It was discovered that people will not age at the same pace if they have an uncontrolled level of iron in the blood that automatically affects the development of diseases typical of a certain age.
The level of iron in the blood could be the key to slow down aging, shows a gene study that worked by scientists with University of Edinburgh and with Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany. Scientists identified genes associated with aging, which could help and give an answer to the question – why people old different speed, or why some are getting old, and some have been young and vital long.
The key to longer life could be a normal level of iron in the blood
An international study, published in the journal Nature Communications, using genetic data from more than a million people, suggests that maintaining normal blood iron levels could be the key to slower, better aging and longer life. The findings could accelerate the development of drugs to reduce age-related diseases, extend healthy years of life and increase the chances of living to a disease-free old age, the researchers said. The scientists focused on three measures associated with biological aging – life span, years of disease-free life (health life expectancy), and longevity.
Biological aging – the rate at which our bodies lose vitality over time varies between people and causes the world’s deadliest diseases, including heart disease, dementia and cancer. The researchers gathered information from three public datasets to enable analysis in unprecedented detail. The combined data set was equivalent to studying 1.75 million lifetimes, or more than 60,000 extremely long-lived people.
Iron levels in the blood suppress Parkinson’s and liver disease
A team of scientists has discovered that genes involved in the metabolism of iron in the blood are partly responsible for a healthy long life. The researchers remind us that diet affects the level of iron in the blood and that abnormally high or low levels of iron are associated with some health conditions typical of a certain age, i.e. life span, such as Parkinson’s disease, liver disease and a decline in the body’s ability to fight against infection in old age. In this regard, they state that formulating a drug that could mimic the impact of genetic variation on iron metabolism could be a step in overcoming some of the effects of aging in the future.
The goal of scientists – how to improve health during aging
“These findings are very important because they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduce the number of ‘healthy’ years of life. Keeping these levels under control can prevent conditions and damage to the body that come with age. We believe that our discoveries about iron metabolism would could also explain why very high levels of iron-rich red meat in the diet are associated with age-related conditions such as heart disease”,
emphasized Dr. Paul Timmers from the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Joris Deelen from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging in Germany pointed out that the goal of scientists is to discover how aging is regulated and to find ways to improve health during aging.
“Ten regions of the genome that we have discovered, which are related to life span, health and longevity are the best candidates for further studies”,
emphasized Dr. Deelen.
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Two planets orbiting a tiny star 218 light-years away appear to be unlike any other in the Solar System. Exoplanets Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d have a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth and appear to consist of thick, steamy atmospheres and incredibly deep oceans.
“We used to think that planets slightly larger than Earth were really big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-down versions of our planet, and that’s why we called them super-Earths,”
said astronomer Björn Benneke of the University of Montreal.
“However, these two planets, Kepler-138c and d, appear to be quite different from that concept: a large fraction of their volume is probably water.” “This is the first time we have observed planets that we can confidently say are water worlds of sorts,” he added.
How the composition of exoplanets is determined
Determining what planets outside the solar system, i.e. exoplanets, are made of usually requires a lot of “detective” work. They are very far away and very faint compared to the light of the stars they orbit. It’s very difficult to get direct pictures, and if we do take them, we don’t see a lot of detail in them. Therefore, the composition of an exoplanet is usually determined on the basis of its density, which is calculated using two parameters – the drop in the brightness of the star during the transit of the planet and the radial velocity of the star, i.e. the so-called oscillation, writes “Science Alert”.
The amount of light blocked during transit indicates the exoplanet’s size, and the star’s radial velocity indicates its mass. Namely, the radial velocity is induced by the gravitational effect of the exoplanet on the star, so the mass of the planet can be determined through this. And once you have the size and mass of the object, you can calculate its density.
What is the density of exoplanets
Gaseous worlds, such as Jupiter, will have a relatively low density, and rocky, metal-rich worlds will have a higher density. At 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter, Earth is the densest planet in the Solar System; Saturn has the lowest density – 0.69 grams per cubic centimeter. Transit data show that Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d have radii that are 1.51 times that of Earth, and their gravitational pull is twice as massive as our planet. This means that their density is about 3.6 grams per cubic centimeter; which is between the rocky and gaseous worlds in density. Jupiter’s moon Europa has a similar density (3 grams per cubic centimeter), which is thought to hide a huge ocean under its icy crust.
“Imagine larger versions of Europa or Enceladus, the water-rich moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn, but are much closer to their star.” “Instead of an icy surface, Kepler-138c and d is surrounded by water vapor,”
said astrophysicist Carolyn Piaulet of the University of Montreal.
Supercritical fluid
According to the expert’s model, more than 50 percent of the volume of these exoplanets is water, which extends to a depth of about 2,000 kilometers. Earth’s oceans, by comparison, have an average depth of 3.7 kilometers. Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d are much closer to their star than Earth is to the Sun, so they are much hotter. One orbits the red dwarf in 13 days, and the other in 23 days. This means that the oceans and atmospheres there look completely different than on Earth.
“The temperature in the atmospheres of Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d is probably above the boiling point of water, so there seems to be a very dense atmosphere made of steam.” Beneath such an atmosphere is potentially liquid water at high pressure or even water in a second phase that occurs at high pressures, called a supercritical fluid.”
Last year, the European Commission published a report on the results of legislation aimed at protecting animals used in scientific research. The main goal of this directive from 2013 was to reduce the suffering animals are exposed to…
Statistics collected by the European Commission indicate that the number of animals used in research is declining. This is the first report since the introduction of stricter rules on the use of animals for research purposes seven years ago. According to the obtained data, 9.39 million animals were used for scientific purposes in 2017, which is less than in 2015, when the number was 9.59 million. Although in 2016 the number of animals in experiments was higher than a year earlier, as many as 9.82 million, the report speaks of a positive trend of reducing the use of animals in research.
In the last year for which there are data (2017), animals were used in basic research in 45 percent of cases, while in applied research they were represented in about 23 percent. Almost a quarter of the animals, also 23 percent, were involved in testing drugs and other chemicals, and the rest were used in the study of new types of vaccines, research into learning processes or forensic examinations.
More than 60 percent of all animals used for research in 2017 were mice, 12 percent rats, 13 percent fish, while the share of birds in experiments was 6 percent. Dogs, cats and non-human primates accounted for 0.3 percent of the total. The law stipulates high standards when it comes to housing and care of animals, as well as testing methods that imply the least degree of pain and minimal use of animals.
Member countries were expected to send detailed data on animal experiments.
“This is the most comprehensive and precise approach to collecting and publishing data on experimental animals,”
He suggests it’s a model other countries should follow, though he notes the complex reporting requirements are a huge administrative burden for scientists and their organizations.
In addition to information on the number and types of animals used in scientific research, member states are now required to state how many times an animal has been used as a guinea pig, for what purpose, and how “cruel” the experimental procedure to which the animal was subjected was. The spokesperson of the European Commission believes that such detailed data “enables us to locate far more efficiently where resources should be directed in order to reduce the number of animals exposed to suffering”.
This question is, in fact, an example of how a seemingly obvious thesis (which scientists have proven in vain for more than two centuries) not only persists, persistent, widely accepted and rooted, but can have terrible and cruel consequences – inciting wars, social and economic divisions, pogroms and monstrous mass slaughter – without being completely accurate.
It is possible that it not only surprises you, but also slightly annoys you, so you have already attributed it to the “political correctness” of modern researchers, but it is really not a political thing, but a genetic thing. The irony is that the racial division that “blood” inspired so many ideologies was denied precisely by “blood” and hereditary material. Human genes, in fact, stubbornly refuse to show any racial diversity (as is clearly seen in other animals).
Today, by the way, the generally accepted point of view is that race is, above all, a social construct. According to the definition from “Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society” by Richard Schaefer, a race is a group of human beings with similar physical and social characteristics that society generally considers different from other groups.
This becomes clearer if we look at today’s Brazil, where a uniform mutual mixture of people of African, European and American origin has “created” entirely new groups. On the other hand, there is a well-known story about the historical (artificial) division of the inhabitants of the Congo in the Great Lakes region into members of the Hutu and Tutsi races. The division was introduced by the colonial rulers, the Belgians, and it not only became a social reality, but during the conflict in Rwanda it caused one of the most monstrous genocides in human history.
The idea and subsequent search for the biological basis of race began at the end of the 17th century, with the works of the French physician François Bernier. As Europe becomes familiar with the rest of the planet at that time, the increasing interest of science in the inhabitants of the new worlds and the issue of race will begin. One of the most influential biologists of all time, Carl Linnaeus, who founded taxonomy and classified all the living world, will divide people in 1735 into four races according to the “continental” key – Europaeus, Asiaticus, Americanus and Afer, so that each of them is assigned a temperament (where Europeans are active and curious and Africans are lazy and carefree).
Although it seems obvious that one can certainly taxonomically separate the indigenous population in Scandinavia from that in Central Africa, further research will show that all humans are not only part of the same species but also of the same subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapines.
Meanwhile, anthropological research from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (which implied that racial differences were present in genes even though it could not be verified) led to unfathomable horrors. Among other things, in Nazi Germany they served for the adoption of the so-called Nuremberg racial laws, the persecution and extermination of Jews, Slavs, Roma and other “inferior races”.
It has been shown, however, that differences between groups of people are not based on genetics at all. No matter how many attempts were made to find them before (and after) the deciphering of the human genome, it is now beyond doubt that the genes that determine race simply do not exist. This was clearly pointed out in 1972 by Richard Lewontin, a revolutionary American biologist, mathematician and evolutionist, who determined that as much as 90 percent of genetic variability is found within one “race”.
The variability among individuals in the human species, all that diversity in complexion, height, strength, and constitution, is so great that it is impossible to really determine a common genetic basis for any group that we would call a human race. Man is therefore a real celebration of evolution – seven billion people today make up the entire universe of biological diversity. And there is no reason to share it.
An illustration depicting the various peoples of Asia was printed in the famous Nordic Family Book, a traditional Swedish encyclopedia published from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Similar illustrations indicating racial characteristics were an integral part of practically all encyclopedias and textbooks of anthropology everywhere in the world at that time.
We asked Riley Black, a science writer specializing in evolution, paleontology and natural history, to weigh in on the film’s basic premise — that dinosaurs were cloned using DNA taken from mosquitoes.
Time is a critical factor.
The last of the non-avian dinosaurs – undeniably fearsome that haunt museum halls and our dreams – they became extinct 66 million years ago. It’s so far away from us that we can’t even fathom how long it’s been, and we’ve lost any chance we had of cloning dinosaurs in the relatively short time since the late Cretaceous mass extinction.
This isn’t the dinosaur mix you’re looking for…
You may have heard that paleontologist Mary Schweitzer and colleagues recovered some soft-tissue remains from the Cretaceous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus and the hadrosaur Brachylophosaurus. These claims have been controversial, but cannot be dismissed. Schweitzer and others have built a stunning argument that in exceptional cases, fragments of the original dinosaur protein may have survived to the present day. But that’s not what we need to clone a dinosaur. The starting point of any dinosaur resurrection exercise is DNA. Unfortunately for paleo geeks like myself, DNA has a relatively short half-life. There is almost no chance of ever recovering the genetic material of the dinosaurs.
Looking at the bones of recently extinct bird-like dinosaurs—specifically, the 8,000- to 600-year-old bones of giant flightless birds called moas that once walked New Zealand—the geneticists calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That’s longer than researchers expected, but nowhere near long enough to allow us to ever get DNA from a Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops (much less much older dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus). Even under ideal conditions where the bones would remain dry and chilled at -5 degrees Celsius or below, the creature’s entire genome would have been wiped out within 6.8 million years, or about 59 million years less than the last non-avian dinosaurs.
Parasaurolophus puzzle
Any ancient dinosaur DNA would show up in tiny and gray, just like the Ice Age mammoths, Neanderthals, giant sloths, and saber-toothed cats that provided the genetic minutiae. The trick is to identify those parts and figure out where they belong in the animal’s complete genome. It requires a baseline derived from a close relative – modern Asian elephants work for mammoths, and our own genome for Neanderthals.
But living bird dinosaurs are so far away Pachicephalosaurus and that their utility in revealing the genome arrangement of non-avian dinosaurs would be quite limited. And that’s not to mention pseudogenes and non-functional parts of the genome. We haven’t even fully sequenced the genome of our own species—we’re still at about 99 percent of the functional part—so we’re pretty far from completely reconstructing an extinct genome.
Raptor by any other name
So a Velociraptor or Tyrannosaurus genome would not be a feat of resurrection, but of reinvention. Even if it were possible to obtain dinosaur DNA, we would have to reverse-engineer dinosaur genomes according to our best possible estimates of their anatomy and behavior. There are more obstacles. Creating a complete DNA profile gets you nowhere if those genetic cues can’t be translated into a viable embryo that will grow to maturity. It is understandable that Michael Crichton and the film adaptations of his work completely obscured this point, especially since researchers cannot clone birds.
It’s easy enough to say – We’ll stick an artificial nucleus in an ostrich egg and the rest will take care of itself, but that ignores the intrinsically biological interactions that actually make up a living, growing organism. Since birds committed the growth of their offspring outside the body, there may not even be a way to successfully clone a bird, so there would be no method by which we could bring back the dinosaurs even if we had all the necessary raw materials.
From a historical perspective, meditation has been practiced for 5,000 years. Meditation has its roots since ancient times. It has also been studied for its physiological effects on people in the modern world.
According to research in psychology, meditation has been practiced for 5,000 years. It became the subject of scientific studies as early as the sixties of the last century, and the practice spread from Western Europe to the USA. Some associate meditation with religion, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and even some Christian religions. People have been meditating since ancient times
How has meditation transformed from ancient times to today?
The proven benefits of meditation have merged ancient religion with modern science.
While meditation was once considered a religious and spiritual practice, it is now used as a modern tool and practice that modern studies have shown can relieve stress, balance emotions, control pain and improve sleep quality, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Meditation has almost become synonymous with better sleep: There are tons of meditation apps on the market (via Medical News Today, one of the most popular, Headspace, reached two million paid subscribers in 2020.
Scientifically proven benefits of meditation
Meditation helps people cope with the fast-paced life in the modern world that lives seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We are attached to our work, constantly on our phones and always planning the next meeting, event, all the while trying to balance work and personal life.
The most common reasons why people decide to meditate is the desire to overcome sudden reactions, to avoid increased aggressiveness, as well as to get rid of anxious feelings and stress. People choose meditation to clear their mind and be more focused. Whoever decides to meditate, you need to include this activity in your daily plan. By the way, meditation is also considered important for the way you communicate with people around you.
Modern society lives
Modern society lives “fast”, so it is meditation that slows people down and keeps them focused
Chances are you’ll thank yourself if you carve out just a little time in your busy schedule for a little meditation. After all, there are many scientifically proven benefits of meditation that can improve our quality of life.
Meditation makes us more self-aware
In order to live in a quality way, it is important to know ourselves and to be in touch with our feelings. If you’re in touch with who you are, chances are you’ll be able to connect better with the people around you – and interactions are important.
According to a study published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, meditation can help define destructive behavior patterns and turn them into healthy habits.
The same conclusion was published in the journal Advances in Mind Body Medicine, where it was pointed out that time spent in silence is good for the mind and body, and a person becomes better and more relaxed.
Meditation reduces feelings of anxiety and depression, improves attention and helps with concentration when it comes to pain. Meditation can also help prevent memory loss and help you get rid of addiction.
People who need an alarm to wake up in the morning are generally more tired than those who wake up without it, the results of an American study conducted on 450 employees working in offices in the United States, in which scientists measured the length of sleep and heart rate with the help of portable devices.
57 percent of them woke up with the help of an alarm and, as a rule, they were more tired than those who woke up naturally because the alarm disturbed their natural sleep cycle,
announced scientists from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, reports Euronews.
In contrast, people who woke up naturally slept longer and consumed less caffeine on a daily basis. Also, they felt less tired during the day.
When we wake up naturally, scientists explain, the body activates the “stress response” shortly before waking up in order to prepare us for it and wake us up.
While waking up with the ringing of the alarm, that natural response of the organism is then skipped and this leads to the interruption of the sleep cycle.
The most affected by fatigue are the so-called night birds, the people who use the alarm to wake up in the morning the most, according to research published in the journal Sleep.
With the morning alarm, we should first think that it is time to get up, and not that we should sleep longer and silence the alarm, because we will not solve the lack of sleep if we press the snooze button.
Those five or 15 minutes of sleep that we get after pressing “snooze”, i.e. delaying the alarm, will undoubtedly not give us the best we should get from the sleep process – the study states.
Snooze the alarm plays no role, Notre Dame professor Aaron Striegel says in the journal Sleep.
The purpose of this research was partly the desire to demystify what happens in such cases. It’s problematic if you need an alarm because it means you’re chronically sleep-deprived,
In the scientific world, new discoveries are made almost every day. Due to new achievements and discoveries, something that older generations learned in school is now outdated and scientific facts have been changed, writes Business Insider.
For example, we believed that diamond is the hardest mineral in the world, but in fact the hardest structure in the world is ultra-hard nanoconnected cubic boron nitride.
Although it was widely believed around the world that the witches of Salem were burned at the stake, the truth is that they were actually sentenced to death by hanging.
