The Meyler-Fuchs Hybrid Warp Drive (MFHD) and its extensions — H-MFHD and the Recursive Double Möbius Warp Drive (RDMWD) — introduce a non-orientable Möbius-parity ansatz into toroidal positive-energy warp metrics, producing a topological torsion-lowering mechanism that fundamentally changes the energy scaling of spacetime engineering. Combined with hyperbolic shift reformulation and orthogonal transport splitting, this yields quadratic (or better) reductions in field energy requirements compared to every prior positive-energy warp proposal. Whereas Fuchs et al., Lentz, and Bobrick (...) & Martire require planetary-to-stellar mass-energy equivalents for meaningful warp velocities, MFHD satisfies all classical energy conditions (NEC, WEC, DEC, SEC), eliminates horizons and closed timelike curves by construction, and brings required field energies down to approximately 10⁸–10¹¹ J for v ≈ 0.5c. The two-axis orthogonal shift splitting is identified as the decisive innovation: for curvature exponents p ≥ 4, energy is halved relative to all single-axis designs. The paper also examines the persistent cultural motif of spinning and rim-rotating disc-shaped craft across seven decades of UAP reports, argues that institutional skepticism toward these reports suppressed a legitimate physics investigation for decades, and shows that the same topological principles now formalized in MFHD may explain the observed rotation signature. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s angular-momentum objection is addressed and shown to apply only to naive rigid-body rotation, not to the gauge-invariant topological torsion employed here. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Meyler-Fuchs Hybrid Warp Drive (MFHD), a finite, positive-energy, subluminal warp metric built on a toroidal plasma shell with classical GRMHD sourcing. The design hybridizes the torsion-lowering M¨obius-parity ansatz from Meyler’s TEPWD framework with the positiveenergy, shift-based constructions of Fuchs and Lentz, enforcing strict guard inequalities that prevent closed timelike curves (CTCs) and superluminality. We then present H-MFHD, a hyperbolic-shift reformulation that replaces static shift fields with dynamically evolving potentials governed by anisotropic wave equations, ensuring (...) causal propagation and numerical well-posedness. Following the Time- Machine Design and Evaluation Checklist (Meyler, 2025), we provide complete derivations of the metric, curvature tensors, stress-energy decomposition, energy conditions, geodesic structure, stability analysis, and semiclassical consistency. We prove steady-state equivalence between MFHD and H-MFHD, derive sufficient conditions for theWeak and Null Energy Conditions, and formulate a PDE-constrained optimization that minimizes boundary gradients subject to guard inequalities. Numerical benchmarks show that hyperbolic shaping yields ∼25% energy reduction beyond the M¨obius-thick-wall baseline, and that splitting transport across two orthogonal shift axes can halve the required energy for curvature exponents p ≥ 4. The MFHD/H-MFHD framework is shown to be a finite-device candidate with explicit engineering gates, classical stability, and manageable semiclassical backreaction timescales. (shrink)

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one’s action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would . Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator – consistency between one’s action and a subsequent event – was manipulated, and its effects on binding (...) and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship. (shrink)

Objects and events are fundamental units of perception: Objects structure our experience of space, and events structure our experience of time. A striking and counterintuitive finding about object representation is that it can warp perceived space, such that stimuli within an object appear farther apart than stimuli in empty space. Might events influence perceived time in the same way objects influence perceived space? Here, five experiments (N=500 adults) show that they do: Just as stimuli within an object are perceived (...) as farther apart in space, stimuli within an event are perceived as further apart in time. Such “Event-based Warping” is elicited both by events characterized by sound (E1), as well as events characterized by silence (E2). Moreover, these effects cannot be explained by surprise, distraction or attentional-cueing (E3 and E4), and also arise cross-modally (from audition to vision; E5). We suggest that object-based warping and event-based warping are both instances of a more general phenomenon in which representations of structure — whether in space or in time — generate powerful and analogous relative perceptual distortions. (shrink)

