Knowledge Land

Few people understand what the war in Ukraine means for big business—namely, opportunity. It’s not just the weapons and reconstruction contracts. Ukraine’s vast agricultural lands—among the most fertile in the world—are up for grabs, and American companies like BlackRock are at the front of the line. RFK Jr. Deftly and clearly explains. JP Morgan and BlackRock — From Financiers of Destruction to Half-Trillion Dollar ‘Heroes’ of Reconstruction - The Hypocrisy of Reconstruction of Ukraine by the Same Corporations that Profited from the War JP Morgan and BlackRock, along with consultancy McKinsey & Company, are collaborating with the Ukrainian government to establish a reconstruction fund. The objective of this fund is to attract significant investments for the country’s reconstruction, which could cost between $400 billion and $1 trillion, depending on estimates. This fund, known as the Fund for the Development of Ukraine, will use a “blended finance” approach to mobilize both public and private capital, targeting priority sectors such as infrastructure, climate and agriculture. BlackRock and JP Morgan offered their services pro bono to manage this fund, leveraging their expertise in financial markets and debt management. The intention is that this fund can begin to operate fully once the war ends, although planning is already underway and has been discussed at recent international conferences. The recent partnership between JP Morgan, BlackRock and McKinsey & Company to rebuild Ukraine highlights the bitter irony of the current geopolitical situation. In a deal that aims to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for the reconstruction of war-torn Ukraine, these American financial giants now position themselves as the economic saviors of a country whose destruction, in part, was facilitated by policies and actions in financial markets that they themselves dominated and shaped. The United States, through its foreign policies and interventions, has a long history of fomenting instability in various regions of the world. In the case of Ukraine, the situation is no different. From the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, American interests were clear: to weaken Russia and expand the Western sphere of influence. The irony becomes even more evident when we consider that many of the same financial institutions now being called upon to rebuild Ukraine are those that have profited immensely from armed conflicts and the destabilization of global markets. JP Morgan and BlackRock are entities deeply rooted in the global financial system, and both have a history of financing military industries and governments that perpetuate conflict. JP Morgan, for example, has a long history of involvement in financing wars and authoritarian regimes around the world. BlackRock, in turn, as the largest asset manager in the world, has stakes in practically all major defense companies, which profit directly from the manufacture of weapons used in conflicts such as Ukraine. This dichotomy is alarming: the same institutions that financed destruction are now celebrated as leaders of reconstruction. The “fund of reconstruction” proposed for Ukraine is not just a humanitarian effort; it is also a strategic maneuver to ensure that Western capital has control over the country’s future assets and economic infrastructure. The reconstruction of Ukraine, costing up to a trillion dollars, presents a lucrative opportunity for these companies, which are now seen as saviors. Furthermore, McKinsey & Company’s presence on the project adds an additional layer of criticism, as the consulting firm has frequently been accused of unethical practices and collusion with corrupt regimes. McKinsey’s lack of transparency and controversial practices call into question the integrity of the reconstruction process. Music: The Takeover by Dhruva Aliman - Amazon - https://amzn.to/2B9tGa7 - Apple - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dhruva-aliman/363563637- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet - Bandcamp - https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/road-of-fortunes - http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/ - https://www.instagram.com/dhruvaaliman/ #ukraine #BlackRock #élection2024

High above the Earth’s North and South Poles, a steady stream of particles escapes from our atmosphere into space. Scientists call this mysterious outflow the “polar wind,” and for almost 60 years, spacecraft have been flying through it as scientists have theorized about its cause. The leading theory was that a planet-wide electric field was drawing those particles up into space. But this so-called ambipolar electric field, if it exists, is so weak that all attempts to measure it have failed – until now. In 2022, scientists traveled to Svalbard, a small archipelago in Norway, to launch a rocket in an attempt to measure Earth’s ambipolar electric field for the first time. This was NASA’s Endurance rocketship mission, and this is its story. Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Instagram: / nasagoddard · X: / nasagoddard · Facebook: / nasagoddard #space #discovery #energy

"Climate: The Movie" highlights a different perspective on the climate change debate and is supported by scientists who have signed the Clintel's World Climate Declaration. This group of researchers seeks to present an alternative narrative in the face of the dominant discourse. Climate The Movie is a must-see film for anyone concerned with the future of science and humanity. Features distinguished scientists (Nobel physicist, Princeton astrophysicist, among others) showing how climate "science" has been corrupted by politics, money, and the lust for power. Presents extensive data and reasoning showing that CO2 has been purposely demonized as the alleged key to climate control, knowing that this implies control of the vast majority human energy resources (fossil fuels). This completely ignores the obvious source of historical climate change - solar radiation and its variation with cloud cover, orbital parameters, and the sun's magnetic and thermal changes. Well-presented, in a calm and non-apocalyptic manner that stands in distinct contrast to most climate alarmism. Wonderful piece of work. Climate The Movie does as it says, presents the Cold Truth. It gives a good overview of how climate change came to dominate current political discourse. It features a raft of prominent scientists, physicists, climatologists and Patrick Moore (the founder of Greenpeace) all who dared to dispute the prevailing consensus that the science is settled. The documentary meticulously details the 4 other more reliable measurements of temperature change (rural surface stations, ocean gauges, satellite readings and atmospheric balloons) to show that all the IPCC reports and models are mostly based on sites that have been engulfed over time by urbanization and hence subject to distortions in the record by the urban heat island effect. The 4 methods confirm only a slight temperature rise and this is reported alongside the long term historical records going back centuries and then tree ring and ice core testing going back millennia to show that we've been warmer before when there was no industrial output to blame. Finally many current media myths and obsessions were debunked including no increase in hurricanes and storms, hotter daily temps in the 1930's than recently and significantly fewer modern forest fires than the '20' and '30s. The way prominent scientists, environmentalists, politicians and the media exaggerate and distort the truth to manipulate the masses into accepting all of the constraints on lifestyle and escalating costs of enforcing net zero is dramatically laid out. This documentary is an important contribution to the debate of climate science that is in reality far from settled. Sensational video showing what the state of the Earth's climate really is. Scientists, Nobel laureates, climate researchers, astrophysicists describe what is really happening, and what is our real threat. The best of it is that they are independent of the government, of grants, of the mercy of the media. A true picture of the "climate fight" on many levels. Data and experts are presented in a compelling way that creates a powerful dissenting narrative to the human influenced Climate Change hypotheses. With no consensus on the science, the film takes a look at the goals and practices being implemented by each ideology. On one side there are grabs for more government control, regulation, a loss of personal freedom and centralization of power; all in the name of Climate Change. On the other there is a call for more freedom and a spreading of awareness that we are slowly losing our individual sovereignty. #climatechange #environment #history

