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Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a dream — you were in high school again or had forgotten to study for an important exam or were flying with your dog — and realized that you were dreaming?


What you probably experienced was a lucid dream — a state of being aware in your dream that you are dreaming.


A small percentage of people have several lucid dreams weekly or even nightly; 20 percent experience them monthly; up to 50 percent report never having had a lucid dream.


Surprisingly, lucid dreaming is a skill that can be learned.


Lucid dreaming could be an opportunity to “reach new heights of self-exploration and self-knowledge” by opening a new way to explore your mind, said Benjamin Baird, a psychology research assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies cognition, consciousness and dreaming.

It’s also fun, a strategy for unlocking creativity and a therapy for nightmares.


Some people find it easy to learn to lucid dream. Others find it more challenging. Baird said he “threw the kitchen sink” at learning to lucid dream and went from “nothing” to having a lucid dream weekly at his peak……

 
Dark matter is supposed to account for 85% of the mass in the universe, according to conventional scientific wisdom. But proponents of a radical new theory of gravity, in which space-time is “wobbly”, say their approach could render the elusive substance obsolete.

The proposition, outlined in a new paper, raises the controversial possibility that dark matter, which has never been directly observed, is a mirage that a substantial portion of the physics community has been chasing for several decades. The theory is viewed as quite left-field and is yet to be thoroughly tested, but the latest claims are creating a stir in the world of physics.

Announcing the paper on X, Prof Jonathan Oppenheim, of University College London, said: “Folks, something seems to be happening. We show that our theory of gravity … can explain the expansion of the universe and galactic rotation without dark matter or dark energy.”

There are multiple lines of evidence for dark matter, but its nature has remained mysterious and searches by the Large Hadron Collider have come up empty-handed. Last year, the European Space Agency launched a mission, Euclid, aiming to produce a cosmic map of dark matter.


The latest paper, published on the Arxiv websiteand yet to be peer-reviewed, raises the question of whether it even exists, drawing parallels between dark matter and flawed concepts of the past, such as “the ether”, an invisible substance that was thought to permeate all of space.

“In the absence of any direct evidence for dark energy or dark matter it is natural to wonder whether they may be unnecessary scientific constructs like celestial spheres, ether, or the planet Vulcan, all of which were superseded by simpler explanations,” it states. “Gravity has a long history of being a trickster.”…….

www.theguardian.com

Controversial new theory of gravity rules out need for dark matter

Exclusive: Paper by UCL professor says ‘wobbly’ space-time could instead explain expansion of universe and galactic rotation
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 

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