Cryptids must be protected!

We look at many strange things here on the channel. My research is mostly conducted from behind the safety of a keyboard others are more proactive.

They go out in search of answers, armed with all sorts of equipment and cameras they fearlessly head out to sites of paranormal, ufo and cryptid activity.

Now these intrepid researchers may be prepared for almost anything but how about the long arm of the law.

David Aragon asked this question in his article.

“Hunting Cryptids? Then You Better Know The Law”

Let’s a take a look at his thoughts.

The scenario is set, sightings of strange creatures or phenomena have been reported and you are determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on. You arm yourself with recording equipment and weapon for your personal protection then head off the hunt.

You arrive at that the location and with some trepidation you begin your search, to your surprise you hear noises coming from the bushes, your nervousness increases but you are there to find answer and walk toward the sound.

SUDDENLY!! The creature leaps from the bush and you instinctively raise your weapon and defend yourself

But hold on you may be about to break the law.

There are rules that in certain places the killing of unknown creatures or cryptid animals like Bigfoot will end with you standing before a judge.

This because some places have classified these creatures as protected. If you shot and killed a Bigfoot in Skamania County in Washington State you would face a fine of up to $10,000 and most likely some jail time. You would also become world famous as the person who killed Bigfoot and would have to deal with all that would come with such fame.

A cousin to Bigfoot is the Skunk Ape, this cryptid hominid has not been so lucky and could find itself in the crosshairs of a hunter who could legally shoot the beast.

One man in Florida has been trying to get the cryptid some protection, he has been lobbying for a law to protect the Skunk Ape but has failed twice.

Dave Shealy, the man who wants the animal given the safety the law can provide says he has encountered Florida’s version of Bigfoot a number of times. Talking about his experiences and efforts to amend the law he said.

“Everyone thought the law was a joke. They shot it down, what harm would it have done to pass a law like that? Is the skunk ape in harm’s way? Yes. No doubt about it.”

The Sasquatch is not the only cryptid that enjoys the protection of the law. I looked at the recent sightings of lake monsters and the spotting of Nessie twice in a five day period.

If these witnesses had gotten too close to the monster they could have faced prosecution, this because the Scottish government has a plan in place for when or if the Loch Ness Monster is ever found.

The government set out a series of steps for zoologists or researchers to follow.

The code of practice was written in 2001 by Scottish Natural Heritage, which is funded by the Scottish government.

SNH said it would “dust off” the plan and put it into action should the cryptid be discovered, it says officials should take a DNA sample from the lake monster, this to enable scientists to study the creature.

It should then be released back into the loch with extra measures put in place to make sure it is not disturbed. Nessie would be an extremely rare species and in need of conservation.

Another lake cryptid almost as famous as Nessie is Champ.

Champ is said to inhabit the waterway of Lake Champlain. The American version of Nessie was given protection by New York law makers.

Laws making it illegal to harm Champ in any way were written back in the 1980s.

Another mysterious American monster that has also been granted legal protection is the Jersey Devil.

New Jersey’s oldest, most enduring, and important cryptid has been around for three hundred years.

Legend tells, a Mrs. Jane Leeds came from a poor family who scratched a living in the Pine Barrens of Jersey, a rugged place with vast forests, sandy soil and patches of swamp. In 1735, Mrs. Leeds found that she was pregnant with her 13th child. She was not happy and complained to her friends and relatives that the “Devil can take the next one”, and the story reveals that he did.

When the baby was born, it was monster!

The newborn immediately took on a grotesque appearance and grew to more than 20 feet long, with a reptilian body, a horse’s head, bat wings and a long, forked tail. It thrashed about the Leeds home for a bit, some make claims that it attacked and killed many people including the mother before vanishing up the chimney.

 The creature, or the “Jersey Devil” as it was dubbed, began stalking the Pine Barrens.

The scientific community has been tasked with finding and possibly capturing the famed monstrous, hooved flying creature. There have been many different theories as to what the cryptid really is, with some thinking it to be a living dinosaur. Others proposed that it may be a new kind of carnivore. A hunt has been going on for some time with Superintendent Robert D. Carson, of the Philadelphia Zoo, offering a $10,000 reward for the creature’s capture.

The reward has yet to be claimed.

And as the Jersey Devil has been awarded the title of “Official State Demon of New Jersey” it looks as if the beast has found some protection under law.

Cryptids are however found all over the world so what other countries protect the mysterious and legendary creatures of folklore that stalk their mountains and forests?

In the country of Bhutan, a small peaceful Buddhist land found in south East Asia, they have a version of Bigfoot called Migoi, or what some have come to  call ‘the Abominable Snowman.’

This animal has been reported for centuries and is very highly respected in local culture, the 8-foot-tall hairy hominid creature was awarded a 250 square mile sanctuary in 2001.

The Bhutanese government are often applauded for making their country the happiest in the world.

The country rating its success by measuring its worth by citizens’ happiness.

Bhutan is famously the only country in the world to rank Gyalyong Gakid Palzom, or Gross National Happiness (GNH), above GDP. Everything—from governance and economic development to cultural preservation and environmental conservation—is decided according to this holistic tenet, designed to measure and protect the collective happiness and wellbeing of the population.

It would seem that Asian Bigfoot cousin has been lucky enough to be included in this measurement of happiness.

So what do you think, should law makers and governments of the world take cryptids seriously and offer them protection?

Maybe they should remain on the fringes of history the fact most people believe them to be myth offering the beasts a form of protection.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below

Time travel and the real future predicting computer!?

The world has just gotten over its endgame fever, I think we are safe from spoilers but here’s your heads up if you haven’t seen it yet

Okay

Those of you still here know that the film works around time travel with Tony Stark solving the problem of navigating the quantum realm thanks to information provided by Antman.

