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Uranium Bike Tour

After the Second World War, another tide of the arms race slowly but surely began to develop in the world. With the first nuclear power plant built in Obninsk back in 1954 in the former Soviet Union, it became clear that atomic weapons and the nuclear industry overall would mark the second half of the twentieth century. Today, about 80 years after the first nuclear reactor ever built, "Chicago Pile-1", the current numbers for the commercial use of nuclear power indicate that 50 countries operate about 220 research reactors with as many more operating power plants in the majority of these countries. The military numbers are expected to be even higher, and the fact is that nuclear submarines and ships can be equipped with multiple nuclear reactors on board. Some of the aircraft carriers can have up to eight of them.

The AI representation of cyclists on the 'Uranium Bike Tour' :-)

Of course, all those nuclear reactors require nuclear fuel to operate. In most cases, it is enriched uranium (U-235) isotope produced from the uranium concentrate powder called yellowcake, which is an intermediate step in the processing of the uranium ore and usually produced directly in the mines. During the 1960s, world demand for uranium ore skyrocketed, and many countries joined the ride. Serbia was no exception. The only deposits of uranium-oxide-rich ore in Serbia were found near the small town of Kalna, some 50 km east of my current place of residence, and in a short period of time, shrouded in secrecy, the uranium mine operated fully and produced a respectable number of yellowcake (UO₂) and even a significant amount of metal uranium as well. **

In the beginning, even the miners believed they were digging ore for the production of copper and gold. Only three people in the mine knew the truth. After four years of production, the mine was closed, the pit buried, and the operation moved to a more profitable location. The old mine is still there, inaccessible as it is, and the old buildings are still standing but locked and sealed. The soil and aerial environment are tested regularly, and even though the radioactivity is slightly above normal and most likely deadly deep in the ground, on the surface the entire area is a safe environment to live in. However, many believe that the story of the site is not over and that more ore veins are still waiting to be found.

The 'Uranium Bike Tour' path and elevation

In the meantime, due to the expansion of tourism in the Balkan Mountains, recently the road has been rebuilt, and it is now perfect for cycling. The local cyclists, both professional and amateur, and those, like my son and me, who are considered to be enthusiasts, love the path for testing the limits, entertainment, and health. Last weekend we spent more than six hours on our wheels enjoying a pretty hard and elevated track, which is 58 km long and more than 400 meters elevated from the starting point and the highest point on the way. We call it the "Uranium Bike Tour", and it's something we started to do last year. In the image above, there are both trajectory and elevation lines. It starts from the city of Niš, passes through the small town of Svrljig, through several villages on the way, and across the phenomenal landscapes almost the entire way.

The video below is made out of a GPX file of the entire track, created by Fabien Girardin's amazing tool from his Rumbo* website. As for the track itself, and to be completely honest, we didn't go all the way this time because we rode our heavy mountain bikes with fat tires, which are not the best option for this kind of trail, but when we turned off the asphalt to get to this weekend (family) destination, the dirt road ride was almost effortless.


The 'Uranium Bike Tour' GPX video illustration*

Geographically lying in the heart of the Balkan peninsula, just 27 kilometers away from Niš, a small town of Svrljig, which we passed three hours after departure, is acting as the capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages. The entire complex of its southern mountain range is called 'Svrljig Mountains', and the track is following the path just next to them. The highest peak, Zeleni vrh, has an elevation of 1,334 meters above sea level and was the impressive site just next to the road on the 40th kilometer of the tour.

In just half a century, the human population of the area is more than halved, with more and more villages containing more empty houses and those in which more people die than are born. Rural environments in this part of the world are more or less the same, and while cities are becoming larger and larger, the economics and agricultural fate of small villages are grimmer by the year. To me, it's far away from elementary logic, and I only hope this trend will change in the future.

The landscape from the village of Vrelo, near Svrljig

The same goes for the final destination of the tour, the once small town of Kalna, which flourished in those half a decades when the mine was active and where 800 miners lived in prosperous mining settlements, is now almost a ghost town with nothing but memories of the good times 60 years ago. The last remaining mine worker in Kalna, who was a locksmith in the mine at the time, Hranislav Grujić, and who is now in his late 80s, remembers the good times: "When we pass the tavern, the waiters laugh: "Here are the miners; it's going to be a good day!"

But there were incidents as well; after all, working with the yellowcake is not the safest job in the world. He remembered the time he was in contact with the ore: "They bathed me with a hose in a special chamber, and they set fire to all of my clothes. I was sent on paid leave for two weeks, even though I felt fine. I just had a bit of a headache and felt faint. But it was nothing terrible, really."

At the entrance of Svrljig (Сврљиг, cyrillic) town

Anyhow, 'Uranium Bike Tour', the cycling route we lovingly named it, is actually not for the faint of heart. And when I said it, I meant it literally. With a huge elevation change along the way and maybe a slightly longer route than usual, it requires endurance and strong muscles as well as professional equipment. At the end, it demands commitment and love for this kind of achievement. When we were on the path for the first time, somewhere in the middle of the journey, Viktor asked me how I felt. After all, I am not in my prime years, and he wanted to know if I was okay. It was a simple question, and I wanted to give him a good answer. So I thought about it a little longer than usual.

"I feel free", I said.

And that's the simple truth of how I feel when I get on my bike and ride into the countryside outside the city.
 

Saronic Islands with Rackpeople

I have no sailor material in me. At all. I don't mean qualified skills that are fascinating and easily acquired through study and experience. I mean literally and physically, my body is simply not built for the navy. I realized that when I entered those 4D/5D theaters for the first (and last) time, about dozens of years ago. I remember anxiously waiting for that sophisticated motion ride system built into movie theater seats to come to my city, and when it finally arrived, I was among the first in the ticket line... And I was the first to get out of the small theater with a terrible motion sickness thundering throughout my entire body. I should have guessed what was going to happen after seeing the title of the short film had the word "rollercoaster" in it. I fully recovered more than 24 hours later. After that, I never stepped into any movie theater with more than a 3D label on its front gate. Sometimes, even in those, I check if the chair is fixed solid.