Also, we believed that the pyramids were built by Jewish slaves, but the truth is that they were built by the Egyptians themselves because there were no Jews then. Experts claim that they even got their own crypts in the pyramids.
It was believed that paper could not be folded more than seven times, while a group of students in 2012 failed to fold stacks of toilet paper 13 times.
One of the most commonly used scientific facts believed to be the Great Wall of China is the only structure that can be seen from space, but the first Chinese astronaut himself admitted that he failed to see the wall during his stay in space.
The Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, as well as the Dane Morton Meldal, are the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on joining molecules – in the field known as click chemistry.
Click chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the study of how to connect different molecules into a single whole. Their work is used in cell research and the monitoring of biological processes, and it can also be applied to drugs for the treatment of cancer. The Nobel committee praised their work, which they say will make chemistry more efficient, adding that the impact of their research can be seen in science.
“With this year’s prize, we want to show that not everything has to be complicated, but that things can be made easy and simple,” says Johan Acquist, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
The winners will share a prize of ten million Swedish kronor (about 912,000 euros). Bertocci, a pioneer in bioorthogonal chemistry, is the eighth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
“I am delighted, I can hardly breathe,” said Bertossi after being informed of the prize by the Nobel committee.
Her discoveries can be applied in medicine and pharmacology, she explained. This means that scientists can “apply chemical research to the human body by monitoring whether the drug ends up in the right place and keeps it away from where it shouldn’t.” It’s also a “biological tool” that will help scientists spot molecules they didn’t know existed, she added. Barry Sharpless won the Nobel Prize for the second time. 21 years ago, he became a Nobel laureate thanks to his work on chiral catalysts.
Sharpless and Medal worked separately, but they The Nobel Committee last year awarded the prize to scientists for developing ways to construct molecules. Swedish physicist Svante Pabo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for Neanderthal DNA research.
Three scientists, French Alain Aspe, American John Clausur and Austrian Anton Zeilinger, received the Nobel Prize in Physics on October 4, for research in the field of quantum mechanics – the science that describes nature using particles smaller than atoms.
Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
2021 – Benjamin List and David McMillen, awarded the Chemistry Prize for developing a new way to construct molecules.
2020 – Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the prize for inventing tools to modify DNA.
2019 – John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino shared the prize for their work on lithium-ion batteries.
2018 – Francis Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory Winter were awarded for the discovery of enzymes.
2017 – Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson were awarded for advancing the picture of biological molecules.
2016 – Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa won the prize for a machine made of molecules.
2015 – Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modric and Aziz Sankar were awarded for their work on DNA repair.
These famous and world-famous (and recognized) attract millions of visitors every year, but have you ever wondered what their history is? During the tour, you will probably be introduced to some lesser-known things by a local guide, but until you visit one of them, here is your chance to learn more about them!
Empire State Building (New York)
It was built by slightly more than 3,400 workers, who (be careful now) built four floors every week! Therefore, it is no wonder that the entire necklace was completed in only 450 days.
At a height of 381 meters, it held the title of the tallest building in the world until 1972. About 40 million dollars were spent on its construction, and today’s value is an incredible 637 million. The building even has its own postal code, and the top was intended as a place where zeppelins would be “parked”.
And yes, let’s also say that there is not 102, but 103 floors, but the last one is reserved exclusively for VIP guests, so any of us mortals will hardly ever visit it.
Eiffel Tower (Paris)
The symbol of Paris is also one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. The tower, made for the World Exhibition in Paris, was built for two whole years, and consists of a total of 18 thousand pieces of iron. After 20 years, it was supposed to be demolished, but the city authorities decided to keep it because of the antenna on top, which was important for the radio signal.
Today, Paris is unimaginable without the tower, and not only is it visited by millions every year, but it is also the workplace for more than 600 Parisians.
Taj Mahal (Agra)
It took 22 thousand people, a thousand elephants, 28 different types of stone and 17 years to build it. The Taj Mahal is famous for its symmetry, and depending on the time of day, it is always a different color.
Legend has it that Shah Jahan tore the fingers and hands of the workers who worked on this building so that they could never build anything as beautiful again. An esthete, but also a rather cruel man.
Trevi Fountain (Rome)
Hardly anyone is not familiar with the legend that says that throwing a coin over the left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain guarantees a return to the Eternal City.
The city authorities have nothing against the fact that tourists have “embraced” the legend, given that every day around 3000 euros are poured into the fountain. So, annually, that fountain brings a little more than a million euros. Not bad, right?
Caritas workers collect all that money every day and donate it to more than 200 countries.
Sagrada Familia (Barcelona)
Whoever visited the Catalan capital, could not remain indifferent to the appearance of the Holy Family. The church is the pinnacle of the work of the great architect Antoni Gaudí, and although construction began in 1882, it is interesting that it is still not fully completed.
The legendary Gaudí worked on it for about 40 years, until his death, and according to the latest information, the cathedral is expected to be completed in 2025. They were alive, then they saw.
Statue of Liberty (New York)
Perhaps the first monument that comes to mind when it comes to the USA is certainly this woman with a torch in New York Harbor. The Statue of Liberty was made in France and is a gift from France to the USA. The fact that it was disassembled into 350 parts and transported by ship on the way to America speaks volumes for how big it is.
The sculpture represents the Roman goddess of liberty, and the face is modeled after the face of the sculptor’s mother. And yes, if this statue was wearing “shoes”, it would need the number 7801!
Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
One of the largest and most beautiful museums in the world is located in the imperial city of Saint Petersburg. It has more than three million pieces in its collection, including works by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Picasso. The following speaks volumes about the size – if a visitor were to spend only a minute at each exhibit, it would take him 11 years to visit the entire museum.
The museum is specific in that it also “employs” 60 cats in charge of guarding the museum premises from mice.
Leaning Tower of Pisa
One of the most visited attractions in the world in the 1990s was closed to the public because the tower simply leaned too far, and the safety of visitors was at risk.
Noticing this, the Italian authorities came up with a plan to restore and return the tower to the position it had in 1838. The project was created by the architect Mikele Jamoilkovski, the tower was saved, and the entire operation cost 25 million euros.
Since 2001, it has been reopened to the public, so social media has been flooded with images of people “pushing” the tower.
Expressing feelings and emotions has always been considered a sign of weakness, especially when it comes to men. However, over the years, society has begun to realize how wrong that belief actually is. In fact, being able to express and process feelings is very useful for us. Happiness, anger, frustration, excitement – release those feelings! Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of expressing your feelings and emotions.
It’s healthy for everyone
Being able to express feelings of happiness or even sadness is incredibly healthy. Scientists have long believed that what we feel significantly affects the way our body reacts. When we are happy, our body feels nurtured. When we are sad or angry, our body also has to release some tension. Expressing feelings and emotions is important because it serves as an outlet for us. Why is it dangerous to keep all negative feelings to yourself? When you think about it, all that repressed negativity has to “go” somewhere. In the most unfortunate cases, this negative energy manifests as illness.
It helps you develop
Expressing your feelings helps you develop as a person. Some feelings may not be very pleasant, but allowing yourself to feel them makes it easier for you to understand them. Start by asking yourself questions you wouldn’t normally ask yourself. In a way it makes you look at situations without colored glasses and also teaches you to recognize what other people are feeling.
It sets you free
Can you imagine not being able to express your feelings at all? Many children who grow up in “strict families” often do not know what it means to be free. They are mostly protected and occasionally even have to deal with repressed feelings. However, once they are released from control, they feel light and free, and when a person feels that way, the world is new again. The will to live increases drastically. Expressing feelings and emotions is really very important. However, it is also very important that we learn how to do it properly. For example, being angry does not give you the right to destroy someone’s room or to be mean and abusive to others. By directing your feelings in the right way, you will be able to live a meaningful life.
Are emotions good and bad?
We have all been taught that certain emotions are bad, such as fear and anger, and some are good, such as happiness and joy. Do you judge emotions that way? If so, you may be disappointed when we tell you that emotions are neither good nor bad. They are simply our feedback system to ourselves, an alarm of sorts about what is happening to us right now. Imagine looking at a beautiful sunset and feeling absolutely nothing, or holding a newborn child and feeling no joy… Or imagine feeling absolutely no sadness in response to the death of a loved one…
Emotions happen, regardless of whether we are aware of them or not. Therefore, they tell us exactly what is happening to us. Precisely for this reason, we should accept, feel and express our emotions, because then we open up opportunities to improve our life. If we ignore or even worse suppress emotions deep inside or express them in an inappropriate way, what they are not, then we have opened the door for emotions to rule our lives and thereby limit us. A lot of people believe that they should constantly experience pleasure and joy in order to be happy in life. But that’s not the point. These are just one of the many emotions we experience.
Unfortunately, in most cases when we are children we are not taught how to appreciate the emotional part of ourselves or how to accept emotions. Instead, it very often happens that parents punish children because they cry or get angry about something, and then beliefs arise such as it is a weakness to show emotions, real men don’t cry, it’s not nice to see girls who get angry and similar, which is why we experience obstacles in our life. Whatever your belief is, know that it is your belief that determines whether your emotions rule your life.
What role do emotions play in your life? What is your belief about emotions?
Below we present to you 20 short facts about the human brain that you may not have known.
1. Although responsible for only about 2% of body weight, the brain consumes about 20% of the oxygen in our blood and 25% of the glucose (sugar) circulating in the bloodstream.
2. There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, but they make up only 10% of the brain. About 75% of the brain is water.
3. The average weight of the human brain is about 1.3 kilograms.
4. The brain produces a current strong enough to power a 10 to 23 V light bulb.
5. The average adult brain weighs about 1.3-1.4 kg. Height and weight have nothing to do with intelligence quotient (IQ).
6. When the blood supply to the brain is interrupted, after losing consciousness after 8-10 seconds, he can survive without oxygen for only a few minutes because brain cells begin to die after 1 minute without oxygen.
7. A newborn baby’s brain triples in size in the first year of life.
8. The brain has 60% white and 40% gray matter.
9. When you have a headache, your brain doesn’t hurt. The brain has no pain receptors and therefore cannot even feel pain.
10. Although some animals have larger brains, for example the elephant, the human brain accounts for 2% of the total body weight (in the case of an elephant, it is only 0.15%), which means that humans have the largest brain for their body size.
11. Many studies have proven that the brain can easily create a false memory, that is, create an event in your childhood that never actually happened.
12. Laughing activates five different parts of the brain.
13. If it’s healthy, your brain never loses its ability to learn.
14. Research has shown that the hippocampus, the part that deals with visual-spatial awareness, is larger in London taxi drivers than in other people. London taxi drivers spend months and sometimes years memorizing literally every street in London before they get their license.
15. There are certain ‘mirror neurons’ in the brain that cause you to yawn when others yawn around you, but also cause a part of your body to hurt for a moment, even though someone else has hit themselves. Scientists believe that these neurons are also responsible for the general feeling of empathy towards others.
16. Drugs like cocaine activate the pleasure center in the brain (nucleus accumbens), and release dopamine serotonin which makes you happy. The nucleus accumbens is also activated when you help someone in need or donate money/goods to a charity.
17. Every time you remember something or have a new thought, you create a new connection in the brain.
18. There are over 100,000 kilometers of blood vessels in the brain.
19. Numerous scientific studies have concluded that reading aloud to children and talking to them often contributes significantly to the development of their brains.
20. If you want to remember something, create an association because that’s how memory is created.
Your parents often told you about your adventures when you were a child. Of course, you don’t remember it, just like the vast majority of people in the world don’t remember anything before their third birthday.
This phenomenon is called childhood amnesia, and it is still a puzzle for scientists. The fact that we don’t remember early experiences is somewhat paradoxical because in the first few years we acquire many complex skills “for life”, such as walking, talking and recognizing people’s faces. And yet, memories of certain childhood events are lost in adulthood. It’s as if someone tore the first few pages out of our autobiography.
What is the cause of childhood amnesia?
This question has plagued psychologists for more than a century, but we are finally uncovering the pieces of the puzzle. The first serious study of childhood amnesia was the work of French psychologists Victor and Catherine Henri in 1898. Spouses Henri, while talking to 123 adults, realized that their earliest autobiographical memories went back to the age of just over three years. These findings were later confirmed by numerous studies that indicate that the average age for the first memories is between three and three and a half years. However, there is a lot of variability: some people seem to remember events when they were only two years old, while others remember nothing before they were six or even eight years old. At the same time, those early memories are rather hazy.
How did Freud interpret the absence of early memories?
Serious attempts to explain the phenomenon of childhood amnesia began decades after the Henries published their research. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, reflected on the problem of childhood amnesia in his essay from 1905. At the same time, he concluded that we repress our childhood memories because they are full of sexual and aggressive impulses and are therefore too embarrassing to face in later life, reports Jutarnji.hr. However, that idea fell away over time, and the thesis was launched that young children simply cannot form explicit memories of events. The picture changed again in the 1980s, when the first studies of children themselves appeared instead of research on what adults remember from childhood. Thus, scientists have discovered that children younger than two or three years old can indeed recall autobiographical events, but that these memories fade. Then the question arose as to what causes their disappearance.
What did memory research in children show?
Canadian psychologist Carol Peterson from Memorial University in Newfoundland found in her research that children can remember traumatic experiences quite faithfully, even when they happened at a very early age. In a period of eight years, children could remember things that happened to them five years ago, that is, when they were three years old. But, prof. Peterson was also interested in whether eight-year-olds could remember ordinary events from early childhood. Her research from 2005 on 140 respondents showed that children under the age of nine have some memories of their first impressionable experiences. But the older the children, the fainter the memories. Thus, children from six to nine years old could recall events from the time when they were three years old. However, teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16 recalled only individual situations from when they were over four years old.
Two years later, Carol Peterson interviewed the same 140 respondents again. She asked them the same questions: What are their earliest memories? Of course, everything that the children mentioned was also checked by the parents. The results showed that only five of the 50 youngest children, who were between four and seven years old at the time of the first interview, could recall their earliest memories, even after being reminded of what they had said two years earlier.
“The memories just disappeared,” Carol Peterson told Live Science. On the other hand, 22 out of 61 children aged ten to 13 could recall the same memories from their earliest years as two years ago. Children over the age of ten were able to recall, after being reminded, almost all of their earliest memories. By that age, the earliest memories crystallize and those memories stay with us in adulthood.
Does childhood amnesia also exist in animals?
Neuroscientists led by Catherine Akers from Children’s Hospital in Toronto published a study in Science in 2014 that showed that mice also have their own version of childhood amnesia. It is similar with monkeys, our close relatives in the animal world. Scientists cite neurogenesis, the process of creating new neurons, as the main cause of our forgetting early events in childhood. Until the 1990s, the dogma reigned in science was that the number of nerve cells or neurons is determined at the moment of birth and that their number only decreases during life. But scientists have shown that our brain changes throughout life and that new neurons are created even later. One of the places of neurogenesis is the hippocampus, a structure in the brain that is involved in the creation of long-term memories. Neurogenesis in the hippocampus peaks during the first few years. Catherine Akers and her collaborators have shown in experiments on mice that the rapid creation of new neurons in the hippocampus blocks access to old memories.
Is the period of earliest memories the same in all cultures?
Scientists have realized that there are puzzling cross-cultural differences about the age of earliest memories. For example, in one cross-cultural study, researchers found that the average age of first memories for people of European descent was about 3.5 years, and for those of East Asian descent, 4.8 years. Among the Maori in New Zealand, that age is only 2.7 years. – Those differences cannot be explained only by the maturation of the brain – Patricia Bauer, professor of psychology from Emory University in Atlanta, told New Scientist.
Scientists believe that one of the explanations for this phenomenon is storytelling. Compared to East Asian parents, European and North American parents are more likely to discuss the past with their children using more complex forms of storytelling. As a result, their children have earlier memories. Maori storytelling culture is even richer, with detailed oral histories and a strong focus on the past, leading to even earlier memories.
When it comes to autobiographical memory, the early exchange of family memory is important. In North American culture, people are crazy about memoirs and reality TV. It’s all a life story. If society tells you that your memories are important, then you will remember them better – she told New Scientist prof. Ki Wang of Cornell University
So many galaxies and so little time! What can a busy scientist do? A team of international researchers solved that problem by turning to thousands of amateur volunteers around the world for help describing the universe. The result of that appeal is the “Galaxy List”.
Modern instruments allow us to peer deep into time and space, but on Earth it is still only 24 hours in a day. It’s a conundrum that researchers have faced more and more in recent years, as the volume of telescope images has outstripped attempts to organize them.
Now, an international group of scientists has decided to solve that problem by harnessing the power of the crowd and the Internet to help them deal with the vastness of space.
The result of that endeavor is ‘Galaxy Zoo’, a project dedicated to cataloging the heavens. Its second phase has just been completed.
Lucy Fortson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota in the USA and one of the project leaders explains:
“We find galaxies in two main morphologies or shapes: elliptical and spiral. The complexity of those shapes makes recognizing the differences very difficult for machine algorithms or computers. The best machine algorithm that can distinguish between these shapes, which is available to us, is the human brain. “An Oxford graduate (who worked on the project) and his supervisor were sitting in a pub and thought, ‘You know, if we put this on the Internet, are people going to classify galaxies?'” says Fortson.
