Five ways to travel through time

Travel to the past is probably impossible. But to the future? That’s a different story. Cathal O'Connell considers the feasibility of physics.

In 2009 the British physicist Stephen Hawking held a party for time travellers - the twist was he sent out the invites a year later. (No guests showed up).

Travel into the past is probably impossible. Even if it were possible, Hawking and others have argued that you could never travel back before the moment your time machine was built.

But travel to the future? That’s a different story.

Of course, we are all time travellers as we are swept along in the current of time, from past to future, at a rate of one hour per hour.
But, as with a river, the current flows at different speeds in different places. Science as we know it allows for several methods to take the fast-track into the future.

Here’s a rundown.

1. Speed

This is the easiest and most practical way to get to the far future - go really fast.

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, when you travel at speeds approaching the speed of light, time slows down for you relative to the outside world.

This is not a just a conjecture or thought experiment - it’s been measured. Using twin atomic clocks (one flown in a jet aircraft, the other stationary on Earth) physicists have shown that a flying clock ticks slower, because of its speed.

In the case of the aircraft, the effect is minuscule. But If you were in a spaceship travelling at 90% of the speed of light, you’d experience time passing about 2.6 times slower than it was back on Earth.
And the closer you get to the speed of light, the more extreme the time-travel.

The highest speeds achieved through any human technology are probably the protons whizzing around the Large Hadron Collider at 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Using special relativity we can calculate one second for the proton is equivalent to 27,777,778 seconds, or about 11 months, for us.

Amazingly, particle physicists have to take this time dilation into account when they are dealing with particles that decay. In the lab, muon particles typically decay in 2.2 microseconds. But fast moving muons, such as those created when cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, take 10 times longer to disintegrate.

2. Gravity

The next method is also inspired by Einstein. According to his theory of general relativity, the stronger the gravity you feel, the slower time moves.

As you get closer to the centre of the Earth, for example, the strength of gravity increases. Time runs slower for your feet than your head.

Again, this effect has been measured. In 2010, physicists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) placed two atomic clocks on shelves, one 33 centimetres above the other, and measured the difference in their rate of ticking. The lower one ticked slower because it feels a slightly stronger gravity.

To travel to the far future, all we need is a region of extremely strong gravity, such as a black hole. The closer you get to the event horizon, the slower time moves - but it’s risky business, cross the boundary and you can never escape.

And anyway, the effect is not that strong so it’s probably not worth the trip.

Assuming you had the technology to travel the vast distances to reach a black hole (the nearest is about 3,000 light years away), the time dilation through travelling would be far greater than any time dilation through orbiting the black hole itself.

(The situation described in the movie Interstellar, where one hour on a planet near a black hole is the equivalent of seven years back on Earth, is so extreme as to be impossible in our Universe, according to Kip Thorne, the movie’s scientific advisor.)

The most mindblowing thing, perhaps, is that GPS systems have to account for time dilation effects (due to both the speed of the satellites and gravity they feel) in order to work. Without these corrections, your phones GPS capability wouldn’t be able to pinpoint your location on Earth to within even a few kilometres.

3. Suspended animation

Another way to travel to the future may be to slow your perception of time by slowing down, or stopping, your bodily processes and then restarting them later.

Bacterial spores can live for millions of years in a state of suspended animation, until the right conditions of temperature, moisture, food kick start their metabolisms again. Some mammals, such as bears and squirrels, can slow down their metabolism during hibernation, dramatically reducing their cells’ requirement for food and oxygen.

Could humans ever do the same?

Though completely stopping your metabolism is probably far beyond our current technology, some scientists are working towards achieving inducing a short-term hibernation state lasting at least a few hours. This might be just enough time to get a person through a medical emergency, such as a cardiac arrest, before they can reach the hospital.

In 2005, American scientists demonstrated a way to slow the metabolism of mice (which do not hibernate) by exposing them to minute doses of hydrogen sulphide, which binds to the same cell receptors as oxygen. The core body temperature of the mice dropped to 13 °C and metabolism decreased 10-fold. After six hours the mice could be reanimated without ill effects.
Unfortunately, similar experiments on sheep and pigs were not successful, suggesting the method might not work for larger animals.

Another method, which induces a hypothermic hibernation by replacing the blood with a cold saline solution, has worked on pigs and is currently undergoing human clinical trials in Pittsburgh.

4. Wormholes

General relativity also allows for the possibility for shortcuts through spacetime, known as wormholes, which might be able to bridge distances of a billion light years or more, or different points in time.
Many physicists, including Stephen Hawking, believe wormholes are constantly popping in and out of existence at the quantum scale, far smaller than atoms. The trick would be to capture one, and inflate it to human scales - a feat that would require a huge amount of energy, but which might just be possible, in theory.

