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How Napoleon went from ‘cannibal’ to ‘Majesty’ in 20 days
Alexandre Dumas' famous anecdote about Fake News in the 1800s has a surprising twist
29 September, 2020
Napoleon's victory march to Paris, and the effect it had on Parisian headlines - mapped for the first time ever.
Image: Frank Jacobs & Carrie Osgood
- Unfazed by his first defeat, Napoleon swept back into power in 1815, going from exile to emperor within a single month.
- Parisian newspapers scrambled to adapt: at the start of that month, Napoleon was a 'cannibal'; at the end, 'His Majesty'.
- For the first time ever, this map illustrates the spatial dimension of that shift – but the anecdote, made famous by Dumas, has a twist.
Napoleon's return
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUwNzUyMC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTQyMTk2NH0.l0fMraZJdCs0DXT5PvMVGi59tQh48XyKzUDf-GsB7Lc/img.png?width=980" id="8590f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="582486983fc34779beeb1d20eacafe17" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Detail from \u2018D\u00e9barquement de Napol\u00e9on\u2019. Colored wood engraving by Fran\u00e7ois Georgin (1801-63). Print on paper." />1 March 1815: Napoleon lands at Golfe-Juan. Detail from 'Débarquement de Napoléon' by François Georgin.
<p>In French history, the period from 1 to 20 March 1815 is known as <em>Le Vol de l'Aigle</em>: the Flight of the Eagle. The Eagle, of course, is Napoleon – the diminutive Corsican whose political and military genius had propelled him to become Emperor of France, and conqueror of much of Europe.</p><p><span></span>But at the start of 1815, Napoleon's glory days were behind him. Defeated by a coalition of European powers, he had been exiled to Elba, a small island off the Italian coast. In France, the monarchy had been restored. On the throne sat a brother of the king who had been executed in 1789. It was almost as if the French Revolution – and the Napoleonic Wars – had never happened. </p><p><span></span>That state of affairs proved insufferable to Napoleon, who could not content himself with ruling over Elba. On 26 February, with a small band of loyal soldiers, he set sail for France in <em>L'Inconstant</em>, a brig disguised as a British ship. Just after noon on 1 March, Napoleon landed at Golfe-Juan. </p><p><span></span>Choosing a route north that avoided the Provence's most royalist regions, Napoleon and his army reached Grenoble in a mere six days. Having made it this far, Napoleon grew more confident of his gamble: "Before Grenoble, I was an adventurer. After Grenoble, I was a prince." Known today as the <em>Route Napoléon</em>, the once and future Emperor's fabled mountain road from the coast to Grenoble is fringed with gilded eagle statues.</p><p><span></span>As its quick advance proceeded north, the ranks of Napoleon's army swelled with defectors from the very same royalist forces sent to arrest him – often, these were veterans of Napoleon's battles across Europe, and their fierce loyalty to their old commander trumped their present duties in service of the king. In Lyon and many other towns, the streets were lined with crowds equally nostalgic for the heydays of Empire. </p><p><span></span>Riding a wave of popularity and speeding like lightning, Napoleon swept all before him. Without a single shot being fired, he reached Paris on 20 March. The king had fled the country. Napoleon was Emperor again… for just about 100 days. On 18 June, he suffered his final defeat at Waterloo. Four days later, he abdicated. On 8 July, Louis XVII regained his throne.</p><p>Following his failed comeback, recorded in Napoleonic lore as <em>Les Cent-Jours</em>, Napoleon was sent into exile again. This time to a much more isolated island: St Helena, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, where he would die in 1821. </p>"The ultimate monument to journalism"
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUwNzU1OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDk5NjA1MX0.nOCJaZiMApEHtLmroT8SICpovVDHKvU-_HO5rHH056I/img.jpg?width=980" id="8cb81" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a2a394f4f07c46dd8fb10bcbf67c6f0a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Photographic portrait from 1855 of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) by Gaspard-F\u00e9lix Tournachon, a.k.a. Nadar (1820-1910)." />In Une année à Florence (1841), Alexandre Dumas (pictured by Nadar in 1855) took a critical look at the attitudes of the Parisian press to Napoleon's return.
