On this issue, I advise you to read the book of one of the largest modern experts in Islamic sciences tafsir (interpretation of the Koran) and usul al hadith (hadith studies) of the sheikh Taki Usmani "Quran Studies".
According to this book, there were several stages in the preservation of the Qur'an, some of them are:
1. The writing of the Qur'an in the era of the Prophet ﷺ
2. collection of the text of the Koran under Mr. Abu Bakr
3. collection of the text of the Koran under Mr. Usman
4. Steps taken to help recite the Qur'an
Briefly about the first stage I will give an excerpt:
Although the main way to preserve the text of the Qur'an was to memorize it by the companions, the noble Prophet ﷺ also arranged for the writing of the verses. How this was done was told in one of the hadiths by Mr. Zayd ibn
Thabit (may Allah be pleased with him):"I wrote down the verses sent down to the Prophet ﷺ. When
a revelation came, he felt the heat, and drops of sweat
flowed from it like beads. When this state
ended, I took out the scapular bone or another
material. He dictated and I wrote. Upon completion of the recording
her weight was such that it seemed to me that my leg
will break under its weight, and I will no longer be able to walk. how
Anyway, when I finished recording, he said:
"Read!" and I read to him. If I made a mistake,
he corrected it, and then I took the tape out to people.Hadith reported in Sahih Bukhari
The recording of the revelations was entrusted not only to Zeid ibn Thabit, but also to other companions who performed this work as needed.
The same associate Zeid ibn Thabit (may Allah be pleased with him) received a mission to collect the text of the Koran in writing from Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) after the death of a large number of hafiz (hafiz is a person who knows the Koran by heart) in the battle of Yamama (approximately a year and a half after the death of the Prophet ﷺ).
And here are the methods followed by Zeid ibn Thabit (may Allah be pleased with him), who, by the way, was also a hafiz himself (from the same book):
Further, an announcement was made publicly that all who had records of the verses of the Qur'an should bring them to Mr. Zeid.
When receiving such records, Zayd verified their authenticity in the following four ways:
1. To begin with, he compared them with what he himself remembered.
2. When someone came with an ayat, he did not receive this person alone, but together with Mr. Umar (may Allah be pleased with him), because, as reports indicate, Umar, who also knew the Qur'an by heart, was appointed by Abu Bakr to work with Zeid. Therefore, he also checked the verse with what he himself knew.
3. No written verse was accepted until there were two reliable witnesses confirming that the recording was made in the presence of the noble Prophet ﷺ. Sheikh Suyuti said that, apparently, witnesses
confirmed the fact that such verses were presented to the Prophet ﷺ in
year of his death on their correspondence with seven variations, on
whom the Qur'an was sent down. This statement of Sheikh Suyuti is confirmed by a number of narrations.
4. Then the written verses were compared with personal copies
associates. According to Imam Abu Shamakh, the purpose of this
method was the maximum precaution against
records of the Qur'an so as not to rely on mere memory. AT
as a result, the recording took place from those texts that were
formed in the presence of the noble Prophet ﷺ.
In the third way, Sheikh Suyuti means the annual verification of the Koran in the month of Ramadan by the Prophet ﷺ himself, of whom there were two in the last year of His life.
And this is the NATIONALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT!
Those who saw the broadcast of the inauguration ceremony could draw attention to the spectacle of Putin being transported from the White House (by the way, he was also alone in the White House) to the Kremlin through deserted Moscow. Not a single person on the way. Nobody welcomes, nobody rejoices. A terrible sight.
A neutron bomb named Putin was detonated in Moscow. They did not even dare to take the extras from Poklonnaya to the streets. A touching moment of unity of the leader not with the people, but with empty streets.
Obama inauguration. At the place of the President's passage, some took a place in 3 days!
Original taken from alexey_ivanov in Continuing the theme of the deserted inauguration
Video this time. The sight of empty sidewalks in Moscow is striking in the afternoon on a day off. Well, I understand that they closed the central metro stations, blocked access to the center. And those who live in the center, on the same Novy Arbat, for example, have they been blocked in the entrances?
And it is interesting that this is all shown by Channel One.
UPD. By the way, there is a nice comment on YouTube for this video:
"that's how many people in Moscow support Putin"
Original taken from sudenko c Not a single person on the way. Nobody welcomes, nobody rejoices. An eerie sight
Original taken from mr_mstislav in a terrible disgrace - the executioner's kanguration
Original taken from mrvorchun in
Original taken from andreykl_linux at the inauguration. Find 10 differences
Originally posted by stepanov_karel at Inaugurations. Find 10 differences
Original taken from uborshizzza at the inauguration. Find 10 differences
Obama inauguration. At the place of the President's passage, some took a place in 3 days:
Yushchenko's inauguration 
Inauguration of Sarkozy 
Those who saw the broadcast of the inauguration ceremony (there are no photos yet) could turn to the spectacle of Putin being transported from the White House to the Kremlin through deserted Moscow. Not a single person on the way. Nobody welcomes, nobody rejoices. A terrible sight.
Original taken from sudenko Putin's plan worked
"...12 00. Beginning of the inauguration. Vladimir Putin's cortege drove through an empty city. Journalist Alexander Golts wrote on his FB: "Putin was driving to the Kremlin along absolutely empty streets. Not a single person. A neutron bomb named Putin was detonated in Moscow. They did not even dare to take the extras from Poklonnaya to the streets. A touching moment of the leader's unity not with the people, but with empty streets"...
Metro stations in the center of Moscow are closed for exits.
As Vodokanal employees told our correspondent, they welded hatches along the route of the cortege ... "...
Some mysteries are destined to sink into oblivion and forever remain unsolved. But some of the mysteries, thanks to modern technology and the research of archaeologists and historians, have already been solved today.
In contact with
Odnoklassniki
But the unraveled mysteries became no less interesting.
1 Marie Antoinette's Missing Son
Missing son of Marie Antoinette.
For about 200 years, no one could say what happened to the son of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. The eight-year-old Louis XVII was named uncrowned king.
During the French Revolution, his parents were executed, and the boy was sent to the temple prison in Paris. Two years later, legend has it, the boy was kidnapped from prison, and a dead doppelganger was left in his place.
In 2000, DNA tests were carried out on the preserved heart of a child who had died in prison (this macabre memento was kept by the doctor who performed the autopsy).
The DNA matched exactly the genetic material obtained from a strand of Marie Antoinette's hair. This debunked the popular story of little Louie's escape. The child tragically died in prison because he was ill with tuberculosis.
2. Pharaoh's firstborn
Pharaoh's firstborn.
Several historians have stated that they have identified the name of the pharaoh's heir who died during the biblical plague: Amonkherkhepeshef.