Attempts to prove this either way have failed, ultimately because of the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

5. Using light

Another idea, put forward by the American physicist Ron Mallet, is to use a rotating cylinder of light to twist spacetime. Anything dropped inside the swirling cylinder could theoretically be dragged around in space and in time, in a similar way to how a bubble runs around on top your coffee after you swirl it with a spoon.

According to Mallet, the right geometry could lead to time travel into either the past and the future.

Since publishing his theory in 2000, Mallet has been trying to raise the funds to pay for a proof of concept experiment, which involves dropping neutrons through a circular arrangement of spinning lasers.

His ideas have not grabbed the rest of the physics community however, with others arguing that one of the assumptions of his basic model is plagued by a singularity, which is physics-speak for “it's impossible”.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/ph…/five-ways-travel-through-time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/…/stephen-hawking-time-trav…

http://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation/#.VwudOVt961t

http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_speci…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

http://edition.cnn.com/…/innova…/suspended-animation-trials/

http://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html

உண்மையில் நாங்களும் ரை பண்ணலாமா?

INTERESTING STORY OF CAR WIPERS

Just imagine yourself driving a car without wipers in a heavy rain! Is it easy to drive?!

At the dawn of the 20th century, Mary Anderson went to New York City for the first time. She saw a much different New York City than the one tourists see today. There were no cabs honking, nor were there thousands of cars vying for position in afternoon traffic. Cars had not yet captured the American imagination and were quite rare when Anderson took that trip, but the woman from Alabama would end up inventing something that has become standard on every automobile. During her trip, Anderson took a tram through the snow-covered city.

She noticed that the driver had to stop the tram every few minutes to wipe the snow off his front window. At the time, all drivers had to do so; rain and snow were thought to be things drivers had to deal with, even though they resulted in poor visibility. When she returned home, Anderson developed a squeegee on a spindle that was attached to a handle on the inside of the vehicle. When the driver needed to clear the glass, he simply pulled on the handle and the squeegee wiped the precipitation from the windshield.

Anderson received the patent for her device in 1903; just 10 years later, thousands of Americans owned a car with her invention.

"So, if there exists a problem, there exists an opportunity if you can see it...!"

More interesting stories to come, just engage with my posts (or follow me if you have not followed yet) if you want to see the inspirational stories you love on your timeline.

One of the best perfectly preserved mummies of the world

Rosalia Lombardo,an Italian child mummy, She had died in the year 1920 at the age of two. She's almost perfectly preserved even though she's been dead for 93 years. She still has all her internal organs, skin, and even eyes remarkably intact.

Delivery Truck in Knoxville/1909

Robotic farming..is it going to be the futuristic technology considering the labor shortages

Robotic farming..is it going to be the futuristic technology considering the labor shortages..experiments are on for another revolution in the agriculture sector!!

Robotic farms may be the future of crop production, and Japan is on its way to launching the first of its kind. Spread, a vegetable producer based in Kyoto, promises that pesticide-free lettuce will pack more nutrients, cost less to produce than current conventional farming techniques, and will increase output incomparably faster.

"Seed planting will still be done by people, but the rest of the process, including harvesting, will be done by  industrial robots," company official Koji Morisada told AFP. Morisada added that the robot labor would cut personnel costs by roughly half and reduce energy expenses down by nearly one third thanks to the LED lighting they plan on implementing.

In 2012, the Japanese-based firm announced they would be the first company in the world to launch a fully automated farm with robots in charge of nearly every step in the process. But now the promise has finally come to fruition — the company’s begun growing the lettuce plants operated by robots that resemble human arms. The “indoor grow house” will begin operation by mid-2017, with the plan to produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day. Their goal is to increase production to half a million heads a day within five years of opening. 

This futuristic lettuce plant is an advanced type of hydroponic indoor vegetable growing operation, which allows the farming process to move indoors where the sun never shines.Sunless farming relies on darkened rooms illuminated by blue and red LED lights.

These smart farms are climate-controlled farming units that allow growers to profit indoors, a system that was created out of tragedy. The Shigeharu Shimamura farming company opened in 2004 after a nuclear disaster led to food shortages. An abandoned factory was transformed into the world’s biggest indoor farm with 25,000 square feet, currently producing up to 10,000 heads of lettuce a day—100 times more per square foot than current farming methods. The plants grew twice as fast using 40 percent less power, 80 percent less food waste, and 99 percent less water usage than outdoor farm fields.

