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I feel the anger of arachnologists rising.

Not sure the BBC really do this story full justice. Original JGS open access article and pdf download at https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/full/10.1144/jgs2024-029

Nigel, the little devil 😊👿 A bit more on ants - hope that it is not considered too long Ants, Individual and Colony, Superorganism, Leadership, and Fire Ants Like bees, ants are often considered to be mindless cogs in a machine—the hive, or colony—that somehow possesses its own intelligence. This kind of intelligent society of insects has been called a “superorganism;” the internet would probably also qualify for this. Mathematical scientists have looked for self-organizing principles whereby each ant passes on information to the next. These theories assume that ants function like a computer, through rapid interactions and distributed processing. Yet this does not explain the variety and intelligence of their response. Perhaps—once again—we are considering an animal to be a computer, rather than looking at the unique intelligence it demonstrates. From recent research it is certainly possible that individual ants possess intelligence as well as some remarkable group behavior. Adjusting Responses Recently, it was shown that ants are able to perceive threats of varying degrees and adjust their responses—e.g. how much energy to expend, or how aggressive to be—accordingly. Ants are noted to respond rapidly to new circumstances. For instance, if food is discovered, more ants will be sent to this location within minutes. If the nest is damaged, many workers will swarm to fix it immediately. This process involves more than just touching each other, more than a computer calculation: it requires the knowledge that the hive has to be repaired and the specific materials that are necessary. A very recent study has shown that individual ants can learn to use completely novel information in the form of magnetic and vibrational information using landmarks of navigation back to a nest. In other words, ants are able to evaluate a situation and respond appropriately. Individual Leadership To determine a new location for the hive, ants undergo a competition, which is similar to the bee’s waggle dance described in a previous post. Individuals ants each advertise a variety of potential sites with some ants choosing the same site. When a quorum is reached for a specific site, the vote is concluded; all the ants return to the nest to begin carrying worker ants, young ants, and the queen to the new site. Very recent research has shown that when separated from their hive, ants take advice from their more experienced individual brethren, scout ants who had memorized other good locations, about the rebuilding of a new home. It appears that ants are led by the smartest of the bunch, not by a mysterious “hive intelligence.” Ant Doctors Some ants that farm fungus for food have been shown to use multiple antibiotics to kill weeds, and inhibit microbes. This has been likened to doctors using multiple antibiotics for resistant infections in humans. Ants on Fire But, perhaps, one of the most remarkable tricks of the insect kingdom belongs to the fire ants. In experiments, when these ants are thrown into water, they quickly use their claws and jaws to grip the feet of other ants, forming a woven lattice of bodies that is completely water-resistant: a living raft. Despite the tightness of the fit, the ants position in the rafts allows each one to breath trapped air. These rafts, which can remain intact for long periods of time, allow the ants to safely traverse water or escape floods. The Individual in Society It has yet to be shown how these types of behaviors can be pre-programmed. Ants clearly act as individuals and exhibit leadership. But, groups of ants can do remarkable feats together such as the fire ant raft. The question of the intelligence of the hive versus the individual remains unanswered. If there is a type of intelligence in the aggregation of organisms, perhaps it is worth asking: What kind of superorganism are humans becoming, especially with the advancement of the Internet?

“I’m not God but to play God” I could ponder if colours were completely subjective then would redshifting in outer galaxies imply that time was slowing down in such regions rather than just the frequency of light? That way if you through a spear at the edge of the universe then time might simply freeze. When it comes to dualism then there’d be no one as far as we know in outer galaxies to affect a potentially slowed rate of time as if time also had an impersonal quality. “The javelin argument, credited to Lucretius, is an ancient logical argument that the universe, or cosmological space, must be infinite. The javelin argument was used to support the Epicurean thesis about the universe. It was also constructed to counter the Aristotelian view that the universe is finite.“

One way to interpret Einstein’s hypothesis of gravitational waves were the Sun to disappear is to simply observe the apparent red-shifting of light during a sunset. So we can still see sunlight even when the Sun has passed the horizon much like a mirage where the light refracts down in the atmosphere. Perhaps a solution to quantum gravity is to simply give up where there might not be quantum gravity! A slowing down of light during sunset would help to explain our circadian rhythms! The Sun isn’t literally disappearing but only from our own evolutionary minds so to speak! Simply Red - Sunrise (Remastered) Mirage diagram: (Less dense hotter air on ground is the same for an orange sunset) “Entropic gravity, also known as emergent gravity, is a theory in modern physics that describes gravity as an entropic force—a force with macro-scale homogeneity but which is subject to quantum-level disorder—and not a fundamental interaction… In 2009, Erik Verlinde proposed a conceptual model that describes gravity as an entropic force. He argues (similar to Jacobson's result) that gravity is a consequence of the "information associated with the positions of material bodies". This model combines the thermodynamic approach to gravity with Gerard 't Hooft's holographic principle. It implies that gravity is not a fundamental interaction, but an emergent phenomenonwhich arises from the statistical behavior of microscopic degrees of freedom encoded on a holographic screen.”

Is it tho, some answer's may never be revealed or resolved, even by science; but to say you're wrong bc I know better, while in a state of non-understanding, seems deluded. What's the second law of holes? Keep digging, the metal-detector went beep?