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The Illusion of Time

Since time immemorial, scientific thought did not flow in a straight line. It was full of retrograde motion and ups and downs and many theories were debunked along the way. Take for instant Einstein’s static universe or theory about existence of small planet in the orbit between Mercury and the Sun. On the other hand, illusions originated in our brains were not uncommon either. For the biggest example, we are all aware that weirdly huge Moon right next to the horizon is coming strait from the trickery of our mind. But what about time? It is definitely something we are taking for granted for a vary long time. Could it be both, construct of our own brain and yet based on something more fundamental and still waiting for better understanding? The time from our daily experience, feels very much real. We are living in it's present state and it flows inevitably forward to the uncertain future and thanks to our memories and factual evidence all around us it came from the certain past.

Is Infinity Real?

Sooner or later computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example the size of entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These gods-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 to us. So, considering the state of obvious, the question arises by itself - if our own reality is such simulation and we are nothing but AI units within some alien quantum computer, wh

ZVIKTOR22: International Space Station

One day build of Lego Ideas: International Space Station. For over 20 years, the International Space Station has welcomed cooperation from different nations to achieve common goals that benefit all mankind. The largest spacecraft ever built, it continues to unlock discoveries not possible on Earth—and push the boundaries of human space exploration further than ever before. For more videos please visit ZVIKTOR22 YouTube Channel .

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've 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 embedded video story as a documentary of the half a 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 upcoming series o

Star Wars Books

Coincidentally, around the end of the first three "Star Wars" movies the time of my high school days begun. That meant, among other things, that the distance from my home to the new school building drastically increased, along with my everyday's commute time back and forth. If I decided to avoid the bus in the morning, it would take me about 30 minutes of leisurely walking to get there. In regards to today's story, it was half an hour of one of the kind entertainment I was enjoying on more than several occasions. Walking toward the school, I was mounting my state of the art Sony Walkman on my belt loaded with one of my favorite cassettes and listening audio recordings from "Star Wars" trilogy. I am not talking about official movie soundtrack - it was the audio cassette of the entire film only without acting and dialogues. Just two hours of background orchestra coverage created by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. I wrote mor

What Jupiter and Mercury Have in Common?

Before we jump into premature conclusion with easy answers as 'nothing at all' or 'at least they are both orbiting the Sun' perhaps we could do some quick research for just in case... With equatorial radius of Jupiter almost thirty times bigger than the same property on Mercury, obvious composition difference between one gas giant and small rocky planet and all the other major difference in mass, density, temperature, orbital inclination, orbit period and with almost everything we could compare the two, it is very hard to find the slightest similarity. Not to say that Jupiter in its arsenal is in possession of moons equal or even bigger in size than the smallest planet of our Solar system. However within past couple of seasons, what they had in common was the fact that they were under the spotlight of all of us who from time to time enjoy gazing the sky with naked eyes or through modest telescopes with strong feeling of being the witnesses of our own Solar system

The First Detectives in Fiction

In the history of humanity, complexity of solving riddles of big crimes, ordinary felonies and even simple misdemeanors in growing western society has become more difficult with the fast development of large cities of 19th century. This was the time when first detective agencies have been founded, initially in Paris by Eugène François Vidocq, convicted criminal who in his inspirational life switched the side of the law and turned into criminalist career, followed by 'Bow Street Runners', the very first police detective force in London and first detective units in Boston and Chicago with Allan Pinkerton, famous owner of the most memorable private detective agency in the history of United States. There is no doubt that many actual events from western criminology from the early 19th century heavily influenced first modern detective stories from the time. The very first one in this genre is widely attributed to Edgar Allan Poe and his short story "The Murders in the Rue

Adventurous Travels for 6th Graders

Geographically lying in the heart of Balkan peninsula, a small town of Svrljig is acting as a capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages that are, demographically speaking, living their lives on the edge of extinction. In just half a century human population of the area is more than halved with more and more 'haunted-like' villages containing more empty houses than those with smoked winter chimneys in which more people die than are born. The past of the area went through numerous changes over time and was pretty colorful to say the least. Like everywhere else, ever since the written literacy spread its wings only millennium ago, history of Svrljig is pretty well documented ever since the grate Schism of 11th century and we pretty much know what was like living here down to that time. But history goes even further in the past - to those times we know little about and all we have is a ruin here and there we can try to understand and build a

Fairies of Naissus

In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take for instance old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and of course all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them, originates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci who live

The Genetics of Human Behavior

Genetics is, relatively speaking, a very young science. After discovery of DNA only couple of decades ago it stopped being solely statistical and psychological study of heredity and ever since then it was given a very important component in its labs - a microscope. In simple words, we are now able to dive more deeply into the world of genes and their government of human body and behavior. In this short time we learned a great deal of human genetics and how it works. Many genes are already identified in relation to how we act and interact with others and our environment. Let's discuss some of them that already earned cool nicknames in relation of what they are capable of or what we think and suspect they do. The mixture of genes we own are given to us by our parents, which they inherited from their parents who were gifted with the same from their own mothers and fathers and so on. What is finally our DNA composed of, basically defines us and not just our looks and physical propert

Iron Man

In old Serbian folklore there was one very interesting fairy tale with one very unusual character for the time it was first told. In short it goes like this: "Once upon a time, there was a king who ordered his three sons to get married in most unusual way. All three of them were supposed to shoot arrows and from where they landed, the emperor would pick the most beautiful girls to be their brides. Needless to say the youngest's arrow ended far away from the city and flew right into the old well just next to the ugly greenish frog. Well, the deal in fairy tales always goes all the way and not surprisingly the frog soon became his wedding wife." "And just like in typical fairy tale, the frog eventually turned into the most beautiful girl in the entire kingdom and almost immediately became the person of envy for all royalties, especially the queen and all the other princesses. This never went well in old stories and soon after the young prince was given the most i

Choosing Planets

Let's turn our imagination to the edge and do something different today. We can call it thought experiment, childish game, day dream, science fiction, pure fantasy or whatever we want but let's move the boundaries far away from Earth, far away from our Solar system, even farther from our Galaxy and do something wild. Let's choose a planet. Or to be more precise, let's select one in the vastness of cosmos and move away from this Earth and start new life. Of course in day dreams we are allowed to do this just because the imagination is what our species differs from others on Earth. Ok, to begin this little endeavor, we need a little astronomy to start with. What we know for sure is that our galaxy alone contains more than 200 billion stars, majority of them not so much different from our Sun and by using basic statistical study based on planet finder's microlensing technique there are approximately 100 billion planets orbiting them. Perhaps more. Multiple that b