It took <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/radiohead/">Radiohead </a>a little less than four years to make one of rock's most thrilling leaps, evolving from the potent but familiar post-grunge of <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/radiohead-pablo-honey/">Pablo Honey </a> into the multihued art-rock of their third LP, <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/ok-computer/">OK Computer </a> .Everything was, to quote a later Radiohead song, "in its right place" by 1997. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, the band expanded in every area: more complex lyrical themes, a wider range of influences (from <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/miles-davis/">Miles Davis </a>to the <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/beach-boys/">Beach Boys </a>) and a heftier toolbox of instruments (electronics, cello, glockenspiel, mellotron).

Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer': The Story Behind Every Song

OK Computer 's experimental opener, built around Phil Selway's chopped-up drums, draws on Yorke's uneasy relationship with automobiles. A decade earlier, he was involved in a car accident that left his girlfriend injured, though the singer walked away unharmed (at least physically). The lyrics were inspired by an article ("An Airbag Saved My Life") in a British Automobile Association magazine and themes of reincarnation from The Tibetan Book of the Dead — a heady start to a heady album.

Airbag

OK Computer 's epic centerpiece is a collage, combining a series of unrelated musical ideas and pulling inspiration from multiple sources. For example, the title is a nod to Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and also a tongue-in-cheek twist on Yorke's public persona. The title “was chosen as a joke,” he told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/radiohead-lyrics/ok-computer/paranoid-android/">Jam! </a>“It was like, ‘Oh, I’m so depressed.’ And I just thought, that’s great. That’s how people would like me to be.”

Paranoid Android

For the record's spacey third track, Radiohead tried to emulate the electric keys and warm textures of Miles Davis' 1970 jazz-fusion classic Bitches Brew . Yorke also drew on an old-school essay about being an alien from another planet: "You’ve landed and you’re standing in the middle of Oxford. What do you see? If you’re an alien from another planet, how would you see these people?’” he told Launch in 1999. But the final lyrics tweak that concept, using the perspective of a human bored with life on Earth.

Subterranean Homesick Alien

If it's one of Radiohead's most cinematic songs, there's a logical reason: The band did indeed write "Exit Music" for a film, <a href="https://screencrush.com/tags/baz-luhrmann/">Baz Luhrmann </a>'s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet . Yorke had a clear vision, having watched a previous movie adaptation growing up. “I saw the [1968 Franco Zeffirelli] version when I was 13, and I cried my eyes out because I couldn’t understand why, the morning after they shagged, they didn’t just run away,” Yorke <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/radiohead-lyrics/ok-computer/exit-music-for-a-film/">recalled </a>. “The song is written for two people who should run away before all the bad stuff starts. A personal song.”

Exit Music (For a Film)

It's the emotional anchor of OK Computer : a subtly complex singalong that crescendos into a wall of falsetto. Ironically, it's about emotional detachment, "the emptiest of feelings." Reflecting on the song to <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/humo.html">Humo </a>magazine in 1997, multi-instrumentalist <a href="https://diffuser.fm/tags/jonny-greenwood/">Jonny Greenwood </a>noted: “It’s the transit-zone feeling. You’re in a space, you are collecting all these impressions, but it all seems so vacant. You don’t have control over the earth anymore. You feel very distant from all these thousands of people that are also walking there.”

Let Down

“It was a band catchphrase for a while on tour – whenever someone was behaving in a particular shitty way, we’d say, 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later,'” Greenwood told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/melodymaker053197.html">Melody Maker </a>. “You have to rely on something like that, even though we’re probably just kidding ourselves.” The playfulness of that concept turned out to feel more sinister within the song's dramatic balladry, even as the arrangement swells to a gorgeous climax with guitar noise and manipulated vocals.

Karma Police

Yorke delivered the album's dystopian manifesto with "Fitter Happier" ... well, sort of. The ambient interlude features creepy text-to-speech lines ("Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week / Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries / At ease ") partly ripped from self-help books and fully delivered by Fred, a voice built into Macintosh computers. The track emerged during a difficult time in Yorke's life: "I had writer's block for three months," he told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/humo.html">Humo </a> in 1997.

Fitter Happier

Perhaps the most divisive song on OK Computer , this snarling rocker is indeed a bit more straightforward, both musically and lyrically, than what surrounds it. The politically minded track, Yorke told <a href="https://citizeninsane.eu/media/uk/select/03/pt_1997-07_select.htm">Select </a>, was inspired by "watching too many MPs on telly – you just get that feeling of, ‘Whoa, I’ve seen this once too many times.'” "Electioneering" appeared on set lists during Radiohead's 1996 tour, though that version included a final refrain of "Doin' it all" that was dropped for the album recording.

