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To be politically correct there is no State Govt in J & K at the moment since the assembly stands dissolved and it is under Governor Rule. Hence there are no Kashmiri Ministers but ex ministers except some MPs such as Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah. They have been joined by Mehbooba Mufti ex CM, the new ex IAS turned politician Shah Faesal and Sajjad Lone, ex MLA who have come together to put up so called fight for alleged plans of the Central Govt for abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35 A.How has the alleged likelihood rattled them?A day after National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval returned from a visit to the Valley, speculations were rife that the Centre has decided to move 10,000 additional paramilitary troops. During Ajit Doval's three-day tour, he had held detailed discussions with senior officers of the state administration, police, paramilitary forces, Army, state and central intelligence agencies.Kashmir-based politicians have led to conjectures, while asking the Centre to desist from making such a move. All regional parties of Jammu and Kashmir, including the National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement (J&KPM) and others are opposed to any tinkering with Articles 35A and 370 that give special status to Jammu and Kashmir.PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti took to Twitter and wrote, "Centre's decision to deploy additional 10,000 troops in the Valley has created fear psychosis amongst people. There is no dearth of security forces in Kashmir. J&K is a political problem which won't be solved by military means. GoI [Government of India] needs to rethink and overhaul its policy."NC chief Omar Abdullah has asked the Centre to wait for the verdict of the Supreme Court (SC) where a bunch of petitions challenging Article 35A and Article 370 are pending.Former IAS officer-turned-politician also wrote on Twitter, "This MHA communique regarding deployment of additional 100 Coys of CAPF [Central Armed Police Forces] is fueling huge anxiety in Kashmir."Sajad Lone of People's Conference tweeted, "Scare, panic in Kashmir. Failed adventurists keen on adventurism. Failed experimentalists keen on experimentation. Hubris blinds reasoning."Why has it rattled them alone but not the others?Dismissing speculations, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State Unit President Ravinder Raina said, "The additional deployment was underway for upcoming J&K assembly."Appealing people not to believe in rumours, Additional Director General Police (ADGP) Law and Order Muneer Khan on Saturday said that 100 companies of paramilitary forces will replace those personnel of training companies, who are deployed on various duties since last year starting from urban local bodies elections.IG Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Ravideep Sahi said, "The induction and de-induction of troops are done to strengthen law and order and counter insurgency grid."Sources in security grid though admitted that no political signal was conveyed but that security forces have prepared an elaborate contingency plan in anticipation of court order expected sometime soon. Sources further added that security preparations are also under way for August 15 - Independence Day.IG rank officers would be given special charge in North and South Kashmir for micro management to ensure that law and order situations are handled well. So far there are DIG rank officer for the regions. Kashmir is being divided into three administrative zones -- North, South and Central -- with three IGs heading it.But even as speculations are rife, there is no date set in the Supreme Court to hear the contentious matter. Just before Lok Sabha elections, a petition was filed by Jammu and Kashmir Governor to delay the hearing in the wake of Lok Sabha polls.[1]Dr Jitendra Singh, who is also a Lok Sabha MP from Udhampur, said that even former PM Jawaharlal Nehru had said that the Article 370 and Article 35A, which give special status to Jammu and Kashmir, was temporary and would fade with time.On discussion in Parliament on Jammu and Kashmir's special status on Friday, Dr Jitendra Singh said, "This so-called special status is an alibi created by the Congress and the National Conference. When it suits them, they are special and when it doesn't, they aren't."Jitendra Singh also emphasised on the fact that the Article 370 or 35A were just temporary provisions in the Indian Constitution."Even those who differ with us, conveniently forget that even the protagonist of Article 370 or 35A which most prominently included former PM Nehru, were of the opinion that it's going to be a temporary provision in the constitution of India and the constituent assembly," Jitendra Singh said.Jitendra Singh also slammed former J&K CM Sheikh Abdullah and said, "When the term of state assemblies was extended to six years, then J&K CM Sheikh Abdullah adopted it. Three years later, when it was reversed, he refused using the excuse of the state's special status."Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday also said Article 370 of the Constitution is only a temporary provision and not a permanent one. He said this in the Lok Sabha.[2]Jammu and Kashmir BJP president Ravinder Raina on Sunday said his party is for early abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. He also exhorted confidence that the BJP will form the next government in the state on its own.[3]Raina said his party will work for defreezing of the eight assembly seats reserved for refugees from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and revoking of the cumbersome M-Form exercise for Kashmiri migrant pandits before the next assembly polls."Article 370, a temporary transititional provision, is the biggest injustice with the people of Jammu and Kashmir, while the Article 35A is a constitutional blunder which was included through back door without the consent of Parliament and the president...We wish the early abrogation of both these constitutional provisions," Raina told reporters here.[4]Dr BR Ambedkar had forewarned the country on this score in reply to Sheikh Abdullah’s demand for a special status in the Constituent Assembly of India. He had said, “You want India to defend Kashmir, give Kashmir equal rights over India, but you deny India and Indians all rights in Kashmir. I am Law Minister of India, I cannot be a party to such betrayal of national interests.” [5]Sensitivity of Kashmiri Politicians to Special Status: ReasonsThe Article 370 was clearly meant to be a temporary provision included in the Constitution to cater for the specific requirements of the troubled times immediately after India’s independence and the state’s accession to India. It was meant to remain in operation during the existence of the State’s Constituent Assembly.As time passed, the vested interests within Jammu and Kashmir and the compulsions of various political parties outside the state to appease their vote banks ensured its retention. No thought was spared by the votaries of ‘the retention of Article 370’ for the enormous potential this would have to wreak havoc on the unity and integrity of the country. It is the only state in India which has a constitution of its own.To begin with, Article 370 has built emotional and psychological barriers between the people of Kashmir and the rest of India, thus fostering a psychology of separatism. Existence of this statute is used by Pakistan and its proxies in the valley to mock at the very concept of ‘India being one from Kashmir to Kanyakumari’. It has kept alive the two-nation theory. Over a period of time, the separatist lobby in the state has used this barrier to build a mindset of alienation.The citizens of Jammu and Kashmir become citizens of India automatically; whereas the citizens of India have no such right when it comes to their claiming a similar right in the state. Consequently, the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir can own property and settle anywhere in India. On the other hand, Article 370 prevents any Indian from claiming any such right. [6]The vested interests in Kashmir, be these politicians, bureaucracy, businessmen, judiciary, etc., have misused Article 370 for their own nefarious purposes, by exploiting the poor and the down-trodden people of the state. The rich have consistently used Article 370 to ensure that no financial legislation is introduced in the state, which would make them accountable for their loot of the state treasury. These include the provisions dealing with Gift Tax, Urban Land Ceiling Act, Wealth Tax, etc.This has ensured that the rich continue to grow richer and the common masses are denied their legitimate share of the economic pie. Article 370 has also helped create power elites and local Sultans, who wield enormous power, which they use to trample upon the genuine demands of common people for public welfare. As no outsider can settle in the state and own any property there, the politically well-connected people stand to gain enormously. It is these influential people who make the rules, decide the price and determine the buyer, since any competition from an outsider is completely ruled out.These vested interests have gained much financial assistance from India which they have used to build separatist mindsets and secessionist lobbies with which they blackmail India. To the gullible people of Kashmir, the abolition of Article 370 is projected as a catastrophic event that will sound the death knell of Kashmiri Muslim culture, but in actual fact, this argument is a ploy to prevent assimilation of Kashmiris into the national mainstream.The bogey of threat to the Kashmiri identity that the abolition of Article 370 will pose is merely a ploy to camouflage the political ambitions of the leaders. Actually these very people cause a great damage to Kashmiri culture, as no culture can survive without the stimulus of outside contact and opportunity to cross-fertilise. It was this mindset that has been responsible for creating the violent communal upsurge of 1989, which finally led to the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. [7]Mehbooba Mufti has received a notice from the Jammu and Kashmir Anti-Corruption Bureau, enquiring if she had endorsed recommendations allegedly made by some of her cabinet colleagues for appointments in the JK Bank during her tenure as chief minister.