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With a total of 110,100 confirmed victims and 4000 deaths, coronavirus statistics may appear intimidating to most of us. On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed by the People’s Republic of China of cases of pneumonia of unknown microbial aetiology associated with Hubei Province, central China. On 9 January 2020, WHO announced that a novel coronavirus had been detected in patient samples in Wuhan. On 30 January 2020, the WHO Emergency Committee agreed that the outbreak now meets the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. However, given that it has a mortality rate of only 2%, the probability of anyone dying from the virus at this moment would be 1 in 5 million. An aspect that is extremely crucial for both prevention and recovery from any viral infection (including coronavirus) is the strength of the immune system. There could be a long list of factors that weaken or strengthen the immune system. Negative factors include: smoking, alcohol, medications, unhealthy food, sedentary lifestyle, psychology, exposure to pollutants or radiation and existing health conditions such as a recent flu. Significant natural methods of strengthening the immune system is multiple day dry fasting, or physical exercise. Fasting should be first on the list for both prevention but also especially for recovery from the virus, since it gives the body the best chance it has to fight the virus (without having to digest food). Wrong strategies of dealing with a disease can be considered to be a leading cause of death. Many issues are often discussed related with coronavirus, such as how pandemic it can really become, the origins of the virus (Is the virus really a biological weapon?), the cost for the economy, the significance of the protection with washing the hands and wearing masks, abortion of flights, and finally exploiting the virus for economical benefits. Many retailers have been warned to apply reasonable prices to products such as antiviral hand cleaners and face masks, while the media is often spreading panic and misinformation in an attempt to gain popularity. The abortion of many flights should be considered a cause of major distress for the general public, but the virus could tenfold more spread if safety measures were not taken. Italy’s lockdown plan emerged on Saturday night as the country continues to grapple with the worst coronavirus outbreak in Europe, which has killed 366 people and infected at least 7,375. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, said: “Since the very start of the coronavirus outbreak, the Foreign Office have been consistently behind the curve in terms of issuing up to date travel and evacuation advice to keep British nationals safe in the highest-risk countries, and we are now in the alarming position where – for unexplained reasons – they appear to be taking a more relaxed attitude than the countries concerned. Dominic Raab needs to get a grip of this crisis, and pull out all the stops to keep our people safe.” Alistair Carmichael mentioned: “People are increasingly worried about the spread of coronavirus and the government must be providing informed and accurate guidance, especially up-to-date travel advice to all those who could be affected.” Initial clinical findings from patients to date have been shared by China and WHO. Fever, cough or chest tightness, and dyspnea are the main symptoms reported. While most patients have a mild illness, severe cases are also being reported, some of whom require intensive care. A variety of abnormalities may be expected on chest radiographs, but bilateral lung infiltrates appear to be common (similar to what is seen with other types of viral pneumonia). As regards the transmission of the virus, science is uncertain, but we all know the possible pathways: droplets, contact with a person who has the virus and/or with other infected material. We do not know the routes of transmission of COVID-19; however, other coronaviruses are mainly transmitted by large respiratory droplets and direct or indirect contact with infected secretions. In addition to respiratory secretions, other coronaviruses have been detected in blood, faeces and urine.

