Will the Vatican release the truth? Will the next Pope open the secret archives? UFO Sighting News.

Is the Vatican holding back UFO information? Yes absolutely yes! But thats thinking small and really underestimating the power of the Vatican and how much they have tried to hold back many history changing discoveries...always stealing them using and storing them away so that they will never be seen until hundreds of years in the future. This storage area of secrets is actually called 'Vatican Apostolic Archive' formerly known as the 'Vatican Secret Archive." I guess the word secret was to obvious so they took that out. The big thing in the archive...historically significant documents, most pertaining to the Catholic church, to keep back information that could make the church look bad in the eyes of the public. All churches have these but they also have proof of alien life there, and to top it off, they actually have possession of crashed alien craft. Of course they hid this and more all in order to protect their religious doctrine and keep control of its congregations. 

Here is something most don't know...in the head of the Egyptian sphinx was a green tablet, also known as one of the emerald tablets which is a legendary artifact attributed to Herms Trismegistus, a ancient figure who was believed to be a fusion of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes. The tabled is said to contain the secrets of the universe...a young Russian boy named Boris Kipriyanovich predicted that the head of the Egyptian sphinx held an object which has the answers to the universe in this small object. He also said there is a big button behind one of its ears to release the chamber and make it open. I did investigate and yes, there is such a square stone protruding from next to one ear. But thats not what gave it away. It was an old photo from the time when they were digging out areas of the sphinx and pyramids...a photo arose...of a man on the head of the sphinx, and there was a hole about half a meter across in the top of its head near his feet. This was it, they found it, and it was shipped to the Vatican where it has not been seen yet. So yeah...the Vatican is holding something powerful, something all powerful, something with god-like powers all in a iPad size emerald computer tablet. 

Scott C. Waring 

Below is my personal discovery I made and the Internet has stollen my credit from me. SCW

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

28-04-2025 om 23:41 geschreven door peter  

Thousands of alien structures on planet Mercury In NASA Photo, UFO UAP Sighting News. April 27, 2025.

Date of discovery: April 27, 2025

Location of discovery: Mercury

Source photo: 

• https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA02243.tif

 

Guys check this out. I made this video last night. Its new. I was going through the NASA index of Mercury and found this old photo which has thousands of visible structures in it. The only reason this photo was released is because the person editing out alien structures at NASA didn't know what alien structures look like, so he blurred out the areas that had structures that humans would identify with, but he really missed out on the others that many humans would not recognize as alien structures. But my many decades of experience is at your disposal so here they are in the video. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

28-04-2025 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

Shape-Shifting Materials: Evidence of Lockheed Martin's Hidden UFO Technology?

Shape-Shifting Materials are advanced, adaptive materials capable of changing their physical form, embedding sensors and circuits directly into their structure, and even storing energy,  all without traditional wiring. Lockheed Martin is at the forefront of developing these futuristic materials, raising questions about the possible extraterrestrial origin of this technology. 

In a previous article, we discussed why suppressed exotic technologies are suddenly being disclosed. One company that frequently comes up in this conversation is Lockheed Martin, the American defense and aerospace giant known for pushing the boundaries of aviation and space innovation. 

Imagine an aircraft that can grow its own skin, embed sensors into its body, store energy without wires, and even shift its shape mid-flight to adapt to changing conditions. This isn’t science fiction anymore, Lockheed Martin’s cutting-edge research is turning these futuristic concepts into reality. 

But where is all this coming from? 

The rapid development and creativity behind Lockheed Martin’s projects raise intriguing questions. Whistleblowers like David Grusch have recently alleged that Lockheed Martin has had access to recovered UFO materials for decades. Supporting this, Don Phillips,  a former Lockheed engineer,  confirmed years ago that exotic materials have been held and studied by the company since at least the 1950s. 

This suggests that for over half a century, Lockheed has secretly been engaged in researching and reverse-engineering off-world technologies. It's possible that the breakthroughs we’re seeing today are the result of this hidden legacy. Ben Rich, former head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works division, famously hinted at this when he said, "We now have the technology to take ET home." 

One particularly stunning development involves "smart" materials that behave almost like muscles, allowing aircraft structures to morph in real-time. These materials enable a craft to fine-tune its aerodynamics on the fly, adjusting instantly to turbulence, speed shifts, or mission-specific demands. 

Lockheed’s innovations go even further. By embedding carbon nanotubes, extremely strong and highly conductive microscopic structure, directly into the material, they have created surfaces that can transfer information and power without traditional wiring. In these next-generation aircraft, the "skin" itself acts as the nervous system, the energy grid, and the sensor network all at once. 

You can only imagine the kinds of technologies that have been developed over the years through the reverse engineering of exotic materials and recovered extraterrestrial craft. Yet, governments and space agencies remain tight-lipped about the existence of advanced alien civilizations, who likely introduced these techniques to Earth unintentionally.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

28-04-2025 om 23:09 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

28-04-2025 om 22:12 geschreven door peter  

Atlantic ocean currents are weakening — and it could make the climate in some regions unrecognizable

Related: A long-lost ice sheet could predict the future of New York City — one in which Lower Manhattan and Coney Island are 'perpetually submerged'

To travel back south, surface waters in the North Atlantic must plunge down the water column and merge with bottom currents. Climate scientists say this sinking step is where the circulation is slowing down, because surface waters have to be very salty, and therefore very dense, to sink. But growing rivers of meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Arctic are diluting the salt concentrations of surface waters, preventing them from plunging to the seafloor.