Egyptologist Kent Wicks, during the excavation of a burial complex in Egypt, found many burials decorated with artistic paintings depicting the life of Ramses II and his sons. Most shocking were the organ jars found, signed with the name Amonherkhepeshef.
A skeleton was also found with the characteristic features of the family of Ramses II and with a fractured skull. Amonherkhepeshef was a military general, and the skull was most likely broken by a mace during the battle. DNA testing is not possible at the moment due to the completely decomposed tissues.
3. Paul I
Pavel I.
The Russian Empress Catherine the Great gave birth to an heir, who was named Pavel, in 1754. Catherine's husband, Peter III, was much more interested in his toy soldiers and mistress, so some suggest that the child was the illegitimate bastard of Sergei Saltykov, an officer who may have been Catherine's lover.
Young Paul's parents despised each other, and Paul was only eight years old when his legitimate father, Peter III, was poisoned. Paul later stated that he was convinced that his mother was involved in a plot to kill his father.
Catherine the Great believed that her son would become a bad king and wanted to elevate her grandson Alexander to the throne. But Catherine died of a stroke, after which Paul ascended the throne. As it turned out, her fears were not in vain: Paul became an eccentric and eccentric king. Four and a half years later, he was killed, and his son Alexander was believed to have participated in the conspiracy.
4. Prince Arthur
Prince Arthur.
In 1486, the English prince was named after the legendary King Arthur of Camelot at birth. When Prince Arthur of Wales was only 15 years old, he was married to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand.
The alliance, which was intended to strengthen the alliance between Spain and England, did not last long. Five months after the wedding, Prince Arthur died from causes unknown to this day.
The frail teenager lived with his new bride at Ludlow Castle, near the Welsh border. His widow married a younger brother, Arthur, who eventually became Henry VIII. In 2002, archaeologists discovered Arthur's tomb in the basement of Worcester Cathedral and hope to one day find out what killed the heir to the throne.
5. Menelik
Menelik.
Menelik was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. If you believe the Ethiopians, then it is he who is the reason for the disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant. The myth of Menelik tells how his mother raised him in her own kingdom, and as an adult, the young man met his father in Jerusalem.
When Solomon offered Menelik the opportunity to become his heir, the ungrateful royal offspring fled with the Ark of the Covenant. Menelik said that he learned the religion of his father, after which he brought Judaism to his people (this is the religion that is still practiced in Ethiopia).
The thousands of years that have passed since then make it impossible to establish whether this Ethiopian king even existed.
6 Victoria's secret grandson
Secret grandson of Victoria.
Although this has never been proven, persistent rumors circulate around one of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise. Historical notes about Louise are known for describing her beauty, rebellious disposition and love of love. Biographer Lucinda Hawksley believes that the princess had an illegitimate son with one of her servants, a man named Walter Stirling.
Stirling was Louise's younger brother's tutor and was fired just four months after being hired, which was highly unusual for royalty. The child was allegedly a boy named Henry, born in 1866 or 1867, when Louise was still a teenager. The boy, who didn't even have a birth certificate, was adopted by Sir Frederick Lockock, Queen Victoria's gynecologist.
7. House of royal children
House of the royal children.
In the mid-19th century, Scottish Egyptologist Henry Rind was excavating at Thebes when he found an ancient mass grave. The remains belonged to Egyptian princesses. Almost nothing is known about them, so scientists have given them the collective title "House of Royal Children".
No one knows the history of the burial, but the fact remains that only court women and girls of royal blood are buried in it. Many of the names inscribed in the tomb are fairly well-known, such as Tiaa, sister of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Scholars do not know why so many princesses died during the reign of just one pharaoh.
8. Saint Dmitry
Saint Dmitry.
As everyone knows, Tsar Ivan the Terrible killed his son, who was supposed to become the heir to the throne. Shortly thereafter, Ivan's wife gave birth to another boy, Dmitry.
When the child was only two years old, Ivan the Terrible died, and Dmitry's older half-brother, Fedor I, ascended the throne. The sickly Tsar Fedor could not give birth to an heir, so Dmitry was next in line for the throne.
But in 1591, the nine-year-old crown prince died under mysterious circumstances. According to the official version, he had a knife in his hand at the time he had a seizure. As a result, the prince accidentally stabbed himself in the neck with a knife.
One of the legends says that Dmitry was actually killed on the orders of Boris Godunov, who eventually became the king. In 1606, 15 years after his death, Dmitry was declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.
9. Little Caesar
Little Caesar.
The son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra lived only 17 years. He was born in 47 BC, three years before Caesar's assassination. During this time, the baby ruled Egypt along with Cleopatra.
Caesarion, or "Little Caesar" as he was sometimes called, was the king of Egypt, but for some mysterious reason, his name has hardly survived in official documents.
One theory is that Cleopatra wanted to continue her dynasty with the twins she later gave birth to by Mark Antony, but this remains unproven.
When Caesarion was a teenager, he became a pawn in a deadly power struggle between Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian.
Mark Antony and Octavian shared power in Rome, but each wanted to be the sole ruler. The young king disappeared when Octavian became sole ruler of Egypt and Rome.
10. Anastasia Romanova
Anastasia Romanova.
One of the most intriguing mysteries associated with the ruling dynasties is the mystery of Anastasia Romanova, whose remains were not identified in the mass grave of the royal family shot in 1918.
In 2007, the grave of the Romanovs was excavated within a radius of about 70 meters from the original burial site. The find was shocking. The remains of brutally murdered two children were found - a very young boy, as well as a girl aged 17 - 24 years.
The remains of two other royal children could not be found. Three different genetic tests were carried out, all of which showed that Anastasia Romanova was not in the grave. The fate of the representative of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty is still unknown.
HORRIBLE SIGHT
It happened in 1867 in a colony for children in Paris. At about 2 am, the guards heard animal cries and chomping sounds in one of the rooms. Frightened caretakers immediately ran to the sound. Looking out the door, they literally turned gray with horror. Bloodied children stood in the center of the room, and between them...
Some mysteries are destined to sink into oblivion and forever remain unsolved. But some of the mysteries, thanks to modern technology and the research of archaeologists and historians, have already been solved today.
But the unraveled mysteries became no less interesting.
1 Marie Antoinette's Missing Son
Missing son of Marie Antoinette.
For about 200 years, no one could say what happened to the son of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. The eight-year-old Louis XVII was named uncrowned king.
During the French Revolution, his parents were executed, and the boy was sent to the temple prison in Paris. Two years later, legend has it, the boy was kidnapped from prison, and a dead doppelganger was left in his place.