The answer was a resounding yes. The first phase of the project, which ended in 2009, asked interested volunteers from around the world to help classify nearly a million galaxies from the near universe. A scientific background was not required. All that was needed were eyes, interest and the ability to register at galaxyzoo.org.
Fortsonova said that it was such a success that the participants asked the organizers to give them more tasks, which the scientists accepted. Now they’ve published their findings in “Galaxy Zoo 2,” a document containing some 16 million classifications made possible by over 83,000 enthusiasts. The project featured 300,000 galaxies with the clearest images and asked volunteers not only to describe their basic shape, but also to provide a more detailed description: Does the galaxy contain spirals and how many spiral “arms” are present? Does the galaxy have “galactic bars” – long, elongated features that represent concentrations of stars? Is a galaxy merging with another galaxy?
The classifications were recorded between February 2009 and April 2010.
Scientists involved in the project say that the new catalog is ten times larger than any previous one. They estimate that it represents the result of thirty years of work by one researcher.
The data should help scientists answer questions that have long fascinated them.
“One of the biggest questions people are trying to figure out is how our universe evolved and how we got to where we are.” One aspect of this is understanding the formation of galaxies. We know that the personality of a galaxy is shaped by its history, and its history is written in the morphology of the galaxy,”
says Lucy Fortson.
Galaxy Zoo relies on responses from large groups, usually via the Internet, to come up with information or data, and is not the first scientific attempt to discover information about the universe.
For years, researchers into the existence of extraterrestrial life have used computer programs from several universities and research projects to scan the radio waves of space for signs of intelligence.
The rigor of science plays a role in projects based on collecting data from large groups of people. In the Galaxy Zoo 2 project, each galaxy was classified between 40 and 45 times to ensure data accuracy. Fortson said her team used “certain methods and formulas” to weed out the classifications of those participants who “weren’t really paying attention.”
The next step, she says, is to provide volunteers with a Hubble Telescope:
“I compared it with the census. We’ve just done an inventory of the present: We’ve gone round and interviewed all these galaxies and seen the diversity, the rich diversity of galaxies in our immediate universe. Now we want to go back in time and make a list of galaxies as they were formed.”
“By comparing the two censuses, we can learn how galaxies have evolved,”
On the eve of the partial eclipse of the Sun, on Tuesday, October 25, there is great excitement among amateur astronomers and lovers of this discipline. In order to observe this wonderful celestial phenomenon, it is necessary to be in a specific place on the planet, and on that specific date when at least three astronomical conditions for the occurrence of an eclipse have been met. And with that, of course, that you are lucky with the clouds.
Every eclipse or eclipse occurs when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, so that it partially or “completely” obscures the image of our star, and its shadow falls somewhere on the surface of the planet. Depending on whether you happened to be right there, in the moon’s shadow or in a much wider, surrounding penumbra, called the umbra and penumbra, you will see the Sun’s disk obscured completely or only partially, as will be the case on Tuesday, October 25.
Unfortunately, most of us will not see the arrival of the umbra just above us and the total eclipse, because it is expected in the year when today’s newborns will be preparing for retirement, that is, on September 3, 2081.
Why is it so? Why don’t solar eclipses happen more often? Once a month, for example, every new moon?
Let’s think about the changes of the moon, about how during a conditionally speaking period of 29 days, the Earth’s satellite changes its shape and names – new, first quarter, full and last quarter. No matter what we call them, the moons would not occur in that way if the Moon did not revolve around the Earth and occupy different positions in relation to the Sun, and therefore be illuminated in various ways. And when it is young, invisible, the Moon is actually unlit for us because it stands between the Sun and the Earth, and its dark side is facing us.
But? But, if once a month, at every new moon, the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, why doesn’t it block the star for the observers and they don’t see the eclipse?
The answer lies in the position of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. Perhaps you did not know, but it is not in the same plane as the Earth orbits the Sun. For reasons still insufficiently explained, the Moon’s orbit is tilted at an angle slightly greater than 5 degrees relative to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. That is why the shadow cast by the Moon “misses” the planet almost always, except when it is found in those places where the plane of the Moon intersects the plane of the Earth’s orbit. Then all three bodies – the Sun, the Moon and the Earth – will be aligned in a line. And then there are eclipses – solar and, on the other hand, lunar (when the Earth hides the Sun).
During the year, 2 to 5 solar eclipses can occur. However, not all of them are total because everything can happen for a total eclipse, but the Moon at that time can be in its elliptical orbit too far to completely cover the Sun even when it completely “enters” its image. That is why there are several types of eclipses. By the way, they can also be seen in different locations on Earth.
One of the biggest mysteries in biology has been largely solved with the help of artificial intelligence, experts announced.
Predicting how proteins fold into unique three-dimensional shapes has puzzled scientists for half a century. DeepMind, a London laboratory that uses artificial intelligence, has solved this problem to a large extent, according to the organizers of the extraordinary scientific competition.
A better understanding of the shape of proteins could play a key role in the development of new drugs to treat various diseases. DeepMind’s discovery is expected to accelerate the study of a large number of diseases, including Covid-19, which has been active in previous years. Their program determined the shape of the protein at a level of accuracy comparable to expensive and time-consuming laboratory methods, they say. Dr Andrei Kristafovich, from the University of California, one of the panel of scientific arbitrators, described the achievement as “truly extraordinary”.
“Being able to explore protein shapes quickly and accurately has the potential to revolutionize scientific life,” he says.
What are proteins?
Proteins are present in all living things, where they play a key role in chemical processes essential to life.
Made from a series of amino acids, they fold in countless possible ways into complex shapes that hold the key to how they perform vital functions. Many diseases are linked to proteins’ roles in catalyzing chemical reactions (enzymes), fighting disease (antibodies), or acting as chemical messengers (hormones such as insulin).
“Even tiny rearrangements of these vital molecules can have catastrophic consequences for our health, so one of the most effective ways to understand a disease and find new ways to treat it is to study the proteins involved.”
says Dr. John Molt of of the University of Maryland, in the USA, chairing the panel of scientific arbitrators.
“There are tens of thousands of human proteins and many billions of them in other species, including bacteria and viruses, but determining the shape of just one requires expensive equipment and can take years.”
How does the competition work?
In 1972, Christian Anfinsen received the Nobel Prize for work that showed that it is possible to determine the shape of a protein based on the sequence of amino acids it is made of.
Every two years, a large number of teams from more than 20 countries blindly try to predict the shapes of sets of about 100 proteins based on their amino acid sequences with the help of computers. At the same time, biologists create 3D structures in the laboratory using traditional techniques such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy, which determine the location of each atom relative to each other in their protein molecule. A team of scientists from Casp (Community-wide Experiment for the Critical Appraisal of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction) then compares these predictions with 3D structures made using experimental methods. Kasp uses a measurement method known as the global distance test to assess accuracy, ranging from 0-100. A score of around 90, achieved by DeepMind’s AlphaFold program, is considered comparable to laboratory techniques.
What happened this year?
In the latest round of the competition, Casp-14, AlphaFold determined the shape of about two-thirds of the proteins with an accuracy comparable to laboratory experiments.
The arbitrators said that the shape accuracy of most other proteins was also high, though not quite at that level. AlphaFold is based on a concept called deep learning. In this process, the structure of folded proteins is represented by a spatial graph. The program then “learns” using information about the 3D shapes of known proteins stored in the Public Protein Database. An artificial intelligence program managed to do in just a few days what would take years in a laboratory.
How will this information be used?
Knowing the 3D structure of proteins is important for making drugs and understanding human diseases, including cancer, dementia and infectious diseases. One example is Covid-19, in which scientists studied how the spike protein on the surface of the Sars-CoV-2 virus interacts with receptors in human cells. Professor Andrew Martin of University College London (UCL), a former Caps participant and current arbitrator, told the BBC that “understanding how a protein sequence folds in three dimensions is really one of the fundamental questions of biology.”
“The entire way a protein functions depends on its three-dimensional structure, and protein function is important for everything related to health and disease.”
“By knowing the three-dimensional structure of proteins, we can help develop drugs and intervene in health problems, whether it’s infections or hereditary diseases.”
Professor Dame Janet Thornton, of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK, said how proteins fold to create “extremely unique three-dimensional shapes” is one of the greatest mysteries in biology.
What will happen next?
And other scientists will want to study the data to determine how accurate this AI method is and how well it works at the level of detail. There are still large gaps in knowledge, including understanding how multiple proteins fit together and how proteins interact with other molecules such as DNA and RNA.
“Now that the problem is largely solved for individual proteins, the way is open to the development of new methods for determining the shape of protein complexes – collections of proteins that cooperate to shape the bulk of the machinery of life and other applications.”
Intelligent people are always expected to be the best, no matter what it is. Because of this, they often feel the pressure of society and have no one to talk to about their weaknesses and insecurities. These are the six negative sides of intelligence.
Smart people often think more than feel
Intelligent people often have trouble not feeling any relief when expressing their emotions. Namely, they express their emotions more verbally, while those who are less intelligent try to express them through physical reactions – hitting, running, screaming, crying, dancing or jumping for happiness.
Ultimately, the emotions of intelligent people remain trapped within them, regardless of their verbal expression. Scientists cannot determine exactly how emotional and cognitive abilities are related, but they have found that highly intelligent people do not need to rely on emotional skills to solve problems.
People always expect them to be top notch in everything
Intelligent people are always expected to be the best, no matter what it is. Because of this, they often feel the pressure of society and have no one to talk to about their weaknesses and insecurities. The problem also arises when parents expect too much from their smart children. Namely, because of their children’s great abilities, parents focus on what their children will do, instead of what their children actually are.
They may never learn to appreciate the value of hard work
Many smart people often feel that they can get by with much less effort than others. But a high IQ does not always lead straight to success. Intelligence can become a problem for people who discover they have it and don’t have to work as hard as others to succeed, and thus never develop a good work ethic. Scientists also claim that intelligent people feel that they don’t have to work hard to achieve what they want.
People can get angry if they are constantly being corrected
When an intelligent person notices that his interlocutor has said something completely incorrect, it is difficult for him to suppress the need for clarification or correction. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that other people may be confused and offended by such behavior, and that there is a risk of losing friends. If you correct people every time you talk to them, they will stop talking or hanging out with you.
They overthink things
A common trait of all intelligent people is spending too much time thinking and analyzing. They try to give everything an existential meaning, which leads to the fact that they are constantly in a vicious circle. Mostly they try to find answers to questions that no one has been able to answer so far, and that can be done in vain. The problem also arises when making decisions. Then smart people try to analyze all the possible consequences, which in the end can lead to the decision not even being made in the end.
They understand how much they don’t know
Super-intelligent people are often aware that there is a lot they don’t really know, and no matter how hard they try, there will always be something they don’t know. This observation, although good, can also be frustrating because the more you learn, the more aware you are of how much more you actually have to learn.
“There is nothing to be afraid of in life. Life just needs to be understood.”
“Life is not simple for any of us. How to deal with it? We must persevere and above all believe in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that it must certainly be achieved.”
Marie Curie is not only the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, but also the first person to receive the award twice, and the only woman to receive it in two different categories. Secluded, dignified and modest, she gained the admiration of scientists all over the world.
Marie Curie valued education from an early age and as a child stood out above other children. At the age of 5, Maria learned to read and write, listening to her sister learn the alphabet. From the beginning of her schooling, she was a brilliant student, and at the end of high school she was awarded a gold medal for her success. However, her homeland, Poland, was then under Russian domination, and women could not attend university. As her desire for education was strong, Marie Curie (then Sklodowska) found a solution and soon connected with a group of young people who organized their studies in a non-compulsory organization called the Mobile University. In 1891, she went to Paris to live with her sister and studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne. She finished her studies at the Sorbonne as the best student, first in the physics and chemistry class, and second in the mathematics class.
She met her future husband, Pierre Curie, who was then a doctoral student in Becquerel’s laboratory, in 1894 and married him the very next year, after Pierre defended his doctorate.
She began her first research under the influence of Becquerel, who discovered in 1896 that uranium salts emit rays that are as penetrating as x-rays. Encouraged by this discovery, Marie Curie decided to study uranium rays as part of her doctoral dissertation. She showed that this radiation originates from the atom itself. She then continued her systematic studies of radioactive substances, especially uranium, and came to the discovery that uranium pitch has four times stronger radiation than elemental uranium, which led to the conclusion that some other elements are also present. Through various researches, she came to the discovery that this activity of uranium particles is also characteristic of some other substances (thorium) and decided to call this phenomenon radioactivity. Her husband, Pierre Curie was intrigued by her discoveries and decided to join her. In 1898, the Kiri couple discovered the existence of a new element. The newly discovered element was called “polonium”, in honor of Mary, the homeland of Poland. A few months later, they announced other results of their research and the existence of another element. Because of its high radioactivity, it was called “radium”. They came to this discovery after painstaking work in a laboratory located in a shed and extensive research in which they processed 8 tons of uranium ore, and only in 1902 did they isolate one tenth of a gram of radium.
The crown of all research came in 1903. years. Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics, in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the field of radioactivity. Thus, Mrs. Curie became the first woman to be awarded by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.
In the same year, Maria received her doctorate from the University of Paris and became the first woman in France to achieve that academic degree. After these successes, recognitions from other European countries followed.
The Kiri couple not only discovered new elements, but also the effects of radioactivity on cells. They made an important discovery – that sick, cancerous cells exposed to radiation are destroyed much faster than healthy ones. In order to enable the operation of this, the first laboratory in the world, which carried out experiments by treating cancer cells with radioactive substances, it sought the help of other countries, and the USA was one of the countries from which it received valuable help. President Harding, on behalf of the women of America, gave her 1 gram of radium for her institute, which for her was “countless times more precious than gold”.
This discovery played a huge role in the subsequent research and development of therapy for the treatment of many forms of cancer. Radiological therapy is still the main therapeutic method in the treatment of cancerous diseases.
After becoming an unfortunate widow in 1906, Marie Curie was asked to take over her late husband’s university professorship. That’s how she became the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.
She continued to work hard and dedicatedly, and in 1910, with the help of her colleague, she isolated pure metallic radium. The award for all the research and discovery of the chemical elements radium and polonium, for the isolation of radium and the study of the nature of that element and its compounds, arrived the following year in the form of another Nobel Prize. This time it was the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Thus, Marie Curie became the first scientist with two Nobel Prizes.
Through further research, she realized that X-rays can help locate foreign objects in the body and thus facilitate the surgeon’s work. During the First World War, Marie Curie, with the help of her daughter Irene, who she also included in her scientific activities, devoted herself to developing the medical application of radiography. She designed a vehicle that was used for radiography, and which was sent to the front to help wounded soldiers. The vehicle became known as the “little kiri”, as it was fondly called. Marie Curie personally brought him to the front line. The vehicles were equipped with radon, a radioactive gas derived from radium, which Maria personally collected and placed in gas pipes.
At the time when Marie Curie was researching the harmful effects of radiation, they were still unknown, so the Curie couple conducted research without any protection from radioactive substances. It was even said that Marie Curie loved the beautiful blue-green light with which substances glowed in the dark, and that she even carried test tubes with radioactive isotopes in her pocket and kept them in her desk drawer. The intensity of radioactivity to which the Curies were exposed was so high that their laboratory equipment, books and notes are still considered too dangerous to handle.
Marie Curie died of leukemia on July 4, 1934. She was buried in the cemetery in Scow next to her husband Pierre. In honor of their achievements, in 1995 the French moved their remains to the Panthéon in Paris.
Many people think about what happens after death, so they wonder what the last moments look like, whether life really “flies by” before our eyes and what awaits us after the last breath. Scientists have been dealing with this topic for years, and now they have solved the dilemma – does dying look like a process of falling asleep or are we aware that we are disappearing.
Dying is a unique experience for the individual and their loved ones. There is much more than physiological changes that contribute to the experience of dying. For example, a person’s personality, the burden of the disease, the support of family and friends, the duration of the terminal illness and their spirituality – explains Dr. Patrick Steele, a specialist in palliative care. However, there are certain physiological changes that occur universally.
Regular breathing patterns may change. Sometimes it can be faster than normal and sometimes slower. In the final days, there may be periods where there are long gaps between breaths. Breathing can become noisy at the end of life. It is the accumulation of waste products, secretions of the body. It’s often more upsetting for those listening than for the individual dying, Steele describes.
Study organizer Dr. Ajmal Zemar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, says this could mean that the idea that life “flies before our eyes as we die” is grounded in science. As a neurosurgeon, I sometimes deal with loss. It is indescribably difficult to convey the news of death to anxious family members – said the neurosurgeon, adding…
Something we can learn from this research is the following: even though our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us, their brains may be replaying some of the most beautiful moments they experienced in their lives – Dr. Zemar added.
A twinkle in the eye
In addition to Zemar, another team of scientists momentarily restored a faint flash of life to the dying cells in the human eye. In order to better understand the way in which nerve cells are subject to lack of oxygen, a team of American researchers measured the activity in retinal cells of mice and humans immediately after death. They managed to revive the cells’ ability to communicate hours after death. When the cells were stimulated by light, postmortem retinas were shown to emit specific electrical signals, known as beta waves, writes Science Alert. These waves are also seen in living retinas and indicate communication between all layers of macular cells that allow us to see.