Image: public domain
<p>In 1841, Alexandre Dumas <em>père</em> published a travelogue called <em>Une année à Florence</em> ('A year in Florence'). It contained a reflection on the believability of newspaper headlines, based on the reports on Napoleon's return to power in the Paris-based newspaper <em>Moniteur Universel </em>in March 1815. </p><p><span></span>As the official journal of the French government, that paper was hostile to Napoleon, at least when he started his campaign. Dumas notes that the its attitude shifted as the deposed Emperor approached the seat of power: </p><p><span></span>"If you want to follow his victory march to Paris, you only have to consult the <em>Moniteur</em>. To guide our readers in this historical research, we will provide a rather curious sample. Step by step, it represents Napoleon's march towards Paris and shows the change his advance produces in the attitude of the newspaper."</p><p>Dumas then lists ten headlines which prove his point. Below are the original French headlines, plotted on the map are the English translations. For the first time ever, this map provides a spatial dimension to the shifting attitudes of the <em>Moniteur</em>. </p><ul><li><em>L'anthropophage est sorti de son repaire.</em></li><li><em>L'ogre de Corse vient de débarquer au golfe Juan.</em></li><li><em>Le tigre est arrivé à Gap. </em></li><li><em>Le monstre a couché à Grenoble. </em></li><li><em>Le tyran a traversé Lyon. </em></li><li><em>L'usurpateur a été vu à soixante lieues de la capitale. </em></li><li><em>Bonaparte s'avance à grands pas, mais il n'entrera jamais dans Paris. </em></li><li><em>Napoléon sera demain sous nos remparts. </em></li><li><em>L'empereur est arrivé à Fontainebleau.</em></li><li><em>Sa Majesté Impériale et Royale a fait hier son entrée en son château des Tuileries au milieu de ses fidèles sujets.</em></li></ul>Dumas concludes: "This is the ultimate monument to journalism. It need not do anything else, for it won't do anything better."When legend becomes fact
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0MDQwOC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTYxNDY3NH0.5MRM0RKVXTZLiwSc8UkRCjMHMR6RqBnOQykxHrUxH5M/img.png?width=980" id="22c7e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3b8d9a5201ab19c38bfab18c83aa73c0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="\u200bMap by Frank Jacobs & Carrie Osgood illustrating Napoleon's return to Paris, from 1 to 20 March 1815." />For the first time, a map that shows Napoleon's lightning march to retake power in Paris, and the headlines that accompanied him there.
Image: Frank Jacobs & Carrie Osgood
<p>The <em>Moniteur Universel</em> was known as <em>le journal de la pensée officielle</em>, i.e. the record of 'official thought'. Perhaps not so different to the 'mainstream media' of today. In fact, some have drawn parallels between the <em>Moniteur</em>'s initial dismissiveness of Napoleon's return, and the U.S. media's inability to comprehend Trump's march to victory in 2016. For that reason, and to illustrate the larger point that truth and journalism should not be mistaken for each other, the Dumas anecdote is regularly dusted off.<br></p><p><span></span>However, the story has another layer – and a two other important lessons about journalism. </p><p><span></span>Lesson number one: Check your sources. The entire run of the <em>Moniteur Universel</em> <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34452336z/date.item" target="_blank">can be consulted online</a> via the <a href="https://www.bnf.fr/fr" target="_blank">French National Library</a>, including the relevant daily editions from 1 to 20 March 1815. They do not contain the titles that Dumas uses. In fact, as the journal of record, the <em>Moniteur</em> mainly published decrees, statutes and ordinances – nothing quite as lurid as the headlines quoted by Dumas. </p><p>In <em>Les Cent-Jours: Légende et réalité</em> (1983), French historian George Blond after extensive research is forced to conclude that "although the Emperor was insulted and dismissed as an adventurer or evildoer in some newspaper commentaries, this legendary series of newspaper headlines never did exist."</p><p>Of course, that won't stop the Dumas anecdote from resurfacing. And that second lesson is perhaps the ultimate one this anecdote can teach us about journalism: that the media – mainstream or otherwise – can't resist a good story. In the words of newspaperman Maxwell Scott in the John Ford western <em>The Man who Shot Liberty Vallance</em>: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."</p><p><em><br></em></p><p><em>Many thanks to <a href="https://carrieosgood.com/" target="_blank">Carrie Osgood</a>, who produced the map to complement Alexandre Dumas' anecdote. </em><em>The map is available for purchase on her <a href="https://dataworldatlas.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">online store</a> in two versions, the <a href="https://dataworldatlas.com/posters.html#!/Napoleon-Map/p/239541152/category=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">basic map</a> (as shown above) and the <a href="https://dataworldatlas.com/posters.html#!/Napoleon-Map-&-Story/p/239559061/category=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">map with the story</a> (as shown below).</em><br></p><p><strong>Strange Maps #1050</strong></p><p><em>Got a strange map? Let me know at </em><a href="mailto:strangemaps@gmail.com">strangemaps@gmail.com</a><em>.</em><br></p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUwOTY4NC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODc4NzU3OX0.IfiW2IIdQ7_1wHxfvEZLqz_9cMIwA_M8kYuEFYNpufE/img.png?width=980" id="476ae" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8742b3f7d7a74e88f434d6a2ffa9f89b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
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Live on Monday: Does the US need one billion people?
What would happen if you tripled the US population? Matthew Yglesias and moderator Charles Duhigg explore the idea on Big Think Live.
28 September, 2020
Big Think LIVE
Is immigration key to bolstering the American economy? Could having one billion Americans secure the US's position as the global superpower?