In 2000, DNA tests were carried out on the preserved heart of a child who had died in prison (this macabre memento was kept by the doctor who performed the autopsy).
The DNA matched exactly the genetic material obtained from a strand of Marie Antoinette's hair. This debunked the popular story of little Louie's escape. The child tragically died in prison because he was ill with tuberculosis.
2. Pharaoh's firstborn
Pharaoh's firstborn.
Several historians have stated that they have identified the name of the pharaoh's heir who died during the biblical plague: Amonkherkhepeshef.
Egyptologist Kent Wicks, during the excavation of a burial complex in Egypt, found many burials decorated with artistic paintings depicting the life of Ramses II and his sons. Most shocking were the organ jars found, signed with the name Amonherkhepeshef.
A skeleton was also found with the characteristic features of the family of Ramses II and with a fractured skull. Amonherkhepeshef was a military general, and the skull was most likely broken by a mace during the battle. DNA testing is not possible at the moment due to the completely decomposed tissues.
3. Paul I
Pavel I.
The Russian Empress Catherine the Great gave birth to an heir, who was named Pavel, in 1754. Catherine's husband, Peter III, was much more interested in his toy soldiers and mistress, so some suggest that the child was the illegitimate bastard of Sergei Saltykov, an officer who may have been Catherine's lover.
Young Paul's parents despised each other, and Paul was only eight years old when his legitimate father, Peter III, was poisoned. Paul later stated that he was convinced that his mother was involved in a plot to kill his father.
Catherine the Great believed that her son would become a bad king and wanted to elevate her grandson Alexander to the throne. But Catherine died of a stroke, after which Paul ascended the throne. As it turned out, her fears were not in vain: Paul became an eccentric and eccentric king. Four and a half years later, he was killed, and his son Alexander was believed to have participated in the conspiracy.
4. Prince Arthur
Prince Arthur.
In 1486, the English prince was named after the legendary King Arthur of Camelot at birth. When Prince Arthur of Wales was only 15 years old, he was married to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand.
The alliance, which was intended to strengthen the alliance between Spain and England, did not last long. Five months after the wedding, Prince Arthur died from causes unknown to this day.
The frail teenager lived with his new bride at Ludlow Castle, near the Welsh border. His widow married a younger brother, Arthur, who eventually became Henry VIII. In 2002, archaeologists discovered Arthur's tomb in the basement of Worcester Cathedral and hope to one day find out what killed the heir to the throne.
5. Menelik
Menelik.
Menelik was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. If you believe the Ethiopians, then it is he who is the reason for the disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant. The myth of Menelik tells how his mother raised him in his own kingdom, and as an adult, the young man met his father in Jerusalem.
When Solomon offered Menelik the opportunity to become his heir, the ungrateful royal offspring fled with the Ark of the Covenant. Menelik said that he learned the religion of his father, after which he brought Judaism to his people (this is the religion that is still practiced in Ethiopia).
The thousands of years that have passed since then make it impossible to establish whether this Ethiopian king even existed.
6 Victoria's secret grandson
Secret grandson of Victoria.
Although this has never been proven, persistent rumors circulate around one of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise. Historical notes about Louise are known for describing her beauty, rebellious disposition and love of love. Biographer Lucinda Hawksley believes that the princess had an illegitimate son with one of her servants, a man named Walter Stirling.
Stirling was Louise's younger brother's tutor and was fired just four months after being hired, which was highly unusual for royalty. The child was allegedly a boy named Henry, born in 1866 or 1867, when Louise was still a teenager. The boy, who didn't even have a birth certificate, was adopted by Sir Frederick Lockock, Queen Victoria's gynecologist.
7. House of royal children
House of the royal children.
In the mid-19th century, Scottish Egyptologist Henry Rind led the way when he found an ancient mass grave. The remains belonged to Egyptian princesses. Virtually nothing is known about them.
therefore scholars have given them the collective title "House of Royal Children".
No one knows the history of the burial, but the fact remains that only court women and girls of royal blood are buried in it. Many of the names inscribed in the tomb are fairly well-known, such as Tiaa, sister of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Scholars do not know why so many princesses died during the reign of just one pharaoh.
8. Saint Dmitry
Saint Dmitry.
As everyone knows, Tsar Ivan the Terrible killed his son, who was supposed to become the heir to the throne. Shortly thereafter, Ivan's wife gave birth to another boy, Dmitry.
When the child was only two years old, Ivan the Terrible died, and Dmitry's older half-brother, Fedor I, ascended the throne. The sickly Tsar Fedor could not give birth to an heir, so Dmitry was next in line for the throne.
But in 1591, the nine-year-old crown prince died under mysterious circumstances. According to the official version, he had a knife in his hand at the time he had a seizure. As a result, the prince accidentally stabbed himself in the neck with a knife.
One of the legends says that Dmitry was actually killed on the orders of Boris Godunov, who eventually became the king. In 1606, 15 years after his death, Dmitry was declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.
9. Little Caesar
Little Caesar.
The son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra lived only 17 years. He was born in 47 BC, three years before Caesar's assassination. During this time, the baby ruled Egypt along with Cleopatra.
Caesarion, or "Little Caesar" as he was sometimes called, was the king of Egypt, but for some mysterious reason, his name has hardly survived in official documents.
One theory is that Cleopatra wanted to continue her dynasty with the twins she later gave birth to by Mark Antony, but this remains unproven.
When Caesarion was a teenager, he became a pawn in a deadly power struggle between Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian.
Mark Antony and Octavian shared power in Rome, but each wanted to be the sole ruler. The young king disappeared when Octavian became sole ruler of Egypt and Rome.
10. Anastasia Romanova
Anastasia Romanova.
One of the most intriguing mysteries associated with the ruling dynasties is the mystery of Anastasia Romanova, whose remains were not identified in the mass grave of the royal family shot in 1918.
In 2007, the grave of the Romanovs was excavated within a radius of about 70 meters from the original burial site. The find was shocking. The remains of brutally murdered two children were found - a very young boy, as well as a girl aged 17 - 24 years.
The remains of two other royal children could not be found. Three different genetic tests were carried out, all of which showed that Anastasia Romanova was not in the grave. The fate of the representative of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty is still unknown.
Modified May 13, 2017 by Vladimir NikonovYour post must be moderated
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A video featuring a strange creature appeared on the Web, which horrified everyone! Frightened locals immediately took the mysterious cub to the hospital so that they could be explained who he was.
When the scientists received the test results, they were speechless. After all, it all boils down to...
