If anyone has ever told you that they’ve just seen your double, or if you’ve ever seen a double of a friend or family member, you’ll be familiar with the odd sensation that accompanies this revelation. It’s a scenario that can suddenly strike doubt into your day and make you question reality a little bit. Your identity suddenly not so unique, an imposter in your midst!

One artist, Francois Brunelle, began a project exploring this weird phenomenon. Find some of his work in this article, and more here!

A Brief History of Doppelgängers

In traditional folklore, a doppelgänger is somebody’s double, sometimes considered an evil twin or even a harbinger of bad luck.

From the German words Doppel (double) and gänger (goer or walker), the doppelgänger is a concept that has been seen time and again in different stories and myths from many cultures around the world. However, a mid-19th-century book called ‘The Night Side of Nature’ by Catherine Crowe, which dealt with paranormal phenomena, popularized the German word and brought it to mass consciousness.

Typically, in many tales involving these apparitions, seeing a doppelgänger of a friend or relative is thought to mean that ill health is about to befall them. Seeing one’s own doppelgänger is an omen of death. Continue reading →

Science fiction has been warning us about the dangers of ‘playing God’ ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818. However, in the past two months, there have been two separate scientific studies published about biohybrid robots; machines made from living cells.

Although the surface implications of such research initially appear to be little more than an attempt by a group of scientists to tamper with the laws of nature, there are practical reasons behind the research.

The traditional image of a large metal robot has serious practical issues. A bulky robot presents serious safety risks for any people working with it, as the slightest malfunction could cause injury or even fatality. Animal-like machines will (in theory) be able to perform tasks with an increased level of intricacy.

The scientists involved in both studies, Case Western Reserve University and Harvard University, believe that these biohybrid robots will ultimately prove to be less harmful and destructive to both people and the environment. However, creating such complex ‘machines’ is no easy task. Continue reading →

It’s happened to us all at least once before; you just bought your new favorite shirt, wore it once and threw it in the wash. When you pulled it out of the dryer it somehow shrank so much it may as well be a crop top. Wouldn’t it be great that were just a thing of the past? Well, you may not have to wait as long as you might think.

No Heat, No Problem

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory together with General Electric Appliances have developed a new dryer that uses vibrations of a high frequency to wick away the moisture from clothes.

The machine utilizes piezoelectric transducers, no bigger than a silver dollar, wired to an amplifier that rapidly expand and contract to separate the water and the fabric.

As a result, it doesn’t use heat like a conventional dryer, producing a cool mist instead of hot air which as we all know leads to the dreaded shrinking shirt problem. The Department of Energy says current dryers are responsible for 1% of America’s total energy consumption, costing roughly $9 billion a year. So a technology that makes drying 70% more efficient and completed in roughly 20 minutes would be a game changer. Continue reading →

“If you think about it, photosynthesis is amazing. It takes sunlight, water, and air — and then look at a tree. That’s exactly what we did, but we do it significantly better because we turn all that energy into fuel.” ~Daniel Nocera

Photosynthesis powers nearly all life on earth. The evolution of photosynthesizing organisms 3.4 billion years ago was the beginning of natural processes that have led to plants, animals and ultimately us. It is one of the most efficient energy creation processes in the natural world. However, two teams at Harvard University, led by a chemist and a biologist, may have finally created a manmade improvement on this fundamental process.

The Bionic Leaf

Together Daniel Nocera and Pamela Silver and their teams have invented a bionic leaf that produces energy ten times more efficiently than photosynthesis in plants. The ‘leaf’ is more accurately described as a living battery, although it was called a leaf as a tribute to the perfect marriage of chemistry and biology that created it.

The device uses solar energy (like a plant) from a photovoltaic panel to power the chemical reaction, which splits water from a compound into the individual elements oxygen and hydrogen. Once this reaction has occurred, microbes within the mechanism feed on the hydrogen and convert carbon dioxide into alcohol, which can later be used as fuel.

Although the system has been proven to be able to create fuel Silver sees the uses of the ‘leaf’ as much farther reaching. ‘The beauty of biology is it’s the world’s greatest chemist — biology can do chemistry we can’t do easily,’ she said. ‘In principle, we have a platform that can make any downstream carbon-based molecule. So this has the potential to be incredibly versatile.’ Continue reading →

Many people have the feeling as if something big is going to happen, yet nobody really knows what this big change is going to be. It is starting to reveal itself at the edge of the horizon.

Over the last couple of decennium, exponentially more people started to feel a bigger affinity towards spirituality. Something is not only changing in the world, but also inside of us. There seems to be a link between those changes. It seems like more people are starting to wake up and experience a so-called ‘spiritual awakening’.

This is a process of letting go of the person they have become, to become the person they are meant to be. Being more perceptive to what is happening within ourselves and to what is happening around us.

A spiritual awakening is for every person different, so is the way a person experiences spirituality and to which degree it influences their life on a daily basis.  Some people do not even realize they experience symptoms of a spiritual awakening, because they don’t know how to categorize their experience.

Here is a list of different symptoms which are linked to a spiritual awakening. Which ones these symptoms did you experience or which ones can you recognize?

Extremely vivid and lucid dreams
Ever had the feeling after waking up from a deep sleep, that you were not sure if something really happened or if you dreamt it? These are the extremely vivid dreams. Sometimes you will even find yourself being conscious in a dream. The moment that you realize you are dreaming you can take control of the dream, and experience the infinite possibilities of a lucid dream. Continue reading →

If you visit ancient ruins in Italy or Greece, chances are you’re going to be in an area swarming with tourists. Unbeknownst to most people around the world, Algeria is a country found in North Africa with a diverse mixing pot of cultures dating back many thousands of years. One of the most influential cultures was that of the Romans, and they have left their mark in a vast amount of ways.

In the years immediately after the last civil war, police escorts were mandatory (with sirens wailing), and, like some parcel-delivery service, foreign guests were counted, signed for and passed over at each wilaya (county) boundary.  Times have not changed much. Even today tourists face a lot of hardships getting to these ruins so they are mostly left alone.

Timgad

Founded by the Roman Emperor Trajan in 100 AD, the roman city of Timgad located in the Aurés Mountains of Algeria was most likely a base for the Third Augustan Legion. It was used as a meeting point before or after traveling through the Sahara desert.

Continue reading →