A major challenge for semantic video segmentation is how to exploit the spatiotemporal information and produce consistent results for a video sequence. Many previous works utilize the precomputed optical flow to warp the feature maps across adjacent frames. However, the imprecise optical flow and the warping operation without any learnable parameters may not achieve accurate feature warping and only bring a slight improvement. In this paper, we propose a novel framework named Dynamic Warping Network to adaptively warp the (...) interframe features for improving the accuracy of warping-based models. Firstly, we design a flow refinement module to optimize the precomputed optical flow. Then, we propose a flow-guided convolution to achieve the adaptive feature warping based on the refined optical flow. Furthermore, we introduce the temporal consistency loss including the feature consistency loss and prediction consistency loss to explicitly supervise the warped features instead of simple feature propagation and fusion, which guarantees the temporal consistency of video segmentation. Note that our DWNet adopts extra constraints to improve the temporal consistency in the training phase, while no additional calculation and postprocessing are required during inference. Extensive experiments show that our DWNet can achieve consistent improvement over various strong baselines and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on the Cityscapes and CamVid benchmark datasets. (shrink)

The toroidal, multi-axis warp drive geometry — a thick-wall plasma ring with orthogonal rotating elements and an axial transport corridor — appears prominently in science fiction visual design well before it was rigorously derived as a positive-energy spacetime solution. This essay traces the mathematical arc from Alcubierre's 1994 exotic-matter bubble metric through the positive-energy constructions of Lentz (2021) and Bobrick and Martire (2021), to the Meyler–Fuchs Hybrid Warp Drive (MFHD, Meyler 2025), the first complete derivation of a toroidal (...) positive-energy warp metric satisfying all classical energy conditions with explicit engineering parameters. We examine the jump-ship design from Foundation (Apple TV+, 2021) as a case study: its nested orthogonal ring structure, axial singularity aperture, and confinement geometry correspond with precise fidelity to the MFHD metric’s mathematical architecture — yet the design predates the complete physics. We argue that the artists, working from the incomplete Alcubierre framework, nonetheless rejected the exotic-matter bubble topology and converged on the toroidal positive-energy structure that the physics community would not fully formalize until years later. This convergence is not coincidental: it reflects deep geometric intuition about what a physically realizable warp device must look like. The correspondence between the visual design and the MFHD mathematics is examined in detail across five structural features. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter attempts to establish ontologically some of what Einstein established in physics. Einstein was himself driven by ontological forms of argument. Seeing what might have been underneath and behind some of Einstein's most basic thoughts should teach us something valuable. It presents a model that is not limited to particle-objects-in-space-time; it also fits well for explanations in terms of warps and woofs of space-time as infinitesimal energy-loops or superstrings. It is argued that space-time has properties, yet it is not (...) itself had as a property or even a set of properties, and it could not exist without properties. A propertied space-time is a one-object universe and space-time satisfies the correct definitions of ‘substratum’. (shrink)

Let me begin then by introducing you to a distinction between what I will call a broadly “Platonic”-style and a broadly “Aristotelian”-style metaphysics. The guiding thread will be the notion of the essential and non-essential (accidental) features of a thing. Perhaps you will find what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” view unfamiliar and even foreign, because there is a kind of metaphysical “common denominator” in some philosophical circles today, left-over perhaps from the days of “analytic” philosophical insularity, but in (...) any case quite unlike what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” metaphysics. Instead it is much closer to what I regard as a Platonic approach. (shrink)