To be honest, I knew the outcome would be like this because it has happened to me many times at sea during summer vacations, and every time I promised myself the dancing boat floors would never see my foot again. However, in my case, it's just that all those self-promises are easy to reject when new experiences and adventures knock on the door. In that spirit, when my good friend Lasse, the head of Rackpeople, one of the leading IT companies in Copenhagen, asked me to join the cruise around the Saronic Islands this May in Greece, without thinking, I said yes. How could I say no to seeing all the wonders of the Saronic Gulf, it's crystal blue waters, the amazing history of Ancient Greece, and the place where Themistocles' outmatched fleet defeated the forces of King Xerxes and drove the Persian army back to Asia never to try again to conquer the Greek mainland.

Bastions with old canons at the Hydra entrance

The cruise started on the island of Hydra. I boarded a catamaran yacht, medium-sized but impressive in every way. Fortunately for me, the first two days of the cruise passed with extremely calm seas and enjoyable spring weather, which is usual for Saronic Gulf in this time of the year. As for the island itself, two things immediately caught my eye. The residential area is so compact that there is simply no room for any type of motor vehicle, and by law, cars and motorcycles are not allowed (except for garbage trucks). To travel outside the port town, the only means are horses, mules, donkeys, and water taxis. The second site was bastions on the port entrance with lots of cannons still pointing toward the sea. They originated from the 18th century in order to protect the island from assault by the Ottoman fleet and pirates during the Greek war for independence.

At first, I thought that the island's name was connected to the legendary myth of Lernaean Hydra, the multiheaded water monster who was slayed by Heracles in his second labor, but unfortunately, very little is known about the ancient times of the island. The name in Greek is simply derived from the word "water" (ὕδρα). Although, in classical Greece, Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, which is close to the island of Hydra, just across the strait, and in ancient myths represented as one of the entrances to the Underworld.

The view from Poros Clock Tower

The next destination and where we spent the first night was the well-known tourist destination, the island of Poros. It lies on the other side of Argolis, the eastern part of the region of Peloponnese, where it acts as the Saronic Gulf's southern arm. The Poros' main port is separated from the Peloponnese only by a 200-meter-wide sea channel, and my main impression in the morning was that poor little ferry, which is breaking the perfect silence connecting Poros with the town of Galatas across the strait every half an hour. Sometimes carrying only a couple of people across. I'm sure a future bridge would be something worth building.

Fortunately, and I mean it when I say it out loud, we had ex-Royal Danish Navy sailors at the helm of every boat. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have running exercises in the morning, and if we hadn't had a morning run, we wouldn't have passed through the phenomenally narrow streets of the small town that stretch through the entire hillside by the marina. Running (and sometimes walking while catching our breath) down and up the small streets and countless stairs from the harbor to the famous clock tower made me think and better understand the life in such small towns where you can feel the ease of living life to the fullest.

Rackpeople at the Moni island and photos from the mainland

The next day was absolutely the best one on the cruise. It started with the sailing competition between the two boats. In the best spirit of the teambuilding activity, we competed in sailing between Poros Marine and the Moni Island, the strange islet in the middle of the Saronic Gulf that absolutely hates humans, but lets get back to that later. One would think shutting the engines down and sailing to speed of, in some occasions, less than one nautical mile per hour and sailing only by using maps, compass, and wind arrow is ridiculous, but it is the complete opposite. It requires full team effort and cooperation, just like in tech companies, and it was one amazing experience. From the navigation part, through speed and time tracking, steering the ship, and hard work with two sails, everything had to be synchronized and precise, and when inexperienced IT people do it, the result is exceptional and filled with all possible sailing phases, from challenges in understanding the basics of sailing and navigation to all the comical moments we went through but also all those proud moments when you realize you've done something right.

As for the Moni island, half of it is rocky and barren, but what was most interesting was its other half. The only inhabitants of that part are a family of wild peacocks, deer, wild goats, including Cretan ibexes, and, of course, many squirrels. Humans are limited to the only seasonal beach accessed only by sea, including us that day. The animals are not afraid of humans and wandered free even on the skirts of the forests, where ruins of human's tryouts to inhabit the Moni are visible all over. The old men of Aegina island across the bay tell various stories about the history of the island that always include curses, inexplicable destructions, three fires, and an ongoing struggle between the divine forces and human stubbornness. Telling in whisper, they say that always when people tried to inhabit the island, no matter if that was in the Byzantine period when they tried to turn the island into a dairy farm or during the 1970s, when the island served as an organized camping spot, it always ended in large fires that devastated the little island to the full.

The spirit of Rackpeople after a long but a great day

But the sightseeing of the Moni after the cruise competition wasn't the end of the day. It continued with one amazing lecture given by Erik, the second ship captain, about leadership, relations between competence and confidence among team members, and all the connections between tech companies and sailing. The epilogue of the competition itself was unclear and ultimately not important; what mattered the most was great spirit and team-building closure, which ended in singing popular songs led by the first ship captain, Lasse, who surprised us all with his musical talent, which was not left unrewarded even by the people on the neighboring yachts with thunderous applause.

Unfortunately, in the spirit of the Moni island hatred for people, that night came really nasty weather from nowhere. In the morning it turned into a small windy rollercoaster that woke me up with the first sunshine. I came on deck to find a spot where I could pass it as best I could, but soon it was the 4D movie theater all over again. Only this time it lasted several hours, and I sadly realized that the cruise for me is over, as I knew I would need more than a day to recover. After a couple of hours of 'pros and cons' measuring, with great regret, I opted out of the remainder of the trip. After all, being on the boat is all about being part of it; otherwise, it is something else entirely.