[8]The CBI has charged Abdullah and three others -- then JKCA general secretary Md Saleem Khan, then treasurer Ahsan Ahmad Mirza, and J&K Bank executive Bashir Ahmad Misgar -- under sections of the Ranbir Penal Code related to criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust. The charge sheet was filed in July last year against them for allegedly misappropriating over Rs 43 crore from grants given by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to the JKCA for promoting the sport in the state between 2002-11.[9]"They (Centre) did whatever they had to with separatists. Now, they are using many tactics against mainstream political parties. When they got a hint of an all-party meet, Farooq (Abdullah) was taken to Chandigarh (for questioning by the ED in cricket association scam). "They are using corruption as a tool against political parties, crackdowns are being done, workers are being harassed, detained in police stations and their security withdrawn," she alleged.[10]How has Article 370 hurt Hindu Kashmiris and Refugees?One of the worst human tragedies the state faces is the denial of basic democratic and citizenship rights to nearly 600,000 refugees from Pakistan who entered the state at the time of partition or as a result of wars between India and Pakistan, thereafter. These refugees have made the state their home for the last over six decades, yet neither they nor their children can get citizenship rights in the state, as result of the applicability of Article 370. They can neither vote nor fight election; they cannot get loans from the state nor seek admissions into various professional colleges of the state.One of the main reasons for the failure of the state administration to respond to the anguished cries of the Kashmiri Pandits to provide them with adequate security in 1998–90, was that the state administration had been completely subverted from within by the radical anti-national elements, who had infiltrated into the system over a period of time. [11]Article 35A of the Constitution protects any laws in Jammu & Kashmir relating to the definition and privileges of permanent residents from being challenged as discriminatory or unconstitutional. As an example of these privileges, Jammu & Kashmir restricts anyone except permanent residents from acquiring immovable property. Article 35A grants the State Legislative Assembly the power to make such a restriction and prevents any challenge against this on the basis that this is inconsistent with the laws that apply to other citizens of India.Article 35A violates the very concept of equality enshrined in the Constitution of India. Its treatment of non-permanent residents of Jammu & Kashmir is akin to treating its own people as second class citizens. The provisions of Article 35A also violate the principles of gender equality. Section 6 of the Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir, which derives its power from Article 35A, discriminates against women residents of the State, who marry a person from another State. The children from such unions are not entitled to the Permanent Resident Certificate (PRC) or the benefits accruing from it, such as the right to acquire immovable property and a Government job. The same, however, does not apply to the offspring of a male who marries a woman from another State.[12]How has Article 370 hurt Jammu and Ladakh Regions?Article 370 has also been used to deny a fair share of economic pie to both Ladakh and Jammu region (see chapter 18). Violent agitations that rocked Ladakh in July-September 1989 were the result of the resentment felt by Ladakhis at being treated unfairly by Kashmiris Muslims.It is often forgotten that J&K state is not a homogeneous entity. Apart from Valley Muslims, Jammu has a predominantly Hindu population while Ladakh has a mix of Buddhist and Muslims. Then you have the Gujjars & Bakarwals.Notably, after Partition, Jammu and Kashmir’s prime minister Sheikh Abdullah carved out 30 seats for the Jammu region, 43 seats for Kashmir region and two seats for the Ladakh region. At present, the Assembly has 87 elected seats with Kashmir having 46 seats, Jammu 37 and Ladakh four. The BJP is hoping that since Jammu has more area than Kashmir, it would get more seats under delimitation than Kashmir. According to the 2011 census, the total population of Jammu region was 53,78,538 of which Dogras are the dominant group, comprising 62.55 per cent of the population.Jammu has 25.93 per cent of the area and 42.89 per cent of the population. Against this, the Kashmir region’s population in 2011 was 68,88,475 of which 96.40 per cent was Muslim. Though it has only 15.73 per cent of the state’s area, the Kashmir region holds 54.93 per cent of the population. Ladakh has 58.33 per cent of the area and accounts for 2.18 per cent of the population. A mere 2,74,289 people reside in Ladakh, of which 46.40 per cent are Muslims, 12.11 per cent Hindus and 39.67 per cent are Buddhist.[13]Time for tough talkThere will be violence instigated in the Kashmir Valley when the nation takes recourse to such action, but that cannot, and must not, deter the State from preserving the right to equality, enshrined in the Constitution. For the good of the people of India and for the residents of Jammu & Kashmir, Article 35A must be repealed forthwith as it will pave the way for the development of the state and its total integration with the union.The BJP election manifesto, jointly released by Prime Minister Modi and Shah ahead of the blistering poll campaign they crafted together, clearly lays out the party’s position and intent: “In the last few years, we have made all necessary efforts to ensure peace in Jammu and Kashmir through decisive actions and a firm policy. We are committed to overcome all obstacles that come in the way of development and provide adequate financial resources to all the regions of the state. We reiterate our position since the time of the Jan Sangh to the abrogation of Article 370. We are committed to annulling Article 35A of the Constitution of India as the provision is discriminatory against non-permanent residents and women of Jammu and Kashmir. We believe that Article 35A is an obstacle in the development of the state.”The Modi 2.0 Government would like to correct the regional imbalance based on the area, population and proportionate assembly representation to solve the Kashmir riddle.Now both Modi and Shah face their biggest challenge yet of translating this promise into reality and negotiating many anxieties and sensitivities along the way.[14]Footnotes[1] Tension grips Kashmir over possible scrapping of Article 35 A[2] Special status to J&K is temporary, even Nehru said ye ghiste ghiste ghis jaayegi: MoS Jitendra Singh [3] BJP for Early Abrogation of Articles 370, 35A of the Constitution: J&K BJP Chief Ravinder Raina[4] BJP for Early Abrogation of Articles 370, 35A of the Constitution: J&K BJP Chief Ravinder Raina[5] Impact of Article 370 - Indian Defence Review[6] Impact of Article 370 - Indian Defence Review[7] Impact of Article 370 - Indian Defence Review[8] Mehbooba Mufti Gets Anti-Corruption Notice, Says "Not Surprised"[9] Brazen misuse of central agencies: Mehbooba Mufti on ED questioning Farooq Abdullah in J&K cricket scam[10] 'Don't Do Anything That'll Cause Tensions': After Meeting, Farooq Abdullah Warns India, Pakistan of Aftermath[11] Impact of Article 370 - Indian Defence Review[12] Articles of seclusion[13] Articles of seclusion[14] Articles of seclusion

I would argue that the Moon is by far the best place to send humans in the near future for many reasons. But not for Helium 3. I’ll get to that in a minute.Inside look at one of the ideas for the ESA moon village, using 3D printing on the Moon for the radiation shielding. Image credit Foster + Partners / ESA. Their new director, Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner is keen on taking us back to the Moon first, and has an exciting vision for a lunar village on the Moon as a multinational venture involving astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, maybe even Chinese taikonauts, and private space as well.It is great for science. I think we are bound to have science bases there similarly to the ones in Antarctica - and the ESA lunar village is a great way to get started on it.It is even, surprisingly, of astrobiological interest. With a near certainty it has meteorites in the permanently shaded lunar craters that have organics preserved for billions of years from Mars, early Earth and even Venus. It may even have intact fragments of ammonites and earlier Earth lifeforms. After a simulated impact on the Moon, fossil diatoms are still recognizable, and indeed the smallest ones are intact, complete fossils. There must be a lot of material from the Chicxulub impact on the Moon, which may also contain fragments of larger creatures such as the ubiquitous ammonites of Cretaceous seas. Perhaps the Moon will be one of the best places for fossil hunters in our solar system, outside of Earth.Artist's impression of Cretaceous period ammonites, courtesy of Encarta. The Chicxulub impact made these creatures extinct. It hit shallow tropical seas and the ejecta could have sent fragments of Cretaceous period sea creatures such as ammonites all the way to the Moon. Fragments in the cold polar regions may even have the organics preserved.The Moon must have meteorites from Mars too, for us to pick up, also from early Venus, from before its atmosphere became as thick as it is now. Early Venus might have had oceans and might have been as habitable as early Earth and Mars. However, most of that record is probably erased even if we get to explore the surface of Venus. It was resurfaced by volcanic processes around 300 hundred million years ago. It doesn't have continental drift, and the leading explanation for its young cratering record is that Venus may have had superplumes so large they resurfaced the entire planet. Its atmosphere is so thick that no meteorites get from Venus to Earth right now, and anyway, a modern meteorite or a sample return would tell us nothing about