This is the first time a deceased donor’s eyes have reacted to light in this way, and some experts question the irreversible nature of death in the central nervous system.
“We were able to wake up the photoreceptor cells in the human macula, which is the part of the retina responsible for our central vision and our ability to see fine details and color,” explains biomedical scientist Fatima Abbas of the University of Utah.
In eyes obtained up to five hours after the death of the organ donor, these cells responded to bright light, colored lights, and even very dim flashes of light. After death, it is possible to save some organs in the human body for transplantation. But after the circulation stops, the central nervous system as a whole stops responding too quickly for any form of long-term recovery.
Different regions and different types of cells have different survival mechanisms, which makes the whole issue of brain death much more complicated. Learning how selected tissues in the nervous system cope with the loss of oxygen could teach us about the recovery of lost brain functions.
In 2018, scientists from Yale University made headlines when they kept a pig’s brain alive for as long as 36 hours after the animal’s death. The feat was achieved by halting the rapid degradation of mammalian neurons, using artificial blood, heaters and pumps to restore the circulation of oxygen and nutrients. A similar technique is now possible in mice and human eyes, which are the only extruded parts of the nervous system. By restoring oxygenation and some nutrients to the eyes of organ donors, researchers from the University of Utah and Scripps Research were able to trigger synchronous activity among neurons after death.
“We were able to get retinal cells to communicate with each other, the way they do in the living eye to mediate human vision,”
says visual scientist Frans Winberg of the University of Utah.
Initially, experiments showed that retinal cells continued to respond to light for up to five hours after death. However, the crucial intercellular beta-wave signals quickly disappeared, apparently due to the loss of oxygen.
Buried in a shallow grave deep inside a remote Indonesian cave, archaeologists have found the bones of a young person they say could change the history of medicine.
Using radiocarbon dating techniques, scientists estimate that the body had lain untouched for 31,000 years inside Liang Tebo Cave in Borneo’s East Kalimantan province, according to research published in the journal Natur.
The most striking aspect of this discovery is that the young man or woman’s lower left leg is missing, with signs that it was carefully amputated when the person was a child or early teenager. The patient survived the surgery and died of unknown causes when he was between 19 and 21 years old, the scientists said. The skeleton was found in 2020 by Australian and Indonesian archaeologists, who say the amputation reveals considerable surgical skill and is the earliest example of this type of operation. This discovery, according to CNN, changed our understanding of the sophistication of Stone Age people.
“It is significant because it significantly changes our species’ knowledge of surgery and complex medicine,”
said Maxim Aubert, a professor at the Center for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University in Queensland.
“They had to have a deep knowledge of human anatomy, how to stop the blood flow, how to anesthetize the patient, prevent sepsis. All that became the norm only recently,” said Aubert. Experts believed that human ancestors did not know how to perform difficult procedures like amputation until the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements transformed human society in the last 10,000 years. Before this discovery, the oldest known example of amputation was an elderly farmer whose left forearm was removed just above the elbow 7,000 years ago in present-day France, the study said.
It was only 100 years ago that surgical amputation became the medical norm in the West. Before the development of antibiotics, the study states, most people would have died during the amputation.
“Blood loss, shock and subsequent infection were the main sources of death until relatively recently in human history.”
said Tim Maloney, a researcher at Griffith University and one of the study’s co-authors.
Community Care
This person had his lower left leg amputated as a child and survived six to nine years after the operation, according to experts. There were no signs of infection in the bones, and new bone growth formed in the amputated area – something that takes a long time. In addition, while the rest of the skeleton was the size of an adult, the amputated bones stopped growing and retained the size of a child. The surgeon or surgeons who performed the operation 31,000 years ago, probably with knives and scalpels made of stone, must have had a detailed knowledge of anatomy and the muscular and vascular system in order to discover and connect the veins, blood vessels and nerves and prevent fatal blood loss and infection , according to the study.
After amputation, care was vital, and the wound had to be regularly cleaned and disinfected.
“I think what’s most amazing is that this is real, direct, tangible evidence of a really high level of care in the community,”
said Maloney.
To live with an amputated leg in mountainous terrain for years, an individual would need a lot of constant help and care from their community.
“That this child survived the procedure and was estimated to have lived many years afterwards is astonishing,” said Charlotte Roberts, a professor in the Department of Archeology at Durham University in the UK, in a commentary published with the study. She was not involved in research. Roberts agrees with the assessment that the limb was deliberately removed – an accidental injury would not show a clean slash. Nor is it likely that the foot was cut off as punishment, given that the person lived for years after the amputation and was carefully buried, said Roberts, who trained as a nurse before becoming an archaeologist. The Australian team said it’s possible these hunter-gatherers had knowledge of medicinal plants, such as antiseptics, that grew in the rainforests of Borneo.
An exciting region for discovery
The child’s remains were dated in two ways: radiocarbon dating of charcoal remains in the sediment layers above, on, and below the skeleton; and a tooth dated by measuring the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes, the chemical elements found in tooth enamel. It is also the oldest known deliberate burial in island Southeast Asia, with limestone markers placed on top of the grave, the body placed in a bent, fetal position and a large globule of ocher – a mineral pigment used in Stone Age cave art.
The skeleton was discovered in a region that has become an exciting site for paleoanthropology: Liang Tebu, a large limestone cave with patterns of human hands on the walls, located in a remote, mountainous area that can only be reached by boat at certain times of the year. The world’s oldest figurative rock art has been found in caves elsewhere in Indonesia, and extinct human species such as Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis have been found on islands in the same region.
“From this area, people traveled by boat to cross the islands of South Asia to reach the mainland of Papua and Australia (the first successful great sea voyage),” Aubert said. “They were advanced artists, and now we know they had advanced medical knowledge. “
“At Liang Tebo, we came across this prehistoric person who was amputated 31,000 years ago less than a meter from the surface and we know we still have 3-4 meters of sediment to excavate before the bedrock,” he added. due to the spread of covid, and archaeologists based in Australia rushed home to avoid a border closure that would last more than two years. “We want to go back. Maybe we will find more human remains, and maybe the remains of unknown species,” they said.
It is even more interesting that the mathematical statistics on the growth of mankind confirm that the whole of mankind originated from one small group of people several thousand years before Christ. Similar conclusions were reached by Italian and Japanese geneticists. However, such facts are not welcomed by the public, because they defy the established dogma of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The grandfather of researcher Robin Simmons worked as a doctor in Eastern Turkey and Russia between 1904 and 1910, at the very foot of Great Ararat – the place where, according to local tradition, the ark of Noah and his family landed after the Great Flood. Some of the Kurds and Armenians there whom he treated told him exactly that – that Noah’s ark was preserved on that mountain, high up on the north side, just below the pass of the extinct double-peaked volcano, and showed him that spot on an old photograph Ararata also found out that the old names of the places in that area largely contain memories of the Ark – Noah’s Village, the First Vineyard, the House of Sam – Sam was one of Noah’s sons, the ancestor of the Semites, the City of the First Market, the Place of the First Descent… Most of these names today they are no longer used, but they are very specific in the Old Armenian language.
There are, however, other legends about the place of Noah’s landing. The Koran, for example, also talks about the Ark – but it says that it landed on Al Qudiya, a mountain about 300 kilometers south of Ararat, while the Iranians claim that Ararat is on their land – Mount Kuh e Alwand. There is a famous story about the months-long expedition of the soldiers of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, who allegedly entered the Ark and photographed it, mapped the position, somewhere in the rugged, canyon-crisscrossed upper regions of the Armenian side. This expedition was undertaken just before the October Revolution, during which, it is thought, the majority during the campaign itself, they were killed, and photographs, maps and artifacts disappeared. Relatives of several survivors confirmed the authenticity of that expedition.
The Engineer’s Story
American Ed Davis, was in 1943 an army engineer of the US army, who built supply roads in Turkey and Russia. Doing some favor to their driver’s village, which is near Ararat, the driver’s relatives offered to take him to the place where the Ark can be seen, which prayed under the ice in retreat. On the way, they stopped in a village where there was a cave with supposed artifacts found in the ice, which appeared in the Ark after the melting of the ice. There were oil lamps, clay barrels and antique tools. After traveling for several days, on horseback and on foot, they reached a cave that was decorated with some beautiful old writing, which is thought to be located at a height of about 2500 meters on the western wall of the Ahora Gorge. Indeed, explorer Ed Crawford later discovered a cave in Ahora Gorge with apparently pro-Assyrian petroglyphs that can be interpreted as an immediate post-Flood religious text. The next day, a guide showed Davis a horseshoe-shaped crack in the ice and said: There’s Noah’s Ark. At first Davis couldn’t see anything, but soon he caught sight of him. It was in his words: A huge, rectangular, man-made structure partially covered in ice and rock, lying on its side. At least 30 meters was clearly visible. I could even see the inside, a part of it had been broken through – through that hole, some tree trunks were sticking out, and water was coming up from under the structure. Inside the collapsed section, which he was told was the largest, Davis saw at least three stories. The guide told him that near the top there is a residential area of 48 rooms. He also told him that inside there were cages as small as a fist, but also large enough for a family of elephants. They planned to rappel down the next day, but the weather turned so bad overnight that they had to turn back.
Satellite images
George Stephan is a military-trained specialist with 30 years of experience interpreting all types of satellite imagery who says he has access to every square foot of planet Earth. He says: I was looking at the mountain, from a height of 3050 meters above the summit, using the PAMS system (special photo analysis of material spectrum). I am one hundred percent convinced that there are two man-made structures, one below the other, on the 3,962-meter elevation on the northern side of the mountain. Both look as if they were once joined, as there is a spectral trail between them…
When he marked the locations of the anomalies he found on a topographic map of Ararat, they turned out to be the same ones that Robin Simmons had been marked by his grandfather. However, things do not add up to Davies’ story – he did not mention crossing the ice plains.
Aerial shots
A few months later, Simmons and Adams flew over Ararat in a plane, but the Turkish authorities did not allow them to land. By taking videos of it, and especially of Ahora Gorge, they soon identified the wanted point, a frozen wave-like formation hovering over something embedded in the glacier. Circling above the mountain, Simmons was trying to find a trace of the second, broken-off part of the object that George Stephan determined was about 335 meters below, in a steeper part of the glacier. And indeed, there he managed to photograph a similar structure with a broken end and a roof covered, barely visible in the ice wall. Still circling above the terrifying Ahora Gorge, Simmons surveyed a spot that matched Ed Davis’ description from a height of about 750 meters. And indeed, another similarly anomalous object protruded from the steep ground, with what looked like a pointed roof and vertical walls, the end of which appeared to be broken. If it was also the Ark, then, according to Davis, there would have to be another similar part beneath it, trapped even deeper in the ice. All three objects were remarkably similar, and all could in fact have been parts of the Ark, which the Bible says was about 150 meters long – or even two feet longer if the cubit measure is in fact a royal cubit.
What exactly is hidden there
But the story gets even weirder. According to one source, who spoke to Simmons only on condition of complete anonymity, in 1974 an American special operations team was engaged in recording a Russian radar system that tracked flights from Turkey to what was then USSR. Returning via Ararat, in order to escape detection, the team was caught in a storm and found shelter in a crevasse. When they entered it, they thought it was an old Byzantine sanctuary – but they realized that the altitude was too high for such a thing, so they unanimously concluded that it was – the biblical Ark. Their report, code-named Black Spear, also reached the US president, because Simmons was told by a friend of the president’s adviser that the adviser had seen the still-secret Oval Office report, which included specific mention of what the operatives in question believed. that a part of the real Noah’s Ark is preserved, trapped in the ice. Another similar story, full of details, was disclosed. Between December 1959 and April 1960, one pilot made about fifty flights from a secret Turkish base into the Soviet Union, in order to distract the Soviets from simultaneous American flights. Returning to Turkey through the Russian-Iranian border zone, next to Ararat, on the left side, he says, he often saw and photographed an oblong, rectangular coffin-like object, which protruded from the ice at about 4,500 meters. height. Now, according to him, those recordings are stored seven floors below the Pentagon.
-The question arises, why is all this being covered up? -Who cares if the Flood and the Ark remain only legends? Could the findings from the Ark deal a decisive blow to the already shaky Darwinian theory and who knows what other valid scientific theories? And maybe they would also fundamentally shake the ruling political systems in the world. -Is that perhaps why Greater Ararat is inaccessible for research today? Because the Ahora gorge is a prohibited zone for any climbing and photography. The approaches are mined, and the place is secured by military fortifications.
Three major religious holidays this year happened at the same time. Those who think that the reconciliation of religion and science would be a way for humanity to successfully face climate change, the fair distribution of resources and the adaptation of society to technological changes are not rare.
In a rare occurrence, which occurs only every thirty-three years, the three major holidays of the monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – happened at the same time this year. Last Friday and this Friday, Christians of the western and eastern churches commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, and on Sunday they celebrate Easter, marking their faith in his resurrection. Also, on the previous Friday, the Jews celebrated the eve of Passover, commemorating the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the end of their slavery. That same weekend, Muslims around the world marked another Friday, their weekly holiday, as part of the month of Ramadan, which began on April 2 and ends on May 3. This rare merging of holidays is possible because unlike the Christian calendar, which is determined by the movement of the sun, the Islamic calendar is aligned with the moon and the lunar year. Twelve months in the solar year last 365, in the lunar year, on the other hand, only 354 days. Thus, the Islamic holiday cycle follows the Western calendar for three decades.
Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It is held with church services and traditional meals. The holiday is also an occasion for celebration in the commercial sector through the sale of Easter fashion products, Easter baskets and chocolate bunnies. Many Christians also practice Great Lent, which begins 40 days before Easter. The idea is that the renunciation for Lent reflects the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth during his 40 days in the desert. Great Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, continues with the observance of Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, the day of his alleged resurrection.
Ramadan is celebrated during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, fasting from dawn to sunset. It is a period in which Muslims seek forgiveness for sins committed, pray for spiritual guidance, and use the month to refocus on their faith through self-restraint and good deeds. Passover is an eight-day festival of the Jews, whose observance includes abstaining from leavened foods, observing days of rest, and retelling the stories of the exodus from Egypt. The Seder, the traditional Passover meal, is held on the first night of Passover. This year, Vaisakhi, the great holiday of another monotheistic religion – Sikhism, was held on the same days. On April 13, the Sikhs celebrated with this holiday the creation of the Khalsa Panth, an order of initiated Sikhs dedicated to the service of the One Creator and humanity, founded in 1699. Before that year, this date was celebrated as a harvest festival in the Punjab region, and many observe it not only as a religious, but also as a cultural holiday.
Tao of Psysics
Besides such an impressive conjunction of important religious holidays can serve as a big metaphor and an opportunity for noble and more than necessary calls for reason, brotherhood and understanding among all people and stopping conflicts and wars, imperial ones and religious ones, at the same time it can also be an occasion to shed more light on another great divide within contemporary society – that between religion and science.
After a long, centuries-old tradition of the sharpest conflicts in which, as a rule, science and scientists suffered, many believe that the time has come for these two, in many aspects, opposing views of reality to find points of contact or at least ways for peaceful coexistence. Those who think that such a historical reconciliation, no matter how much the term is overused, is the only way for humanity to successfully face the biggest challenges such as climate change, the fair distribution of resources and the adaptation of society to frenetic technological changes. One of the first steps in the 20th century in this direction was made by the American physicist of Austrian origin Frittjof Capra. During his travels in Asia, he noticed great similarities in the way the religious and philosophical schools of the East described reality, and the language used by modern physics for the same purpose. In the following years, he translated these insights into a book that has preserved its iconic status to this day. Capra published his Tao of Physics: Exploring the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism in 1975 in New York. The book became an instant hit, especially in artistic and intellectual circles, and over time has seen numerous reprints, and has been translated into 23 languages around the world.
In the atmosphere of awakening the interest of the Western public in the traditional philosophical, religious and artistic concepts of the East, The Tao of Physics, somewhat surprisingly, also met with a lot of positive reactions from the scientific community. Nevertheless, there were completely expected negative reactions from the ranks of scientists, who had absolutely no right to put their methodical scientific work on the same level with the discoveries made in the flash of religious revelation.
Thus Nobel Laureate Leon M. Lederman, a physicist and former director of Fermilab, criticized The Tao of Physics and several similar books that appeared at the same time, such as The God Particle, by Garry Zukava: “Although they begin with reasonable descriptions of quantum physics [the authors of these books] later they construct elaborate elaborations completely devoid of understanding how carefully theory and experiment are woven together and how much blood sweat and tears go into each painful advance.” Capra later summarized his motivations for writing the book: “Science does not need mysticism, and mysticism does not need science either.” But people need both.”
During his research, he recognized two basic principles in modern physics, which were also constant motifs of Eastern philosophies – the fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence of all phenomena and the essential dynamic nature of reality. Capra talked about the ideas from the book in 1972 with the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg in one of his interviews:
“I visited him several times in Munich and showed him the entire manuscript, chapter by chapter. He was very interested and open. He told me that he was aware of the parallels I wrote about from before. While working on quantum theory, he traveled to India and was the guest of Rabindranath Tagore with whom he discussed Indian philosophy. Heisenberg told me that these conversations helped me a lot when working on my own theory, convincing him that all these new ideas in quantum physics were not so incredible. He discovered that, in essence, there was an entire culture based on very similar ideas. And Niels Bohr also had similar experiences during his trip to China.”