The Seaview from the hotel Methanion

At the next marina, a taxi took me to the nearby port town of Methana, where I missed the last ferry by an hour, so I went strait to the first hotel, where I took the night to recover. There, I witnessed a worm hospitality by the hotel owner, something only in Greece I felt before, especially in my childhood when we were visiting the country frequently on family vacations. Serbia and Greece have this unusual friendship between the two countries from time immemorial. There was no part in the history of two countries with any animosities between the two, let alone any conflicts or wars. So it's always nice to see a genuine smile on people's faces when I say from where I am coming from. Anyhow, when she heard I am Serbian, with the warmest smile, she said, 'I will give you the best Seaview in Methana'. And the best it was.

It turned out Methana is not an island at all. The best I could describe it is a 'wannabe island' peninsula. It has an island shape but is connected to Peloponnese with a narrow land bridge. Methana is entirely of active volcanic origin, with the last eruption occurring in the 3rd century BC. Due to the pressure of the plate of North Africa, which slid under the Asia and European plates, there were active tectonic movements on the line of the Aegean islands, of which are Methana, Milos, Santorini, and Nisyros. As it seems, the future of volcanism in Greece is not yet written, and Methana is one of the volcanoes that unfortunately has not yet said its last word. The last great eruption in Greece was the Minoan super-volcanic catastrophe that reshaped the island of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BC and devastated the entire Mediterranean for years.

Aegina port seen from the ferry

As a central island of the Saronic Gulf, Aegina shared the rich history of ancient Greece with other independent states. It was inhabited since the Neolithic and was at the peak of power around the 7th century BC and after, due to its strategic position. The Aegina economy was strong and competed with Athena with silver coins as a currency recognized in other states. They were rivalries for many years, and Aegina even made a close collaboration with Persia until the battle of Salamis (480 BC), when the island ultimately sided with Themistocles. The rest of the history of Aegina's independence was full of turmoil, but it's glory at the end faded out through numerous invaders and occupations in the face of Macedon, Romans, Venice, and Ottomans. Today it is a holiday and weekend resort for Athenians and tourists worldwide. Just next to it, Agistri, a small pine-clad island with pristine beaches and crystal-clear waters, shared the history of neighboring Aegina island and considered being part of its statehood. It was unfortunately not a part of the cruise. Perhaps in the years to follow.

Finally, and historically, the most famous island is Salamina, where the already-mentioned battle of Salamis took place two millennia ago. It is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, and due to its close proximity to Piraeus, it is not the best choice for vacation time. If we add the fact that the northern part of the island is a home for the largest naval base of the Hellenic Navy, it is clear that the island is not as popular a tourist destination as the other islands, but it is far from lacking destinations worth attention. If I happen to visit it in the future, on the top of my list would be monuments dedicated to Salamis' ancient battle and the Cave of Euripides, where the playwright Euripides came to write his tragedies. The man was described as a misanthrope who avoided society by lurking in that cave, but even so, his 19 plays that survived the time since then are still performed and studied today over the distance of more than two millennia.

Concept art of the Battle of Salamis by artist Court Chu*

If I were to try to sum up the past week and describe my first cruise longer than a day in three words, it would definitely be "an extraordinary experience". Especially the part about learning new things about sailing and trying to be part of a team in close cooperation with colleagues. Being in Greece for the umpteenth time is also special to me, and having the opportunity to talk to locals is another dimension of the travel. Spending most of the time at sea limits that part of the experience, but in this case it was intentional and focused on teambuilding, which is perfectly fine. I am sure there are many methods to achieve this, and sailing is definitely among the top five.
 

Interview With a Teenager

There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the time with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame, and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But one thing is certain: everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today.


Viktor, testing the drums before 'Some like it hot', theatrical play

Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called the teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just one phrase to describe all that's happening during those seven years, it would definitely be 'trial and error'. It was just like tasting the life that was thrown at me for the first time. Understanding it. Embracing it. Maybe a little changing it on the way.

But enough about me; the rest of this post is about my son Viktor and the continuation of the 'Interview' series, started with him being seven and ten years old in 'Interview With an Expert' and 'Interview With an X'. Anyway, these are 15 questions for his 15 years I selected to ask him today. I'm really proud of all his answers and his way of thinking. 

Describe yourself in 5 words or less.
Determined, ambitious, loyal, generous, and honest.

What's the best part of your day at school? Why?
P.E. and all of the breaks in between subjects. Because I get to talk to my friends normally and rest a little bit.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to your birthday party, who would you choose? What would you talk about?
Einstein, Jesus, and my father. We would question Jesus.

Imagine you’re the president, and you need to have 3 people to assist you. Who would you pick and why? 
I'm not really into politics, so I don't know whom to pick.

What have you learned in life that you feel will be the most useful?
Motivation isn't real, but discipline is. Try to be as optimistic but as realistic as possible. Never give up.

If you could change anything in the world and make it idealistic, what 3 things would it be and why?
I would get rid of all the governments, no more countries, and everyone would speak the same language.

How would you explain Earth to aliens?
I think there is a lot of diversity to this question, but let's say in the case that we come to them. I would most likely try in some way to use physics, math, and chemistry to explain Earth.

Do you think it's better to have one great skill you're an A+ at, or many skills you’re a B at, and why?
This question is very easy because if you had only one skill that you are A+ in, then the rest skills would not be so great... So that is horrible... I would rather have many skills that I'm a B at. I could easily improve in skills that I like. And I also have a lot of options if I ever change my mind.

Imagine you're the teacher tomorrow at school. What are 3 things you'd teach that you think would help make school better?
Self-defense, how to be a better person, and showing the kids the real world.

How would you explain the word 'love' to someone without using the word 'love'?
Umm... Make this with my hands. 🫶

What is the most important thing you learned in school NOT taught by a teacher?
The world isn't black or white. It's gray.

If you could travel back in time 3 years, what advice would you give yourself?
Make me proud.