A lot of strange things have been happening around the world lately. Now a huge fish of an incomprehensible species swims ashore, then a huge crab hides at the pier. Huge two-kilogram fish fall from the sky instead of rain. I imagine the faces of those people whom they began to fall on their heads.In general, what just happens: dogs and cats began to speak human language. Wow, some people only begin to speak at the age of seven, but these do not have time to grow up and already swear like people.
And this has never happened before. Where could such a thing come from? From the photo and video it is clear that this is not a person, but from some side it resembles a human body.A video appeared on the web with the participation of a strange creature photo...
This something very similar to a werewolf from Hollywood nightmares was found in Pahang, Malaysia. Frightened locals immediately took the mysterious cub to the hospital so that they could be explained who he was. When the scientists received the test results, they were speechless.
After all, everything converges to the fact that this is really a werewolf cub! Whether they said this as a joke, or is it really true - one can only guess, since additional information was not announced, and the creature itself was left in the laboratory for additional analyzes (according to them).
But if they didn't want to hide something, they would provide more information, at least the results of the tests themselves, wouldn't they? In general, this creature left behind a lot of questions after its appearance, and the locals are sure that they are not being told something.19 CRAZY SCHOOL PHOTOS OF KIDS.
Babies are cute and adorable, but they don't pee and pee when their parents are ready.
We've rounded up footage of the most disgusting baby photo shoots that show the dirty side of parenting. Parents - current or future - watch and enjoy...Babies are cute and adorable, but they pee and ka-ka not at all when their parents have time ...
All these photos were found in the most hidden nooks and crannies of the global network. Where, so to speak, the human mouse did not click.
Although you may have already seen some of them. Take courage, move the children away from the screen, and keep a plastic bag nearby just in case.
A selection of frightening pictures of unknown origin. The faint of heart do not enter.
The year 2016 is coming to an end, and one of the most authoritative and main scientific journals in the world, Nature, is summing up its results. We respect the opinion of its editors and present you with a list of the most important people in the world of science and technology who made this year, according to Nature.
Gabriela Gonzalez: Gravity Spy
A physicist who helped collect the first signs of long-sought gravitational waves.A year ago, Gabriela Gonzalez struggled to keep the biggest secret of her life. Two giant detectors in the United States have picked up signs of gravitational waves - the ripples of space-time that Albert Einstein knew about, but that have never been observed directly. It was Gonzalez's work that helped more than a thousand scientists in their careful attempts to confirm the discovery before it was announced to the public.
Such news does not remain a secret for long. But the discovery was so important that it took the research team nearly five months to analyze data from two LIGO detectors in Washington and Louisiana. As a spokesperson for the LIGO scientific collaboration, Gonzalez was among the key people who coordinated the analyzes of teams scattered around the world, including the Virgo interferomer researchers near Pisa, Italy.
It took the multifaceted talents of González to realize this massive effort. Most physicists know early on whether they will become theorists or experimentalists. But Gonzalez began graduate school as a theoretical physicist and only then switched to experimental work, showing unusual abilities. “She proved herself to be a top-notch scientist by doing this,” says Reiner Weiss, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and one of the founders of LIGO.
Throughout her career, Gonzalez has done "a little bit of everything" at LIGO. For some time, she has been occupied with the important task of diagnosing the performance of interferometers to ensure that they have achieved unprecedented sensitivity - which is now sufficient to detect length changes in 4 km interferometer arms with an accuracy of one part in 1021. This can be compared to the width of DNA compared to orbit of Saturn. She then helped the scientists who analyzed the data. And she pushed gravitational wave researchers and dozens of their colleagues in traditional astronomy to sign cooperation pacts. Together they will look for phenomena that emit gravitational and electromagnetic waves.
In the hectic months leading up to the announcement of LIGO's discovery, Gonzalez and her colleagues struggled to make sure they had concrete evidence. They knew that history had not been so kind to those who had previously reported gravitational waves. More recently, in early 2015, an international collaboration had to take it back when they reported on a telescope at the South Pole that had found indirect signs of the long-awaited wobble.
To add pressure to the LIGO team, rumors of the discovery began leaking out a week after the initial discovery, and journalists started calling. During her long period of analysis, Gonzalez says she never made a major decision without consulting with colleagues. But others praise her leadership. “Gaby got us through this whole period,” says Weiss.
Gonzalez says that after her current position as a spokesperson for LIGO, which expires in March 2017, she will move back into full-time research. The field of science she helped create - gravitational wave astronomy - is seeing its inception. “It has always been a fun journey. And now it's only better."
Demis Hassabis: creator of consciousness
An AI developer beat one of the best in Go. Next - the solution of global problems.Game lover Demis Hassabis had one of the toughest matches of his life in March - and he wasn't even a player. Hassabis had to watch from the sidelines as his team's creation, the AlphaGo computer program, took on Lee Sedol, the world champion in the strategy game of Go. The computer won, and it was a huge victory for the field of artificial intelligence and another triumph for Hassabis.
As co-founder of DeepMind, the London-based firm behind AlphaGo, Hassabis was both excited and relaxed. “That was our breakthrough and it was successful,” he says.
But this victory was much more than Go. Hassabis wanted to show the world the power of machine learning techniques, which he hopes to use to create human-level AI capable of solving complex global problems.
Hassabis sketched out such a vision at an early age. As a chess prodigy, he began developing innovative video games that sold millions of copies as a teenager and started his own company in his 20s. After earning a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, he founded DeepMind in 2010. Google bought the company 4 years later for 400 million pounds.
At this company, scientists are applying inspiration from the field of neuroscience to artificial intelligence tasks, from speech synthesis to navigating the London Underground. Each algorithm is more complex than the last, Hassabis says, and weaves in abilities that have historically been developed separately in the field of AI. DeepMind artificial intelligence has come a long way, learning to see, act on that vision, use it for planning and reasoning. Speaking of solving real-world problems, scientists used machine learning to cut power consumption at Google data centers by 15%. This is what Hassabis hopes to apply on a larger scale.
Although the company's researchers publish, their work is kept secret, which annoys some scientists. And some privacy advocates have reservations about DeepMind's plans to partner with the UK's National Health Service. Scholars, however, are flocking to work for the company.
As a person, Hassabis is unassuming but persistent. He has a knack for convincing others of his passion, says Eleanor Maguire, his former academic advisor at University College London. "After he talks about something he's interested in, it's infectious," she says. The academic work involved in running a company doesn't leave much time for yourself, but Hassabis isn't worried. "We are working on an important mission, so it is worth the sacrifice."
Terry Hughes: Reef Guardian
A coral researcher has sounded the alarm about a massive bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.When Terry Hughes flew over the Great Barrier Reef in March, his heart sank at the sight of telltale pale spots just below the surface where corals were dead or dying.
Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council's (ARC) Coral Reef Research Center in Townsville, says he and his students wept as they looked at the aerial damage data. The bleaching has affected almost all reefs, with initial surveys showing that 81% of the northern part was significantly affected. It was the most devastating bleaching event in the history of the Great Barrier Reef - and it is only a fraction of what is happening across the Pacific.
This year's coral problems in the Pacific have been triggered by a strong El Niño warming pattern in the tropical Pacific. Abnormally high water temperatures have caused the corals to expel the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae that provide them with most of their food - and color. Some corals can recover from bleaching, but others die. Follow-up surveys in October and November showed that 67% of the shallow corals in the 700-kilometer northern section of the Great Barrier Reef had died.
When a massive El Niño erupted in the Pacific Ocean in 2015, Australian scientists feared the country's reefs might be in danger. So Hughes, one of the world's leading coral researchers, assembled a task force that volunteered to survey the reef if bleaching began. This group eventually expanded to 300 people. “We put together a very detailed study plan, hoping that of course it wouldn't happen,” he says.
Hughes lives close to the central part of the Great Barrier Reef. As head of the first studies, he became the de facto representative of the catastrophe. At the peak of media interest in reef bleaching, Hughes gave 35 interviews in one day.
The reef crisis has defied some rules. The traditional view of bleaching, says Hughes, is that corals slowly starve to death after zooxanthellae leave them. But this year temperatures were so high that “many corals died before starvation set in. They literally nailed it."
Corals around the world have been suffering over the past few years as global temperatures repeatedly hit record highs. In October 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that global bleaching began to occur as coral reefs in Hawaii, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives began to die.
This year the bleaching has spread to Australia, Japan and other parts of the Pacific. Scientists say that as climate change increases core temperatures, bleaching will hit reefs more frequently. In some cases this can happen so frequently that most corals simply cannot survive.
Hughes is not yet ready to give up the Great Barrier Reef. But recent bleaching has left the corals in a weakened state, vulnerable to attack from pathogens and predators. Another bleaching event in the near future could result in further damage. "The message to the people," he says, "is that the window to confront climate change is slowly closing."
Gus Velders: coolant
Atmospheric chemist laid the groundwork for international climate agreement.It's not often that atmospheric chemists save the world, but Gus Velders got his chance in October. He attended international talks in Kigali, Rwanda, which were to lead to a phase-out of the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), extremely potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioners.
Most countries have agreed to aggressive deadlines for dealing with these components, but India and some other countries wanted four additional years. Turning the numbers into a model on his laptop, Welders informed the parties to the agreement that this particular concession would have little effect on the planet.
This and his earlier work helped to smooth the way for the broad proclamation of the global agreement, which was signed on October 15th. Welders, a research fellow at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, is proud of the role he is playing. "I've never been involved in a process that leads to a global climate agreement before," he says.
But this is no coincidence. Colleagues say that Welders has become the world's expert on HFC emissions and that no one else could have done such a quick analysis in Kigali. He is part of a community of scientists who helped transform the 1987 Montreal Protocol - an international agreement aimed at protecting the stratospheric ozone layer - into a tool to combat global warming.
The refrigerants that fall under the protocol are also potent greenhouse gases, and Welders' team showed that the Montreal agreement actually did more to control global temperatures than the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. More recently, the team projected how much HFCs could contribute to warming over the 21st century. This helped pave the way for the HFC agreement that was reached as an amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
Celilna Terci: Detective Zika
A doctor who hastened to solve a medical mystery in the northeast of Brazil.Concerns about the Zika virus spread around the globe in 2016, with Brazil as the epicenter of concern, where the epidemic first appeared. Some scholars have even called for the postponement of the Olympic Games planned for Rio de Janeiro in August of that year. Beyond Madness, Celina Maria Terci Martelli fought on the front lines in northeast Brazil, trying to solve a medical mystery.
Terchi, a doctor and infectious disease expert, turned her life upside down because of Zeke back in September 2015. It was then that she was asked by the health ministry to investigate a spike in reports of babies born with abnormally small heads and brains, i.e. microcephaly, in her home state of Pernambuco. She quickly became convinced that the country was facing a public health emergency.
Terchi, who works at the Aggeu Magalhães research center in Recife, immediately contacted scientists around the world asking for help. She formed a networked task force of epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, pediatricians, neurologists, and reproductive biologists. The challenges were formidable, Turchi says: There were no reliable tests on Zeke in the lab, and there was no consensus on the definition of microcephaly. But the intensive network paid off, and Turchi and colleagues finally gathered enough evidence to demonstrate a link between the problem and Zika infection in the first trimester of pregnancy.
However, the problem was far from solved, Terchi says. Although Zika has spread throughout the Americas, the expected explosion did not occur in a number of cases outside northwestern Brazil. Terchi was tasked with finding out why. Visiting hospitals in Recife and researching the outbreak, Terchi says she had to invent. “There was no book to work from.” Now she and her colleagues are writing this book.
Alexandra Elbakyan: science pirate
The founder of an illegal hub of scientific works attracted the attention of the court and deserved recognition.It took only a few years for Alexandra Elbakyan to go from IT student to notorious fugitive. In 2009, when she was a graduate student working on a graduation project in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Elbakyan faced the frustration of not being able to access many academic papers because she couldn't afford it. So she learned to bypass paywalls.
Very soon, her skills were in great demand. Scientists on many web forums asked for papers they didn't have access to, and she was happy to help them. “I got a lot of thanks for sending out free work,” she says. In 2011, she decided to automate this process and founded Sci-Hub, a pirate website that pulls copies of research papers from paid sources and gives them to whoever asks for it. This year, interest in Sci-Hub literally exploded, and with it the number of users. According to Elbakyan, the site currently contains about 60 million entries and handled over 75 million downloads in 2016. Last year there were 42 million, about 3% of all science publisher downloads worldwide.
Yes, this is copyright infringement on a grand scale - and it has earned Elbakyan praise, criticism and lawsuit. Few people support the fact that she acted illegally, but many see Sci-Hub as a continuation of the open access movement, according to which these works should be downloaded and read for free. "She did something amazing," says Michael Eisen, a biologist and open access advocate at the University of California at Berkeley. "Lack of access to scientific literature is a huge injustice, and she fixed it in one fell swoop."
For the first few years of its existence, the site went unnoticed - but eventually became too big to be ignored by subscription publishers. In 2015, a Dutch company, with broad support from the publishing industry, filed a lawsuit in the United States against Elbakyan, accusing her of hacking and copyright infringement. If Elbakyan loses, she risks paying millions of dollars in damages and possibly even going to jail. For this reason, Elbakyan does not reveal his current location and gives interviews via encrypted data transmission. In 2015, an American court ruled to close Sci-Hub, but the site appeared on other domains. It is most popular in China, India and Iran, but about 5% of users come from the US.
