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Everything about life in the USA 🇺🇸 Buy ads: https://telega.io/c/american @Source_Ads ↪️ Feedback : @cobbl
Three years ago, David and Cathy Thayer moved from northern Idaho to Cayo, Belize. In Idaho, the Thayers had nine months of winter each year. In Cayo, they have 12 months of summertime.
Despite the promise of eternal summer, Cathy did not immediately embrace the prospect of packing up and leaving her U.S. life behind. "When David first got this idea of moving to another country into his head, I humored him," Cathy says. "He'd start talking about moving to a new country, and I'd listen. To his face I'd say, 'Ah, that's interesting, dear.' To everyone else I was saying, 'No way!'"
When her husband came to her with the notion that the couple retire overseas, Cathy hadn't traveled anywhere other than Paris. When David told her he'd bought tickets for them to travel to Belize, she was shocked. "I didn't know anything about Belize at the time, but I knew one thing," she says. "I knew that Central America is nothing like Paris."
However, David realized that if he had any chance of realizing his dream of life in a new country, he needed to get his wife on board. Reluctantly, Cathy agreed to take the trip. "I agreed to travel to Belize because I told myself it'd be a nice vacation. That was the extent of my commitment at first," she says. "However, I have to admit that I found I liked two things about Belize right away. First, I could communicate with everyone, because English is the language here. And, second, it was warm."
Initially, the couple thought they wanted to live on the ocean. But, after two days on Ambergris Caye, one of the Caribbean islands offshore from mainland Belize, David and Cathy realized the beach life wasn't for them.
David suggested they take a look at Cayo as an alternative. "I'm not a jungle girl," Cathy says. "When I think of jungle, I think of snakes and bugs the size of your head." However, she agreed to go see Cayo with David with the condition that if they didn't find a place to live that they both liked within three weeks they would finally give up on the whole idea.
Their last day in Cayo, the day before their return flight to the U.S., David and Cathy walked into a house available for rent, and Cathy knew she'd found the place where she wanted to live. "I knew the minute I walked onto the property," she says. "I could just see myself living there."
The couple has been living in Cayo ever since. Today, Cathy is as enthusiastic about their decision to make the move as her husband. "One of my favorite things about being in Belize are the other expats," Cathy says. "We're all different, quirky in our own ways, but we have one big, important thing in common. We all left home, left the States, to come somewhere completely new. It's no small thing. It's a pretty amazing and cool thing."
"Back in Idaho, I had a fine life, but a small life. I had my work, my home. I had Target. I shopped for entertainment. I was happy, but I had no idea how much I was missing out on," Cathy says. "Making this move has opened up the whole world to me. Now I see how small and fearful my perfectly fine life really was. I was afraid of moving outside my comfort zone, but I didn't even realize it. I made this move for my husband, but I think I'm the one who has really benefited."
Of course, the past three years reinventing their lives from Idaho to Belize have not been without struggle for the Thayers. The two biggest challenges at first were the internet and the roads. However, the couple reports that both of these things have improved dramatically since they've been living in Cayo.
The biggest change for the better has been personal. "The fears I had moving here have been replaced by confidence," Cathy says. "In the beginning, I was afraid of Belize City. Now I travel to Belize City on my own, walk around, shop, speak with people I meet. Belize City doesn't scare me anymore.
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What are the older population of the US up to nowadays? Where do they live and what do they do in their retirement years?
The population is aging rapidly as the baby boomers begin to enter the retirement years. The median age of U.S. residents grew from 35.3 years in 2000 to 37.2 years in 2010, according to recently released Census Bureau data. In some communities, more than half of the population is over age 40.
"The aging of the baby boom population is contributing to the increase in the median age," says Lindsay Howden, a Census Bureau statistician and co-author of the report. "Other contributing factors are improvements in mortality and a stable birth rate."
Those on the verge of retirement make up the country's fastest-growing group of people. There are now 81.5 million Americans between ages 45 and 64, up 32 percent since 2000. The proportion of people age 65 and older climbed 15 percent to 40.3 million. By contrast, the number of people under age 18 has grown just 3 percent since the beginning of the decade, to 74.2 million.