<p>
Is immigration key to bolstering the American economy? Could having one billion Americans secure the US's position as
<em>the</em> global superpower? What if massive population growth could nourish rural economies and strengthen our country from the inside out? Perhaps these questions are provocative fodder for more debate and contention but, for Matthew Yglesias, asking them and arguing about them is part of the American way. Join him in a conversation moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg as they explore the case for one billion Americans.</p><h2></h2><h2>STREAMING LINKS<br>
<a href="https://youtu.be/FKaApFbTpx4" target="_blank">YouTube</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/posts/10157677011223527" target="_blank">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://edge.bigthink.com/live_streams/111" target="_blank">Big Think Edge</a></h2>
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Earth alienation: Hannah Arendt on outer space
This space expansionist ideology marked the beginning of what Arendt called "earth alienation."
29 September, 2020
Photo by Niketh Vellanki on Unsplash
On Wednesday 30th May, billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX company launched its first human passengers into orbit from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, opening a door to the commercialization of space.
<p> With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, and the SpaceX-manufactured manned orbital rocket, this was the first time that a private firm had carried humans into space orbit. For Musk, it was "a dream come true", as he took a small step towards his ultimate goal: the colonization of Mars. But he is not alone, soon the billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson will follow suit with their respective commercial space exploration companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Orbit.</p><p>When the erstwhile USSR launched Sputnik into space in 1957, it was the first time that "an earth-born object made by man was launched into the universe." Those were the times of the Cold War and the 'space race', with both the Soviet Union and the United States seeking to gain a technological edge over each other. This space expansionist ideology initiated by the two great powers of the era marked the beginning of what Hannah Arendt called "earth alienation".</p><p>In 1963, soon after the first human expeditions to space and amid NASA's plans to launch the Apollo 11 lunar mission, Hannah Arendt participated in the contest "Symposium on Space", organized by <em>The Great Ideas Today</em>. She was asked whether "Man's conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?" "The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man" was the essay that she published as a consequence of that contest. It was later included in the second edition of her book <em>Between Past and Future </em>(1961). The essay stemmed from and resonated with the prologue and the latter part of her book <em>The Human Condition </em>(1958). In both of these works, she writes of how science had transformed what it meant to be a human in the modern world. Arendt believed that technology was moving us away from communal participation in society; that it was uprooting the masses as it advanced individualism and execrated interdependence, pushing more and more people into the dungeon of loneliness. Ultimately, in her eyes, science was creating a type of human being who finds satisfaction merely in labour and consumption.</p>
<p>The essay thus begins with the question of whether man's conquest of space had increased or diminished his stature. The seemingly obvious answer would be that it had increased his stature, but Arendt did not subscribe to this popular notion. To her, if we went to space and began to control the heavens in the sky and the humans on the Earth, then we would simply become another entity; from "subjects" of the Earth we would become "objects" of the Earth, and cease to be the great, dignified human beings we are now. If we began to understand ourselves not as human beings on Earth but cosmically, we would get smaller.</p><p>Arendt believed that science is antithetical to anthropocentrism and humanism, and that it has taken us away from earthly, sensible reason. As she writes in her essay: "It has been the glory of modern science that it has been able to emancipate itself completely from all such humanistic concerns." What we learn from science is a truth that is not apparent in the world of sensory experience and "only by renouncing the explanation of life in the ordinary science" do we get to learn the scientific truth. It teaches us to deeply question our ability to have a common-sense view of the world, in which we can trust our senses.</p><p>Arendt was deeply frustrated by the idea of human departure from Earth into space. In <em>The Human Condition</em> (1958), she writes: "At the same time, we have begun to populate the space surrounding the earth with man-made stars, creating as it were, in the form of satellites, new heavenly bodies, and we hope that in a not very distant future we shall be able to perform what times before us regarded as the greatest, the deepest, and holiest secret of nature, to create or re-create the miracle of life. I use the word 'create' deliberately, to indicate that we are actually doing what all ages before ours thought to be the exclusive prerogative of divine action." Here, she sought to convey that the science used by men to change or manipulate our understanding and improve our world had now reached a breaking point in which universal sciences were remaking our world as artificial on the principles of not only physics but also political and anthropological sciences, which were designed to create a man-made world instead of one created by God.</p>
<h3>The human condition</h3><p>Arendt called the Sputnik launch the most important event of the modern era, because it represented the ability of mankind to leave and flee the Earth. This desire to flee the Earth has been central to the human condition for millennia: "The most radical change in the human condition we can imagine would be an emigration of men from the earth to some other planet. Such an event, no longer totally impossible, would imply that man would have to live under man-made conditions, radically different from those the earth offers him."</p><p>At the core of her argument, Arendt suggests that "the earth is the very quintessence of the human condition". If we, humans, were to be uprooted from Earth, it would create an alienation from that same Earth, having its roots in the development of science and technology. The advancement of science into outer space exploration would transform life itself, which was not artificial and yet, for some time now, we had been trying to make artificial. "Great many scientific endeavours have been directed toward making life also 'artificial' toward cutting the last tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature."</p><p>Due to this, man "seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence" in wanting to remake everything that is not "good enough". Arendt writes that humanity has a "desire to become immortal", to live longer and faster in a way that would surpass biological processes; from a contemporary perspective, what we might understand as digitizing our bodies. The ultimate goal of this is to find another planet and settle there. But she continues that even if humans migrate from Earth to any other planet, it would still be an artificial one because it would be completely designed and created <em>by humans</em>. There would be no idea of "fate" because humans would be able to control everything. In that way, they would destroy natural processes, and be able to avert every natural thing they disliked. For Arendt, the artificial is not only something that is created by man, but something that is in man's control rather than God's. In living in such an artificial environment, humans would be treated as "objects", having less humanity and distinction; abandoning our earthliness. Arendt terms this the "loss of stature of man".</p>