Elbakyan often finds his name in newspapers and says he receives hundreds of messages of support every week and even financial donations. She says she feels a moral responsibility to keep her site afloat because of the users who need it to keep going. “What is wrong or shameful in running a site that gives access to research, like Sci-Hub? I think nothing, so I can speak openly about my activities,” she says.
Critics and supporters alike believe that her site will have a lasting impact, even if it doesn't last long. “Universal open access is the future,” says Heather Pivovar, co-founder of Impactstory, a nonprofit that helps scientists track the impact of their online contributions. In many ways, she hopes that Elbakyan's actions will eventually force publishers to move to an open access model.
Elbakyan says that he will continue to build Sci-Hub in the process of obtaining a master's degree in the history of science. She will maintain the site herself, but if she is hindered, someone else can take care of it.
John Zhang: Fertilization Riot
The doctor unleashed controversy on the subject of a dubious in vitro fertilization procedure.Shock, anger, skepticism and congratulations. This is how fertility specialist John Zhang was greeted in September when he claimed that a controversial method of mixing three people's DNA was used to conceive a healthy baby.
This method is designed to protect children from the transmission of inherited disorders associated with mitochondria, the cellular structures that produce energy. But ethical and safety concerns have prompted the United States to ban such procedures. Zhang, who works at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York, performed the technique at the company's clinic in Mexico.
Critics saw this as an attempt to evade regulation and complained that he announced the work at a conference rather than as a publication. But Zhang dismisses these objections. “The most important thing is to get a live born baby and not tell the whole world about it,” he says.
Zhang has a habit of pushing scientific and ethical boundaries. In the 1990s, he worked with reproductive endocrinologist Jamie Grifo at NYU Langone Medical Center, developing a version of the technique that Zhang was using that year. It was created to help older women get pregnant by replacing their aging mitochondria with younger ones. This method did not lead to successful cases of pregnancy.
When US regulators began restricting the method in 2001, Zhang and his colleagues in China were hired. In 2003, Zhang's team created and implanted several embryos into a woman. After she had a miscarriage, China banned the technique too.
Grifo and some others applaud Zhang's latest work. “I think something great has finally happened,” says Grifo. Others criticize the New Hope team. “A lot of the things they do are completely unsafe,” like infusing a donor egg with a drug that can cause chromosomal abnormalities, says Shukhrat Mitalipov, a stem cell scientist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Zhang is confused. He says many other families at risk of mitochondrial disease transmission have shown interest in his procedure and he hopes to have it performed in other countries. “In five to ten years, people will look at her and say: why were we so stupid, why were we against it?” he says. "I think we have an obligation to show the benefit to all of humanity."
Kevin Esvelt: careful CRISPR
A budding biologist has put the ethics of working with genes ahead of experimentation.At the age of ten, Kevin Esvelt visited the Galapagos Islands for the first time. It was there that his appetite for reworking evolution manifested itself for the first time. Looking at the iguanas, birds and the vast biodiversity of these islands that inspired Charles Darwin, Esvelt promised himself to understand evolution - and improve it. “I wanted to know more about where these creatures came from,” he says. "And to be honest, I'd like to make my own."
Today, Esvelt is still a cautious biologist. In less than a year after launching the lab at MIT, Cambridge, he made a name for himself as one of the first to tackle the controversial "gene drive" technique. His method uses the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing method to bypass evolution and force the gene to spread faster in the population. It can be used to eradicate diseases such as mosquito-borne malaria or eradicate invasive species. However, it can also trigger a chain of unintended reactions or even be used to create biological weapons.
Esvelt came up with the idea for CRISPR gene boost when he experimented with the Cas9 enzyme in 2013. “The whole day I was in absolute ecstatic glee that this will get us rid of malaria,” says Esvelt. “And then I thought, wait a minute.”
After this thought, Esvelt worked to make sure that ethics would take precedence over experiments. He first sounded the alarm in 2014, calling for a public debate about gene overclocking before he had shown it worked. He and his colleagues have since shown how the method can be made safer and how it can be reversed.
This year, his propaganda began to bear fruit. Researchers and politicians around the world are discussing this technology; research into the method is ongoing, but cautiously. Omar Akbury, who studies gene runaway at the University of California, Riverside, believes Esvelt's approach got the public's attention - and funding - for the nascent technology at the right time. This is his personal achievement.
Guillem Anglada-Esküde: planet hunter
An astronomer has discovered the closest known planet outside the solar system.Earlier this year, Guillem Anglada-Esküde was not at all surprised when signs of an alien world rippled across his monitor screen. He was pretty sure that the Earth-sized planet near Proxima Centauri was only 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) away.
For Anglada, an astronomer at Queen Mary University of London, the discovery was more of a relief than a shock. He and his colleagues worked feverishly to earn their place in the competitive world of planet-hunting, and Proxima's find confirmed they were on the right track. "We did it," he says.
For the rest of the world, the discovery of the closest known exoplanet to Earth has fired the public imagination. And it raised questions about whether life could exist in our cosmic backyard and whether astronomers could detect it.
Questions of this kind were the first to draw Anglada into the planet hunt. As a science fiction fan, growing up near Barcelona, Spain, he began his astronomical journey modeling data for Gaia, the European Space Agency's billion-star mapping mission. He later transferred his data science skills to the realm of exoplanets. He developed a method to extract faint planetary signals from data collected by the main ground-based planetary search instrument, HARPS, at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile.
But Anglada himself soon plunged into academic drama, arguing with other researchers over who deserved the right to discover a planet larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune in orbit around the star Gliese 667C. “I could leave this area and do something else,” he says. “But I made the decision to pursue this case further, very aggressively.”
He immersed himself in the HARPS data, posting paper after paper on the planetary signals he discovered in the background noise in the data. And then, as if moving away from all this secrecy and competition, Anglada launched a rather public hunt for a planet in the orbit of Proxima.
He put together a team and got observation time at HARPS and other telescopes to double check to find any evidence of a planet orbiting a star that wasn't caused by stellar activity (which many exoplanet hunters' claims break). Scientists documented their work in detail on websites and social networks. Such transparency “didn't look dangerous at all,” says Anglada. “We had the feeling that no one else was doing it.”
Within days they confirmed that the planet was there; a couple of weeks later they submitted a paper detailing their discovery. The planet was named Proxima b. It is at least 1.3 times the mass of the Earth and revolves around Proxima every 11.2 days.