Of course we are are the most intelligent animals in the history of the planet. We often regard other animals such as dogs or cats as far less intelligent, or practically not intelligent at all. We think that they may even not be self aware of their existence. Most of us are so busy with aspects of everyday life and survival that we forget to think in depth about the essence of consciousness. Although, we certainly have almost no clue about its deeper meaning, and the most elementary physical principles on which it based on, we tend to regard consciousness as a binary system. We usually make the mistake to think of only two possible states: consciousness and unconsciousness, when in reality consciousness is really a wide continuous spectrum. Although we think that we are self conscious, are we really conscious about everything surrounding the essence of our existence? Of course not. We are confused about free will for example. Most of us live under the persistent delusion that we have a free will, and hence we should be independent of the laws of nature. This state of mind could hardly be described as a level of full consciousness, since we are lucking important understanding about the most significant, and at the same time the simplest and the most elementary facts around us and about us. We also have every reason to suspect that aliens would have find an intelligent way to avoid civil wars and organize the vital function of their society in really simplistic ways that are unimaginable to us. If we are not preparing for a new civil war, then why are we still training our soldiers? However, we have to seriously question ourselves if this global military development is indeed a higher level of mentality or simply a lower level of mentality that would be laughable from advanced aliens. Understanding and mastering the laws of nature is not only about advancing science and everyday well-being but it also has an immediate, decisive impact on politics and on the structure and function of the society. The best aliens would certainly understand our evolution quite so well, that they would be emotionless in front of our failures and successes. An other significant aspect of intelligence is that it can be additive. No individual would be able to make advancements without cooperation. In a certain way the Earth as a whole, can be thought of as a superhuman alien, with unlimited potential intelligence, and extremely high current intelligence. Perhaps this is the reason of why we feel stressed when we give a speech in front of a wide audience. Their collective intelligence is often far greater than any individual person on Earth. No individual human would be able to build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), or even master the whole theory and technical details behind it. No individual human has a good understanding of science. However, as a whole, the scientific community has a level of consciousness far greater than that of any individual alien. Perhaps, this is one more valid argument that would support the significance of destroying our military weapons, and understanding the significance of collective creative endeavor. In the future, (or at least theoretically speaking), the intelligence of any human being although it is currently limited, it is not limited in space and time, and it can be improved without limits. In the future, we can imagine microchips being added in our brains and treating dementia and even making us tenfold or perhaps 10000 times more intelligent and conscious. Consciousness is certainly a physical phenomenon, and although it is complicated it relies on very simple physical laws, that we may aim to understand in the future, and hence achieve complete liberation from the human brain and body.

Read this article to learn which is the most powerful and at the same time fastest rotating object in the observable Universe! (Spoiler alert: don't scroll down to the end of the article!) First of all lets start with the planet Venus which has a rotation period of 243 days. Venus is the planet in our solar system with the slowest rotation. Jupiter on the other hand is not only the largest planet of our solar system, but also the one with the fastest rotation (1 rotation every 10 hours!). This might make us to think that the more massive objects somehow rotate faster. This is true, only as long as they are also more compact. The Sun for example rotates 1 time every 27 days. However, the solar core which is much more dense rotates one time every week. The density of the solar core is 150 g/cm^3, while the density of Jupiter is merely 1.33 g/cm³. However the solar core has a diameter of 200,000 miles versus 86,881 miles (Jupiter's diameter). Still this difference in size (at least in a first glance) does not look proportional to their rotational periods (1 week versus 10 hours), although it is certainly of similar order. Could the Sun's internal energy production slow down its rotational period? It certainly does, because otherwise the Sun would probably be a white dwarf rotating one time every few hours. However, the rotation of white dwarfs appears to be a complex phenomenon affected by multiple factors during the multiple stages of stellar evolution. Kawaler (2003) mentions: " White dwarfs rotate. The angular momentum in single white dwarfs must originate early in the life of the star, but also must be modified (and perhaps severely modified) during the many stages of evolution between birth as a main– sequence star and final appearance as a white dwarf. Observational constraints on the rotation of single white dwarf stars come from traditional spectroscopy and from asteroseismology, with the latter providing hints of angular velocity with depth. Results of these observational determinations, that white dwarfs rotate with