For April 2011 Author of the Month please join us in welcoming Dr. Manjir Samanta-Laughton.
Dr. Manjir’s new book, Punk Science, demonstrates that ideas from the cutting-edge of science actually explain phenomena that have previously been thought of as paranormal. Dr. Samanta-Laughton offers a new model of the universe, where consciousness generates life, where black holes exist inside our bodies as well as far out in space, and where the same science explains galaxies and planets as well as human evolution, auras and chakras. Drawing on the very latest in scientific understanding, the Black Hole principle outlined by in this book, represents the next leap forward in both human understanding and living, and gives a closer approximation to scientific reality than the macho-approach of the old-style physics. Please join the conversation on the AoM Message Boards this month.
A Realisation of Galactic Proportions
“OK, that’s it! I can’t keep this to myself anymore.”
It was early 2004 and I looked up from the report in New Scientist magazine. Antimatter had been found pouring from the heart of our very own Milky Way galaxy and astrophysicists did not know why.[1] But strange though this was, it was totally predictable from the theories I had published in a paper the previous year.[2] How was it that I knew something that the astrophysicists themselves did not? And why me? Why was a female, British Asian, medical GP without even an A-level in physics and barely out of her twenties, coming up with all these ideas about the cosmos?
It was that moment that prompted me to overcome my reservations about writing the book that eventually became Punk Science.[3] I was in the middle of something big, I didn’t know why — I just had to go with it and see where this road was leading me. It was as if I wasn’t in control any more; this theory had begun to take over my life.
The Road to ‘Eureka’
Believe me, this is not where I thought I would end up — putting forward a new theory in physics. I am from a medical family and have trained as a GP like my parents. But after a spontaneous spiritual awakening, which happened in my first few weeks of medical school, I added a burgeoning mystical life to my medical studies. Pretty soon, I realised that the principles of the universe I was experiencing mystically must have their correlation within the scientific realms.
To start with, I simply wanted to explain these esoteric principles in terms of modern physics. Like authors who had published before me, I could see the links between esoteric principles such as distant healing and non-locality in quantum theory. So I started learning about ideas in cutting-edge physics and comparing these with traditional esoteric principles. My aim in the beginning was to provide better care for my patients. I had a (perhaps naive) belief that if doctors simply understood the physics behind energy healing modalities, then maybe they would lose their fear of including them in medical practice and patients would then benefit from these powerful but non-toxic treatments. But this journey took me somewhere quite different.
Gradually a different path emerged and as I firmly stepped onto it, the universe moved around me creating extraordinary events leaving me free to study and write full time. I started writing a book, even though I had no publisher initially, highlighting the links between cutting-edge biology and physics and esoteric ideas. But how did I end up going from being a GP wanting to help her patients to making predictions about the universe that were rapidly being proved to be right?
At the Heart of Every Galaxy
It was the autumn of 2003 and I had become captivated by the field of cosmology which had been in turmoil since around the turn of the century with many long held beliefs becoming obsolete as data came pouring in from telescopes. Cosmologists had just faced one of their biggest challenges for years — the unwelcome arrival of dark energy: a mysterious force that seemed to be blowing the universe apart and accelerating its expansion.
Images from Hubble and other telescopes were throwing open some of our long cherished beliefs and making us question our theories and expectations about the universe. I became particularly fascinated by black holes. The concept of black holes started life as a conclusion of Einstein’s theory of relativity — that if space and time curved beyond a certain point they would create a point of infinite gravity. Initially it was thought that certain stars collapse at the end of their lives and produce these points of infinite density and gravity, with a pull so powerful that not even light can escape — hence a ‘black’ hole.
For decades these objects remained a theoretical concept and although they sparked the imaginations of science fiction writers, it was not known if black holes really existed. It was not until the dawning of the 21st century when our telescopes were picking up black holes everywhere that we realised that not only did back holes exist, but they were actually quite common.[4] How is a black hole detected if no light can escape it? One of the ways is to look at the material around them, called an accretion disc which spins very fast around it, so fast that only the gravity of a black hole could be creating it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0x4lvaHlh8
The amazing thing was, when we turned our telescopes on neighbouring galaxies, we found a supermassive black hole at the heart of each one. We even found a black hole at the centre of our own galaxy! So instead of being rare exotic creatures, it turned out that black holes are actually quite common, appearing not only in the heart of every galaxy, but smaller black holes appear all over our galaxy too. Sometimes, they are associated with objects such as quasars which give out bright radiation.
Hold on a minute — why would a quasar which has a black hole associated with it give out such bright radiation? Surely the black hole would suck up all the light so that we can’t see it? Indeed! In fact the more we looked, the more the data showed up surprises that contradicted our current theories.
The Great Annihilators
It was in studying objects called microquasars, which are smaller version of quasars, that I started to find some answers. Microquasars also have a black hole associated with them, but their behaviour again is peculiar. They too are spewing out material very fast despite the black hole associated with them.
Sometimes they give out gamma ray radiation and sometimes electrons at close to the speed of light and sometimes the antimatter opposite of electrons — positrons. Because we know that within microquasars, antimatter and matter combine to form light in the form of gamma rays, a process called annihilation, New Scientist magazine dubbed them ‘The Great Annihilators’.[5]
What was the cause for this strange behavior? Why was this very fast material been spewed out by microquasars? If there is a black hole associated with a microquasar, then why wasn’t it sucking everything up? Astronomer, Sir Martin Rees commented that we should study microquasars because what we find out about black holes of this size will inform us about larger black holes so there was a general agreement that black holes all probably behave in the same way, just at different scales.[6]
The Universe Speaks
I was pondering all of these conundrums — black holes, dark matter and dark energy and microquasars as I took a walk with my dog in the woods in the autumn of 2003. I also wanted to find out how everything fitted together with the notion that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, which has arisen out of the work of quantum physicists such as Amit Goswami and Fred Alan Wolf.[7],[8] Radical scientists such as these had looked at the conclusions of quantum physics which tell us that a subatomic particle only comes into existence when it is measured. They realised that the act of conscious observation has a role in creating reality. Some physicists have gone further and concluded that in fact, consciousness is fundamental to the universe.
Mulling all of this over in the woods, I decided to take a rest on the branch of an oak tree and remembered something I had seen years ago in a video featuring the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme.[9] He recommended that we take time to tune into the rotation of our own planet and for some reason, here on this branch of an oak tree, was the first time I tried it.
What came next is something I find hard to describe, but it was if I had been thrown into the very fabric of the universe and caught a glimpse of its secrets. Everything seemed to be made up of the most exquisite geometry and mathematics, which was at the same time both infinitely complex and ever so simple. And I suddenly understood how black holes work and it wasn’t at all how we had previously theorised. I had been shown what I now call ‘The Black Hole Principle’ and it was a discovery that would profoundly alter the course of my life.
Dimensions of Consciousness
In order to understand the Black Hole Principle, we need to first discuss a few other scientific ideas. One is that the universe is made up of many dimensions. This concept started in physics after Einstein had successfully united space and time. What Einstein did was the equivalent of going up a hill to look at the big picture in a disorganised crowd. The scene becomes unified and you can see what is going on from a higher perspective instead of seeing chaos on the ground.
This is effectively what Einstein did in mathematical terms and ever since, people have been finding a way to unite all the forces of nature and sometimes they have been creating higher dimensions to do it, as found in String Theory. These higher dimensions are all around us but we can’t see them because they have different geometrical qualities. Physicists used to think that these dimensions are very small but changed their minds and started realizing that these dimensions could be worlds of their own.[10] So, according to physics, we live in a universe of many dimensions.
The Infinite Light of Heretics
Another concept that has come out of academic physics in recent years is that the speed of light is not the speed limit of the universe. It sounds crazy, but some radical thinkers such as Professor Joao Magueijo in London have been postulating that the way to solve some of the the problems we have in cosmology, such as the horizon problem and the flatness problem, is to realise that the speed of light is variable and was faster in the early universe.[11] Magueijo even goes onto say that light is infinite and it is curled up in higher dimensions.[12],[13] So what we see as the speed of light is actually a small fraction of its actual speed, which is infinite. Naturally these ideas have caused a storm in the world of physics with some people branding Magueijo and colleagues as heretics.
But it leaves us with the notions that the universe is one of infinite light that contains many dimensions and if we put that together with ideas coming from quantum theory, it is also alive with consciousness. All this has come from physicists themselves in the academic world — not from New Age postulations which make these ideas so remarkable.
Beyond the Perception Horizon
When I started to piece all this together, I realised that what we call dark matter and dark energy is not actually dark at all — it is ‘superbright’![14] What we have been calling the speed limit of the universe is not the speed limit at all; it is simply a reflection of the limitations of consciousness in what we call our reality — three spatial dimensions and one of time. The speed of light then becomes the Perception Horizon, beyond which we don’t perceive anything with our normal senses and our instruments which are attuned to this dimension alone. However, the areas of the universe which lie beyond this Perception Horizon are the realms that mystics have been discussing throughout the ages e.g. the light perceived by deep meditative states.
So what does this have to do with black holes? Well in that insightful instant, which only lasted a few seconds but imparted volumes worth of books to me, I realised that black holes are not dark guzzling monsters at all. We have got it all wrong. They are actually the source of infinite light. This infinite light lies at the heart of black holes. It spirals from the centre, down through the dimensions to the edge of our perception where the light then splits off into a particle of matter such as an electron and a particle of antimatter — a positron. This is why we see electrons spewing out of black holes at the speed of light because they have only just reached our dimension and therefore our perception.
And that is not all. This is a breathing process and it works both ways. Positrons and electrons recombine to form gamma rays. Black holes are therefore the source of the gamma ray bursts that we have seen coming from even the furthest regions of our cosmos and have puzzled scientists for over 50 years since they were first discovered. We even have evidence of this breathing process happening near to our own Milky Way galaxy — high energy gases close to the centre of our galaxy have been noticed to be moving in and out and nobody seems to know why, but this finding totally fits our theory.[16]
Burping Black Holes
We may also be able to account for the strange patterns we see coming from black holes. A lot of astrophysicists think that the emissions from black holes are the result of explosions or black holes guzzling up matter such as stars, causing matter to be ejected in the process. But instead of a steady decay of emissions as expected after an explosion, the pattern of emissions is more erratic, leading to bizarre concepts such as the one that black holes burp on their food![17]
Once we understand that a deeper process is occurring in black holes than an explosion process that is limited to our dimension, then we won’t need to create these bizarre explanations as we now have a simple, elegant theory that can make some powerful predictions.
I also realised that the Black Hole Principle does not just end with black holes in the cosmos; this same signature behaviour is present at every level in a fractal fashion — from objects as small as atoms and quarks to supermassive black holes and even structures in between such as stars and planets. If I am right, we would see the following types of behaviours in structures.
- Emission of electrons at almost light speeds
- Annihilation processes present of antimatter and matter
- Emission of antimatter
- Gamma ray radiation emissions
- Patterns that are unpredictable — with hours or maybe days between flares
- A bipolar jet-like concentrated pattern of emissions
The Fractal World
After publishing my initial ideas in a journal in the winter of 2003, I spent the next two years researching and verifying this theory which I called The Black Hole Principle. Sure enough a lot of the unexplained behaviours of various objects in the cosmos from red dwarfs to planets fit this pattern. Even comets were throwing up surprises for astrophysicists, but not for me — their behaviour fitted the Black Principle perfectly.[18] Behaviour that we have known about for a long time like radioactivity and the quantum jumps of an electron within an atom can now be seen in a new perspective.
Even planets and stars show the same pattern of periodic ejections and emission of high energy electrons and light. Just look at the X-ray and gamma ray radiation found around the planets of our solar system, the mysterious plumes given off by Jupiter and Solar flares, which remarkably display the same cycling of antimatter and matter that we see in supermassive black holes. [19],[20]
Our own planet Earth is the site of some astonishing evidence of the Black Hole Principle. Now surely, our own planet cannot be full of fractal black holes? But if you remember the term ‘black hole’ is now a misnomer as they are actually the source of infinite light and are the creative forces in the cosmos. It is something that cosmologists themselves were forced to announce in 2010 mainly due to the fact that the size of every galaxy has such a direct correlation to the size of the supermassive black hole at its centre that is was no longer possible to deny the creative role of black holes.[21]
Bolt Upright
So let’s look back at some of the criteria for black hole behaviour and compare it to our own planet. Where do we see high energy electrons moving at very fast speeds on our own planet — in lightning! We are often given the impression that lightning is created by a sort of static electricity which builds up in the clouds yet nobody has been able to prove this. The measurements that have been taken actually show that the power build up is not nearly enough to cause a bolt of lightning.[22]
When a lightning bolt hits the earth it is traveling at ? the speed of light. Amazingly, recent discoveries have shown that gamma rays flashes that exist in the earth’s upper atmosphere are associated with thunderstorms and lightning bolts and just this year alone, NASA have also found that antimatter is being emitted too.[23]
, [24]
So now we have periodic ejections of electrons, gamma rays and antimatter as well as the presence of matter, antimatter annihilation, just as we find in a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy.[25]
But it is happening, not just in outer space but in our own atmosphere! It is the same Black Hole Principle happening at every single level. There are many more examples given in the book Punk Science which include DNA, quarks and the long-derided concept of chakras.[26]
We live in a fractal black hole universe with the signature of creation happening at every single level in everything. Every level of the universe is being created in every moment via spirals of light from infinity. When they reach our dimension, delineated at what we are currently calling the speed of light but is really the limitation of our perceptions in our dimension, they split into the antimatter and the matter which make up our universe and a mirror universe to ours. The matter universe is the one which we are mostly aware of in our daily lives.
Bang Goes the Theory
This means that creation is happening at every single level, not just at one single point 15 billion years ago; there was no Big Bang. Astonishingly the very evidence that was supposed to support Big Bang theory is showing up its deficiencies and this has prompted a group of cosmologists to form the Alternative Cosmology Group, protesting that unless you work on Big Bang theory, you will not get academic funding.[27]
However, the more we look at the evidence, the more Big Bang theory disintegrates. For example, when we started looking deeper into the universe, we expected to find that we would see only younger stars; as it has taken a longer time for the light to reach us, we should be looking into the early universe. But that is not the case. No matter where we look, the universe looks the same — old stars and young stars appear everywhere.[28]
The other piece of evidence that was supposed to cement Big Bang theory, but instead derailed it was the measurement of the microwave background radiation. Discovered by accident in the 1960s by Penzias and Wilson, this radiation has been interpreted as the remnants of the Big Bang. We even faintly pick it up as the ‘snowstorm’ picture on our television sets.
But strange features started to appear in the microwave background. Curious alignments and axes were seen that relate to current structures.[29]
,[30]
This meant that instead of being related to an event that happened billions of years ago, the microwave background shows alignments to current objects. With microwaves being emitted by our very own Milky Way black hole — it could be that the microwave background is aligned to current structures because it is being emitted by them in the here and now![31]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US5uuQu0JAA
Time and time again, findings that were puzzling to astrophysicists were perfectly fitting the Black Hole Principle. The predictions I have outlined above applied to structures as small as a quark and unexpected as a brown dwarf.[32],[33]
So when I found that antimatter was pouring out of our own Milky Way galaxy in a veritable fountain to the surprise of many, but totally predictable by this theory, I realised that too much evidence was accumulating for me to keep this theory to myself, it needed to get out there.[34] So I collated the data together and published it in the book Punk Science which provides many of the references for further reading. Since then of course, we have discovered massive bipolar gamma ray emissions coming from our own galaxy too: another iteration of the theory.[35]
Nothing new under the black hole sun
It has been a difficult journey at times requiring me to leave behind the familiar life of a medical doctor and step into uncharted territory. The discovery of similar theories from groups around the world have just reiterated that we are in the middle of a massive scientific revolution. In fact many scientists even a hundred years ago were formulating similar theories, but did not have the astrophysics data that we have acquired in the last few decades to express them in this way.
Going even further back, we realise that the concept that the centre of galaxies are a creative force in the universe has been described by many earlier cultures. The Maya described the centre of the galaxy as the Great Mother or Cosmic Womb. The Gnostics had a creation myth possibly inherited from earlier cultures, that describes the fall of a goddess from the centre of a galaxy, swirling around and falling through some sort of cosmic boundary before creating our world. And maybe this knowledge has something to do with spirals appearing in ancient art such as at New Grange in Ireland.
I get a sense that the time for this theory has come and that we are simply rediscovering what we used to know. Maybe we had to move away from this ancient knowledge in the cycles of time so we can rediscover it now with the benefit of our current technologies which bring us right back to what our ancestors knew — that everything is a spiral of living breathing creative light from infinity occurring at every level and at the heart of every spiral is the same infinite oneness that connects every structure in the universe from the very large to the very small.
Biography
Dr Manjir Samanta-Laughton is an award-winning international speaker and author, with two best-selling books translated into several languages. She is a former medical GP, bio-energy therapist and holistic doctor at the Bristol Cancer Help Centre and has now become a leading light in the field of linking cutting edge science and spirituality. She has over ten years experience as a speaker around the world in Ireland, the USA, Italy and Japan, including keynotes speeches at several universities. She has also been extensively interviewed by the media, including the BBC, Channel 4, Edge Media TV, The Guardian, The Sunday Express and many more.