In the previous part, we emphasized that the world is full of mysteries that science cannot explain, so we bring you some more of them.
Cocaine in Egyptian mummies
We all know that Columbus came to America with his crew thinking that he had discovered India. He may not have found the western route he was looking for, but he certainly found all sorts of interesting things. Let’s say a bunch of plants and animals that Europeans have never seen. And while the natives happily discovered European diseases such as smallpox brought to them by sailors, Columbus smoked tobacco and chewed coca leaves. Thinking people, this is not so bad! Everything else is history. And that is the history we learn in school. Cocaine, just like the coca plant, originates from South America. Which was discovered in the 15th century. But in 1992, German scientists did a little research on Egyptian mummies and discovered traces of hashish, tobacco and cocaine. And that in hair, skin and bones. Okay, hashish comes from Asia and the bourgeois from Egypt could get their hands on it. But tobacco and cocaine are from the New World. Of whom not only the ancient Egyptians had not heard, but no one had heard of in this part of the planet for, say, 3,000 years. The discovery is as incredible as if we found out today that chocolate is, say, from Jupiter. So how is that possible? No one understands. However, there are several theories. Although it is unlikely that archaeologists would have a party with hashish and cocaine in the pyramid and then put drugs in the bones of the mummies.
Hebrew text in New Mexico
Imagine that you are an archaeologist from America, when a local from New Mexico tells you that there is something you should look at. You take a gun, put on a hat and then in the middle of nowhere near Albuquerque you find a 90 ton rock with some text on it. This is exactly what happened to Professor Frank Hibben in 1933. Okay, Native Americans are known to have lived in the area for a long time, so the inscriptions on the stone shouldn’t be strange, right? But Frank immediately realized that the writing was not in Native American. He was on hiber. More specifically, the ancient version of the Hebrew language. And the text was the 10 commandments of God. It is even more interesting that some Greek letters were also used, which means that the author mixed Greek and Hebrew. Which is again typical of ancient times. The stone was basaltic and the same as the surrounding soil, which means it was not brought from somewhere else. Okay. But maybe some Jew in his moments of leisure went to the middle of the desert and carved the 10 commandments of God in stone? A perfectly logical explanation. But geologists have recently investigated the entire site and concluded that the text is at least 500 years old and perhaps even 2,000 years old. Which, you understand, is completely impossible.
Roman statues in Mexico
Somewhere around the second grade of elementary school, almost everyone will realize that Rome and South America are not very close. Even if by Rome we understand all the conquered territories of the Roman Empire. They may have sent their legionnaires to Africa and Asia, but Latin America was not really in their plans. Because they didn’t even know it existed since everything west of Europe and Africa was just the deep blue sea and Neptune’s realm. But then what is a sculpture from Rome doing in an old temple in Mexico? So up to this head with a characteristic appearance for Rome and the second century. It was not clear to anyone how this was possible until 1982. When a group of underwater researchers discovered a pile of ceramic jars in the sea off Rio de Janeiro.
A strange coin in North America
In 1957, archaeologists dug in Maine in the North-East of America. They were looking for artifacts from the Native Americans who lived there. And they found one coin that wasn’t quite Native American. Viking already. But the Vikings lived on the other side of the ocean. In Europe. The coin was discovered to have been made during the reign of King Olaf Kyrra in Norway sometime in the 11th century. And it was found in America among 30,000 artifacts of ancient Indians. It is very likely that the Vikings were the first to reach America. Although there is no definitive evidence for that theory.
A strange language in New Mexico
That New Mexico again. It’s not at all strange that aliens landed there at Roswell. Well, you see, in the wastelands of America there is a tribe of Indians who speak a strange language. The language commonly called – Japanese! The Zuni tribe may not exactly speak literary Japanese, but the similarities between the two languages are frightening, linguists say. Here are some examples. Clan is called kwe in Zuni and kwai in Japanese. Clown is newe a na zuni niwaka. The priest is Shawani and the Zuni is Shiwani. And similar words are just the beginning. Even crazier is that their syntax is almost identical. Both languages thus put verbs at the end of sentences, which is not a very common thing. It is interesting that the Zuni language has nothing in common with other Native American languages from its environment.
Why is there more matter than antimatter?
According to our current understanding of physics, particles, matter and antimatter are equal but opposite. When they meet, they are supposed to destroy each other and after that destruction, nothing remains. Most of that destruction happened at the beginning of the universe. However, enough matter remained to form billions and billions of galaxies, stars, planets and everything else. Most explanations revolve around the meson, a short-lived subatomic particle made of one quark and one antiquark. B-mesons decay more slowly than anti B-mesons, which may have led to enough B-mesons surviving to go on to form all the matter of the universe. B-, D- and K-mesons can oscillate and become antiparticles and then particles again. Research shows that B-mesons probably assume the “normal” state more often, and this may be the reason why there are more ordinary particles than antiparticles.
Where is all the lithium?
In the beginning, temperatures in space were incredibly high, and isotopes of hydrogen, helium, and lithium were widely synthesized. Hydrogen and helium are still present in large quantities and make up almost the entire mass of the universe, while we can only find and see about a third of lithium-7. There are indeed many explanations for why this is so, including hypotheses involving hypothetical bosons known as axions, or hypotheses that claim lithium is trapped in the star’s crust and undetectable by our present-day telescopes and instruments. However, so far there is no main theory to explain the absence of lithium from space.
Why do we sleep?
We know that the human body regulates the biological clock (a 24-hour cycle that also occurs in the absence of light) that maintains sleep and wake cycles, but we don’t really know why. While we sleep, our body regenerates tissues or undertakes other maintenance activities, and we spend a third of our lives sleeping. Some organisms have no need for sleep at all, but why do we? There are several different theories regarding sleep, although none of them satisfactorily answers this question. One of the theories is that animals that can sleep have developed effective methods of hiding from predators, while others that have not developed these methods must remain alert and awake and their organism regenerates in other ways, not through sleep. However, although we do not know why we sleep, more and more research is being conducted on the importance of sleep and how sleep affects important elements in our body, such as brain plasticity.
How does gravity work?
We all know that the Moon’s gravity causes ocean currents, that the Earth’s gravity keeps us on the surface of the planet, and that the Sun’s gravity keeps the planets in their orbits, but how much do we really understand about gravity? That powerful force comes from matter, and therefore, a more massive object has a greater ability to attract other objects. However, while scientists understand much of how gravity works, they don’t quite understand why it exists in the first place. Why are atoms mostly empty space? Why is the force that binds atoms different from gravity? Is gravity actually a particle? These are questions that simply cannot be answered with our current understanding of physics.
Where is everyone?
The visible universe has a diameter of 92 billion light years and is filled with billions of galaxies, stars and planets, but the only evidence of life in all that unimaginable vastness is right here on Earth.
Statistically, the probability that we are the only living beings in the universe is actually very impossibly small, so why haven’t we discovered any life forms yet? This question is known as the Fermi Paradox, and it gives us several suggestions and explanations as to why we have not yet encountered extraterrestrial life; some more likely than others. We can probably argue for days about the possibility that we are missing the signals, or that the signals exist and we don’t understand them, or that “aliens” can’t or won’t contact us, or—an extremely unlikely possibility—that Earth is the only planet ever to support life.
What is dark matter made of?
Approximately 80 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter. Dark matter is a rather unusual phenomenon, because it does not emit any light. Although it has been theorized for sixty years, there is no hard evidence that it exists. Most scientists believe that dark matter consists of loosely bound massive particles, which can be up to 100 times more massive than protons, but which our instruments for detecting baryonic matter (visible, normal dark matter) cannot detect. Our candidates for the composition of dark matter are axions, neutralins and photins.
How did life originate?
How did life originate, where did it come from? Those who believe in the primordial soup model believe that the early Earth was abundant with different elements and that over time they developed increasingly complex molecules that fueled the emergence of life. It could have taken place in the depths of the ocean, in clay or under the ice. Different models give varying degrees of importance to lightning and volcanoes in the swamp of life. Although DNA is the primary basis for current life on Earth, some scientists have suggested that RNA may have been the primary basis for the first forms of life. Furthermore, scientists wonder if nucleic acids once existed independently. Did life flourish only once, or is it possible that it arose and disappeared, and arose again? Some believe in the panspermia model, according to which microbial life came to Earth via meteorites and comets. If that is true, it again does not answer the question of how that life came into being.
In 1991, Christie’s auction house received a precious object that attracted attention not only because of its beauty, but also because of the mysterious symbols carved into its surface. The instrument was a medieval astrolabe, which our ancestors used for astronomical calculations. It was probably made in Spain in the late 14th century, and it is highly likely that it changed hands many times.
Among the experts interested in it was the British historian David A. King, who saw similar markings in a manuscript from Normandy, in northern France, dated around the same time. They were numerical notations unknown even to specialists in medieval studies and the history of mathematics. Invented by Cistercian monks in the late 13th century, it was a method of writing numbers used in monasteries across Europe for at least two centuries. At that time, Arabic numerals were beginning to be used more than the Roman version, but it would be centuries before the new system was widely accepted.
The Cistercians do not seem to have contributed to this dispute in any way: their notation was actually more of a third alternative, useful to European monks from England to Italy, from Spain to Sweden. And it enjoyed a certain popularity, because, unlike Roman numerals, it provided the possibility of writing any number with only one symbol. However, like the Roman system, that Cistercian system was not easy to multiply or divide.
By the time the printed book had already replaced manuscripts as a means of transmitting knowledge, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 had already conquered the world. Roman I, V, X, L, C, D and M have reserved their place in history. But the Cistercian numbers were rejected to such an extent that only a century later they had already become a mystery. One exception, King points out, was the use of this numbering until the 18th century to mark the numbers on wine barrels and measuring rod scales in Flanders.
Cistercian numerals have surfaced only a few times in history, most prominently when they were adopted by Freemasons in Paris in 1780, and in nationalist writings on German folklore from the 20th century.
But how did the system – which the German Renaissance mathematician Agrippa of Nettesheim described as “very elegant numbers” – actually work?
“Very elegant numbers”
According to King, the system of the Cistercian monks was based on a simple notation representing the numbers 1 to 99, which was brought to England from Athens by the monk John of Basingstoke in the early 13th century. Over time, the system was expanded to represent every number from 1 to 9,999 with a single digit. In his famous book Chronicle of Majors, the Benedictine monk and historian Matteo de Paris taught how to write them. In the figure below, each corner, or quadrant, contains a symbol for thousands (1), hundreds (2), tens (3), and units (4), in the following order: As it spread through the Cistercian monasteries, this system underwent slight modifications depending on the language the monks spoke. At one point, the baseline was horizontal, but by the 14th century, French monks had returned it to its original position. Matteo de Paris pointed out that “the most fascinating thing and what we do not find in the case of Roman or Arabic numerals is that each number can be represented by a single character”. The problem, of course, is being able to read and write with the help of this system. But if you follow the basic rules, it will not be as difficult as it seems at first glance.
Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in the 19th century was a favorite place of world archaeologists, because many valuable gold objects could be discovered in this area. Unfortunately, due to the high value of the items found, it was also a favorite of numerous robbers who emptied, stole and sold everything could be sold. The saddest thing of all is that most of the found and stolen things are never written down. When Howard Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he was convinced that an undiscovered and unrobbed tomb was hidden there, but no one agreed with him. Thanks to his persistence and dedication, but also to the financial resources of Lord Carnarvorn, who supported his work, in November 1922, the English archaeologist finally found what he was looking for. In the ruins of the Valley of the Kings, he discovered hidden steps that led to a 3,300-year-old tomb above which was written the name Tutankhamun. The sealed area consisted of four rooms, which the archaeological team began to explore.
On February 16, 1923, he finally stepped into the last room – the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and what he found there changed the face of archeology forever. Since the Egyptians considered the pharaohs gods, after death they mummified their bodies and filled the tomb with gold, clothes, weapons, jewelry and other valuable items.
Carter and his colleagues found untold wealth in the tomb. He had a gold death mask on his face, which today is considered the most famous object found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Although there was an inscription above the sarcophagus: Death will overtake those who disturb the pharaoh’s sleep, at first no one paid attention to it. But considering that 12 people from this expedition died suddenly within six weeks of the opening of the tomb, stories about Tutankhamun’s curse began to spread. Two months after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Lord Carnarvorne also died. The day after Lord’s death, his close friend George Gold came to investigate the matter. He entered the pharaoh’s tomb, a few hours later he developed a high fever and died.
By 1930, 22 people had died who participated in the opening of the tomb, which further spread the story of Tutankhamun’s curse.
So is there any truth behind this curse? Can a person really get sick from an ancient grave?
The European and American public, already affected by Egyptomania, was also gripped by the idea of the curse of the mummy. Newspapers sensationally published news about the death of members of the expedition and their relatives. Richard Bethell – Howard Carter’s assistant, Bethell’s father – Lord Westbury, A.C. Mace – Carter’s partner and Elizabeth Carnarvon are victims of Pharaoh’s revenge against journalists. Judging by the list of victims, native Egyptians were not affected by the curse. Carter, who was as popular for surviving the curse (at least until 1939, when he died) as for finding the mummy, hated the sensationalism created around the excavation. He was deeply disturbed by the public’s desire to hear so much about superstition. He even tried to convince people that pharaonic curses did not exist at all in Egyptian rites for the dead. Inscriptions on graves often contained protective formulas, messages to frighten enemies from this or that world, but usually contained good wishes for the buried.
But like all curses, the one about Tutankhamun’s tomb stuck in the public imagination. Eighty years after the opening of the tomb, the British Medical Journal published a scientific study on the curse of the mummy. Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia, examined the survival rate of 44 Westerners who according to Carter’s records were in Egypt during the excavation and inspection of the tomb. It’s Nelson assumed that the curse as a physical entity had the power to harm only those who were physically present at the opening of the chamber or casket (thus excluding Lord Carnarvon’s dog). Nelson defined several specific dates for the exhibition: February 17, 1922 – the opening of the third door, February 3, 1926 – the opening of the sarcophagus, October 10, 1926 – the opening of the coffin and November 11, 1926 – the examination of the mummy. Of the 44 Westerners identified, 25 were present during the opening or examination. These 25 lived an average of 20.8 years after exposure, and those who were not exposed lived an average of 28.9 years after 1926. The average age at death for those who were exposed was 70, and for those who were not exposed for 75 years. Nelson determined through this research that there is no such thing as a curse.
Could exposure to poisonous pathogens in the tomb lead to the death of an already sick man?
Carter claimed that the grave was free of bacterial matter, but modern research shows that bacteria that attack the respiratory organs may be present in ancient tombs. Sarcophagi contain formaldehyde, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia gas – all substances that damage the lungs. Ancient meat, fruit and vegetables found in burial offerings, not to mention mummified human bodies, can attract dangerous molds such as Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus, while bat droppings can grow fungi. But regardless of the potential for unpleasant micro-organisms, experts believe that Lord Carnarvon’s death is not linked to the tomb. He died outside the research season, at a time of year when it is too hot to dig in Egypt. He could have been exposed to bacteria, fungus and mold for months before his death.
The formation and separation of continents is part of the Earth’s geological cycle. With the help of computer models, researchers from Australia have predicted when and where a new supercontinent will form. The Earth’s landscape, characterized by vast oceans and endless continents, is constantly changing.
A new model developed by Australian scientists now predicts that the Pacific Ocean will disappear, bringing the continents closer together to form a new supercontinent called Amaziah, around the North Pole. But not for another 200 or 300 million years. The scenario projected by scientists from Curtin University in Australia and Peking University in China predicts that the Americas will move to the west and Asia to the east, Antarctica to South America, that Africa will merge with Asia on one side and Europe on the other – and form Amaziah. This research paper was published in the journal National Science Review.
Supercontinent
“Our result shows that with the centennial cooling of the Earth’s mantle, the total strength of the ocean will weaken, and the Pacific will shrink enough to become a smaller ocean than the expanding Atlantic and Indian oceans.”
said lead author Dr. Chuan Huang, from Kartin’s Earth Dynamics Research Group and the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
The name “Amazia” arose from the belief that America would merge with Asia.
The last supercontinent, known as Pangea, separated into continents about 180 million years ago. It encompassed almost all of Earth’s land mass and was surrounded by a global ocean called Pantalasa. In the latest projection, researchers used a supercomputer to simulate the formation of supercontinents. Computer modeling shows that the Pacific is already shrinking by a few centimeters each year. Dr. Huang predicts that Australia will collide first with Asia and eventually merge with the Americas, before the Pacific Ocean disappears.
Other scenarios
In the past, scientists predicted three different scenarios in addition to Amasia: Novopangea, Pangea Ultima, and Auric. This research casts doubt on the possibility of those other scenarios.
“One hundred percent certainty is a rather aggressive term that is rarely used in science, especially when we are talking about the evolutionary trend of the complex Earth system that we are just beginning to fully understand,” explains Zheng Xiang Li, co-author of the study.