Electioneering

Radiohead had dabbled in orchestration before OK Computer — the gentle strings on "Fake Plastic Trees" help elevate that ballad to classic status. But they leaped in that area with "Climbing Up the Walls," which uses darkness and dissonance to amplify the song's haunted-house atmosphere. “I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn’t sound like 'Eleanor Rigby,'” Greenwood told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/guardian97.html">The Guardian </a>, “which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years.”

Climbing Up the Walls

The narcotic calm of "No Surprises" can't help but feel a bit eerie amid OK Computer 's paranoia. But it's a rare song here that doesn't mask its prettiness, utilizing a twinkling glockenspiel, Ed O’Brien’s chiming guitar and a rainbow of vocal harmonies. “It was meant to be like a nursery rhyme,” O’Brien told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/melodymaker053197.html">Melody Maker </a>in 1997. “Strangely, it was the very first song we did for the album. Didn’t exactly set the tone, did it? It’s a bit like Louie [sic] Armstrong’s ‘[What a] Wonderful World.'”

No Surprises

OK Computer 's turbulent penultimate tune dates back to The Bends tour of summer 1995 when <a href="https://diffuser.fm/tags/brian-eno/">Brian Eno </a>recruited Radiohead for the War Child charity LP The Help Album . “We took the hard option and recorded a brand-new song,” O’Brien told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/melodymaker053197.html">Melody Maker </a>in 1997, detailing the song's quick construction. “Although, admittedly, that’s only because we’re so bad at covers. Always have been. Even when we were a school band, we couldn’t do them.” The resulting track, with its furious guitars and intriguing lyrics about an air-crash survivor, was simply too good to leave off the next Radiohead record.

Lucky

Radiohead slowed down things for OK Computer 's atmospheric closer, which musically contrasts with the mad rush described in the lyrics. "Came from being in a beautiful square in France on a sunny day and watching all these American tourists being wheeled around, frantically trying to see everything in ten minutes. You know: We've got to be in Paris tomorrow morning!". The arrangement feels fittingly breathable and open — Greenwood, the track's chief architect, told <a href="http://www.greenplastic.com/coldstorage/articles/humo.html">Humo </a>, "It’s a song where there doesn’t have to happen anything every three seconds. It is become a song with space.”

The Tourist

When OK Computer was released in the spring of 1997, it was instantly greeted with ravenous acclaim.

According to the music press, Radiohead’s third album was pushing the boundaries of rock, it was about modern life; it was Important. And so, the band’s fans poured over every lyric and every detail in the CD artwork to divine what sort of serious concept album this was, misunderstanding that sometimes Radiohead was just goofing around.

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Communication

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Music

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Artificial Intelligence

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Society, Arts & Culture

The Story Behind Every Song

“ <a href="https://poets.org/poem/my-71st-year">My 71st Year </a>” by Walt Whitman Antonin Dvorak: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1Px1S9xcLCI9zJJMtd0OpN?si=1Nb5OYItRfqXMoQKez0W4g">Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, B. 178 “From the New World”: II. Largo</a>Reverent, wistful, wise, both Whitman and Dvorak take a sweeping look back over the trials and triumphs of life with a sense of closure and acceptance. The poem and the piece are a salute to life as it stands, happiness and heartbreak included. Rather than a continuum, we feel the past and present all at once—ending not with a bang, but with a whisper.

Tidings

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48228/mothers">Mothers </a>” by Nikki Giovanni Maurice Ravel: Ma Mère l’oye (Mother Goose Suite), M. 60: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7EC7BjMxBzVlmQi3WNJpNK?si=fw3SSqGNSkih21tTPA8-_w">I. Pavane de la Belle au Bois dormant </a>and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7EC7BjMxBzVlmQi3WNJpNK?si=fw3SSqGNSkih21tTPA8-_w">II. Petit Poucet </a>Tender, but not without tension, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is the perfect companion to the poem “Mothers” by Nikki Giovanni. As the mother goose steps between her young and the outside world, we feel (as listeners and readers) beauty and intimacy, but also a level of distance—there are things the mother knows that the children have not yet learned about the world.