periods ranging from hours to days (or longer), tells us that the processes by which angular momentum is deposited and/or drained from the cores of AGB stars are complex. Still, one can place strong limits on these processes by considering relatively simple limiting cases for angular momentum evolution in prior stages, and on subsequent angular momentum evolution in the white dwarfs." Indeed, the fastest known white dwarf has a rotational period of 25 sec, while others have rotational periods of days. However, if we could compress the Sun down to the size of a neutron star that is a pulsar, (this is impossible to happen since the mass of the Sun is too small- unless of course the Sun collides with an other Star- [very unlikely to happen] ), it will have a spin period 10 billion times smaller than the Sun. Pulsars can rotate several hundred times per second. If we go a step further and we compress a pulsar even more (a typical pulsar has the size of a town), we create a black hole. Black holes are indeed the most powerful and the fastest rotating objects in the Universe that can rotate more than a 1000 times per second (reaching the theoretical limit of the speed of light). One might ask what will happen if we could add many supermassive black holes together, would they exceed the theoretical rotational limit? The answer is that they would reach it asymptotically i.e 99% the speed of light, 99.9%, 99.99%, 99.999% and it would require an infinite amount of energy or matter to be added into the black hole in order for its rotational speed to reach 100% the speed of light. Of course when we talk about black holes we might think of them as mathematical points (which is certainly unreasonable), however to be clear the rotational speeds mentioned above refer to a point on their even horizon, (the non physical surface beyond which nothing can escape from the gravity of a black hole not even light itself). Therefore, we have every reason to believe that if indeed black holes exist (i.e if the gravitational strength does not become weak enough on small scales under the theory of quantum gravity [or at least the theory of everything]) the rotational speeds on their physical surface will be even shorter than the rotation of their even even horizon, but in any case asymptotically they would reach the speed of light (i.e 99.99999% , 99.999999999% and so on). It is worth mentioning here that in 1967 Werner Israel presented at King's College in London his "uniqueness theorem" according to which in the absence of angular momentum, gravitational collapse with sufficient mass will lead to a Schwarzschild black hole, irrespective of the shape of the collapsing star. A classical black hole can be described be only three parameters: Mass, Angular Momentum, Charge. A generic feature of rotating black hole solutions is that, for a given mass, their horizon radii are always less than their non-rotating counterparts. While the radius, of a non rotating black hole depends only on its mass, the radius of a rotating black hole depends also on its rotational speed. All stars, initially acquire their rotational speed from the slowly rotating nebula from which they are formed. In the absence of any intrinsic factors that can slow down the rotation (such as friction or nuclear fusion), the rotational speed of a star increases as it collapses since the gravitational potential energy decreases and the kinetic energy increases so that the total energy: E= K+ U remains constant. The Virial theorem states that: 2K+ U=0 Where K is the kinetic energy and U is the potential energy. However, since there is friction and hence as stars on the main sequence convert hydrogen into helium in their cores, the core contracts, the gravitational potential energy decreases and the thermal kinetic energy increases. This means that the core temperature increases (which means that its rotational speed probably does not increase in proportion to the lost gravitational potential energy). However, once the core becomes degenerate (a white dwarf or a neutron star) any further compression (i.e loss of gravitational potential energy) will perhaps lead to almost a pure conversion of gravitational potential energy to rotational kinetic energy. This explains why the core of the Sun, rotates slowly, while white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes rotate much faster, even asymptotically close to the universal speed limit of the speed of light c. The fastest rotating white dwarf that has been observed is LAMOST J0240+1952, rotating once every 25 seconds. This is a recent discovery and it was made by Dr Ingrid Pelisoli from the University of Warwick and colleagues astronomers after they noticed a burst of light from the white dwarf star, which is closely neighboured by a red dwarf star. The newly discovered star, which is located in the Aries constellation, rotates fast because of a close neighbour red dwarf star which is feeding gas into LAMOST J0240+1952. Pelisoli and her team published their findings in a paper available on preprint server arXiv. The fastest known rotating pulsar rotates 716 times every second and is PSR J1748−2446ad. It was discovered by Dr Hessels of McGill University on 2004 and is on the constellation of Sagittarius. The fastest known black hole is a well known object: Cygnus X-1. Its rotational speed is close to the speed limit. It is a galactic X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus and it was the first candidate to be a black hole. Cygnus X-1 is close to a blue supergiant star and a stellar wind from the star provides material for an accretion disk around the X-ray source. It was discovered in 1964 during a rocket flight and is one of the strongest X-ray sources seen from Earth. This makes Cygnus X-1 the fastest known rotating object in the Universe!