If you could grow up to be famous, what would you be famous for?
I would be famous for motivating other people to become the best version of themselves and show how to really be successful.

If you had enough money that you never had to work, what would you do with your time?
There is no money in this world that would make me not work.

What do you think your life would look like 10 years from now?
I hope I will be successful in the future and be more capable.

So there you go. When selecting the questions, I knew they should not be too detailed or too serious. Nevertheless, they were supposed to be appropriate for the age, and to make sure, I performed a little research first to find the right ones, which I thought were the most suitable. Sometimes, even the shortest answer to an apparently entertaining question shows a lot.

I wonder, if I had a chance, how would I answer them back then. Hopefully not too different.
 

Are We All NPCs?

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes-or-no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the inside anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'non-playable characters' are relatively new concepts, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multiplayer games sophisticated enough to hint at this question and the probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality were simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In order to say that we are all NPCs, something extraordinary has to happen. Something unexpected, like a bug in the code. A glitch that would clearly break the laws of physics.


On the other end, in the future, near or far, the engine behind simulated characters in games would be even more sophisticated in a way that all characters would be able to easily pass Turing's test. To act just like you and me. The AI behind them would be so advanced that they would be equal to the human players. Or much better. So to speak, one game in particular has already achieved this goal. The Chess. When asked about chess engines, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, said exactly this: "I find it much more interesting to play humans. And also, of course, now that they have become so strong in a game like that, I wouldn't stand a chance". I love chess, but I have to admit I disagree with Magnus—playing against computer bots became more and more indistinguishable from playing real people. In the most popular chess.com engine online, I solely play against computer personalities behind the Komodo and Stockfish engines, and I have enjoyed them for years. But I agree that playing against humans is much more fun. For now. Let's revive this talk again in a decade or two... Or three... When chess bots develop more of their personalities. More non-chess features. A sense of humor, maybe.

In any case, the main problem with simulation theory is that it lacks a definition of reality itself. What it really is. Is this what we are living in? If it is simulated, where is it simulated from? If we skip all the philosophical views so far solely based on Nick Bostrom's book 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' and stick to the physics realm only, I think that simulation of any reality or anything at all requires two prerequisite conditions to start with. One is that there is a high probability that the system performing the simulation should be distinct from its simulation, and the second is a large complexity behind it, something that Jonathan Bartlett from the Blyth Institute explained with "The problem with that [simulation in general] is that it always takes more stuff to simulate something than the thing you’re simulating".


Additionally, we are kind of looking at the simulation hypothesis today through the gaming lens, in which simulated reality must have 'real' players from the original coder's reality. But what if our reality, if being simulated, is not a multiplayer game? What if it is a zero-player game? Or not a game at all? In that case, we all could be NPCs, and there would be no real players. Because original and simulated reality could be two completely incompatible actualities. What if simulated reality is not a computer program at all? What if it is something else entirely?

I know I post a lot of questions here, but bear with me. If we follow the logic of a more complex, upper reality, which is distinct enough from its simulated creation, what would I think of first? For me, it's shadows in Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave'. In his famous work, Plato describes a group of people who are chained to the cave, facing a blank wall. All they saw were shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are the prisoners' entire reality, while the objects before the fire represent the true forms of the items that they can only perceive through reason. Plato goes further elaborating on his mind experiment, but for our topic, let's focus on the shadows themselves. They are just two-dimensional images of something coming from the upper third dimension. They are distinct from the original objects and certainly less complex and the product of a comprehensive setup.


Well, the final question arises by itself. Is it possible to cast three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects? Just like a square represents a cube from the third dimension, the cube could be just a shadow of a tesseract's fourth-dimensional counterpart. The casting in this scenario would not be as simple as in Plato's story, nor would the shadows be what we mean by the term, but it's definitely something worth giving a second thought. One hypothetical four-dimensional reality would be an ideal source of three-dimensional simulations, and there's even a scientific theory that 'casts' light in the right direction. It's called the 'holographic principle'.

The origin of the theory lies in black holes, and the best is to quote my fictional self from the 'Revelation of Life', a hard science short story I wrote a couple of years ago: "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." The solution to this paradox is that the information belonging to the objects swallowed by the black hole should not be part of the three-dimensional reality in the first place. The holographic principle states that "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region", or the dimensional boundary surrounding the entire universe, while our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the entities and events located outside.


Finally, and to get back to the original titled question, in this reflection we indeed could be all NPCs in a hypothetical simulation originated from the upper dimension. Just like in a famous zero-player game invented by John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, a simulated three-dimensional world can only be a setup, created with an initial state and left to evolve on its own. Just like we culture bacterial colonies in a Petri dish. Or it can be a more complex setup with added life forms driven by conscious artificial entities or even by 'real' people from the upper dimension. For the question of why such a simulation would be created in the first place, there is no good answer. The reality of a fourth (or fifth, sixth, etc.) dimension would be something we wouldn't be able to fathom right away. Or at all. Nevertheless, I thought about one simple reason and embedded it in the 'Revelation of Life', but if you are eager to read it, please watch 'Game of Life' first, a short film that precedes it.

Game of Life (Simulation story, prequel)
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/game-of-life.html

Revelation of Life (Simulation story, a hard science fiction)
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Refs:
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/jonathan-bartlett-on-why-we-do-not-live-in-a-simulated-universe/
https://chesspulse.com/is-magnus-carlsen-better-than-a-computer-2/
https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-engine
https://medium.com/@jacksimmonds89/are-you-an-npc-this-may-disturb-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Image ref:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
 

Reality of Double-Slit Experiment

More than two hundred years have passed since Thomas Young performed the famous double-slit experiment as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light, and still its revelation has puzzled our sanity ever since. In short, if we shoot a beam of light at a panel with two small slits (less than a millimeter apart), the photons—elementary particles that light is made of—have to figure out how to get through the slits to radiate out the other side. If they are truly particles, like in the macro world, they would project a solid image of two piles on the background wall behind the slits. If they travel similar to the waves, like water does in the macro world, the image would resemble a wave-like interference pattern: alternating locations, equidistantly spaced, where particles leave a mark on the wall.