The robot-run farm is predicted to outdo Shimamura’s indoor farms using less space with increased production. The automated innovation will increase the company’s lettuce production from 21,000 heads a day to 50,000. The farm measured about 4,400 square meters with floor-to-ceiling shelves for the produce to grow from. The entirely automated agricultural system is an effort to compensate for labor shortages elsewhere in the country’s economy. The company plans to build more robotic plant farms throughout Japan, with the long-term goal of tapping into overseas markets. 

Ravi Shankar directing the host of Giants This video will take your breath away

This video will take your breath away . It is 1969-70. Pt Ravi Shankar directing the host of Giants . Alla Rakhha , HARI Prasad , Shivkumar Sharma , Kartik Kumar and host of others . Enjoy . These things are rare to come by

Who was Ravi Shankar?

Pandit Ravi Shankar, was the virtuoso sitar maestro who introduced Indian classical music to the world and inspired the Sixties 'psychedelic' sound through his collaboration with the Beatles.

Shankar was born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury in Benares (a.k.a. Varanasi, or Kashi), Uttar Pradesh, on April 7 1920 and raised by his mother in a Bengali brahmin community.

Pandit Ravi Shankar CREDIT: AP

His father, Pandit Dr Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, a wealthy landowner and minister in a maharaja’s court, left his family in poverty and went to Calcutta and then London to practise law. 

The youngest of five surviving brothers (two other children had died, at birth and in early childhood), Shankar was nicknamed Ravi, meaning “the sun”.

He met his father for the first time when he was eight years old.

Ravi Shankar and George Harrison collaborate

In 1966, Harrison befriended Shankar and began to take lessons from him and the latter's protégé Shambhu Das.

This association catapulted Shankar to international fame.  The Beatles’ guitarist then went to India for six weeks.

During the 1970s he distanced himself from his hippie associations and began to refocus on cementing his status as a classical Indian musician but his friendship with Harrison endured.

“It is a beautiful relationship,” Shankar said. “Guru and disciple and friend at the same time and father and son as well.”

Harrison collaborated with him on two Concert for Bangladesh benefit performances in 1971, co-produced a four-CD album for Shankar’s 75th birthday, and produced Shankar’s album Chants of India (1997), in which classical Indian forms (mantras and chants based on Sanskrit prayers) were combined with a choir and Western instrumentation including vibraphone, harps, violins and cellos.

Harrison also edited Shankar’s autobiography, Raga Mala (Garland of Ragas, 1999), and once dubbed him “the Godfather of world music”.

He is also to a lesser extent, known for his association with Yehudi Menuhin the violinist, who he performed frequently with.

Shankar inspired the composer Phillip Glass and collaborated with him on the album album Passages in 1990 He also composed a concerto with sitar for the London Symphony Orchestra. 

 Shankar died in December 2012 aged 92. 

pundit is applied to experts and intellectuals who appear in the media.

What is a Pandit?

• A Pandit, also spelled pundit, is a wise or learned man in India, particularly one skilled in the Sanskrit language, who has mastered the four Vedic scriptures, Hindu rituals, Hindu law, religion, music, and/or philosophy.
• The term is often used as an honorary title.
• In English, the word has been used more broadly, to refer to any of the following: Siddhas, Siddhars, Naths, Ascetics, Sadhus, or Yogis, and the loan word

Thanks http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

அந்தக் காலத்தில் கலக்கியவர்கள்..இன்று..!!!

World's fastest electron diffraction snapshots of atomic motions in gases

Scientists have made a significant advance toward making movies of extremely fast atomic processes with potential applications in energy production, chemistry, medicine, materials science and more. Using a superfast, high-resolution "electron camera," a new instrument for ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, researchers have captured the world's fastest UED images of nitrogen molecules rotating in a gas, with a record shutter speed of 100 quadrillionths of a second.

Scientists have long dreamed of watching nature's smallest and speediest phenomena in real time. For instance, watching biomolecules facilitate life-sustaining chemical reactions at high speed and in atomic detail could teach scientists new ways of producing efficient chemical catalysts. However, most available techniques excel at speed or detail, not both.

"Our new UED instrument can do both: It achieves an unprecedented combination of atomic resolution and extraordinary speed," said researcher Xijie Wang, SLAC's UED team lead and co-author of a new study published today in Nature Communications. "We've taken UED snapshots of atomic motions in gases faster than ever before and demonstrated the technology's potential for making molecular movies of chemical reactions."