“All the various models you’ve read about [including our work] are just hypotheses, and our prediction is based on our modeling results which are themselves limited by our current knowledge and number of assumptions (as with all similar work). “ It is estimated that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. In its geological cycle, dynamic movements and the separation of continents occur routinely. Continents are moved by the movement of tectonic plates under the ocean.
“We created spherical Earth-like systems with the help of supercomputers, mimicking Earth’s internal structures, properties and processes such as plate tectonics and mantle convection. We then ran a series of model simulations to see which factor(s) might control how supercontinents form.” , says Lee.
Among numerous scientists, the great earthquake that hit Nepal this year emphasized that the continents are still in the process of forming a new supercontinent.
Researchers are examining changes that will occur over several tens of millions of years. Geologist Zheng-Xiang Li, after the great earthquake, traveled to Nepal to use new seismological instruments to study the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. For now, there is no excessive fear among scientists that the tectonic plates will change their structure somewhat excessively.
What exactly is color? It can be argued that it is only a human illusion, but it is most accurate to say that color is a human visual perceptual characteristic. Namely, thanks to the receptors in the retina of the eye, man is able to see a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Exactly 200 years ago, the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) published the book Theory of Colors (Zur Farbenlehre) in which some of the first coherent explanations of what colors actually are were given. Apparently, it is an extremely unusual detail that a poet like Goethe in 1810 was engaged in the scientific research of colors, but this work of Goethe’s approach enabled, in addition to the research of the optical spectrum, as it was studied by physicists, to open up the field of investigation of the phenomenon of human color perception. This gave rise to today’s color theory, which explains the mixing of colors and the visual effect of certain color combinations for the needs of the visual and fine arts.
Goethe became interested in the phenomenon of color after looking at a refraction of light through a prism and its “splitting” into the colors of the rainbow. Realizing that the science of the time did not have very clear answers about the origin and perception of color, he faced this topic and examined some of the phenomena. Goethe’s Color Theory was not an axiomatically structured work, but rather an overview of what could be discerned about the phenomenon of color – even at the time it was published, Goethe’s book did not have any special scientific significance, but it was inspirational for artists and philosophers in the 19th century. Logically, in his analyses, Goethe relied on the fundamental theory already given by Isaac Newton (1643–1727) in the book Optics from 1704, which is considered a pioneering work on the nature of light and the first scientific explanation of how colors are created. With his famous experiment with the refraction of light through a prism, Newton explained how color is actually a property of light itself and that it is not simply a characteristic of an object.
But Goethe rightly saw that Newton’s explanation of how light “consists” of only seven colors in the spectrum that combine was not entirely complete and, less frequently mentioned, he rejected Newton’s theory of light being made up of particles, but he did not favor nor to the rival Huygens school that light is a wave. Goethe’s claim that it is neither a wave nor a particle fits remarkably well with the modern quantum mechanical explanation of the behavior of light. Goethe also drew a wheel with six colors, and at the end of the 19th century, German scientists developed the so-called RGB system in more detail with three basic colors: red, green and blue.
But what exactly is color? It can be argued that it is only a human illusion, but it is most accurate to say that color is a human visual perceptual characteristic. Namely, thanks to the receptors in the retina of the eye, a person is able to see a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, namely that which has wavelengths between 380 and 780 nanometers, which is most often called the visible spectrum (light or radiation with a longer or shorter wavelength belongs to radio waves , microwaves, infrared radiation, X radiation or gamma radiation).
Each monochromatic radiation originating from a light source has a specific wavelength, which can be, for example, 570 nanometers. We see this radiation in the human eye as light of a specific color, which in our case is yellow. However, the Sun’s or white light is not monochromatic and consists of a “mixture” of several monochromatic lights, which is clearly verified in experiments such as the one in which Newton separated white light into seven colors by refraction, and can also be found in nature in phenomena such as the formation long. In a simplified way, it can be said that certain wavelengths of visible light are in fact its color, but one should be careful with this explanation because other beings do not have to see light of the same wavelength in the same way, in the same color as a human.
It should be emphasized that objects and the world around us do not actually have their “own colors”. When light falls on a certain object or material, some parts of the light spectrum are well absorbed and some are reflected, which in itself is a true characteristic of the material. When an object is observed, only those parts of the spectrum, i.e. those “colors” that are rejected, reach the eye, which creates the illusion in the eye and brain that the object has that color.
But the bottom line is that the colored image of an object that we see, no matter how luxurious, exciting or depressing it may be, was not actually created by the object, but by the light that “carries” all possible colors within itself. There is no color in total darkness.
The most interesting thesis is that it is not at all necessary that the light of the same color is seen by every human being as the same color in their brain. What if person A perceives 570 nm light as blue and person B perceives it as red? This is not a problem in communication since we all call it yellow in everyday language. But this question shows better than anything else that the world does not have to be equal in the perception of two people.
Think about him. Turn off the light and try to touch all those objects around you in complete darkness, your body, fabrics, armchairs, tables and walls, all those constructions made of billions of tightly bound molecules with no color on them. All that dead colorless world. You will almost certainly want to turn the light back on. And to revive the colors again, even if they are only our illusions.
“But at the same time, anyone who is serious about science remains convinced that some kind of spirit manifests itself in the laws of the universe and that it is far superior to man.” In this way, doing science leads to religious motivations of a special kind, which are certainly quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
Albert Einstein
Collision and meeting of truth and beauty
In his house in the suburbs of Berlin, the great scientist Albert Einstein hosted Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian philosopher and poet, one July day in 1930. These two colossuses of the human spiritual struggle started one of the most intellectually stimulating discussions of the 20th century and beyond, mainly exploring the age-old friction between religious and scientific thought, but also the point of their meeting. The growing secularity of the Western world and the millennial tradition of India at one table, in a rare state of osmosis and synthesis.
This clip of that historic conversation and masterful meditation on the concepts of consciousness, beauty and truth is just a part of the published book about this meeting of giants, “Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore”.
EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the divine as something isolated from the world?
TAGORE: It is not isolated. The infinite personality of Man understands the Universe. There can be nothing that cannot be subsumed under the human personality, and this is proof that the Truth of the Universe is also the human Truth. I took scientific facts to explain it – matter is made up of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter seems solid. Similarly, humanity consists of individuals who, however, have their own interconnections of human relationships that give the human world a living unity. The entire universe is connected to us in a similar way, it is the human universe. I pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.
EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions of the nature of the universe: 1. The world as a unity dependent on humanity. 2. The world as a reality independent of the human factor. TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty. EINSTEIN: It is a purely human conception of the Universe. TAGORE: There can be no other conception. This world is the world of men – the scientific view of it is the view of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which bestows upon him the Truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are permeated through our experiences. EINSTEIN: It is the realization of the human entity. TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity. We must realize it through our emotions and activities. We have realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our own limitations. Science deals with what is not limited to individuals; it is an impersonal human world Truth. Religion understands these truths and connects them to our deeper needs; our individual awareness of Truth takes on universal significance. Religion applies values to the Truth, and we know this Truth well through our harmony with it. EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man? TAGORE: No. EINSTEIN: If there were no more human beings, Apollo Belvedere would no longer be beautiful. TAGORE: No. EINSTEIN: I agree with this conception in the case of Beauty, but not in the case of Truth. TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through man. EINSTEIN: I cannot prove that my conception is correct, but it is my religion. TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony existing in the Universal Being; The truth is in the perfect understanding of the Universal Mind. We as individuals approach it through our own mistakes and misconceptions, through our accumulated experiences, through our enlightened consciousness – how else could we know the Truth? EINSTEIN: I cannot scientifically prove that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is validly independent of humanity; but I firmly believe in it. I believe, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry says something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. In any case, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth that is relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first causes the negation of the existence of the second. TAGORE: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must be essentially human – otherwise, everything that we individuals perceive as true could never be called truth – at least not the Truth that is called scientific and can only be reached through logical processes, or in other words, the organ of thought that is human. According to Indian philosophy, there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be created by the isolation of the individual mind or described in words, but can be understood by the complete merging of the individual with its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to science. The nature of the Truth we are discussing is appearance – that is, what appears to the human mind as true and therefore human, may be called maya or illusion.
EINSTEIN: So, according to your conception, which may be purely Hindu, it is not an illusion of an individual, but of humanity as a whole. TAGORE: Species also belongs to unity, to humanity. Therefore, the whole human mind understands the Truth; the Indian or European mind arrives at the same understanding. EINSTEIN: The word “species” in the German language is used for all human beings, in fact, even monkeys and frogs could belong to it. TAGORE: In science we move through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus arrive at that understanding of the Truth which is in the mind of Universal Man. EINSTEIN: The problem begins with the question of whether Truth is independent of our consciousness. TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man. EINSTEIN: Even in our daily lives we are forced to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this in order to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable and comprehensible way. For example, if no one is in this house, and yet this table remains where it is. TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. What I perceive can be perceived by the same kind of consciousness that I possess. EINSTEIN: If no one were in the house, the table would still exist – but, from your point of view, it is illegitimate – because we cannot explain what it means for the table to be where it is, independently of us. Our natural point of view, regarding the existence of truth beyond humanity cannot be explained or proven, but it is a belief that no one can lack – not even primitive beings. We attribute superhuman objectivity to Truth; it is necessary for our existence, that truth which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind – although we cannot say what it means. TAGORE: Science has proven that a table, as a solid object, is an apparent object and that therefore what the human mind perceives as a table would not exist without that mind. At the same time, it must be recognized that the fact that ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate rotating centers of electrical force also belongs to the human mind. In understanding the Truth, there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind threatened in the individual. The eternal process of reconciliation is carried out in our science, philosophy, ethics. In any case, if there were a Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then it is completely non-existent for us. It is not difficult to imagine a mind for which sequences of things occur not in space but only in time, like sequences of notes in music. for such a mind, the conception of reality is akin to musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is a reality of paper that is infinitely different from the reality of literature. To a kind of mind such as the mind of a paper-eating butterfly, literature is completely non-existent, but to the human mind literature has a greater value of Truth than paper itself. Similarly, if there were a Truth that had no sensory or rational relation to the human mind, it would forever remain nothing as long as we remain human beings. EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you! TAGORE: My religion is the reconciliation of the super-personal man, the universal human spirit, in my individual being.
Leonardo Da Vinci is usually thought of primarily as an artist, but he was also an important humanist, scientist, and naturalist in the Renaissance. There is no evidence that Leonardo Da Vinci was an atheist, but he should be a role model for all of us in how to approach scientific and artistic problems from a naturalistic, skeptical perspective. He is also the reason why atheists should pay more attention to the connections between art and philosophy or ideology.
Leonardo believed that a good artist must also be a good scientist in order to best understand and describe nature. The humanistic, natural, and scientific aspects of Leonardo’s life and work are not always clear because he was the original Renaissance man: Leonardo’s art, scientific research, technological inventiveness, and humanistic philosophy were bound together.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s life and work
Leonardo Da Vinci was born in the village of Vinci in Tuscany, Italy on April 15, 1452. His skill and ability to evoke so much emotion with a few simple lines is almost unparalleled in the history of art. Although people may realize that he is an important artist, they do not realize how important he is as an early skeptic, naturalist, materialist and scientist. As with other Renaissance artists, Leonardo Vinci’s works were primarily religious.
This is only to be expected because the Catholic Church was the largest, wealthiest institution of its age. He commissioned the most northern art and architecture, so any talented artist would work primarily in a religious context. However, not all religious artists convey the same messages, and not all religious art is exclusively religious.
Mona Lisa/The virgin of the Rocks(sometimes The Madonna of the Rocks)
The art of Renaissance artists like Leonardo is not the same as medieval religious art. Leonardo emphasized the humanity of human beings, using Christian figures and mythology to convey secular, humanistic ideas. Christianity cannot be separated from his work, but neither can humanism.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Science & Naturalism
The origins of science can be traced back millennia, but it can be argued that the origins of modern science are in the Renaissance. Two characteristics of the Renaissance factor in modern science: a rebellion against religious and political restrictions on knowledge and a return to ancient Greek philosophy – which includes empirical, scientific exploration of nature. Renaissance figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci were explicit in their reliance on empiricism rather than faith, a willingness to study nature to gain knowledge rather than relying on tradition or dogma.
Leonardo Da Vinci demonstrated this attitude through careful exploration of the natural world. He didn’t just wonder how birds fly, for example, he undertook systematic studies of birds in flight – and then realized it and tried to apply it in the hope that humans would be able to fly too. Leonardo also studied how the eye sees in order to apply this knowledge to improve his artistic creations.
Driven by the belief that nature always takes the shortest path, he developed the early theorems of inertia, action/reaction, and force. None were as developed as the famous Descartes and Newton, but they show their involvement in science, as well as the degree to which they placed empirical data and science above faith and discovery. This is why Leonardo was such a strong skeptic, casting doubt on the popular pseudosciences of his time, especially astrology.
Leonardo Da Vinci and Renaissance Humanism
As one of the central figures of Renaissance Humanism, the central focus of all Leonardo da Vinci’s art and science was the human being. A focus on human problems rather than otherworldly problems led Renaissance figures such as Leonardo to spend more time on work that would benefit people in their daily lives rather than the extraneous interests of the Church.
The focus of the Renaissance on humanity was the spread of interest in Greek and Roman philosophy, literature and historiography, all of which provided a stark contrast to what was produced under the direction of the Medieval Christian Church. Renaissance Italians felt themselves to be inheritors of Roman culture – a legacy they were determined to study and understand. Naturally, the study led to admiration and imitation.
We have no direct evidence that Leonardo Da Vinci himself was obsessed with or tried to imitate ancient Roman culture, but the key to Renaissance humanism for us today is more its spirit than its content. We have to compare Humanism with medieval piety and scholasticism against which Humanism was considered a breath of fresh air. Renaissance Humanism was a revolt – sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit – against the other-holiness of medieval Christianity. Humanists turned away from a religious preoccupation with personal immorality, focusing instead on how to enjoy, use, and improve this life for the people who live it.
Renaissance humanists did not just write about new ideas, they also lived their ideas.
The medieval ideal was an ascetic monk, but the Renaissance gave us the idea of a Renaissance man: A man who lives in the world and as much as he hears as many people can learn as many different characteristics of the world as possible not only for the sake of esoteric knowledge, but to better improve human life here and now.
The anti-clerical and anti-ecclesiastical leanings of the humanists were a direct consequence of their reading of ancient authors who did not care for gods, did not believe in any gods, or believed in gods that were far and away from anything humanists were familiar with. Renaissance Humanism was a revolution in thought and feeling that left no part of society, not even the highest level of Christianity, untouched.
This was determined by a statistical analysis published in the journal Science of the survival probability of about 4,000 people who reached the age of 105 or more.
A team of scientists, led by demographer Elizabeth Barbi from the University of Sapienza and statistician Francesco Lagon from the University of Roma Tre in Rome, concluded that the risk of death, which seems to increase with age, balances out after the age of 105, creating a kind of “mortality plateau” “. According to scientists, since that time, the chances of someone dying before reaching their next birthday are half-and-half.
French demographer Jean-Marie Robin, who was not involved in the research, believes that if there is a balance in mortality, there is no limit to human longevity. Scientists have long debated whether there is an upper age limit to life in humans. The consensus is that the risk of death increases systemically in adulthood, until about age eighty.
But there is great disagreement about what happens when people reach their ninetieth or hundredth year.
Some scientists have reexamined demographic data and concluded that there is a fixed, natural “expiry” of the human species and that the death rate continues to rise. Others have gone through the same data and concluded that the risk of death levels off at a very advanced age and that, accordingly, human lifespan has no upper limit. In 2016, a group of geneticists reopened that debate by analyzing the recorded ages of the world’s oldest individuals. They estimated that human longevity peaks at the age of 115. The group substantiated this with the example of only a few individuals who have lived the longest possible lifespan since the mid-nineties.
On the other hand, research published in various journals claims the same thing. According to Donald Roland, the world is facing a new global trend of increasing the number of old people, which will lead to a series of social changes worldwide. Namely, in 1950, no country had more than 11 percent of the population over 65 years old. In 2000, this number increased to 18 percent, and by 2050, scientists predict that as many as 38 percent of the total population will be older than the mentioned age. Only in the last quarter of the twentieth century, this number increased by a full six percent, while at the same time a serious decline in fertility was recorded. According to Roland, the world will soon have more pensioners than children, considering that they will make up as much as a quarter or a third of the number of nations.
In this connection, numerous economic studies were conducted that predicted a large burden on pension funds and calculated how many young, able-bodied people would have to work to support just one pensioner. However, not only pension funds will be affected by the aforementioned trend, but also healthcare, the economy, the working-age population and many other aspects of modern society.
Today, there are numerous definitions of age that most agree on. However, when it comes to the age limit and the criteria used to classify people in this category, there are different understandings in different countries on different continents.
The longest lifespan was recorded in the case of the French woman Jean Calme, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. In the study, scientists focused on a group of people aged 105 and older in Italy, the country with the highest percentage of very old people per capita. Thus, they avoided the problem of variation in data collection among different legal jurisdictions. Most believe that these data provide the best evidence for the onset of mortality balancing at very old ages in humans.