early Venus. That leaves any Venus meteorites on the Moon as our best, and maybe only way to find out about early Venus, including any biology from those times. That's especially so if they have the organics preserved. For more on this see Search for life from Mars, Venus, or the Earth - on the Moon in Meteorites! below.The Moon also must have collected organics from the comets and asteroids of the early solar system that bombarded Earth, so it can help give us an inventory of the organics that lead to kick starting life on Earth. For more about all this, see Charles Cockell's paper: Astrobiology—What Can We Do on the Moon?For more on this see the chapter Search for past life from Earth on the Moon in my Touch Mars? book.It is a great place for certain kinds of telescopes - infrared and very long wave radio. Also the optical telescopes we build there can be joined together to get long baseline optical interferometry because it is stable geologically with only minor tremors and small earthquakes. Also larger versions of the Arecibo telescope could eventually be built in the craters there and liquid mirror telescopes.The Moon itself is also far more interesting than we realized with Apollo. That includes the ice at the luanr poles - which is of great scientific interest, whether or not it is useful as a resource, and lunar caves probably over 100 km long and some may be kilometers wide. It is also known to be still active with argon vented, and some small areas that have been resurfaced recently, with the processes involved not clear yet - there are many mysteries to sort out. For more on this see the Moon science surprises chapter of my Case for Moon First book.And - it is differentiated with wide variations in mineral content - it is not at all the bland uniform “all the same” body that it is sometimes made out to be. There were many processes on the early Moon that concentrated and separated out minerals although many of them are different from the Earth and there are still processes going on depositing meteoritic iron and materials from the solar wind - and probably also ice from comets at the poles. The processes includeFractional crystallization - as a melt cools down, some minerals crystallize out at a higher temperature than others so form first. They then settle or float, so remove the chemical components that make them up from the mix, so changing its formula, leading to new crystals to form in a sequence.Gravitational settling, lower mass material floats to the top.Volcanic outgassing can concentrate materials such as iron, sulfur, chlorine, zinc, cadmium, gold, silver and lead.The processes that lead to volatiles condensing at the poles - which it seems can also concentrate silver tooProcesses unique to the Moon (perhaps electrostatic dust levitation may concentrate materials)?Volatiles brought in as part of the solar windAsteroid and micrometeorite impacts bring materials from asteroids to the lunar surface such as iron and possibly platinum group metals etc.For more on this see the Metals section of my book.ASSETS AND RESOURCESThen - it actually does turn out to be a great place for in situ resource use, and to set up human habitats. Also for export of materials to the Earth and LEO. I’d go so far as to say that if you can’t set up a human settlement on the Moon at the lunar poles, or in the lunar caves, you probably can’t do it anywhere off planet.Some of the main assets areSolar power 24/ 7 at the lunar poles.Dust is easily managed (no dust storms)Meters deep regolith good for radiation shielding from the solar storms and cosmic radiationThe regolith has nanphase iron in it which makes it possible to melt a surface layer using microwaves - useful for constructing a landing pad - and for a layer of glass to keep the dust away from the habitatIt is easy to land and take off. You can get to lunar orbit with only about half of your spaceship mass as rocket fuel. Also the landing is reversible until the last minute. Apollo 11 could have aborted back to orbit right up to just before the moment of touchdown (not possible on Mars or the Earth). Also it happens on a slow enough timescale to permit manually piloted landing as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin demonstrated (not possible on Mars)The hard vacuum is itself a resource - it may eventually be the prime place for manufacturing computer chips in the Earth- Moon system.Easy to make solar panels in situ using mainly in situ resources.It seems to have a fair bit of ice at the poles. Though the evidence is rather contradictory, the LCROSS impact data does suggest the presence of ice in pure crystal form. If so it may have larger deposits of pure ice. These are of scientific interest of course, but assuming there is a fair bit, can probably also be used for human settlersThe lunar caves may be the largest in the solar system that we know of - we don’t know how big they are but the Grail evidence suggests over 100 km long for the longer ones and tens to hundreds of meters wide but they may easily even be many kilometers in diameter and still be stable in the low lunar gravity.It has many useful metals - including calcium which in vacuum conditions is as good as copper, also aluminium.It has iron - pure iron, not the oxides - mixed in with the regolith and also probably as ore bodies from meteorite impacts. This is very variable in its platinum group and metal content. But amongst its thousands of craters it probably has at least a few that were made by particularly platinum rich meteorites. And - if we are lucky - well there are signs of magnetic anomalies from the impactor that formed the south pole Aitken basin. It may well be platinum rich - that’s Paul Spudis’ business case for the Moon - he thinks it may be a rich source of platinum. I don’t know for sure - but it seems likely that amongst all those craters, at least a few happen to have been made by platinum rich iron meteorites and have tons of ore just below the surfaceFor more on this see the The Moon is resource rich section of my book.It is also a great place to find out about human impacts on the solar system as we explore it. For instance the problem of trash. What do we do with the many tons of trash that build up around a settlement every year? What about footprints on the Moon, does the entire area around the base get covered in them? What about fuel for the rockets landing and taking off? Does the contamination of the lunar surface cause problems for science studies and if so, how do we minimize these effects? What about other organics and contamination and waste products from human bases, how does this impact on science and indeed on other human activities there? It is something we can study in much simpler situations than further afield. The Moon is huge and it doesn’t have a connected environoment, apart from ballistic motion of gases and electrostatic levitation of dust. What you do in one part of the Moon will for the most part only affect the nearest few square kilometers. So we can learn about these issues without the risk that the entire Moon gets contaminated in ways that we find a nuisance before we understand what we are doing in practice.For more on this see the Trash on the Moon - testing ground for planetary protection measures for a human base section of my bookLIFEBOATS ON THE MOONIt’s also the place in our solar system that I think has most potential for industrial exports to LEO or to Earth. I don’t know if it is possible even for the Moon to make this economic as a business. But if you can’t do it on the Moon you can’t do it anywhere probably. And even fi it is not economic as a business it could still be a very useful sideline for reducign costs. E.g. maybe your main objective is to make a lunar railway, but your byproducts include the platinum group elements and gold which you don’t need in situ and export to Earth to offset some of the costs of your habitats on the Moon.That’s partly because it is so easy of access from Earth. You can get there in a couple of days. This makes it far safer . The ISS has lifeboat spacecraft attached to it at any time that can take you back to Earth within hours. It is practical to add lifeboats to a lunar habitat to get you back to Earth within two days kept constantly stocked with food, fueled and ready to go. We can’t at present do this with voyages further away.The main problem there is life support. You can't test life support intended for a zero g environment on the ground, not properly. The ISS has had numerous life support issues which were only fixed due to resupply from Earth. See this list of some of them. None were immediately dangerous, and some were relatively minor but some of them would have been fatal on a timescale of months.If issues like that arose on a spacecraft like the ISS as far away as Mars many of those issues would have lead to the entire crew dying as they could never have got their spaceship back to Earth in time. The same would be true of other issues that arise over long timescales only, e.g. damage to equipment or to hull integrity from a micrometeorite - food gone off, harmful microbioal films build up, fire fire, or release of harmful chemicals, damaging vital equipment for life support, or essential provisions.The retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, former commander of the ISS, interviewed by New Scientist, put it like this in their article "We should live on the moon before a trip to Mars""I think ultimately we’ll be living on the moon for a generation before we get to Mars. If the world and the moon were threatened and the only way to preserve our species was to launch from Earth, we could go to Mars with yesterday’s technology, but we would probably kill just about everybody on the way.""It’s as if you and I were in Paris, paddling around in the Seine in little canoes saying, 'We’ve got boats, we’ve got paddles, let’s go to Australia!' Australia? We can barely cross the English Channel. We’re sort of in that boat in space exploration right now. A journey to Mars is conceivable but it’s still a lot further away than most people think."For more about this see the Lifeboats on the Moon section of my Touch Mars? book.TRANSPORT TO / FROM EARTHMost authors talk about how the ice at the poles of the Moon