SLAC Director Chi-Chang Kao said, "UED is a major addition to the lab's outstanding portfolio of ultrafast techniques, complementing our X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source, and enabling groundbreaking research on complex dynamic systems with wide-ranging implications for chemistry, the biosciences and future materials." LCLS is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

An 'Electron Camera' For Ultrasmall, Ultrafast Vision

UED uses a focused beam of highly energetic electrons to probe samples – in this case, a stream of laser-excited nitrogen gas. Gases are ideal model systems for studying processes in chemistry. Electrons scatter off atoms in the sample and generate a pattern on a detector that researchers use to determine where the sample's atoms are located. By varying the time between the laser excitation and the electron beam, which comes in very short electron bundles, scientists can track rapid changes in the pattern that correspond to quick motions of the atoms.

While the technique itself is not new – UED has been under development by several groups throughout the world since the 1980s – it has never been done at this speed for gases.

"When it comes to studies of gases, SLAC's instrument is about five times faster than any other UED machine before," said Jie Yang from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who led the study with Markus Guehr, a researcher at SLAC and at Potsdam University in Germany. "This leap in performance is due to the instrument's superior high-energy electron source, which was originally developed for SLAC's LCLS. It will help us better understand a whole new range of speedy processes on the atomic level."

Taking Snapshots of 'Molecular Echoes'

In the new study, the research team demonstrated the instrument's superb performance by capturing the rapid rotation of nitrogen molecules in a gas.

Each molecule consists of two nitrogen atoms connected via a strong chemical bond. As the molecules in the gas tumble around, they normally point in random directions. But hitting them with an extremely short laser pulse makes them briefly all point in the same direction. Although they quickly fall out of alignment, they periodically line up again in a sort of "molecular echo."

"When the nitrogen molecules do line up again, they also rapidly switch from pointing in one direction to pointing in the perpendicular direction," Yang said. "This transition takes only 300 quadrillionths of a second." The team was able to capture this process because the "shutter speed" of the UED instrument was three times faster than the changes in alignment.

Guehr said, "The entire process had been studied with other methods before, but our research is the first to visualize it both in real time and with a resolution detailed enough to separate the positions of the two nitrogen nuclei in the molecules."

Toward Movies of Chemistry in Action

The researchers hope to use the technology in the near future to film molecules as they vibrate and watch chemical bonds break and form during chemical reactions.

"We are also looking forward to combining UED with complementary ultrafast studies at LCLS," Wang said. "Electrons tell us about a material's structure, whereas X-rays tell us more about its function. Putting both together will give us a more complete picture in groundbreaking studies of all kinds of complex dynamic processes in nature."

A good lesson for a real sales manager.

Dream World

 an article about the importance of taking dreams seriously, the kind of dreams, dream symbols and dream work.

It is useful to look a little bit closer at our dreams and to analyze them. They contain unconscious happenings which compensate the conscious ego. Dreams give us clarification on non-personal motives, situations, our shortcomings, and so on, of which we are not, or only vaguely, aware of in everyday life.

When analyzing one’s dreams, one obtains a healthy self-criticism, the first step necessary for a purposeful psychological development. Dreams tell us precisely what is wrong and what needs to be done to correct it. By acting correspondingly, one becomes more conscious of oneself. The consciousness grows from its restricted and personal, sensitive ego-world to a new horizon.

The origin of conscious actions, with all their shortcomings and advantages, is in the unconscious of man. One of the ways the world of the unconscious expresses itself is by dreams. By means of symbols and events it tries to communicate with our consciousness. All too often one does not attach any importance to dreams and one does not make any effort to recall them. They contain complete information of our entire being and by listening to this dream world, man can gain access to a wonderful world that is as real as what we call our conscious reality. It is a world in which we are rooted. From this dream world we get the food for our inner growth, although we do not recognize it. He who closes himself of to this world is just floating around on the ocean. But he who listens and understands the language of the birds, the winds and the waves, knows where he can go unhindered. So it is with dreams. He who knows their language, knows how to repair mistakes, and thus lead a better life.

Carl Gustav Jung wrote in his ‘Ubergang’ that the dream is as "a small hidden door to the most deep hidden and secret corners of the psyche, an entrance to the cosmic night, which was the psyche before there was any trace of an ‘ego’-consciousness: and what will remain the psyche, no matter how far our ‘ego’-consciousness might stretch itself… All consciousness acts to divide, but in our dreams we take the form of a more universal, true and eternal man who wanders through the darkness of the primal night. There he is still the whole man, and this wholeness is in him, not distinguishable from nature and devoid of any ego-consciousness. From this all unifying depth the dream arises; no matter how childish, grotesque or immoral the dream might be."

more: http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/dreamworld.htm

Waste paper recycled into new paper within just 3 minutes.

