Totally objective observation remains a simple impossibility. And while in our ordinary earthly life we miss this fact completely, it becomes much more apparent in near-death experiences, when the body and brain cease to mediate our encounter with the larger reality and we encounter it directly.

The Science of Heaven - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

A compelling account from a Harvard Professor and neurosurgeon suggesting that consciousness precedes and extends beyond the activities of the brain.

Source: thedailybeast.com

Besides the storage density, DNA storage has two more advantages. The first is longevity; DNA lasts for thousands of years (or even millions, if it’s trapped in amber). The second is future-proofing: Since DNA is the basis of all life, future societies will always have technologies available to read it (that assumes artificial intelligence doesn’t exterminate or replace human society, of course).

Scientists Convert a 53,000-Word Book Into DNA Mashable Scientists Convert a 53,000-Word Book Into DNA | The top source for social and digital news

Thanks to @chrismillet for this link.

Source: Mashable

According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. Particles wading through the field gain heft the way a bill going through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming ever more ponderous. Without the Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html
thisistheverge: CERN announces discovery of new particle consistent with Higgs boson Scientists at CERN say they’ve found a new particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson with 5-sigma certainty — a false positive probability of about 1 in 9 trillion. Evidence of the particle’s existence in the 126GeV mass range was gleaned from the CMS (video below) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela explains, “this is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found.” 
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thisistheverge:

CERN announces discovery of new particle consistent with Higgs boson

Scientists at CERN say they’ve found a new particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson with 5-sigma certainty — a false positive probability of about 1 in 9 trillion. Evidence of the particle’s existence in the 126GeV mass range was gleaned from the CMS (video below) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela explains, “this is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found.”