The Universe of Mirages:

Row row row your boat gently down a stream,
merrily merrily merrily go, your life is just a dream.

1.Nothing in the universe is where it seems to be!
Light travels 186,000 miles or 300000 km per second and it takes 8 minutes (or more) for sunlight to get to earth. This might mean that we still see the sun after sunset. It takes very much longer for light to get to other planets. The Mars rovers move(d) so slowly probably because it takes more than half an hour to send a remote control signal to them and receive a report or picture of the machines' actions coming back. A moon rover's remote controlled action would take about 4 seconds minimum to observe. The nearest visible star could explode and we would not know until a few years later. Also, did you ever think about the fact that if you launched a rocket to the moon, it wouldn't even still be there (where it was when you launched the rocket) when you got there?

The further we look into deep space, the more we see things that have moved very very far away from where they appear to be. Not only that, the light from them has passed a lot of massive objects with intense gravity, and the light has been redirected, at least. Gravitational lensing makes multiple magnified images of more distant single galaxies bend around closer ones, and strangely, those more distant galaxies appear blue while the closer ones appear red. The red shift is caused by stretching of light waves as those galaxies have moved away from us at significant fractions of the speed of light, so they aren't anywhere near there anymore. Now I have noticed a common pattern in deep space pictures, where those red and blue galaxies that can be seen only with the best telescopes tend to appear as three in a row, a straight line segment with a midpoint. Is the telescope seeing triple? Are there really many triplets of the same things out there, or has the light gone around the whole universe three times before coming here? The universe was a lot smaller when those things were there, so that is possible. Also, as we look deeper into space the things get redder, older, even too red to see because the light waves are so stretched. The background microwave radiation is so stretched it seems to be the end of the universe. But what the microwave image is showing, was once very close to us when the "big bang" happened. The image is inside out. You could even say that that radiation probably came from very close to, or even, HERE.

Everything came out of the big bang, and so as we look back in time at ancient light from deep space, we see the first things that were once very close to here that could be seen, as if they were the remotest things we can see. Again, that happened here, and is certainly not where it looks like it is now. New things are out there, if the universe is even that big. It might not be. Maybe there is only one galaxy and all of he others are just light from this one, orbiting this one, and being pulled back in so we can see it. Truly many things in the sky are too old to still be there, and they can't be there, so we can see them but they are not really there! We can't possibly know what IS there, if anything, because it will take FOREVER for the light to get here! That light will bend around lots of galaxies and stuff like black holes before it gets here so when it does, those stars will have not only moved, but will never have been where they will be seen. Deep space is a total and complete Mirage, as if we are in a tubular maze of bent mirrors in an amusement park fun house. The universe could be inside a shiny bubble in an infinite ocean. We can't know. A few years ago some scientists noticed another pattern in the appearance of deep space and hypothesized that its shape must be like an international football, a dodecahedron, the ancient shape representing the fifth, celestial, element. The astronomers also have noticed that the same objects were appearing in different parts of deep space and their rotational orientation is apparently explained by that shape, although they did not say it was a reflection, but believed instead that by passing through the apparent walls of the universe, they too would be reoriented toward the image of an object with no other explanation than as if they were creatures walking on that shape like lizards in an Escher drawing. Some have said that if a black hole had swallowed the galaxy, we might see the universe as we actually do see it now. It appears to be stretching and expanding, with distant stars accelerating away from us, while the neck of the vortex funnel is actually still beyond our sight or event horizon and can break through at any time and squeeze us into the singularity. This is all so mind-blowingly confusing that even scientists forget little things and get confused and make silly mistakes about what their measurements say is really out there. One space probe actually crashed into Mars allegedly because not all of its automatic measurements were in the same metric system.

2.Dreams, Life, and Death (formerly Dynamic Ram / Rover Theories)
Where are we when we are dreaming?
Where are we when we are awake?
Where are we when we no longer live?

If we are asleep, how do we experience being in the dream world? Where is the dream world? What is it we are looking at? What is it we are looking at when we are awake? What are "psychedelic" people looking at and where is it? What can we see after death? How can we see anything with closed eyes even when we are dreaming?

An old hypothesis, at least for myself was, when information is being entered into a computer's memory (but not a disk), and there is a power failure, the computer forgets and loses all that information. This is the same as saying our memory and our mind are what our brain is "Doing".

A new hypothesis. Consider the dream world. Consider a multiplayer FPS or Virtual Reality game. Consider those Mars Rovers. It is YOU, whatever and where ever YOU are, that SEES the dream, your game world and allies and enemies, and what the camera on your Mars Rover sees. The question remains: What and Where are YOU? Where is what you see? If your game character loses a leg, if your Mars Rover breaks down, if something happens to you in a dream, what happens to you? Your game character struggles to move when it is disabled. Your Mars Rover may freeze up a wheel, or run low on energy because sand is covering the solar panel. Over time, the condition may worsen. Lucky for Mars Rovers, friendly dust devils come by and blow sand off the solar panel just in time before you run out of power. But parts continue to break. Your game character is losing limbs and blood. You are frustrated. Your avatar and your machine are not able to do what you want to do with them. YOU are fully aware of the situation. Avatar loses a life. Machine runs out of power. You can't see Mars or the Zombie City worlds anymore. Everything goes black. You can't see, you can't move. You are disconnected from those worlds. What are you and where are you? You have an automobile accident, maybe you are on the battlefield and ran over a land mine. You lose a leg. You fade in and out of consciousness, at least from the medic's point of view.

What and Where are you?
Your brain is not your computer.
Your brain is the remote control system to your body.
Your eyes are your cameras.
Your limbs are your motors and wheels.
Your brain and body are losing power.
You are consciously aware of the situation.
You see yourself on the hospital bed.
You hear the vital signs monitor flatline beep.
What and where are you?
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
What... Where... ?
You? ... ... ...

(...and Kilroy were never here.)

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