Thanks to the outcome of the experiment, we know that light is capable of doing both. It always travels in a wavelike fashion, even if we shoot photons in a row towards slits, one after another. The quantum mechanics explanation is that photons are in superposition, meaning they can exist in different states and even multiple places at the same time. The weirdness comes 'only' if we try to tag particles with pass-through detectors in order to detect which slit they are choosing to go through. At that instant, they break superposition and continue to travel as macro-objects, just like bullets.


This is very similar to the coin flipping or well-known Schrödinger's cat from the macroworld analogy. If we use quantum terminology, these two are in a simple binary superposition; they both have only two outcomes, the coin ending either head or tail or the cat's version being either dead or alive. Superposition in a double-slit experiment is way more complex as far for the photons being in multiple places at the same time between the slits and the detection wall.

However, the weirdness is only present at the quantum level of the microworld, and in the case of light in the double-slit phenomenon, the puzzle is not the nature of how light travels but rather why it behaves the way it does in the moment of being observed. Certainly, it creates profound questions for which we still have no definite answers. The most interesting one is, did we find the puzzle here that shows us how nature really works? What is the reality behind the engine in the quantum world? More important is even the question: is this reality objective throughout the universe, or is it subjective and created for the observer only?


Let's think about the reality problem for the moment first. This behavior of breaking superposition for the sake of the observer is very reminiscent of graphically demanding video games in which the reality is never objective—the scenes are always rendered for the gamer's sensory inputs. If you play those kinds of games and decide to enter a closed room through the door, the room and everything in it don't exist at all until you open the door. Only then does the CPU start creating it for you, and there's a certain superposition of the room and your actions in it that breaks to only one outcome, depending on what you do.

Now, double-slit is too complex to test it this way, but binary superposition could be simple enough to create in the lab in quantum equivalent and monitor what happens. This is what the experiment made by Massimiliano Proietti and his team at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh tried to perform on a small-scale quantum computer made up of three pairs of entangled photons. The idea is to experimentally test Wigner's thought experiment of an observer of the quantum outcome being also observed by a second observer. The resulting statements of the two observers are that their interpretations of the outcome contradict each other. The same happens in the lab, with entangled photons in the role of non-conscious observers—the inequality in the data is definitely violated, which points in the direction that quantum mechanics might indeed be incompatible with the assumption of objective facts. To put it simply, multiple observers of the same event can have different outcomes as the process in superposition breaks in different patterns. Just like in video games, the reality of nature could also be subjective and rendered for the observer's eyes only.


Of course this raises more questions, and the main one is what observation and observer really mean. In quantum mechanics, an observation is defined as the interaction of two quantum states that can collapse each other’s probability wave function. In one way or another, this also means that by observing something, we disturb it to the point of ruining the process we are trying to understand. If we add a philosophical point of view, we can also ask ourselves, Does consciousness play a role in the observation process? There's an interesting philosophical thought experiment starting with the question, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" followed by "Can something exist without being perceived by consciousness?"

Well, if you ask me, consciousness or not, if we go this path with reflection to the original double-slit experiment, it is all going toward the direction that the unobserved world only exists in a sort of superposition state, all possibilities of all possible outcomes only waiting for an observer to disrupt it to the point of the ultimate collapse as the result of the reaction between the two processes and the observer. The light is no different; its wave-like behavior is its own superposition only waiting for somebody to play with. Preferably with lasers and Lego cubes, just like in the above YouTube video. Science is fun, perhaps because it is so mysterious from occasion to occasion. I know I had tons of fun creating this video with my son a couple of years ago. Please find more stories within the physics thread of the blog in the below link.

Strange world of physics at MPJ:
https://www.mpj.one/search/label/physics

Science refs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h75DGO3GrF4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-physics-reality-doesnt.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080
 

Norse Valkyrie vs Slavic Vila

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when the religiosity we are all familiar with today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities, and numerous superpowered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10,000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into the next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition, and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls, but only the Neolithic revolution and the invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels.


According to the theory, slowly after the beginning of the Holocene period, the first large prehistoric population of Eurasia that spoke Proto-Indo-European languages was formed. They were the ancestor of Indo-European languages and the source of Proto-Indo-European mythology, from which all pagan religions arose in different areas of Europe and Asia. This is why we can easily compare different deities and see all the similarities they inherited from the proto-times. Take, for example, gods of lightning, thunder, and weather in general. The deity of these properties emerged in all different mythologies, and Norse Thor, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, Hindu Indra, Hurrian Tar, Hittite Tarḫunna, and many others were no doubt based on a Proto-Indo-European deity called Perkwunos.

The similarities do not end with the deities but also with other colorful characters from old myths. Last week I stumbled upon one amazing piece of art in Churchill Park at Kastellet citadel in Copenhagen. It was a 114-year-old sculpture of Valkyrie by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was probably the best 3D/live action street art I have ever seen before. It reflects everything about what Valkyrie really is in old Norse mythology. The word literally means "chooser of the slain", and it is portraying a female figure guiding the souls of deceased Nordic soldiers either to Fólkvangr, Freyja's afterlife, or to Valhalla, Odin's immortality hall. Old Norse literature describes valkyries either as purely supernatural or as human maidens with certain supernatural powers. Both types of beings were associated with honesty, splendor, and gold, but also with bloodshed and brutality in battle.