Although this world is close to its star, it is also in the "habitable zone": liquid water can exist on its surface. This makes it not only the closest known exoplanet at 3,500 confirmed stars, but also a place where alien life could thrive - a double bonus for scientists and sci-fi buffs.
People may soon get a close look at Proxima b. The Breakthrough Starshot initiative aims to send a fleet of tiny laser-powered self-propelled spacecraft to the nearest star and will most likely choose Proxima as the best option.2016 is coming to an end. A little more than a month is left before we pass the important milestone that separates us from 2017, which will come with its joys, anxieties and singularities. What do we remember about 2016? We are starting to sum up. To be honest, the most important scientific events this year were more disappointments than breakthroughs. But a negative result is also a result, so you should be glad that the field is opening up for new theories, experiments and discoveries.
We found gravitational waves
On February 11, 2016, LIGO scientists officially announced the discovery of gravitational waves. A team of physicists was able to hear and record the sound of two black holes colliding billions of light-years away, thus confirming Einstein's latest theory of general relativity.
This barely audible sound, physicists say, was the first direct evidence for the existence of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Einstein last century. It is also a confirmation of the nature of the origin of black holes, gravitational traps from which even light cannot escape. The energy transported by these gravitational waves, 50 times more powerful than the total energy of all the stars in the universe combined, was recorded by the highly sensitive LIGO antennas.
Gravitational waves will answer such questions: do black holes really exist, do gravitational waves move at the speed of light, does space-time consist of cosmic strings, and more. Read more about what questions gravitational waves can help us answer here.
Tesla autopilot killed a manIn the United States, the first accident involving a Tesla Model S car under autopilot control was recorded, resulting in the death of the driver. The incident occurred on May 7, 2016, but data about it were published only in July. According to the police report, the car was driving on a Florida state highway and crashed into a truck crossing the road at one of the intersections. The roof of the Tesla was blown off and it flew another 30 meters before coming to a stop. Driver Joshua Brown died in the accident.
Artificial intelligence started killing sooner than we thought. And although this is a wake-up call, it should be so.
What will happen next? We will watch how artificial intelligence kills hundreds of people, anywhere, in any way: for the sake of pharmaceutical experiments; eliminates failed design babies; kills some people to save others; takes the lives of criminals in order to save lives they might otherwise take. And we will look at it as the salvation of mankind. We will have to put up with the lesser evil in order to get rid of the greater. And it started in 2016.
Let's go to Proxima bThere were two events here.
On August 24, 2016, European Southern Observatory (ESO) scientists confirmed the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet in the potentially habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, our closest star. A planet orbits Proxima Centauri, a small red dwarf star, just 4.25 light years away. Proxima Centauri is a little closer than the famous pair of Alpha and Beta Alpha Centauri. The planet is called Proxima b, and the ESO team estimates its mass at 1.3 Earth's.
The planet's orbit lies almost seven million kilometers from Proxima Centauri, that's 5% of the distance between the Earth and our own Sun. Also, this star is much colder than our Sun, so Proxima b is still in the "potential habitable zone" of exoplanets, in which the temperature allows water to be in a liquid state on the surface.
Once again: the nearest planet to us of the star closest to us can be potentially habitable and even similar to the Earth.
That is why Yuri Milner launched the Breakthrough Starshot project. Challenge: Send a spacecraft the size of a postage stamp to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth. Each nanodevice, or StarChip, will be equipped with cameras, an engine, and a navigation and communication system. The guys in Silicon Valley can make tiny things and stick them on chips. Once in space, the craft would fly on the energy of light rather than combustion, propelled by a meter-wide laser sail attached to each chip.
The Alpha Centauri system is only the first step in an epic interstellar journey. In terms of cosmic distances, this star system is literally around the corner: only 4.37 light years from us. Trillions of kilometers. You can get information about it literally within one human life.
Mystery of the ninth planetAstronomers have found some compelling, albeit circumstantial, evidence pointing to the existence of a vast, invisible world that lies in the far reaches of the Kuiper Belt. The new planet - the ninth in the solar system - should be a super-Earth, that is, ten times larger than the Earth in size.
Earlier this year, Caltech planetary scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown presented powerful circumstantial evidence for the existence of a large, yet-to-be-discovered planet, perhaps ten times as massive as Earth, orbiting the Solar System beyond Pluto. The scientists derived their evidence from anomalies in the orbits of a handful of observed small bodies.
Read more about how the research of anomalies around the Ninth Planet proceeded.
SpaceX unveils plan to colonize MarsTo be fair, in April 2016, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its rocket onto a floating barge. This event became important for the development of the company and attracted the attention of the whole world, but the main goal of the company is still different. Namely: the colonization of Mars. And Elon Musk presented a detailed plan for the company at the end of September.
Elon Musk thinks it will take humanity 40 to 100 years to go from landing a ship full of colonists on Mars to founding a self-sustaining civilization. Musk outlined that a fleet of ships capable of carrying at least 100 people leaving every two years could populate Martian cities in a short time.
And the Interplanetary Transport System will help Musk in this. Of course, SpaceX's plans are still quite raw, it will take many decades to make the dream of an entrepreneur a reality. If everything goes well.
The trip will go like this: first, the spacecraft takes off from pad 39A. The spacecraft and the first stage then separate. The first flies into orbit, and the first stage returns to Earth after 20 minutes. On Earth, it sits down again on the launch pad, and a fuel tank sits on top of it. The rocket takes off again, already with fuel. It then connects to the spacecraft, fueling it in orbit. And, finally, the whole structure flies to Mars. On the way, people will be entertained by weightless games, movies, games, a restaurant and other entertainment in the cabins.
Having reached Mars, the device will land on its surface using retrothrust. Passengers will use it, along with cargo and equipment that will be delivered to Mars in advance, to establish a long-term colony. In 20-50 trips, there will be a million people on Mars.
It is not yet known where people will live and what they will eat, how they will maintain health in microgravity, and how they solved the problem with harmful cosmic radiation. Mask doesn't seem to care - he says it's not a serious problem. The risk of getting cancer will be slightly increased, and probably the engineers will come up with protection against radiation by the time the first ship is sent.
People will be able to return: it will not be a one-way trip. In addition, it will be necessary to somehow return the missiles. Musk noted that there will be no children among the first travelers, and the astronauts will have to be "ready to die."
However, they will have games in zero gravity, so it's not scary.
They didn’t find a new particle at the LHC (but they really wanted to)A disturbing turn in the fate of the Large Hadron Collider and physics in general awaited physicists around the world in August 2016.