<h3>Finding the Archimedean point</h3><p>Archimedes once said that if he had a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, he would shift the Earth from its position. In <em>The Human Condition</em>, Arendt quotes Kafka: "[Man] found the Archimedean point, but he used it against himself; it seems that he was permitted to find it only under this condition." Science may well have found such a point for us – a point from which we could think ourselves off the Earth to such an extent that we could look at the Earth not as our home but as some mechanical object; such that we could look at it from above by separating ourselves from it and making ourselves not those who are fated to live on Earth, but those who can create a new Earth.</p><p>Arendt further explains this in her essay "The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man" (1961): "The human brain which supposedly does our thinking is as terrestrial, earthbound, as any other part of the human body. It was precisely by abstracting from these terrestrial conditions, by appealing to a power of imagination and abstraction which would, as it were, lift the human mind out of the gravitational field of the earth and look down upon her from some point in the universe."</p><p>The human brain is indeed earthly, yet science has allowed us to think from the Archimedean point. A point at which we could, in a sense, think from so far outside the Earth that we could remake it and see the Earth simply as something to be understood, not as a home but an "objective reality". If we apply this Archimedean point to ourselves, then our activities appear as no more than overt behaviour and we begin to study ourselves "with the same methods we use to study the behavior of rats."</p>
<h3>Earth alienation</h3><p>Arendt mentions that man has two competing parts. On the one hand, he is earthly, i.e. he is born into the world, and deals with fate and fortune, and with those things that are beyond his control. On the other hand, he is an artificer, one who can remake the world as he wills. This ability is the core of human freedom. We are not entirely free to make the world as we will, since it is natural, but we can in some sense make our world. In <em>The Human Condition</em>, Arendt queries what happens when we increasingly acquire the scientific and technological ability to remake not only parts of the world but the entire world; when we can create new planets, when we can clone, grow and design human beings who are made with human intent. What happens to human freedom in such a world?</p><p>Arendt answers that we face something called 'Earth alienation' – flight from the Earth to the universe. Its roots were crystallized when Galileo recorded the first astronomical observations using a telescope. As the weekly publication of the Hannah Arendt Center, <em>Amor Mundi</em>, explains in its editorial essay <em>Human Being in an Inhuman Age</em>: "Earth alienation is experienced when mankind succeeds in making all things on the earth (including the earth and mankind himself) subject to human mastery and control. When all human beings and human events can be made and remade by human invention, we humans will have fulfilled our rebellion against our fateful birth on this planet. In this sense, earth alienation challenges the quintessential human condition of being earthbound."</p><p>The scientific revolution increased our knowledge by giving us information about things we didn't have before. It taught us to distrust our senses and, in doing so, we started to think that universal science was more real than the things we encounter solely with our senses in our immediate world. We realized that we have never encountered reality and "instead of objective qualities, in other words, we find instruments, and instead of nature or the universe – in the words of Heisenberg – man encounters only himself."</p>
<h3>"Expansion is everything"</h3><p>The second part of Arendt's <em>The Origins of Totalitarianism </em>starts off with an epigraph by Cecil Rhodes, an English imperialist who exploited South African slaves and monopolized the diamond business in Africa. Arendt writes: "He had discovered the moving principle of the new imperialist era [that] expansion is everything." Rhodes famously claimed that "I would annex the planets if I could." As Rosa Luxemburg and others have suggested, imperialism is central to capitalism, because capitalists always need a downtrodden class as their subordinates whom they can oppress and exploit to keep capitalism growing – as Rhodes did in South Africa.</p><p>In his essay "The Case Against Mars", Byron Williston, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, writes: "The simple idea is that expansion is the next step in evolution and that we ought to push it forward." Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires have their intellectual forefather in Cecil Rhodes. They are implementing a new wave of expansion where they do not have to conform to political or economic quandaries. Rhodes only <em>talked </em>about annexing the stars, but Elon Musk is actually realizing it. This new imperialism, which aims to colonize space and the planets, would monopolize its targets even before they are inhabited. Evidently, after having destroyed the Earth's resources to the point where they will make the Earth uninhabitable, the rich will merely move to another planet, leaving the rest of us at the mercy of their destruction.</p><p>If this happens, it will be because the wealthy elite have masqueraded their commercial interests as technological advancement, thereby luring us into dreaming the unimaginable. While such cosmic fantasies are easy to indulge, it is worth heeding Arendt's essay, so that we might avoid a situation of blind belief; where we "failed to think".</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/science/earth-alienation-shoaib-shafi" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Landau Genius Scale ranking of the smartest physicists ever
How Nobel Prize winner physicist Lev Landau ranked the best physics minds of his generation.