Compassion

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49307/my-sad-self">My Sad Self </a>” by Allen Ginsberg Erik Satie: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0m9m4AntGBQVd0B105Ua76?si=t4N36eEgQ3yOv5AD1CAPPg">Gnossienne: No. 3 </a>Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reveals a deep feeling of disconnect with the vibrant city of New York in this poem. The discordant, floating feeling is mirrored in Satie’s Gnossienne: No. 3. Its slow, somber, descending notes serve as the perfect backdrop as readers picture Ginsberg traveling through the boroughs of New York, the world whizzing by.

Sorrow

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49620/ah-ah">Ah, Ah </a>” by Joy Harjo Antonin Dvorak: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/77DoM5RekJnuQthYEvaZSR?si=ORn71_EWQbWEH_BpKGHytg">The Moldau (from Má Vlast): Allegro </a>Spanning, spinning, and dreamlike, Dvorak’s piece perfectly suits the nature-filled wonderment of Joy Harjo’s “Ah, Ah.” With a fast pace, both Harjo and Dvorak place their audience at the edge of their seats—positioning each measure as a new image in their minds. As the poem and the piece progress, the images become larger, more vibrant, and all-encompassing.

Spectrum

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven">The Raven </a>” by Edgar Allan Poe Hector Berlioz: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0drP5Um2vTKuNCIIdT9oQy?si=0j-VjQ_kQw6ZfZP6XhN35Q">Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14, H 48: 5b. Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat – Dies irae</a>Looming and ominous, “The Raven” is the quintessential poem of grief and fear. With the sound of a chiming clock tower and heavy, intimidating tones, Berlioz’s piece evokes the image of the raven at every turn. Listeners of the piece can easily imagine our protagonist’s fast and fearful movements as he is haunted by memories of the late Lenore.

Nevermore

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54773/american-smooth">American Smooth </a>” by Rita Dove Ravel: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/485e2gUbRwqwLyODs5yZ1L?si=jxNTdmMaSnSLQzCIh5RVOA">La Valse, M. 72</a>Spinning and swirling, this piece whisks listeners away on a whirlwind waltz that’s equal parts smooth and bombastic. As Dove and Ravel mimic the experience of achieving flight, readers and listeners may forget for a moment that we’re merely human as the magic of music and dance sweep us off our feet.

Rhythm

“ <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51298/the-afternoon-sun">The Afternoon Sun </a>” by C. P. Cavafy Antonio Vivaldi: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2sTfG5WRMX41Asosz4SVlC?si=k9ELXvOYSGKxlDatol7NbQ">Sonata for Vincello and Basso continuo No. 5 in E Minor, RV 40: III. Largo</a>Wistful and dreamy, this piece by Vivaldi perfectly complements Cavafy’s “The Afternoon Sun.” As Cavafy revisits the home he and a former lover shared, memories flood back of the room as it was—each piece of furniture intact. Listening to Vivaldi’s work while reading this poem creates a cinematic experience, as we picture each element in the room fall into place.

Reflection

“ <a href="https://poets.org/poem/douce-souvenance">Douce Souvenance </a>” by Jessie Redmon Fauset Claude Debussy: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6CbdaG9zou8czkeNOITBYS?si=kZc_mZ1qSDqTma6UJxwVJA">Rêverie</a> Nostalgia takes center stage yet again for this last classical music and poetry pairing. The yearning ebb and flow of Debussy’s Rêverie wholly intensifies Harlem Renaissance poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/jessie-redmon-fauset">Jessie Redmon Fauset’s poem </a>“Douce Souvenance” (or sweet memory). Evoking images of nature and playing with light and dark themes, both Debussy and Fauset bring to light the eternity that exists within each memory—cherished and golden.

Reminiscence 

Poetry and classical music have been used for centuries to set a scene, paint an emotion, or evoke a memory. Both have influenced and inspired each other over the years to create historic masterpieces, from Charles Baudelaire  and Claude Debussy  to Aaron Copland and Emily Dickinson. To celebrate the connection between the two art forms, here is a handpicked list of 8 poems paired with the perfect classical music. 

Both poetry and classical music have been used for centuries to set a scene or evoke an emotion. Discover 8 seamless poem and classical music pairings. 

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Poetry Pairings: Classical Music Edition - Read Poetry

"Classical Music" is a bit of a blanket term that we use to describe "old" music, but there is a whole load of fascinating styles and periods hiding inside.It started of in Europe as church music as priests saw how the lifting power of music could be used in prayers and hymns. Monks and abbots sang and chanted hymns now known as Gregorian chants in acapella and in polyphonic rhythm. This was the Medieval Era.