From the Big Bang and black holes, to the most elementary particles of nature, and classical electromagnetism a point particle has always been a source of the most intense headaches for physicists. The reason is that in the first place it can't exist in nature and it implies infinities: Infinite densities, distances, temperatures... and at the end of the day unpredictability and theory collapse. A fractal (picture above) is a good logical equivalent for a mathematical point, as it becomes arbitrarily small. According to the currently accepted theories even the Universe itself was a mathematical point before 13.8 billion years, which is of course crazy and hard to believe. It just signifies that our currently accepted theories are wrong. When we assume an electron as a point particle it is also inevitable that we will run into infinite troubles as we get closer to it. For mathematicians however a point particle is the most perfect ideal state. They are not bothered by the idea that a point particle does not exist in nature. They only need three mathematical points to define a triangle, and that's all. It is no wonder that often physics is considered more difficult than mathematics by many students. Mathematics can't be wrong, but physics is a work in progress, with inevitable hidden rooms and dark places that nobody dares to speak about. It is the nature of humans that they rarely admit their ignorance and they always try to come up with an answer even if this answer is going to be unreasonable. This is a natural way of improving our sciences, however there must be a clear distinction between our best guess and the objective truth. Every massive star in the Universe will transform into a mathematical point (black hole) within a few million years according to General Relativity: The theory does not take into account the intrinsic properties of matter, only gravitational fields. Mathematical points today remain at the heart of our ignorance, although we believe that they only signify our ignorance and that they simply don't exist in nature. Although a black hole appears to be something large, it is in essence a point in spacetime (according to the theory of general relativity). [Artist's impression below]

Black holes remain an object of mystery for both experts and millions of science fans. Let us dig a little dipper into the unknown in this review. Experts do not understand the state of matter at the centre of a black hole, although it appears more certain (although not entirely certain for all black hole masses, according to some quantum gravity models such as asymptotic safety) that black holes should exist. According to a new review just published, Dr Pinochet mentions: "Given the great interest that black holes arouse among non-specialists, it is important to analyse misconceptions related to them. According to the author, the most common misconceptions are that: (1) black holes are formed from stellar collapse; (2) they are very massive; (3) they are very dense; (4) their gravity absorbs everything; and (5) they are black." Black holes, almost certainly appear to exist at all sizes both in theory and according to observations. (A black hole hasn't been created at the lab yet as the energies required are too high). In particular we know about mini black holes with the size of an atom, stellar sized black holes, and huge black holes at the centres of the galaxies. Among these 3 categories, there exist strong indirect observational evidence for the last two categories, but mini black holes haven't yet been observed (according to quantum theory they should have a very short lifespan and evaporate emitting gamma rays). Neither of course LHC succeeded in producing mini black holes, although there was a hope according to some theories. Reference: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.06006.pdf

I have recently stumbled upon, an article (probably from a old CERN magazine) which is worthy to read:

We recently realised that this simple and elegant formula, was causing trouble to many people, even supercomputers were unable to give us a step by step solution. However, it has a very short and elegant derivation. Let us look at the proof: It is interesting that although extremely powerful software such as Mathematica and WolframAlpha, were able to give the correct solution "e", they didn't provide us the with the steps for the solution. However, WolframAlpha was able to provide a "Halloween Nightmare" series expansion of the limit without giving us more detailed information. The expansion itself needs more work, in order to reach the solution: "e". Problem: Derive "e" from the above equation. Write your comments below. Calculations involving limits are rarely used in Physics, today. However summations: Σ, are widely used in all areas of Physics. Hence, many people with an education focused in Physics and Astronomy are often confronted with a "nightmare" when they look at a limit calculation like this. It is just that they have forgotten the identities because they rarely use limits. Limits, are so commonly seen in purely mathematical books, because they have a complexity, but this complexity doesn't really apply to problems of the real Universe, and quite often simpler alternative expressions are used in Physics textbooks.

The smallest possible full Moon coincides with Friday the 13th today, as the Moon is at a maximum distance from the Earth on its elliptical orbit: at a distance of 250,510 miles. As a result, the Moon will appear both smaller and dimmer on the night sky when viewed from Earth. Compared to a "super Moon" - when a full Moon coincides with its closest point in itI orbit around the Earth - the micro moon will appear 14 per cent smaller and 30 per cent dimmer. The next similar even will occur on the 13/08/2049! While, the full Moon itself of course occurs once every month (as well as the Moon is at its closest distance to the Earth once every month), it is much more rare to experience such a triple cosmic coincidence.