Seiko Epson Corporation (TSE: 6724, "Epson") has developed what it believes to be the world's first^*1 compact office papermaking system capable of producing new paper from securely shredded waste paper^*2 without the use of water^*3. Epson plans to put the new "PaperLab" into commercial production in Japan in 2016, with sales in other regions to be decided at a later date. Businesses and government offices that install a PaperLab in a backyard area will be able to produce paper of various sizes, thicknesses, and types, from office paper and business card paper to paper that is coloured and scented.

The machine can easily produce a fresh sheet of paper in about 3 minutes after it gets loaded with shredded pieces of paper. That means that it is able to produce over six thousand sheets over an eight-hour period. This eliminates the need for offices to engage in extensive recycling initiatives that are more costly and time-consuming than the PaperLab.

In order to work, Epson developed something known as “Dry Fiber Technology,” which works entirely without water. First, waste paper is transformed into long, thin cottony, fibres. Then a variety of different binders can be added to the fiberized material to make the paper, well, all-around awesome. The additive materials can increase the binding strength or whiteness of the paper, add colour, fragrance, or even flame resistance.

So the design can shred your confidential documents and make the papers that you want to keep virtually unburnable.

Ten Great Philosophical Movies That Question Free Will

From the beginning of time, human beings have wondered if the universe has a plan in store for them. We have pondered whether every person is born to fulfill a determined destiny, or if every human can build their future from scratch, depending on the choices they make.

It is true that we are determined by time, space, the laws of physics, and so on. We seem to believe we possess some kind of control over our decisions, and that our personality, preferences and tastes are up to us. We believe that we are conscious and aware of every turn on the tracks on the train of life. However, it’s actually more probable that a clueless blind dog is driving that train, and we’re just along for the ride, thinking our will controls the vehicle.

That’s why philosophers have wondered if the fate of people is conditioned by outside random forces, which shape our lifestyle from the cradle to the grave. The fact that if you weren’t born to those parents, or in that neighborhood, or in a different country or century, your life would have been totally different, makes us wonder if humanity is really free, or if we just collectively act on instinct like biological robots.

Considering that filmmakers tend to be visual philosophers, this list has 10 films that explore this topic, each one reaching different conclusions.

10. Pi (1998)

Max is a genius mathematician, whose search for a unique code to decrypt the patterns he sees all over nature will drive him on a downward spiral to madness.

He spends all day in his small apartment, fixing and adapting all sorts of special hardware, entirely dedicated to finding a magical combination of numbers that will uncover hidden truths about the world. Max is convinced that he’ll discover the key to understanding the universe on a whole.

However, it turns out that a few Jewish researchers are searching for this combination as well; they think it’s the real name of God that can only be found by a chosen one.

So, if Max believes there’s a determined number that can be used to understand the world’s patterns and even predict their outcomes, then free will can’t exist. In that case, human beings would just be following a set of natural rules that organize the universe, maybe obeying divine purposes, like the Jewish researchers in this movie seem to believe.

Max’s positions represent a branch of mathematical determinism that claims that free will is really an illusion. Laws of physics give a compelling diagram of how the world works, without any need for a metaphysical entity governing living things. There are many scientists, especially neurologists, that support this theory.

Wolf Singer is one of the most popular among them; an article he wrote in 2004, claiming that the illusion of “conscious” decisions can be explained by certain processes in the brain, has created controversy and intense discussion.

Do we have free will? No. There’s a natural pattern that predicts every event.

9. Watchmen (2009)

On the surface, “Watchmen” doesn’t seem like a film related to the free will vs. determinism debate.

Zach Snyder isn’t known for his intellectual depth as a director. Thankfully, master comic book writer Alan Moore (the author of the graphic novel “Watchmen” is based on) loves to analyze philosophical matters in his work, much like Batman loves to add thousands of layers of black paint to everything he owns.

In one of the best written chapters of the graphic novel, Moore lets us consider what it would be like to be an omnipresent being. He describes Dr. Manhattan’s perspective of time in a vivid way. This character is aware of every little event that happens anywhere, and at the same time, his memories and future happenings fuse together to provide him with a divine perspective of the world.

In the notable scene where a Vietnamese woman slashes the comedian’s face with a broken bottle just before he fatally shoots her, Dr. Manhattan is present and does nothing to stop this atrocious murder. Considering his godlike powers and firm morality, this doesn’t makes sense until later in the film when Dr. Manhattan confesses that “everything is predetermined, even my responses”.

As an omnipresent and omnipotent being, he knows when and how anything is going to happen, but unless it is already predetermined, he can’t stop any future event simply because he has prior knowledge of it taking place. Paradoxically, he’s also predetermined.

All this references the famous philosophical debate which wonders, if a God already knows what everybody’s going to do before it happens, then could we still have free will? Many philosophers, namely Leibniz, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm, have given different answers to this question. Moore’s answer seems to be that even God is a victim of determinism; he just stands and watches his creations interact without being able to intervene unless is already predetermined to do so. So, in short, everybody is time’s bitch.