The Medieval Era

In the Renaissance period music became more accessible to the world beyond the church as printing became possible. Members of the upper-class started hiring composers to compose music under their patronage. Composers started developing more complex melodies by combining 2 or 3 melodies together in a piece. A few famous composers of this era are Claudio Monteverdi, William Byrd and John Downland.

The Renaissance Period.

The transitioning period was the Baroque Era. Music composers started fusing embellishments with complex melodies as different instruments like the violin and cello came into being. Small orchestras started to form and two different forms of music arose-sonatas and concertos. Opera became popular as did new instruments like the pipe organ, harpsichord which added more depth to orchestras. Few of the best known composers of this period were Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli, Telemann, Couperin and Scarlatti.

The Baroque Era.

Classical Era gave birth to most of the popular classical music where composers like Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn preferred balanced musical structures over the Baroque style.Composers laid down framework for future musicians in clear organised musical compositions. The symphony was created, a four part orchestral piece and orchetsras became larger and more developed.

The Classical Era.

The piano became the popular keyboard instrument among many other instruments. People started thinking of themselves as artists and less as servants to the upper class. Opera became more modernised as did public concert halls to serve as the stage for orchestral performance.Composers like Schubert, Rossini, Paganini are credited to have created some of the best known music alongside Beethoven and Mozart.

The Importance Of The Classical Era.

The last phase was the Romantic Era.Composers became more idealistic and developed strong and intense emotions along with their compositions. The orchestra doubled in size as did musical pieces in duration. Traditional tonal patterns were modified and as did the music theory. Ballet became popular over opera. Composers like Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Wagner, Schumann, Debussy etc., became the runners of modern orchestral music.

The Romantic Era.

Classical music transformed after this period into many different forms as music spread to different cultures. Classical music became a side step to the modern music as people's interest in classical music diminished. It does exist in the 21st century but having lost its former glory it is more commonly seen used in movies and TV shows. Two of the most famous composers of the 21st century are John Williams and Hans Zimmer.﻿

The 21st Century.

Western music has had a long list of musical development over the few hundred years and it's all thanks to our forefathers that the current Western music thrives, based on the vast expense of music theory. Some people coined this term as classical music.

History Of Classical Music

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have recently studied how, imbued with enough energy, photons can bounce off of one another like massive particles do. Scientists at the LHC and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have also reported seeing photons colliding and converting that energy into massive particles. The photon’s most recent seemingly impossible feat? Smashing so hard into a lead nucleus that the collision seems to produce the same state of matter that existed moments after the Big Bang.

CERN sees evidence of quark-gluon plasma during collision

Although they have known for years they could produce small amounts of quark-gluon plasma in collisions between heavy ions, this is the first time scientists have reported possible evidence of quark-gluon plasma in the aftermath of a collision between the nucleus of a heavy ion and a massless particle of light.Collisions between photons and lead nuclei are common inside the LHC. Their first round of results indicate the answer could be yes, an insight that might provide a new understanding of fluid dynamics.

Stimulated Quark-Gluon Plasma Formation

They went looking for collisions between photons and nuclei, called photonuclear collisions, in data collected during the lead-ion runs at the LHC. These runs have happened in the few weeks just before the LHC’s winter shutdown each year that the LHC has been in operation.Lead nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, which are made up of even smaller fundamental particles called quarks. “You can think of the nucleus like a bag of quarks,” Noronha-Hostler says.This bag of quarks is held together by gluons, which “glue” small groups of quarks into composite particles called hadrons.

The Large Light Collider

When two lead nuclei collide at high energy inside the LHC, the gluons can lose their grip, causing the protons and neutrons to melt and merge into a quark-gluon plasma. The now-free quarks and gluons pull on each other, holding together as the plasma expands and cools. Eventually, the quarks cool enough to reform into distinct hadrons. Scientists can reconstruct the production, size and shape of the original quark-gluon plasma based on the number, identities and paths of hadrons that escape into their detectors.

The Photons Having A Moment 

During the lead-ion runs at the LHC, nuclei aren’t the only things colliding. Because they have a positive charge, lead nuclei carry strong electromagnetic fields that grow in intensity as they accelerate. Their electromagnetic fields spit out high-energy photons, which can also collide—a fairly common occurence.Despite their frequency, no one had ever closely examined the detailed patterns of these kinds of photonuclear collisions at the LHC. For this reason, ATLAS scientists had to develop a specialized trigger that could pick out the photon-zapped lead ions from everything else.