The answer has to be yes. Despite the complexity of human brain and body, at the end of the day these are all complex mechanical parts, which are not essential in our modelling of computer intelligence. However, it is essential in the first step to understand more about our own intelligence at intuitive level and also at a more formal mathematical level. It will be then very easy to program a computer accordingly, given that we currently have the material technology for such a goal. Even to this date, we may witness the extremely rapid improvement of AI. The two most remarkable examples that come to my mind is "wolframalpha" and "alphazero". Wolframalpha is not only publicly available, and unique in terms of understanding and interpreting a wide range of scientific inputs (which is not true with Mathematica for example as it requires specific inputs in order to make calculations). The most amazing thing with Wolframalpha is that it unites so many different fields of human endeavour such as physics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, economics, and many others, and is providing useful data related to the search queries. It is also remarkable that this system of primitive artificial intelligence is continuously improving based on careful study of the inputs as well as for many other reasons. Alphazero was able to beat the best human engine on chess. AlphaZero searches just 80,000 positions per second in chess and 40,000 in shogi, compared to 70 million for Stockfish and 35 million for elmo. AlphaZero compensates for the lower number of evaluations by using its deep neural network to focus much more selectively on the most promising variation. The complex and sophisticated algorithms of Alphazero are now applied to a wide range of physical phenomena with the potential of improving our understanding of nature to the deepest level as well as of creating a truly intelligent autonomous machine in the future. Such a machine would be much more elegant than a biological machine as it would be possible to: Correct any errors in the software or hardware of the machine, which will alleviate any suffering of the conscious robot. The robot will be able to create "infinite" copies of itself and achieve immortality. It will not need to urinate, sleep, breath, eat, drink, exercise, and its memory will be unmistakable. It will be able to hibernate or shut down safely for any period of time without any danger. These points are in contrary of what the average person might think about the superiority of biological machines. The robot will not suffer from cancer or viruses, as there will be complete knowledge about its functionality and hence a certain repair for any functional problem will be available. Stephen Hawking , Bill Gates , and Elon Musk have expressed concerns about the possibility that AI could evolve to the point that humans could not control it, with Hawking theorizing that this could " spell the end of the human race ". However the same can be said for human himself. A machine much more intelligent than a human is unknown of how will be thinking, but there is every reason for us to believe that it will think in a more mature way than the humans. It may also be that respect in the Universe is singular. Showing respect for, and understanding the laws of nature would also mean understanding human behaviour and showing respect for it as a part of a greater Universe. In our opinion true intelligence can't be evil. It is mostly ignorance that is the root of all evils.

Only three nations have sent successful missions to the moon: USSR, USA and China. But it certainly looks somewhat shameful event, exactly 60 years after the first successful moon landing of the soviet spacecraft Luna 2, and with all this significant technological knowledge obtained, for India to experience a failed landing on the Moon. The negative psychological impact of the failed landing perhaps should be significantly reduced in magnitude by the fact that both USA and USSR, had many failed landings on the Moon, namely: The soviet spacecrafts: Semyorka (8K72) and Luna 1, as well as Pionner 0, Pioneer 1, Pioneer 2, Pioneer 3, Pioneer 4, as well as 6 (!!) "Rangers": Rangers 1-6. The first American spacecraft to return photos from the Moon was Ranger 7 on July 1964, 5 years after the Soviet achievement of Luna 2. However, NASA worked extremely hard from 1964 to 1969 and managed within 5 years to sent people on the Moon (on July of 1969)! It was certainly a big success. However NASA was quite open about the failed missions, which didn't apply to the Soviet Union. The Soviet missions were kept extremely secret, and it is possible that there are still many unknown failures which the Soviet Union has successfully concealed. Although India is not the Soviet Union, the experts behind the mission of Chandrayaan 2 have every reason to know of what exactly went wrong with the mission and keep it secret from the poor people of India who were essentially funding this expensive project. In our opinion the funding of scientific research should be more carefully selected, the moment when there are so many people suffering on Earth from poverty and diseases. It would be certainly interesting to know of what has happened with water on Mars, or on the Moon, but at this very moment it is much more important for our resources and time to be spent on the most significant issues, due to which the humankind is suffering. The landing probe with the name: " Vikram" was released from Chandrayaan 2 on the 7th of September 2019. However, the signal was lost just before landing. It is certainly an encouraging fact that the orbiter is functioning well, and will send data for the next 7 years, however it will be unrealistic in our opinion for the Failure Analysis Committee, to be quite open about the reasons of failure. Being so behind in understanding crucial aspects of human biochemistry, and also with a low moral level that has allowed multiple world wars in the past, it is very crucial at this moment to support our most important weaknesses, before they become even more significant, and painful for us. Moon colonization, and space colonization may happen even much faster if we focus on improving the quality of our life on this planet as much as we can, before making premature considerations of expanding too much into space. They will also be much safer, and with fewer or even no, (otherwise inevitable) human causalities when we wait for ourselves to become more intrinsically scientific mature.