There are about 500,000 people in the world today who are 100 years old and older – a number that is expected to double every next decade. Even if mortality risk in later life remains flat, the growing number of people over 100 should continue to grow at a rate of one year per decade.
Scientists hope to better understand the causes of the decline in death rates in later life. Some of them believe that too few centenarians and older people are included in the analysis and that therefore the evidence for balancing mortality is not credible.
How did the screw get into the 300 million year old rock? Why did the builders of the pyramids in Mexico bring material from thousands of kilometers away in Brazil? The world is full of mysteries that scientists cannot yet explain, and here we present some of them.
Chinese mosaic lines
These unusual and beautiful lines were carved in China’s Gansu Sheng desert. Some sources indicate that they were created in 2004, but this has not been officially confirmed. They are located near the Mogao Caves, which are protected as a world heritage. The lines cover a large expanse, but despite the uneven and inaccessible terrain, they retain linear proportions.
A mysterious stone doll
A small human figure was discovered in Nampa (Idaho) during the drilling of a well and caused great interest to scientists in the last century. An indisputable work of human hands, it was found at a depth of 97 meters, which leads to the conclusion that it was created long before the arrival of man in this part of the world.
The first stone calendar
In the Sahara desert, in Egypt, there is the oldest “astronomically arranged stones” in the world: Nabta. More than a thousand years before Stonehenge was created, people arranged stones here in a circle, on the shore of a lake that has long since dried up. More than 6,000 years ago, three-meter-high stones were dragged from a distance of one kilometer. Although the desert in the western part of Egypt is completely dry, this was not the case in the past. There is convincing evidence that there have been several wet periods in the past, the last being 130,000-70,000 years ago. At that time, there was a savanna here, where numerous animal species lived, such as buffalo and large giraffes, various types of antelopes and gazelles.
A 300 million year old iron screw
In the summer of 1998, Russian scientists, who were searching for meteorite remains 300,000 kilometers southwest of Moscow, found a part of the rock, which contained an iron screw. Geologists estimate that the stone is 300-320 million years old. At that time, not only were there no intelligent life forms on Earth, there were no dinosaurs either. The screw, on which the head and groove are clearly recognizable, is about one centimeter long and about three millimeters in diameter.
Sliding stones
Even NASA cannot explain this phenomenon. It is about the stones that slide on the dried lake bed in the American National Park “Death Valley”. Lake Racetrack extends over an area of 4 km from north to south and 2 km from east to west and is covered with mud. Stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of kilograms, slide over the sediments, leaving behind grooves, but no one has yet had the opportunity to see when this happened.
The power of the pyramids
The walls of the pyramids of the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan are made of the mineral micaschist, although the nearest quarry is thousands of kilometers away in Brazil. Today, this stone is used in technology and energy production, so the question arises as to why the builders went to such lengths to incorporate this material into the walls of their city.
Dog suicides
Overten Bridge, near Milton (Scotland), built in 1859, became famous because of a series of unsolved cases of “suicides” of dogs, who jumped from it into the abyss. The incidents were first recorded in the 50s and 60s of the last century, when it was observed that dogs – usually breeds with elongated muzzles, such as collies – suddenly jump from a bridge 15 meters into an abyss.
A petrified giant
A fossilized Irish giant from 1895, about four meters tall, was discovered in Antrim (Ireland), during blasting in a mine. Interestingly, he has six fingers and toes.
Pyramid from Atlantis
Scientists are still investigating the remains of megaliths found in the so-called the Yucatan Channel, in the waters of Cuba. American archaeologists, who discovered the site, immediately announced that they had found Atlantis.
Giants in Nevada
A Native American legend about 3.6-meter tall red-haired giants who lived in this area before the Indians settled it was confirmed when in 1911 the mummified remains of a giant human jaw were discovered in a cave. In 1931, two skeletons were found in the bed of the lake, one of which was 2.8 and the other 3.5 meters high.
A mysterious wedge
In 1974, an aluminum wedge was discovered under the 20,000-year-old remains of a mastodon on the banks of the Morish River in Transylvania, not far from the town of Ajuda. It was covered with a layer of oxide one millimeter thick, which indicates that it is 300-400 years old. Aluminum is usually found mixed with other metals, but this was pure aluminum. The three-hundred-year-old artifact is a mystery because aluminum was not discovered until 1808.
Loladof’s plate
It is about a 12,000-year-old stone vessel, which Polish professor Sergej Loladof discovered in Nepal. It seems that Egypt is not the only place visited by aliens in ancient times. On the plate is a clearly visible plate in the shape of a UFO, and there is also a being that looks remarkably like “little gray”.
This ruler belonged to a long line of Greek Macedonians whose ancestor is Ptolemy I, one of the most trusted lieutenants of Alexander the Great. The Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt from 323 BC. to 30 B.C. and most of its rulers remained faithful to Greek culture. In fact, Cleopatra was known as one of the first members of this dynasty to speak the Egyptian language. Although she came from the Ptolemaic family, which cultivated incestuous marriages, she did not have certain physical defects. On the contrary, in addition to her physical beauty, she was also gifted with a very good intellect when it comes to diplomacy and head of state. It is interesting that although she was staying in Rome, during the murder of Julius Caesar, the government did not prosecute her.
Cleopatra, along with Mark Antony, took her own life in 30 BC. after Octavian’s forces exiled them to Alexandria. While Antony is believed to have stabbed himself in the stomach, Cleopatra’s method is less well known. Legend has it that she died after letting a poisonous snake bite her hand, but the ancient chronicler Plutarch claims that what really happened is unknown. He says that Cleopatra is known to have hidden poison in her combs, and the historian Strabo states that she probably applied a deadly cream. With this in mind, many scientists suspect that she used a needle dipped in some kind of poison.
A tunnel discovered under an Egyptian temple
Kathleen Martinez, an archaeologist from the University of Santo Domingo, has been searching for Cleopatra’s lost tomb for almost 20 years. Now she believes she has made a crucial breakthrough. Martinez and her team discovered a 1,305-meter tunnel, located 13 meters underground, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced recently, and architectural design experts called the discovery an engineering marvel. “The excavation revealed a huge religious center with three sanctuaries, a sacred lake, more than 1,500 objects, busts, statues, gold objects, a huge collection of coins depicting Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and Ptolemy,” Martinez told CNN. .
“The most interesting discovery is the complex of tunnels that lead to the Mediterranean Sea and submerged structures that have not yet been explored,” she added.
Exploring these underwater structures will be the next phase of her search for the lost tomb of the Egyptian queen – a journey that began for her in 2005.
“I admire Cleopatra as a historical figure. She was a victim of Roman propaganda, with the aim of spoiling her image,” Martinez said.
“She was an educated woman, probably the first to be formally taught at the Museum in Alexandria, the cultural center of her time,” says Martinez, who noted that she admired Cleopatra as a student, but also as a person who spoke several languages, was a philosopher and a mother. .
When her partner, the Roman general Mark Antony, died in her arms in 30 BC, Cleopatra took her own life soon after by allowing herself to be bitten by a snake, according to popular belief. That moment has been immortalized in art and literature – but, more than two millennia later, little is known about where their remains actually are.
A series of clues led Martinez to believe that Cleopatra’s tomb could be located in the Temple of Osiris in the ruined city of Taposiris Magna, in northern Egypt, where the Nile River empties into the Mediterranean Sea. As he explains, Cleopatra in her time was considered the human incarnation of the goddess Isis, as Antony was considered the embodiment of the god Oris, Isis’s husband.
I will discover hope from dreams
Martinez therefore believes that Cleopatra may have decided to bury her husband in the temple in order to keep everything in line with this myth. Of all the 20 temples around Alexandria she has studied, she says no other site, structure or temple has such a perfect combination of conditions for this – as the temple of Taposiris Magna. In 2004, Martinez presented her theory to Zahia Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist who was then Egypt’s minister of antiquities. Her project was approved a year later. And after years of searching, Martinez feels he’s getting closer to his dream discovery. Excavations so far have revealed that the temple was dedicated to Isis – which Martinez believes is another sign that the lost tomb is nearby.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Egyptian coast has been affected by earthquakes for centuries, causing parts of Taposiris Magna to collapse and sink under the waves. Although “it’s too early to know where these tunnels lead,” Martinez believes that if they lead to Cleopatra, it will be the most important discovery of the century.
Often when we fall in love we cannot explain our choice, this does not mean that there is no explanation for it, but that we should dig deeper. Every man and every woman has an inner opposite, said the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in Caseville, Switzerland, the son of a Protestant minister. During his high school education, he first wanted to study archaeology, then philology, and finally opted for medicine. After completing his medical studies in Basel, he decided to specialize in psychiatry. After he received his doctorate and became an assistant professor at the University of Zurich, he married Emma Rauschenbach, with whom he had five children and who was his collaborator for the rest of his life.
The year 1907 represents a turning point in Jung’s life. That year he met Sigmund Freud in Vienna. On that occasion, they talked for a full 13 hours. The admiration was mutual. Jung said that Freud was the first significant man he met. However, in 1912 there was a divergence due to conflicts on the theoretical and personal level. After that, Jung founded his own, analytical or complex psychology, in order to point out the difference in relation to psychoanalysis.
When Jung tells us about male-female relationships, he says that a man has a female part, and a woman has a male part – this is a hidden code by which we unconsciously search for our partner.. Here is his precise quote: “Each man carries within himself the eternal image of a woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a particular female image. This image is the imprint or “archetype” of the experience of all female ancestors, the repository, so to speak, of all the impressions that women have ever acquired.”
Carl Gustav Jung called the female part in a man “anima”, and the male part in a woman – “animus”. From this it follows that in the human soul there is that “other half” that all people want so much to find in the outside world. And this also means that each person carries in his soul the image of the partner with whom he will be happy and whom he will love.
That is why love with another person happens suddenly, and she cannot explain the reason for her choice. After all, the picture in our soul is vague and defies any logic, analysis or explanation. And love happened because the outer woman matched some part of the image of his inner woman. And there lies the main unsolvable problem: no external woman will ever fully correspond to this internal image, but it can only be some features and character traits that associate us with the woman from the internal image.
Although there are those similarities, the rest of that person can be completely unacceptable to a man and this is one of the main reasons why we say we fall in love with the wrong people. This is the reason for constant quarrels and conflicts between lovers and futile attempts to change partners. Every person unconsciously wants to change his partner because of that vague image of an ideal partner that he carries in his soul. But no one has ever succeeded in this. However, the attempts do not stop, and each new one brings additional disappointment. Below are additional quotes from Jung that are mutually related to male-female relationships:
I can’t love anyone if I hate myself. This is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are distinguished by their special morality, because they radiate an atmosphere of self-inflicted torture. It is not a virtue but a vice.
The creative mind plays with the object it loves.
Where love reigns, there is no will to power: and where power prevails, love is lacking. One is the shadow of the other.
Without love, nothing is possible…because love makes a person willing to risk everything.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks beyond his heart-dreams. Who looks inside the heart – wake up.
Any way you shake it, the meter is an extremely important unit of measurement. It is one of the seven base units used in the International System of Units, commonly known as the metric system. Almost every country on Earth uses a meter to measure distance. And before the Americans, Liberians or Myanmar (the only three countries in the world that still officially use the Imperial system) shout: We don’t use the meter! We use our feet! We would ask them to consider this: The US government officially defines a foot as 0.3048… meters. That’s right, even if you don’t want to, the meter is how we define length and distance almost everywhere on Earth. But where did the meter come from? Who decided how long a meter is? How do we know something is exactly one meter? Well, the story of this simple measurement is long, incredibly overcomplicated – and absolutely fascinating.
40 rods to a pig’s head
Let’s go back to the beginning, to before the meter even existed. That was in the days when measurements were more of an art than a science. When a foot was… the length of one’s foot. Whose leg exactly? No one can say. When an inch was the length of your thumb, or the king’s thumb, or even three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end, lengthwise. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that these measurements are not very precise. To make matters worse, the measurements varied greatly from region to region. Maybe you use an inch of barley, but they use a thumb-inch, or maybe they don’t use inches at all, but something else entirely. According to one author, a quarter of a million different measurements were used at one time in France alone. Hey, those were the old days – what else could you expect? But then the old days became the not-so-old days, and science became more and more complex. People began to realize that these inconsistent and highly imprecise measurements made scientists’ jobs difficult. They began to call for a universal measure. One measurement to rule them all. This is the beginning of the metro’s life, but it took centuries to get to where it is today.
Very close…
So we had the idea of coming up with a single, universal measurement of distance, but how did we decide what it should be? Well, one of the first ideas came from the English architect Christopher Wren in the late 1600s. He proposed that the new universal measure should be the length of the second pendulum. Basically, if you make a pendulum that takes exactly one second to swing completely in one direction, the length of that pendulum will be one meter. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? After all, this would mean that everyone on Earth could build their own seconds pendulum and know exactly how long meter long. Perfect! No more grains of barley! Well, not quite. Unfortunately, the pendulum per second varies depending on where you are you find in the world – not very much, but enough that it cannot be a universal measure.
The metric system is a tool of the devil
A bunch of other ideas were thrown around, but no one made much headway. Then something happened – and that something was called the French Revolution. France ushered in what it hoped would be a new age of science and knowledge. As such, the French Academy of Sciences has decided that it is high time to settle this whole thing with universal measures once and for all. After years of talks, they finally appointed a commission to actually do it. This commission was headed by a man named Jean-Charles de Borda. If there’s one thing this guy likes, it’s decimalization. That is, he liked things that could be divided evenly, and we can partly thank him that there are 1,000 grams in a kilogram, 1,000 meters in a kilometer, etc. Now, if Borda had his way, we would have 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute. and 400 degrees in a circle—not all of his ideas stuck—but his committee eventually decided to define a meter: It should be exactly one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
Dunkirk to Barcelona
Now that that was decided, all we had to do was measure the distance from the North Pole to the equator, do some quick calculations, and above all change – oh, we have a universal measure. Simple, right? It is not OK. In the late 18th century, measuring such a great distance was no easy feat. In the end, a plan was made. Instead of measuring the end, the researchers would simply measure the distance from Dunkirk, France to Barcelona, Spain. These two cities were located on the same longitude, so if you knew exactly how far apart they were, you could calculate the distance from the equator to the North Pole.
Grueling Work
Two astronomers, Pierre Machen and Jean-Baptiste Delambre, were hired to make the measurements. Mechain started down to Barcelona, and Delambre to Dunkirk, and they went about their business. But unfortunately, exploring so many kilometers was still an extremely daunting task. Plus, the aforementioned French Revolution ensured chaos reigned in the countryside. It’s not exactly the easiest environment to do tedious and precise calculations.
Holy meter
The time has come to make a meter. Using Mechain and Delambre’s measurements, mathematicians were able to calculate the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Then they divided that by ten million and we ended up with. Meter. Universal measure. With the magic number finally found, the Academy of Sciences had a physical object, a rod made of platinum, made to that exact dimension. Since then, that bar, known as the meter des Archives, has been the literal yardstick for one meter. First of all, the number that Mechain and Delambre came up with? That’s wrong. There were small errors in the calculations, which threw everything off. These errors would haunt Mechain for the rest of his life, and he eventually contracted yellow fever and died while in the field, trying to correct the calculations. Now the number was not far off: it was shorter than a real meter by only two tenths of a millimeter. But remember, the whole point of this was to make a meter that was exactly one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. Why go through all that work just to get it wrong? Well, maybe you skipped all the measurements and just made a meter of some arbitrary length and called it a meter.
In fact, it was more than a century before we invented the ideal solution: the laser. The laser allowed scientists to measure the distance light particles travel, and since the speed of light is constant, we finally had a perfect way to define a meter. A way that will never change and could be repeated all over the world. That is why the definition of a meter used today is the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299 792 458 seconds. It may sound complicated, but it’s something that will never change. Sure, it doesn’t have the same kitschy appeal of barley grains, but oh well. You can’t have everything.
During the entire history of the world, death occupied many scientists who were looking for a solution to prevent it. We present to you one scientist from the present and one from the past who have a positive attitude towards the given problem.
The first one we are talking about is Nikola Tesla, who by all accounts stood out from other scientists because his attitude towards spirituality had its own specificities, but also a peculiarity when he approached metaphysics. He was of the view that the mental component associated with the spirituality of the human being enables progress. This is what set him apart from Einstein who denied the mental component. Studying the mechanisms of his psychic life, Tesla discovered that a series of images from the “other reality” are always related to events in the “real reality” and that there is a fairly regular correlation.
He managed to come to the realization that his every thought was caused by some external impression.
Tesla tells us:
“Not only thoughts, but also actions are caused in the same way. After some time, it was perfectly obvious to me that I was only an automaton endowed with the ability to move, responding to the stimuli of the sensitive organs and thoughts and acting accordingly. The practical result of this knowledge was, many years later, the discovery of teleautomatic control, the laws of which I finally became aware, although I had previously carried them within me in the form of vague and unfinished ideas.”