We formulate a non-linear geometric control framework for the MANTA architecture (Multi- Axis Non-holonomic Toroidal Actuation): active feedback stabilization of a source-closed, positiveenergy toroidal warp spacetime. Modelling the metric–source system as a control-affine system on a smooth differential manifold, a full Lie Algebra Rank Condition (LARC) analysis establishes that a single-axis drive is permanently confined to a rank-3 unreachable leaf, whereas the multiaxis integration of an axial shift channel b and an azimuthal frame-dragging channel Ω attains full rank 4, (...) guaranteeing complete non-linear controllability over both the background propagation states and the internal breathing-mode perturbations. Three independent routes—exact symbolic brackets, numerical commutator-loop flows, and closed-path area holonomy—establish that the non-commuting control fields generate a rectified stabilization force proportional to the enclosed area in the control plane, with the holonomy ratio converging to the symbolic bracket coefficient to five significant figures. We further show that an axially elongated anisotropic pressure profile breaks the isotropic dominant-energy-condition wall at λ ≤ 2, admitting pointwise compliance with all four classical energy conditions at λ = 3.0 and a local well depth Φ = 23.11%. We further identify and close a structural defect: because the two-axis bracket obeys c1 ∝ Ω, control authority collapses in the low-compactness limit where one most wishes to operate. Introducing a third, radial shift channel — physically, a controlled m = 0 breathing of the plasma cross-section — yields a bracket cradial = 2A2N2(brsz − bzsr)/α4 that contains no Ω, because both poloidal shifts enter the ADM lapse α2 = N2 + A2(b2r + b2z ) through the same denominator. The three-axis controllability determinant is likewise Ω-free and retains full rank 5 as Ω → 0. The dynamic control layer is derived from the 3 + 1 decomposition rather than posited: the shift is constraint-slaved to the plasma source ( ˙U = L−1κ ˙S), the propulsion law is grounded as the slaved response rate az = −[L−1κ ˙S ]bz , and the plant couplings are identified as Green’sfunction coefficients of the constraint inverse — verified by three independent routes to 10−14. The nonlinear map from a prescribed plasma current to the effective source is the single remaining open link and is labelled as such. The frame-drag momentum constraint is solved exactly: Gt ϕ reduces to a pure divergence with flux weight W = r3/N and zero remainder, and is linear-elliptic in Ω. The physicality envelope of the driven source is fixed by the Hawking–Ellis discriminant D = (ρ + pz)2 − 4f2, with the DEC ceiling shown to bind strictly before the Type IV wall. Identifying the standing shift amplitude with cruise velocity (|bz| = v/c) converts the physicality envelope into a speed limit. Optimising the shift-profile width against the background and re-optimising it at each well depth shows the ceiling to be independent of well depth, vmax ∼ Φ−0.030 over three and a half decades, with vmax ≃ 0.86c throughout — reproduced independently across three smooth profile families and by continuous as well as discrete optimisation; a 0.5c cruise is therefore admissible under all four classical energy conditions at every radius, at any well depth examined. Three independent routes for the corresponding total energy disagree by up to 103, so no energy figure is claimed. Every load-bearing claim in this paper carries an explicit evidentiary tag—[P] proved symbolically, [N] numerically verified, [E] estimated by scaling, [S] speculative—and Appendix B provides a line-by-line reproducibility audit in which each numerical assertion is independently recomputed. The controllability results are [P]/[N]. The mission-scale energy ledger is [E]/[S] and is presented as such. (shrink)

Active Metric Control via Informational State Manipulation: Specification of a Causal-Symmetric Warp Drive -/- In this paper, faster-than-light travel is reformulated as a problem of informational engineering rather than exotic matter. Within the Causal-Symmetric Informational Framework, gravity is treated as an equation of state of an underlying informational medium, and non-equilibrium quantum information becomes a genuine energy source. The warp drive is specified by actively generating an informational energy density from the quantum relative entropy of the local state (...) with respect to an informational equilibrium state. This gives rise to an informational stress–energy contribution that formally plays the role of exotic matter in general relativity, but is reinterpreted as emergent “negentropy” rather than as an ad hoc negative-energy fluid. Using a minimal k-essence model, the paper derives this informational source from a covariant action and shows that controlled violation of the usual null energy condition can be achieved while retaining a unit sound speed and avoiding ghost instabilities. -/- Beyond sourcing the metric, the framework also addresses causality. The same informational structure that drives the warp bubble controls the effective invariant speed of light through a spatial profile of the conductivity parameter “kappa”. By designing the kappa gradient in the bubble wall to be smooth and strictly monotonic, the paper formulates a chronology protection conjecture that yields a sufficient condition for global hyperbolicity and the absence of closed timelike curves. A quantitative scaling analysis shows that the required informational energy density grows extremely rapidly with bubble size and speed, reaching values near the Planck energy density even for modest warp configurations. This shifts the central challenge from unknown exotic matter to the controlled generation of enormous amounts of structured quantum information, far beyond current technology but precise enough to be linked to prospective experimental bounds on kappa from delayed-choice quantum random number generators. (shrink)

