If you were to travel back to when dinosaurs walked the Earth, it might take you a little while before realizing that you had slipped into another time. A wandering Tyrannosaurus or a shovel-beaked Edmontosuarus chewing a rotting log would be immediate giveaways, of course, but the forests, floodplains and other landscapes of the time would not be so alien as to immediately arouse your suspicion. We still inhabit the same planet as our favorite saurians, after all, and the world of the dinosaurs was not quite like what we often see in the movies.
The trick almost every dinosaur movie tries to perform is how to bring us in contact with the terrible lizards. Sometimes the creatures live on a lost world—a plateau or island where the Age of Reptiles never ended. Jurassic Park popularized another method: genetic reinvention, returning dinosaurs to the world they supposedly ruled. Time travel is another favorite, either bringing the scaly stars to the present or throwing humans back into the past. The latest prehistoric romp, 65, in theaters this weekend, attempts something a little different, with future humans seeming to drift through both space and time to crash land on Earth just before the Cretaceous come to a fiery close.
First thing’s first—the title 65 is a dino-sized mistake. In 2012 the International Commission for Stratigraphy, or geologists who determine Earth’s timescales, revised the end of the Cretaceous Period to be about 66 million years ago rather than the previous estimate of 65.5. If you were to visit Earth about 65 million years ago, during a time called the Paleocene, you would find thick forests where the descendants of mammals that survived the asteroid impact were starting to get big. Triceratops would have been extinct for a million years.
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Adam Driver stars in the new movie 65. Sony Pictures
What lies beyond the edges of the observable universe? Is it possible that our universe is just one of many in a much larger multiverse?
Movies can’t get enough of exploring these questions. From Oscar winners like Everything Everywhere All at Once to superhero blockbusters like Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, science fiction stories are full of creative interactions between alternate realities. And depending on which cosmologist you ask, the concept of a multiverse is more than pure fantasy or a handy storytelling device.
Humanity’s ideas about alternate realities are ancient and varied—in 1848 Edgar Allan Poe even wrote a prose poem in which he fancied the existence of “a limitless succession of Universes.” But the multiverse concept really took off when modern scientific theories attempting to explain the properties of our universe predicted the existence of other universes where events take place outside our reality.
“Our understanding of reality is not complete, by far,” says Stanford University physicist Andrei Linde. “Reality exists independently of us.”
If they exist, those universes are separated from ours, unreachable and undetectable by any direct measurement (at least so far). And that makes some experts question whether the search for a multiverse can ever be truly scientific.
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This image shows the cosmic microwave background—the oldest light in the universe, released shortly after the big bang. This barrier marks the edge of the observable universe, though scientists have come up with a few theories about what may lie beyond.Image courtesy WMAP/NASA
In classical physics, a vacuum is a total void—a true manifestation of nothingness. But quantum physics says that empty space isn’t really empty. Instead, it’s buzzing with “virtual” particles blipping in and out of existence too quickly to be detected. Scientists know that these virtual particles are there because they measurably tweak the qualities of regular particles.
One key property these effervescent particles change is the minuscule magnetic field generated by a single electron, known as its magnetic moment. In theory, if scientists could account for all the types of virtual particles that exist, they could run the math and figure out exactly how skewed the electron’s magnetic moment should be from swimming in this virtual particle pool. With precise enough instruments, they could check their work against reality. Determining this value as accurately as possible would help physicists nail down exactly which virtual particles are toying with the electron’s magnetic moment—some of which might belong to a veiled sector of our universe, where, for example, the ever-elusive dark matter resides.
In February, four researchers at Northwestern University announced they had done just that. Their results, published in Physical Review Letters, report the electron magnetic moment with staggering precision: 14 digits past the decimal point, and more than twice as exact as the previous measurement in 2008.
Mucus is not widely considered a topic for polite conversation. It’s something to be discreetly blown into a tissue, folded up, and thrown away.
But the simple truth is that without mucus, you wouldn’t be alive.
“Mucus is essential for the protection of your body,” says Jeffrey Spiegel, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon at Boston University. “It’s a protective barrier and it allows you to breathe comfortably. If you had no mucus, you’d be quite sorry you didn’t.”
Given how important mucus is — and how often colds and allergies cause mucus-related symptoms — it’s worth learning a bit more about it.
1) You produce about 1.5 quarts of mucus a day — and swallow the vast majority
Most of us think of mucus as something that leaks from our nose, but the truth is that it also gets secreted in your trachea and other tubes that carry air through your lungs, where it’s technically called phlegm. Wherever it’s produced, mucus is a mix of water and proteins, and most of it gets pushed to the back of your throat by microscopic hairs called cilia.
Centuries before the birth of Leonardo Da Vinci, three brothers from Baghdad gathered their designs for more than 100 ahead-of-their-time inventions into a manuscript titled the Book of Ingenious Devices. Also known as the Kitáb al-Hiyal, it contains blueprints for rudimentary gas masks and mechanical digging machines — devices that would not become commonplace for another thousand years.
