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Three Caves

Part of Serbia below the Danube River is pretty mountainous, with complex geology, especially in the eastern parts where the Carpathian and Balkan mountains collided and over eons formed the Serbian Carpathians, with a total of 14 independent mountain ranges in existence today. These rocks date back to the Proterozoic Eon (2.5 billion–541 million years ago), with limestones and dolomites mainly formed from the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago. There are dozens of large caves within these mountains, and many have tourist paths built to visit and admire their beauty and history. Two of them we visited last week, and they both gave us extraordinary experiences and impressions.


However, the first cave in this blog story belongs to the one formed in the foothills of an ancient volcano of the nowadays mountain of Bukulja in western Serbia, although the recent paper posted a theory that the mountain is much younger (15 million years ago) and instead formed in tectonic processes. Whatever the case, the Risovača cave is definitely unique in the Balkans and probably on several occasions hosted families of Neanderthals during the Late Pleistocene era. Numerous tools from this period similar to those found within other Neanderthal sites across Europe are found here and preserved for display in local museums. Like with other groups, and due to small numbers overall, Neanderthals most likely went extinct due to assimilation with modern humans in a process called "bred into extinction". More about it I wrote in Neanderthals, Humans and Shared Caves.

During the same time, the cave hosted various dominant animals from the same period, like cave lions, hyenas, and bears. This image is from the local museum of Arandjelovac, and its special space is occupied by the cave bear, fully assembled from the bones found in the cave. The bones belonged to more than one animal and formed a skeleton up to three meters high, which was approximately the average height for the cave bears. Those behemoths could go up to 1 ton in mass and 3.5 meters in height.


In the Balkans, during the last couple of millenniums of coexistence of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, our ancestors lived mainly along the rivers, especially the Danube to the north, while Neanderthals occupied more inland territories, no doubt in the vicinity of caves like this one. There is strong evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead, most likely not in the caves themselves, which is the main reason for the lack of human remains excavated to date.

Compared to the Risovača, two other caves, Ravništarka, named after the nearby village, and Lazar's cave, named after a rebel man who found shelter there in the time of the Ottoman Empire, stand out with their natural beauty rich in cave jewelry and mineral formations. 


Ravništarka cave is pretty long and one of those river caves with the small stream flowing its entire length. The water dug the whole canal of around 500 meters, and the mountain minerals did the rest. Numerous stalactites and stalagmites decorated the tourist path, like the one in this image, in the shape of a flying horse. Dozens of other pareidolia-decorating wall formations are made of glittering calcite, which under the LED lights gives the amazing feeling of surreality. 

Lazar's cave on the other end, with its large entrance, is probably hiding more history than it is currently known. For its wide space within, it has always been the center of human activity ever since the Copper Age. During the Bronze Age, Lazar's Cave played the role of a hunting station, and in the Iron Age it became a center of metallurgy. Even in recent history, the cave attracted people for multiple reasons. Numerous legends are circulating around, with one claiming that lots of Serbian soldiers hid inside after surviving the battle of Kosovo and the defeat by the invading army of the Ottoman Empire on June 15, 1389. 


Even though the caves could be crowded with tourists, we had luck that all three were free of charge at the opening hours, and browsing the mysterious caverns alone added an extra feeling afterwards. Somehow it felt like we traveled back in time, and all the sites inside caves seen in pristine condition looked unearthly beautiful and alien.

The following photos and videos are the best we could do with modest smartphones in dark light conditions, but some of them turned out really phenomenal.

Risovača cave:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ienEnC1xypJBdNut7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEWXtFiKhE
https://www.nmar.rs/en/risovaca-cave/
 

Historical Fiction of the World War Two

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War", which lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in an armistice based on the unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22-year-old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with 30,000 other surrendered soldiers. He spent the next four years in a Nazi military camp, leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son.

I am sure it was not easy for him to cope with the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, the unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and an agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for all the former soldiers came in the second part of 1945, after the fall of Hitler's Third Reich, when all of them, along with more than 7 million displaced people, ended up for several months in the chaos of the immediate postwar traumatic experience of trying to find their way home. After his return to Serbia under a completely new regime, life treated him pretty well, and the post-war time is perhaps best described with his own words: "Although I was not a member of the communist party, I think I was respected in society; I became a councilor of the municipality of Nis and a member of the council of the electronic industry. Above all, I was proud of my family and 50 years of marriage."


Doing hard labor in the fields and machine workshop helped him to pass through the war relatively undisturbed, and, if we exclude the short April war in the beginning, I am sure the bullet holes in the car he used to maintain were his only reminder of all the horrors of the war. He was pretty quiet about all that happened to him for years, until one of our family gatherings about thirty years ago when he opened his soul and told us most of what happened in those four years, and especially a couple of those last months in 1945 when he headed back home on foot. 

I only found two of his photos that appear to be from his imprisonment, and I was genuinely surprised that there were any at all. The one with the notebook is the most interesting, and knowing him is also not surprising. Who knows, maybe out there somewhere is still waiting to be found that very notebook, which possibly contains one extraordinary journal along with a couple of potentially untold stories he may have taken with him to the grave and not told to anyone.


Anyhow, what reminded me of my grandfather and inspired me to write all this was the latest Mark Sullivan novel, "The Last Green Valley", a historical fiction following a remarkable story of one displaced family and their unfortunate and, at the same time, amazing adventure from the last year of the Second World War. It really was one great novel with an astonishing feeling composing after each page turned. It simply left me speechless after the last one. 

While we are at historical fiction, I warmly recommend two more titles in the genre: Mark Sullivan's "Beneath a Scarlet Sky", with a similar heartbreaking story from the same period in northern Italy, and Ken Follett's "Hornet Flight", with war adventures based on real events in occupied Denmark.

In the Footsteps of Pino Lella:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UJfEaFiMK4
 

Science Fiction at its Best

When it comes to the space exploration within hard science fiction, the one where science is embedded in the narrative to the point that it is impossible to tell a story without it, only rare novels stand out among all the others in the ocean of short stories and novels published online and in traditional ways. Sure, it's not really possible to be familiar with the entire vast universe of sci-fi literature of today compared to past times, especially before the internet, when it was easier not to miss a noticeable book on the public shelf. 

