AP Staff - LONDON
Scientists at the Stephen Hawking Institute in London announced their findings following a rare crossover scientific effort with the neurological field Friday at the Institute's headquarters in London.
Hawking Institute Principal Investigator Johan Ehrlicht announced, "Using data discovered by our colleagues in the neurology field, we have discovered where our souls go when we die."
"Iichi Fukuyama and Yang Ha of Osaka Polytechnic University have furnished us with a vector they found neutrons emitted from the front porch neuron cluster predominantly are moving towards," Ehrlicht said. "And using the Very Large Orbital Telescope Array we have discovered a superluminally-rotating black hole at the end of that vector, about 6.7 light years away."
Fukuyama and Ha helmed the largest death-and-dying study in the world, placing hundreds of terminal patients in metabolic stasis before and after the moment of death, and are credited with the discovery of the "Front Porch" Neuron Cluster, consisting of one hundred to 150 neurons, wedged just behind the brain stem and just in front of the cerebellum, which is always active during life and extinguishes during death.
In 2056, Fukuyama and Ha, using particle detectors around the head and neck of the dying patients, discovered a very energetic neutrino pulse emitted at the moment of death in the direction of the black hole, dubbed VLOT-BH-A1, by Ehrlicht's team earlier this year.
VLOT-BH-A1 is about four times the mass of the sun and its surface, the event horizon, is rotating at a speed faster than the speed of light.
"According to our current theories of black hole mechanics, when the black hole is rotating at this speed, objects passing through the event horizon are treated very gently," Ehrlicht explains. "They don't get destroyed, but instead are allowed to pass right through. It is also believed that there is an area of relative stability surrounding the singularity in the center of the black hole."
Ehrlicht equivocates, "However, It's impossible to know if this is where the neutrinos are going, actually."
It's very likely the case that the neutrinos are heading towards the black hole, astrophysicist Alyssa Tate says. Tate is a fellow at the Carl Sagan Research Society in New York.
"There's not much else in the sky in that direction," Tate says. "But the Hawking Institute's characterization of this body as 'heaven' is irresponsible."
Neurologists have long theorized that the Front Porch cluster keeps consciousness coherent, and have discovered that, in monkeys--who have an analogous neural structure located in a similar part of the brain--upon severing, brain death happens almost immediately.
"It's a very striking and intriguing piece of anatomy," Tate says. "Why we evolved consciousness that way is extraordinary and defies convention, and the identification of this neural cluster in other disparate species such as in other apes, in dolphins, and in some birds raises questions about our place on this planet."
Astrophysicist, theologian, and director of the Vatican Observatory, Francesca Arcangeli, says it's a very interesting discovery "that His Holiness has expressed a great deal of interest in."
Arcangeli, who has a Master's degree in Theology and a Master's degree in Astronomy from Boston College, and who runs the Holy See's own observatory in Rome, says that it is in line with accounts from the bible and other religious apocrypha that the soul would escape the body after death.
"I think it encourages us as theologians to ask questions about what is meant by heaven in the scriptures and in the other texts that analyze the scriptures, because finding that not only do these neutrino emissions leave the brain after death, but that they all seem to go in the same direction to the same spot in the sky deserves serious contemplation from us at the Vatican."
Religious leaders from around the world have both celebrated and denounced the announcement of the Front Porch neuron cluster.
"I'm sure all the big telescopes on and around earth will be pointing at that black hole to see what they can see," Arcangeli says.