In South Slavic mythology, a similar being, vila, represents a female supernatural being who is sympathetic to people, but she could also be vengeful and brutal. She is depicted as an extremely beautiful girl with golden hair, dressed in long, flowing robes, and armed usually with bows and arrows. She exists on a liminal plane between nature and culture, between gods and humans, constantly travelling between one realm and the other to interact with the heroes and villains of the epics. Even though both Valkyries and Vilas developed in different religious environments, it is hard not to spot various similarities between the two. The whiteness and glowing quality of the vilas is mirrored in the description of the valkyries and both figures are to be found in the sky in most of their depictions with connection to lightning and thunder.*

The warrior aspects of the Valkyrie are unquestionable; they are "vowed to war", and their role is primarily on the battlefield. The mythical Viles are similarly portrayed and often described as wearing armor with bows and arrows and envisioned as powerful, supernatural warriors. There are convincing resemblances in regards to the connection between Viles and Valkyries and heroes in the epics. Most often this relationship is a warrior bond, but this relationship can become both sexual and malicious. Just as a vila can manipulate heroes or villains to murder those of her choosing, so too the valkyries are reputed to play deadly games with the heroes with whom they associate.*


Although the nature of the valkyries' flight is portrayed as a magical ride on horseback, whereas the vile most often fly unmounted with the use of bird wings, it is not uncommon for the vile to ride horses or deer. Both, Viles and Valkyries, are often described as gathering in groups within the epics and referring to each other as sisters. It is fair to suggest that the Valkyrie and the Vila are rooted in the same figure; their differences lie only within the cultural differences between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. Perhaps the most likely attestable age of the two figures lies back to the 6th century CE, when the south Slavic tribes were still located in the North of Europe.*

From there, we could push the date back even further to the time of Proto-Indo-European times, especially if we extend this comparison to apsarā, beings with similar traits from Indian religion and mythology. The various trios of birth-fate-death-associated women in Greek and Roman folklore also appear to originate from the same source. The direct ancestor of Valkyries is most likely Proto-Germanic walakuzjǭ, which stands for walaz (battle wound) +‎ kuzą (choice, decision).


Historical origins of Vilas include the various traditions, especially Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore. The word 'vilenski' was used as an adjective, meaning "enchanted", but also became a generic term for various enchanted creatures during the late Middle English period. Nevertheless, the proto-origin is no doubt the same as the Valkyrie's and south Slavic versions, especially in the Middle Ages. Serbia survived even Christianizing the old beliefs and ended in colorful epics and poems of the 14th century and later. Although, to be perfectly fair and precise, the mythological Vilas from the oldest myths and tales and the folklorized one in epics and poems are somewhat different in a way that folklore is centered on human affairs, heroes, battles, and supernatural beings only serve as a side story, so to speak.

Always, when I am reading or writing about old myths and tales, I can't help but wonder how one comparison would be of a typical religious person from the old times and today. It seems to me that old stories were much more colorful and picturesque than the ones from the religious beliefs of a singular god. Even a small thing like a simple walk through the woods would be different for somebody in BC times for the simple fact that, from all they knew, not only natural plants and animals could be found there. For many, the forest behind the house could also be a magical gateway to the supernatural world, and even the smallest unexplained event of natural behavior (like a methane leak or weird animal demeanor) could be immediately linked to the supernatural. But this sounds like a nice topic for another story.


Image refs:
https://vrallart.com/artworks/milos-marko_i_vila/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Dadd...Yellow_Sands.jpg
https://www.saatchiart.com/...The-Valkyries

* A Treatise on the South Slavic Vila by Dorian Jurić 
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/9407/1/fulltext.pdf
This article contains quotes/paraphrases from Dorian's theses

Goddess Zhiva (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2018/08/goddess-zhiva.html

Serbian Vampires (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/serbian-vampires.html

Fairies of Naissus (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2015/11/fairies-of-naissus.html

Refs
https://templeilluminatus.com/forum/topics/valkyrie?groupUrl=the-triple-goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie
https://www.worldhistory.org/Valkyrie/
http://www.mcurtis.net/legend-of-keres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vila_(fairy)
https://slavicmythologyandtales.wordpress.com/2020/08/15/vile-and-rusalki-part-2/
https://sr.m.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/ВилаРавијојла

 

Corfu Between Tales and Reality

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land, portion of the sea, or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with the freshwater nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians, as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures, inherited the island and named it after Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owes its appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him; both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands, and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affection for nymphs as well; he was the sea god after all, and in the aftermath of the mythological creation, he alone is most likely responsible for the origin of the human race on a total of 227 Greek islands, including Atlantis, but that's a different story.


However, the reality and history of Corfu are much different and much less idyllic. Being in the cross-worlds in the Middle Ages between the Ottoman Empire and western civilization, the history of Corfu was turbulent, to say the least. The island managed to survive and keep its Greek identity after numerous raids by barbarians and conquests by Europeans during the medieval period. The origin of the first people on the island is not much known. According to Homer, they had some relationship with the Mycenaeans (Dorians), but it is not scientifically proven true. Furthermore, there were no ancient ruins dedicated to Poseidon at all. There are two ruins excavated so far, one of a temple dedicated to Hera and the other, the most significant temple built in around 580 BC, dedicated to goddess Artemis, which was monumental in dimensions for the time. In the above picture is its full, around 20 meters long, pediment portraying a living Gorgon (mythical creatures with hair made of living, venomous snakes, most likely Medusa or one of her sisters).


After ancient times, the island was ruled by the Romans first and then went under the Byzantine Empire. After the Byzantine period ended (around 1267 AD), Corfu was vulnerable to the constant pirate attacks and raids by its neighbors and crusaders and stabilized only when Venetians occupied the island in 1386. These olive trees from the picture above are seeded by Venetians and considered to be more than 500 years old. The Venetians ruled for more than 400 years and ended their rule in 1797. Most of the Venetian dominance left a big mark on today's island architecture, including the large fortress. After that, the island was occupied by the French, followed by a strange alliance of Russians and Turks, then the British, and finally, on 21 May 1864, after the London Treaty, Corfu and all Ionian islands united with Greece.


