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Mount Rushmore in the United States was declared a national monument in 1925. The most interesting fact is that this was declared a national monument even before a construction began in 1927. It is located in south western Dakota in the Black Hills. Faces of U.S. presidents are carved into the rock of these hills. There are figures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. President faces are engraved at about 150 meters above the valley, which lies next to the rock, and height of each carved face is about 20 meters. The cost for the whole project was a million dollars, which is a small sum for the cultural value of this monument. An American historian Dan Robinson gave the idea for this monument and the project work was conducted by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who died in 1941 before the completion of the monument, but his son finished his father’s work. The monument is located near the Borglum studio, which is a sort of mini museum that includes tools used for building a monument.

Chat or Khat

 

According to old Egyptian beliefs, a man consists out of 7 to 9 “layers”. Consciousness and will make it possible for these layers to connect and make one harmonic and dynamic unity – MAN. As there are seven colors of the spectrum of sunlight and seven notes of music scale, there are seven aspects of human being.

These aspects create so called internal hierarchical gradation. These are some of the principal layers of a man according to Egyptians:

A rock cube crowned with human head is a physical body that possessed intelligence and human form during lifetime. For itself, it is a piece of “fabric” that decomposes after physical death.

Ankh

A red pitcher or a heart on the left side of the scales, represents a vital energy that triggers physical body and makes it alive. In a broader sense Ankh is the key of life, one of theological symbols in Egypt.

 Ka

Ka is the center of emotions and it is made after the image of the Spirit, the most subtle aspect of a man. Ka is transferor of the same spiritual aspect and the plan of manifestation that shapes the human body, it is shown in motion that symbolizes the apparition from a man, though it is his essential part. Well, this definition is a little complicated, but read it a couple of times, it’ll become clearer.

Ab and Ba

Yes, it reminds of the famous group ABBA, maybe there is some kind of symbolism or a connection the members wanted to show… Ab and Ba are twin sisters and represent two parts of human mind. They are shown as female characters, naked or dressed, once in a very modest clothing and the other time in a very luxurious. Ab is a part of mind that is related to wishes, different emotions and passion. It is the headquarter of the intellect or a “subjective” mind turned to its own illusions. Modern psychology calls this aspect – “Conscious I”. Ba is headquarter of pure ideas; another words that describe it perfectly are exalted and noble, and it represents unselfish mind that is independent of all the wishes, passions and subjectivity. In modern psychology it is “Mental I”. Ba is represented as a bird, here…

Akhu or Cheybi

It is a spiritual resurrection shown in the image of bird with human head, similar to Ba. This symbolizes the intuition of sacral. In one aspect it is a soul, the spiritual part in human that could travel somewhere else after physical death. Because of its bird nature, it is on the top of concrete things, ready to fly to the heights of Amenti – the Amon God’s house.

Atmu or Sahu

“A male character on the left of the scales” is the aspect that can return the lost Godlike Man status. It is a spiritual cause of human, a part that lives beyond changes and located beyond the measurable space, as a spectator. In other words is the immortal soul. This is the highest level of human nature – a divine spark in a man that connects him with its divine origins.

The sevenfold structure of man represents also the vision of man created in Thebes. Well, many cultures, religions and teachings agree that there is more than this life, and that something that is invisible by naked eye in human lives on after our body ‘wears out’ and dies. There must be something right and truthful in all that.

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A 32-year-old Indian guy, Datta Phuge does not hold the statement that money can buy love to be true. But, you can definitely draw the attention of many women if you show you have much money. Since he’s not handsome, but he’s rich, he hired a team of 15 jewelers who worked 16 hours a day, during two weeks, making him a shirt out of gold. The pleasure of wearing the golden outfit, this man paid about 17 thousand euro. “I know I’m not the most handsome man in the world, but women find it difficult to remain indifferent to this kind of clothes. Shirt of gold has always been my dream” -he said. The shirt is coated with gold and made of white velvet, having Swarovski crystals on it and a golden belt. Well, you can say this is an original idea, especially in India.

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 What is dark energy?