They travel back and find the infinity stones, in doing this they splinter the universe with Captain America even going back and spending a lifetime with his love Peggy Carter.

This is just a fun filled Marvel romp a big block buster movie filled with superheroes and no science right?

Well actually we may be closer to having the capabilities that were showcases in the film with the recent discovery that a newly developed Quantum Computer Can See the Future.

There may not be the 14 million futures seen by Dr. Strange but it does see 16 of them

Let take a look

Let’s start by asking what is quantum computing is it an alternate universe technology like is seen in the movie?

The fundamentals of ability of a computer is to store and manipulate information. Current computers manipulate individual bits, which store information as binary 0 and 1 states. Quantum computers leverage quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate information. To do this, they rely on quantum bits, or qubits.

In a quantum computer, a number of elemental particles such as electrons or photons can be used (in practice, success has also been achieved with ions), with either their charge or polarization acting as a representation of 0 and/or 1.

These particles are qubits; the nature and behavior of these particles (as expressed in quantum theory) form the basis of quantum computing. The two most relevant aspects of quantum physics are the principles of superposition and entanglement.

Think of a qubit as an electron in a magnetic field. The electron's spin may be either in alignment with the field, which is known as a spin-up state, or opposite to the field, which is known as a spin-down state. Changing the electron's spin from one state to another is achieved by using a pulse of energy, such as from a laser - let's say that we use 1 unit of laser energy. But what if we only use half a unit of laser energy and completely isolate the particle from all external influences? According to quantum law, the particle then enters a superposition of states, in which it behaves as if it were in both states simultaneously.

The particles can move in a superposition of many different states all at the same time. This is when a kind of time travel comes into the picture.

  Researchers followed Ironman’s lead and used this quantum quirk to design and build a prototype computer that can predict 16 different futures at once.

When Mile Gu our equivalent of Tony Stark, boots up this newly designed computer, he gets to see the future, well At least, 16 possible versions of it.

Gu, an assistant professor of physics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, is an expert in quantum computing. The science uses the weird and bizarre laws that govern the universe's smallest particles to help computers calculate more efficiently.

We can look at the well-known example of Schrödinger's cat and the thought experiment that says that a cat trapped in a box making no sound or movement was simultaneously dead and alive until the point that someone opened the box, a qubit in a superposition is similar as it can equal both 0 and 1 until it's measured.

This means it can Store multiple different outcomes into a single qubit, this ability making it more efficient in terms of memory compared to traditional computers, this giving it a distinct advantage when making complicated predictions.

In a study published April 9 in the journal Nature Communications, Gu and his colleagues demonstrated this idea using a new quantum simulator that can predict the outcomes of 16 different futures (the equivalent of, say, flipping a coin four times in a row) in a quantum superposition. These possible futures were encoded in a single photon (a quantum particle of light) which moved down multiple paths simultaneously while passing through several sensors. Then, the researchers went one step further, firing two photons side-by-side and tracking how each photon's potential futures diverged under slightly different conditions.

The computer specialist then went on to make the comparison to the Marvel universe saying;

"It's sort of like Doctor Strange in the 'Avengers: Infinity War' Before the climactic battle of the  film, the doctor looks forward in time to see 14 million different futures, hoping to find the one where the heroes defeat the big baddie. He does a combined computation of all these possibilities to say, 'OK, if I changed my decision in this small way, how much will the future change? This is the direction our simulation is moving forwards to."

So they have working Eye of Agamotto, based on real world physics and not the mystical energies of the movie world!

The researchers tested their “time stone” or quantum prediction engine if you prefer using the classic model of the perturbed coin.

Gu explained,

"Imagine there's a box, and inside it is a single coin, at each step of the process, someone shakes the box a little bit, so the coin has a small probability of flipping."

Unlike a traditional coin toss, in which the outcome always has an equal chance of being either heads or tails, the outcome of each perturbed coin toss depends on the state the coin was in during the previous step. If the coin flipped from heads to tails during the third shake of the box, for example, then the fourth shake would be likely to remain tails.”

It sounds like we need the ancient one to offer GU a bit of warning like she did with Banner as he got his big green mits on the time stone.

The researchers ran two different versions of this coin experiment, one in which the box was jiggled a little more strongly and another with less powerful shakes. In both experiments, the box was shaken four times, providing 16 possible combinations of outcome of heads and tails.

Following the fourth step, the team encoded it’s superposition of all 16 outcomes in a single photon, a qubit, simultaneously showing the probability of every possible outcome based on the strength with which the box was jiggled.

The team then in the final stage of the experiment, combined the superpositions of the strongly shaken coin and the weakly shaken coin to create one master map of possible future outcomes.

"This showed us how quickly the futures diverged depending on how hard I shook the box at each step," Gu said.

Today, constraints on computing power keep the team's simulator limited to looking at only 16 possible futures at once.

 Gu claims that this limitation is only temporary and that One day, as quantum computers become larger, more powerful and more commonplace, simulators like this one could be expanded to see infinitely more futures at once.

He says that there are many practical uses for this technology beyond defeating large purple space villains, it could aid in weather prediction or help make more-informed investments in the stock market. It could even help improve machine learning, which is all about artificial intelligence teaching itself to make better and better predictions.

So we step from “Endgame” and into the world of “Age of Ultron” A.I quantum machines able to see the outcome of any event, yep that’s going to work out well!!

Gu added

This is all "highly exploratory,", and will require lots of further experimenting to figure out all the quantum simulator's applications.

Have we seen the first steps to predicting the future, will this computing power unlock the secrets of time travel, would you like to travel time if so to when would go?

Let me know in the comments below.