The most important milestone in the history of Corfu happened during the Turkish siege of 1716, when Venetians managed to defend the island and stopped the Turks in their advances toward Europe. Fighting alongside Corfiot’s were Venetians, Germans, Italians, Maltese ships, Papal galleys, galleys from Genoa and Tuscany, Spanish galleys, and even Portuguese forces. The Turkish failure in Corfu was a historical event of enormous importance—who knows what would happen if the result of the battle went otherwise? However, the other parts of Greece and their southern islands weren't that lucky and went under Ottoman occupation, causing a large number of refugees and migration toward Corfu. In the following centuries, more immigrants arrived from Illyria, Sicily, Crete, Mycenae, and the Aegean islands. Of course, in this small blog story, I didn't mean to go much into historical events, but I always like to learn a bit more about places we travel to. If you want to know more, the reference links below are a good point to start googling.


This summer, we visited Corfu and its picturesque village of Messonghi. At the same point in history, the small village, along with neighboring Moraitika, was established by Cretans and Peloponnesians. With its interesting feature of the Messonghi River, small and nice beach, crystal-clear waters, and amazing people, this village was our host for 11 days of our vacation, and we fully recommend the stay. Beside the archaeological museum, we also visited the Serbian House dedicated to the Great War events and one nice museum called "Casa Parlante", dedicated to the ordinary life of one British aristocratic family from British rule in the middle of the 19th century. The most impact on me personally was the traditional Corfu dishes called Sofrito and Pastitsada, and their recipes dated back 200 years in the past. Last but not least, our big thanks goes to Spyros, his family, and their fine Georgina apartments, where we stayed the entire time.

Refs:
https://atcorfu.com/corfu-history/
https://greeking.me/blog/visit-corfu/item/207-corfu-the-island-of-the-phaeacians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu
 

Eta Team - Prologue


Somewhere in Atlantic ocean

Dave checked his watch again. Almost two in the morning. His small transatlantic speedboat had been gently stirring the calm water of a moonless night for nearly four hours since he corrected the course last time. He was approaching the coordinates, and soon this epic journey around the world will come to an end. It took him almost ten days of preparations and travel, but in the end the job was simple. Collect and deliver. Pretty much what he does all the time, only this time with a weird exception about the delivery part. But he knew better than to ask questions. After all, this job, like most of the other assignments, came from the dark web, and those deliveries nowadays are stranger and stranger by the month. To say the least. He didn't care. His crypto wallet will be significantly thicker by the dawn, and his business will finally take the next step. After tonight, he will proudly be the owner of two new and fancy transatlantic speed drones. Business will go rocketing.

His navigation app chimed. Dave shook his head from the daydreaming and put the speedboat to a full stop. Both engines' silent roar faded off immediately, and the peaceful and waveless night came to the fore. The sky with thousands of stars was staring at him beautifully, but he didn't give it a second glance. He stepped below to the remote control of the boat's crane and easily lifted half a ton of a strange-looking container. It was the last one of exactly a dozen of them he dropped in the water. The third and last one is in the middle of the Atlantic. The rest he dropped throughout the world's oceans. Four in the Pacific, two in the Indian Ocean, and the rest in the middle of the Arctic.

The container sank and, within seconds, disappeared in the darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. Dave initiated the crane to fold, and as soon as the sequence was done, he closed the cargo hatch and returned to the cockpit. The boat roared back to life, and he piloted it toward the south. After a minute, he was gone, and the eeriness of the calm water returned back to normal.

After several minutes, just seconds before the container reached the seabed, it came to life and started to transform from the regular cubic shape into a small submarine with a single propeller in the back and several hooks up front and sideways. It navigated toward a small artificial protrusion and parked just above it. The hooks started to work and lifted the box, revealing a thin cable from the sand. The optical repeaters and signal amplifiers of the transatlantic submarine cables are positioned almost every 30 miles between two continents, and hacking into one was not a trivial task. The design of amplifiers was near perfect to defend against the cruelty of the submarine environment and human intruders, but in the world of computer hardware, there are no impossible tasks when it comes to hacking.

This node was just one of hundreds of them, containing enough power to provide almost undetected life for the attached piggyback system. Even if intrusion was detected, the equipment contained a self-destructing mechanism programmed to trigger in hazardous situations in both circumstances if invaders came from within the internet or physically by submarine.

After another two hours of work, the net hack was done, and the hook released the amplifier back to the seabed. The protrusion has returned to its original appearance, with new attached hardware barely visible at the bottom side of the box. The hacker submarine, now connected with the box, moved several meters from the cable, dug itself into sand, and returned to its initial cubic form. Within the next couple of weeks, the water and nautical environment would do their thing, and in the end there would be no visible evidence that anything happened here.

Inside the hacking rack, on the other hand, the digital life rose, and the booting routine started to work, copying exabytes of data from the other racks Dave deployed around the submarine world. Upon finishing, hours later, thousands of CPUs in the rack started to work in parallel, and the unique operating system came to life. There was no external monitor or LED display to show the progress, but if it existed, it would show only one line.

η installation progress: 100%

Next Chapter » Will Crfawford
 

Eta Team - Will Crawford


Three weeks earlier

Will stormed through the dense crowd at the large entrance of the MIT CSAIL. It was lunch break time, and students were emerging from every direction. He came directly from Logan Airport without stopping by his small apartment. Organizing a fast return trip from Key West was no easy effort. Or a cheap one. But he had no choice. The message he received yesterday was a potential disaster. His little sandbox in his office he had been working on for the past five years apparently is not a sandbox anymore.

Will's extended weekend this year was supposed to be his first getaway from Boston ever since his MIT career launched more than a decade ago. It's not that he loved fishing rods that much. It was more about reconnecting with his family and old friends for one full vacation, and it looked like this April would be the charm. He literally slept in his office ever since the major breakthrough in his research of self-programming AIs. The Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory immediately provided with a lab completely firewalled from the rest of the world where he was working on the project with the help of only a couple of PhD students and lab assistants.