Sound of Space Data: Crab Nebula Sonification - This video is a sonification of X-ray light emitted by the Crab Nebula. The data was obtained by NASA’s NuSTAR and Chandra space observatories, whose teams turned the data into sound to enable people to audibly perceive different features of the Crab Nebula, making it more accessible for the visually impaired. In this sonification, X-ray wavelengths from NuSTAR (represented as different colors) are mapped to different musical pitches and sounds. Red, yellow, purple, blue, and white are mapped to notes from low to high. For Chandra, brightness in the X-ray data corresponds with pitch and volume, and a bell sound indicates the position of the pulsar at the center of the nebula. The Crab Nebula is what remains of a star that exploded as a supernova. The explosion that created the Crab Nebula was visible from Earth in the year 1054, when it was recorded by Chinese astronomers. Most of the star’s mass was pushed into space, creating a wide debris field that continues to expand. The rest of the stellar material collapsed into a dense object called a pulsar. The pulsar’s rapid rotation and strong magnetic field accelerate particles and shoot them into space. The particles emit high-energy X-rays that NuSTAR can detect, but as they travel outward, they collide with the debris scattered by the supernova, causing them to slow down and lose their energy. This is why NuSTAR only sees light from a relatively small region close to the pulsar. Lower energy X-rays detected by Chandra can be seen farther out. For more information on the NuStar go to: nustar.caltech.edu For more information on the Chandra Space Telescope go to: chanhttps://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CXC/SAO Music: Dream Walking (Emerald Mix) by Dhruva Aliman - Amazon- https://amzn.to/2Mgr7pg - Apple - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dhruva-aliman/363563637 - Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet - Bandcamp - https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/the-wolf-and-the-river - http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/ #universe #discovery #science

Aircraft carriers, floating fortresses of steel and power, have become synonymous with naval might. These behemoths of the sea, capable of projecting air power across vast distances, have played a pivotal role in shaping the course of history, particularly during the 20th century. From their humble beginnings to their evolution into the ultimate symbols of maritime dominance, aircraft carriers have left an indelible mark on the world. The Dawn of Carrier Aviation The concept of launching aircraft from ships was not entirely new. Early experiments with seaplanes and makeshift platforms on battleships paved the way for the development of dedicated aircraft carriers. The first true aircraft carrier, HMS *Hermes*, was commissioned by the Royal Navy in 1920. It marked a paradigm shift in naval warfare, ushering in the era of carrier aviation. The United States Navy followed suit, commissioning its first carrier, USS *Langley*, in 1922. These early carriers were relatively small and carried a limited number of aircraft. However, they demonstrated the immense potential of air power at sea. World War II: The Carrier’s Rise to Prominence The outbreak of World War II transformed aircraft carriers from experimental vessels into strategic assets of paramount importance. The Battle of Midway, a pivotal clash in the Pacific theater, showcased the devastating power of carrier-based aircraft. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while initially successful, was ultimately thwarted by the presence of American aircraft carriers. Throughout the war, aircraft carriers played a decisive role in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. They provided air cover for convoys, launched attacks on enemy ships and installations, and supported ground operations. The development of powerful carrier-based fighter planes, such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair, further enhanced their offensive capabilities. The Nuclear Age and Beyond The advent of nuclear weapons had a profound impact on naval warfare. The introduction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, such as the USS *Enterprise*, marked a new era of maritime dominance. These carriers were larger, faster, and had greater endurance than their predecessors. They could operate for extended periods without refueling, projecting air power across the globe. Today, aircraft carriers remain the cornerstone of modern navies. They are equipped with sophisticated radar systems, advanced weapons, and a wide array of aircraft, including fighter jets, bombers, and helicopters. They are capable of conducting a variety of missions, from humanitarian assistance to combat operations. The Future of Aircraft Carriers The future of aircraft carriers is uncertain. Some experts argue that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other emerging technologies may eventually render traditional carriers obsolete. Others believe that carriers will continue to play a vital role in the 21st century, particularly in projecting power and deterring aggression. Regardless of their future, aircraft carriers have left an enduring legacy. They have shaped the course of history, revolutionized naval warfare, and served as symbols of national power. Their story is a testament to the ingenuity and determination of mankind, and their role in the future remains to be written. #documentary #military #history

NASA Puts Next-Gen Exoplanet-Imaging Technology to the Test - A cutting-edge tool to view planets outside our solar system has passed two key tests ahead of its launch as part of the agency’s Roman Space Telescope by 2027. The Coronagraph Instrument on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will demonstrate new technologies that could vastly increase the number of planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) that scientists can directly observe. Designed and built at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, it recently passed a series of critical tests ahead of launch. That includes tests to ensure the instrument’s electrical components don’t interfere with those on the rest of the observatory and vice versa. “This is such an important and nerve-wracking stage of building a spacecraft instrument, testing whether or not everything works as intended,” said Feng Zhao, deputy project manager for the Roman Coronagraph at JPL. “But we have an amazing team who built this thing, and it passed the electrical components tests with flying colors.” A coronagraph blocks light from a bright cosmic object, like a star, so that scientists can observe a nearby object that would otherwise be hidden by the glare. (Think of a car’s sun visor.) The light reflected or emitted by a planet carries information about the chemicals in the planet’s atmosphere and other potential signs of habitability, so coronagraphs will likely be a critical tool in the search for life beyond our solar system. But if scientists were trying to obtain images of an Earth-like planet in another solar system (same size, same distance from a star similar to our Sun), they wouldn’t be able to see the planet in the star’s glare, even with the best coronagraphs and most powerful telescopes operating today. The Roman Coronagraph aims to change that paradigm. The innovations that have gone into the instrument should make it possible to see planets similar to Jupiter in size and distance from their star. The Coronagraph team expects these advances will help enable the leap to viewing more Earth-like planets with future observatories. As a technology demonstration, the Roman Coronagraph’s primary goal is to test technologies that have not been flown in space before. Specifically, it will test sophisticated light-blocking capabilities that are at least 10 times better than what’s currently available. Scientists expect to push its performance even further to observe challenging targets that could yield novel scientific discoveries. Even with the Coronagraph blocking a star’s light, a planet will still be exceptionally faint, and it might take a full month of observations to get a good picture of the distant world. To make these observations, the instrument’s camera detects individual photons, or single particles of light, making it far more sensitive than previous coronagraphs. That’s one reason the recent tests were crucial: The electrical currents that send power to the spacecraft’s components can produce faint electrical signals, mimicking light in the Coronagraph’s sensitive cameras – an effect known as electromagnetic interference. Meanwhile, signals from the Coronagraph could similarly disrupt Roman’s other instruments. The mission needs to ensure neither will happen when the telescope is operating in an isolated, electromagnetically quiet environment 1 million miles (about 1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. So a team of engineers put the fully assembled instrument in a special isolated, electromagnetically quiet chamber at JPL and turned it on to full power. They measured the instrument’s electromagnetic output to make sure it fell below the level required to operate aboard Roman. The team used injection clamps, transformers, and antennas to produce electrical disturbances and radio waves similar to what the rest of the telescope will generate. Then they measured the instrument’s performance, looking for excessive noise in the camera images and other unwanted responses from the optical mechanisms. “The electric fields we generate with the antennas are about the same strength as what’s generated by a computer screen,” said Clement Gaidon, the Roman Coronagraph electrical systems engineer at JPL. “That’s a pretty benign level, all things considered, but we have very sensitive hardware onboard. Overall, the instrument did a fantastic job navigating across the electromagnetic waves. And props to the team for wrapping this test campaign in record time!” #explore #space #universe

