Getting to the Bottom of it: Can you Snore and Dream at the Same Time?

The fact that you cannot snore and dream is a well circulated fact about sleeping on the internet. However, there are also a large amount of skeptics that are die hard believers that you can snore and dream at the same time. They provide some extremely valid points, too. However, both sides are at a disadvantage. There is no official source that states whether you can or cannot snore and dream at the same time.

If there is a source, it is buried deep in some dusty medical journal in some library somewhere. The study has probably been done at some point, but the conclusive results have never made it to the internet. Modern scientists and researchers ignore the subject, most likely because they have better things to do. I mean, what is answering one random non-life threatening question versus finding a cure for things like sleep apnea or waking paralysis?

So, while I cannot give you a definitive answer, I will at least give you two very valid trains of thought on the subject so you can pick your side in this age old debate.

Skeptics Theory
The skeptics believe that snoring and dreaming are two separate entities.

Snoring happens when the muscles of the mouth and throat relax. This relaxation causes the soft palate of throat to sag in relaxation. Since we still intake air, the air passing through the airway causes the narrowed airway to vibrate. This is how the sound of snoring is made.[2] The narrower your airway, the louder your snoring is. This can be a sign of sleep apnea, however. So if you are disturbing others when you sleep because of your snoring, you may want to consult a doctor.

Dreaming is a response from the brain. There is no one part of the brain that contributes to dreams, it is a team effort on that front. While you can dream all through the night, the sleep stage where most dreams occur is in REM sleep. This sleep stage is courtesy of the electrochemical pulses of the caused by the brain stem. Surprisingly, up until 2004, scientists did not know what part of the brain was responsible for the imagery and scenery in dreams.  In 2004, when a stroke victims lost her dreams due to brain damage, two Swiss doctors theorized that the imagery comes from a dense area of gray matter in the back of the brain.[1]

This is essentially why skeptics believe dreams and snoring to be unrelated. One is a reaction to the bodies relaxation and need to breath, the other is some random electrochemical waves firing around in the brain.

Why We Cannot Snore and Dream at the Same Time
The theory for why we cannot snore and dream at the same time has a lot to do with the bodies reaction to REM sleep. In the first stages of sleep, the body relaxes, breathing slows, and heart rate slows. The relaxation of the body, as mentioned previously, leads to snoring. However, when you enter REM sleep you heart rate increases, but you breathing becomes even shallower. [3]Snoring is a result of air passing through the airway and causing vibration and sound. The more air you try to intake, the more intense the vibrations become, thus the louder snoring becomes. So in theory, with your breathing becoming more shallow, the less air your body is taking it. So as a result, it should not cause snoring.

This, I believe, is the basis for why people believe you cannot snore and dream at the same time. This theory suggests that you are less likely to snore while dreaming and not that you cannot snore while dreaming.

However, as I mentioned earlier, there is still no conclusive results on the subject. I have read extensively on both the topics of snoring and dreaming to no avail. Though if you readers out there know of a scientific study that proves it, I would love to hear about it!

So now that you have heard both sides of the story, which do you believe?

This Is the Definitive Photograph of Planet Earth

Unlike NASA's Blue Marble—which is a composite made from many different photographs—this is a portrait of Earth taken in one single shot. It's the highest resolution image of our home planet, 121 megapixels. That's an amazing 0.62 miles per pixel.

This image was not taken by NASA or the European Space Agency. It's been taken by Russia's latest weather satellite, the Electro-L.

Elektro-L is now orbiting Earth on a geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator, sending photographs of theentire planet every 30 minutes using a 2.56 to 16.36 Mbits per second connection with ground control. The images—and the video of the Northern Hemisphere—combines four light wavelengths, three visible and one infrared. The orange you are seeing here is the vegetation.

According to Robert Simmon-a scientist at the NASA Earth Observatory, Goddard Space Flight Center-the Russian images are not better or worse than NASA's images. They are just different visualizations of reality based on different data sets:

Elektro-L is a Russian Satellite similar to GOES (the satellites that provide the cloud image loops shown on the news every night). The images posted by Gizmodo are a combination of visible and near-infrared wavelengths, so they show the Earth in a way not visible to human eyes (vegetation looks red, for example). They're not any better or worse than NASA images, but they show different things.

The Elektro-L is similar to their GOES satellites. "It's a geostationary weather satellite orbiting above the equator at ~54˚ East" says Robert, "the US has two similar operational geostationary satellites over the east and west coasts, EUMETSAT has one over Europe and one over the Indian Ocean, Japan has one over the far western Pacific." The difference between them is that Elektro-L uses three bands in reflected light-red and two near infrared bands-while NASA's GOES doesn't have the near-infrared.

Dennis Chesters, GOES Project Scientist at Goddard, explains the Russian process in more detail:

The 3 reflected sunlight bands can simulate a conventional red-green-blue color picture. The near infrared channel is a vegetation indicator, since plants reflect near-ir as well as green. You can learn more about the basic characteristics of Elektro-L's ten-channel imager, the Multichannel Scanning Unit (MSU), here.

You can explore the zoomable version here. [Planet Earth—Thanks Karl!]

Image credit: NTsOMZ. Image processing: James Drake.

ZeroN , Computer controlled magic levitation made by MIT student

ZeroN is the name of the project carried out by Jinha Lee. ZeroN uses magnets, a Kinect visual system (webcam based), plus a special software that enables either the computer to move a steel ball around in space, or a human to just grab it and move it, essentially telling the computer where it should go. It can even remember how it was moved, then repeat the movement automatically.

What if materials could defy gravity, so that we could leave them suspended in mid-air? ZeroN is a physical and digital interaction element that floats and moves in space by computer-controlled magnetic levitation.

Time lapse visualisation of never-ending days and nights above the polar circle

As you may know, days and nights work differently above the polar circle. There is no sunset during the day and there is hardly any sunrise during the night. Below is your visual reference which shows how it works.

Polar day.

A robot that washes your hair and massages your head

The Japanese are now know for their passion to mechanise every thing. This time they have decided to make a robot that can be put in a hair salon and offer its automatic services to the customers. This robot which has been built by Panasonic is having a trial run in a hair salon.