28 September, 2020
5th International Scientific Congress of Solvay L to r, 3rd row: A.Piccard, E.Henriot, P.Ehrenfest, E.Herzen, T.de Donder,T. Schrodinger, E.Verschaffelt, W.Pauli,, W.Heisenberg, R.H.Fowler, L.Brillouin, 2nd row: .Debye, M.Knudsen, W.L.Bragg, H.A.Kramers, P.A.MDirac, A.H.Compton, L.deBroglie, M.Born, N.Bohr, 1st row: I.Langmuir, M.Planck, Mrs.Curie, H.A.Lorentz, A. Einstein, P.Langevin, C.E.Guye, C.TR.Wilson, O.W.Richardson.
Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
- Nobel-Prize-winning Soviet physicist Lev Landau used a scale to rank the best physicists of the 20th century.
- The physicist based it on their level of contribution to science.
- The scale was logarithmic, with each level being 10 times more valuable.
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
<p><strong></strong><strong>Lev Landau</strong> (1908-1968) was one of Soviet Union's best physicists. He made contributions to nuclear theory, quantum field theory, and astrophysics, among others. In 1962, he won a Nobel Prize in Physics f<span style="background-color: initial;">or developing the mathematical theory of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluidity" target="_blank">superfluidity</a></span><span style="background-color: initial;">. </span>Landau also wrote an immensely influential textbook on physics, teaching generations of scientists.</p><p>A brilliant mind, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau" target="_blank">Landau</a> liked to classify everything in his life. He ranked people by their intelligence, beauty (he had a penchant for blondes), contributions to science, how they dressed, and even how they talked – often with a healthy dose of sarcasm. </p><p>One of the most famous of Landau's classifications that has been passed down is his ranking of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. Of course, it wouldn't have later physicists, as he died in 1968, but these are arguably the most significant names.</p><p>This scale is logarithmic, meaning people ranked as rank 1 contributed ten times more (according to Landau) than people ranked as class 2, and so forth. In other words, the higher the number, the less valuable the physicist. </p>
<p>Here's how this scale broke down:</p><p><strong>Rank 0.5 – Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)</strong></p><p>Einstein, the creator of the Theory of General Relativity, is in a class of his own. Landau thought he was by far the greatest mind among a very impressive group that redefined modern physics. </p><p>Landau added, however, that if the list was to be expanded to scientists of the previous centuries, <strong>Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727),</strong> the titan of classical physics, would also join Einstein at first place with 0.5.</p>
Rank 0.5 – Albert Einstein
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NDY3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjI2NTU4OH0.FtBYC7oJz-ZOiiGC9y0Z50_JvQChmp-ONa3jhR3SuLA/img.jpg?width=980" id="d6f66" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="61288810a4f035ec2af8957fad4e9015" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Albert Einstein With Displaced Children From Concentration Camps. 1949.
Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Rank 1
<p>The group in this class of the smartest physicists included the top minds that developed the theories of quantum mechanics.</p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg" target="_blank">Werner Heisenberg</a> (1901 - 1976) - a German theoretical physicist, who's achieved pop-culture fame by being the name of Walter White's alter ego in <em>Breaking Bad</em>. He is known for the Heiseinberg Uncertainty Principle and his 1932 Nobel Prize award flatly states it was for nothing less than "the creation of quantum mechanics".</p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger" target="_blank">Erwin Schrödinger</a> (1887 - 1961) - an Austrian-Irish physicist who gave us the infamous "Schroedinger's Cat" thought experiment and other mind-benders from quantum mechanics. The Nobel-prize-winner's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Schrödinger equation</a> calculates the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function" target="_blank">wave function</a> of a system and how it changes over time. </p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NDY3OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODMzNDgzN30.-PEYwz68ryekyo51biKAgbRKqsEviFrdPk2iixV_0KI/img.jpg?width=980" id="13774" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4d39501a6c01320632a3788eb4fccc1e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Erwin Schrödinger. 1933.