However, even today, the true classics in the genre are easily recognizable, perhaps in all those moments during or after reading when we wonder not if the plot is possible or scientifically plausible but when we fail to distinguish the fiction part from the real science. To achieve this, authors can rely not only on their writing narrative but also on their ability to successfully entangle science and fiction, and not only for those who understand the scientific background with ease.


Despite Andy Weir's latest novel, "Project Hail Mary", being only partly true hard science fiction, it might be one of those rare gems after all. It has everything: Martian-type humor, a real apocalyptic villain, amazing friendship among main protagonists, the author's proposed answer to the origin of life in our galactic neighborhood, a couple of twists in the 'how I didn't see that one coming' fashion, and the genuine and tearful happy ending.

On the other side, to be entirely honest, the apocalyptic scenario, even though nicely scientifically plotted, is too far-fetched for my taste and understanding, but still, it is a bright refreshment compared to the usual man-made villainy we used to deal with in most of the science fiction of today. The same goes for a fictitious lifeform capable of transferring energy into mass and vice versa. It does look strained and not very much in Weir's fashion, considering his previous books that are more scientifically based on the technology of today.


Nevertheless, it is easy to conclude that "Project Hail Mary" is coming with an instant classic flavor and undoubtedly standing shoulder to shoulder with all-timers such as "Contact" by Carl Sagan or "Rendezvous With Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke or several modern authors who boldly explored the science behind artificial intelligence, vacuum decay, block universe, holographic principle, simulation theory, etc. I genuinely enjoyed reading it and will be anxiously looking forward to the upcoming movie.

Image ref:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISS-10/.../Russian_Orlan_Spacesuit

Book reviews
https://www.mpj.one/search/label/books?&max-results=12 

Rendezvous With Rama
 

Science of the Fountain of Youth

Cosmologically speaking, humans and all other animal forms of life (here on Earth) don't live very long. We can thank this fact for the evolutionary design of life based on the organic chemistry we are all made of. We came a long way from the point in history when evolution started to boost our development from hunter-gatherers into today's dominant species. But do we live longer today than before? Despite common belief and compared to our ancestors who lived in the past dozen millennia, the life span of humans today, enhanced by miracles of modern ways of living, which, in short, include improved health care and nutrition, better sanitation, access to clean running water, and immunization, is not dramatically extended, if at all.

Yes, the life expectancy (average life span of the entire population) of ancient times was way shorter than today, but this statistical data was misleading because of the vast number of people in the distant past who died very young due to high child mortality caused by numerous deaths of young people who didn't survive all the hazards of deadly diseases and various infections and epidemics. But many of those who experienced adulthood actually lived to a ripe old age. If we exclude life expectancy from the table and check a couple of known people from, for example, Roman history, Emperor Tiberius died at the age of 77 while Empress Livia, wife of Augustus, lived until she was 87 years old.


At the dawn of the third millennium, if we are talking about lifespan globally, it is estimated to be around 75 years on average. Depending on the quality of life in our societies, this number is a little higher or a little lower, but in retrospect, the rise of our civilization and all the benefits of the scientific discoveries 'only' managed to notably reduce a large number of deaths among the young population but not to extend individual life span itself. As it seems, significantly prolonging our carbon-based life with all we know today is a hard nut to crack.

The science of 'Why do we age?' is pretty much explored to the level that organic chemistry of invoking both aging and death is identified and well known. In the cell's power plant, within hundreds to thousands of mitochondria surrounding the nucleus, in the process called cell respiration, food we consume and oxygen we inhale are transformed into energy needed for the cell to operate. Unfortunately, it's the same process whereby various harmful products are discharged and released as waste products. Mitochondria uses oxygen and simple sugars to create the cell's main energy source, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), while byproducts' oxidative oxygen molecules in turn damage the adjacent mtDNA. Over time, the accumulation of mtDNA damage reaches a certain threshold value and damages the cell inevitably. The cell responds with a reproductive process in which, by using DNA instructions in the nucleus, it duplicates itself, and a new cell continues the work of the previous doomed one. Unfortunately, the number of duplications is limited until telomeres, or the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, run out. If we add intracellular and extracellular aggregates of various molecules that are no longer useful and potentially harmful but accumulated everywhere, what we get as a result is aging, potential various diseases, and ultimately death.


By knowing all this, we don’t have to be rocket scientists to pinpoint exactly where the mythical water of the fountain of youth should operate. There are about 100,000 trillion mitochondria in the human body, and it is obvious that the Holy Grail of modern medicine lies within research of how to either deal with cells' oxidative stress along with the accumulation of junk molecules or to find a way to bypass mitochondria altogether and deliver ATP directly to every cell on a daily basis and reduce consuming food and inhaling oxygen to the bare minimum.

The history of fountain(s) of youth is most likely connected to spa waters rich in mitochondria-friendly substances. For just an example, one of the mitochondrial byproducts is hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), a strong oxidizing agent, and to deal with its negative reaction to cells, the human body is producing the antioxidant glutathione peroxidase (GPx) in order to break hydrogen peroxide into harmless water. To produce it, an organism needs glutamine, glycine, and cysteine, and those are usually present in sulfur-rich water and food, as well as in ingredients rich in selenium and certain amino acids, etc. Of course, this is just an example of one antioxidant dealing with just one oxidant, but the list goes on. There's a possibility that once in the past there existed a spa spring with a combination of antioxidant ingredients that was just perfect to maintain all the toxins below dangerous levels for those who drank it regularly. Maybe it still exists somewhere on the surface of Earth, waiting to be found. Of course, if found, swimming in it won't work. It would require drinking it on a daily basis and is probably only effective when combined with certain diets.