No matter how astrophysicists crunch the numbers, the universe simply doesn’t add up. Even though gravity is pulling inward on space-time — the “fabric” of the cosmos — it keeps expanding outward faster and faster. To account for this, astrophysicists have proposed an invisible agent that counteracts gravity by pushing space-time apart. They call it dark energy. In the most widely accepted model of dark energy, it is a “cosmological constant”: an inherent property of space itself, which has “negative pressure” driving space apart. As space expands, more space is created, and with it, more dark energy. Based on the observed rate of expansion, scientists know that the sum of all the dark energy must make up more than 70 percent of the total contents of the universe. But no one knows how to look for it.

 

What is dark matter?

Evidently, about 84 percent of the matter in the universe does not absorb or emit light. “Dark matter,” as it is called, cannot be seen directly, and it hasn’t yet been detected by indirect means, either. Instead, dark matter’s existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation and the structure of the universe. This shadowy substance is thought to pervade the outskirts of galaxies, and may be composed of “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs. Worldwide, there are several detectors on the lookout for WIMPs, but so far, not one has been found.

 

Why is there an arrow of time?

Time moves forward because a property of the universe called “entropy,” roughly defined as the level of disorder, only increases, and so there is no way to reverse a rise in entropy after it has occurred. The fact that entropy increases is a matter of logic: There are more disordered arrangements of particles than there are ordered arrangements, and so as things change, they tend to fall into disarray. But the underlying question here is, why was entropy so low in the past? Put differently, why was the universe so ordered at its beginning, when a huge amount of energy was crammed together in a small amount of space?

 

Are there parallel universes?

Astrophysical data suggests space-time might be “flat,” rather than curved, and thus that it goes on forever. If so, then the region we can see (which we think of as “the universe”) is just one patch in an infinitely large “quilted multiverse.” At the same time, the laws of quantum mechanics dictate that there are only a finite number of possible particle configurations within each cosmic patch (10^10^122 distinct possibilities). So, with an infinite number of cosmic patches, the particle arrangements within them are forced to repeat — infinitely many times over.  This means there are infinitely many parallel universes: cosmic patches exactly the same as ours (containing someone exactly like you), as well as patches that differ by just one particle’s position, patches that differ by two particles’ positions, and so on down to patches that are totally different from ours.

Is there something wrong with that logic, or is its bizarre outcome true? And if it is true, how might we ever detect the presence of parallel universes? 

 

Why is there more matter than antimatter?

The question of why there is so much more matter than its oppositely-charged and oppositely-spinning twin, antimatter, is actually a question of why anything exists at all. One assumes the universe would treat matter and antimatter symmetrically, and thus that, at the moment of the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced. But if that had happened, there would have been a total annihilation of both: Protons would have canceled with antiprotons, electrons with anti-electrons (positrons), neutrons with antineutrons, and so on, leaving behind a dull sea of photons in a matterless expanse. For some reason, there was excess matter that didn’t get annihilated, and here we are. For this, there is no accepted explanation.

 

 What is the fate of the universe?

The fate of the universe strongly depends on a factor of unknown value: Ω, a measure of the density of matter and energy throughout the cosmos. If Ω is greater than 1, then space-time would be “closed” like the surface of an enormous sphere. If there is no dark energy, such a universe would eventually stop expanding and would instead start contracting, eventually collapsing in on itself in an event dubbed the “Big Crunch.” If the universe is closed but there is dark energy, the spherical universe would expand forever.

Alternatively, if Ω is less than 1, then the geometry of space would be “open” like the surface of a saddle. In this case, its ultimate fate is the “Big Freeze” followed by the “Big Rip”: first, the universe’s outward acceleration would tear galaxies and stars apart, leaving all matter frigid and alone. Next, the acceleration would grow so strong that it would overwhelm the effects of the forces that hold atoms together, and everything would be wrenched apart.

If Ω = 1, the universe would be flat, extending like an infinite plane in all directions. If there is no dark energy, such a planar universe would expand forever but at a continually decelerating rate, approaching a standstill. If there is dark energy, the flat universe ultimately would experience runaway expansion leading to the Big Rip.