The Mufti and the Führer - In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world. The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”1 On November 28, 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti’s requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches....The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely....the Jews....” Hitler replied: Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany’s objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely.2 Two German historians say that Hitler had a plan to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East and had forged an alliance with Arab nationalists. This is perhaps why Hitler met with the Mufti and provided him a budget of 750,000 Reichsmark per month to foment a jihad in Palestine. The alliance did not alter Hitler’s racist views toward Arabs reflected in his refusal to shake the Mufti’s hand or drink coffee with him.3 In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974. A document attesting to the connection between Nazi Germany and the Mufti was released in March 2017. In the letter published by the National Library of Israel Archives, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler heaps praise upon Mufti al-Husseini, stating that the Nazi leadership " has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs - and especially in Palestine - against the Jewish invaders." Himmler ends the letter by bidding the Mufti "warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory." This letter was delivered in the Fall of 1943, two years after the Mufti's famous meeting with Adolf Hitler. #WWII #Palestine #Israel

Dating expert, Sadia Khan, says women respect men they cannot manipulate. Women are always testing if they can manipulate men. Sadia is a relationship coach who has dedicated her social presence to helping individuals and couples navigate the complexities of modern relationships. Her passion for helping people build fulfilling and lasting connections has guided her on this meaningful journey. Sadia holds a BSc in Psychology, Master's in Education and Developmental psychology, Qualified Teachers Status, Diplomas in Psychotherapy, Advanced CBT, Psychoanalysis, and Inner Child Healing. Her academic training and extensive practical experience allow her to offer well-rounded and evidence-based guidance. #psychology #dating #relationships

What will the military of the future look like? Get a glimpse of upcoming technologies and how they might be utilized, including combat wear, future space wars and high-tech military robots. Future battlefields might be unrecognizable with the growth and advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum, cyber, space, and biotechnology. AI and Autonomous Weapons Artificial intelligence will be a crucial development for the U.S.’s drone platforms. Next-generation drones will fly autonomously without interference from end users, but end users can assume or override controls if needed. Drones will fly in any weather condition and track enemy activity while sending back intelligence and video feed to end users. Operators will be able to track and detect personnel through facial recognition and determine whether they are friendly or hostile. Facial recognition will increase our ability to track specific combatants and allow Soldiers to engage targets directly with lethal fires. The technology will also help reduce collateral damage and prevent civilian deaths, which we might have perceived as hostile in past engagements. Laser availability will also enhance next-generation drone capability. Laser technology provides drones with another level of sophistication, similar to hellfire missiles’ lethality. New laser lethality will have lasting effects on enemy targets. Future drones’ sophisticated and enhanced lethality will use laser-penetrating energy to take out vehicles, aircraft and other weapon systems. Information Warfare Misinformation and overloading systems and critical infrastructure will allow the U.S. to deliver decisive blows to its adversaries. Overloading enemy networks and disrupting their communications helps shape narratives and disseminate effective disinformation to adversary populations. Hypersonic Technology Imagine missiles or anything flying faster than the speed of sound; it is already a nearly unfathomable speed. By 2040, hypersonic weapons will be equipped with nuclear munitions traveling up to 20 times the speed of sound. These speeds will ensure surprise on enemies. If proven dependable, these hypersonic weapons will help deter threats from any country. #futuretech #battle #AI

Your plant has its needs but it can’t communicate them to you. Lua turns your favorite plant into a spirited virtual pet! It's the perfect addition to your inner garden houseplants: its playful/cheerful/lively personality makes it the ideal plant companion. Lua has 5 senses: Lua saves your greenery and makes you skip the hassle of an intricate setup: the free mobile app only requires an internet connection once for the download, and is then operational, even offline! Using Lua’s app is literally as simple as scanning a QR code! Lua displays 15 different real-time animations : 6 animations are directly related to your plant’s health and overall well-being, while the 9 others gives Lua and your plant, a spark of life. 6 essential animations: Thirsty: When soil moisture drops under the defined threshold, you need to water your plant. Sick: Too much water can kill your plant too, wait until Lua is thirsty to add water. Vampire: After a few days Lua will turn into a vampire if exposure to light is not sufficient. Squint: Too much exposure to light can harm your plant, when Lua is squinting it’s looking for shade. Cold: When the temperature drops. Lua will sneeze the day after. Hot: Lua is too hot. Other animations: Happy: Lua is back to normal. Puzzled: Lua couldn’t read your QR code. Wink: You showed a QR code to Lua and it understood it. Tired: Lua will go back to sleep when there’s no movement in front of it. Wake-up: When Lua senses a movement. Grumpy: Random animation. If stretch goal #2 is reached, Lua will look grumpy when there’s a good chance of rain. Tongue sticking out: Random animation. Motion Tracking: Lua detects a movement and follows it with the eyes. If nothing happens, Lua will go back to sleep. Super simple app: The app has been entirely designed around simplicity and ease-of-use: Download Lua app & let the easy setup install it in less than no time. Choose your plant’s family, the exact type of plant or manually set your own preferred thresholds. Make Lua read the generated QR code and it’s all set! Music: Star of the Conqueror by Dhruva Aliman - Amazon- https://amzn.to/2Mgr7pg - Apple - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dhruva-aliman/363563637 - Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet - Bandcamp - https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/the-wolf-and-the-river - http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/

NASA launches spacecraft to explore metal-rich asteroid Psyche - On on Friday the 13th, October 2023, NASA launched a spacecraft from Florida on its way to Psyche, the largest of the several metal-rich asteroids known in our solar system and believed by scientists to be the remnant core of an ancient protoplanet, offering clues about Earth's formation. The Psyche probe, folded inside the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, blasted off under partly cloudy skies from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on a planned journey 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion km) through space. The spacecraft, roughly the size of a small van, is due to reach the asteroid in August 2029. The launch, shown live on NASA TV, marks the latest in a series of recent NASA missions seeking insights about the origins of our planet about 4.5 billion years ago by sending robotic spacecraft to explore asteroids - primordial relics from the dawn of the solar system. Asteroid Psyche measures roughly 173 miles (279 km) across at its widest point and resides on the outer fringes of the main asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. Cargo-faring panels enclosing the spacecraft inside the nose of the rocket's upper stage were jettisoned about five minutes after launch, and the probe itself was released into space about an hour later. NASA has said the process for the spacecraft to autonomously unfurl its twin solar panels and to point its communications antennae toward Earth takes around two hours. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles confirmed detection of the probe's first radio signals shortly after it was seen on live video floating free from the rocket. After reaching the asteroid, the spacecraft would then orbit it for 26 months, scanning Psyche with instruments built to measure its gravity, magnetic proprieties and composition. According to the leading hypothesis, the asteroid is the once-molten, long-frozen inner hulk of a baby planet torn apart by collisions with other celestial bodies in the early solar system. It orbits the sun about three times farther than Earth, even at its closest to our planet. The first asteroid of its kind chosen for study at close range by spacecraft, Psyche is believed to consist largely of iron, nickel, gold and other metals, with a collective hypothetical monetary value placed at 10 quadrillion dollars. But the mission has nothing to do with space mining, according to scientists. Its objective is to gain greater understanding of the formation of Earth and other rocky planets that are built around cores of molten metal. Earth's molten center is too deep and too hot to ever be examined directly. "So we say, tongue-in-cheek, that we're going to outer space to explore inner space," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche's principal investigator for NASA's mission partner Arizona State University, told a briefing for reporters on Tuesday. Upon reaching Psyche, the probe is set to circle it in a series of gradually descending orbits, ending up a mere 40 miles (64 km) from the asteroid's surface, before finishing the mission in November 2031. The asteroid, discovered in 1852 and named for the goddess of the soul in Greek mythology, is the largest of about nine known asteroids that appear from ground-based radar observations to consist largely of metal, with rocky material mixed in. Still, scientists can only guess at what Psyche looks like, Elkins-Tanton said. #explore #space #adventure