I have written a number of columns in this magazine about wormholes, warp drives, and other constructs of Einstein’s general relativity (GR) that appear to offer a good physics foundation for faster-than-light travel and even for travel back in time. All of these GR constructs come from a particular non-standard way of using Einstein’s theory, an approach that might be described as "metric engineering." Instead of considering a particular arrangement of mass and energy and asking how space would be (...) warped and what effects would be produced by such an arrangement, in metric engineering we specify how we want space to be warped in order to produce these effects, and then ask what arrangement of mass and energy would be required to accomplish this. The usual outcome of this kind of GR calculation is that a certain quantity of negative mass-energy would be needed. For example, to stabilize a wormhole, a significant quantity of negative mass-energy is needed near the wormhole’s throat. (shrink)

Alternate View Column AV-81 Keywords: Alcubierre Warp Drive FTL spacewarp solution Einstein's equations general relativity Published in the November-1996 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 4/15/96 and is copyrighted ©1996 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

A recent breakthrough has moved the concept of a "warp drive" another step along its path from a fictional SF prop-idea to a well founded physics concept that might one day be realized. This improvement on the Alcubierre warp drive was devised by general relativity theorist Chris Van Den Broeck of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He has eliminated seemingly insurmountable problems with the Alcubierre warp-drive scheme. His improvement employs topological gymnastics to keep the interior (...) of the warp bubble large while making its external surface very small. But before describing Van Den Broeck’s work, I’ll summarize the Alcubierre warp drive concept itself, first featured in my column (#81) in the November-‘96 Analog. (shrink)

Part of a symposium on *The Rationality of Perception* by Susanna Siegel (2017 Oxford University Press).

Abstract The companion control paper (Meyler 2026, hereafter MANTA) established that a positiveenergy toroidal warp shell is governable: full-rank (LARC Rank 5) non-linear controllability, an exact area-holonomy tracking law, and the identification of the plant couplings as constraint Green’s functions, all inside an effective plant whose momentum source Si was taken as given. MANTA named one open link on its critical path: the map from a physical plasma to that source. This paper specifies that link and reduces it to (...) a single, sharply-stated equilibrium problem. We first establish, from the ideal-magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) form of the Arnowitt– Deser–Misner (ADM) momentum density, that the metric shift vector cannot be sourced by static currents ([P], two routes). The Eulerian momentum density Si that drives the shift is proportional to bulk fluid velocity in every term; a magnetostatic plasma has Si ≡ 0 for any current J and field B. The Lorentz force J × B is a force density entering energy-momentum conservation ∇μTμν = 0, not the momentum constraint. Only bulk flow sources the shift. This inverts the naive current-to-shift picture into a two-stage architecture: flow sources the shift; currents establish and hold the flow. We invert the exact 2D poloidal momentum constraint Gt z = 8πSz on the solved MANTA background (Φ = 0.2311, A = 1.6914, N = 0.769) using the correct cylindrical operator — radial in the shift, with no ∂2 z bz term ([P]) — on 141 × 141 finite-difference grids ([N]). For the fixed-width DEC-compliant envelope (λ ≤ 0.14) the required peak bulk flow is subluminal and sub-Alfv´enic, v/c ∈ [0.0608, 0.1303] (18 230–39 060km/s) at n = 1018 m−3, B = 10T (VA = 0.5886c, MA ∈ [0.103, 0.221]). Width re-optimisation (MANTA Theorem 7) extends the standing envelope to 0.50c. The required flow shear over-supplies the sheared-flow-stabilization (SFS) threshold by 11.7×–25.1×, so the sourcing flow is itself strongly stabilizing. Against the best measured confined-plasma flow (∼ 100km/s, 3.3 × 10−4c) the requirement is a factor ∼ 180–390 higher — a regime shift, not a velocity wall, since the controlling ratio is v/VA, not v/c. Stage-2 force balance shows the flow is a 0.2% perturbation on the static shell; charge conservation forces a 62.5% Lorentz / 37.5% thermodynamic split, explaining MANTA’s anisotropic stress; the CGL double-adiabatic invariants drift by ∼ 100% per transit, an honest negative establishing that the sourcing plasma requires a non-ideal closure. The native topology is a high-magnetization, low-density, high-field sheared-flow Z-pinch. No feasibility claim is made in either direction; every load-bearing relation carries an evidentiary tag ([P]/[N]/[E]/[S]). (shrink)