will make it easy to transport materials back to Earth, and especially ice itself as an export to LEO. I think this is at least a possibility but not yet proven.However there is one way we can achieve easy transport to / from Earth that is already worked out. I am a big fan of the Hoyt cislunar tether system. This doesn’t get anything like the attention it deserves. The compelte system which synchronizes a tehter so that its tip is stationary momentarily on the lunar surface for materials to be loaded and unloaded once per cycle would be rather an engineering marvel. But even if they don’t achieve that, to be able to hop from the lunar surface up a few meters, catch onto the tether and end up boosted with no extra fuel all the way to LEO and then get caught by another tether for a gentle re-entry - that’s a big game changer. The ingenious thing is that it is powered by the potential difference between the lunar surface and the Earth which is further down in the gravitational well. It works not unlike a syphon which lets you syphon water over the edge of a bath.It is cleverly designed and the details are important - but the basic idea is simple. Just two tethers and material flowing both ways, from Earth to the Moon and from the Moon back to Earth. So long as more material is moved from the Moon to Earth then that generates an excess of power much like the way a difference in water levels powers a waterwheel and that then can be used to keep both tethers spinning. Both tethers alternately are raised and lowered in orbit depending on whether they receive or send their loads to the other tether.The thing is - it is made of ordinary materials. You can build it with kevlar. It doesn’t need carbon nanotubes. Also its total mass is low. That means that if you are sending payloads to the Moon once a week for a year, you would already save on the total payload if you set up this tether system first (given that once it is set up, you no longer need any fuel at all to send payloads to the Moon).At least - that’s for the tether system itself. It assumes some infrastructure on the Moon of course to load and unload payloads at that end and you need to be mining the Moon - but it can just be dummy payloads of luanr regolith if needed, maybe used for radiation shielding in LEO. At any rate - whether they do it in the first few years or a decade or two later, it is not a distant future thing like the space elevator.For more about this see the Exporting materials from the Moon section of my book.WHY HELIUM 3 IS NOT LIKELY TO BE A MAJOR ASSET ON THE MOONThe Moon is a source for helium 3, deposited in the regolith by the solar wind, and some say that helium 3 will be of value for fusion power in the future because it is not radioactive and doesn't produce radioactive waste products. If so, small amounts of helium 3 from the Moon could be worth a lot on Earth and be a useful commodity to export. Apollo 17's Harrison Schmidt is a keen advocate of helium 3 mining on at a reasonable rate at a reasonable rate the Moon.However, we don't yet have fusion power plants at all, and one able to use helium 3 is a tougher challenge. Frank Close wrote an article in 2007 describing this idea as "moonshine" saying it wouldn't work anyway. Frank Close says that in a deuterium - helium 3 tokamak, at normal temperatures for a tokamak, the deuterium helium 3 reaction proceeds so slowly that the deuterium would instead fuse with itself producing tritium and then fuse with the tritium (the original article is here, but it's behind a paywall). For a critical discussion see also the Space Review article The helium-3 incantationSee also Mining the Moon by Mark Williams Pontin. If you can use much higher temperatures, six times the temperature at the centre of the sun by some calculations, the helium 3 will fuse at a reasonable rate, but these are temperatures way beyond what is practical in a tokamak at present. The reason such high temperatures are needed for a tokamak is because the plasma is in thermal equilibrium and has a maxwellian distribution which means that to achieve a few particles at very high temperatures you have to heat up a lot of particles to lower temperatures to fill up the maxwellian distribution so that just a few will react. This is potentially feasible for the lower temperatures of DT but not feasible for the higher temperatures of 3He 3He.However if you use electrostatic confinement, a bit like a spherical cathode ray tube with the fusion happening at the center where the negatively charged "virtual cathode" is, then the particles are all at the same high energy and the result is much more feasible with lower power requirements. This is the approach of Gerald Kulcinsky who achieves helium 3 fusion in a reactor 10 cm in diameter. However though it does produce power, it produces only one milliwatt of power for each kW of power input so is a long way from break even at present.Gerald Kulcinski who has developed a small demonstration electrostatic 3He 3He reactor 10 cm in diameter. It is far from break-even at present, producing 1 milliwatt of power output for each kilowatt of input. See A fascinating hour with Gerald KulcinskiPerhaps this line of development will come to something. Perhaps one way or another we will achieve helium 3 fusion as the enthusiasts for helium 3 mining on the Moon hope. However it is early days yet, and we can't yet depend on this based on a future technology that doesn't exist yet.However even if we do achieve helium 3 fusion, it might not be such a game changer for the lunar economy as you might think. Crawford says (page 25)" that to supply all of our energy from Helium 3 would mean mining 5,000 square kilometers a year on the Moon, which seems ambitious (and would mean the whole Moon would only last 200 years). So, even if we develop Helium 3 based fusion, and it turns out to be a valuable export, it's probably not going to be a major part of the energy mix.Even more telling, he also calculates that covering a given area of the Moon with solar panels would generate as much energy in 7 years as you'd get from extracting all the Helium 3 from that region to a depth of three meters.Also - there are many other ideas being developed for nuclear fusion, such as laser fusion, and the Polywell which has the same advantage that no significant radiation is produced when it uses fusion of boron and hydrogen. I think it is far too soon to know whether or not the helium 3 on the Moon will be an asset in the future when we achieve nuclear fusion power. For a summary, see ESA: Helium-3 mining on the lunar surface.This doesn't mean that there is no point in helium 3 mining however. As Crawford suggests (page 26)", Helium 3 is useful for other things, not just for fusion power. It's used for cryogenics, neutron detection, and MRI scanners, amongst other applications, so some Helium 3 from the Moon could be a valuable export right away, even if it doesn't scale up to the huge quantities you'd need for Helium 3 based power generation on Earth. You'd get it automatically as a byproduct while extracting the more abundant volatiles from the solar wind in the regolith, so it might well be a useful side-line to help support lunar manufacturing economically as part of the mix along with everything else.(this is from the Helium 3 section of my book)CASE FOR MOON FIRST AND THE VALUE OF ASTROBIOLOGY ON MARSFor more about the case for the Moon and the many benefits of sending humans there see my Case For Moon FirstI wrote that book originally because I care deeply about the science value of Mars for astrobiology. It concerns me a lot that NASA are contemplating sending humans there before they can assess what effect our microbes could have on any native Mars life - especially in the case of a crash of a human occupied ship on the Mars surface. They agree that so long as there are habitats there for our microbes to survive in, that the process of introducing Earth microbes to Mars would become irreversible as soon as humans land on the planet - never mind crash there. For more on this see NASA's plan for safe zones - based on finding Mars life easily in my Touch Mars?A crash could spread the debris with microbes over hundreds of kilometers of the Mars surface, by analogy with the Columbia space shuttle crash on re-entry to Earth. For more on this see the Elon Musk's fun but dangerous trip to Mars section of my Touch Mars? bookYou might wonder, who cares, the life there is probably only microbial? Or at most perhaps lichens? Well - it could easily be microbes from an earlier era of evolution, for instance RNA only microbes. After all that is one hypothesis for the structures in ALH84001, and whether or not those structures are early living cells, it is a possibility for early life on Mars. Then, it is possible that Mars life has hardly evolved since then. Or it could be highly evolved. Nobody seems to know if Martian conditions would favour vastly more rapid evolution than on Earth, or evolution that ran to a standstill at a very early stage of evolution and has barely changed since then, or something roughly parallel to evolution on Earth, so that it has reached about the same stage as us.Anyway - if it is an early form of life like that, it could be amazingly precious for science, fill in a vast gap in our understanding of how life evolved - and yet be very vulnerable.For more on this see the What if Mars has really tiny cells - like the structures in the Mars meteorite ALH84001? section of Touch Mars?And it need not have been exposed to Earth life. People talk a lot about panspermia - transfer of lifeon meteorites from Mars to Earth or Earth to Mars - but it has never been establisehed in either direction yet. The obstacles are formidable even though life is also far hardier than previously thought. Especially from Earth to Mars, the shock of ejection at a speed fast enough to LEAVE the atmosphere at the Earth escape velocity is huge. Also at such speed as that - it has to travel through the atmosphere at such speed that it is already a fireball in the first few hundred meters as it leaves the surface of the Earth - otherwise it is far too slow to leave Earth’s gravitational field. Any photosynthetic life on the surface would be destroyed by the fireball. It then has the