Sixty-five million years ago the last of the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. So too did the giant mosasaurs and plesiosaurs in the seas and the pterosaurs in the skies. Plankton, the base of the ocean food chain, took a hard hit. Many families of brachiopods and sea sponges disappeared. The remaining hard-shelled ammonites vanished. Shark diversity shriveled. Most vegetation withered. In all, more than half of the world's species were obliterated. What caused this mass extinction that marks the end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the Paleogene? Scientists have yet to find an answer. The one that does must explain why these animals died while most mammals, turtles, crocodiles, salamanders, and frogs survived. Birds escaped. So did snails, bivalves, sea stars (starfish), and sea urchins. Even hardy plants able to weather climate extremes fared OK. Scientists tend to huddle around one of two hypotheses that may explain the Cretaceous extinction: an extraterrestrial impact, such as an asteroid or comet, or a massive bout of volcanism. Either scenario would have choked the skies with debris that starved the Earth of the sun's energy, throwing a wrench in photosynthesis and sending destruction up and down the food chain. Once the dust settled, greenhouse gases locked in the atmosphere would have caused the temperature to soar, a swift climate swing to topple much of the life that survived the prolonged darkness. Asteroid or Volcanoes? The extraterrestrial impact theory stems from the discovery that a layer of rock dated precisely to the extinction event is rich in the metal iridium. This layer is found all over the world, on land and in the oceans. Iridium is rare on Earth but it's found in meteorites at the same concentration as in this layer. This led scientists to postulate that the iridium was scattered worldwide when a comet or asteroid struck somewhere on Earth and then vaporized. A 110-mile-wide (180-kilometer-wide) crater carved out of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, called Chicxulub, has since been found and dated to 65 million years ago. Many scientists believe the fallout from the impact killed the dinosaurs. But Earth's core is also rich in iridium, and the core is the source of magma that some scientists say spewed out in vast, floodlike flows that piled up more than 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) thick over 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers) of India. This bout of volcanism has also been dated to about 65 million years ago and would have spread the iridium around the world, along with sunlight-blocking dust and soot and greenhouse gases. Both hypotheses have merit. Some scientists think both may have contributed to the extinction, and others suggest the real cause was a more gradual shift in climate and changing sea levels. Regardless of what caused the extinction, it marked the end of Tyrannosaurus rex's reign of terror and opened the door for mammals to rapidly diversify and evolve into newly opened niches.

The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936 - The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were more than just a worldwide sporting event, they were a show of Nazi propaganda, stirring significant conflict. Despite the exclusionary principles of the 1936 Games, countries around the world still agreed to participate. Key Facts 1 Nazi Germany used the 1936 Olympic Games for propaganda purposes. The Nazis promoted an image of a new, strong, and united Germany while masking the regime’s targeting of Jews and Roma View This Term in the Glossary (Gypsies) as well as Germany’s growing militarism. 2 For the first time in the history of the modern Olympic Games, people in the United States and Europe called for a boycott of the Olympics because of what would later become known as human rights abuses. Although the movement ultimately failed, it set an important precedent for future Olympic boycott campaigns (such as those in 2008 and 2014). 3 Once the boycott movement narrowly failed, Germany had its propaganda coup: the 49 nations who sent teams to the Games legitimized the Hitler regime both in the eyes of the world and of German domestic audiences. For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the sponsoring athletic and Olympic organizations of the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that—some observers at the time claimed—might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust. The 1936 Summer Olympic Games In 1931, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice signaled Germany's return to the world community after its isolation in the aftermath of defeat in World War I. Two years later, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship that persecuted Jews, Roma View This Term in the Glossary (Gypsies), all political opponents, and others. The Nazi claim to control all aspects of German life also extended to sports. German sports imagery of the 1930s served to promote the myth of “Aryan” racial superiority and physical prowess. In sculpture and in other forms, German artists idealized athletes' well-developed muscle tone and heroic strength and accentuated ostensibly Aryan facial features. Such imagery also reflected the importance the Nazi regime placed on physical fitness, a prerequisite for military service. Exclusion from German Sports In April 1933, an "Aryans only" policy was instituted in all German athletic organizations. "Non-Aryans"—Jews or individuals with Jewish parents and Roma (Gypsies)—were systematically excluded from German sports facilities and associations. The German Boxing Association expelled professional light heavyweight champion Erich Seelig in April 1933 because he was Jewish. (Seelig later resumed his boxing career in the United States.) Another Jewish athlete, Daniel Prenn—Germany's top-ranked tennis player—was removed from Germany's Davis Cup Team. Gretel Bergmann, a world-class high jumper, was expelled from her German club in 1933 and excluded from the German Olympic team in 1936. Jewish athletes barred from German sports clubs flocked to separate Jewish associations, including the Maccabee and Shield groups, and to improvised segregated facilities. But these Jewish sports facilities were not comparable to well-funded German groups. Roma View This Term in the Glossary (Gypsies), including the Sinti boxer Johann Rukelie Trollmann, were also excluded from German sports. Propaganda Germany skillfully promoted the Olympics with colorful posters and magazine spreads. Athletic imagery drew a link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece, symbolizing the Nazi racial myth that a superior German civilization was the rightful heir of an "Aryan" culture of classical antiquity. This vision of classical antiquity emphasized ideal "Aryan" racial types: heroic, blue-eyed blonds with finely chiseled features. Concerted propaganda efforts continued well after the Olympics with the international release in 1938 of Olympia, the controversial documentary directed by German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Renowned for her earlier propaganda film, Triumph of the Will (1934) depicting Nazi Party rallies at Nuremberg, Riefenstahl was commissioned by the Nazi regime to produce this film about the 1936 Summer Games. #history #documentary #ww2

Deep space exploration (or deep-space exploration) is the branch of astronomy, astronautics and space technology that is involved with exploring the distant regions of outer space. However, there is little consensus on the meaning of "distant" regions. In some contexts, it is used to refer to interstellar space. The International Telecommunication Union defines "deep space" to start at a distance of 2 million km (approximately 0.01 AU) from the Earth's surface. NASA's Deep Space Network has variously used criteria of 16,000 to 32,000 km from Earth. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights (deep-space astronautics) and by robotic spacecraft. At present the farthest space probe humankind has constructed and launched from Earth is Voyager 1, which was announced on December 5, 2011, to have reached the outer edge of the Solar System, and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012. Deep space exploration further than this vessel's capacity is not yet possible due to limitations in the propulsion technology currently available. Some of the best candidates for future deep space engine technologies include anti-matter, nuclear power and beamed propulsion. The latter, beamed propulsion, appears to be the best candidate for deep space exploration presently available, since it uses known physics and known technology that is being developed for other purposes. #spaceexploration #science #nasa

