL THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:48:00 +0000

(Boston) - The first all-sky maps developed by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, the initial mission to examine the global interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, suggest that the galactic magnetic fields had a far greater impact on Earth's history than previously conceived, and the future of our planet and others may depend, in part, on how the galactic magnetic fields change with time.

"The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with emissions not resembling any of the current theories or models of this never-before-seen region," says Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute. "We expected to see small, gradual spatial variations at the interstellar boundary, some 10 billion miles away. However, IBEX is showing us a very narrow ribbon that is two to three times brighter than anything else in the sky."

A "solar wind" of charged particles continuously travels at supersonic speeds away from the Sun in all directions. This solar wind inflates a giant bubble in interstellar space called the heliosphere — the region of space dominated by the Sun's influence in which the Earth and other planets reside. As the solar wind travels outward, it sweeps up newly formed "pickup ions," which arise from the ionization of neutral particles drifting in from interstellar space. IBEX measures energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) traveling at speeds of roughly half a million to two and a half million miles per hour. These ENAs are produced from the solar wind and pick-up ions in the boundary region between the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium.

The IBEX mission just completed the first global maps of these protective layers called the heliosphere through a new technique that uses neutral atoms like light to image the interactions between electrically charged and neutral atoms at the distant reaches of our Sun’s influence, far beyond the most distant planets. It is here that the solar wind, which continually emanates from the Sun at millions of miles per hour, slams into the magnetized medium of charged particles, atoms and dust that pervades the galaxy and is diverted around the system. The interaction between the solar wind and the medium of our galaxy creates a complex host of interactions, which has long fascinated scientists, and is thought to shield the majority of harmful galactic radiation that reaches Earth and fills the solar system.

"The magnetic fields of our galaxy may change the protective layers of our solar system that regulate the entry of galactic radiation, which affects Earth and poses hazards to astronauts," says Nathan Schwadron of Boston University's Center for Space Physics and the lead for the IBEX Science Operations Center at BU.

Each six months, the IBEX mission, which was launched on October 18, 2008, completes its global maps of the heliosphere. The first IBEX maps are strikingly different than any of the predictions, which are now forcing scientists to reconsider their basic assumptions of how the heliosphere is created.

"The most striking feature is the ribbon that appears to be controlled by the magnetic field of our galaxy," says Schwadron.

Although scientists knew that their models would be tested by the IBEX measurements, the existence of the ribbon is “remarkable” says Geoffrey Crew, a Research Scientist at MIT and the Software Design Lead for IBEX. “It suggests that the galactic magnetic fields are much stronger and exert far greater stresses on the heliosphere than we previously believed.”

The discovery has scientists thinking carefully about how different the heliosphere could be than they expected.

"It was really surprising that the models did not generate features at all like the ribbon we observed," says Christina Prested, a BU graduate student working on IBEX. "Understanding the ribbon in detail will require new insights into the inner workings of the interactions at the edge of our Sun's influence in the galaxy."

Adds Schwadron,"Any changes to our understanding of the heliosphere will also affect how we understand the astrospheres that surround other stars. The harmful radiation that leaks into the solar system from the heliosphere is present throughout the galaxy and the existence of astrospheres may be important for understanding the habitability of planets surrounding other stars."

IBEX is the latest in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers space missions. Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, leads and developed the mission with a team of national and international partners. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Center for Space Physics at Boston University carries out a wide variety of research in space physics including: space plasma physics, magnetospheric physics, ionospheric physics, atmospheric physics, and planetary and cometary atmospheric studies.

Scientists try to calm '2012' hysteria

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:43:00 +0000

As an upcoming action movie fuels Internet rumors, several scientists make public statements: The world will not end in 2012, and Earth is not going to crash into a rogue planet.

Is 2012 the end of the world?

If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.

Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time.

"Two years ago, I got a question a week about it," said NASA scientist David Morrison, who hosts a website called Ask an Astrobiologist. "Now I'm getting a dozen a day. Two teenagers said they didn't want to see the end of the world so they were thinking of ending their lives."