Do we have free will? Absolutely not. Even God’s actions are predetermined.

8. Being John Malkovich (1999)

It’s obvious at this point that Charlie Kaufman reads a few books on philosophy before writing a new screenplay. Every movie he has made features several philosophical ideas, which he uses to intrigue his audiences just as those thoughts intrigued him. “Being John Malkovich” proves he can combine these kinds of questions with his trademark comedic style.

Dualists and physicalists have been arguing about the existence of a “mind” or “soul” for ages. This film’s plot seems to support the dualists; they think that a higher immaterial consciousness must exist in living things.

The protagonist in “Being John Malkovich” finds a secret door in his office that leads to John Malkovich’s head. He can see everything from Malkovich’s perspective, and given that the main character is also an expert puppeteer, he’s able to control poor John’s body after a few rounds of practice. This raises some questions: where does Malkovich’s conscience go when he’s being controlled by the puppeteer? How is this man able to see through the eyes of Malkovich without him noticing? Where does our conscience come from, and why are we able to control our bodies?

The film also portrays an interesting fact; when anyone enters Malkovich’s head, they go in with their whole bodies. It’s not just a conscience transfer; their whole physical bodies enter Malkovich’s mind and then exit it after a few minutes.

Does this mean our body is just the manifestation of our consciousness? Or is what we call “consciousness” just a byproduct of our brain’s sophisticated biology? This is not a new issue in philosophy; dozens of intellectuals have debated and even written hundreds of books about it.

Descartes firmly opposed the existence of an immaterial substance that lies only in living things; how can a non-material substance interact with a material one? It’s one of the questions that dualist theories like the one in this film face, although science hasn’t reached the point of pointing to the precise mechanisms of the brain that constitute what we call “free” choices; most scientists prefer the physicalist’s claims.

However, subjective experiences play a big role in “Being John Malkovich”; are the subjects that visit Malkovich’s mind really being John Malkovich, or are they just controlling his body? Then again, isn’t our brains all we really are? Or is there more to a human being?

Do we have free will? Yes, but our body could be invaded by other humans, forcing us to redefine the nature of being.

7. Dead Man Walking (1995)

If we, as a species, don’t really have control over our choices, then how can we blame a murderer for killing people if he’s predetermined to do so? Why should we blame anyone if our choices depend on hundreds of external factors that we have no control over? “Dead Man Walking” deals with all these questions wonderfully, telling the story of an inmate sentenced to death by lethal injection as he copes with guilt, denial and anxiety.

Susan Sarandon plays a nun trying to save a criminal (Sean Penn) from imminent execution; she believes he might be innocent, or at least worthy of a lighter form of punishment. Her character interrogates the imprisoned to find out the facts about what he’s accused of doing. He claims he was drugged at the time, and that he also hadn’t slept for two days. Penn’s character blames his partner for having committed the crimes; he just stood and watched as he murdered a young man and his girlfriend.

The nun’s attempts to spare him are unsuccessful, so she chooses to convince the criminal to accept his guilt in the matters. He may have not killed anyone; however, he was an accomplice and did nothing to stop the crime. In the end, he comes out of his denial and admits that he was more involved in the events that he wanted to recognize.

All of this relates to Peter Strawson’s famous article about free will and morality, titled “Liberty and Resentment”.

He claims that we don’t need to know if free will exists, and to not be confident about the correctness of our morality and legal system, because there are a series of feelings that humans experience (as the parents of the murder victims in the movie represent) when injustice is perpetrated, which validates our moral and penal practices.

Strawson also claims that criminals must be punished without victimization, meaning that they should be judged according to their actions and held accountable, regardless of whether they claim to have been mentally incapacitated at the time. The vandals should recognize their guilt if they want to be considered equal to their peers; if not, they should be isolated from the rest of society.

Sarandon’s character approaches these concepts from a religious perspective that is very similar to Strawson’s view. If somebody wants to be remain a part of society, they must admit their doings were reprehensible. She finally accomplishes this under the pressure of his quickly approaching execution. The movie also comments on the negative sides of the death penalty and how a life sentence could grant inmates the time to think about their terrible actions.

Do we have free will? It’s not clear, but regardless of this, our legal system must continue functioning by presupposing the existence of “freedom to do otherwise”.

6. Waking Life (2001)

If I were to explain this movie to a fellow “film scholar”, I would describe it as a “philosophical clusterfuck”. Director Richard Linklater seems to be a philosophy fan, so he seized the opportunity to portray all his doubts and questions about life and existence in a single chaotic movie, in which a bunch of insufferable pseudo-intellectual individuals poorly explain famous philosophical issues. However, a few of these series of ramblings are interesting for the purposes of this article.