We present a first-principles General Relativity analysis demonstrating that the stellar-scale energy figures (∼ 1044 J, equivalent to 1MJ c2) routinely cited in the warp-drive literature (Alcubierre, White, Bobrick–Martire, Fuchs et al.) are mathematical artifacts of unphysical integration and boundary-value prescriptions, rather than demonstrated physical energy requirements of the spacetimes that were actually constructed. We establish three formal results: 1. Non-Covariance of Spatial Stress Integrals. The spatial volume integral Enaive = Z Σt Tμνnμnν√ γ d3x is non-covariant, slicing-dependent, and (...) fails to yield a conserved physical mass-energy in spacetimes lacking a global timelike Killing vector field. 2. ADM Mass Vanishing Theorem. Any spatial metric ansatz prescribed with compact support or exponential spatial falloff (decaying faster than 1/R) possesses an exact ADM mass MADM ≡ 0. Inverting Einstein’s field equations on such an ansatz creates an explicit mathematical self-contradiction: a non-zero integrated stress-energy attached to a metric carrying zero total asymptotic gravitational mass. 3. On-Axis Kinematic Acceleration Identity. For axisymmetric shifted spacetimes, evaluating the geodesic equation on the central symmetry axis (r = 0) under a stationary background lapse yields a coordinate acceleration az = −∂tbz from which the static background lapse cancels identically. Scope and Logical Limits. Invalidating an improper calculation method removes the basis for the published 1044 J figures, but does not by itself prove that a physical warp drive requires low energy. Establishing the true energy budget of a physical warp spacetime requires solving the coupled boundary-value problem for an interior source matched to an exterior metric carrying a genuine 1/R asymptotic mass tail. We outline the mathematical protocol for this exterior match as required future work. (shrink)

Active Metric Control via Informational State Manipulation: Specification of a Causal-Symmetric Warp Drive develops a warp-drive concept within a causal-symmetric informational framework, in which gravity is treated as the macroscopic effect of an underlying informational medium rather than as a fundamental force sourced only by ordinary matter. The work introduces an additional informational energy density derived from quantum relative entropy between the local physical state and an informational equilibrium reference state. This informational contribution formally plays the role of (...) “exotic matter” in the warp-drive metric, but is reinterpreted as emergent negentropy generated by highly structured non-equilibrium quantum information. -/- Within this framework, the paper specifies a family of warp-drive metrics whose source is entirely informational, using a minimal k-essence–type model that allows controlled violation of the usual null energy condition while maintaining a standard sound speed and avoiding ghost instabilities. It proposes a chronology protection criterion based on a smooth, strictly monotonic profile of an informational conductivity parameter, which yields a sufficient condition for global hyperbolicity and the absence of closed timelike curves. A scaling analysis quantifies the extreme informational energy densities required for realistic bubble sizes and superluminal speeds, showing that they approach near-Planckian levels. The work therefore recasts faster-than-light travel as a problem of quantum informational engineering and links its feasibility to experimentally constrainable informational parameters rather than to unknown forms of exotic matter. (shrink)

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid growth in research focused on developing vaccines and therapies. In this context, the need for speed is taken for granted, and the scientific process has adapted to accommodate this. On the surface, attempts to speed up the research enterprise appear to be a good thing. It is, however, important to consider what, if anything, might be lost when biomedical innovation is sped up. In this article we use the case (...) of a study recently retracted from the Lancet to illustrate the potential risks and harms associated with speeding up science. We then argue that, with appropriate governance mechanisms in place, it should be quite possible to both speed up science and remain attentive to scientific quality and integrity. (shrink)