vacuum of space, cold, cosmic radiation, solar storms and then has to find a habitat on Mars when it gets there, from the interior of a rock (remember the exterior was roasted already as it left Earth’s atmosphere) and if in modern Mars in an environoment with almost no running water even when during its occasional periods of somewhat thicker atmosphere.It may never have happened in that direction for billions of years and it is also possible that life from Earth never got to Mars (depends how robust Early Earth life was).For more on ths see the What about Zubrin's meteorites argument? section of Touch Mars?HOW THE MOON TURNS OUT TO BE BETTER THAN MARS FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTSAnyway - so that was my original motivation for writing this book. I thought - if we can find that the Moon is good enough to at least delay the colonization of Mars attempt - it gives us some breathing space and time to assess the impact of humans on Mars before they actually get there.But - as I worked on the book I was amazed to find that not only is the Moon a good second fiddle to Mars - it is actually a far better place for an attempt at human settlement. In one comparision after another.Meanwhile, many of the ideas for Mars colonization can be used on the Moon - though not all. If you look at the Moon with “Mars colonization” preconceptions you will keep thinking about how it is not as good as Mars.That’s because solutions devised for Mars don’t necessarily all of them work on the Moon - especially e.g. using the CO2 to make fuel from hydrogen. But then - maybe you don’t need to do that on the Moon. It takes less fuel to get back to Earth anyway - and you can use the Hoyt cislunar tether sytem which doesn’t work on Mars - or use water mined at the lunar poles. You also have abundant solar power 24/7 at least at the lunar poles. And the pure iron on the lunar surface and the hard vacuum are major assets compared to Mars, also the higher levels of solar power are never blocked out by Mars dust storms. Then you have the easy way you can clear areas of its surface from dust by glazing it. None of that will work on the Mars, because of its atmosphere and the winds blowing the dust around.So those are all disadvantages of the Mars atmosphere. While CO2 is not at all needed for greenhouses - for space habitats if it is a perfect closed system then human breathing + composted or burnt plant wastes produce all the CO2 you need forthe next crop and ifyou have to import any food then you get a CO2 excess that has to be scrubbed. And the Mars close to 24 hour day is much less of an asset than you’d think if you realize it means it gets bitterly cold at night, so cold that the CO2 freezes out as dry ice at night even in the tropics for many days of the year.Meanwhile things like the “suitport” spacesuits to keep out dust are useful in both places.For more on this Mars or Moon spectacles and the old woman young woman illusionTERRAFORMING AS A PLANET CENTRIC APPROACH THAT WOULD TAKE THOUSANDS OF YEARSAs for the idea of terraforming Mars - the Kim Stanley Robinson books are science fiction with a lot of fudging of figures to fit the story into a timescale of a few generations. In reality the optimistic projection of the Mars society is for a thousand years to get to the point where you have a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere with trees and humans using air breathers - based on very optimistic projections of amounts of dry ice on the surface. It could be tens to hundreds of thousands of years after that to reach a breathable atmosphere (you have to extract so much carbon from the atmosphere that you create a meters thick layer of organics over the entire surface of the planet, in the low light levels of Mars) and that’s with vast use of megatechnology. When you think also of what you could do with that level of megatechnology in decades rather than centuries, for other space activities - well -it becomes more of a fantasy future than a likely near future reality. Also with much to go wrong and the prospect of making the planet less rather than more habitable for humans in the worst cases.Why use so much mega technology to create an atmosphere tens of kilometers thick when you only need the bottom couple of meters, and to cover a planet with seas filling up bone dry desert sand with water to depths of hundreds of meters (perhaps by bombarding it with comets) when you just need a few inches depth of water for aquaponics or growing plants in normal soil, or perhaps meters depth of soil for trees? Why commit to making an entire planet into a human habitat when you only need a few square meters to square kilometers to start with? And when it comes to the area available for colonization - well it would take a long time to exhaust even the areas available on the Moon and in lunar caves. But if we do eventually have billions and then trillions in space - you get much more surface area for far less resources invested if you use the materials from the asteroid belt. Enough to build habitats sufficient to have a surface area total of a thousand times that of the land area of Earth just from the asteroid belt.If we do ever engage in terraforming, it seems like something we’d do at a later stage, not one of the first things we attempt in space. Learn our lessons in smaller scale habitats. After all there was plenty to go wrong even with Biosphere II never mind trying a similar project for an entire planet in one go.And we can also try paraterraforming, starting with the Moon - covering large areas of the surface with habitats - or indeed, building large habitats in the lunar caves. It’s actually much easier to live in the lunar caves than many realize - the caves have a stable temperature, shieled from cosmic radiation, may be vast inside, already “built” as a structure to live in. The main disadvantage is the 14 day lunar night. However humans don’t need an acre or even a thousand square foot of agriculture to grow enough food for one person, but only 30 square metres. Also nowadays we can use LED lights optimized for growing plants at only 100 watts pwer square meter. With these sorts of figures it is feasible to deal with the lunar night using only battery storage and other energy storage solutions and solar power. For that matter, the Russians in their early BIOS-3 experiments in the 1970s found out that there are many plants that can crop fine with 14 days of darkness every month so long as the roots are cooled to just a few degrees above zero during the long lunar night.For more on this, see my An astronaut gardener on the Moon - summits of sunlight and vast lunar caves in low gravity in MOON FIRST Why Humans on Mars Right Now Are Bad for Science .And for lunar paraterraforming and even terraforming, see Terraforming or paraterraformingBUT WHAT ABOUT ZUBRIN?Zubrin makes what seem to be knock down arguments to his supporters - that we need to go to Mars right now and that there is no need to protect Earth or Mars in the process. However, convincing as he may sound, it’s important to know that when it comes to planetary protection then almost nobody is in agreement with him;. He is not the decision maker.For the background on planetary protection going back to Lederberg in 1957, and how Zubrin’s arguments seem within that context, see Planetary protection - researches by Sagan and Lederberg onwards - and Zubrin's argumentsMy main concern is with NASA, and only indirectly his effect on them. He can’t get them to ignore planetary protection altogether as he is not supported in that by the planetary protection department or COSPAR - the international group who discuss planetary protection or anyone. He can get them to put the Mars mission on the top of the agenda but I think with Trump his influence on US space policy is waning somewhat.My hope is that as we start to explore the Moon and space geeks get excited and fired up by the new things we are finding out there - and faced with the practicality of actually being able to go into space and visit the Moon and do cool things there right nowm that the Mars fever will calm down.SpaceX is the only commercial company in support of Mars first - Blue Origins and everyone else is in the New Space business is focused on LEO and the Moon.Under Obama, the US was the only country focused on Mars first and is now changing itts stance towards Moon first. The rest of the world including Europe, China and Russia have always been keen on returning to the Moon first.Also just about all astronauts agree that we should go to the Moon first. Even Buzz Aldrin, one of the keenest advocates for humans to Mars, thinks we should go to the Moon first - he was misquoted by Obama as his “been there done that” was meant as a joke as he made clear in his autobiography published soon after.It just makes more sense, apart from planetary protection issues. Iam not saying that they agree on the need to find out more about Mars before landing humans there. Their focus on going to the Moon first is mainly for safety and practical reasons and many of them are thinking in terms of a follow on mission to Mars a few years later. But it can give us a breathing space to both find out more and raise public awareneess of the need for planetary protection and get it more discussed so that we make a wise informmed decisions for Mars. It will also help take the pressure off from those who are desparate for humans to go further away than LEO and currently see Mars as the best way to do that.It will be a few years before we have humans on the Moon too probably, at least for Russia, the US and EU because of our commitment to the ISS. It is very expensive to maintain and there’s no suggestion at the moment of taking on a second big project for humans in space at the same time. Though I’ll be sad to see the end of thre ISS when it de-orbits probably some time in late 2020s, the funding will then go into these Moon missions and the ESA village will be international and also involve private / public partnerships and collaborations. It makes it far more feasible than the ISS was for development and expansion plus there is so much we’d be learning about the Moon.China or some other country could surprise us with astronauts to the Moon beforoe then. But