A philosophy professor describes Sartre’s ideas about free will and personal responsibility; he says that when postmodernists describe human beings as a confluence of forces or a social construction, the individual gets to play the part of victim of the universe, not really choosing who he is.

Sartre thinks that every human chooses to be what it is, and that everyone is always capable of changing and becoming something else. Here lies the concept of “angst”, defined as the pressure and anxiety one feels for being able to decide at every turn and at the same time, being an example for all humanity.

The second point of view argues that human beings must be governed by the same physical deterministic laws that reign over everything else. As we are physical bodies, all our actions correspond to a determined physical formula, which really makes us doubt the existence of free will.

As you see, this film is more a series of lectures or a long podcast than it is a movie. Linklater didn’t care about subtlety or illustrations of philosophical thoughts, he preferred to film a group of people lecturing the main character about all sorts of issues. This proves to be tiring, but is useful as a philosophy 101 lesson. As a film? It doesn’t hold up.

Do we have free will? It is undetermined; this film tries to start a debate about it, but doesn’t offer a cohesive answer or even a narrative.5. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

If you haven’t seen this film, then scroll down with your eyes closed for about five seconds because this is going to be a spoilery ride.

A highly contagious virus kills five billion people in 1997; the result is an apocalyptic scenario in which the remaining humanity has moved underground. Bruce Willis is chosen to travel back in time, not to change the events that lead to the disaster, but to look for a pure sample of the virus so that the post-apocalyptic scientists can find a cure.

Long story short, Willis’s character is shot while trying to murder the man guilty of releasing the deadly virus. Also, the protagonist often dreams about a traumatic event of his childhood, where he saw a man getting shot at an airport. In the end, we find out that the man that he saw getting killed was his older self as a time traveler.

This has a lot of mind-blowing implications: the protagonist’s life was conditioned from when he was a child to die in that exact moment, and the reason he died was because he forgot about determinism. The movie establishes that time can’t be changed, not even with a functional time machine, because everything is already predetermined to happen in a certain way.

Willis’s character falls into the illusion of free will, thinking that he can change the past, and ends up fulfilling his destiny of being shot to death. He had a blatant warning that should have been enough for him to avoid getting killed in that way. However, it was already predetermined to happen, and nothing to do against fate.

Do we have free will? No, we all have a fate to fulfill and time machines are useless.  When I started watching this movie I didn’t realized that it would kill so many of my dreams.

4. The Thin Red Line (1998)

This movie is famous for two things: being one of the greatest war movies of all time, and the fact that director Terrence Malick cast almost every actor in Hollywood and edited out a few of them in post-production.

A poorly known fact, however, are the philosophical implications of this film. As the author of this outstanding article eloquently points out, the entire structure of “The Thin Red Line” is based on the writings of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Unlike most war movies where the story is told through an individual’s perspective, Malick chooses to approach this phenomenon from various angles. We see each soldier’s point of view, the life choices that got them in the Army, their ways to cope with the horrors of war, their desires and their motivations to stay alive. We also hear their inner monologues, so we understand what they’re experiencing.

An objective reality exists, but it is beyond our grasp; humans can give hundreds of different meanings to the same event. So, in short, all of our personal worldviews are biased and impossible to fully share with others.

Every soldier tries to rationalize the events happening around them, in an attempt to find meaning invested in the horror of war. They’re all alone with their own ways of thinking, believing that their brothers in arms share common thoughts with them, when each of them must bear their own individual cross.

This is why conflict emerges between Lt. Gordon Tall (Nick Nolte) and Capt. James Staros (Elias Koteas). They’re both experiencing the same events; however, Tall believes that the ends justify the means and doesn’t care about losing a few soldiers on the battlefield. Staros considers them his children and isn’t interested in sending his men to a certain defeat and painful death, based on his superior’s reckless orders.

So, if every human lives in their own personal reality that is affected by a number of external factors, how can we make conscious and free choices about the empirical world? If we are trapped in our own subjectivity, then how can our decisions continue to be free? The fact that we could never comprehend the whole picture in any circumstance puts the existence of free will in doubt.

Do we have free will? If we do, it would be very limited by our own philosophies, ideologies and prejudices. So, would it still be free?

3. Memento (2000)

This is the film that put Christopher Nolan on the map. It’s the one that confused thousands of film enthusiasts due to its fragmented storyline, backwards narrative, and Guy Pearce’s sweet drug dealer suit.