Tesla continues and says that “death does not exist, and with this knowledge, the fear of it also disappears. And remember: not a single human that existed died. They turned into light and as such continue to exist. The secret is that those light particles return to their original state. Returning to one of the previous energies. Christ and others knew that secret. I was searching for how to preserve human energy. It is one of the forms of light. In the Soul, it is sometimes equal to the supreme light of heaven . I didn’t search for it for myself, but for the good of everyone. I believe that my discovery will make people’s lives easier and more bearable and direct them to spirituality and morality.“
Today, there are scientists who share a sketchy opinion with Tesla, such as Robert Lanza, an assistant professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. One of the principles of quantum physics is that certain events cannot be overlooked with one hundred percent certainty. On the contrary, there are a number of possible events, each of which has a different probability of occurrence. According to the so-called “many-worlds” interpretation, each of these events actually represents one universe, that is, a world. Such a point of view is also supported by the new scientific theory of biocentrism, introduced by Lanza himself, according to which there is an infinite number of parallel worlds. Everything that could ever happen takes place in one of those worlds. For example, if we had four possible choices when choosing a college, although we think we chose only one, all four scenarios actually took place, but each in one of the parallel worlds.
All these worlds exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in them, but death does not exist in any of these scenarios. Lanza concludes that although our bodies are doomed to self-destruction, that subjective feeling of living “who am I?” it’s just 20 watts of energy emanating from the brain. Given that one of the most certain scientific laws is that energy is never lost, it cannot be destroyed or created, it means that the energy of the feeling of living does not leave with death either “Everything we see and experience right now is actually a whirlwind of information produced in our brain, and time and space are just the means by which we unite all that information within the same framework,” Lanza points out. It means that we actually live in a timeless and spaceless world, and in such a world death does not exist.
Even Albert Einstein admitted that his old friend “departed this strange world a little before me. It doesn’t mean anything. People like us… realize that the difference between past, present and future is actually just a stubbornly persistent illusion”.
The universe is constantly surprising us, always destroying what we think we know in every aspect of the endless abyss that surrounds us. Carl Sagan described it best: Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known. Whenever we go looking for proof of a certain concept or idea, something completely unrelated to what we thought we understood is turned upside down. The universe will naturally contain some of the strangest coincidences and phenomena you’ve ever seen, from unicorn-shaped galaxies and Mickey Mouse-shaped craters on Mercury to nebulae and shooting stars. Here we will look at 6 of the strangest phenomena in the universe!
A 186-year-old tornado on Jupiter
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a high-pressure storm on the giant planet Jupiter that is said to be as bad as Earth’s worst hurricanes. It’s so big you could fit three of our Earths in it. In 1979 Voyager 1 took amazing photos of this phenomenon. With these and other photographs of Jupiter, they have allowed scientists to see different colors in the clouds around the Great Red Spot, suggesting that the clouds rotate counterclockwise around the spot at different altitudes. Big red spot has been observed from Earth for about 400 years as large enough to be seen by ground-based telescopes. In 1665, Giovanni Domenico Cassini is said to have been the first to officially observe this miracle. Obviously this is quite difficult to confirm, but one thing is for sure, this dwindling power plant is dying, getting smaller and smaller over time. Nevertheless, it is still one of the strangest spectacles in the universe.
The largest reservoir of water in space
The largest and most distant reservoir of water in space ever discovered was found in 2011. The water is equal to 140 trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans. Water surrounds a quasar containing a giant black hole called APM 08279+5255 – 20 billion times the size of the Sun and more than 12 billion light-years away. The quasar is powered by a supermassive black hole that slowly engulfs the surrounding gas-filled disk or dust, producing huge amounts of energy. The energy production of this quasar is equal to one thousand trillion suns. All the water vapor in the Milky Way is 400 times less than in this quayar. Water vapor surrounds the black hole in a gaseous circle that reaches hundreds of light years, a light year is about six trillion miles. Although the gas is -53 degrees C and 300 trillion times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere, it is five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what is typical in galaxies like the Milky Way. Measurements of steam and other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggest that there is enough gas to feed the black hole until it grows to about six times its mass, but who knows what will happen to it until then.
A supermassive black hole defies science
The largest black hole in the universe was discovered in 2015, J0100+2802 inside the largest quasar, with the highest brightness of any known quasar. J0100+2802 is puzzling astronomers because, with a mass of 12 billion suns and a luminosity of 420 trillion suns, it is 7 times brighter than the previous brightest quasar. It was formed only 900 million years after the Big Bang and should not be anywhere near the size it is for its age. This black hole is located 12.8 billion years away from Earth. Xiaohui Fan, author of the study that discovered this phenomenon, summed up its impressiveness perfectly: “How could a quasar so bright and a black hole so massive form so early in the history of the universe, in an era shortly after the earliest stars and galaxies had just appeared? ” The significance of this finding cannot be understated as it has forced astronomers to rethink their understanding of quasars and their formation.
Diamond planet
55 Cancri e, discovered in 2004, is a planet in the Milky Way that is at least one-third diamond. 55 Cancri e is known as a super-Earth, with a radius twice that of Earth and a mass eight times greater. It orbits its host star, 55 Cancri which is found about 40 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cancer, in just 18 hours, remember it takes Earth 365 days to orbit our Sun.
A big cloud of raspberry flavored rum
Sagittarius B2, a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust found about 390 light-years from the center of the Milky Way, contains massive amounts of ethyl formate. Ethyl formate, a chemical compound, is responsible for giving this behemoth its raspberry and rum scent. Sagittarius B2 has a mass that is 3 million times that of the Sun and spans an area of about 150 light years. Temperatures in the cloud range from 27 degrees C to -233.2 degrees C. Don’t get too excited as there are plenty of other chemical compounds, including propyl cyanide. This alcoholic wonder contains billions of liters of alcohol. The composition of Sagittarius B2 was studied in Spain by astronomers using the IRAM radio telescope. The cloud actually contains enough ethyl alcohol to fill 400 trillion trillion beers. To consume that much, every person on earth would have to drink 300,000 pints every day for a billion years.
A planet of burning ice
Gliese 436 b is a planet about the size of Neptune and was first discovered in 2004. It was found about 30 million light years from Earth and is about 20 times larger. It orbits only 6.9 million kilometers from its star and lasts 2 days and 15.5 hours, while the Earth orbits about 150 million kilometers from the Sun. Gliese 436 b has a minimum surface temperature of 245 degrees C. The water that exists on the planet, known as ice-X, is held together by enormous gravitational forces despite the extreme temperatures. The substance, of course, is not ordinary ice, its compressed water is similar to the way diamonds form from carbon. These forces prevent water molecules from evaporating and escaping the planet, instead becoming tightly packed deep inside.
Hermann Hesse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, died 50 years ago. He is considered one of the most popular German authors in the world, despite the fact that he was written off long ago in his homeland. He always knew he wanted to be a writer. This was not the case with his parents, his father, a missionary in India, and his mother, the daughter of a missionary, believed that their son should be a priest. He was born on July 2, 1877 in the town of Kalvo, near Stuttgart. As a child, his parents sent him to a Protestant monastery, from where he ran away, unable to cope with the Christian upbringing.
Either a writer or nothing
He wanted to be a writer and nothing else. His journey towards realizing that dream was like an odyssey. He attended various schools, failed to find himself and in a depressive phase at the age of fifteen, he tried to commit suicide. The search for one’s own identity, the difficult process of self-realization – these are themes he returned to in his novels. His works are based on personal experiences, they are self-analytical poetic confessions. Hesse’s biographer Gunnar Dekker explains the interest in his works in the world as follows: “The question of autonomy that goes beyond the religious level. It comes after religious understanding and is not militant and missionary, it is open to other ways of life and other ideas. This is a very present issue in the Arab world.”
Here are some of his most famous quotes:
We are happy only when we do not ask for anything from tomorrow, and from today we gratefully receive what it brings us.
Love does not exist to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
The older I got, the less fulfilled I was by the small pleasures that life offered me, and the clearer I understood where to look for the true sources of joy and meaning. I learned that being loved means nothing and that loving is everything, that the ability to feel is what gives beauty and value to our existence.
A hero is one who has the courage to face his destiny.
People who have courage and character are always unpleasant to other people.
But happiness was always where someone knew how to love and lived for his feelings. If he nurtured them, if he did not trample and suppress them, they brought him pleasure. Beauty does not bring joy to the one who possesses it, but to the one who knows how to love and admire it.
Suffering hurts only because you fear it. She’s chasing you because you’re running away from her. You don’t have to run away, you don’t have to be afraid of her. You have to love. So he loves suffering. Don’t resist her, don’t run away from her. Taste how sweet she is in the depths, surrender to her and do not receive her with hatred.
Your hatred is that it causes you pain and nothing else. Suffering is not suffering, death is not death, unless you make them so.
Severity arises from overestimating time. But in eternity there is no time, eternity is just a moment just enough for one joke. The world is beautiful when viewed without the desire to search, simply, like a child.
It is not our goal to become like others, we need to be different from each other, to learn to see people who are different from us and to respect them for who they are.
We have in our soul everything that has ever lived in human souls. All the Gods and devils that have ever existed… they are all within us, they are there as possibilities, as desires, as exits.
Wondering if we have actually progressed in understanding the world in the 21st century, I present to you a list of seven knowledge that science has brought us in the last few years. Namely, the world today is significantly different from the one we lived in before 2001. Before the era of social networks, world presidents could not use public networks to advertise, there were no smartphones, and cinemas did not wear 3D glasses. The new coming century increasingly heralded the future century. The new changes were, of course, contributed by various historical processes, old and never resolved colonial challenges, globalization and unstoppable population growth. In addition to the above, we must also include the unpredictable consequences of new technologies such as the development of the Internet, mobile telephony and the use of new materials. While noting that many things were already known, here we did not look back at all the technological breakthroughs in this century, as well as the fact that millions of scientists publish millions of papers every year, the true effect of which will be known in the so-called future. But the main question here is which seven findings science has undoubtedly reached in this century. The following list would look like this:
1-Let’s get to know the human genome
At the very beginning of the 21st century, that is, in 2001, projects involving the deciphering of the human genome were announced, and various companies simultaneously entered the race to take the lead in genetic technology. Along with stem cells and nanotechnologies, the understanding of genetics has since changed medicine dramatically, and the consequences of understanding the genome extend to all areas of science.
2-Gravitational waves exist The spectacular result of the LIGO experiment confirmed in 2016 the existence of gravitational waves that no one could record before, and which Einstein predicted through his theory of relativity. Through a previous experiment in the world of science, Radio-Astronomy was born, a science that studies the movement and changes in radio waves.
3-CRISPR can replace any gene It is about an exceptional technology that has been intensively researched since 2005. CRISPR is an almost accidentally discovered defense mechanism that bacteria defend and protect against viruses and that enables them to effectively cut intruders from their DNA chain with the help of proteins called CAS, which work like a kind of scissors. The researchers quickly realized that with its help, they could cut out pieces of genetic information without them being viruses. With this, we come to the knowledge that every gene can be replaced with such a procedure, that is, that the given research can be applied to humans as well. Thus, in 2012, a technology called CRISPR/CAS9 was born.
4-Neaderthals in us A large amount of research has revealed many new things about the life of the Neanderthals who were more intelligent than previously thought. Other new species of our genus Homo were discovered in this century, and thanks to genetic research, a lot was learned about the continuous interbreeding of all these species with the first humans. Since 2010, the Neanderthal genome decipherment project has been launched, with which we will see in the next few years how far the research has reached.
5-Planets above the solar system Although the first planets were discovered in 1978, after 2009 a real revolution in finding planets outside the solar system began. The Kepler space telescope has since discovered a large number of so-called exoplanets, planets that orbit other stars in space. To date, up to 3,600 of them have been discovered in more than 2,700 different star systems, and some of them are in the so-called habitable zone. The discovery of seven terrestrial planets in the Trappist-1 star system attracted the most attention in 2017.
6-Water on Mars in a liquid state They are in space research during the second decade of the 21st century. enormous results have been achieved, and robotic probes have been sent to various worlds in the solar system. The greatest attention was paid to the planet Mars, which in this century will be the goal of the future mission with the first human crew on that planet. Among other information provided by NASA, we learn that in 2013 it announced that the Curiosity robot confirmed that water was in a liquid state on Mars, which opened up the possibility of the existence of microorganisms.
7-There is a particle of God The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern near Geneva in the summer of 2012 proved the existence of the Hicks boson, which is popularly called the God particle. The salty particle was imaged in proton collisions on two separate detectors and experiments. This largely confirmed the standard model of elementary particles, a theory that describes the structure of matter, for physicists.ž
Anyone who lives and works under conditions of increased psychological stress, short deadlines, numerous obligations, who for a longer or shorter period encounters difficulties in daily functioning – fatigue, exhaustion, low energy, mood, insomnia, overload, tension and anxiety can be a candidate for some of the natural treatments or psychotherapy.
Covid 19, illness and/or death of a close person, business and financial problems, personal and partner problems, loneliness, are according to the results of the CoV2Soul study on a nationally representative sample, the most threatening stressors (wars should also be added to this).
Anxiety is part of a person’s normal response to danger or the threat of danger and is part of the fight-or-flight adaptation to survival. In contrast, an anxiety disorder is an intense, uncontrollable, and often irrational worry that interferes with daily functioning. The symptoms themselves can be mild, moderate and severe, and the treatment according to our guide implies that dietary supplements with or without psychotherapy can be used for mild and partially moderate symptoms of anxiety, and for more severe symptoms, drugs with or without psychotherapy.
In addition to anxiety, psychological suffering caused by stress also manifests itself in the form of a depressive disorder characterized by low mood associated with a very low level of self-esteem and loss of pleasure or interest in people, things and events that previously made a person happy. You noticed that some of these symptoms are repeated in anxiety and depression and I often like to say “there is no depression without anxiety symptoms, and there is no anxiety without depressive symptoms”.
It is estimated that 15% of people experience a depressive episode during their lifetime, but many people with depression have recurrent or chronic depression, which is a serious and disabling illness.
The best depictions of anxiety can be seen in the paintings of Edward Munch, who manifested this state through his gift for painting.
Treatment with auxiliary drugs is justified for mild and possibly moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression. A potential candidate is anyone who lives and works under conditions of increased psychological stress, short deadlines, numerous obligations, who for a longer or shorter period encounters difficulties in daily functioning – feels tiredness, exhaustion, low energy, mood, insomnia, experiences overload, tension and anxiety.
And finally, how to reduce the impact of stress? Eat and drink in a balanced way, exercise regularly according to your physical capabilities and always in the fresh air, practice relaxation techniques, reduce stress triggers (don’t watch the news, leave time for yourself, set priorities…), learn to say NO or the simplest, get a pet .
The question arises as to how many world languages will really disappear by the end of the 21st century. Due to the very development and progress of techno-industrial development, the extinction of the same languages follows, because industrial development itself creates cultural consequences for world languages. Experts from Pent University tell us that in addition to language extinction, there is also a problem that manifests itself in ourselves, because we are not doing anything about it. According to the analyzes at the given university, we come to the conclusion that more than 50 percent of today’s languages will disappear from the historical scene, and with them the cultures of certain nations.
Most of all, the problem lies in the increasing use of “official languages” such as English, German and French, and thus their insertion into autochthonous cultures dominated by a different linguistic set. Also, according to analyzes conducted in 35 different places in the world, they came to the conclusion that these places have over 1600 languages. It is very likely that the next generations will replace their language with the most frequently used languages in the world, thus their autochthonous languages will face extinction. If we were to categorize the most frequently used languages, then it would look like this (according to the number of inhabitants who speak the given language):
The title of the biggest workers in Europe is held by the Austrians, the Japanese are being forced to go on vacation, while the French are being asked to return to work, the survey showed. The Japanese are the nation that enjoys vacations the least in the world and are reluctant to leave the workplace to laze around, while the French are the biggest fans of resting and enjoying the days of leisure and the five-week annual vacation, equally for everyone regardless of seniority and level of education.
In Japan, people work for seventy hours a week, and the Japanese spend only nine days out of work out of a two-week holiday, while the French have only 34.5 days of the five weeks, according to a scientific study. In European countries, the least paid annual leave is determined by law, while in the US this role is assigned to company management.
So we come to know that people in the USA go on vacation in the period from April 13 to 22, while they use only the 14th day of the 17th annual vacation. On the other hand, people who work in New Zealand take all 17 vacation days compared to people in the US. When we talk about Europe, people who are citizens of Denmark, Germany and Norway like to go on vacation the most. On average, people from all three countries take a month off from work each year. Other countries, such as Spain and Sweden, use only 20 to 25 days of annual leave out of their 32 days of vacation. When we look back at the average working hours in Europe, we come to a considerable variety of working hours. The list of countries with the shortest working hours includes France, which fixed the early hours of its citizens at 35 hours a week. On the list, after France come the Dutch, Danes, Belgians and Germans, whose average is 38 to 40 hours in the early week. In general, in other European countries, the average varies from company to company.
If we were to choose the countries with the highest average working hours, then it would certainly be Japan and China, where annual free days are used the least. The average number of days off during the year is on a scale from 10 to 15 days. Accordingly, the aforementioned countries introduced a law that workers can use additional days off, so Japan established a law that according to the increase in seniority, an increase in annual leave follows, while China, in addition to the 15 days off, also counted days during public holidays .
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