there is no sign of that at present and indeed China are keen to join ESA in the lunar village concept.Meanwhile we have many robotic missions to look forward to .This year we have China and India both sending government missions and four teams for the lunar X Prize by end of March and astrobiotic, who were the leadingcontender for the X Prize until they pulled out probably some time this year or next. We will soon be at the point where we have multiple robotic missions to the Moon every year - which we can do because it is cheaper and easier to get to the Moon than to Mars - and that will make a big difference with streaming HD video as our robots explore the caves, surface and lunar poles and then find the best location for a human base and start prepairing for it. ?And lots of science discoveries streaming back.This is not going to detract from Mars robotic exploration but is additional to it.That’s how I see things unfolding. I am much more hopeful about a planetary protection friendly future exploration of space than I was, say, two years ago. And I think people will be surprised at how many minor but niggling issues there are on the Moon such as the trash, rocket exhaust and contamination of the site around the base for human investigations. So leading them to take more care as we explore further afield rather than just landing on Mars and hitting all those issues for the first time there,THE MOON AS AN ASTEROID CATCHERWhatever you have in Near Earth Asteroids you also have on the Moon. Asteroids have impacted on the moon for billions of years so it is like an asteroid collecting station - smaller material mixed in the regolith, metallic ore bodies buried in craters probably, iron core of the impactor that made the Aitken basin splashed out over the rim of it possibly by the magnetic evidence, and there is ice at the lunar poles.The main advantage of the Moon is that it is so close and easy of access to Earth while the asteroids which require the lowest delta v to get to from Earth are also the ones that phase in and out with our orbit most slowly, typically easisest to access once a decade.Perhaps the most practical idea for the most easily accessible asteroids with low relative delta v is to grab a chunk and bring it back to the Earth Moon system for further reprocessing.But the Moon has done that already by catching them in the impact craters. I think we need to explore both and see what happens but if I were a betting man my money would be on the Moon to be the lions share of the economy if we do get a space economy in the near future exporting to Earth.The asteroids do have advantages especially for autonomous mining, the spin can be used to deliver materials back to Earth since many are spinning, the low gravity may be an advantage in some ways, the idea to bag an asteroid with heated carbon monoxide - then heated by the sun 24/ 7, solar power continuouslyu which you only get at the poles on the Moon. But the latency for controlling operations from the Earth may be an issue plus distance to go for servicing. Hard to say as we may get rapid progress in autonomous operation and in how easy it is to get to the asteroids - but both those would benefit the Moon too.SWIMMING ON THE MOON AND RUNNING ON WATERI’ll just finish with some fun thoughts. Did you know that in the luanr surface - if we ever have habitats there with large amounts of water - humans could run on the water like the Basilisk (“Jesus”) lizard?Running on water - a possible future lunar Olympics sport :). Four out of six subjects were able to run on water in simulated lunar gravity using small rigid fins - similarly to the way Basilisk lizards can run across rivers. So running on water could be a future lunar sport (in an air filled habitat of course) paper hereAnd a strong swimmer could easily leap out of the water like a dolphin? See Hilarious XKCD about lunar swimming :). You'll be amazed by what humans could do on the Moon if or when we have our first swimming pool there. Lunar Swimming on XKCDThat might be somethign we can explore sooner than you expect. After all a lunar habitat will need water stores for both living there and perhaps for rocket fuel too. Why not have some of it in the form of a swimming pool? And especially if the water can be mined locally on the Moon then it might be quite easy (comparatively) to set up a lunar swimming pool.CASE FOR MOON FIRST BOOK AND OUR FACEBOOK GROUPYou can find the book here: Case For Moon First - has more on nearly all the things I’ve covered here (though not on the dolphin leaps and running on water, I have yet to add a section about that).Also my Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps? and MOON FIRST Why Humans on Mars Right Now Are Bad for Science,Also see our facebook group hereCase for Moon for Humans - Open Ended with Planetary Protection at its CoreIt is for anyone interested in a Moon first approach - not necessary at all that you agree with my views on everything or anything :). There are still so few places for discussion of a Moon first prespective, at least compared with Mars colonization discusisons.

What are some benefits of meditation that we might not know about?Meditation is quite a complex subject and it is not entirely possible to describe it relatively simply in a forum such as this. This description is long because it is written on a scientific basis.Does science have anything to say on meditation? Indeed it does for we are now on the threshold of unlocking the secrets of the mind. While it was entirely impossible to be objective about the state of mind of so called advanced Buddhist meditators before, the new state of the art functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques have enabled neurologists, cognitive scientists and psychologists to have an entrancing view into the neural activity of the brain, something which was altogether impossible just one or two score years ago. Functional MRI is non invasive and safe. It does not require radioactive tracer substances, unlike positron emission tomography (PET) or single photon emission tomography (SPET), and uses the brain’s natural haemodynamic (blood flow) response to neural activity as an inbuilt tracer. Some techniques include the use of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) imaging, which depends on the ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated haemoglobin. In those areas of the brain with increased activity, there will be higher metabolic requirements and therefore increased blood flow which temporarily changes this ratio, and the magnetic resonance signal can be picked up by ultra fast scanners. In simple layman terms, it means those areas of the brain which are actively being used will convert sugars to energy with the use of oxygen brought by the blood stream and this will be reflected in the levels of oxygenated haemoglobin.Apart from its myriad applications in medicine and industry, the machines are being used to explore many dimensions of uses including that of lie-detection, although the golden grail is still that of mind-reading. Present machines can pinpoint metabolic activity at a resolution of about 4 millimeters in diameter, but are still relatively slow, tracking activity occurring for two seconds or so. To catch a thought, a level of complexity requiring the recording of a signal lasting for mere milliseconds, would require magnets up to several times that of the present models which are about 3 to 4 tesla in strength. This is not likely to be feasible because magnets of such strength can induce heat in the brain or zap the vestibular system ( the balance centres in the inner ear), making you dizzy in the process. Hence current investigators favour the use of software analysis of brain patterns which occur as people think of certain concepts or ideas. Still, there is a lot to be done, for what is English to you or me would be gibberish to a Bhutanese when the f MRI brain decoder is used on him.This odd couple, of Buddhist monk and grey haired scientist, really is a nascent rapprochement between science and faith. For this we might even have to thank the Maoists, for if they had not decided to make the Dalai Lama into the most prominent religious refugee in the world, he would not have arrived on the shores of the United States and centres like M.I.T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a pantheon of engineering which is now coordinating work on ‘Investigating the Mind’ in collaboration with his Tibetan and other Buddhist practitioners.What has so far been found is certainly interesting. When psychologist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin peered into the mind of a French-born monk named Matthieu Ricard with a scanner, he asked the monk to attain a meditative state of compassion and measured the neural activity in the brain. He did the same with some 150 other untrained volunteers and found brain activity fairly evenly divided between the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain just behind the forehead, of both the right and left lobes. Neuroscientists Steven E Shelton and Ned H Kalin at the same University have now established that right prefrontal lobe activity is associated with fear and anxiety responses and heightened defensive behaviors and a locus of negative emotions as well as higher cortisol levels in the blood. On the other hand, left frontal lobe activity was associated with calmness and contentment as well as feelings of positive emotions and a lower level of secreted corticotrophin- releasing hormone resulting in lower cortisol levels. What was found unusual in the scans of the monk was that his neural activity pattern was skewed so far to the left he was virtually ‘off the curve’ according to Prof Davidson.And here we are, it seems mental discipline exerts its effects on the neural processes in some definitive way that we are now deciphering. So, the Wisconsin scientists did studies on other monks, asking them to attain a state of open awareness, of non judgmental attachment to emotions and feelings as well as happenings around them. Brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain which seems to have a role in assigning emotional meanings to perceptions, seemed to plunge quite dramatically in these meditation