I fall asleep thinking about the work I have ahead of me, laying out future research in my mind, hoping there is a way through this insanity that leads back to reality. A reality grown and stretched to include something new.
~An excerpt from The Sleep of Reason


THE REAL SCIENCE:
New Organ Discovered in Human Body: Scientists just discovered one of the biggest organs in the human body and it could significantly advance our understanding of cancer and many other diseases:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/scientists-say-they-ve-discovered-unknown-human-organ-could-help-n860601

We’re taught that the shift from non-life to life began in the warm, soupy puddles of water that dotted the Earth’s surface. Over millions of years, the Sun shone, molecules formed and dispersed, until one of the billions of biochemical combinations produced a cell that could change the sunlight into energy. The rest is history, right? 
 
But how likely is that, really? First and foremost, if you’re a brand new molecule looking for a food source, the Sun is a poor candidate. That newborn cell, like all cells, is looking for an energy source about one tenth as powerful as a single photon emitted from the sun. As one scientist has suggested, a cell trying to catch the energy in a photon and use it directly to synthesize sugar is like a baseball player trying to catch bullets from a machine gun.  
~An excerpt from Sleep of Reason

THE REAL SCIENCE:
Where was the warm little pond? Many scientists believe that it existed on Earth, most likely near hot hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. There’s also a small contingent that believes life emerged on land, among volcanic rocks. But there’s an even smaller — but increasingly confident — contingent that thinks life emerged in space, and evidence published in the Journal of Chemical Physics on Tuesday provides support for their daring hypothesis.

https://www.inverse.com/article/39300-origin-life-space-molecules-dna

Though we’ve been swimming steadily down, there is light in the cave—and it’s coming from the wrong direction. It comes not from above, but from below. When I look down to gauge the size of the chamber, I see a slight phosphorescent glow. I point my divelight downward, hoping to see the source of the light, but when the light touches the bottom of the chamber, it bounces off in all directions, reflected again and again around the room.

Surprised, I run my divelight around the sides of the chamber. There is anchor ice along all the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The delicate discs of ice are stuck to the walls at odd angles turning the chamber into a prismatic hall of mirrors.
 ~an excerpt from Sleep of Reason

REAL SCIENCE:
Deep within Antarctica’s ice caves, a group of scientists may have discovered a secret ecosystem of plants and animals being supported by the warmth of an active volcano. Forensic analyses of soil samples from the caves revealed intriguing traces of DNA. While most of the DNA was similar to mosses, algae and invertebrates found elsewhere in Antarctica, not all sequences could be fully identified.

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-antarctic-caves-harbour-secret-life.html

After staining my sample, I slide it under the microscope. There’s no ambiguity. The small sickle shapes are as red as a matador’s cape.
you see them  
“FUCK YOU!” I scream out loud into the silent room as my patience finally snaps. Suddenly, the silence becomes more than silence. More like a waiting. When the voice comes again, it’s stronger.
ahhhh
and you hear us
it is
our beginning
I put my head down on my desk. What happened to not playing with your hallucinations?
~An excerpt from Sleep of Reason

THE REAL SCIENCE:
We Speak the Same Language: We have a symbiotic relationship with the trillions of bacteria that live in our bodies -- they help us, we help them. It turns out that they even speak the same language. And new research from The Rockefeller University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai suggests these newly discovered commonalities may open the door to "engineered" gut flora who can have therapeutically beneficial effects on disease.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170830141248.htm

“And then there are even cooler places where we are trapped in the spaces in the rock,” Sam says.
“Ugh. That sounds horrible,” I think, claustrophobic just thinking of it.
“No. Not at all,” Sam says. “It’s like being in your own house, in your own bed, the comfort of that moment when you are half asleep and half awake. I have felt that in you. It is like being held in the arms of the earth, still and yet still slowly dancing.”
He makes it sound beautiful. I slowly rearrange my mind to include being trapped in the interstitial spaces of semi-molten igneous rock as comforting and homey. It’s hard to do, but somehow not impossible.
~An excerpt from Sleep of Reason

Weird Life Found Trapped in Giant Underground Crystals: Floating in pockets of fluid, the microbes are likely new to science and may be up to 50,000 years old, a NASA researcher says.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/crystal-caves-mine-microbes-mexico-boston-aaas-aliens-science/

The wood is warm under my fingers, soft and moist in the afternoon sun. Shup-shup-shup-shup-shup and a flying pause as my fingers hop across the fence post and onto the next slat, shup-shup-shup-shup-shup and fly. I breathe in as my hand makes the jump.

I try to order my steps to fit my hand’s rhythm. Shup-shup-step-shup-shup-shup-step-fly-breathe, but it just throws the whole thing off. Still, I can’t help feeling like this could be something. Something new. Like it’s part of a song I can’t hear.
~An excerpt from Sleep of Reason

THE REAL SCIENCE:
Alzheimers and Light Therapy: Our busy minds create a rhythm of their own, literally. In fact, the mind's axons fire in different prescribed rhythms depending on the action they intend to produce. And as we are constantly in the middle of plural actions, our heads are constantly creating their own rhythm section as part of the physical process of our being. In people with Alzheimer's, scientists have found their axons can't fire at one particular frequency, and that the action tied to that frequency is the calling forth of the cleanup crew for the brain. Even more fascinating was the way they figured it out, and how they hope to use the information to help.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/bringing-gamma-back/

What happens when Nanoarchaea peregrinus’ food source in the earth runs out? If we are connected, could we be at the beginning of our own version of Colony Collapse?
 
Our appalling environmental behavior isn’t killing us outright. But, what if it is slowly killing who we are? What if by compromising those populations that live in the earth, we are also compromising those that live in our minds.
 
Think of all the mind’s mysteries—issues we work to control, but cannot fully explain: depression, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy. Think of the people dealing with what we call ‘syndromes’ because we don’t know what else to call them— the schizophrenics, the psychopaths, the sociopaths. Could we already be dealing with the symptoms of our collapse without knowing it?
 
Are we changing the world in a way that is damaging to us?
~an excerpt from The Sleep of Reason

REAL SCIENCE:
The Gut-Brain Connection to Mood Disorders, Autism: These microbes’ reach may extend much further, into the human brain. A growing group of researchers around the world are investigating how the microbiome, as this bacterial ecosystem is known, regulates how people think and feel. Scientists have found evidence that this assemblage—about a thousand different species of bacteria, trillions of cells that together weigh between one and three pounds—could play a crucial role in autism, anxiety, depression, and other disorders.

http://www.theatlantic.com/gut-bacteria-on-the-brain