 

 How do measurements collapse quantumwavefunctions?

In the strange realm of electrons, photons and the other fundamental particles, quantum mechanics is law. Particles don’t behave like tiny balls, but rather like waves that are spread over a large area. Each particle is described by a “wavefunction,” or probability distribution, which tells what its location, velocity, and other properties are more likely to be, but not what those properties are. The particle actually has a range of values for all the properties, until you experimentally measure one of them — its location, for example — at which point the particle’s wavefunction “collapses” and it adopts just one location. [Newborn Babies Understand Quantum Mechanics]

But how and why does measuring a particle make its wavefunction collapse, producing the concrete reality that we perceive to exist? The issue, known as the measurement problem, may seem esoteric, but our understanding of what reality is, or if it exists at all, hinges upon the answer. 

 

Is string theory correct?

When physicists assume all the elementary particles are actually one-dimensional loops, or “strings,” each of which vibrates at a different frequency, physics gets much easier. String theory allows physicists to reconcile the laws governing particles, called quantum mechanics, with the laws governing space-time, called general relativity, and to unify the four fundamental forces of nature into a single framework. But the problem is, string theory can only work in a universe with 10 or 11 dimensions: three large spatial ones, six or seven compacted spatial ones, and a time dimension. The compacted spatial dimensions — as well as the vibrating strings themselves — are about a billionth of a trillionth of the size of an atomic nucleus. There’s no conceivable way to detect anything that small, and so there’s no known way to experimentally validate or invalidate string theory.

 

 Is there order in chaos?

Physicists can’t exactly solve the set of equations that describes the behavior of fluids, from water to air to all other liquids and gases. In fact, it isn’t known whether a general solution of the so-called Navier-Stokes equations even exists, or, if there is a solution, whether it describes fluids everywhere, or contains inherently unknowable points called singularities. As a consequence, the nature of chaos is not well understood. Physicists and mathematicians wonder, is the weather merely difficult to predict, or inherently unpredictable? Does turbulence transcend mathematical description, or does it all make sense when you tackle it with the right math?

 

 Infinite Universes

Scientists can’t be sure what the shape of space-time is, but most likely, it’s flat (as opposed to spherical or even donut-shape) and stretches outinfinitely. But if space-time goes on forever, then it must start repeating at some point, because there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time.

So if you look far enough, you would encounter another version of you — in fact, infinite versions of you. Some of these twins will be doing exactly what you’re doing right now, while others will have worn a different sweater this morning, and still others will have made vastly different career and life choices.

Because the observable universe extends only as far as light has had a chance to get in the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang (that would be 13.7 billion light-years), the space-time beyond that distance can be considered to be its own separate universe. In this way, a multitude of universes exists next to each other in a giant patchwork quilt of universes.

Bubble Universes

In addition to the multiple universes created by infinitely extending space-time, other universes could arise from a theory called “eternal inflation.” Inflation is the notion that the universe expanded rapidly after the Big Bang, in effect inflating like a balloon. Eternal inflation, first proposed by Tufts University cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, suggests that some pockets of space stop inflating, while other regions continue to inflate, thus giving rise to many isolated “bubble universes.”

Thus, our own universe, where inflation has ended, allowing stars and galaxies to form, is but a small bubble in a vast sea of space, some of which is still inflating, that contains many other bubbles like ours. And in some of these bubble universes, the laws of physics and fundamental constants might be different than in ours, making some universes strange places indeed.

 

Parallel Universes

Another idea that arises from string theory is the notion of “braneworlds” — parallel universes that hover just out of reach of our own, proposed by Princeton University’s Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. The idea comes from the possibility of many more dimensions to our world than the three of space and one of time that we know. In addition to our own three-dimensional “brane” of space, other three-dimensional branes may float in a higher-dimensional space.

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene describes the idea as the notion that “our universe is one of potentially numerous ‘slabs’ floating in a higher-dimensional space, much like a slice of bread within a grander cosmic loaf,” in his book “The Hidden Reality” (Vintage Books, 2011).