experts. To further their understanding the researchers blasted recordings of baby laughter or women screaming and found hardly any reaction from the emotion-processing regions, yet when these monks tuned into the compassionate mode, the left superior prefrontal region spiked in activity. There is a particular area of the prefrontal cortex which seems to be involved in almost all aspects of conscious activity such as coordinating our thoughts and switching back and forth between tasks – something akin to a central executive which directs the content of conscious activity whether this is speech or calculation or activating visual memory. This area is known as area 46.Which brings up a question – are these smiling monks in Dharamsala, home base of the exiled Tibetan leadership, truly happy?From what has been described so far, it may well be hypothesized that they really are, for according to Professor Owen Flanagan of Duke University in North Carolina, the studies published in the New Scientist magazine seem to confirm that in experienced practitioners, the left prefrontal lobes are consistently more active and therefore these people are more likely to experience positive emotions and good mood.Somehow this leads us to think they may have installed a kindly and more wholesome chief executive officer in that particular region of their brain!Researchers led by Paul Ekman at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Centre found that conscientious meditation practice can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory, and thereby attenuate responses to shocking experiences, and situations likely to incite anger and frustration. The amygdala is a component of the limbic system, which comprises also the hippocampus, thalamus and hypothalamus as well as olfactory bulb and certain circuits in the cerebral cortex and is that part of the brain which has a major role in experiencing and expressing emotions. Initially evolved for evaluating smells, the limbic system in lower animals helped in deciding whether some object should be approached or avoided but in higher animals, the sense of smell has become less important than vision or hearing for purposes of feeding, reproduction or defense of territory. In the lower mammals such as hedgehogs and rats or lemurs, which have less cortical tissue (read - a lot less brainy) this limbic system does perceive, remember and learn to avoid danger.Present research suggests that in mammals the prefrontal cortex assesses danger when presented with data from the visual cortex (located at the back of the head). Association fibres from the prefrontal cortex interconnected with the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system directs the hypothalamus to initiate the release of hormones that support the motor responses to perceived threat such as adrenalin and cortisol from the adrenal glands located near the kidneys.There is a genetic component to anxiety as any family doctor or psychiatrist who deals with dysfunctional families would readily tell you. Recent reports in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology reported by Norman Schmidt and others suggest that people with a particular variation in the 5-HT transporter gene (5 –HTT) show an enhanced response in an induced anxiety experiment.Since life inevitably throws up stressful situations with divorce, bereavement and economic upheavals or job insecurity amongst them, our adaptive responses – whether we sink into depression or bounce back from adversity would seem to depend on certain genetic traits. The long form of the 5-HTT gene is linked to increased regulation of 5 –HT ( 5-hydroxytryptamine or serotonin) levels in the brain which means that neurons take up 5 -HT faster, leaving less available. This has been correlated to anxiety states and depression in patients. On the other hand the short form of the gene seems to confer a more stable temperament in those participants who were tested. Of course a single gene is rarely the culprit and more genes may be involved but certainly genetic as well as psychological traits do seem to be harbingers of certain psychological disorders. The other critical component is the environment because in the absence of severely stressful events, people with the long form of the 5-HTT gene are no more likely to commit suicide than those with the short form. In other words, there is no expression of the gene without the environmental input. Would meditation really help in a fundamental way in this situation? Does meditation, Buddhist or otherwise, change the brain in terms of its emotional circuitry?To answer that question, Davidson recruited 39 employees of a biotech firm in Wisconsin and randomly assigned 23 of them to receive meditation training of between two to three hours once a week for a total of eight weeks; while the other 16 received no such training. The training was conducted by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, who taught them the technique called mindfulness, in which the meditator views each passing thought as impartially and as non-judgmentally as possible and attaches no emotional reaction to it. The idea is that you are just a passive observer of your own thoughts. At eight weeks, and again at sixteen weeks later, electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of the activity of the frontal cortices of the meditators had shifted; with more neuronal firings in the left compared with those in the right frontal-regions nestled just behind the forehead. The control group showed no such right to left shift. Any conscientious sceptical observer would then tell you that the numbers were small but it is also true that observers have noted this was a relatively well executed study with a control group and a sound method.Since EEG recordings are relatively crude devices for measuring spatial and synaptic changes in the brain which would account for the shift in frontal cortex activity from right to left, functional MRI had to be used for this purpose. By examining this little almond shape structure deep within the brain known as the amgydala, (amygdale is the Greek word for almond) and its connections with the prefrontal cortex, these researchers found that the inhibitory signals from the prefrontal cortex appear to rein in the activity of the amygdala and its associated negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression and anger and these signals seemed to be under some form of voluntary control.As to whether meditation induces structural changes in the connections between the frontal lobes and amygdala, a newer technique known as diffusion tensor imaging will be used to look into the possibility. Scientists and New-Age gurus are suddenly enchanted by the view of the plastic brain, the possibility that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as your muscles are sculpted into an Adonis shape by aerobics and weight training, it seems that the gray matter in the brain may become more densely aggregated with particular networks by repeated mental training. The brain is a curiosity in that it seems to be able to change its neuronal connective networks by expanding and strengthening those circuits that are used and by shrinking and weakening those which are rarely activated. This has been found to be true in addicts. Eric J Nestler and Robert C Malenka reported in the Scientific American in March 2004 that drug abuse produces long-term changes in the reward circuitry of the brain. Chronic use of cocaine, alcohol or heroin or other addictives can change the behaviour of a key part of the brain’s reward circuit extending from the dopamine producing nerve cells of the ventral tegmental area, at the bottom of the third ventricle near the base of the brain, to dopamine sensitive cells in the nucleus accumbens located in the forebrain. The dopamine release also produce certain proteins (delta FosB) which in turn activate specific genes which then generate other proteins such as CDK5 which induce sensitizing responses as well as others, like CREB(cyclic AMP response element-binding protein), which promote tolerance. The pathways then become highly responsive to presence or absence of the drug, producing the cycle of addiction that is seen. Although psychological, social and environmental factors are certainly important, there is a suggestion of genetic susceptibility in up to 50 percent of cases because some cases do run in families.Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin University , has also conducted studies on monks who have spent more than 10,000 hours in meditation, and compared their brain scans with those of novices. How do we know these monks have such meditation logs as it were. Well, in places like Bhutan, when monks go on retreats, they climb off to a mountain hut miles away from civilization, and stay there for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days alone, with only their supporters bringing them food and necessities every few weeks. Now, that is what they called a retreat! At the end of which they come out smiling, and even if you tried to sour them up with a foul mouthed tirade or two, it would just as likely drip right off. Monks with the requisite training show a dramatic increase in high frequency brain activity called gamma waves during compassion meditation. Compassion meditation involves generating a kind of loving kindness towards all beings, and with practice, these practitioners can attain a mental state in which compassion permeates the whole mind, with no other transgressing thoughts.With the scans that had been performed on the monks and the novices, there was a clear difference between the two sets. The increase in high –frequency brain activity called gamma waves is thought to be a coordinated form of brain neuronal signaling which knits together far-flung brain circuits, and may underlie higher mental activity such as consciousness. There is a diagram on brain wave coherence which is probably related to this finding and it is discussed later in this chapter. The novice meditators showed a slight increase in gamma activity, but most of the monks showed extremely large increases in such patterns. This brings Professor Davidson to theorize that the mental training can bring the brain to