I’ve always known how important the unconscious is when it comes to creativity – it generates the most surprising and affecting parts of stories while I’m in that hazy, detached writing zone. (And that’s why writers who want to get published shouldn’t plot things out too heavily in advance – you’re cutting off the bit of you that is the most important part of the process.)

Now we know the subconscious mind stands behind everything – choosing when and how we respond, and identifying certain emotions – love, fear – as “more important”. The analogy in the above article is that the conscious mind is a searchlight, but the subconscious decides when to switch it on and where to shine it.

There’s never been any sign of complex carbon-based molecules on Mars, but sulphur is all over the place, more than on earth. Some microbes in our own backyard convert sulphates to sulphides as a by-product of their activity. Intriguing evidence of this microbial work has been found at crater sites – and similar tests could be carried on Mars relatively easily.

All we need is a Mars Lander fitted with the right tools. Oh, one’s already planned? When’s it hitting the red dust?

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover will land on the Martian surface in 2012. It will carry a mass spectrometer that should be sensitive enough to see variations as small as 2 per cent in sulphur isotope abundances, says John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the lead scientist for the mission.

Martin is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author for The Wired Society which was prescient about much of today’s world. In this one, he interviews lots of experts across a range of disciplines and gives a powerfully-stated overview, which is hard to get in such a complex world.

It’s a popular science book, and easily understood, so all you uber-scientists don’t come here complaining that he’s not written it at a thesis level. Worth checking out for anyone interested in life in general, science and politics.

What you always feared is true.

His comments were made today as scientists gather in London to discuss the prospect of discovering extra-terrestrial life.

New Scientist reports that a meeting will be held in Texas in June to discuss if, and how, and in what form, such an attempt at communication should be made.

There is opposition. Our oldest stories tell us that it’s not always wise to let the gods notice you, which is what’s on the mind of SF author David Brin. He resigned from a SETI panel because he felt there wasn’t enough discussion of the potential repercussions from such a broadcast. He says: “I dislike seeing my children’s destiny being gambled with by a couple of dozen arrogant people who cling to one image of the alien”

The stuff of science fiction is just day-to-day business for Jacque Fresco, a futurist who’s come across my radar a few times in the past. He’s a designer and an inventor with a view on where we’re going and what we need to change to survive.

His latest work is The Venus Project – a vision of how to integrate the best of science and technology into a comprehensive plan for a new society based on both human and environmental concerns.

Click on the link above and you’ll see some absolutely breathtaking art that wouldn’t look out of place on an SF book cover. You can find out more about The Venus Project here:

About time, too.

They can perform quite complex tasks effectively. Unlike Hoon and Hewitt.

A research project at medical centres across the UK, US and Europe is examining what happens to consciousness after we “die” (in inverted commas because death is measured by a sliding scale and it’s possible to be brought back, sometimes up to an hour after the heart stops beating). It’s arisen out of numerous reports of Near-Death Experiences, as well as a study that shows 20% of people who have a flatline brain state and are resuscitated, still have lucid memories of what happened around them. Obviously, a lack of brain activity suggests that shouldn’t be the case.

The study could release its findings as early as 2012.

Meanwhile, Critical Care Doctors at the George Washington University Medical Faculty have released a new report which shows that patients “experienced a sudden electrical ‘alertness’ or spike in brain waves in the moments before they died. The spikes came in the same moments just before each patient’s death. They rose to comparable levels and were consistent in duration.”.

Researchers suggest this may be the first scientifically recorded sign of the near-death experience.

Zeilinger and others working in the field have shown that widely separated particles can somehow have quantum states that are linked: by observing one, the outcome of the other is affected. But as New Scientist magazine says, “No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.”

Read the full account of questions that keep physicists up at night at the New Scientist site.

Part of this belief is based on the Mayan Long Count calendar, which, according to some academics, comes to an end on December 21 (or 23) 2012. An End, with a capital E. Typically of the academic world, there is no firm agreement on this, with some saying the calendar actually ends 4.134105 × 10 to the 28th years in the future. Which is what is commonly known as “wiggle room”.

But it’s not just the Mayans. A similar prediction lies in the myths of the Hopi Native Americans, in the I Ching, some say in a code hidden in the Bible, and in the writings of the philosopher Terence McKenna, who created a formula which predicted a singularity of infinite complexity on December 21 2012, when everything and anything imaginable will occur simultaneously. Which seems to happen in my office on a regular basis.

All New Age Nonsense, some say. Well…it doesn’t matter. Much to the annoyance of my arch-rationalist friends, things which don’t exist can often have a greater effect on the world than things that do. If enough people believe we are approaching a time of “spiritual awakening” or “consciousness change”, they will make that happen. Altering patterns of behaviour. Becoming, say, more environmentally-minded. More socially aware, or politically aware. Then, 2012 becomes a focal point for changing the world. Putting it right.

On the other hand, maybe all these predictions are right.

For that reason, I’m going to be documenting here anything and everything which might relate to this. Strange events, odd coincidences, political and environmental acts, UFO sightings, religious phenomena, scientific advances and anything else which might take my interest. Who knows – a pattern might appear – or not? And as anyone who has read my books knows, I’m very interested in hidden patterns.

I’m interested to hear of any links, sightings, bizarre occurrences – personal or global, acts of activism, and transcendence, which may or may not fit into this. You can sign up for my forum and leave a message there, or DM me through that site.

I think we can have some fun with this.

“Beyond its revolutionary technological applications and scientific impact, the evidence of an active role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality holds profound implications for our view of ourselves, our relationships to others, and to the cosmos in which we exist. These, in turn, must inevitably impact our values, our priorities, our sense of responsibility, and our style of life. Our ability to acquire, or to generate tangible, measureable information independent of distance or time challenges the foundation of any reductionistic brain-based model of consciousness that may be invoked. The lack of notable correlations in the data with standard learning curves or other recognizable cognitive patterns, combined with the repeatable and distinct gender-related differences, suggest that these abilities may stem from a more fundamental source than heretofore suspected. Certainly, there is little doubt that integration of these changes in our understanding of ourselves can lead to a substantially superior human ethic, wherein the long-estranged siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of intellect and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of human experience can be productively reunited.”

You know I’ve spent the last nine years writing about this stuff in Age of Misrule, The Dark Age and Kingdom of the Serpent, right?

And then Dan Brown goes and writes about it in The Lost Symbol and gets all the attention. Bastard.

It’s interesting and inspiring research and like Brown says in his book, has the potential to instigate a paradigm shift in scientific thinking.