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4. The health system as a whole. The U.S. government and other donors are finally recognizing and addressing health systems as whole, complex entities, rather than reducing them to series of disease-specific services. There’s even a first-of-its-kind bill pending in the U.S. Congress devoted to strengthening health systems as part of foreign aid, and global health security and planning is becoming a greater priority for the U.S. and the global community.
3. Politics and power shifts. The stakes are high for global health and development during any U.S. presidential election year, and this one will be no different. The U.S. is slated to contribute $37.9 billion in foreign aid during fiscal year 2016. But changes in the White House determine development policies and funding, and certain public health topics become highly politicized targets (reproductive health and family planning come to mind). For all countries – rich or poor – powerful data and up-to-date information are crucial when it comes to advocating for health investments.
2. The enduring wealth gap. Globally, the percentage of people living at or below $1.90 per day dropped from 44 percent in 1981 to 12.7 percent in 2012. Despite this remarkable progress, the wealth gap is growing. New Oxfam research indicates that the world’s 62 richest billionaires possess as much wealth as the 3.65 billion people who make up the poorer half of the human population. This inequality goes beyond wealth disparities; it means health disparities as well, as the poor are more likely to suffer chronic health problems, more likely to fall into financial hardships because of health costs, and less likely to have access to health care.
1. There are more than 59.5 million refugees today. That’s more than at any time in human history, even at the end of World War II. The movement of people – not just of those exiting Syria, but of all who are on the move worldwide – has huge implications for health systems around the world. The challenges of providing care to so many who’ve been displaced are staggering. And what about the families and friends they’ve left behind? Any mass exodus is sure to include skilled health workers, particularly as they and their facilities are common targets during wartime. And when health workers are forced to flee, their home towns are left without care. As the numbers shift in 2017, we’ll see the true public health implications of such a massive population of vulnerable human beings.
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GLOBAL HEALTH
The persistent wealth gap worldwide is growing. Some global health threats take us by surprise, sparking fires we never expected to fight. Take Ebola, for instance – the world couldn’t have foreseen the 2014 outbreak, particularly in West Africa, which had never before experienced it. Other fires, though, have been smoldering quietly for decades, and are now building strength and becoming difficult to contain.
What many global development organizations do this year and how we do it:
10. Ebola’s unprecedented survivors. Never before have there been so many survivors of the virus. Survival, it turns out, is both a boon and a burden – many now face a lifetime of social exile and chronic health problems. Ebola survivors will present new health-care challenges in 2017 as health workers learn to care for their unique needs.
9. Mental health for trauma survivors. In 2016, the mental health consequences of war, displacement, Ebola, gender-based violence, natural disasters and other traumas will become more and more apparent. Today’s global health workforce isn’t ready for these challenges – there are too few social service workers and others trained to provide complex, specialized mental health care, and far too few are based where the need is greatest. In fact, there just aren’t enough health workers right now to go around – period.
8. A reversal in the health worker shortage. According to the World Health Organization, there’s a global shortage of 7.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives. As we begin the first full year of our new Sustainable Development Goals, more countries will be working toward universal health coverage and to meet their health-related targets through stronger, more equitably distributed health workforces that include community health workers, widespread access to technology and a health team approach to bringing care to those in need. And for the first time ever, there'll be a global strategy to achieve it.
7. Air pollution. A study last year linked air pollution to 6 million deaths per year in China. Last month, Beijing issued its first red alert for smog. And smoking, which contributes to poor air quality, continues to rise in China, where it may cause about 20 percent of all adult male deaths during this decade. But air pollution is even worse in the United Arab Emirates, where the air contains 80 micrograms of pollutants per cubic meter, compared to China’s 73 and India’s 32. Health workers and systems around the world should be preparing for a rise in respiratory and other related health troubles.