On the other hand, administering ATP directly to the cells via the bloodstream, if such a mechanism is possible, seems to be more complicated than I previously thought, due to the fact that mitochondrial production and behavior are not actually passive. Mitochondria don't just produce it but also deliver it to the right site within the cell. In different cell types, mitochondria behave differently and resemble small, bacterial hive-like lifeforms; they are mobile, constantly change shape, and even merge/separate with other mitochondria or construct chains for the efficiency of what they do while administrating ATP where it is actually needed. Unless the fountain of youth is full of intelligent nanobots with the ability to replace trillions of mitochondria in a human's body, preventing aging in the near future, this way resembles more science fiction than anything else. 

To conclude with some wisdom, the magic fountain or scientific pill with certain ability to significantly enhance human life span is still out of reach. To find the Holy Grail, it seems, we would definitely need one or more breakthrough discoveries that we are still missing, but with each new scientific discovery, we seem to be getting closer every day.

 

Game of Life

People have asked me what the "Game of Life" is that we've been playing all summer. The only honest answer I can give is that I don't really know. I guess I lost myself in the entire story of our pioneer filmmaking project. It started like any other father-son benign tech play—it was sometime back in the middle of April when I was categorizing our pile of ordinary family video files and our 'cooking series'. So in a moment of 'light bulb floating above my head', I asked myself why we don't move one step further and create a little longer short film of some sort. So I asked Viktor, and he seemed thrilled about it, especially when I told him that he would play the major role, and from there our "Game of Life" project became a reality and started growing and morphing into a real short movie, and after a little while began being more and more enjoyable and serious.

In short, after four months of all of our 'Hollywood' efforts, Viktor and I proudly present a science fiction short film based on "Game of Life", a cellular automaton game invented by John Horton Conway in 1970. Actually, this is the first episode in the potential series we called "Flares and Fireflies". We hope you will enjoy watching it at least as much as we enjoyed making it, and—this is important—please keep in mind that we are not really educated filmmakers or talented actors and that this is pretty much the maximum we could do with all of our knowledge and the modest technology we used, to say the least. If you like it, after the movie, later in the post, is the story of how and where we made it, the entire script, some blooper stories, and behind-the-scenes photos.


First of all, I hope you like our film, and for further understanding, what I would say about the core of its script is that it tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. Just like in Conway's simple two-dimensional game, life itself could be the same—just a set of rules in some artificial zero-player game that, on a quantum or molecular level, provides results of interactions of main ingredients.

That was about the "Sci" part of the "Sci-Fi" genre. The fiction that follows the story is in the fact that life might be fully artificial in origin. In other words, the film explores the rules of evolution that are not intended to be seen or understood by everyone. Even those chosen to dive into the game by random chance or by complex rule outcome are not able to understand the principles at once. If you are asking now how the game of life really looks from the inside and behind white-green wireframes, well, you will have to wait for another episode. But is there going to be another episode? The honest answer is that I don't know. I really don't. So far we only have ideas, and from there to the final file is a long way. We'll see.


This long way with the first episode started with the script. Believe it or not, the first draft and the final scenario were not too different. It slightly changed, but only because of technological restrictions and improvisations. Ever wonder what a script looks like for short films like this one? Here it is in full:

01. Wakeup 1 - Strange sound? Nothing. Going back to sleep.
02. Wakeup 2 - Light appears. Goes through the door.
03. Getting out of bed, following light.
04. Following the light upstairs.
05. At the balcony. Light and mild explosion. Artifact on the table.
06. Examining the artifact. The first portal appears.
07. Light goes into abandoned house.
08. Appearing in an abandoned country house.
09. Following light.
10. Second artifact. Goes through second portal.
11. Ending in the sea. Getting out on the beach. Stealing dry clothes.
12. Wandering a dirt road.
13. Entering lighthouse site. Following light.
14. No artifacts here. Watching the lighthouse.
15. Seeing multiple flashes on the horizon over the site.
16. The site reappears in white wireframe only. People too.
17. Standing up in wireframe.
18. Checking a man who's reading Kindle.
19. Looking at wireframe hands.
20. Kindle man: 'Everything is white. Isn't it?'
21. Looking at the Kindle man again. Everything is back to normal.
22. 'Did you see it too?'
23. 'No. But I saw it once before. Different lighthouse, though.'
24. 'Where? When?'
25. 'Long ago... When I was about your age...'
26. 'But... What does it mean?'
27. 'I believe it is a game. Not everyone can see it.'
28. 'What kind of game?'
29. 'I never found out really.'
30. Reaching for the backpack. Taking out the final artifact.
31. 'But maybe you will. I think this belongs to you now.'
32. Taking the artifact. It starts glowing.
33. Going back to the beach.
34. Going back to the abandoned house.
35. Going back to the balcony.
36. Wakeup 3 - Realizing it was a dream. Going back to sleep.
37. Sleeping. Zooming hand. Hand is going wireframe.
38. Back to normal. Light on the hand.
39. Light goes to the clock table.
40. Artifact appears.

In the end, "Game of Life" is composed of 50 scenes filmed at four major locations. Two of them are Viktor's room and our living room, decorated with green screens for the occasion. The adventure starts and ends in the main character's room, and the only dialog is filmed in front of a green background and merged with the coastal background we took in Greece. Unfortunately, technologically speaking, this is the weakest chain in the movie, and not only because of our lack of efforts. "Chroma key" software within Adobe's "After Effects" didn't cope too well with the modest laptop I have used to run it through. It failed and crashed too often during rendering, and it got the last nerves out of me. If you add to all the struggles that the consumer DSLR (Nikon D5200) we used to film is not perfect for audio capture without an external microphone and the fact that we had to record audio separately, I have to say that I am not really satisfied with the dialog scene, but in the end I'd like to think that this is the best I could do with editing that part of the film.


However, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse, as it plays a major role in the story, and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel during our summer vacation. It was located some 30 kilometers away from the famous Greek city of Corinth, built on a rock at the end of a small headland with tremendous views of the entire Corinthian Gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes and enjoyed amazing time at local beaches and restaurants. In the above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi', not far away from the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed the last portal scene, and also just next to the ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora'—a sanctuary occupied by a real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in the 9th century BC by some ancient Corinthian cult. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera, I found a stone perfect for the background of the green screen dialog scene. Before we went to Greece, I 'scouted' the entire site with Google Maps and photos people took and posted in Google's gallery, and all I have to say is that it looked perfect for filming, just like I hoped for. Very little improvisation was needed for the 'running' and 'firefly' scenes. The same was with filming the 'portal' scene on the beautiful sandy beach of Vouliagmenis Lake, which is actually a lagoon connected to the Corinthian Gulf and Ionian Sea with a narrow strait.

Finally, the fourth location we used to film intermediate portal scenes belongs to our special place—a village in eastern Serbia where we spent many vacations and weekends in the past. The name of the village is Guševac, and I mentioned it before on the blog on numerous occasions. With its intact mountain spirit, it was our first choice. The very first scene was actually filmed here in the abandoned barn. I intended to use nearby forests for additional scenes for the second portal, but due to the complexity, I gave up on that idea. It would be visually great, but it is not really that connected to the main story.


If you ask me what I liked the most behind and before the scenes of "Game of Life", without a doubt I say it was the entire adventure of making it. It started as a father-son summer play, and in the end, this is what it really is: endless fun of filming scenes, creating scripts, directing the plot, improvising the story and scenes, and enjoying all the bloopers and laughter on all 'sets', especially in Greece. I really can't say what was more fun to do. Even the editing was a special time with learning all new stuff and knowledge, and in a way I am now looking at movies and TV shows with different eyes and capturing all the perfect and imperfect flow of scenes with my new 'director' habit. A small regret and disappointment was the equipment. I know I am not a perfect director and cameraman, but I am more than positive that with at least a little better technology, including software and rendering computers, the final movie would be much better. At least it would mask or hide most of our imperfections and flaws.

One thing is for sure though: if you are thinking of filming your own short movie with a modest consumer camera and not so much obeying a tripod, don't think twice; go for it, and however the result is non-ideal in the end, I guarantee you that the feeling will be just perfect.

Revelation of Life (Game of Life sequel):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Game of Life graphic novel:
https://www.mpj.one/2017/03/gol-graphic-novel.html

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
http://www.mpj.one/2015/12/is-life-zero-player-game.html
http://www.mpj.one/2016/08/cyclops-of-peloponnese.html
 

Revelation of Life (1) - The Orb

I don't know how to explain... I mean people have vivid dreams for sure. My best friend told me about his dream just the other day and boy... It was real horror story and it had everything, amazing heroes, real twisted villain and so much details with action to the level that even Stephen King would not be ashamed of. But me.. I don't know. It's so strange... 

My dreams have left me. Five years ago I had my last dream. Ever since then it's blank. The nights are just restful and uneventful. There's no remembering in the morning. And I am not sure that last dream was even a dream.
Game of Life - prequel
Game of Life - short film
Revelation of Life - part two


Revelation of Life
part one

five years later

I don't know how to explain... 

I mean, people have vivid dreams for sure. My best friend told me about his dream just the other day, and boy... It was a real horror story, and it had everything—amazing heroes, a real twisted villain, and so many details with action to the level that even Stephen King would not be ashamed of.

But me... I don't know. It's so strange... 

My dreams have left me. Five years ago, I had my last dream. Ever since then, it's blank. The nights are just restful and uneventful. There's no remembering in the morning. And I am not sure that last dream was even a dream. Hell... I know it was not a dream. I know because it is still here. In my room. 

The orb.

The strangest thing is that it's still glowing. But even more peculiar about it is that I am the only one who sees it. The glowing, I mean. The orb is not noticeable otherwise by anybody who visited my room. Except for my father, I saw him once taking it in his hands and inspecting it like it had some special meaning to him. Maybe because he was in my dream too. After all, he was the one who told me in the dream that life is just a game of some sort. He was the one who gave me the orb.

"Where did you get this orb from? It looks a little familiar. Old too." He asked me while rotating it and examining its perfect grey curve, seemingly not noticing the glaringness from one of the blue bulges carved on top of it.

"Ahem... you don't see it?"

"See what?"

"The blue node... Do you... Do you find anything unusual about it?"

He turned the orb and had a closer look at all three nodes, but I could tell he's not seeing anything unusual or extraordinary.

"The curvature is perfect, and it does look too heavy." He put it back on the small dresser next to the clock, where it was. "What is it anyway?"

"Just a decoration... Somebody gave it to me for my birthday on Sunday." I answered and turned, hoping he didn't see my disappointed expression. I never told him about the dream and the glowing orb. I never told anybody about it. I was afraid back then.

After five years, the fear was different. Instead, I was afraid for my sanity. After all the dreamless years I was starting to believe I was going crazy. But from the bottom of my soul... I don't know. All my rationality was telling me that there was more to the story. It's just a feeling telling me to wait. Telling me that the fear is irrational. Telling me that a new dream is coming.

I couldn't be more wrong.

Continues in Revelation of Life - Phil

 

Revelation of Life (2) - Phil

"You gotta be kidding!" - I was inspecting my father's face in search for any hint of a concealed smile that would explain a joke he was telling me. "You are actually suggesting that there is a two dimensional balloon surrounding our universe where real life is located and the 3D cosmos inside a balloon is just a holographic illusion? You are saying that you and me are actually living at the end of the universe and all these here are just holograms? That we are made of... what exactly.. light? Energy?"
Revelation of Life - part one
Are We Holograms?
Revelation of Life - part three


Revelation of Life
part two

Phil

Sometimes after lunch, my father and I enjoyed talking about different things, and on many occasions we exchanged opinions about science fiction, movies, and mysteries of the universe. That warm October day was no different.

"You've got to be kidding!" I was inspecting my father's face in search for any hint of a concealed smile that would explain a joke he was telling me. "There is a two-dimensional balloon surrounding our universe where real life is located, and the 3D cosmos inside a balloon is just a holographic illusion? You are saying that you and I are flat as two pieces of paper, actually living at the end of the universe, and all these here are just holograms?" For some reason I was unusually irritated by the silly physics. Although, on the other hand, if cosmology was not that strange to begin with, we wouldn't have that many great sci-fi shows and movies... "So, we are made of... What exactly... light?" Energy?"