How science is uncovering the secrets of Stonehenge - Secrets of Stonehenge's stones revealed after centuries of debate Researchers believe the large 'sarsen' stones originated 15 miles to the north of the prehistoric circle, which is a World Heritage Site. LONDON — For thousands of years, Britain's Stonehenge has held tight to many of its secrets. Now, scientists say in a study published Wednesday they have uncovered one: The origin of many of the stones that make up the mysterious prehistoric stone circle thought to date from 2,500 BC. Image: Stonehenge Dr. Jake Ciborowski — part of the research team — analyzing one of the 52 sarsen stones at Stonehenge using a portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometer.David Nash The monument — erected during the late Neolithic period — is a popular tourist attraction in southern England and one of the country’s most famous sights. But despite its popularity, much is still not known about the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Researchers from the University of Brighton analyzed the 52 large stones — known as sarsens — that make up the main circle and inner horseshoe of the monument, and concluded that all but two shared a common origin. The scientists then compared the core of one of the sarsens — drilled in 1958 during conservation work — with data on sarsens from around the United Kingdom and determined that they originated about 15 miles to the north in West Woods, Wiltshire. The research — released in the journal Science Advances — was only made possible after the core was returned to the U.K. from Florida by a representative of the company that carried out the work over 60 years ago. “Archaeologists and geologists have been debating where the sarsen stones used to build Stonehenge came from for more than four centuries,” lead researcher David Nash, a professor of physical geography at the University of Brighton, said. “This significant new data will help explain more of how the monument was constructed and, perhaps, offer insights into the routes by which the 20- to 30-ton stones were transported,” he added. Scientists have been trying to unlock the mysteries of Stonehenge since the Middle Ages, with the first known excavation at the site taking place in the 1620s. In 2015, researchers concluded that the smaller stones that make up the monument — known as bluestones — were quarried a remarkable 180 miles away in western Wales. Although one fewer question now remains, experts are still unsure who built and used Stonehenge, and why they chose to locate it where they did. “This research provides a fantastic leap forward in our knowledge about Stonehenge, as we can finally answer the question of where the iconic sarsen stones were brought from,” said Susan Greaney, a senior historian at English Heritage, the charity which looks after Stonehenge. She added that the return of the core from Florida was crucial, as it allowed the researchers to undertake a “small amount of destructive sampling.” But despite the research team discovering the origin of 50 of the 52 sarsen stones, the ancient wonder continues to hold the secret of the other two. “We still don’t know where two of the 52 remaining sarsens at the monument came from,” Nash said. “There remain mysteries to solve.”

Nazi Creatures - Hitler, Goring, Himmler…the three architects of the Final Solution. But these three men, like many other high ranking Nazis, shared another obsession: a fascination with the animal world. In the last days of the Nazi regime, Hitler risked his life every day, leaving the safety of the bunker to walk his beloved dog, Blondi. But the Nazis’ interest in creatures went beyond love of their pets or the animal welfare laws they introduced. Whether it was experiments to create the purest bred of horse, transforming German Shepherds into tools of terror or trying to resurrect the long extinct wild auroch, they sought to control and purify the animal kingdom – practicing the principles of eugenics they would later apply to humans. This documentary investigates the secret programs to control the animal kingdom. A fascinating journey into the world of Hitler’s creatures. #documentary #history #ww2

Apollo 11 50 years on: leaving our mark on the Moon - The Moon landings were not a hoax. Apollo 11 did happen. Humans really did set foot on the Moon. We have countless images, videos, lunar samples and scientific data to prove it. But more than that, human exploration has literally left its mark on the Moon's surface. ..."In 2009 we sent a lunar reconnaissance orbiter to map the lunar surface in three or four orders of magnitude more resolution than had ever been managed before," Prof Ojha says. "Every single Apollo landing site was pictured. Absolutely stunning. "What really strikes me about these images is that those footprints, those tracks of the lunar vehicles - they’re going to maintain their integrity for millions of years," he says. "No matter what we do to ourselves as a civilization, we’ve really left our mark on the cosmos." #proof #nasa #explore Music: Flying Dream by Dhruva Aliman - Amazon - https://amzn.to/2B9tGa7 - Apple - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dhruva-aliman/363563637- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet - Bandcamp - https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/road-of-fortunes - http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/ - https://www.instagram.com/dhruvaaliman/

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. He was born on or around 23 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a prosperous glover and local dignitary, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. There are no records of William’s education, but he probably went to King’s New School – a reputable Stratford grammar school where he would have learned Latin, Greek, theology and rhetoric – and may have had a Catholic upbringing. He may also have seen plays by the travelling theatre groups touring Stratford in the 1560s and 70s. At 18, William married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had three children over the next few years. What are Shakespeare’s ‘lost years’? No-one knows what Shakespeare did between 1587 – the last documentary record of his youth in Stratford – and 1592 when he is first mentioned in London. There is much speculation about these ‘lost years’, including stories that Shakespeare was exiled from Warwickshire for deer-stealing and that he worked at the London playhouses holding horses for theatre-goers. What did Shakespeare write? Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more. His 17 comedies include The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing. Among his 10 history plays are Henry V and Richard III. The most famous among his tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare also wrote 4 poems, and a famous collection of Sonnets which was first published in 1609. Was Shakespeare successful in his lifetime? By 1592, Shakespeare was well-known enough as a writer and actor to be criticised by jealous rival Robert Greene as an ‘upstart crow’ and ‘Johannes Factotum’ (a ‘Johnny do-it-all’) in his pamphlet Groats-worth of Wit (a groat being a small coin). Although it is difficult to determine the chronology of Shakespeare’s works, it is likely that by 1592 he had authored 11 plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His plays were successful: the box office takings from the first performance of Henry VI, Part 1 at the Rose in 1592 were £3 16s. 8d., the highest recorded for the season. For much of the period from September 1592 to June 1594, the London playhouses were shut because of the plague. Shakespeare published two epic poems during this time, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Shakespeare’s success grew through the 1590s. He joined and became a shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who performed before Queen Elizabeth on numerous occasions, and as well as writing more plays, he published several poems and circulated his sonnet sequence in manuscript. His successes enabled him in 1597 to buy New Place, the second largest house in Stratford. This success was not untainted by tragedy however: in 1596 his 11 year old son Hamnet, died. Where were Shakespeare’s plays performed? In 1599, Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took up residence in the newly built Globe. Julius Caesar was one of the first plays performed there. Performances at the Globe were divided into three seasons with breaks around Christmas when the players performed at court; Lent, when playing was intermittent; and summer when the players toured the provinces escaping the infection and infestation of the city. When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, her successor, King James I, announced that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men would now be the King’s Men. This patronage was a huge coup for the troupe, but Shakespeare was by no means a puppet playwright and he continued to write plays that posed difficult questions about kingship. The Jacobean works of 1604–08 were darker and include the mature tragedies Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. In 1608 the King’s Men took on a second theatre, a candlelit indoor venue at Blackfriars, whose expensive seats catered to a more elite audience and whose lighting may have influenced the atmosphere of late plays such as The Tempest. What are the quartos? Shakespeare’s plays began to be printed in 1594, probably with his tragedy Titus Andronicus. This appeared as a small, cheap pamphlet called a quarto because of the way it was printed. 18 of Shakespeare’s plays had appeared in quarto editions by the time of his death in 1616. Another three plays were printed in quarto before 1642. When did Shakespeare die? In 1613 the Globe burned down and the same year Shakespeare retired from the London theatre world and returned to Stratford. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, where he had been baptised 52 years earlier. #history #biography #documentary