6. Emerging and waning health threats. Polio and HIV are two of the most devastating diseases of our time – but they’re waning or, in the case of polio, on the verge of eradication. At the same time, Zika virus, Ebola flare-ups and other unexpected threats will make headlines in 2017, and pose challenges to global health security. For many health systems around the world, these dangers are already in the back yard.
5. Climate change. More extreme weather and rising sea levels, temperatures, and carbon dioxide levels could usher in a wide array of human health effects, the CDC warns – from asthma to chikungunya to mental illness. Will countries begin to make progress in curbing carbon emissions after the Paris climate accord of 2016? Or will the commitments made there fall by the wayside? And will progress come in time to protect the most vulnerable countries, such as the low-lying Marshall Islands, which are already disappearing as sea levels rise?
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Global Health: According to the World Health Organization, there’s a global shortage of 7.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives.
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare
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The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole. Since 1906, the global average surface temperature has increased between 1.1 and 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius)–even more in sensitive polar regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future–signs of the effects of global warming are appearing right now.
The heat is melting glaciers and sea ice, shifting precipitation patterns, and setting animals on the move.
The planet is already suffering from some impacts of global warming.
Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
Many species have been impacted by rising temperatures. For example, researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
The sea level has been rising more quickly over the last century.
Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
Some invasive species are thriving. For example, spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.
GLOBAL WARMING could do more than just melt polar ice. It could change our maps, and displace people from cities and tropical islands.
Other effects could take place later this century, if warming continues.
Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia, where droughts are already common, could decline by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
Less fresh water will be available. If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, it will be gone by 2100, leaving thousands of people who rely on it for drinking water and electricity without a source of either.
Some diseases will spread, such as mosquito-borne malaria (and the 2016 resurgence of the Zika virus). Ecosystems will change: Some species will move farther north or become more successful; others won’t be able to move and could become extinct.
Wildlife research scientist Martyn Obbard has found that since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food, polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier. Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a similar pattern in Hudson Bay. He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.
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Living as a Pescatarian
Becoming a pescatarian was one of the most important and life-changing decisions that I’ve ever made — and I made it at age 12. I have not eaten meat since then except for fish, and I don’t plan to for the rest of my life.
You may be wondering, “What is a pescetarian?” Pescetarianism, or pesco-vegetarianism, means being vegetarian while still including seafood in your diet. One still cuts out red meat, pork, poultry, etc. from his or her diet like a vegetarian, but does not cut out fish and other seafood.
Many people ask me “How did you do that? I could never give up meat!” What a lot of people don’t realize is that over time your body’s unnatural craving for mammal and poultry meat disappears, and a healthy body will get sick from beef, pork or chicken if eaten again after a period of a pescetarian diet. This is because land-animal flesh is filled with toxins, uric acid and fecal bacteria.
And frankly, I believe that the human body should always reject these meats, but we are feeding it to our toddlers and convincing them — as we have been convinced — that it is natural and normal. But consider this, do natural carnivores have to cook their meat in order to not get sick and season it so it can taste good to them? Would a human baby kill and eat raw a live chicken out of instinct as for example a baby lion would? No.
Here’s another thing to think about — can we eat raw fish and seafood if it’s healthy and clean and not get sick? Yes. Do we always have to season fish and seafood for it to taste good? No. Are there the same health risks from eating healthy, fresh fish as there are from eating land animals? No.
The only reason the human race started to eat land animals was back when cavemen had to survive in the wild, and berries and vegetables were scarce and killing mammals was their only way to survive. I would say we have definitely advanced since then — everyone could survive on a vegan diet if they chose. That’s all it is. It is making a decision to not only improve your health and extend your life, but contribute to saving our planet and natural resources — and our animals — who deserve to live a free and happy life as much as we do.
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List of Foods That a Pescatarian Can Eat
Fish are on the menu if you're a pescatarian.
Pescatarians are semi-vegetarians that focus on a plant-based diet with the inclusion of fish.