Morrison said he tries to reassure people that their fears are groundless, but has received so many inquiries that he has posted a list of 10 questions and answers on the website of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific ( www.astrosociety.org).

Titled "Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru and Cosmophobia," the article breaks down the sources of the hysteria and assures people that the ancients didn't actually know more about the cosmos than we do.

"The world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012," E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, declared in a statement released Thursday by the observatory and Sky & Telescope magazine. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the magazine's November issue.

Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. Then there's the fact that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, suggesting that the Maya knew something we don't. Finally, end-of-the-worlders have seized upon the hubbub about the 2012 date to proclaim their belief that end times are drawing near.

Morrison, who heads the Lunar Science Institute at the Ames Research Center in Northern California, has coined a term for the phenomenon: "cosmophobia," a fear of the cosmos. According to Morrison, for the most vulnerable among us, all of the things we've learned about the universe in the last century have only increased the number of potential threats to our existence.

Besides fearing a rampaging planet, the worriers think the sun might lash out at the Earth with some calamitous electromagnetic force. They also fear that some sort of alignment between the Earth and the center of our galaxy could unleash catastrophe.

Krupp said that the scare-mongers would have us believe that the "ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike."

According to Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, the Maya never predicted anything. The 2012 date is approximately when the ancient calendar would roll over, like the odometer on a car; it did not mean the end -- merely the start of a new cycle.

Some authors have tried to merge that idea, Joyce said, with Maya mythology that said the Earth had gone through multiple ages of creation, each ending in a disaster. "But there's no prediction," she said. "They did not predict the end of the world."

Morrison says it's hard to know whether the people who have written to him with their fears represent a fringe or a larger cross-section of Americans who, distrustful of traditional sources of information and the authorities behind them, are falling victim to the Internet's snake-oil salesmen.

In such an environment, the viral marketing campaign for the movie "2012," which encourages people to "Vote for the Leader of the Post-2012 World," can seem like confirmation of the apocalypse, rather than of an upcoming 90-minute entertainment vehicle.

A spokesman for Sony Pictures, Steve Elzer, said: "We believe consumers understand that the advertising is promoting a fictional film."

Morrison said the movie's distributors are feeding the "panic" by creating some of the fake science websites. Most of the sites, Morrison said, are full of misinformation and speculation, often by people who have written books they are trying to sell.

Morrison said he could not address the motives of people who were feeding the alarm, but added: "It's wrong to tell lies to frighten people merely to make a buck."

What most worries him is the level of alarm in some of the most recent messages.

"I'm getting more and more questions from people who are upset and scared," he said. Some people say their children are refusing to eat.

In the publication Morrison has posted online, he says that astronomers would long ago have spotted a rogue planet headed for Earth, that the so-called photos of Nibiru on the Internet are fictitious, and that just because the Maya calendar in question ends in 2012, it doesn't mean the Maya were predicting the end of the world.

"The calendar on my desk ends on December 31, 2009. I do not interpret that to mean the world is going to end that day."

How The Moon Produces Its Own Water

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:35:00 +0000

The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

It also gives scientists an ingenious new way to take images of the Moon and any other airless body in the Solar System.

The lunar surface is a loose collection of irregular dust grains, known as regolith. Incoming particles should be trapped in the spaces between the grains and absorbed. When this happens to protons they are expected to interact with the oxygen in the lunar regolith to produce hydroxyl and water. The signature for these molecules was recently found and reported by Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument team.

The SARA results confirm that solar hydrogen nuclei are indeed being absorbed by the lunar regolith but also highlight a mystery: not every proton is absorbed. One out of every five rebounds into space. In the process, the proton joins with an electron to become an atom of hydrogen. “We didn’t expect to see this at all,” says Stas Barabash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, who is the European Principal Investigator for the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument, which made the discovery.