A Trigger That Picks Out The Photon-Zapped Lead Ions

Luckily, photonuclear collisions have a special asymmetrical shape due to the momentum differences between the tiny photon and the massive lead ion: “It’s like a truck hitting a trash can,” Seidlitz says. “All the debris from the collision will move in the direction of the truck.”Seidlitz designed a trigger that looked for collisions that generated a small number of particles, had a skewed shape, and saw remnants of the partially obliterated lead ion embedded in special detectors 140 meters away from the collision point.

The Trigger

After collecting and analyzing the data, Seidlitz, Perepelitsa and their colleagues saw a particle-flow signature characteristic of a quark-gluon plasma. The finding alone is not enough to prove the formation of a quark-gluon plasma, but it’s a first clue. “There are always potential competing explanations, and we need to look for other signatures of quark-gluon plasma that could be there,” Perepelitsa says, “but we haven’t measured them yet.”If the photonuclear collisions are indeed creating quark-gluon plasma, it could be a kind of quantum trick, Perepelitsa says.

Recognizable Particle-flow 

Perepelitsa and his colleagues are dubious that a massless photon could pack a powerful enough punch to melt part of a lead nucleus, which contains 82 protons and 126 neutrons. “It would be like throwing a needle into a bowling ball,” he says.Instead, he thinks that just before impact, these photons are undergoing a transformation predicted by Paul Dirac.In 1931, Dirac published a paper predicting a new type of particle. The particle would share the mass of the electron but have the opposite charge. If it collides with an electron, the two will have a chance of annihilating one another.

The Original Discovery

It was the positron, the first predicted particle of antimatter. In 1932, Caltech physicist Carl Anderson discovered the particle, and later physicists spotted the annihilation process Dirac had predicted as well.When matter and antimatter meet, the two particles are destroyed, releasing their energy in the form of a pair of photons. Scientists also see this process happening in reverse, Noronha-Hostler says. “Two photons can interact and create a quark-antiquark pair.”Before annihilating, that quark-antiquark pair can bind together to make a hadron.

A Quantum Transformation 

Perepelitsa and his colleagues suspect that the collisions they’ve observed, in which photons appear to be colliding with lead nuclei and creating a small amount of quark-gluon plasma, are not actually collisions between nuclei and photons. Instead, they’re collisions between nuclei and those tiny, ephemeral hadrons.This makes more sense, Perepelitsa says, as hadrons are bigger in size than photons and are capable of more substantial interactions. “It’s no longer a needle going into a bowling ball, but more like a bullet.”

Bullet Over A Bowling Ball 

For now, the exact mechanism that may be causing this quark-gluon plasma signature within photonuclear collisions remains a mystery. Whatever is going on, Noronha-Hostler says figuring out these collisions could be an important step in quark-gluon plasma research. LHC scientists’ usual method of studying the quark-gluon plasma has been to examine crashes between lead nuclei, which create a complex soup of quarks and gluons. “We thought originally that the only way we could produce a quark gluon plasma was two massive nuclei hitting each other,” she says.

The Smallest Drop

"We're pushing to the most extremes in fluid dynamics,” Noronha-Hostler says. “Not only do we have something that is moving at the speed of light and at the highest temperatures known to humanity, but it looks like we are going to be able to answer ‘What is the smallest droplet of a liquid?’ No other field can do that.”If photonuclear collisions are creating quark-gluon plasma, it’s in the form of a tiny droplet composed of a few vaporized protons and neutrons. Scientists are hoping to study these droplets to learn more about how liquids behave on subatomic scales.

Conclusion 

The ATLAS experiment at CERN sees possible evidence of quark-gluon plasma production during collisions between photons and heavy nuclei inside the Large Hadron Collider.

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Personal Development

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Science & Nature

Can light melt atoms into goo?

“The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.”

From the Introduction: "Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. a.d. 50-130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 b.c. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 b.c., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus--and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an undergraduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition."

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Leadership & Management

From the Introduction: &quot;Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. a.d. 50-130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 b.c. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 b.c., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus--and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an undergraduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition.&quot;

Epictetus

Nicholas P. White

The Handbook (The Encheiridion)

Your DNA is different from everyone else’s. It determines many of the characteristics that define you, like the color of your eyes or whether your hair is straight or curly. DNA is much easier to find in the “soft parts” of an animal – their organs, blood vessels, nerves, muscle and fat. But a dinosaur’s soft parts are long gone. They either decomposed or were eaten by another dinosaur.