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac" target="_blank">Paul Dirac</a> (1902 - 1984) - another quantum mechanics giant, this English theoretical physicist shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with Erwin </span><span style="background-color: initial;">Schrödinger </span><span style="background-color: initial;">"for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."</span></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr" target="_blank">Niels Bohr</a> (1885 - 1962) - a Danish physicist who made founder-level additions to what we know of atomic structure and quantum theory, which led to his 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics. </p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose" target="_blank">Satyendra Nath Bose</a> (1894 - 1974) - an Indian mathematician and physicist, known for his quantum mechanics work. He collaborated with Einstein to develop the Bose-Einstein statistics and the theory of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bose–Einstein condensate</a>. <em>Boson</em> particles are named after him.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NDY4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTc4MTMyNn0.tHuEhHnJOeqkVhmUCveERTjuLzWQ1wVfH__bNfocWYc/img.jpg?width=980" id="d5001" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2beeac054ddf6d789300cd25ed19cec9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Satyendra Nath Bose. 1930s.
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Wigner" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eugene Wigner</a> (1902 - 1995) - a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who received the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles. Famously, he took part in the meeting with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein that led to them writing a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Szilard_letter" target="_blank">letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt</a> which resulted in the creation of the Manhattan Project.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Broglie" target="_blank">Louis de Broglie</a> (1892 - 1987) - a French theorist who made key contributions to quantum theory. He proposed the wave nature of electrons, suggesting that all matter has wave properties – an example of the concept of wave-particle duality, central to the theory of quantum mechanics. </p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi" target="_blank">Enrico Fermi </a>(1901 - 1954) - an American physicist who's been called the "architect of the nuclear age" as well as the "architect of the Atomic bomb". He also created the world's first nuclear reactor and won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on induced radioactivity and for discovering transuranium elements. </p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NDY4Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjU5Nzg1NH0.2idHvEOr1t-jbfswJJJGUgyANYwLHwCWKWyMVDHYMDA/img.jpg?width=980" id="6aeb9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a8a421bdd02f230e32b4757be540359f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Enrico Fermi. 1950s.
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli" target="_blank">Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) </a>- an Austrian theoretical theorist, known as one of the pioneers of quantum physics. He won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering </span><span style="background-color: initial;">a new law of nature – the exclusion principle (aka the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle" target="_blank">Pauli principle</a>) and developing spin theory.</span></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck" target="_blank">Max Planck</a> (1858-1947) - a German theoretical physicist who won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics for energy quanta. He was the originator of quantum theory, the physics of atomic and subatomic processes. </p>
Rank 2.5
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NDcwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDE1MDIxM30.Eg6tca61EredHxjqNH29HY3UeJbgBVa1nA13EhXTooU/img.jpg?width=980" id="90f86" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0f1e6c5e13263a77b2061e1191fd8baf" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Lev Landau. 1962.
<p><strong>Rank 2.5</strong> is where Landau initially ranked himself, rather modestly, thinking he didn't produce any foundational accomplishments. He later moved his prominence, as his achievement mounted, to the higher <strong>1.5.</strong></p>
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Universe works like a cosmological neural network, argues new paper
Controversial physics theory says reality around us behaves like a computer neural network.
27 September, 2020
Synapses in space.
Credit: sakkmesterke
Surprising Science
- Physicist proposes that the universe behaves like an artificial neural network.
- The scientist's new paper seeks to reconcile classical physics and quantum mechanics.
- The theory claims that natural selection produces both atoms and "observers".
<p>Does the reality around us work like a neural network, a Matrix-like computer system that operates similar to a human brain? A new physics paper argues that looking at the universe that way can provide the elusive "theory of everything".</p><p>This controversial proposal is the brainchild of the University of Minnesota Duluth physics professor Vitaly Vanchurin. In an interview with <a href="https://futurism.com/physicist-entire-universe-neural-network" target="_blank"><em>Futurism</em></a>, Vanchurin conceded that "the idea is definitely crazy, but if it is crazy enough to be true?"</p><p>The scientist developed the theory while <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09280" target="_blank">exploring</a> the workings of machine learning using statistical mechanics. He found that mechanisms involved in the computer learning were similar in some instances to the dynamics of quantum mechanics. </p>
<p>A computer neural network works via <em>nodes</em>, which mimic biological neurons, processing and passing on signals. As the network learns new information, it changes, giving certain nodes more priority, allowing it to connect bits of information in such a way that next time in will know, for example, what are they key traits of a "zebra".</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We are not just saying that the artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing physical systems or for discovering physical laws, we are saying that this is how the world around us actually works," writes Vanchurin in the paper. "With this respect it could be considered as a proposal for the theory of everything, and as such it should be easy to prove it wrong."</p><p>How do you prove his theory wrong? Vanchurin proposes a way. All you have to do is "find a phenomenon which cannot be modeled with a neural network." That, of course, isn't actually so easy to pull off, as Vanchurin himself points out. We don't fully understand how neural network and machine learning work and need to grasp those processes first. </p>
Vanchurin interview:
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="539759cbfd8fcd5b6ebf14a3b597b3f9"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bmyRy2-UhEE?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Vanchurin thinks his idea can accomplish another purpose that has been the goal of modern physics – to reconcile classical physics, which describes how the universe works on a large scale, and quantum mechanics, the study of the atomic and subatomic level of existence. The physicist thinks that if you view the universe as working essentially as a neural network, its behavior under certain conditions can be explained by both the quirky equations of quantum mechanics and the laws of classical physics like the theory of general relativity devised by Albert Einstein. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The learning dynamics of a neural network can indeed exhibit approximate behaviors described by both quantum mechanics and general relativity," writes Vanchurin in his study. </p><p>Diving deeper into his theory, Vanchurin thinks it supports such apparent mechanisms of our world as <em>natural selection</em>. He suggests that in a neural network, particles and atoms, but even us, the "observers" would emerge from a natural-selection-like process. On the microscopic level of the network, some structures would become more stable while some would be less so. The stable ones would survive the evolutionary process, while the less stable ones would not.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">'On the smallest scales I expect that the natural selection should produce some very low complexity structures such as chains of neurons, but on larger scales the structures would be more complicated," he shared with <a href="https://futurism.com/physicist-entire-universe-neural-network" target="_blank">Futurism</a>.</p><p>He sees little reason why this kind of process would only work on just the small scale, writing in the paper:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If correct, then what we now call atoms and particles might actually be the outcomes of a long evolution starting from some very low complexity structures and what we now call macroscopic observers and biological cells might be the outcome of an even longer evolution."</p><p>While he posits the neural network explanation, Vanchurin doesn't necessarily mean we all live in a computer simulation, like <a href="https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/are-we-living-in-a-simulation" target="_blank">proposed</a> by philosopher Nick Bostrom, <a href="https://futurism.com/boson-stars-black-holes-invisible-stars" target="_blank">adding the caveat</a> that even if we did, "we might never know the difference."</p><p>Vanchurin's idea has so far been received with skepticism by other physicists but he is undeterred. You can check out his paper for yourself on <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01540" target="_blank">ArXiv</a>.</p>
Vanchurin on “Hidden Phenomena”:
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="18886ffd5e5840bb19d4494212f88d82"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2NDVdNwsHCo?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Vitaly Vanchurin speaking at the 6th International FQXi Conference, "Mind Matters: Intelligence and Agency in the Physical World." The Foundational Questions...
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We studied what happens when guys add their cats to their dating app profiles
43% of people think they can get a sense of someone's personality by their picture.
27 September, 2020
Photo by Luigi Pozzoli on Unsplash
Sex & Relationships
If you've used a dating app, you'll know the importance of choosing good profile pics.
<p>These photos don't just relay attractiveness; a recent study suggested that <a href="https://www.diyphotography.net/interesting-survey-shows-just-how-important-photos-are-in-online-dating/">43% of people</a> think they can get a sense of someone's personality by their picture. You might guess that someone who has included a photo of themselves hiking is an outdoorsy type of person. </p><p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q3FOUqcAAAAJ&hl=en">But as scientists</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8JxdDd8AAAAJ&hl=en">who study human-animal interactions</a>, we wanted to know what this meant for pet owners – in particular, male cat owners. </p><p>If you're a guy who owns a cat, what kind of effect does it have on suitors if you post a picture posing with your favorite feline?</p>
<p>Prior studies suggested that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2015.1064216" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">women do judge a potential male partner based on whether he has pets</a>. While they favor men with dogs, the results showed that they also give men with cats an edge over non-pet owners.</p><p>Because of this, we reasoned that men pictured with cats would probably be viewed as more attractive and desirable than men who didn't pose with any animals.</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10061007" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">In our study</a>, we recruited 1,388 heterosexual American women from 18 to 24 years old to take a short anonymous online survey. In the survey, we presented them with photos of one of two young white men in their early 20s either posing alone or with a cat. To avoid biasing the women's responses, we randomly presented which photo they saw first. Each participant only rated one man, with and without a cat.</p><p>Each time the participants saw a photo, we asked them to rate the man pictured on several personality attributes, including his masculinity, femininity and dateability. We also asked the women if they defined themselves as a "cat person," "dog person," "neither" or "both."</p>
<p>Most of the women found the men holding cats to be less dateable. This result surprised us, since previous studies had shown that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/175303708X371564" target="_blank">women found men with pets to have higher potential as partners</a>. They also thought the men holding cats were less extroverted and more neurotic, agreeable and open. Importantly, they saw these men as less masculine, too.</p><p>This last point may explain our findings.</p><p>Prior research suggests that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29775193?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents" target="_blank">women often seek masculine men</a> – both in terms of physical appearance and behaviors. So the fact that women in our study found the photo of the man alone more masculine and more dateable supports the idea that women are likely to look first for clues related to masculinity when determining dateability.