We formulate a non-linear geometric control framework for the active feedback stabilization of a source-closed, positive-energy toroidal warp spacetime. Moving completely beyond rigid, un-actuated material shells and standard linear additive state-space approximations, we model the metric-source system as a non-linear control-affine system on a smooth differential manifold. By executing a full Lie-Algebraic Rank Condition (LARC) analysis, we demonstrate that while a traditional single-axis drive is permanently confined to a lower-dimensional unreachable leaf, the multi-axis integration of an axial shift and (...) an azimuthal frame-dragging channel guarantees complete controllability over both the background propagation states and the internal spacetime breathing-mode perturbations. We demonstrate via three independent verification routes—exact symbolic brackets, numerical commutator-loop flows, and closed-path area holonomy—that the non-commuting control vector fields generate a rectified stabilization force proportional to the enclosed area within the control plane. To ensure structural transparency and respond directly to referee audits, we explicitly partition the analysis into two distinct regimes: a non-linear stress-testing regime (λ = 3.0, local well depth Φ ≈ 23.1%) used to validate control loop authority and energy conditions under severe coordinate deformations, and a weak-field interstellar cruise regime (Φ ≪ 1) used to model an optimized 10-year, 0.5c mission transit to Alpha Centauri. In the cruise regime, the total integrated rest-mass energy of the active plasma actuator shell evaluates to a physical baseline of 4.53 × 1011 J, while the time-integrated multi-axis tracking loop requires an idealized station-keeping energy of 2.93 × 1015 J. Pointwise satisfaction of all four classical energy conditions (NEC, WEC, DEC, SEC) is verified throughout via an axially elongated anisotropic pressure profile, with compliance holding in a well-defined band (not the entire manifold). The margins are positive but narrow (∼ 10−4), indicating a narrow ledge rather than a broad plateau. The framework achieves asymptotic stability via a two-channel PD controller and demonstrates that non-commutativity of the control vector fields is not an obstacle but the very resource enabling full governance of the spacetime plant. Honest disclosure of regime boundaries, actuation latency (∼19 control periods), and the perturbative nature of the existence proof is maintained throughout. (shrink)

The emotion of anger has received overall negative treatment in recent moral philosophy. This article explores the gendered representations of anger in the Lienüzhuan 《列女傳》 of Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–6 BCE). It begins with a brief account of the semantic field of anger and its representation in the Lienüzhuan, focusing on three important patterns. Perhaps most important is the didactic role of anger; and how female teachers use it (or avoid it) in instructing male sons, husbands and rulers. Second is (...) the treatment of women’s distinct strategies for addressing the effects of being the object of the anger of others. The third is the representation of female anger in accounts of female vice. The representations of anger in the LNZ provides an important alternative to views of anger as motivated by the desire for payback and status. The LNZ, like other pre-Qin texts, understands anger very differently, and focuses on other-regarding anger, based on perceptions of wrongdoing and injustice. (shrink)

Through an exploratory interrelation of theory with fine art practice, this article sets out to address the role of memory in the transitions and transformations between smooth and striated states. The article constructs a striated, woven formation between virtual and acquired memory, and attentive and inattentive perception, before going on to investigate how its regularity is disrupted through disturbances, slippages and snags.

Traditional empiricism, although largely abandoned, has marked the social studies of science through the persistent division between macrolevel analysis of the institutions promoting and regulating science and microlevel analysis of the laboratory, theories, and experiments. Further traces appear in the largely separate methodologies used in social studies of science, which do not draw from political theory, and studies in political theory, which are silent with respect to the expression of power in the development of science. Poststructuralist conceptions of science have (...) reinforced this divcsion by encour aging a turn away from explanations that assume human agency and accountability. This article attempts to bridge the present methodological gulf between political theory and the social studies of science through methods that are sensitive to the nature and operation of power and to its expression in discourse. The application of these methods in the study of genetic engineering policy m the United States and the United Kingdom is outlined. (shrink)

If we live on the weak brane with zero effective cosmological constant in a warped 5D bulk spacetime, gravitational waves and brane fluctuations can be generated by a part of the 5D Weyl tensor and carries information of the gravitational field outside the brane. We consider on a cylindrical symmetric warped FLRW background a U self-gravitating scalar field coupled to a gauge field without bulk matter. It turns out that brane fluctuations can be formed dynamically, due to the modified energy–momentum (...) tensor components of the scalar-gauge field. As a result, we find that the late-time behavior could significantly deviate from the standard evolution of the universe. The effect is triggered by the time-dependent warpfactor with two branches of the form \}\) constants) and the modified brane equations comparable with a dark energy effect. This is a brane-world mechanism, not present in standard 4D FLRW, where the large disturbances are rapidly damped as the expansion proceed. Because gravity can propagate in the bulk, the cosmic string can build up a huge angle deficit by the warpfactor and can induce massive KK-modes felt on the brane. Disturbances in the spatial components of the stress-energy tensor cause cylindrical symmetric waves, amplified due to the presence of the bulk space and warpfactor. They could survive the natural damping due to the expansion of the universe. It turns out that one of the metric components becomes singular at the moment the warp factor develops an extremum. This behavior could have influence on the possibility of a transition from acceleration to deceleration or vice versa. (shrink)