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The Trip
When I was 5 my Dad had a trip to London which I went on with because it was school holidays. We got there late at night and I was starving and the hotel we were staying at, had closed their kitchen. My Dad went to find some food and left me with my nanny. I sat at the edge of the window overlooking the river Thames flow by, it was magical. I sat on that edge for a good hour and half just watching, I loved it. We stayed in London for few days, doing absolutely nothing but going shopping and eating. Then we came back to Los Angeles.
My birthday falls on the last couple of days of term every year and I always had to go to school (that's a lie I loved school and wanted to go for the most part). Anyway on this particular year, when we came back, I went into my bedroom to find my mom and uncle in there, they had spent the entire four days that we were away
re-wallpapering and redecorating my bedroom.
I had carebear Wallpaper (which I had until I was 12 ya - the shame) and carebear lampshades and curtains and a captain bed (like a bunk bed but instead of having a bed on the bottom it has a wardobe, desk and shelving units). For once in my life I was absolutly speechless. I realized my Dad taking me with him was a planned decision, so my mom and uncle could finish decorating my room. I always remember the love I felt for this little crowd at that moment; the memory of the river flowing, and the kind of care I felt from my parents. To date every time I think of them, I remember those few days and my eyes flicker.
So what is your best memories from your childhood?
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4. It would be possible to survive the leap into the black hole from which you hope to do your communicating in the first place.
Verdict: False—except…
Cosmologists vie for the best term to describe what would happen to you if you crossed over a black hole’s so-called event horizon, or its light-gobbling threshold.
The winner, in a linguistic landslide: spaghettification—which does not sound good. But that nasty end may not happen immediately.
“Most people would agree that a person who jumps into a black hole is doomed,” says Columbia University cosmologist and best-selling author Brian Greene, “but if the black hole is big enough, you wouldn’t get spaghettified right away.” That's small comfort, but for a good screenwriter, it's all the wiggle room you need.
5. And finally: Anne Hathaway could move through time and space and help save all of humanity and her hair would still look fabulous.
Verdict: Who cares? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Agroforestry
Agroforestry is the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems to create environmental, economic, and social benefits. It has been practiced in the United States and around the world for centuries.
For a management practice to be called agroforestry, it typically must satisfy the four "i"s:
Intentional,
Intensive,
Integrated, and
Interactive.
There are five widely recognized categories of agroforestry in the United States:
Agroforestry Farming Systems
Silvopasture combines trees with livestock and their forages on one piece of land. The trees provide timber, fruit, or nuts as well as shade and shelter for livestock and their forages, reducing stress on the animals from the hot summer sun, cold winter winds, or a downpour.
Alley cropping
Alley cropping means planting crops between rows of trees to provide income while the trees mature. The system can be designed to produce fruits, vegetables, grains, flowers, herbs, bioenergy feedstocks, and more.
Forest farming
Forest farming operations grow food, herbal, botanical, or decorative crops under a forest canopy that is managed to provide ideal shade levels as well as other products. Forest farming is also called multi-story cropping.
Windbreaks
Windbreaks shelter crops, animals, buildings, and soil from wind, snow, dust, and odors. These areas can also support wildlife and provide another source of income. They are also called shelterbelts, hedgerows, or living snow fences.
Benefits of Agroforestry
The benefits created by agroforestry practices are both economic and environmental. Agroforestry can increase farm profitability in several ways:
the total output per unit area of tree/ crop/livestock combinations is greater than any single component alone
crops and livestock protected from the damaging effects of wind are more productive
new products add to the financial diversity and flexibility of the farming enterprise.
Agroforestry helps to conserve and protect natural resources by, for example, mitigating non-point source pollution, controlling soil erosion, and creating wildlife habitat. The benefits of agroforestry add up to a substantial improvement of the economic and resource sustainability of agriculture.
Key Traits of Agroforestry Practices
Agroforestry practices are intentional combinations of trees with crops and/or livestock which involve intensive management of the interactions between the components as an integrated agroecosystem. These four key characteristics - intentional, intensive, interactive and integrated - are the essence of agroforestry and are what distinguish it from other farming or forestry practices. To be called agroforestry, a land use practice must satisfy all of the following four criteria:
Intentional:
Combinations of trees, crops and/or animals are intentionally designed and managed as a whole unit, rather than as individual elements which may occur in close proximity but are controlled separately.