Although Barabash and his colleagues do not know what is causing the reflections, the discovery paves the way for a new type of image to be made. The hydrogen shoots off with speeds of around 200 km/s and escapes without being deflected by the Moon’s weak gravity. Hydrogen is also electrically neutral, and is not diverted by the magnetic fields in space. So the atoms fly in straight lines, just like photons of light. In principle, each atom can be traced back to its origin and an image of the surface can be made. The areas that emit most hydrogen will show up the brightest.

Whilst the Moon does not generate a global magnetic field, some lunar rocks are magnetised. Barabash and his team are currently making images, to look for such ‘magnetic anomalies’ in lunar rocks. These generate magnetic bubbles that deflect incoming protons away into surrounding regions making magnetic rocks appear dark in a hydrogen image.

The incoming protons are part of the solar wind, a constant stream of particles given off by the Sun. They collide with every celestial object in the Solar System but are usually stopped by the body’s atmosphere. On bodies without such a natural shield, for example asteroids or the planet Mercury, the solar wind reaches the ground. The SARA team expects that these objects too will reflect many of the incoming protons back into space as hydrogen atoms.

This knowledge provides timely advice for the scientists and engineers who are readying ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The spacecraft will be carrying two similar instruments to SARA and may find that the inner-most planet is reflecting more hydrogen than the Moon because the solar wind is more concentrated closer to the Sun.

SARA was one of three instruments that ESA contributed to Chandrayaan-1, the lunar orbiter that finished its mission in August 2009. The instrument was built jointly by scientific groups from Sweden, India, Japan, and Switzerland: Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden; Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum, India; University of Bern, Switzerland; and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan. The instrument is led by Principal Investigators Stanislav Barabash, IRF, Sweden, and Anil Bhardwaj, VSSC, India.

Cassini Data Help Redraw Shape of Solar System

thecosmicheart@gmail.com (Kerrace Alexander) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:31:00 +0000

Images from the Ion and Neutral Camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere, the region of the sun’s influence, may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models.

In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science Express, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory present a new view of the heliosphere, and the forces that shape it.

“These images have revolutionized what we thought we knew for the past 50 years; the sun travels through the galaxy not like a comet but more like a big, round bubble,” said Stamatios Krimigis of the Applied Physics Lab, in Laurel, Md., principal investigator for Cassini’s Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument which carries the Ion and Neutral Camera. “It’s amazing how a single new observation can change an entire concept that most scientists had taken as true for nearly fifty years.”

As the solar wind flows from the sun, it carves out a bubble in the interstellar medium. Models of the boundary region between the heliosphere and interstellar medium have been based on the assumption that the relative flow of the interstellar medium and its collision with the solar wind dominate the interaction. This would create a foreshortened “nose” in the direction of the solar system’s motion, and an elongated “tail” in the opposite direction.

The Ion and Neutral Camera images suggest that the solar wind’s interaction with the interstellar medium is instead more significantly controlled by particle pressure and magnetic field energy density.

“The map we’ve created from the images suggests that pressure from a hot population of charged particles and interaction with the interstellar medium’s magnetic field strongly influence the shape of the heliosphere,” says Don Mitchell, Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument/Ion and Neutral Camera co-investigator at the Applied Physics Lab.

Since entering into orbit around Saturn in July of 2004, the Ion and Neutral Camera has been mapping energetic neutral atoms near the planet, as well as their dispersal across the entire sky. The energetic neutral atoms are produced by energetic protons, which are responsible for the outward pressure of the heliosphere beyond the interface where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium, and which interact with the magnetic field of the interstellar medium.

“Energetic neutral atom imaging has demonstrated its power to reveal the distribution of energetic ions, first in Earth’s own magnetosphere, next in the giant magnetosphere of Saturn and now throughout vast structures in space—out to the very edge of our sun’s interaction with the interstellar medium,” says Edmond C. Roelof, Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument co-investigator at the Applied Physics Lab.

The results from Cassini complement and extend findings from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft. Data from IBEX and Cassini have made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy.

Researchers from University of Arizona, Tucson; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio; and University of Texas at San Antonio contributed to the article. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument was developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory.