The Sun Affects the Earth More Than You Might Realize

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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

But what happens on the sun doesn't stay on the sun.

As I pointed out last year:

It is known that intense solar activity can destroy ozone in the Earth's atmosphere, thus affecting climactic temperatures. See this, this, this, thisand this. Indeed, the effects of solar energy on ozone may be one of the main ways in which the sun influences Earth's climate.

The sun itself also affects the Earth more than previously understood. For example, according to the European Space Agency:

Scientists ... have proven that sounds generated deep inside the Sun cause the Earth to shake and vibrate in sympathy. They have found that Earth’s magnetic field, atmosphere and terrestrial systems, all take part in this cosmic sing-along.

And NASA has just discovered that "space weather" causes "spacequakes" on Earth:

Researchers using NASA's fleet of five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a form of space weather that packs the punch of an earthquake and plays a key role in sparking bright Northern Lights. They call it "the spacequake."

A spacequake is a temblor in Earth's magnetic field. It is felt most strongly in Earth orbit, but is not exclusive to space. The effects can reach all the way down to the surface of Earth itself.

"Magnetic reverberations have been detected at ground stations all around the globe, much like seismic detectors measure a large earthquake," says THEMIS principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA.

It's an apt analogy because "the total energy in a spacequake can rival that of a magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake," according to Evgeny Panov of the Space Research Institute in Austria.

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"Now we know," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Plasma jets trigger spacequakes."

According to THEMIS, the jets crash into the geomagnetic field some 30,000 km above Earth's equator. The impact sets off a rebounding process, in which the incoming plasma actually bounces up and down on the reverberating magnetic field. Researchers call it "repetitive flow rebuffing." It's akin to a tennis ball bouncing up and down on a carpeted floor. The first bounce is a big one, followed by bounces of decreasing amplitude as energy is dissipated in the carpet.

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"When plasma jets hit the inner magnetosphere, vortices with opposite sense of rotation appear and reappear on either side of the plasma jet," explains Rumi Nakamura of the Space Research Institute in Austria, a co-author of the study. "We believe the vortices can generate substantial electrical currents in the near-Earth environment."

Acting together, vortices and spacequakes could have a noticeable effect on Earth. The tails of vortices may funnel particles into Earth's atmosphere, sparking auroras and making waves of ionization that disturb radio communications and GPS. By tugging on surface magnetic fields, spacequakes generate currents in the very ground we walk on. Ground current surges can have profound consequences, in extreme cases bringing down power grids over a wide area.

What does this mean?

Some allege that spacequakes cause actual, physical earthquakes on Earth. I have no idea whether or not that is true.

The above-quoted NASA article from with a poem which implies such a connection:

Vortices swirl
plasma a'twirl
Richter predicts
a magnitude six

However, the poem may use artistic license rather than scientific rigor.

What is certain is that the science of the affect of space events on Earth is in its infancy, and that there are many fascinating discoveries in our future.

Bacteria and Phytoplankton Affect the Weather

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It turns out that critters so small that they can't be seen with the naked eye might affect the weather, and perhaps even climate.

As I pointed out last year, spacefaring bacteria might affect rainfall:

In 2002, several scientists claimed that bacteria high in Earth's atmosphere came from space.

Last year, scientists said that bacteria in the upper atmosphere may actuallymake rain. Specifically, they said that bacteria can freeze at fairly warm temperatures, so that the "biological ice nuclei" form condensation nucleiwhich triggers rain.

Indeed, some scientists have speculated that bacteria cause rain as a means of transportation, so that they will "rain out" from the upper atmosphere to the surface of a planet.

Now, scientists have discovered a "hibernating" bacteria in a salt mine in Utah which they believe has been in suspended animation for 250 million years. There is evidence that this ability to hibernate for long periods of time is also useful for travel through space by the bacteria:

Bacteria have the ability to go into a kind of semi-permanent hibernation, but survival for this long was unheard of. After lying dormant in the salt crystal for 250 million years, the scientists added fresh nutrients and a new salt solution, and the ancient bacteria "re-animated."

Dr. Russell Vreeland, one of the biologists who found the bacteria, pointed out that bacteria can survive the forces [of] acceleration via rubble thrown into space via a meteor impact. If it is possible for a bacteria to survive being [thrown] off the planet and to stay alive within a salt chunk for 250 million years, then in a sort of "reverse-exogenesis" it may be possible that earth's own microbes are already out there.

Indeed, there is a more down-to-earth analogy to the idea of spacefaring bacteria: the humble coconut. Coconuts can float across long distances of water in the ocean, and when they land on a hospitable island, start growing.

Now, NOAA scientists say that phytoplankton affects hurricanes. As New Scientistwrites:

Using a computer weather simulator, [NOAA's Anand Gnanadesikan] compared the formation of tropical storms in the Pacific under today's phytoplankton concentrations to conditions without any phytoplankton at all. What he found was an overall decrease in tropical storms in a phytoplankton-free digital Pacific.

The mechanism for this shift lies inphytoplankton's ability to absorb sunlight, which heats up the water around it. Without phytoplankton, the sun's rays penetrate deep into the ocean, leaving the surface water cold. Cool water has less energy than warm water, produces less of the moist air needed to build up tropical storms, and allows for stronger winds that can dissipate thunderstorms before they turn into typhoons (what hurricanes are called in the Pacific Ocean). All of this adds up to a Pacific Ocean that is less exciting and deadly than the one we currently have.

Because phytoplankton levels have dropped 40 percent since the 1950s, that may mean that hurricane frequency and/or intensity may decline.

Rain can provide transportation to bacteria, which provides an obvious evolutionary advantage: it gives them a free ride out of space down to a planet's surface.

But could there also be an advantage to phytoplankton from hurricanes? Believe it or not, there is.

As NASA wrote in 2004:

Whenever a hurricane races across the Atlantic Ocean, chances are phytoplankton will bloom behind it. According to a new study using NASA satellite data, these phytoplankton blooms may also affect the Earth's climate and carbon cycle.

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The satellite images showed tiny microscopic ocean plants, called phytoplankton, bloomed following the storms.

"Some parts of the ocean are like deserts, because there isn't enough food for many plants to grow. A hurricane's high winds stir up the ocean waters and help bring nutrients and phytoplankton to the surface, where they get more sunlight, allowing the plants to bloom," Babin said.

***

Bigger storms appear to cause larger phytoplankton blooms. Larger phytoplankton should have more chlorophyll, which satellite sensors can see.

Hurricane-induced upwelling, the rising of cooler nutrient-rich water to the ocean surface, is also critical in phytoplankton growth. For two to three weeks following almost every storm, the satellite data showed phytoplankton growth. Babin and his colleagues believe it was stimulated by the addition of nutrients brought up to the surface.

***

By stimulating these phytoplankton blooms, hurricanes can affect the ecology of the upper ocean. Phytoplankton is at the bottom of the food chain. The factors that influence their growth also directly affect the animals and organisms that feed on them.

Surprising Sea Slug Is Half-plant, Half-animal

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By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 12 January 2010 11:47 am ET

This green slug, which is part animal and part plant, produces its own chlorophyll and so can carry out photosynthesis, turning sunlight into energy, scientists have found. Credit: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez

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A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.

The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they've eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry outphotosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.

"They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything," said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Pierce has been studying the unique creatures, officially called Elysia chlorotica, for about 20 years. He presented his most recent findings Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle. The finding was first reported by Science News.

"This is the first time that multicellar animals have been able to produce chlorophyll," Pierce told LiveScience.

The sea slugs live in salt marshes in New England and Canada. In addition to burglarizing the genes needed to make the green pigment chlorophyll, the slugs also steal tiny cell parts called chloroplasts, which they use to conduct photosynthesis. The chloroplasts use the chlorophyl to convert sunlight into energy, just as plants do, eliminating the need to eat food to gain energy.

"We collect them and we keep them in aquaria for months," Pierce said. "As long as we shine a light on them for 12 hours a day, they can survive [without food]."

The researchers used a radioactive tracer to be sure that the slugs are actually producing the chlorophyll themselves, as opposed to just stealing the ready-made pigment from algae. In fact, the slugs incorporate the genetic material so well, they pass it on to further generations of slugs.

The babies of thieving slugs retain the ability to produce their own chlorophyll, though they can't carry out photosynthesis until they've eaten enough algae to steal the necessary chloroplasts, which they can't yet produce on their own.

The slugs accomplishment is quite a feat, and scientists aren't yet sure how the animals actually appropriate the genes they need.

"It certainly is possible that DNA from one species can get into another species, as these slugs have clearly shown," Pierce said. "But the mechanisms are still unknown."

Thunderstorms Make Antimatter

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Jan. 11, 2011: Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed inside thunderstorms in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

An artist's concept of antimatter spraying above a thunderhead. [video]

Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

Although Fermi's GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it's also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi's launch in 2008.

"In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home," said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Fermi was above Egypt on Dec. 14, 2009, when a burst of positrons emerged from an African thunderstorm. [larger image]

The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. In addition, lightning-generated radio signals detected by a global monitoring network indicated the only lightning at the time was hundreds or more miles away. During one TGF, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2009, Fermi was located over Egypt. But the active storm was in Zambia, some 2,800 miles to the south. The distant storm was below Fermi's horizon, so any gamma rays it produced could not have been detected.

"Even though Fermi couldn't see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it," said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. "The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth's magnetic field to strike the spacecraft."

The beam continued past Fermi, reached a location, known as a mirror point, where its motion was reversed, and then hit the spacecraft a second time just 23 milliseconds later. Each time, positrons in the beam collided with electrons in the spacecraft. The particles annihilated each other, emitting gamma rays detected by Fermi's GBM.

Scientists long have suspected TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, they say, the field becomes strong enough that it drives an upward avalanche of electrons. Reaching speeds nearly as fast as light, the high-energy electrons give off gamma rays when they're deflected by air molecules. Normally, these gamma rays are detected as a TGF.

Click to view the three steps thunderstorms must take to produce bursts of anti-matter. [more]

But the cascading electrons produce so many gamma rays that they blast electrons and positrons clear out of the atmosphere. This happens when the gamma-ray energy transforms into a pair of particles: an electron and a positron. It's these particles that reach Fermi's orbit.

The detection of positrons shows many high-energy particles are being ejected from the atmosphere. In fact, scientists now think that all TGFs emit electron/positron beams. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.

"The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work," said Steven Cummer at Duke University. "We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process."

Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

8 sci-fi inspired advances that became real in 2010

Arthur C. Clark said that 2010 would be the year we made contact. While we didn't find the Monolith, and Zephram Cochrane didn't shake hands with a Vulcan, 2010 had some headlines that were truly the stuff of science fiction.

Are we already living in the future? Take a moment and decide for yourself with these eight advancements that are helping make science fiction into science reality.

Click on any image to see it enlarged.

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1. Cloaking

There were two big advancements for cloaking technology introduced in 2010. The first deals with a"metamaterial" that could be used to channel the flow of light. This alone was the very stuff of science fiction that puts pictures of a decloaking Romulan Warbird (as seen above) in our heads.

The second is a prototype that promised to "remove something from spacetime." At first, visions of the TARDIS and traveling through time come to mind. However, the technology is used to speed up light and slow it down on opposite sides, thereby creating a "gap." The effect of such a light gap cloak would give the appearance of instantaneously moving from one place to another.

The technology resembles something used in an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man: For those who don't remember, in the episode, the alien creators of the Sasquatch used these small handheld devices to give the appearance of jumping from one place to another. It turned out that Steve's bionic eye was able to penetrate the light wavelength (of course) allowing him to see that they were just walking.

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2. Teleportation

Wow! More Star Trek technology than you can shake a tricoder at. While we haven't beamed a landing party down from orbit yet, scientists impressed us all this year by transporting materials a whopping ten miles.

This is a huge leap from a few years ago when scientists were able to move some particles a meager few feet. Just think, one day we'll be telling our grandkids horror stories about how we had towalk or drive places.

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3. Laser Weapons

Lots of science fiction is populated by sweet laser cannons shooting down spaceships or blowing up whole planets. While this is certainly not the Wave Motion Gun from Star Blazers,the U.S. Navy's Laser Weapon System (or LaWS, pictured above) has realized the promise of laser technology in the modern day, by being able to shoot down drones and disrupt enemy electronics.

Of course, there's also Boeing's laser-equipped 747. While it wasn't introduced in 2010, it did score some of its biggest successes then — and run into its biggest roadblocks.

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4. Household Robots

While robots have been around for quite a while, this year saw several mass production household robots roll off the line. The PR2 from Willow Garage (pictured) and the REEM-H2 from PAL Robotics in Spain are are probably a little more closely related to the butler robot from Caprica than C-3PO or Marvin.

The idea that these robots are now being mass produced means they'll probably be in our houses faster than VCRs or flat panel TVs — well, if they continue to develop those beer-delivering skills. That's crucial.

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5.Tractor Beams

While it may be primitive, this was a first for the headlines.

According to Popular Science:

"It works by shining a hollow laser beam around small glass particles, as Inside Science explains. The air around the particle heats up, but the hollow center of the beam stays cool. The heated air molecules keep the object balanced in the dark center. But a small amount of light sneaks into the hollow, warming the air on one side of the object and nudging it along the length of the laser beam. Researchers can change the speed and direction of the glass object by changing the lasers' brightness."

Because it needs air to work, we won't be using it to move spaceships any time soon, but Alexander Graham Bell didn't have "call waiting" or "text messaging."

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6. "Transparent Aluminum"

This one is obviously about as close to the material Scotty described to Dr. Nichols in Star Trek IV as it's possible to be. A lab in Germany, subjected extremely fine-grained aluminum to a scorching 1,200 degrees Centigrade. They made a material that is extremely light, yet tougher than hardened steel and, of course, it's transparent!

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7. Learning Computers

Professor Henry Markram, medical doctor and computer engineer (a rare combination), announced that his team would create the world's first artificial conscious and intelligent mind by 2018.

News articles have compared him to a modern day Frankenstein. (Hey, unless you're sewing together dead bodies and trying to reanimate Abby Normal's brain, you don't really qualify as Dr. Frankenstein.) However, science fiction has warned us again and again about the dangers of trying to build a truly conscious, thinking machine.

The techie in me thinks the idea is a cool one, but then again there's all those lessons taught to us by Forbin, Skynet, M-5 and, of course, the Cylons. Oh, who cares? Thinking robots are damn cool. At least until they take over the world.

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8. Alien Life (on Earth)

This may not be as exciting as mind melding with a Horta, but it may be almost as significant. The Horta (pictured above with Spock) is supposedly based on silicon, and according to McCoy it was the first time they encountered life based on anything other than carbon.

NASA's discovery not only opens a whole host of new possibilities regarding what we define as life, it also opens the possibility of life on planets that were previously thought to be "uninhabitable."

Looking at the strong science fiction influences here, it's only logical to ask, "Would these have even been created had there not been science fiction stories to inspire them? A NASA scientist once told Gene Rodenberry that he was upset when the original Star Trek was cancelled because Star Trek was such a great source of ideas for them...more than he would ever have known.

11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks

Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek.

Click on any image to see it enlarged.

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1. Aerogel

Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It's basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been taken out and replaced with gas instead. If you hold a small piece in your hand, it's practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it's like styrofoam.

Aerogel isn't just neat, it's useful. It supports up to 4,000 times its own weight and can apparently withstand a direct blast from two pounds of dynamite. It's also the best insulator in existence, which is why we don't have Aerogel jackets: it works so well that people were complaining about overheating on Mt. Everest.

Price: $35

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2. EcoSphere

Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. Put it somewhere with some light, and this little ecosystem will chug along happily for years, no feeding or cleaning necessary, totally oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world exists outside.

EcoSpheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. They're like little microcosms for the entire world, man. But ask yourself: are we the shrimp, or the algae?

Price: $80

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3. Mars Rock

NASA has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from Mars for a while now. You can beat them to the punch and pick up a little piece of the red planet without having to travel a hundred million miles, by just taking advantage of all the rocks Mars sends our way.

Every once in a while, a meteorite smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around the sun. And every once in a while, one of these rocks lands on Earth. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and whoever finds the meteorite is allowed to cut it up into bits and sell it to people who want to have their very own piece of another planet.

Price: $70+

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4. Gömböc

The Gömböc is a self-righting object, which means that no matter which way you put it down, it stands itself back up. It's like a Weeble, except it doesn't cheat by having a weight at the bottom, and it's the only shape that can do this.

The existence of a shape with these properties was conjectured in 1995, but it took ten years for someone to figure out how to actually make one that worked. And then everyone was embarrassed when it turned out that turtles had evolved this same basic shape in their shells a long time ago, to make it easier for them to roll themselves back over if they get flipped.

Price: $150

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5. Violet Laser Pointer

It's no longer geeky enough to have a red laser pointer, or a green laser pointer, or even a blue laser pointer. Keep moving up the spectrum until you get to violet, and you'll find the new hotness at 405 nanometers.

So what's next year's new color going to be? It's looking like orange, but they're not quite what I'd call affordable yet. Something to look forward to for next year, especially if you're going for your own personal laser rainbow.

Price: $110

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6. Gallium

Gallium is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It's used in semiconductors and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting point, which is only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid gallium crystal in your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly melt into a silvery metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes back into a solid.

While you probably shouldn't lick your fingers after playing with it, gallium isn't toxic and won't make you crazy like mercury does. And if you get tired of it, you can melt it onto glass and make yourself a mirror.

Price: $80

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7. Miracle Berries

By themselves, Miracle berries don't taste like much. The reason to eat them is that they contain a chemical called miraculin that binds to the sweet taste receptors on your tongue, changing their shape and making them respond to sour and acidic foods.

The upshot of this effect is that some things you eat taste spectacularly different. Straight Tabasco sauce tastes like donut glaze. Guinness tastes like a chocolate malt. Goat cheese tastes like cheesecake. After about an hour of craziness, your taste buds go back to normal, no harm done.

Price: $15

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8. DNA Genotyping

There's nothing more personal than someone's own DNA. And there are ways to give the gift DNA that won't get you children or arrested. With just a little bit of spit, you can get an genotype analysis that will reveal fun insights about longevity, intelligence, susceptibility to diseases, and even food preferences.

While the technology hasn't reached the point where you can affordably get a complete sequence of an entire genome, looking at specific markers is still good enough to suggest some things worth looking out for while spurring a lively nature versus nurture debate.

Price: $100

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9. Klein Bottle

If you want to give a mathematician something to try to wrap their head around, a Klein bottle is a good place to start. A real Klein bottle is an object with no inside and no outside that can only exist in four dimensions. These glass models exist in three, which means that unlike the real thing, they can actually hold liquid.

The difference between the models and the real thing is that by adding an extra dimension, you can make it so that the neck of the bottle doesn't actually intersect the side of the bottle. Take a couple aspirin and try to picture that in your head.

Price: $35

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10. Giant Plush Microbes

They're cute! They're fuzzy! They're potentially deadly! All of the microbes, bacteria, and viruses that you know and love (or maybe not) are available in huggable forms about a million times larger than real life. In the picture are gonorrhea, syphilis, mono, and herpes.

These giant plushes are the perfect way to make the holidays even more awkward, when you present your friends with a variety of adorable STDs. Microbiologists, at least, will appreciate that they're more or less anatomically correct, too.

Price: $9

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11. Ferrofluid

Magnetic particles suspended in oil never looked so sexy. That's all a ferrofluid is, and it looks pretty gross until you put it in close proximity to a magnet, at which point it grows spikes all over the place as the fluid flows out along magnetic force lines.

Ferrofluids are found in everything from speakers to hard drives, but it's much more fun to play with when when you've got a puddle of it naked and out in the open.

Price: $40

5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness

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By Joe DB Sep 21, 2009 4,541,868 views

Much of the brain is still mysterious to modern science, possibly because modern science itself is using brains to analyze it. There are probably secrets the brain simply doesn't want us to know. But by no means should that stop us from tinkering around in there, using somewhat questionable and possibly dangerous techniques to make our brains do what we want. We can't vouch for any of these, either their effectiveness or safety. All we can say is that they sound awesome, since apparently you can make your brain... #5. Think You Got a Good Night's Sleep (After Only Two Hours of Actual Sleep) So you just picked up the night shift at your local McDonald's, you have class every morning at 8am and you have no idea how you're going to make it through the day without looking like a guy straight out ofDawn of the Dead, minus the blood... hopefully. "SLEEEEEEEEEP... uh... I mean... BRAAAIIIIINNNSSS..." What if we told you there was a way to sleep for little more than two hours a day, and still feel more refreshed than taking a 12-hour siesta on a bed made entirely out of baby kitten fur? No more sneaking naps at the fry station for you! Holy Shit! How Do I Do It? It's called the Uberman Sleep Schedule, and besides having a totally badass name, it's a way to get the maximum amount of essential sleep for your body without wasting hours of precious time you could be using to work or drink or farm for World of Warcraft gold. The schedule consists of taking six, 20-30 minute power naps, every four hours during the day. Of course, this new sleep pattern blows donkey-dick to get used to, but it's a price you have to pay to basically extend your waking life by several years. We're pretty sure Kramer did this once on Seinfeld. So it's probably a great idea. The best way to start it off is to just jump right in. Get to sleep at 8pm, set your alarm for 8:30. Get up, play some Call of Duty, sleep again at 12, alarm at 12:30, and so on. After three or four days of this you will start to get high as fuck because of sleep deprivation, and might just want to kill yourself, but don't do it! That would be absolutely counter-productive. By day 10 or so, your brain will say, "Fuck! FINE, we'll do it your way," and will adapt to your new superhuman sleep schedule. How Does It Work? When you sleep normally, your body gets only about an hour and a half of REM sleep, the kind of sleep that is thought to be the most important to keeping your brain sharp. While other stages of sleep help your body to heal and grow, the REM sleep is what makes you feel rested. Of course, sleeping in a bed doesn't hurt either. The first few days of adjusting are tough because your body isn't getting ANY of this REM sleep, and your brain hates you for it. After the third day, or so, your brain figures out that you mean business, and every time you lay down for one of these naps, dives directly into REM sleep in an attempt to compensate for the deprivation. Do some quick math and that's two full hours of REM sleep, while those who are sleeping normally are only getting an hour and a half. Before you know it, while the rest of the world snores away, you'll be up and drawing dicks on their faces. #4. Hallucinate Like You Just Took LSD, Legally Yes, that's right kids! Tell your dealer goodbye and worry no more about winding up naked on the roof of an office building after a bad trip. Now you can be stoned out of your mind by building a homemade deprivation chamber out of some regular, completely harmless household objects. Holy Shit, How Can I Do It! You are going to need three things: a ping-pong ball, a radio with headphones and a red light. Step 1: Turn the radio to a station with just white noise (static), and put on your headphones. Step 2: Cut the ping-pong ball in half and tape each half over your eyes. Step 3: Turn the red light so it's facing your eyes. Step 4: Sit there for at least a half an hour. Step 5: Follow Ben Franklin and your new friend, Harold the unicorn, into the gumdrop forest, and live happily ever after. How Does It Work? It's called the Ganzfeld effect, and it works by blocking out most of the signals that go to your brain. It's the same kind of effect you get when looking into a soft light for a while and lose vision, except at a larger scale. The sound of the white noise and the light from the outside of the ping pong ball are eventually ignored by your brain. With all those signals out of the picture, your brain has to create its own, and this is where the hallucinations come in. We can't guarantee they won't involve, say, the ghost of Lizzie Borden trying to hack off your scrotum with an ax, but that's the risk you take, dammit. Now, if you want a little more control over your hallucinations... #3. Dream Whatever You Want to Dream What if we told you there was a way to make all your fantasies come true? You could have that sports car you've always wanted and the daily threesome with Sarah Palin and Cannonball Run-era Burt Reynolds. Hell, we'll even throw in a few superpowers for your enjoyment. We never miss an opportunity to use this picture. Welcome to the wonderful world of lucid dreaming. Holy Shit, How Can I Do It? Most of you reading this have had a lucid dream before. Every once in a while you wind up in a dream but somehow recognize it as a dream, and you may have found yourself able to pretty much program the dream to your specifications. While there are plenty of tips and tricks to make this happen on purpose, we've narrowed it down to what seems like the most useful, so that you can be riding dinosaurs with Gary Coleman in your sleep in no time: Cowboy hat, optional. 1. Keep a Dream Journal As soon as you wake up from a dream, write down every little thing you can remember about it. Supposedly by writing it down, your brain recognizes certain patterns that only occur in a dream (since most dreams are immediately forgotten) and if they are on paper, you can recall them easily. 2. Think about exactly what you want to dream right before you fall asleep. Makes sense. For instance you've probably fallen asleep watching MythBusters before and immediately dreamed you were flying through the air, using a giant version of Jamie's mustache as a hang glider. Just us? 3. The best time to have a lucid dream is either right before you regularly wake up, or right after. Studies have shown that more people have lucid dreams when they take a nap shortly after they first wake up in the morning. So you can do all that, or if you are the lazy type, get yourself something like the NovaDreamer, a device that detects when you've entered REM sleep and then makes a noise that's supposed to be not quite enough to wake you up, but enough to raise your awareness to, "Hey, this is totally a dream I'm having!" levels. How Does It Work? Obviously the big difference between a dream and real life is that if the Hamburglar came bursting out of your refrigerator right now and started screaming at you in Vietnamese, your first thought would be "This is a strange and unusual event that is occurring right now, and I should question my perceptions." If the same thing happens in a dream, you just go with it. Yes, Mel Gibson is dressed like Col. Sanders. No, this is not a dream. In a dream state, your mind mostly loses the ability to criticize anything that's happening because dreaming just doesn't involve the critical part of your brain. You're all worried that you're at work in your underwear, and don't even blink at the fact that your boss is a dragon who speaks in the voice of your old middle school gym coach. But if you change your mental state ever so slightly, that critical part of your brain can keep functioning even while in dreamland. If you can perfect the technique of dreaming while not all the way asleep, the next thing you know you're ordering up a Smurf orgy. #2. Learn More While You Sleep So say you haven't followed that first step up there and choose to continue sleeping like other mere mortals. A very minor change in your schedule can still let you use your sleep patterns to your advantage, by making you smarter. Holy Shit, How Can I Do It? No, we're not talking about those scams where they have you put a tape recorder under your pillow and let it teach you Spanish while you're asleep. What scientists have found out is if you need to remember a bunch of information (say, for a big exam), do NOT study right up until time for the exam. Study at least 24 hours before, and sleep on it. Note: "Sleep on it" is simply an expression. You can sleep in a bed. They did a study at Harvard that proved this technique works. Participants were separated into three different groups after being shown images that they were told to memorize. One of the groups was tested on the memorization after 20 minutes, the other after 12 hours and the last after 24 hours. You would expect that the ones who were tested just 20 minutes later would do best, but that would, of course, make a really shitty story. No, the participants who slept on it and had 24 hours for the information to fester in their brain did the best on the test, while those who only had 20 minutes did the worst. Wasting your time, nerds, go to sleep. How Does It Work? Scientists say the ability your brain has to retain information works in three different ways: acquisition, consolidation and recall. While the first and last occur while you're awake, it's the middle-man that is important during sleep. When you sleep, your brain is constantly processing information that you couldn't have processed with everything going on up there during the day. This works to strengthen your neurological bonds in the brain. Think of it like downloading something on a computer. When you go to download something while your porn is up, it takes longer, right? Close up any applications that are running and you have a smoother, quicker download. Yeah, kind of like that... maybe. So does this technique work with the "sleep two hours a day" system we mentioned earlier? We're not sure anyone has tried it, but by our calculations such a person would immediately gain mental superpowers, possibly including telekinesis. Somebody in the comments try it and let us know. #1. Believe Something Happened (That Totally Didn't) Stop for a moment and recall your fondest childhood memory. Or your worst. In either case, there's a really good chance that it's total bullshit. Memory is a funny thing. Research has consistently found that our memories from when we were kids are either extremely inaccurate, or didn't happen at all. They are just elaborate constructions of a memory storage system that isn't very good at distinguishing real memories from fake ones. Are you positive this didn't happen? So what if we told you that there was a way to do this on purpose? To hack your brain into believing (and "seeing" vividly) a completely made-up event that never actually happened? Holy Shit! How Do I Do It? The trick is you need somebody else to do it for you (or to you). But it takes very little effort, and no Total Recall-style brain-hacking machines. Or torso mutants. For instance, in a study in 1995 researchers sat down a group of people and mentioned four incidents from their childhood (gathered from family members) and asked subjects how well they remembered them. What they didn't mention was that one of the stories (a tale of them being lost in a specific shopping mall) was utter bullshit. It didn't matter. Twenty percent came back with sudden memories of the event that, in reality, never happened. The sheer act of asking them if it did, caused them to manufacture the memory, filling in details on the fly. Remember when Bruce Campbell was President? Researchers knew they could up that 20 percent figure. In another test, an unsuspecting group of people who had visited Disneyland in the past were placed in a room with a cardboard cutout of Bugs Bunny and/or were shown fake ads for Disneyland featuring Bugs. Afterwards, 40 percent claimed they vividly remembered seeing a guy in a Bugs Bunny costume when they were at Disneyland. They didn't, of course (Bugs isn't a Disney character). Another study took it a step further, and actually Photoshopped a picture of each subject riding in a hot air balloon. When asked if they recalled this non-event, 50 percent said they did. Other experiments successfully convinced people they had at one time nearly drowned, been hospitalized or been attacked by a wild animal. How Does It Work? Your brain kind of plays it fast and loose when it stores memories, and for good reason: Usually the details don't matter. You remember your best friend's phone number but don't remember exactly where and when he told you. You remember that you hate zucchini, but don't remember what day of the week you tried it. Your brain breaks up memories into a stew of general lessons learned and important stuff you'll need later. The problem is that same process makes it very difficult to distinguish real memories from fake onessince the source of a memory is so often discarded in the stew. A fact you think you read in a newspaper might in reality have been read in a fictional novel, or heard from a friend, or dreamed, or implanted by somebody who's fucking with you. So not only could somebody do this for you (though it would have to be set up so that you don't know where and when) but it seems like you could run a pretty successful business just implanting happy childhoods for people. You know, like that time you found out you were adopted, and that your real parents were the Thundercats.