He smiled. "Holographic particles. It's not a joke. Real science. A valid theory at least. Take black holes, for instance; they are still a big mystery. If Hawking was right, any black hole, no matter how massive, would evaporate over time. When that happens, all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it—nothing, especially information, can ever be lost. They say that information could be located somewhere else." He paused to allow the words to sink in.

"In the balloon? But in that case, what are black holes exactly? I mean two-dimensional black holes? The balloon would have no gravity? Wouldn't it? It's two-dimensional."

"You are actually right." He pondered the question for a bit but eventually gave up. "Great thinking! Another mystery of the universe. The gravity, I mean. Still not proved that it's actually a force. Nobody has ever caught those gravitons yet. Who knows, maybe that balloon is not that flat after all."

"Thanks Dad... Ok.. I have to go. Gotta finish a biology homework. But this is definitely worth googling for more. It does sound incredibly complex to be real. Besides, I don't think I'd like being a hologram." I stood up and headed for my room downstairs. "Or flat!" I added from the stairway.

It was the end of October, but the weather was beautiful and sunny, and it would be a waste to stay at home, so I decided to get out for a couple of hours and hang out with my friends. I hurried down to change and...

I was just a couple of steps away from my room when I saw all the familiar light glowing through the door with a low humming noise. Five years ago I would rush toward it, but now I hesitate. The feeling was still not ominous, though. Just like before. So I entered the room a little warily, half expecting a floating firefly roaming my room.

Instead, the orb was the source of both light and noise. It was hovering in the middle of the room, at six feet high, emitting soothing pulses in all rainbow colors. The moment I entered the room, the noise stopped and a pleasant male voice appeared from all directions.

"Please, close the door."

I shut the door quietly but stayed near. For a long moment, I have just stared. I tried to think what to do or say but came up with nothing.

"He was right, you know." The orb said after the longest moments I have ever experienced. The light coming from the blue nodes changed as it spoke.

"Who was?" I managed to calm down a bit. "Right about what?"

"Your father."

After the entire adventure five years ago, I didn't actually know what to anticipate. But I never expected anything like this.

"Who are you?"

The orb floated a little closer, but the voice still sounded like it was appearing from the thin air with a strange stereo effect. Just like it was coming from an invisible sound system hidden in the room walls.

"My name is Phil, and I'm glad we finally met."

Continues in Revelation of Life - Divulgence
 

Revelation of Life (3) - Divulgence

"After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words. After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words."
Revelation of Life - part two
Is Life a Zero-Player Game?
Revelation of Life - part four


Revelation of Life
part three

Divulgence

After the longest minute of my life, I finally regained my senses and rationality, and more importantly, my ability to speak. Well, sort of. At the moment, all I came up with were a few incoherent words.

"I... I'm... also glad to... meet you. Phil?"

The initial fear and tremble started to fade out, so I went to my desk and sat on the chair. The orb followed and kept the same distance.

"I am sure you have a lot of questions for me."

"Well... for starters, you could tell me who you really are? And... what is the meaning of all this? I mean, what happened five years ago..." I was trying to remember all the questions I had after I woke up that morning and found the orb on the clock table next to my bed. But now all the new ones started to form in my mind, and I was pretty confused. The orb definitely saw it on my face.

"It was five years for you, but where I came from, time is something entirely different. It was just a moment ago for me." Phil gave me a couple of seconds to sink in and then continued. "In my plane of existence, I am a student, just like you." - The orb made a slight position change and proceeded. "But let's go back to your conversation with your father a couple of minutes ago; it would be best for you to understand if we start from there."

"Yes... You said he was right. You mean a two-dimensional bubble around the universe is real? Are we made of holographic particles reflected by our true selves from the balloon surface?

"Yes and no." Phil continued to flicker in all colors while speaking. "The bubble exists all right, but it is created in four-dimensional reality. The only thing is that dimensions are not all proportional. One of them is larger than the others, and one is really tiny, speaking in physics terms. They are designed in that way in order to cast three-dimensional objects inside the bubble. Everything here in this universe is actually a three-dimensional shadow from the bubble surrounding it. Or to be precise, every four-dimensional object in the bubble is actively casting its own representation here."

"But how does this casting really work?" There was so much information for a high school student in just a couple of sentences, and only now I realized I missed the premise. "Wait. You said designed? Created? By whom?"

"By me, of course."

At this point, it occurred to me two more explanations of all this. Either I finally went 100% crazy and this was my first hallucination, or somebody is pranking me with some cool magic trick. I was about to announce to my new friend here that the first option is more likely, but he promptly continued.

"I am not God or anything like it, if you are thinking about it right now. Look at it this way: you here developed complex computers with the ability to render equally complex simulations. This is very similar. Where I came from, we use a sort of analogue computational device capable of creating sub-dimensional environments. We utilized those machines for education. This is one of them, and there are many more. Just like I hinted five years ago, this is similar to those zero-player games you are probably familiar with. I created only the initial states of the three-dimensional universe, and the rest came out of it by evolutionary steps. The best thing about it is that I can monitor what happens in snapshots. The time in the bubble is set to be very fast compared to my end."

The voice sounded excited while explaining. I took it as a sign of his character as a student who is still learning exciting things. I know I was no different either.

"But to answer your second question, casting is possible because the energy needed to cast objects from four-dimensional bubbles into three-dimensional interiors is coming from..."

"Fifth dimension!" I interrupted way more enthusiastically than him before. "The origin must be one dimension higher! You are a fifth-dimensional being!"

"Exactly right. Two out of two."

"Amazing! I once saw Carl Sagan's interpolation of the tesseract from 4D into its shadow in 3D. This is just like it, except we are talking now about a live universe that gave birth to life!"

"Not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not live. Actually, not a single universe in any simulations I've heard about ever succeeded with emerging life by their own."