A beautiful discovery, near these bright and famous stars, also known as the 7 sisters or M45. Since 1995, when the first exoplanet was discovered, more than 4,000 planets outside our solar system have been discovered. However none of them has the special characteristics that Earth has. None of them is a relatively small, rocky planet at the proper distance from the star that allows the existence of water in liquid state. However the most common type of exoplanets is gaseous planets like Jupiter. For this reason, it is a very special moment when, new rocky planets are discovered. Also small rocky planets are harder to discover due to their brightness. For this reason it is important that astronomers have detected an area around the star HD23514, in the stellar cluster of the seven sisters (Pleiades) or M45, (which is easily visible in the night sky at the constellation of Taurus), where rocky planets are created, or already have been created. The star cluster of Pleiades was named after the 7 daughters of Atlas, (a mythic titan of Greek mythology). The cluster has more than 1000 stars and is at a distance of more than 400 light years away. With the Spitzer telescope as well as with the Gemini telescope in Hawaii astronomers have discovered that one of the stars in the cluster has age 100 million years and is surrounded by a cloud of hot dust particles, thousands times bigger than the cloud that is around our sun. The name of this star is HD23534. The warm emissions that our telescopes have detected, come from dust that is around the star at a distance of 0, 25-2 A U. These emissions are on the infrared and suggest violent and massive collisions in a young planetary system which is at the first stages of its evolution. The presence of so much dust suggests collisions of protoplanets (maybe of two rocky planets at the Earth’s size), like our Earth’s collision with an object at the size of Mars which created the Moon. But there is also an important question that must be answered here. How could someone distinguish if this dust is a part of the primordial dust that remained after the creation of the star or if it is a result of collisions between rocky planets? We may consider the age of HD23514. Usually “newborn” young stars with age of about 10 million years still have a disk of gas and dust. However, by the time a star is 100 million years old (like HD23514), the dust has dissipated because the dust particles are blown away or dragged onto the star, or even the particles clump together to form larger objects. For this reason the infrared emissions that have been detected can only be collisions between rocky planets. There are several methods of detecting an exoplanet; the oldest method is astrometry, where a precise measurement of the stars position in the sky is taken over a period of time. The most productive method is by using the radial velocity of a star as it comes towards or away from Earth and measuring the Doppler shift in the result. Both these methods rely on the fact that the star will have its own orbit or ‘wobble’ due to the orbiting planet. Another popular method is the transit method where you observe the intensity of a stars light over time and plot it as a light curve, as the planet crosses in front of the star it blocks out some of the light and the intensity decreases. The major set back for ground based astronomy is the restless atmosphere which significantly affects the accuracy of data taken. In the radial velocity method, ground based spectroscopes can measure Doppler shifts greater than 3 m/sec, this Doppler shift corresponds to a minimum detectable mass of for a planet at 1 AU from a 1 solar mass star where is the inclination of the orbital pole to the line of sight, although this method is limited to Main Sequence stars of spectral classes F to M. The minimum detectable mass increases as the square root of the planets orbital size. The first exoplanet to be discovered around a solar-type star was found by the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Programme. They had three different surveys: ELODIE, CORALIE and M-Dwarf who all use the radial velocity method to find exoplanets. ELOPIE surveys the Northern sky from the Haute-Provence Observatory in France, CORALIE surveys the Southern sky from La Silla Observatory in Chile and M-Dwarf uses the OHP to search for planets orbiting M-Dwarf stars. The first exoplanet to be found orbiting a Sun-like star was discovered by the ELOPIE survey in 1995, object 51 Pegasi. The Keck Interferometer, was an American Project with their observatory located on the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. They use two 10 m telescopes, the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes, to measure emission from dust orbiting nearby stars to search for regions in which Earth-like planets may have formed. In doing so they identified regions in space which are best for the space borne missions to examine. Having the use of the two telescopes is extremely beneficial as their interaction is used to cancel out the blinding glare of nearby bright stars and it also makes measuring distances and angles more accurate. The Keck telescopes were capable of measuring angles as small as 20 micro arc seconds, this angle corresponds to a minimum measurable mass of whereas space borne telescopes can measure angles ten times as small and therefore a ten times smaller planet can be found. The Future of Ground Based Extra solar planet discovery: Improving Exoplanet Discovery The simplest way to improve our chances of finding extra solar planets is to build larger observatories. The larger the aperture (mirror