In 2008, in recognition of her work, she joined a prestigious group of scientists and philosophers for a meeting in Japan examining the underlying assumptions behind science, which has become the influential Science Evolve group.
Her books are Punk Science published by O books and The Genius Groove published by Paradigm Revolution Publishing.
She lives in Derbyshire, UK with her partner, James.
Endnotes
- Reich ES. When Antimatter attacks. New Scientist. 24 April 2004; 34-37[back to text]
- Samanta-Laughton M. QBC: The Science of Auras and Chakras. Holistic Health. Winter 2003/4; 79:16-21.[back to text]
- Samanta-Laughton M. Punk Science. O-Books. 2006. [back to text]
- Minkel JR. Bye Bye black hole. New Scientist. 22 January 2005; 29-33.[back to text]
- Henbest N. The Great Annihilators. New Scientist. 1 April 2000; 28-31.[back to text]
- Ibid. [back to text]
- Goswami A. The Self-Aware Universe. (Tarcher/Putnam)[back to text]
- Wolf FA. Starwave (Macmillan) 1984[back to text]
- Swimme B. Canticle to the Cosmos. [DVD][back to text]
- Lykken J. The Physics of Extra Dimensions. Quick time video associated with lecture at Enrico Fermi institute.15 February 2003. http://hep.uchicago.edu/cdf/smaria/ms/aaas03.html [downloaded February 2003][back to text]
- Magueijo J. Faster than the speed of light. (Arrow) 2004.[back to text]
- William R. Speed of Light (abc.science) 2000. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s212674.htm [cited Dec 2005].[back to text]
- Magueijo J. Faster than the speed of light. (Arrow) 2004.[back to text]
- Milewski JV. Superlight, One Source one force. 17 November 1996; http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/milewski.htm. [cited December 2005][back to text]
- Richter P, Wakker BP. Our growing breathing galaxy. Scientific American. January 2004; 28-37.[back to text]
- Schilling G. Do black holes play with their food? Science NOW. 18 August 2005; 4.[back to text]
- Clark S. Tails of the unexpected. New Scientist. 10 September 2005; 32-35[back to text]
- Bryner J. Giant Storms Erupt on Jupiter. Space.com. 25 January 2008. http://www.space.com/4878-giant-storms-erupt-jupiter.html [cited Macrh 2011][back to text]
- Muir H. Celestial Fire. New Scientist: Inside Science 161. 21 June 2003; 1-4.[back to text]
- Chown M. Supermassive black holes – the fathers of galaxies. New Scientist. 6 January 2010; 30-33.[back to text]
- Gosline A. Thunderbolts from Space. New Scientist. 7 May 2005; 30-34.[back to text]
- Ibid.[back to text]
- NASA’s Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space. NASA website. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/fermi-thunderstorms.html [cited March 2011][back to text]
- Finkbeiner DP. WMAP Microwave Emission Interpreted as Dark Matter Annihilation in the Inner Galaxy. January 2005. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409027[back to text]
- Samanta-Laughton M. Punk Science. O-Books. 2006. [back to text]
- Lerner E. Bucking the Big Bang. New Scientist. 22 May 2004; 20. [back to text]
- Chown M. End of the beginning. New Scientist. 2 July 2005; 30-35. [back to text]
- Starkman GD, Schwarz D J. Is the Universe out of tune? Scientific American. August 2005; 36-43 [back to text]
- Merali Z. ‘Axis of Evil’ a cause for cosmic concern. New Scientist. 13 April 2007;10. [back to text]
- Finkbeiner DP. WMAP Microwave Emission Interpreted as Dark Matter Annihilation in the Inner Galaxy. January 2005. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409027 [back to text]
- Gefter A. Liquid Universe. New Scientist. 16 October 2004; 35-37. [back to text]
- Rutledge RE, Basri G, Martin EL, Bildstein L. Chandra detection of an X-ray flare from the brown dwarf LP 944-20. The Astrophysical Journal. 1 August 2000; 538:L141-L144. [back to text]
- Reich ES. When Antimatter attacks. New Scientist. 24 April 2004; 34-37. [back to text]
- NASA’s Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy. NASA website. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html [cited March 2011] [back to text]