</p><p>We suspect old cultural norms may be playing a role in the responses. Past research suggests that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000034" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">male femininity and homosexuality are still perceived to be connected</a>. Since cats are sometimes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.1998.11425085" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">associated more closely with female owners</a> – and therefore, considered a feminine pet – posing with cats may have primed the women taking our survey to default to this outdated trope, despite <a href="https://www.bustle.com/articles/79524-10-reasons-to-date-a-man-who-owns-a-cat-because-it-actually-makes-him-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">some popular media efforts</a> to elevate the status of male cat owners.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the perception of male cat owners as less extroverted and more neurotic, agreeable and open may have nudged our respondents to put these men in the "friend zone." In other words, perhaps seeing a man pose with the cat suggests he might be a better confidant than date.</p><p>It's important to note that whether the women identified themselves as "cat people," "dog people," "both" or "neither" affected their perceptions. Women who self-identified as "cat people" were more inclined to view the men pictured with cats as more dateable or say they had no preference.</p><p>Of course, like any research, our work has its limitations. Our sample is a very specific population – heterosexual, primarily white women, aged 18 to 24 years and living in the United States. We don't know how these results would change if we surveyed, say, bisexual or gender-fluid women, men interested in men or individuals from different cultural backgrounds.</p><p>And that's the best part. This is a new, growing area of research, and it's only one of a handful of potential studies on the relationship between pet ownership and first impressions on dating apps. This means we have our work cut out for us.</p><p>But in the meantime, if heterosexual men are looking to get a match, it's probably a good idea if they save showing off their photos with their favorite felines for the first or second date.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144999/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation"></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lori-kogan-1026738" target="_blank">Lori Kogan</a>, Professor of Clinical Sciences, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/colorado-state-university-1267" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Colorado State University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/shelly-volsche-1063004" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Shelly Volsche</a>, Lecturer, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/boise-state-university-1983" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Boise State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-studied-what-happens-when-guys-add-their-cats-to-their-dating-app-profiles-144999" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Ultracold gas exhibits bizarre quantum behavior
New experiments find weird quantum activity in supercold gas.
26 September, 2020
Credit: Pixabay
Surprising Science
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
<p>Experiments by California physicists revealed "bizarre" behavior in an ultracold gas. The results promise innovations in quantum engineering and a connection between classical physics and quantum mechanics.</p><p>The scientists used lasers to set up an optical trap for lithium atoms. As they were held in a lattice formation, pulses of energy shook up the system and made the atoms exhibit truly unusual quantum activities.</p><p>The research was carried out by UC Santa Barbara undergraduate student Alec Cao, who was the lead author of the paper, and his colleagues in professor David Weld's <a href="https://www.physics.ucsb.edu/people/david-weld" target="_blank">Atomic Physics group.</a></p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">The scientist's lab specializes in creating <strong>"artificial solids,"</strong> described as "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">low-dimensional lattices of light and ultracold atoms" by the university's <a href="https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/020020/quantum-shake" target="_blank">press release.</a> These solids can simulate how quantum particles would behave in dense solids that are subjected to repeating force. The experiments go back to the work of the Nobel laureate physicist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Bloch" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Felix Bloch</a> for the underpinning. Bloch predicted that if you apply constant force to a quantum particle in a periodic quantum structure, it will start oscillating.</span></p><p>Despite Bloch's theoretical prediction, actual observation of such oscillations didn't happen <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.213201" target="_blank">until 2018</a>, also by Weld's group. </p><p>In the new experiment, they changed laser intensities and outside magnetic forces, creating time dependency and curving the lattice. This established a force field leading to slow oscillations that "gave us the opportunity to look at what happens when you have a Bloch oscillating system in an inhomogenous environment," explained Weld.</p>
Quantum Mechanics, Onions, and a Theory of Everything
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="036ae7b8dd661df2d125a3421a0299ba"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bcVruA0AJ-o?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>And what happened was quite unexpected, according to the researchers. The atoms were shooting back and forth, moving further apart at various intervals, and even created patterns in reaction to the energy pulses.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It was a bit bizarre," explained Weld. "Atoms would get pumped in one direction. Sometimes they would get pumped in another direction. Sometimes they would tear apart and make these structures that looked like DNA."</p><p>To explain what they were seeing, the scientists applied <a href="http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/weeks/research/tseries7.html" target="_blank">Poincaré sections</a> - a mathematical technique developed for classical physics. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"In our experiment, a time interval is set by how we periodically modify the lattice in time," said Cao. "When we chucked out all the 'in-between' times and looked at the behavior once every period, structure and beauty emerged in the shapes of the trajectories because we were properly respecting the symmetry of the physical system." </p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Professor Weld pointed out that Alec understood that these paths could tell precisely "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">why in some regimes of driving the atoms get pumped, while in other regimes of driving the atoms spread out and break up the wave function."</span></p><p>The research may have applications in topological quantum computing as well as advancing knowledge of how quantum chaos appears, explaining such phenomena as the butterfly effect. </p><p>Check out the new study in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.032032" target="_blank">Physical Review Research.</a></p>
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