The brothers — Muhamad, Ahmad, and al-Hasan bin Musa ibn Shakir, who were called the Banu Musa or the “Sons of Moses,” after their father — grew up in the early 9th century AD. It was the dawn of the Islamic Golden Age, an age which they themselves helped bring about. Each brother specialized in a different area of study: Muhamad in astronomy, Ahmad in engineering, and al-Hasan in geometry.
Legend has it that the Banu Musa, left impoverished after their father passed away, were taken under the wing of Abu al-Abbas Abdallah ibn Harun al-Rashid, a caliph remembered for his interest in and support for the development of the arts and sciences. It was on his orders that the brothers set to work on their Book of Ingenious Devices, which they completed around 850 AD.
The Devils River, in southwestern Texas, runs, mirage-like, along the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, through some of the most barren countryside in the United States. Access to the river is limited; unless you’re in a kayak, the only way to travel upstream is along a skein of rutted dirt roads. It was on one of these roads that, a few years ago, David Wagner noticed a shrub that seemed to him peculiarly filled with promise.
Wagner is an entomologist who teaches at the University of Connecticut. He has close-cropped silvery hair and a square jaw and bears a passing resemblance to George C. Scott playing General Buck Turgidson. The way other people might recall a marvelous restaurant or a heartbreaking vista, Wagner remembers a propitious plant. He has friends who own a house along the Devils River and each time he has visited them he has stopped by the exact same shrub to investigate. No luck. This past October, I was traveling with him when he tried yet again. He spread a white nylon sheet on the ground, then started whacking the bush with a pole to dislodge anything that might be clinging to it.
“Un-fucking-believable!” he exclaimed. I was whacking a plant nearby, just for the hell of it. Wagner held out his hand. A caterpillar about three-quarters of an inch long was wriggling across his palm. It looked brownish and totally ordinary until I examined it under a loupe, at which point it was revealed to be flamboyantly striped, with yellow and red splotches and two black, hornlike protuberances sticking out of its back. Based on a series of taxonomic calculations, Wagner was convinced that the caterpillar was the juvenile form of an exceptionally rare moth known as Ursia furtiva.
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Some scientists warn of an insect apocalypse. The flying-insect community has been “decimated,” a research paper said.Illustration by Jochen Gerner
Despite progress in other areas of American life, women are still facing discrimination in the workplace — and it’s showing up in their paychecks.
Tuesday’s Equal Pay Day marks the continuing discrepancy between men and women’s salaries, a date the country has been recognizing since 1996. But in the 27 years since the effort began to bring attention to the pay gap, it has narrowed very little.
In 2023, women are earning 77 cents for every dollar earned by White men, the racial group with the highest pay across occupations. That figure takes the average pay for all full- and part-time working women and compares it with the average pay for White men. The figure is calculated based on earnings in 2021, the most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 1996, women were earning 75 cents to the White man’s $1. Then, the number was calculated using only the wages for full-time workers — today the gap comparing full-time earnings alone would be 84 cents for women compared with $1 for White men.
Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Named after a Black minstrel show character, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted […]
The word power tends to have a negative connotation, but it is often required to get things done in the workplace. Contrary to what you may think, power dosn’t come only from the title you have or where you are on an org chart. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes people make at work is giving up their power because they think they don’t have any.
Fortunately, you can build your power even more with intentional action, and I want you to know how you can be even more powerful than you already are. As a leadership consultant, I often advise people to “Lead from where you are,” because you have the power to positively affect your colleagues and your organization in whatever role you’re in.
Though there are many different types of power at work, three are especially important: position, relationship, and expert. Here’s how these kinds of power function, and how you can develop them yourself:
Position power
Position power is fairly straightforward; it’s the power you get from the role you hold at an organization, including your title and function. Generally, the higher up you go in the org chart, the more power you have.
What’s the secret to a fulfilling career? Most advice focuses on finding purpose and satisfaction in your work. If you can just land the perfect job doing meaningful work, you’ll finally be happy. But my research across a wide range of organizations and industries shows that our understanding of what leads to professional satisfaction is often misplaced. People tend to overestimate the importance of the what when they should be focusing on the who.
In interviews with a diverse group of 160 people from a variety of industries and positions, my colleagues and I found again and again that flourishing in your career depends as much on your relationships, both in and out of work, as it does on your job itself. People whose work is mundane or demanding are just as likely to feel satisfied and fulfilled as those with fun or inspiring jobs if they proactively invest in relationships that nourish them and create a sense of purpose.
The importance of relationships is backed up by research. Studies show that social connections play a central role in fostering a sense of purpose and well-being in the workplace. They also impact the bottom line: Effective management of social capital within organizations facilitates learning and knowledge sharing, increases employee retention and engagement, reduces burnout, sparks innovation, and improves employee and organizational performance.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Adam Driver stars in the new movie 65. Sony Pictures
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