A further wrinkle on this theory suggests these brane universes aren’t always parallel and out of reach. Sometimes, they might slam into each other, causing repeated Big Bangs that reset the universes over and over again.

Daughter Universes

The theory of quantum mechanics, which reigns over the tiny world of subatomic particles, suggests another way multiple universes might arise. Quantum mechanics describes the world in terms of probabilities, rather than definite outcomes. And the mathematics of this theory might suggest that all possible outcomes of a situation do occur — in their own separate universes. For example, if you reach a crossroads where you can go right or left, the present universegives rise to two daughter universes: one in which you go right, and one in which you go left.

“And in each universe, there’s a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking — incorrectly — that your reality is the only reality,” Greene wrote in “The Hidden Reality.”

 

Mathematical Universes

Scientists have debated whether mathematics is simply a useful tool for describing the universe, or whether math itself is the fundamental reality, and our observations of the universe are just imperfect perceptions of its true mathematical nature. If the latter is the case, then perhaps the particular mathematical structure that makes up our universe isn’t the only option, and in fact all possible mathematical structures exist as their own separate universes.

“A mathematical structure is something that you can describe in a way that’s completely independent of human baggage,” said Max Tegmark of MIT, who proposed this brain-twistin gidea. “I really believe that there is this universe out there that can exist independently of me that would continue to exist even if there were no humans.”

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The only strange thing about Carl the bartender is that he’s not quite human.

The humanoid robot mixes drinks for guests at the Robots Bar and Lounge in Ilmenau, eastern Germany.

Guests at the bar can interact with Carl, who was developed and built by mechatronics engineer Ben Schaefer 

With a glass in hand. humanoid robot bartender Carl is ready to serve customers at the Robots Bar and Lounge in Ilmenau, eastern Germany

Carl can mix drinks according to customers’ requests and also indulge in small talk, his creator says

Carl helps out another bartender by pouring a shot of a spirit into their cocktail shaker ready to be mixed

The robot is the creation of mechatronics engineer Ben Schaefer, who has spent 23 years working in the field.

He built Carl from the parts of disused industrial robots from the German firm KUKA.

His newest employee helps out his human colleagues by pouring out measures of spirits and adding them to cocktail shakers for mixing.

He can also conduct short conversations with the customers who take up the bar’s nine seats, though they probably don’t sparkle like the drinks because his speech recognition skills and ability to interact are, for the moment, limited.

To make sure the robot does not crash in the small area behind the bar, Carl wears a belt with sensors.

 

Carl’s creator Ben Schaefer, a mechatronics engineer, has been working in the field of humanoid robots for 23 years

Mr Schaefer interacts with his newest employee as it offers up a glass of spirits to be adding to Mr Schaefer’s own cup

There are only nine seats at the bar for the best view of Carl in action at the Robots Lounge and Bar in Ilmenau 

The customers can have limited conversations with Carl who also measures out spirits for another bartender to mix

The belt helps Carl stay upright instead of spilling drinks everywhere and protects his human counterparts.

Another room in the bar, described as a place to encounter technology and future visions, contains a life-size model of a Nasa astronaut.

Writing on the bar’s website, Mr Schaefer said his company aims to make humanity in humanoid robots closer to reality and show that ‘scenes as in science fiction films are quite possible’.

Humanoid robots tend to have limbs and a torso to resemble the human body, while artificial intelligence tries to replicate the way the mind works.

Mr Schaefer said putting Carl to work meant it was easier to see how the design needed improving than trying to figure out problems in a laboratory

Perhaps one day Carl may boast the skills of Tom Cruise in Cocktail, but for now his creator is making him useful by having him measure out spirits

By putting Carl in a real-life scenario, it was easier to test the programming and make improvements than it would be in a laboratory.

‘On this system, you can let your imagination run wild, because each step makes our robot a bit more human,’ Mr Shaefer writes. 

For now, Carl will be part-tourist attraction and part test-dummy while Mr Schaefer and his team work out how to shake humanoid robotics out of its ‘stagnant’ state.