The ABCs Of DNA

Dinosaur fossils are all that’s left of those prehistoric animals. Immersed for tens of millions of years in ancient mud, minerals and water, the fossils come from the dinosaur’s so-called “hard parts” – its bones, teeth and skull. We find dinosaur fossils in the ground, in riverbeds and lakes, and on the sides of cliffs and mountains. Every now and then, someone finds one in their <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/find-a-dinosaur-in-your-backyard-its-all-yours-19885792/">backyard </a>.

Is DNA In The Fossils?

But scientists have a big problem when trying to find DNA in dinosaur fossils. DNA molecules eventually decay. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11555">Recent studies show </a>DNA deteriorates and ultimately disintegrates after about 7 million years. That sounds like a long time, but the last dinosaur died at the end of the <a href="https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Cretaceous-Period/628196">Cretaceous Period </a>. That’s more than 65 million years ago.

The Trouble With Dino-DNA

Dig up a fossil today, and any dino-DNA within would have long since fallen apart. That means, as far as scientists know, and even using the best technology available today, it’s not possible to make a dinosaur from its DNA. Although it’s too late to find dino-DNA, scientists recently found something almost as intriguing. They discovered DNA fragments in the fossils of Neanderthals and other ancient mammals, such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00436-x">woolly mammoths </a>.

Dino-DNA Could Reconstruct A Dinosaur!

Although it’s too late to find dino-DNA, scientists recently found something almost as intriguing. They discovered DNA fragments in the fossils of Neanderthals and other ancient mammals, such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00436-x">woolly mammoths </a>. Now that makes sense; those fragments are less than 2 million years old, well before all of the DNA would decay.

The Basic Idea 

Just for fun, let’s imagine that somehow, sometime in the future, researchers came up with fragments of dinosaur DNA. With only fragments, scientists still could not make a complete dinosaur. Instead, they would have to combine the fragments with the DNA of a modern-day animal to create a living organism. That creature, however, could not be called an actual dinosaur. Rather, it would be a hybrid, a blend of dinosaur and, most likely, a bird or reptile.

Imagine For A Moment...

Ever since moviegoers saw the first ‘Jurassic Park,’ millions have wondered if scientists could make a dinosaur in the lab.

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History

Is it possible to recreate dinosaurs from their DNA?

<ul><li>An aspiring astrophysicist who shaped the boundaries of science with his work, but never limited them to a certain theory. Apparently, it was Chandrasekhar's laurels and titles that were supposed to reach as far as the mysteries of the cosmos travel. </li> </ul>

About Chandrashekhar

With a million stars as a blanket, the boy was only able to marvel at the amazing beauty of the celestial objects twinkling far beyond his reach. He would have stood all alone at the sea's edge where the earth meets the heavens and happily measured the limitlessness of the ocean. In spite of his ignorance of the forces of nature that encompass the very meaning of his existence here on earth, he would often gaze up at the stars and pray: "Oh God, may I be like Newton!"

Childhood Dreams

He applied Einstein's theory to solve a famous astronomy problem and provided an explanation for why dwarf stars, upon running out of hydrogen, become unstable and explode inside. This work came to be known as The Chandrasekhar Limit. Further, it led to the concept of supernovas, neutron stars, and black holes, as well as the idea of massive stars going through evolutionary stages."Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you." - Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar

The Chandrashekhar Limit

During his time in England, he investigated in depth the degenerated electron gas found in dwarf stars, under the guidance of one of the internationally renowned professors at his university, R.H. Fowler. Among numerous laurels, his work possessed the same lustre and brightness as that of a north pole star. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his outstanding contribution to astrophysics, as well as Padma Vibhushan in 1968.

Awards

Theoretically, Chandrashekhar's theories were critical and even caused controversies but because his work was supported by sound calculations, deeply researched, and years of development, it was always the case that all other alternative theories went down against him. He was an atheist who was distant from any cosmic theory, however, when it came to anything that included science, he was a generous, sincere, and substantial person.

The Importance Of This Man In Astronomy

Having spent his entire life studying space theories, Chandrashekhar passed away at the age of 84. Today it is this work that continues to inspire many admirers who look up to the sky and count their dreams since every contribution of his holds a significant account in scientific research. Four years after his death, NASA launched Chandra X-ray Observatory, one of its four "Great Observatories" and named it in honour of the legend.

