Ask a string theorist how matter behaves on its most fundamental level, and they will have an answer for you. Ask a cosmologist how a black hole forms, and they will have an answer. But the fact is that both treat their phenomena as occuring ON TOP OF the fabric of spacetime (FOST). As if matter were some sort of extra layer that in no way depends on the FOST for it's existence. This simply cannot be true. Let us perform a paradigm shift. Ready?

I believe that the fabric of spacetime is made up of the Bose-Einstein condensate. That is, the FOST is made up of the same baryonic matter as you and I.

Let's examine this idea. What is the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC)? I would like to recommend this as the dossier to the BEC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls4efnPKegY

Let us now tie everything together. The temperature in interstellar space is certainly cold enough to be a BEC, but isn't it that cold because matter is extremely diffuse there? No. Remember the BEC has properties akin to a wave, not a particle. There is ALOT of matter in interstellar space. However, it is the case that the wave functions have not decohered because there is no one there to perform a quantum measurement on it. If only we could hang out in the interstellar medium with scanning electron microscopes! Then we would see how densely packed with matter it really is! Perhaps, I will leave it at that and let your imagination take over.

It has not escaped my notice that this resolves the mutual exclusivity of quantum mechanics and general relativity, and is thus a "theory of everything". This conclusion may also lend itself to the problem of dark matter and dark energy, which are certainly illusory concepts that would do well to leave our collective consciousness. Cheers!

I was thinking the other day about Major Histocompatibility Complexes (MHC). MHC is a group of genes that determine our immune system's ability to recognize pathogens as such. MHC variation in homo sapiens sapiens' (our) gene pool varies widely. It is evolutionarily advantageous for us to mate with someone who has a MHC that is different than ours. That way, our offspring's immune system is ready to ward off a larger number of pathogens. Interestingly, the phenotype of our MHC is our body odor. The range of variability in our potential mates' MHC that would be advantageous to our offspring is hard-wired into our olfactory bulb. Thus, if you like the smell of someone (sans cologne, deodorant and anything else that masks the body's true odor), you can be fairly certain that your MHC's have a relatively wide margin of variation. But, really - how often do you get close enough to someone to know that they smell good? Surely oxytocin can facilitate this interaction.

But, then again, which came first - the chicken or the egg? This is just a hypothesis, and it does appear that facilitating monogamy and pair-bonding between mother and offspring is oxytocin's primary role. But if my hypothesis is true, it would certainly enhance oxytocin's fecundity over evolutionary time.