The Indus Valley was home to one of the world's first large civilizations. It began nearly 5,000 years ago in an area of modern-day Pakistan and Northern India. A busy marketplace in the Indus Valley. There were more than 1,400 towns and cities in the Indus Valley. The biggest were Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Around 80,000 people lived in these cities. The names Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were given to the cities in later times. We do not know what the Indus people called their cities, because nobody has been able to translate their ancient language. The Indus Valley civilization was entirely unknown until 1921, when excavations in what would become Pakistan revealed the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. The ancient city in present-day Pakistan was the jewel of a flourishing civilization—and clues suggest its inhabitants were skilled urban planners. So what caused the decline of Mohenjo Daro? Mohenjo Daro, built at the time of the pyramids and centuries before the Roman Baths, was the largest city of the Indus Civilization. A well-planned street grid and an elaborate drainage system hint that the occupants of the ancient Indus civilization city of Mohenjo Daro were skilled urban planners with a reverence for the control of water. But just who occupied the ancient city in modern-day Pakistan during the third millennium B.C. remains a puzzle. "It's pretty faceless," says Indus expert Gregory Possehl of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The city lacks ostentatious palaces, temples, or monuments. There's no obvious central seat of government or evidence of a king or queen. Modesty, order, and cleanliness were apparently preferred. Pottery and tools of copper and stone were standardized. Seals and weights suggest a system of tightly controlled trade. (These archaeological findings unlocked the stories of our ancestors.) The city's wealth and stature is evident in artifacts such as ivory, lapis, carnelian, and gold beads, as well as the baked-brick city structures themselves. A watertight pool called the Great Bath, perched on top of a mound of dirt and held in place with walls of baked brick, is the closest structure Mohenjo Daro has to a temple. Possehl, a National Geographic Explorer, says it suggests an ideology based on cleanliness. Wells were found throughout the city, and nearly every house contained a bathing area and drainage system. City of mounds Archaeologists first visited Mohenjo Daro in 1911. Several excavations occurred in the 1920s through 1931. Small probes took place in the 1930s, and subsequent digs occurred in 1950 and 1964. The ancient city sits on elevated ground in the modern-day Larkana district of Sindh province in Pakistan. During its heyday from about 2500 to 1900 B.C., the city was among the most important to the Indus civilization, Possehl says. It spread out over about 250 acres (100 hectares) on a series of mounds, and the Great Bath and an associated large building occupied the tallest mound. A miniature bronze statuette of a nude female, known as the dancing girl, was celebrated by archaeologists when it was discovered in 1926, Kenoyer notes. Of greater interest to him, though, are a few stone sculptures of seated male figures, such as the intricately carved and colored Priest King, so called even though there is no evidence he was a priest or king. The sculptures were all found broken, Kenoyer says. "Whoever came in at the very end of the Indus period clearly didn't like the people who were representing themselves or their elders," he says. According to University of Wisconsin, Madison, archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, also a National Geographic Explorer, the mounds grew organically over the centuries as people kept building platforms and walls for their houses. (Explore the palaces and tombs of these "lost cities" across the Americas.) "You have a high promontory on which people are living," he says. With no evidence of kings or queens, Mohenjo Daro was likely governed as a city-state, perhaps by elected officials or elites from each of the mounds. Just what ended the Indus civilization—and Mohenjo Daro—is also a mystery. Kenoyer suggests that the Indus River changed course, which would have hampered the local agricultural economy and the city's importance as a center of trade. (These four lost cities were jewels of ancient Africa. What happened to them?) But no evidence exists that flooding destroyed the city, and the city wasn't totally abandoned, Kenoyer says. And, Possehl says, a changing river course doesn't explain the collapse of the entire Indus civilization. Throughout the valley, the culture changed, he says. "It reaches some kind of obvious archaeological fruition about 1900 B.C.," he said. "What drives that, nobody knows." #ancient #history #documentary

The rise of the Roman Empire can be traced back to Italy of the eighth century BCE. This was a period of cultural change, when the simple way of life of the peoples of central Italy was beginning to be affected by new influences from the eastern Mediterranean. The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides the Carthaginians were defeated. Macedonia, Syracuse and several Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting, and Iberian and Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success before moving into Italy; and Africa, where Rome finally won the war. The First Punic War had ended in a Roman victory in 241 BC after 23 years and enormous losses on both sides. After the war Carthage expanded its holdings in Iberia where in 219 BC a Carthaginian army under Hannibal besieged, captured and sacked the pro-Roman city of Saguntum. In early 218 BC Rome declared war on Carthage, beginning the Second Punic War. Later that year, Hannibal surprised the Romans by marching his army overland from Iberia, through Gaul and over the Alps to Cisalpine Gaul (modern northern Italy). Reinforced by Gallic allies he obtained crushing victories over the Romans at the battles of Trebia (218) and Lake Trasimene (217). Moving to southern Italy in 216 Hannibal defeated the Romans again at the battle of Cannae, where he annihilated the largest army the Romans had ever assembled. After the death or capture of more than 120,000 Roman troops in less than three years, many of Rome's Italian allies, notably Capua, defected to Carthage, giving Hannibal control over much of southern Italy. As Syracuse and Macedonia joined the Carthaginian side after Cannae, the conflict spread. Between 215 and 210 BC the Carthaginians attempted to capture Roman-held Sicily and Sardinia, but were unsuccessful. The Romans took drastic steps to raise new legions: enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification; this vastly increased the number of men they had under arms. For the next decade the war in southern Italy continued, with Roman armies slowly recapturing most of the Italian cities that had joined Carthage. The Romans established a lodgement in north-east Iberia in 218 BC; the Carthaginians repeatedly attempted and failed to reduce it. In 211 the Romans took the offensive in Iberia and were badly defeated but maintained their hold on the north east. In 209 BC the new Roman commander Publius Scipio captured Carthago Nova, the main Carthaginian base in the peninsula. In 208 Scipio defeated Hasdrubal, although Hasdrubal was able to withdraw most of his troops into Gaul and then Cisalpine Gaul in spring 207 BC. This new Carthaginian invasion was defeated at the Battle of the Metaurus. At the battle of Ilipa in 206 Scipio permanently ended the Carthaginian presence in Iberia. Scipio invaded Carthaginian Africa in 204 BC, compelling the Carthaginian Senate to recall Hannibal's army from Italy. The final engagement of the war took place between armies under Scipio and Hannibal at Zama in 202 and resulted in Hannibal's defeat and in Carthage suing for peace. The peace treaty dictated by Rome stripped Carthage of all of its overseas territories and some of its African ones. An indemnity of 10,000 silver talents was to be paid over 50 years. Carthage was prohibited from waging war outside Africa, and in Africa only with Rome's express permission. Henceforth it was clear Carthage was politically subordinate to Rome. Rome used Carthaginian military activity against the Numidians as a pretext to declare war again in 149 BC starting the Third Punic War. In 146 BC the Romans stormed the city of Carthage, sacked it, slaughtered most of its population and completely demolished it. #documentary #history #rome