"But... all the life here on Earth... how?"

"I created the model to assign a sentient driver to every object that's born naturally or artificially within the system."

"Sentient driver?"

"Something similar to the artificial intelligence from your world. Much more complicated, though."

"So, my conscience, like everybody else's in the universe, is just a software part of your bubble computer... What about free will?"

"There is no such thing. Biologically or otherwise. Free will is just an illusion coming from a vast number of variables. But don't take it inferiorly. In my world, sentient drivers are equal in complexity to real life, if real life is what I am supposed to be... Actually, nobody believes that even we could not be sentient drivers either. We could also be shadows of upper dimensions as well. Life as it seems is as much a mystery as it is here."

I found my way back to the chair. I certainly didn't expect anything like it. This really is the game; only we are all non-player characters in Phil's zero-player game that even he cannot deviate from the course of artificial evolution. Or can he? After all, he is talking with me from the fifth dimension in real time. The orb must be an anomaly of some kind. A back door to his own simulation.

"I know what you are thinking right now. And you can relax. I cannot read sentient minds; you are on your own. That's for sure. While I can project objects like this orb inside the simulation, I cannot affect evolutionary steps or interfere with the driver's actions. Not that it's forbidden or anything. It's just impossible by its nature. I can project a dream or two here and there, but this is not influencing the system with much significance. If at all..." - Phil made a significant pause here. I could tell by the light, and the glowing vanished for a long second. I couldn't describe exactly how, but when it came back, the feeling it radiated changed. "The thing is that this is my first educational project, and I shouldn't interfere in any way. But over time, I grew attached to this entire space it was created. It is really beautiful in more ways than you can imagine."

"Why then? Why are you doing it? Why are you talking to me?" The only question left at that point remained floating in the air, and I was a little afraid to raise it.

"Why me?"

Phil rotated, and the glow transformed into recognizable patterns. Images started to form on the orb's surface and change from one to another in a fast snapshot fashion. Some I recognized from the history lessons; others were unfamiliar and futuristic. Some looked alien but beautiful nevertheless. Then it returned to the regular form.

"Because..."

The orb floated a foot closer.

"I need your help."

I guess my sentient mind wasn't programmed to reply to this in any way, so I just cluelessly stared at Phil and his three blue shivering nodes and his smooth surface glowing in all colors I was familiar with and some I imagined seeing for the first time.

"I want you to help me to save the universe." 

Continues in Revelation of Life - Thea
 

Revelation of Life (4) - Thea

"Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of life and the entire structure of, well, everything. And yet, at that moment I felt like more is coming. Like the truth only started to unveil and I am about to understand the fate of what was undoubtedly beyond my comprehension.. The fate of the universe.. No less."
Revelation of Life - part three
Choosing Planets
Revelation of Life - prequel

To the loving memory of my father
November 6, 2020

Revelation of Life
part four

Thea

Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just a couple of minutes, I have learned the origin of life and the entire structure of, well, everything. And yet, at that moment, I felt like more was coming. Like the truth only started to unveil, and I am about to understand the fate of what was undoubtedly beyond my comprehension. The fate of the universe... no less.

"The universe is collapsing." Phil continued. "The very foundation of the casting sphere started to subside within itself, and there is nothing I can do from my end."

"Do you refer to those white frames I saw five years ago?" I recalled from the previous experience. "Those flashes of the world from normal texture to the frames from the lighthouse site where I was teleported?"

"No. Nothing like that. What I showed you before was just a dream I projected into your sentient driver. I wanted to introduce myself and show you a glimpse of reality. To ease this conversation a bit. As a matter of fact, this evolutionary biological world is the real deal. The danger is physically real and unavoidable." - The words emphasized the last sentence. "Teleportation is real, though. With the help of these primordial orbs, I can teleport any object anywhere in the universe just by taking it out of its dimension and putting it on the different sub-coordinates. Three-dimensional casting objects would follow accordingly."

"Actually, that makes perfect sense." I pondered the dimensional logic. "Considering that you are from one dimension higher." After all, the higher dimension is just a set of infinite numbers of its subdimensions. The flashes from the physics class and equations of relations between 3D and 2D came to my mind. It could be the same with higher dimensions, only vastly complicated... But something else he said started to bother me as well.

"Wait... You said primordial orbs? What did you mean by that? Are you saying this orb is here from the beginning of... time?

"Exactly. When the experiment started, I made sure dozens of orbs were planted inside the casting space. This is the only way for me to communicate with dedicated sentient drivers. One orb is an essential part of one driver. Your sentient is one of the few that originated from the very beginning. Other drivers are added later as the number of lives started to grow, but I can only communicate with those with orbs."

Everything so far bound to computing logic, including this. It was no different from the computer simulations or complex games with non-player characters and their AIs. But it was still theoretical in nature. All this could still be just an intelligent prank. I wanted proof. Something tangible. I remember what the feeling was like five years ago. It could still be that I was dreaming and the morning is about to break all this away very soon.

Although the thought about my conscience being as old as the first life on Earth for some reason filled me with pride and brought a hint of a smile to my face.

"So, sentient drivers move from one life to another after each cycle? You were saying I was bacteria once? Billions of years ago?"

Phil laughed. This was the first time I heard him amused. "Try paramecium." - He continued to chuckle, and I felt that familiar bonding and friendship starting to emerge between us. Despite being two dimensions apart, it looked like he was no older than me at all.

I pushed the thought away and remembered he said there were more primordial sentients. I was wondering if he used the orbs before to interfere with evolution in some ways or if he only wanted to attend the events from the front row.

"Where are the other orbs?"

"Scattered around the universe. None remained on this planet. Actually, there are none in this galaxy beside yours. Unfortunately, at the moment, all of them but two belong to sentients who are assigned to lower forms of life. You and Thea are the only ones I can count on. On the pros side, she is coming from a highly developed civilization, and we really need antigravity and antimatter bombshell devices from her world."