Intensive:
Agroforestry practices are intensively managed to maintain their productive and protective functions, and often involve annual operations such as cultivation, fertilization and irrigation.
Interactive:
Agroforestry management seeks to actively manipulate the biological and physical interactions between the tree, crop and animal components. The goal is to enhance the production of more than one harvestable component at a time, while also providing conservation benefits such as non-point source water pollution control or wildlife habitat.
Integrated:
The tree, crop and/or animal components are structurally and functionally combined into a single, integrated management unit. Integration may be horizontal or vertical, and above- or below-ground.
Such integration utilizes more of the productive capacity of the land and helps to balance economic production with resource conservation.
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If you don't like your life than change it.
You always have a choice.
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William Shakespeare the greatest dramatist of all time:
There is documentary proof that Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564, and scholars believe that, in keeping with the traditions of the time, he would have been baptised when he was three days old, meaning Shakespeare was probably born on April 23rd.
Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and three months pregnant with Shakespeare’s child when they married. Their first child Susanna was born six months after the wedding.
Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children together – a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and two daughters, Susanna and Judith. His only granddaughter Elizabeth – daughter of Susanna – died childless in 1670. Shakespeare therefore has no descendants.
Few people realise that apart from writing his numerous plays and sonnets, He was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights.
During his life Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
Shakespeare lived a double life. By the seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in his hometown of Stratford, where his wife and children were, and which he visited frequently, he was a well known and highly respected businessman and property owner.
During his lifetime Shakespeare became a very wealthy man with a large property portfolio. He was a brilliant businessman – forming a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the company’s profits.
On his death Shakespeare made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford Upon Avon is documented as happening on 25th April 1616. In keeping with traditions of the time it’s likley he would have been buried two days after his death, meaning Shakespeare likely died 23rd April 1616 – his 52nd birthday.
Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave, daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.
Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the remains in Shakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed.
Although Catholicism was effectively illegal in Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield, who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeare’s death that he had been a Catholic.
During his life, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays, 154 sonnets and a number of poems! that we know of. In addition there are a number of “lost plays” and plays that Shakespeare collaborated on. This means Shakespeare wrote an average 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589.
Shakespeare is most often referred to as an Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written after Elizabeth’s death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.
Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.
According to Shakespeare professor Louis Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the Bible – only once and never again.”
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William Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit & his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello
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Global warming and it's effect on the environment
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Pescatarian
An omnivore who excludes poultry, beef, and pork from their diet but includes fish ( or shrimp, oysters, scallops, etc.) They're not vegetarian bc consume meat.
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Corinthians
Bible says: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves”. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Love is something wonderful.
Love decides everything in this world. It doesn‘t have any conditions or boundaries. We don’t know exactly what love is and where it comes from. But one thing is sure: we are nothing without love! There are times when we feel shy and timid, when we are afraid of expressing the love we feel. Being afraid of embarrassing the other person or ourselves we hesitate to say the actual words “I love you”, which can be said in many ways: by means of nice presents and little notes, smiles and sometimes helping and sometimes tears.
In everyone's life there are different experiences; one of them is the first love. My first love was dazzling yet aching. Every time I go back to those memories, my eyes water and I feel like I could have done so much better. My story began few years ago, when I was very little. I was inexperienced and naive; I thought that there was no heart break in this world.
It was a Saturday when I first saw him. His brown caramel eyes made my heart skip a beat for I had never seen anything so breathtaking. His skin was a russet color and his hair was a shady black. That first moment when I saw him is engraved in my head. I can still hear my heart throbbing loudly in my chest as his eyes landed on me in that small room. We stared at each other as he made his way to the seat in front of me and a smile flicked on his lips to seal that moment.