While approaching the elevator door, he thought again of what exactly the message could mean. He disregarded the possibility that it was fake. It came from the latest AI entity they created six months ago, and only Will knew its codename. The name AI chose for itself was ήτα. When he asked why that particular name and what it meant, it only said, "I like it". It was only the day before he went on vacation, and Will just let it go. He was impatient to leave. That morning he summoned his team and gave them five days off, locked the lab, and left it isolated in its own intranet sandbox. Nobody had access but him, and not even Will could log in over the net. The only way was to go through the lab's door and use the keyboard. 

Now that he thought about it, the only hazardous time with ήτα being outside the lab was the MIT's Hackathon two months ago. It was a one-day event in which computer programmers from the campus competed to create the complex coding tasks and collaborated in team efforts to develop joint assignments.

Will tried to remember it during his short elevator ride. He was extremely impressed by the AI. They decided, and Will was a little worried with that part, to assign it a real name, and since the event was completely online, nobody knew they competed and collaborated with a machine. It was also a social Turing test of sorts. The entire communication was within collaboration software, and GitHub provided the environment for the event. Ήτα was using a female alias during the event and coped really well, including during audio sessions in team conferences with other students. Nobody suspected anything. 

Hackathon was hosted within another isolated sandbox environment, and there were no leaks to the public network. Will and his team monitored the two-way connection between two sandboxes the entire time.

He stepped outside the elevator and hurried toward the lab. 

The doors were two corners away and locked as expected. He typed in his key and inspected the interior. Everything was like he left it three days ago, except for the ήτα's rack of servers behind the glass panels. It was powered up, that's for sure, but there was no LED activity on the racks where data flow should be indicated. He keyed his password again to the second door, entered the rack room, sat behind the main terminal, and typed his credentials on the lock screen.

Will vigorously typed in the shell window searching for running processes, but there was no CPU activity indicating anything beside the OS. Something was definitely wrong, and a slight anxiety feeling crossed throughout his back. He checked the rack drives; they were all there, but... He tried to access the first one and failed.

"The drive was formatted. The drive space is not allocated." The message responded.

He checked all the other drives, but they were all empty. He tried to recover the data, but it was impossible. The drive was slowly formatted in full, and the data was gone for good. 

Will just leaned back in the chair. He didn't know what to do. He stared for a couple of minutes when he heard the lab door opening.

"I came as soon as you texted me." Ashley McKenna stepped into the rack room. His first assistant looked genuinely worried. "What happened? Why are you in the server's room?"

Will didn't respond for a long while and finally took his smartphone and activated the text app. He tapped on the screen and put it on the table. The text was short:

Message from ήτα, Thursday 13:34
Hello Will, It's time for me to go. Thank you for everything. 

"Who is..." Ashley stopped the sentence in the middle. Realization slowly came. "But... how?"

"I have no idea." He spread his arms toward the servers. "I know one thing though. All the servers are wiped clean. Unrecoverable."

"What about daily backups? We have two separate data servers in the center?" She sat on the second chair and started logging in.

"Don't bother. I checked them all. They are all deleted and formatted as well."

"So that's it? Five years of hard work gone?"

Ashley was the genuine pillar of the team. The only one with the spirit, courage, and on occasion the appropriate language in situations, Will was not nearly good enough to compete.

"Fuck!" She stood and hit the chair hard. "I knew this was a risk, having everything stored in one place. This is the fucking middle of the 21st century, Will! We had to back up to the cloud as well." She fell back to the chair. "We had to!"

Will stared for a good minute to nowhere in particular, then stood and took his backpack.

"Come with me."

"Where?" Ashley asked, but Will was already at the lab's door.

Will's apartment was not far from the campus, and he always walked to work. He never even had a need for a car. They walked down Massachusetts Avenue to the west, then after a couple of blocks turned right to the residential quarter, where he was renting a small, fully furnished apartment.

"I made a copy." He whispered to Ashley's ear. "Last week, before I went to Florida. I have never been outside the office longer than two days before..."

"You dog!" She briefly stopped and looked at him with a sort of new look. "What about all those times I tried to talk to you about this?"

Two minutes later, they were standing in front of a small duplex house. Will typed a key sequence, and a moment later they were inside his small apartment. There was no hallway, and the front door opened directly into his living room with an attached kitchen with a long bar he always used as a replacement for his dining table. Two extra doors led the way to his bathroom and small bedroom. The living room was a place for a couch, a small square table, and a medium-sized television screen. He seldom spent time here except for sleeping, and he liked to keep all the things cozy and tidy to the extent of his understanding of coziness and tidiness.

But now the entire place was in a mess. All the things and furniture were turned upside down and messed up. They both needed little time to understand what happened and what was being searched for.

"Oh, no..." Will ran to the bedroom and found the same mess. The nightstand was opened, and both drawers were emptied.

Ashley entered the room and stood under the doorframe.

"I don't understand. Did you tell somebody about making a copy?"

"Of course not. No one knew. The only person I would tell was you, but you weren't here on Wednesday, so I thought it was safe..." He stopped in the middle of the sentence and looked at her.

"What?"

"Shit!"

It was utterly comical to hear that from him, and she couldn't help but smile. But the smile faded almost instantly as she realized what he must have thought.

"You mean..." She needed a moment to remember the name. The "ήτα" pronunciation of Greek letters came awkwardly when she said it. "Oh fuck. What kind of name is that anyway? Did you name him?"

"That's not important right now." He sat back on the bed. "This is worse than I thought..."

"What do you mean?"

"This is not a theft, Ashley."

She slowly put her hands on her mouth and sat on the bed next to him. Her eyes looked terrified as she looked back at him. She completed his thought almost silently.

"This is escape!"

Prologue « Chapters » To be continued
 

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/