ZZZZZzzzzzzz.

It's getting late and my eyes are beginning to itch.   I yawn every fifteen minutes or so and this can only mean one thing.   Sleep.

Why the hell do we sleep?   Science knows that we cannot live without it and somehow, we feel energized when we wake up (more so with coffee).   Why can't I just stay awake, finish watching that DVD, finish writing this article and maybe get a second job to help pay for my kid's school?

Yes, there are facets in the CFS theory that can somewhat explain that as well.   I have said earlier that the main repository of information was the Cosmic Fileserver--I whole-heartedly believe that.   However, I also feel that the brain does store some information temporarily and that when we sleep, the day's events are uploaded to the server.

Science has shown that when people sleep, the brain is actually quite active.   You'd think that if we went to sleep, the entire body, mind and soul would just rest.   Well two out of three aren't bad.

Sometimes if I'm cramming for a test I'll study late into the night.   I switch off the lamp and close my eyes.   For the rest of the night, images of what I'm working on flood my dreams.   I'm not much for interpreting dreams, but I'm sure they have their purpose.   If I have a really sad dream, one that makes me awake crying and blubbering, maybe it's to let off steam.   As an adult, I've got my own demons in my closet--perhaps our 'designer dreams' exist to help us cope with the realities of life.

I like to have at least eight hours sleep.   I disagree with doctors that claim that humans actually only need around four hours.   Damn their eyes!   I want my sleep!   Back in the beginning of the article Mr. Skeptic asked where the Fileserver was.   It is still too early to arrive at a location, but there are some WAG's that bear thinking about:

•  It is our Sun.   We all know that energy is beamed to us during the day and we seek the cover of shelter at night

•  It is located in the Earth.   Based on daylight and the rotation, we adopt the same sleeping pattern to recover

Far fetched, I know.   Maybe a short jaunt into the study of jetlag and sleep patterns can shed some light on the topic.

Why should we have jet lag at all?   True, we must sleep (even though no one tells us why) and we have our own 'internal clock' that is used to knowing when we're tired and need to recover.   Most of our body's tissues don't require sleep to refresh itself--our heart, which is loaded with Mitochondria never gets a rest.  

When a traveler leaves London and flies to San Diego, he has a very long day.   He will probably get sleepy early in the evening and unfortunately for him, will probably wake up at around three in the morning, ready for a new day.   You'd think that if the body was used to eight hours sleep that we'd sleep for that amount of time.   If it were the Sun we're used to, you'd wake up on California time just like the natives do.

Begin the conjecture:

Our brains are 'used' to their locations and depending on your location, tune to the CFS in order to process information.   As I mentioned previously, I feel that the brain uses nighttime to upload cached information to the server and based on emotion and the relationship to the data, spends the night hours filing it away effectively.

Like a blind person in unfamiliar surroundings, travelers can't get completely rested.   The brain may be trying to tune to the same frequency as back in London.   The body may be in a new location, but as far as the brain is concerned, you are still asleep in your bed in London.

Interesting fact:   Astronauts sleep remarkably less in orbit than on Earth. NASA can't explain why, it just seems to happen.   Based on what we've discussed, it could mean that as the astronaut sleeps his mind ends up in its 'correct' timezone every 40 minutes.

Could the CFS be the Sun or Earth?   It's hard to tell.   Either way, brain waves travel somewhere and travel tends to screw with our downtime.   Somehow, astronauts have an easier time with it.   It may not have anything to do with it, but we spin hard drive platters so that we can get to the information quicker.   I know it's a stretch, but could an astronaut's spinning orbit allow data transfer to complete itself more quickly?   Could be an indicator that the CFS is the Earth.   Could it be that by virtue of being in orbit there's fewer obstacles or interference from the Earth's surface?   In that case, it would indicate that the CFS is the Sun.

Conclusion :

The mind is an enigma that will take perhaps a thousand more years to unravel.   We believe our efforts are some form of progress.   This article only scratches the surface of how the CFS works.   There will be article upon article pushed to you via this web site in the hope of bringing that thousand years a bit closer to you at home.
 Either way, I hope mankind gets it right, not based on the status quo's interpretation, but based on solid science.