Songkran is the celebration of the traditional New Year in Thailand, a Buddhist holiday, and one could argue the world’ biggest water gun fight. Most travelers to Thailand that want to experience water festival come for the latter. For three days, up to a week in some areas, people take to the street with buckets of water, super soaker water guns, hoses, and anything else that will help them delight in dousing people with water. It is a huge celebration and national holiday in Thailand and great fun. There is a party like atmosphere throughout the cities and many festivals and events taking place throughout the celebration. The Songkran festival used to change dates based on the solar calendar. In recent years the date has been codified and the public holiday is always April 13 – 15 every year. Songkran day is April 13th. This is the day where Thai and Buddhist traditions are observed. The Thai Water Festival, as Songkran is also known, can last longer than 3 days in areas like Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Pattaya. Some people even get started soaking people a little early, so be on the look out a day or two before the holiday officially begins. The Songkran festival started out as the traditional Thai New Year’s celebration. It was based on the solar calendar and the date often fluctuated. In 1940, Thailand adopted January 1 as it’s official start to the New Year but the Songkran holiday continues to be celebrated as part of the cultural and Buddhist tradition of the country. While most people are familiar sights of the water fights raging on the city streets and the festivities and revelries associated with today’s festival, the origins are from more stoic Buddhist traditions that date back hundreds of years and still practiced today. It is a time of cleaning, washing away the bad luck, misdeeds, and misfortunes from the previous year and starting anew. The Thai’s pour scented water over the statues of Buddha and the shoulders of each other and on the hands of their elders in a symbolic gesture of this belief. This tradition still continues is the homes and temples around Thailand. It’s only afterward that people take to the streets and start soaking each other with water and celebrating for days on end. While any attire you don’t mind getting wet is appropriate, many people dress up for Songkran. The ‘Songkran Shirt’ is a colorful flower print reminiscent of Hawaiian shirts, and many people will be wearing them. Some take it to another level and get dressed up in costumes and masks. You can expect to be splashed with water as soon as you start walking down the street. Another Songkran tradition is to wipe a white chalk mixture on people’s faces. It’s a symbolic nod to the chalk used by Buddhist monks for blessing. Don’t be surprised if someone comes up and smears some white goop on your face, though it is impolite for someone to do so without asking first. You aren’t safe from getting wet anywhere unless you are locked in your hotel room, these are the best cities to celebrate the Thai Water Festival. In Bangkok - Khao San Road and Silom are the epicenter for Songkran activities in Bangkok. Khao San Road is the backpacker ghetto and it is a drunken party with plenty of tourist on tourist soaking. There are many bars serving alcohol and DJ’s pumping out tunes. Pattaya does Songkran like no other city in Thailand. When the celebration ends elsewhere, Pattaya carries on celebrating till April 19th, that’s a full week! Soi 6, 7, and 8 are popular spots. Bars will have large drums of water setup for people to reload their water guns, and many tourists will park themselves at the bars, drinking and having a good time as they soak passersby with water. With bars lining almost every street, Pattaya is like one giant Songkran party. The festivities end on Wan Lai, which means ‘Flowing Day’. If you’ve had enough of being drenched, head over to Bang Saen beach where they craft amazing sand castles and sculptures. Chiang Mai is probably the most popular spot for tourists to enjoy the Thailand Water Festival. The slow laid back atmosphere in a city surrounded by a moat filled with water make it an ideal location. The moat is drained shortly before the holiday begins and is filled with clean (‘ish) water as it is a major source for reloading buckets and water guns. The old city is where all the activity is and where you want to be. In Phuket, Patong Beach is where the action is. Bangla and Beach roads in particular are the hot spots. Bangla Road is closed off to cars and people walk up and down dumping water on each other while being shot at with water guns from patrons at the bars lining the streets. #travel #adventure #wild

Mars: graveyard of broken dreams and landers - Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has become a veritable graveyard for landers and rovers dispatched to its surface from neighboring Earth. Only the United States has successfully operated rovers on the Red Planet, four in all, and has lost only one stationary lander. The former Soviet Union had chalked up repeated failures, while Russia's first attempt at a rover will be a joint mission along with Europe dubbed ExoMars. If data shows that Europe's Schiaparelli lander crashed into the Red Planet on Wednesday, it will be the second failed attempt for Europe in 13 years. Overall, almost half of all attempts to land on Mars since the 1960s have ended in disappointment. A recap of surface-bound missions that missed the mark. USSR - Russia The Soviet Union (USSR) was the first to attempt to place a craft on Mars. A launch failure spoiled its first bid in 1962, followed in 1971 with its Mars 2 lander becoming the first pile of man-made debris on the Red Planet. Less than a week later, Mars 3 became the first craft to make a soft Mars landing, though contact was lost after mere seconds and the mission was chalked up as a partial failure. A small "walking" rover on board Mars 3 did not deploy. Moscow tried again in 1973 with its Mars 6 and Mars 7 landers, but contact with the first was lost as it reached the surface, and the second never penetrated the Martian atmosphere. Pre-touchdown communications were lost with two further would-be landers, Fobos 1 and Fobos 2, both launched in 1988. The United States After more than a decade of Soviet attempts, the US was successful on its first attempt—the Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers launched in 1975. They were followed in 1996 by the Mars Pathfinder, a science station and base for the Sojourner rover—the first motorised robot to be operated by humans beyond the Earth or Moon. The only US failure was its Mars Polar Lander which failed to touch down in 1999. It has subsequently placed three more rovers on the Red Planet: Spirit and Opportunity in 2003, and Curiosity in 2011. The latter two are still criss-crossing the alien Martian surface. European Union Europe's first attempt to land on Mars saw the British-built Beagle 2 lander disappear without trace after separating from its Mars Express mothership in 2003. A NASA photo last year showed finally that the craft had touched down, but its battery-recharging solar panels failed to deploy and it was unable to communicate. European Space Agency scientists are trying to establish the fate of their Schiaparelli lander, launched in March as a test run for a Mars rover due for launch in 2020. Schiaparelli separated from its Trace Gas Orbiter mothership on Sunday but signal was lost just seconds before it was to touch down on Mars three days later. #explore #nasa #space