Pearce plays a man who suffers from a terrible condition; he can’t form new memories and he forgets everything he’s doing every few minutes, except for a few facts about himself and his life before the incident that caused his mental dysfunctions.

The protagonist’s only goal is to find the man who killed his wife. This makes him act recklessly due to not caring about anything or anyone else, and he murders a few people in order to find his target. He’s also manipulated by a number of individuals, who find out that having a criminal partner that forgets everything once in awhile is a good deal.

It’s not clear if Pearce’s character is really free; the movie is ambiguous in exploring whether he is fully responsible for the crimes he commits. He constantly forgets the motives of his actions, so does that make him innocent? The protagonist may not have acted the way he did if he didn’t suffer from his condition.

If he’s considered mentally incapable, then according to Strawson’s views, he’s not fully responsible; however, he’s still a murderer. Or perhaps, every time he forgets his recent past, he’s a different person, so the true guilty individual doesn’t exist anymore.

Determinists would say that he couldn’t act otherwise, or to be more radical, that none of us can. The movie seems to imply this as well, as when Teddy is explaining to the protagonist the truth about his situation, he says, “So you lie to yourself to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all do it.” He seems to represent certain deterministic views that people like Wolf Singer defend; he would claim that humans can’t really choose, that our advanced brains do it for us.

“Memento” makes us doubt the veracity of our own memory. It is stated along the way that it isn’t always safe to trust our memories, due to their lack of precision, which is a simple thought I find a bit terrifying.

Do we have free will? It’s debatable, because many of the memories we base our decisions on may not have happened as we remember them.

2. Interstellar (2014)

Christopher Nolan’s amazing space epic is no less than an impressive technical achievement, but as is the case for many of his films, the movie’s topics are deeper and more philosophical to what they seem on the surface.

In “Interstellar”, Nolan takes a physicist’s approach on the subject of free will. In the film’s climax, we see how Cooper cruises through the “fifth dimension” where he can see every instant in time from behind his daughter’s bookcase.

This special physical space seems to englobe every other dimension, including time. Cooper is capable to physically see time all together. Past, present and future moments from his daughter’s life are available for his eyes to examine. He can even influence them, and this excites Cooper, as he’s finally able to interact with his daughter for what he believed was the last time.

Being able to perceive time as easily as one perceives any other physical object raises a few questions: does this mean that every event is already predetermined? If every instant is palpable and concrete, then is it impossible to do otherwise? Considering this, everything that happens seems to be written in stone.

The fact that every incident in the universe of “Interstellar” (and maybe in ours as well) was already meant to happen, subtracts any sense of purpose from it.

Do we have free will? No. Every event is already predetermined; we are unaware of this because we can’t perceive the fifth dimension.

1. Mr. Nobody (2009)

There are many movies that are based on philosophical themes, and various others illustrate interesting philosophical concepts; countless films are influenced by the writings of famous philosophers and some carry out a few philosophical implications within their core. “Mr. Nobody” is a member of all of these groups and is arguably the best at explaining philosophy with the use of images and sharp editing.

It tells the story of Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto), a 118-year-old man who some call C.R.A.F.T. (Can’t Remember a Fucking Thing). He claims to have lived every possible series of events that could have happened to him, and this is of course impossible. Nemo represents a being capable of this feat, one that is aware of every possible life he could have lived, but doesn’t know which life he actually experienced firsthand.

The film depicts the responsibility of the moral being and the angst that comes with the freedom of choice, which is a concept that Sartre carefully constructed in his books.

It also portrays how humans are determined by an infinite number of external causes. From a poorly-made shoelace that alters the course of the protagonist’s life, to an unemployed man boiling an egg, they cause a storm that separates Nemo from the love of his life.

In a few scenes, the protagonist doesn’t seem to know why he acted the way he did, and we see how he causes a violent detour in his destiny for it, as though his brain suddenly decided for him. According to Wolf Singer, this happens all the time; we only notice it once in awhile, but each of our decisions is made by our brains, after comparing favorable versus unfavorable consequences.

We see people’s lives being ruined by sickness, people unable to cope with depression, or suddenly dying from a random event, furthering the thesis of our lack of real control over our lives. The ontology of not choosing is also portrayed. In a key scene, the protagonists says, “as long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible.” This should have been the slogan of the film, because it represents the nature of the plot.

However, the filmmakers don’t offer a straight answer about the existence of free will, they prefer letting us argue about it, and we certainly will.

Do we have free will? Yes, or maybe not, maybe a little bit, or not at all.

Author Bio: Juan studies philosophy. He love films and music and plans to go to film school with his cat.

Read more: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/10-great-philosophical-movies-that-question-free-will/2/#ixzz45Oglbjgx