a greater level of consciousness.Other details in his scans showed enhanced activity in the left pre-frontal cortex, ( the seat of positive emotions) and this seemed to swamp the activity of the right pre-frontal cortex, the seat of negative emotions such as anxiety. A sprawling circuit seemed to be activated when these monks were shown scenes of suffering, compared to relatively subdued activity in the novices. Interestingly, other regions of the brain which were responsible for planned movements became lighted, suggesting that these brains were primed to do something to help those in distress. One of the monks studied, French born Matthieu Ricard, stationed currently at Shechen Monastry in Katmandu, Nepal, is a Ph.D in genetics. He recalled that his feelings at the time of the test were “ Like a total readiness to act, to help” While they may have been pre-existing differences between the two sets – the novices and the monks, the very fact that the monks with the greatest brain changes were those with the most hours of meditation gave a distinct clue that the changes were actually due to mental training. Davidson has published these findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.So, the Buddha was actually correct when he emphasized this fact above all else, because without meditation the mind would be too unwieldy and unlikely to attain enlightenment.Studies done as far back as 1963 and 1966 by Dr Akira Kasamatsu and Dr Tomio Hirai of the Department of Neuro-Psychiatry at Tokyo University on Zen meditation involved a ten year study of the brain wave and EEG tracings of Zen masters. These have also revealed subtle changes in their brain wave recordings particularly with regard to alpha waves.About 90seconds after the onset of meditation in an accomplished Zen master, this slow rhythmic brain wave pattern (α waves) establishes itself, becomes more entrenched at a rate of about 7 to 8 per second about half an hour into the exercise and persists even for some minutes after stopping meditation. Alpha waves are usually seen only in people quietly at rest with their eyes closed but in these experiments, the Zen masters had their eyes open. Thus this brain wave pattern in alert normal wakeful consciousness is unusual and not found in persons who have not made considerable progress in meditation. Moreover, it was found that a Zen master’s assessment of the state of attainment of their disciples or other practitioners correlated directly with the latter’s EEG changes. Another interesting feature is concerned with what is termed alpha blocking and habituation. If a person is reading quietly and suddenly hears a loud noise, his attention is momentarily distracted to the source of the noise for a few seconds. If the same sound were to occur again a few seconds later, his attention is again diverted but would likely be not as strongly as before nor as long. With regular repetitions of the sound at fixed intervals, he becomes virtually oblivious to the sound and continues reading. The Zen master and the novice have different responses in this scenario. Read on…A normal relaxed person with closed eyes generates alpha waves on the EEG as shown in the diagram above. If you interrupt his peace with a loud noise, his alpha waves disappear for seven seconds or more and this is termed alpha blocking. In the case of the Zen master, this alpha blocking is much shorter in duration, about two seconds on average in response to the first noise. In the former, if the noise is repeated at 15 second intervals, there is virtually no alpha blocking by the fifth successive noise and this diminution in response is termed habituation and persists as long as the noise is heard at regular and frequent intervals. Strangely enough, in the case of the latter Zen master, no habituation is seen and his alpha blocking lasts two seconds with the first sound, two seconds with the fifth sound and two seconds with the twentieth sound! Paradoxically, as a result of his meditation, he has developed a greater awareness of his environment.And now comes an interesting facet hitherto unbeknown to most and alluded to earlier– that meditation has the power of transforming the mind! The enlightened mind is significantly different from ordinary minds! This is an objectively verifiable state, especially in those who practice transcendental meditation until they develop awareness even through all stages of sleep.The above is a computer analysis of the electrical brain activity or (EEG) of a beginner and an advanced meditator comparing brain function orderliness, integration and coherence. The more of white waves, the more coherence – see next diagram.Since EEG coherence reflects coordination of cerebral activity and has a strong correlation with creativity, IQ, and a low level of neuroticism, the old adage that some one who is disorganized is a scatter brain probably held some merit! In the normal frenzied working place, people who do not meditate have little or sporadic EEG-coherence on testing. The point is that as one learns transcendental meditation, EEG coherence begins to spill over into ordinary waking activity – in other words, TM trains the mind to work more and more coherently all the time. As time progresses and the meditator becomes more adept, the frontal brain activity becomes more pronounced and the increase in coherence seems to beget a state consonant with increased creativity, empathy and high ethical standards. In more than 500 studies at over 200 scientific institutions and universities in about 30 countries, Buddhist and Transcendental Meditation has been found to promote healing of stress related disorders and prevent its onset by improving stress tolerance. The improvement in quality of cerebral functioning is demonstrable even in very old people above the age of 81. Indeed it is a revolutionary revisit to the old vedic traditions which has now been proven true that one need not stop learning even when you are an octogenarian if you practice TMThat the brain has this ability to generate new cells (neurogenesis) would have been anathema to those dogmatic scientists of yesteryear who believed that we were all born with a fixed number of nerve cells but over the past decades, it has been confirmed that the brain does have the innate ability to rewire itself, at least in discrete areas of the adult brain.Moreover, the new frontier of research is in what is known as neuroplasticity, which postulates that there is a capacity for the brain to adapt in response to daily life changes and nowhere is this more apparent than in children. Many people have this erroneous idea that our brains are the result of the unfolding of a fixed genetic program, courtesy of our parents and in which we have no choice in the outcome. But, in reality present data indicates that with the plasticity in connections between the thinking and feeling as well as motor and memory regions of the brain, the belief that each of us has a ‘set point’ in terms of intelligence or emotional happiness is well nigh untenable and we now know that this so called ‘set-point’ is a lot more movable than we think.So, what has neuroplasiticity got to do with how you think? The answer is – a lot. Moods and emotional tsunamis have been linked to different biological modifications which include brain alterations in the hippocampus ( part of the limbic system ). Three dimensional MRI volumetric measurement of this area of the brain reveal a loss of volume of from 8% to 19% in people with major depression even as early as 7 months after a major depressive episode in comparison to healthy subjects in a recent report from the American Journal of Psychiatry (Frodl T, Meisenzahl E, Zetzsche T) 2002.Dr Yvette Sheline showed that the degree of hippocampal and amygdala atrophy ( loss of tissue) is correlated with the duration of the illness suggesting that it is the result of the illness and not the cause; because patients who recovered from their illness did not exhibit such loss, whereas those depressives who did a dive from high places had such findings at autopsy. At a cellular level, there is noticeable glial cell loss in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, as well as in the prefrontal cortex in both major depression and bipolar depression. Bipolar depression refers to those patients who exhibit manic as well as depressive episodes. Since glial cells are involved in synaptic function (synapse = nerve junctions) and neurotransmission, it is not unreasonable to see why depressed people have such lowered activity because the depression has caused alteration in neuroplasticity. Even in animals such as rats, if you restrict their activity and put them under repeated mild stress, their brains show a decrease in cell proliferation ( neurogenesis) in the hippocampus and there is some evidence that it (depression) even encourages apoptosis ( normal physiological cell death). Obviously, if you want to preserve some brain, it pays to be happy!Elderly people who practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) have been found to have drastically reduced medical costs. In a study in Quebec by Herron and Cavanaugh reported in the Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality (2001) on some 163 elderly people above the age of 65, during the 9 years before TM was commenced, there was no significant difference in health expenditure between the control group who did no meditation and the TM group. However, after another 5 years, those who meditated were found to have 70 percent reduction in health care expenditure from data provided by the health insurance provider. It certainly proves that it is a good reason for any elderly fogey to start learning TM, if one intends to pay the doctor less! An added benefit is the fact that those who do TM are generally physiologically 12 years younger than their chronological age, based on measurements of “biological age” indicators such as blood pressure, near-point vision, and auditory discrimination. Correlated benefits include reduction in blood pressure, improvement in angina pectoris (heart pain due to coronary arterial blocks), and even a 50 percent reduced cardiovascular disease mortality reported in the American Heart Association Journal, Circulation, in February 1996.