"What?!" As it seemed, this conversation couldn't get any nearer to not being full of unexpected surprises and unforeseen directions. "Bombs? What the heck are you..."

"We have to rip part of the universe. It's the only way to save the rest. I'll explain later." - Phil moved two yards away from me, and the light from the orb changed in both color and trembling frequency. "Hold on."

Moments later, a bright light came from the center of the room, and with a familiar, loud buzzing sound, a female figure appeared and fell to the floor. She unsteadily regained her posture and took off her large and obviously heavy backpack and carefully leaned it against the wall. The second orb appeared as well and joined the first one in free float.

She was around my height and wore simple white pants and a T-shirt with long boots to her knees. Her skin was heavenly blue and her hair long and black. Her bare neck contained almost hidden gills that pulsed as she said something in a soft and pleasant voice. Apart from gills and skin color, she appeared not much different than me.

Phil returned the greeting, no doubt in her language, and faced me again.

"Vicks, please meet Thea."

...to be continued
 

Serbian Vampires

It was a foggy day on April 6, back in the year 1725, when angry villagers of the rural hamlet of Kisiljevo, Serbia, opened the grave of their neighbor Petar Blagojević, who died eight days before. His death was followed by a spate of nine other sudden deaths and numerous claims by the victims of being throttled by Petar at night. When they cracked the casket open, features associated with vampires, just like they anticipated, were indeed present: the body was undecomposed, the hair and beard had grown, there was a mixture of new skin and nails along with old ones peeled away, and there was blood flowing out of his mouth.

The villagers were accompanied by an official of the Austrian administration (the Austrian Empire governed the area in the early 18th century) and a local priest. The entire case was documented and reported to the officials and covered by Die Wiener Zeitung, a Viennese newspaper, on July 21st. At the time, vampirism was fully embedded into Serbian folklore with numerous Slavic legends and the old village stories from centuries before, especially during harsh times of Turkish occupation. In the aftermath, with the consent of the authorities, they stabbed Petar's heart with a hawthorn and burned the body.


Petar's case was by no means an isolated phenomenon of vampirism in Serbia. Only one year later, in a different village, about one hundred kilometers to the south, a man called Arnaut Pavle came with an even more colorful story. He was a known rebel against the Ottoman Empire who had escaped to the village from the Turkish-controlled part of Serbia, where he had been plagued by a vampire, by his own claims. Allegedly, he had cured himself by eating soil from the vampire's grave and smearing himself with his blood.

Unfortunately, he died soon after during summer labor—he broke his neck in a fall from a hay wagon. In the following weeks, four people claimed to be plagued by him and died shortly after. Similarly to Petar, after the villagers opened his grave, they saw his body unchanged with the same vampire characteristics. The story said when they drove a stake through his heart, he released a frightful shriek as if he were alive. They cut off his head, burnt the whole body, and performed the same procedure with four victims as well to prevent them from becoming vampires as well.


The most respected Serbian philologist and linguist, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, one of the most important reformers of the modern Serbian language, did thorough inquiries of the old tales, and in his ethnographic research "Belief in things that do not exist", he mentioned vampires as dead people with devilish spirits who enter and revive them after 40 days if their souls are not accepted in the afterlife. The tales indeed contain instructions on how to deal with undecomposed bodies if found in graves, especially those swollen and reddened by what seemed to be human blood. In that illiterate era of the middle ages, when lots of legends and stories in fact survived merely in oral form and transferred from generation to generation only as bedtime stories and were never written down, there is no doubt that colorful fiction is always an inevitable part added to real historical events. More or less, even today, everything in life and death not fully understandable receives fictitious and mysterious additions, especially from religion and vivid human imagination.

Almost three centuries before, back then in the 18th century, little was known about what happens to the body after death. Postmortem purge fluid is one of them. In modern forensics, it is a natural byproduct of decomposition, a reddish blood-like fluid that may or may not exude from the oral and nasal passages after death. Burial in a physical environment (temperature, moisture, and soil properties) with a high deficiency in oxygen often results in slow microbial growth and therefore slow decomposition itself. The body condition is also a factor in the process, as is the nature of the microbial community itself. If we implement all the scientific and medical knowledge of today, it is much easier to separate fiction from what really happened in the Middle Ages. Today we even know a great deal about clinical vampirism, known as Renfield syndrome, which in psychiatric literature is defined as an obsession with drinking blood, and several medical publications are actively concerning themselves with clinical vampirism in scientific literature as well as in forensic psychiatry.


However, on the other side of the science, fiction had its own evolution in past centuries, and vampires received the great portion in written horror stories and movies as well. The word itself in the literature was derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian 'vampir' (Serbian Cyrillic: 'вампир') but it's usage in Serbian folklore is much older. Almost all the old cultures encountered vampirism in one way or another, especially in the old Slavic paganism. There were also beings known as 'lamia/empusa' in old Greek/Roman mythology, with shape-shifting blood-sucking vampiresses, 'baobhan sith' - a female blood-sucking fairy in old Scottish tales—and many others.

Horror fiction with vampires in the foreground/background is not actually my top-notch genre, but from time to time some extraordinary work emerges among all the mediocrities, and 'Constantine's Crossing' by Dejan Stojiljković is just that. The novel follows a main character just before the end of the Second World War in occupied Serbia. Almost all the action is in my own town, where I have been living ever since my birth, and the main premise summarizes the Nazis in a search for the great secret of Constantine the Great, who was the best-known man ever born in this neighborhood in the late 3rd century AD. The author is also native to the town of Niš, known by the name of Naissus in Constantine's time. What is best about the book is that Dejan Stojiljković is perfectly embedding the horror plot into real historical events and people, and perhaps the only downside of the novel is that it is too short for that many characters involved, but nevertheless, it was by far the best horror novel I've read in a while. The accompanying graphic novel is amazing as well, and I warmly recommend both. Below in the ref section, there are more stories related to Naissus, Constantine, and WW2 in this part that could help with understanding the background better.



Medical refs:
Serbia refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire 
 

Is Infinity Real?