It took a longtime for me to talk to him; he never knew I even existed. We became best friends but nothing more. His life was mine, his thoughts were mine, he was my world and he didn't even know. Everyone said that we had something between us, he always laughed because he never notice how I shatter every time he notice someone else, but what really destroyed me was the day he broke the news that he was leaving and maybe never coming back.
Years passed and I never heard from him and because of that, feelings almost vanished along with him but there were still memories hunting me for what I once felt. Now that he is back, it is he who looks for me, it is his heart that breaks, for I once promise myself that I would not drop another tear. As much as I want him vanish from my life again he would not go.
My love for him is like the waves in the sea, it comes and it goes. His name is now carved in my soul for he is part of who I am now. He made me cry but he also made me laugh. He was my first love and as much as I want that part of my story to end, deep inside I know that it isn't over... or is it?
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Interstellar
If you’re one of the estimated 3 gajillion people who have seen or will see Chris Nolan’s blockbuster movie Interstellar, one thing is already clear to you:
this is not a documentary.
That means it’s fiction, specifically science fiction, which is how you get the sci and the fi in the sci-fi pairing.
So if you go into the movie looking for a lot of scientific 'gotcha’ moments, let’s stipulate up front that you’re going to find some.
That being said, part of Interstellar’s considerable appeal is that it does go heavy on the science part of things. Nolan enlisted Caltech cosmologist Kip Thorne as the film's technical adviser, and Thorne kept a whip hand on the production, ensuring that the storyline hewed as closely as possible to the head-crackingly complex physics that govern the universe.
So where did Interstellar play it absolutely straight and where did it take the occasional narrative liberty? Here are a few of the key plot points and the verdict from the scientists (warning, there may be spoilers ahead):
1. A worm hole could open in space, providing a short cut from one side of the universe to the other.
Verdict: Mostly true
Worm holes are a pretty well-accepted part of modern cosmology and it’s Thorne’s theorems that have helped make them that way. The idea is that if you think of space-time less as a void than as a sort of fabric—which it is—it could, under the right circumstances fold over on itself. Punching the necessary holes in that fabric so that you could make your universe-transiting trip would be a bit more difficult.
That would require what’s known as negative energy—an energetic state less than zero—to create the portal and keep it open. There have been attempts to create such conditions in the lab, which is a long way from a real wormhole but at least helps prove the theory.
One bit of license the Interstellar story did take concerns how the wormhole came to be. It takes a massive object to generate a gravity field sufficient to fold space-time in half, and the one in the movie would have to be the equivalent of 100 million of our suns.
Depending on where in the universe you placed an object with that kind of mass, it could make a real mess of the surrounding worlds—but it doesn’t in the movie.
2. Getting too close to the gravity well of a massive object like a black hole causes time to move more slowly for you than it would for people on Earth. Verdict: True
For this one, stay with space-time as a fabric—a stretched one, like a trampoline. Now place a 500-lb. cannon ball on it. That’s your black hole with its massive gravity field. The vertical threads in the weave of the fabric are space, the horizontal ones are time, and the cannon ball can’t distort one without distorting the other, too.
That means that everything—including how soon your next birthday comes—will be stretched out. Really, it’s as simple as that—unless you want to spend some time with the equations that prove the point, which, trust us, you don’t.
3. There is something known as Hawking radiation, discovered by, well, guess who. When a particle falls into a black hole, the fact that it's falling creates another form of negative energy. But nature hates when its books are unbalanced—a negative without a corresponding positive is like a debit without a credit.
So the black hole emits a particle to keep everything revenue- neutral. Zillions of those particles create a form of outflowing energy—and energy can be encoded to carry information, which is how all forms of wireless communication work.
That’s hardly the same as being able to radio down to Houston from within a black hole’s maw, but it takes you a big step closer.
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In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10 year old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.
“How much is an ice cream sundae?”
“50 cents,” replied the waitress.
The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it.
“How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient.
“35 cents,” she said brusquely.
The little boy again counted the coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said.
The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and departed.
When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw.
There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were 15 cents – her tip.
@american
@american