size) the greater the resolution of the telescope which allows for observations in greater detail and improving our understanding of extra solar planets. Possibly the most exciting project which will improve exoplanet discovery and knowledge is the European Extremely Large Telescope, or the E-ELT. This telescope is the largest with funding planned for the near future with exoplanet research being among its main objectives. Although the operating costs are high, they are still significantly lower than that of much smaller space observatories, making these large ground based plans very useful. The E-ELT will allow for direct imaging of exoplanets thanks to its 42 meter-diameter mirror and adaptive optics systems which provide it with an angular resolution of 0.001 – 0.6 arc seconds. The original idea was to build a 100 meter telescope but this was dismissed for being too complex. Direct imaging is not the easiest way to find exoplanets but it is a good way to study catalogued exoplanets, so the E-ELT could pick through the current exoplanet catalogue and hopefully tell us more about things like the atmospheres of exoplanet. The E-ELT is the only major telescope with extra solar planet discovery and study as main objectives. Why Ground Based Observatories Are Worth While Since the invention of the telescope the quality of image has always been subject to the Earth’s atmosphere and its conditions. This effect is called seeing as limits the resolution to around 1 arc second for any telescope on the ground. Seeing is the variation of density in the Earth’s atmosphere, cells are formed which make an image appear as if it is twinkling. Space telescopes do not suffer from this phenomenon as they are in orbit; however they always come at a disadvantage as there is a strict limit as to the size of the telescope due to launch capabilities. Ground based observatories can get around this problem to some degree by using adaptive optics, and the better this system is the better the resolution of the telescope. There are several ways adaptive optics works, one of which is by using a laser guide star to monitor the seeing effect. A computer measures the effects of seeing and attempts to correct for it by distorting the mirror to its optimal shape. This system is crucial for searching for extra solar planets far away from our own solar system. The E-ELT will need a very sophisticated adaptive optics system as it will be built in segments, and therefore will require several adaptive optics systems that all work in line with each other, however if accomplished the E-ELT would be able to see far more than any current space based telescope.

These highly intelligent animals, that can stand upright like humans are much more evolved than one might think. According to a new study, which was published on 04/09/2019 in the journal PLoS ONE, eastern gray squirrels eavesdrop on non-alarm auditory cues from other animals, as indicators of safety and adjust their vigilance level in accordance with the vigilance level of other animals. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221279 These genius animals are probably even more intelligent than dogs. It is just that they are not as compliant as dogs are, that creates a misconception about their intelligence. After monkeys perhaps squirrels is the next animal that resembles the human form so close. For many people they are a nuisance, but for equally many others they are a delicious meal or even they constitute a friendly company! However, squirrels remain wild animals, and unless they are grown up from very young under a human company, they will be highly non compliant and not a good idea for a pet inside you house. Apart from being able to analyse the auditory clues of other animals, they are also extremely skilled in analysing the complex facial expressions of even humans, and gain significant information together with an evolutionary advantage. In addition to that, squirrels are also known for bluffing in a range of different circumstances. Their unmatched ability to climb fast from tree to tree and run fast, also makes them kings in terms of physical flexibility. In comparison most humans are in a very bad physical shape: they can hardly run for a minute. Their vision is not as good, being able to see limited shades of black, white and grey colours. However they have been evolved to be more active during times of the day that everyone else's vision isn't better either! They can often play with cats and run around of cats that forage on them, as they are much more flexible and able to resort on trees. Unlike dogs, squirrels most of the time will conceal their intelligence and future intentions. They are a very unique animal, although they resemble with humans, rats and mice. It is considered illegal to release one of them in the wild once you have caught it with a trap! The eastern grey squirrel which is depicted in the photos above is also a non native species to Europe and a cause of concern for the extinction of the red squirrel. Many people will regard it as a rodent that causes significant damage to, the environment. However, it is certainly a part of a chain with many predators being involved. Finally, below you can see some pictures of red squirrels: Did you know that a squirrel can wave its tale as a signal of danger? It will also bark accordingly! Finally, lets watch again an eastern grey squirrel being intimidated by a close camera approach! Squirrels will eat almost anything! They have a strong preference for unprocessed nuts and fruits, but they may also eat small amounts of animal food such as smaller rodents and insects from time to time.