Great Observatories 

An aspiring astrophysicist who shaped the boundaries of science with his work, but never limited them to a certain theory. Apparently, it was Chandrasekhar's laurels and titles that were supposed to reach as far as the mysteries of the cosmos travel. | Trending

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

The sky isn't the limit, Chandrashekhar limit is!

“III. I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.For if any God or grave master standing by, should command any of us to think nothing by himself but what he should presently speak out; no man were able to endure it, though but for one day.Thus do we fear more what our neighbours will think of us, than what we ourselves.”

Meditations (Medieval Greek: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, romanized: Ta eis he'auton, lit. 'things to one's self') is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the first book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the second book was written at Carnuntum.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known, noncontemporaneously, as the Five Good Emperors and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calmness and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

In February 2001, when researchers released the first set of the human genome sequence, it was a seismic event in the history of life sciences. However, it was not truly complete and 15 per cent of the genome was still to be deciphered. The most complicated chunk of DNA called for further research and technological advancement.

Scientists decipher the complete human genome & found new genes.

A team of 99 researchers led the groundbreaking discovery by identifying about 115 new genes <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/google-deepmind-artificial-intelligence-protein-structures-medicine-life-sciences-1832809-2021-07-26">that code for proteins</a>.The Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an international collaboration that comprises around 30 institutions, <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/search/author1%3Amiga%20author2%3Aphillippy%20jcode%3Abiorxiv%20limit_from%3A2021-05-01%20limit_to%3A2021-07-15%20numresults%3A10%20sort%3Arelevance-rank%20format_result%3Astandard">has released data that gives new insights into the workings of the DNA </a>and how it influences risks of disease and how cells keep it in neatly organised. Experts say that the new details will open our eyes to critical information stored within DNA that had remained elusive forever.

Groundbreaking Discovery 

A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA<a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20180910-rakhigarhi-dna-study-findings-indus-valley-civilisation-1327247-2018-08-31">, the chemical compound that contains the instructions </a>needed to develop and direct the activities of nearly all living organisms. They are made of two twisting, paired strands often referred to as a double helix. Each DNA strand is made of four chemical units, called nucleotide bases, which comprise the genetic "alphabet."Virtually every single cell in the body contains a complete copy of the approximately 3 billion DNA base pairs, or letters, that make up the human genome. DNA contains the information needed to build the entire human body.

What Is A Human Genome?

Scientists identified 3.055 billion base pairs (“letters”) of our DNA code as they made the data public. However, the wait has been over two decades since the first draft was released in 2001. Scientists have known for decades that genes were spread across 23 pairs of chromosomes.<a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/un-calls-for-global-database-of-human-gene-editing-research-1827587-2021-07-13">As long stretches of the genome remained unknown </a>, scientists struggled to understand where millions of bases fit. While they released the first draft in 2001, the reference genome draft was released in 2013 where they had read these fragments more accurately.

Why Did It Take So Long To Decipher The Human Genome?

The Human Genome Project that first realised its goal in 1988 aimed to decipher the human genome in three major ways:<ul><li>Determining the order, or "sequence", of all the bases in our genome's DNA</li><li>Making maps that show the locations of genes for major sections of all our chromosomes</li><li>Producing what is called linkage maps, through which we inherit trait</li></ul>

What is the Human Genome Project? 

<a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20010226-genome-sequence-shows-man-probably-originated-on-earth-about-100000-years-ago-775675-2001-02-26">The project has revealed that there are probably about 20,500 human genes </a>and the information about their structure, organization and function can be "thought of as the basic set of inheritable 'instructions' for the development and function of a human being."A startling finding of this first draft was that the number of human genes appeared to be significantly fewer than previous estimates, which ranged from 50,000 genes to as many as 1,40,000.

The Human Genome Project

Scientists deciphered the complete human genome twenty years after the first draft was released in 2001. Now they have uncovered over 100 new genes.

Scientists complete decoding human genome, uncover over 100 new genes, variations

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/penrose/facts/">long before winning</a> the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer. The brain’s neuronal system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/quantum-mechanics">quantum mechanics </a>– the theory that determines how tiny particles like electrons move around. This, they argue, could explain the mysterious complexity of human consciousness.

Scientists think consciousness is generated by quantum physics.