A Complicated Man - Is the Newton-and-the-apple story true? Does anybody really understand the Principia? Was he a nice guy? Sir Isaac Newton's accomplishments border on the uncanny, as does his image in the world of science. With time, the historical Newton receded into the background, overshadowed by the very legacy he helped create. Newton thus metamorphosed into science personified. So what is that legacy? What were those accomplishments? Here, familiarize yourself with Newton's greatest contributions. Invented the reflecting telescope The standard telescope of Newton's time, the refracting telescope, was not ideal. Its glass lenses focused the different colors inherent in light at different distances. This resulted, at the edges of any bright objects seen through the telescope, in colored fringes that rendered those objects slightly out of focus. Newton solved the "chromatic aberration" problem by using mirrors instead of lenses. His original reflecting telescope, which he built himself in 1668, was just six inches long. This modest device not only eliminated the colored fringes but magnified whatever it focused on by 40 times, which, as Newton noted at the time, "is more than any 6 foot Tube can do." After presenting his scope to the Royal Society, the then-unknown Newton was proposed for membership; he later served as its president for 24 years, until his death in 1727. Proposed new theory of light and color Not long after he donated his telescope to the Royal Society, Newton delivered a paper to that august body about his novel theory of light and colors. Using prisms and his usual very exacting experimental technique, Newton had discovered that sunlight is comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, which could not only be separated but recombined into white light. Though he made his experiments on light as early as 1666, when he was only 24 years old, he didn't publish his classic Optics, which summarized his findings on light and color, until 1704. Discovered calculus When Newton began to muse on the problem of the motion of the planets and what kept them in their orbits around the sun, he realized that the mathematics of the day weren't sufficient to the task. Properties such as direction and speed, by their very nature, were in a continuous state of flux, constantly changing with time and exhibiting varying rates of change. So he invented a new branch of mathematics, which he called the fluxions (later known as calculus). Calculus allowed him to draw tangents to curves, determine the lengths of curves, and solve other problems that classical geometry could not help him solve. Interestingly, Newton's masterwork, the Principia, doesn't include the calculus in the form that he'd invented years before, simply because he hadn't yet published anything about it. Developed three laws of motion Newton's Principia is difficult to comprehend on two levels, even for experts: in its original form, it is written in Latin, and it uses very challenging mathematics. Yet one thing that comes out very simply and very clearly to all is his three laws of motion: Law of inertia: Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Law of acceleration: Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. For a constant mass, force equals mass times acceleration, F = ma. Law of action and reaction: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Devised law of universal gravitation Newton said shortly before his death that it was seeing an apple fall in his mother's garden that set him thinking "that the power of gravity ... was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought. Why not as high as the moon ... and if so that must influence her motion and perhaps retain her in her orbit." This brainstorm (which some scholars suspect Newton may have invented late in life) ultimately led to his law of universal gravitation. The law says that all particles of matter in the universe attract every other particle, that gravitational attraction is a property of all matter. The law explained many things, from the orbits of the planets around the sun to the influence of the moon and sun on the tides. And it held sway as the accepted description of terrestrial and celestial mechanics for almost 200 years—until Einstein came along and rocked the boat with relativity. Advanced early modern chemistry Newton spent untold hours of his life practicing alchemy. Like other alchemists, he sought to turn base metals into gold, find a universal cure for disease, and secure the elixir of life, which promised perpetual youth and eternal life. #history #biography #documentary

They Called It A Conspiracy Theory, Debunked, Racist, Misinformation, Highly Unlikely, Etc. Starring The "Misinformation" Experts: Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Fareed Zakaria, Chris Hayes, The Young Turks, CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, Washington Post, etc…And those who got it right: Trump, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld, Hannity, Maria Bartiromo and more! …Another Case Against 'Misinformation' Bans. U.S. Energy Department Now Says Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, and FBI agrees. Rand Paul says Biden should declassify docs after Energy Department reversal. The Energy Department, which had been undecided on the origin of the pandemic, now joins the FBI in concluding the coronavirus likely spread due to a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and key members of Congress. The so-called "lab leak theory," according to which the virus came from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, was widely dismissed as a conspiracy theory and "misinformation" by Democrats, major news outlets, scientists, and social media companies in the early stages of the pandemic. Paul was hardly the only Republican lawmakers to call for answers and accountability following news of the Energy Department's assessment. Congressional Republicans quickly took to Twitter, demanding apologies from those who dismissed the lab leak theory and for China to be held accountable. The development, which was noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines's office, prompted Paul to call for greater transparency. "Classified documents leaked (they should be declassified!) showing scientists at DOE believe COVID leaked from Wuhan Lab," Paul tweeted, calling for greater transparency. Beyond the FBI and Energy Department, the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies assess at "low confidence" that the COVID-19 pandemic originated due to natural transmission from an infected animal, while the CIA and another unnamed agency are undecided, according to the Wall Street Journal. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the COVID-19 pandemic was likely caused by a lab leak in Wuhan, China. "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Wray told Fox News in an interview that aired Tuesday. "Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab." "I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that's unfortunate for everybody," he added. Wray said the FBI has specialists who focus on "the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses like COVID, and the concerns that they [are] in the wrong hands [of] some bad guys, a hostile nation state, a terrorist, a criminal." #fakenews #bias #gaslighting

Just a few decades ago, the only planets we were sure that existed were those orbiting our sun, making up our solar system. Astronomers thought it was very likely that there were also planets orbiting other stars, but these were almost impossible to detect because they were so small, relatively speaking, and so far away. But since the first planet outside our solar system (or exoplanet) was discovered in 1992, the number of known exoplanets has exploded into an exciting and active field of research. The count of confirmed exoplanets just ticked past the 5,000 mark, representing a 30-year journey of discovery led by NASA space telescopes. The planetary odometer turned on March 21, with the latest batch of 65 exoplanets – planets outside our immediate solar family – added to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive records exoplanet discoveries that appear in peer-reviewed, scientific papers, and that have been confirmed using multiple detection methods or by analytical techniques. The 5,000-plus planets found so far include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and “hot Jupiters” in scorchingly close orbits around their stars. There are “super-Earths,” which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and “mini-Neptunes,” smaller versions of our system’s Neptune. Add to the mix planets orbiting two stars at once and planets stubbornly orbiting the collapsed remnants of dead stars. “It’s not just a number,” said Jessie Christiansen, science lead for the archive and a research scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech in Pasadena. “Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don’t know anything about them.” We do know this: Our galaxy likely holds hundreds of billions of such planets. The steady drumbeat of discovery began in 1992 with strange new worlds orbiting an even stranger star. It was a type of neutron star known as a pulsar, a rapidly spinning stellar corpse that pulses with millisecond bursts of searing radiation. Measuring slight changes in the timing of the pulses allowed scientists to reveal planets in orbit around the pulsar. Finding just three planets around this spinning star essentially opened the floodgates, said Alexander Wolszczan, the lead author on the paper that, 30 years ago, unveiled the first planets to be confirmed outside our solar system. “If you can find planets around a neutron star, planets have to be basically everywhere,” Wolszczan said. “The planet production process has to be very robust.” Wolszczan, who still searches for exoplanets as a professor at Penn State, says we’re opening an era of discovery that will go beyond simply adding new planets to the list. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched in 2018, continues to make new exoplanet discoveries. But soon powerful next-generation telescopes and their highly sensitive instruments, starting with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, will capture light from the atmospheres of exoplanets, reading which gases are present to potentially identify tell-tale signs of habitable conditions. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to launch in 2027, will make new exoplanet discoveries using a variety of methods. The ESA (European Space Agency) mission ARIEL, launching in 2029, will observe exoplanet atmospheres; a piece of NASA technology aboard, called CASE, will help zero in on exoplanet clouds and hazes. “To my thinking, it is inevitable that we’ll find some kind of life somewhere – most likely of some primitive kind,” Wolszczan said. The close connection between the chemistry of life on Earth and chemistry found throughout the universe, as well as the detection of widespread organic molecules, suggests detection of life itself is only a matter of time, he added. Music: Flying Dream by Dhruva Aliman - Amazon - https://amzn.to/2B9tGa7 - Apple - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dhruva-aliman/363563637- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet - Bandcamp - https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/road-of-fortunes - http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/ #universe #space #discovery