It all started last December, when physicists from two LHC collaborations announced they had found mysterious traces of an exotic particle not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics - perhaps the heavier brother of the Higgs boson or the elusive graviton, the quantum carrier of gravity. From the very beginning, everyone warned that these kinds of signals usually go away as new data is added to the mixture. And just like that, from the very beginning of the statements, physicists have been analyzing the new data as crazy.
At the ICHEP 2016 conference in August, the sad truth was officially announced: hints pointing to a possible exotic new particle at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have evaporated.
It happens. Many are disappointed, but not at all surprised. Funny things happen with small amounts of data.
The world's most sensitive detector found no dark matterIn July, shortly before the disappointment with the LHC, physicists were already a little depressed. This time, against the background of gloomy news from the dark field of science.
The incredibly sensitive dark matter detector LUX, buried under a kilometer of rock, found nothing in 20 months of searching for dark matter - which significantly narrowed the range of possible properties of the mysterious substance. On July 21, at the 11th Dark Matter Conference (IDM2016), which took place in Sheffield, UK, scientists presented the results of the LUX work. The conference brought together scientists who seek to understand dark matter - this mysterious substance is believed to make up 4/5 of the mass of the universe. So far, no one has seen it directly.
The researchers examined the vast amount of data collected by the carefully calibrated device in a 20-month experiment that followed a weaker three-month LUX study from 2013, which also came back negative. They were able to filter out signals in the data created by non-dark matter particles that managed to get into the xenon bath and participate in the experiment. Consequently, scientists have a unique opportunity to directly study the interactions of dark matter, which were expected to produce several signals from a hundred per kilogram of xenon.
Just because LUX found nothing doesn't mean dark matter isn't made up of WIMPs; rather, dark matter WIMPs have no mass, or cannot affect ordinary matter in a particular given range.
What can I say? All this is sad.
Artificial intelligence beat the world champion in the game of goIn March 2016, AlphaGo, developed by Google's DeepMind division, defeated Lee Si Dol, the world champion in the logic board game Go. Lee lost the first game after three and a half hours of play, while the clock still had 28 minutes and 28 seconds left.
DeepMind founder Damis Hassabis expressed his "deep respect for Lee Si Dol and his incredible skills," also calling the game of Go "incredibly fun" and "very intense." AlphaGo team captain David Silver noted "the surprising complexity of the interesting game of Go, which made their offspring AlphaGo work almost to the maximum of its capabilities."
Probably, he was a little cunning: artificial intelligence is already successfully beating grandmasters from all over the world, and every year the gap between us is getting wider. The next victory of artificial intelligence in the piggy bank of machines and the next business in which a person is unsurpassed is less.
James Webb Space Telescope completedTwenty years ago, scientists began assembling the next-generation telescope that would be the successor to Hubble. And in early November, NASA engineers announced that the construction of the James Webb Telescope (JWST) was finally completed. The telescope, with a 6.5-meter mirror twice the size of the Hubble mirror, is ready for testing ahead of its scheduled launch in October 2018.
This telescope will replace the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The significance of this cannot be overestimated, since the Hubble was perhaps one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and James Webb is claimed to be 100 times more powerful.
After all, this telescope will pick up where Hubble left off, with Ultra and Extreme Deep Field images. In addition to the Planck and WMAP satellite images (which provided us with photographs of the cosmic microwave background radiation), these are the oldest images of light we have taken, the most distant galaxies. Unfortunately, very soon they will leave the visible light spectrum, go through redshift to infrared due to the expansion of the Universe.
Fortunately, James Webb's instruments are designed to operate primarily in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible region. It will be sensitive to light with a wavelength of 0.6-28 micrometers. The advanced scientific instruments on board the telescope will have four main themes to explore: first light and the reionization epoch, the assembly of galaxies, the birth of stars, protoplanetary and planetary systems, and the origin of life.
Juno successfully orbits JupiterIn July, NASA announced that the Juno spacecraft launched five years ago had finally reached the orbit of Jupiter, our solar system's largest gas giant.
What does it mean? That we will get another "spy" who will study one of the most interesting bodies in our system.
Over the next 20 months, Juno will make 37 orbits around Jupiter and unearth the gas giant's deepest secrets. Among them, for example, will be data on how planets such as Jupiter are formed, and whether they have a solid core. In addition, the device will map the planet's magnetic field, measure the level of water, oxygen and ammonia in the atmosphere of Jupiter, and will also monitor the auroras of the gas giant.Etc. Now, as you know, this is a hot topic. And I also remembered the Indian-Pakistani theme - somewhere here there is a train.
But in fact, these photographs are almost 25 years old and the events depicted in them can be found on the Internet by the phrase “La nave dolce” or “sweet ship”.
On August 7, 1991, Cuban sugar was unloaded from the VLORA ship in the Albanian port of Durazzo. Suddenly, a crowd of people approached him, which in the blink of an eye turned into an avalanche.
She stormed the ship and its captain Bural Miladi was ordered to head for Italy. No persuasion and threats from the port guard helped.
The captain's assurances that the Vlora's engine was in disrepair did not help either. A total of 20,000 people boarded the ship. Among them were women, children and the elderly.
The captain was forced to comply. The defective ship approached the Italian coast only a day later. But in Brindisi, "Vlora" was categorically refused to accept.
Desperate passengers did not want to take in the next port. In Bari. The captain on the radio said that the situation on the ship was close to disaster. Water and provisions have run out, the ship urgently needs repairs. The port authorities have given up. "Vlore" was allowed to moor to the pier.
But what to do with such an avalanche of hungry, exhausted people?
For Italy, this event was out of the ordinary. In December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. And two years earlier, the Berlin Wall was solemnly demolished. Europe enthusiastically welcomed these events, not suspecting what awaits them in the near future. And now the Italian government urgently needed to identify 20,000 unexpected guests somewhere. With difficulty, the local police managed to escort the crowd to the Victoria Stadium.
It was decided to deport everyone back to Albania.
When the Vlora passengers found out about this, riots began. The local police were unable to cope with the distraught crowd. But it was also impossible to leave people hungry. Provisions were thrown into the stadium from helicopters. Then the government went to the deception.The Albanians were promised that everyone, without exception, would be delivered to Rome by plane.
In fact, the planes were heading for Tirana. Two or three thousand people managed to escape. Among them was Kledi Kadu. 17 year old dancer. Now he has become a very famous person in Italy. In Daniele Vicari's Sweet Ship, Kledi recalls the events of that day:
Clady Kadu interviews ballet soloist Vladimir Derevianko.Kledi says that the Russian school of ballet has always fascinated him.
- I still feel like I'm thirsty.
The thirst was so excruciating that I drank sea water, which only made things worse.
He was asked: - What has changed for 20 years in Italy in relation to emigrants?
- The Italians lost interest in them. There was no such indifference before.