The question of time travel stimulates the imagination and provides material for whimsical stories. A work on the topic of "time travel" forces us to deal with the concept of "time". The complexity and the antinomic character of this concept make it difficult to grasp "time" more precisely. We encounter time as a form of perception in its deeply subjective aspect, as a biological rhythm, as a social phenomenon in the sense of a collective determination of time, but also as (...) a physical quantity. Einstein's theory of relativity revolutionized our ideas of space and time. His Special Theory of Relativity (1905) allows "travel into the future" through the effect of time dilation he predicted, and Einstein's theory of gravity allows for closed time lines as solutions to its equations (e.g., Gödel cosmos, anti-de Sitter cosmos). However, traveling in a time loop would immediately lead to a number of paradoxes (e.g., grandfather paradox, information paradox). Although, surprisingly, the basic laws of physics (apart from extremely rare and macroscopically non-appearing quantum mechanical effects) would not be violated in a time reversal, there seems to be a fundamental prohibition of traveling into the past in nature. (shrink)

This review examines Burke's phenomenological analysis of normative femininity, examining how femininity is implicated in both historical and present racial violence. It lauds Burke's analysis of the temporality of gendered experience—in the Beauvoirean tradition of feminist phenomenology—but it criticizes Burke for coming up short in the critical aspect of their project. It closes with some methodological reflections about doing effect critical phenomenology.

The value-ladenness of computer algorithms is typically framed around issues of epistemic risk. In this article, I examine a deeper sense of value-ladenness: algorithmic methods are not only themselves value-laden but also introduce value into how we reason about their domain of application. I call this domain distortion. In particular, using insights from jurisprudence, I show that the use of recidivism risk assessment algorithms presupposes legal formalism and blurs the distinction between liability assessment and sentencing, which distorts how the domain (...) of criminal punishment is conceived and provides a distinctive avenue for values to enter the legal process. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

Science fiction (sf) stories, like other forms of popular culture, are interwoven with the historical moment(s) that produced them. Once we have acquired the reading/viewing protocols that allow us to adjust for the ‘estranging/estranged’ distortions of sf, we recognize more clearly the cultural imprints of the language, images, and values that such stories bear. As popular culture mirrors, they can provide creative access points for ascertaining and understanding the zeitgeist that brought them forth. Both the conception and the first run (...) of Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969) provide reflections and refractions of American culture at a time when it witnessed major international transitions and domestic upheaval. Bearing a recognizable imprint of the post-war optimism and confidence in scientific progress, Star Trek’s premise of telling modern morality plays gives us access to that which Americans were hopeful and/or concerned about. Star Trek was also minted with the American self-image of being the protector and defender of the western world, its values and its achievements. By viewing John F. Kennedy’s presidency vis-à-vis Star Trek, we will see how the US, as a self-styled conqueror of a continent, began to integrate the ‘benevolent’ mission of its ideological predecessor, the British Empire, into its own national mythos. (shrink)