Penrose and Hameroff were met with incredulity. Quantum mechanical laws are usually only found to apply at <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/166887a0">very low temperatures </a>. Quantum computers, for example, currently operate at around <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2240539-quantum-computer-chips-demonstrated-at-the-highest-temperatures-ever/">-272°C </a>. At higher temperatures, classical mechanics takes over. Since our body works at room temperature, you would expect it to be governed by the classical laws of physics. For this reason, the quantum consciousness theory has been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics?">dismissed outright</a> by many scientists – though others are <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/">persuaded supporters </a>.

Ideas and hypothesis

Our brains are composed of cells called neurons, and their combined activity is believed to generate consciousness. Each neuron contains <a href="https://psych.athabascau.ca/html/Psych402/Biotutorials/1/microtubules.shtml">microtubules</a>, which transport substances to different parts of the cell. Microtubules are structured in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-fractals-10865">fractal pattern</a> which would enable quantum processes to occur. Fractals are neither two-dimensional nor three-dimensional, but are instead some fractional value in between. In mathematics, fractals emerge as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGMRB4O922I&ab_channel=Numberphile">patterns</a> that repeat themselves infinitely, generating what is seemingly impossible: a structure that has a finite area, but an infinite perimeter.

Brains and fractals

This might sound impossible to visualise, but fractals actually occur frequently <a href="https://theconversation.com/fractal-patterns-in-nature-and-art-are-aesthetically-pleasing-and-stress-reducing-73255">in nature </a>. The florets of a <a href="https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-solve-the-mystery-of-romanesco-cauliflower-formation/">cauliflower </a>or the branches <a href="https://theconversation.com/fractal-patterns-in-nature-and-art-are-aesthetically-pleasing-and-stress-reducing-73255">of a fern </a>, are both made up of the same basic shape repeating itself over and over again, but at smaller and smaller scales. Fractals also feature in the enchanting repeating artworks of <a href="http://www.pxleyes.com/blog/2010/06/recursion-the-art-and-ideas-behind-m-c-eschers-drawings/">MC Escher </a>and <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/pollocks-fractals">Jackson Pollock </a>, and they’ve been used for decades in technology, such as in the <a href="https://antenna-theory.com/antennas/fractal.php">design of antennas </a>. These are all examples of classical fractals – fractals that abide by the laws of classical physics rather than quantum physics.

Fractals in daily life

It’s easy to see why fractals have been used to explain the complexity of human consciousness. Because they’re infinitely intricate, allowing complexity to emerge from simple repeated patterns, they could be the structures that support the mysterious depths of our minds.But if this is the case, it could only be happening on the quantum level, with tiny particles moving in fractal patterns within the brain’s neurons. That’s why Penrose and Hameroff’s proposal is called a theory of “quantum consciousness”.

Fractals and human consciousness

Advanced technology means we can now measure quantum fractals in the lab. In <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-018-0328-0/">recent research </a>involving a <a href="http://hoffman.physics.harvard.edu/research/STMintro.php">scanning tunneling microscope</a>, electrons are carefully arranged in a fractal pattern, creating a quantum fractal.Then the wave function of the electrons were measured, which describes their quantum state, they too lived at the fractal dimension dictated by the physical pattern they’d made. In this case, the pattern used on the quantum scale was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Sierpinski-gasket">Sierpiński triangle </a>, which is a shape that’s somewhere between one-dimensional and two-dimensional.

Experimental trial and errors.

Using state-of-the-art photonics experiments, they were able to reveal the quantum motion that takes place within fractals in unprecedented detail. They achieved this by <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-photon-definition-and-properties-2699039">injecting photons</a> (particles of light) into an artificial chip that was painstakingly engineered into a tiny Sierpiński triangle. Injected photons at the tip of the triangle spread throughout its fractal structure in a process called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/quantum-transport">quantum transport</a>. They repeated this on two different fractal structures, both shaped as squares rather than triangles.

Photonics experiments 

Our observations from these experiments reveal that quantum fractals actually behave in a different way to classical ones. Specifically, we found that the spread of light across a fractal is governed by different laws in the quantum case compared to the classical case. This knowledge of quantum fractals could provide the foundations for scientists to experimentally test the theory of quantum consciousness. If quantum measurements are one day taken from the human brain, they could be compared against our results to definitely decide whether consciousness is a classical or a quantum phenomenon.

Quantum consciousness

This work could also have profound implications across scientific fields. By investigating quantum transport in our artificially designed fractal structures, we may have taken the first tiny steps towards the unification of physics, mathematics and biology, which could greatly enrich our understanding of the world around us as well as the world that exists in our heads.

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