Sooner or later, computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that the creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example, the size of the entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These god-like engineers of such future simulation will indeed face a decision point regarding which degree of limitation to create for their simulated entities or artificial intelligence units in order for them to never reach the point of finding the proof that their world is in fact nothing more than just a series of electrical or optical currents of one inconceivably powerful futuristic computer.

If created right, there's no doubt that the inner world of all those hypothetical units would seem to be as real to them as our own very reality is to us. So, considering the state of obvious, the question arises by itself: if our own reality is such a simulation and we are nothing but AI units within some alien quantum computer, what exactly is the limitation?


To me, it always has been infinity. My own limited mind always struggled with understanding what it really meant. Aristotle, who buzzed his head with infinity quite a lot, concluded that infinity is only potential in nature. We can always add a number to any number to the point of infinity or divide something into infinite parts, but in reality, he thought that it was impossible to exceed every definite magnitude for the simple reason that if it were possible, there would be something bigger than the heavens or something smaller than the atoms (Greek origin: άτομο, which means without volume and uncuttable).

Today we still can't find the proof of bigger or smaller volumes than we can see or understand. If we look up toward the heavens, we are pretty sure that we cannot see beyond the Big Bang or 14 billion light years in all directions due to the limitation of light speed. The same goes with understanding the smaller volumes of microcosm for which we think the current boundary is around the scale of 10e-12 Picometres due to the quantum limitation of observable micro space without disturbance by the observer.


All things considered, as proposed by mathematics, infinity might be just the other word for really, really big, or extremely small, or very old, or too far away. In every way, simply put, infinity might be just beyond our reach. Perhaps if we are really living in the simulation, this is our limitation, and we are pretty much designed in the realm of simulated physics to never reach it and to never learn what is behind the horizon. Ironically, the ultimate truth could be that there was nothing there. It might be where simulation ends and where alien software developers' backdoor is located. Their own reality could be entirely and unimaginably different.

But what if we are not living in a simulation? What if all the laws of physics were not invented by an ingenious developer and were instead real, perfectly natural, and not artificial in origin? Would we have a volume larger than heavens or smaller than quarks and strings? Or just maybe these two extremes are somehow connected and twisted in a loop with no need for infinity at all? Perhaps, ultimately, the size could be irrelevant and not a factor in all cosmic equations.
 
1 +  = ?

http://sten.astronomycafe.net/is-infinity-real/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
 

In the Footsteps of Pino Lella

It doesn't happen often that after reading a book, you can compare most of the places and some of the portrayed characters with real sites and buildings along with real protagonists from the historical story. Actually, this never happened to me before, and after I'd reached the last cover of 'Beneath a Scarlet Sky', a novel written by Mark Sullivan, published in 2017, I saw the rare opportunity of visiting the city where it all happened and where all the sites still stand today. Not much later, and after my entire family read the novel or at least got familiar with the story, we packed our backpacks and hit the road. In the aftermath, the result is this blog post along with an embedded video story as a documentary of the half-day walking tour of Milan in Italy, where everything happened more than 70 years ago. In the spirit of a fair warning, I advise you to read the book first before watching the video since it might spoil the reading for you or to wait for an upcoming series or movie with Tom Holland in the lead role.


The novel is based on the true story of an Italian teenager, Pino Lella, who lived in Milan during the second world war and, within the last two years until the very end of WW2, helped many Jewish people escape to Switzerland over the Alps and, in the final year, acted as a spy for freedom fighters while being a personal driver for General Hans Leyers, Adolf Hitler’s left hand in northern Italy. Pino survived all the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation and deeply fell in love with Anna, a girl he met on the streets of Milan on the day of the first bombing of the city. He constantly dreamed about the future they would one day share.

This book tour would not be possible at all without fantastic Valeria Andreoli from BellaMilano, who guided us throughout Milan beautifully for almost five full hours! It was amazing to mix the real streets, all the buildings, the castle and the cathedral, hotels, the train station, and even the monumental cemetery with our vividly built images of all the places we already formed from the book and Mark Sullivan's amazing narrative.



Undoubtedly, spending three days in Milan for us provided lots of more opportunities for visiting the history back to the time all the way to Leonardo da Vinci. Around the year 1482, he moved to Milan to work for the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, as an engineer, sculptor, painter, and architect. Until 1499, when Milan was invaded by the French, he left behind the 'Last Supper', a famous mural painting of Jesus and the twelve apostles; many paintings, including 'The Virgin of the Rocks', Milan's Narvigly, the system of navigable canals to ferry people and merchandise in and out of the city, 'Leonardo`s horse', an uncompleted equestrian sculpture; and many more.

We were especially interested in Leonardo's engineering projects and his machines, models, and sketches displayed in 'Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia—Leonardo da Vinci' and within a new exhibition dedicated to this amazing man called 'Leonardo3' stationed in 'Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II', another Milan landmark from the 19th century. This second video log of Viktor's shows a glimpse of what we managed to visit and learn.



(Un)expectedly, at the end of our first visit to this great city, we have left with much more footage from what we initially planned to make with Pino Lella's and Leonardo's stories. All these are now packed in this third video embedded above, and if you like to see more of Valeria and stories hidden behind Leonardo's paintings, especially the ones he did in the Sforza Castle, if you want to learn what you need to do if you are in search of a good luck charm during your first visit to the legendary 19th-century shopping mall, or if you are eager to check out one great Italian restaurant along with a couple of more places we managed to visit, this is the video definitely worth clicking on.

As for us, I am more than sure that Milan definitely didn't see us wandering its streets for the last time. The rest of Italy too.

The book references:
https://bellamilanotours.com/footsteps-pino-lella/
https://marksullivanbooks.com/

Beneath a Scarlet Sky:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32487617-beneath-a-scarlet-sky (en)
https://www.newtoncompton.com/libro/lultimo-eroe-sopravvissuto (it)
https://www.knjizare-vulkan.rs/istorijski-roman/44294-pod-grimiznim-nebom (srb)

Museums:
https://www.museoscienza.org/en
http://www.leonardo3.net/en/