> Eidetic Imaging:
>
> A kind of heightened mental visualisation. From my limited reading and
> intermittent experience it can be described as the moment where mental
> images cease to be voluntary and tenuous and suddenly begin to paint
> themselves into sharper, intense and more luminous detail so that the
> image or series of images seem very suddenly to be more experienced
> than imagined. So suddenly that I wonder what threshold is being
> passed: chemical, electrical? Or whether this is simply a matter of a
> rapid re organization of consciousness into a kind of extreme inner
> subjectivity?
I think nobody knows yet. But my bet is on a reorganization of
consciousness == brain activity patterns. Maybe a self-supporting
mental pattern is set up, and it becomes "real" to the experiencer (a
bit like how novel characters can start to act against their author).
> It has been documented that children experience this more than
> adults.
Yes, it is intriguing. One theory I have is that the child perceptual
system is not yet fully developed, and at first just contains the
"basics" of perception with comparatively little interpretation and
further processing. This means a lot of computational resources are
free, and can sustain eidetic imagery. As the children grow up,
neurons get recruited into cellular assemblies coding for
interpretation, experiences and interconnections, and the eidetic
imagery gets lost due to interference from our higher level systems.
We don't see the world as we did as children, we see a lot of
concepts. This might also explain idiot savants - they lack many of
the interfering (but normally very useful) higher level systems, and
their minds can devote themselves to single tasks.
> Anti Matter:
>
> I once heard some science show say that the energy yield from a
> theoretical anti matter engine would get us to Pluto in nine
> minutes...I more recently heard that a wee chunk of it has been
> manufactured and am curious as to what's to be done with it.
Rather 9 days or weeks (see Robert Forward's publications in the
field). The important problem is of course to manufacture enough for
use as fuel - at CERN they just created nine antihydrogen atoms,
which is obviously insignificant. I have some papers found on the net
at http://antimatter.phys.psu.edu/:
Antiproton-Catalyzed Microfission/Fusion Propulsion Systems for
Exploration of the Outer Solar System and Beyond, by R.A. Lewis et al
Productionand Trapping of Antimatter for Space Propulsion
Applications, by Holzscheiter et al.
The first paper suggests that 10-1000 nanograms of antimatter might
be enough to use for catalyzed microfusion/fission. The second
discusses how to gather this amount and store it.
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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