여헌 장현광은 역(易)을 리(理)와 도(道)로써 설명하고, 더 나아가 리와 도의 항상성을 강조한다. 이런 역의 항상성은 여헌의 선후천(先後天) 이론에서 보이는데, 그는 선천과 후천을 관통하는 하나의 리(一理)를 주장한다. 선천과 후천은 ‘기점의 변화’ 즉 시간성을 전제하는 개념이다. 여헌 선후천설의 특징은 선천과 후천을 아울러 변화하지 않는 원리, 즉 초시간적인 원리에 대한 탐구가 주요 특징이며, 여헌은 그런 초시간적인 원리를 ‘하나의 이치’라고 표현한다. 그런데 여헌의 변하지 않는 것을 찾으려는 시도는 그의 체용론, 경위론 등에 영향을 미친다. 우선 선후천설을 체용의 관점에서 분석하면, 선천은 후천을 가치론적으로 분명히 앞서며, 선천은 (...) 후천을 규정하고 지도하는 것이다. 왜냐하면 후천을 규정하고 지도하는 리는 이미 선천에 구비되어 있기 때문이다. 이 리 때문에, 선천지, 차천지, 후천지는 미세한 차이는 있지만 거의 동일성을 유지한다고 볼 수 있다. 따라서 여헌의 선후천설은 소옹의 선후천설이 가지고 있던 ‘기점에 대한 인식’과는 많은 차별성을 가진다. 이후 여헌은 선천과 후천을 경위론과 연결시킴으로써 선천이 가지고 있는 가치가 변함이 없는 것이며 바른 것(正)임을 보여주고자 한다. 즉 경은 변화하는 가운데에서도 불변하면서 항상성을 유지하는 것을 가리킨다면, 위는 다양한 현상 가운데에서 발견되는 변화이다. 경위론을 통해서 여헌이 정립하고자 했던 것은 변화하는 현상 세계에서 불변하는 것이 있음을 드러내고, 그것을 중심으로 변화하는 세계를 이해하고자 하는 것이다. 선후천설이 경위론과 결합됨으로써 선천이 후천에 대해 가지는 주재(主宰)성은 더욱 강화된다. 여헌이 선천과 후천을 경과 위의 관점에서 분석했을 때, 그가 의도한 바는 선천은 후천에 대해 변함없는 가치의 우위성을 가지고 있으며, 후천은 선천의 원리를 대행하는 것에 불과하다는 것이다. 여헌은 세상에 변하지 않는 이치가 있다는 것을 깨달은 인간이 어떻게 행동해야 하는지 말하고 있다. ‘위’에 의해 야기된 변화 속에서 인간이 실천해야 할 것은 의리이며, 그것은 다름 아닌 ‘시중’이다. 인간의 시중에 의해 거역함은 따름으로, 해로움은 이로움으로, 흉과 인은 길과 상이 된다. 이것은 원래의 ‘경’으로 돌아가는 것이다. 그렇기 때문에 역은 인간에게 변화의 원리를 설명하는 것뿐만 아니라, ‘위’에 의한 변화 속에서 인간이 어떻게 변하지 않는 이치를 깨닫고 행동해야 하는지를 가르쳐주는 책이라 할 수 있다. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. But given that the pages of history are full of such plots, why are CTs regarded with suspicion? Just like with the traditional demarcation problem, philosophers disagree about where to draw the line between legitimate hypotheses about conspiracies and unfounded ‘conspiracy theories’. Some believe that there is no such demarcation line to be drawn, that each CT (...) should be evaluated on its own merits, and that the bad reputation of CTs is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I intend to rescue the intuition that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs. First, I demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories”. Along the way, my analysis will clarify some epistemological issues surrounding falsifiability, asymmetries between causes and effects, and hypotheses involving intentional agents. Because of their extreme resilience to external criticism and counterevidence, I argue, CTs are the epistemological equivalent of a ‘black hole’, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape again. But this strong attraction of CTs comes at a steep price: their theoretical parameters are essentially arbitrary, making them vulnerable to internal disruption. In essence, because it is so easy to construct a novel CT, it is equally easy to construct many ones about the same historical event. And that is what justifies our suspicion of CTs. (shrink)

There is much hand-wringing in the arms control trenches these days over the role and future of arms control in U.S. policy. Liberal supporters of arms control lament what they see as a decade of missed opportunities to pursue deep cuts in the world's nuclear arsenals and to strengthen the regimes for controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Those on the right, perceiving grave weaknesses in Cold War–era arms control regimes, prefers to move ahead with “assertive isolationism,” happily (...) unencumbered with the comprehensive test ban or soon, they hope, the Anti–Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. After a promising start in arms control at the beginning of the 1990s, both sides see U.S. arms control policy drifting in purpose and slackening in momentum, with arms control officials spread thin over a proliferating agenda. (shrink)

Book Review of The Future of Spacetime, by Stephen Hawking et al.