The warming hole that worries scientists is in a spot where the AMOC releases heat. Ocean temperatures there are lower than researchers would expect to see, given current global temperatures, if the AMOC were still going strong. That suggests heat transport from south to north has already declined.

And with climate change cooking the planet, there is a risk that more fresh water will pour into the North Atlantic, triggering a feedback loop that would accelerate the weakening of the AMOC. As ocean currents slow, the amount of salt reaching the North Atlantic may decrease, making it harder for already-diluted surface waters to sink.

"When you have a strong AMOC, it draws in salty water," David Thornalley, an ocean and climate scientist at University College London, told Live Science. "If you start to weaken the AMOC, less salty water gets drawn into the North Atlantic, and that then weakens the AMOC, and then it's a runaway process."

Defining "collapse"

The warming hole is one piece of evidence suggesting the AMOC has already weakened, but not everyone agrees.

The problem is that direct measurements of the AMOC's strength only go back to 2004, so researchers rely on indirect "fingerprints" — climate parameters they think are linked to the AMOC — to identify long-term trends in Atlantic circulation.

The trouble with fingerprints is that they give variable — and sometimes contradictory — results. For instance, a 2018 study suggested weakening, while research published in January suggests Atlantic currents have not declined over the past 60 years, though some scientists criticized the January study's data.

Regardless of whether Atlantic currents have already slowed, most scientists think they will in the future.

Should the circulation weaken significantly, "some pretty major changes are going to happen," Thornalley said, "and they're going to happen gradually over the 21st century."

For one, dwindling ocean currents will carry less heat to countries like Norway, Sweden and the U.K., leading to cooler temperatures in these regions. The amount of cooling will depend on how much strength the AMOC loses.

Climate models generate varying predictions, depending on what assumptions are baked into them, how sensitive they are to certain climate factors, and the data researchers feed the models. Some show a 10% reduction in the AMOC's strength, while others predict a decline closer to 50%, Marsh said.

"A 50% reduction would be far more substantial of an impact on our regional climate," Marsh said, adding that the resulting drop in temperature would disrupt industries that depend on the weather, such as farming. By comparison, "A 10% weakening of the AMOC would be noticeable, but manageable," he said. "It probably would make our weather a little less mild in the wintertime, in particular."

A complete collapse is unlikely, a study published in February found. Even if surface waters stop plunging in the North Atlantic, there are relatively constant factors, such as the wind, that drive the movement of water, Marsh said.

"A collapse, which is some hypothetical 100% failure of the [AMOC], just doesn't feel plausible to me," Marsh said. But the AMOC doesn't need to collapse to throw human lives and systems into chaos, he added.

"Really wild things"

Cooling in the North Atlantic and Northwest Europe could offset some of the warming from climate change — but that may not be a good thing, Marsh said. A drop in temperatures may alter atmospheric processes that drive storms and other weather events in these regions, he said.

Cooling in the North Atlantic won't directly make the U.S. East Coast colder, Marsh said. That's because weather in the Northeast is dictated more by the Arctic polar vortex, a ring of cold wind that circles the North Pole and traps frigid air near the Arctic. If this band becomes deformed or expands, which it sometimes does in the winter, chilly air escapes and sweeps over the Midwest and as far south as the Gulf.

But a weaker AMOC could alter the Arctic polar vortex, which would, in turn, affect the Northeast, Marsh said. The vortex is vulnerable to changes in climate, and recent evidence suggests the structure is already behaving strangely.

Direct impacts on the East Coast and Northwest Europe could also result from sea level rise. Sea levels in parts of the North Atlantic are currently 2.3 feet (70 centimeters) lower than they would be if the AMOC were weaker, because strong currents create uneven sea levels. If the AMOC weakens, water may redistribute itself and add to the sea level rise caused directly by global warming.

As the Northern Hemisphere cools, tropical and subtropical regions could also be thrown into chaos. Studies indicate that a colder North Atlantic would alter Earth's energy balance and trigger a southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a band of clouds that encircles the globe near the equator.

The moisture-laden ITCZ bobs up and down depending on Earth's position relative to the sun, bringing heavy rainfall and storms. It is responsible for monsoons — weather patterns with distinct wet and dry seasons — in South America, West Africa, India and East Asia.

Should the ITCZ shift southward, research suggests it would throw monsoons out of whack for at least 100 years. "Right now, we have these regions that are used to getting this very intense rainfall in their wet seasons," said Ben-Yami, the lead author of this research. Ecosystems are adapted to these downpours, and people depend on rainfall for agriculture, she said.

A southward shift of the ITCZ would lead to shorter and drier wet seasons in places like West Africa. These effects could persist for decades and severely disrupt life around the equator, Ben-Yami said. "Farmers somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, they need that rainfall," she said.

Shifts in rainfall would affect the Amazon rainforest, too. The effects may differ between the Northern and Southern parts, because the rainforest is so big that the southern part would still receive significant rainfall even if the ITCZ were to shift southward, Ben-Yami said.

But the northern Amazon rainforest — including parts of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Brazil — would experience longer and more intense dry seasons, which would be devastating for the region, she said.

Combined, the effects of a weakened AMOC could cost hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars, Thornalley said. "It's a pretty global shift in climate — it would be very, very expensive," Thornalley told Live Science.

What's more, North Atlantic sediments from the last ice age (120,000 to 11,500 years ago) suggest that abrupt shifts in climate linked to the AMOC have occurred in the past.

"We know the climate can do really wild things," Thornalley said. "We know that really, really, really well."

Making predictions

Researchers say the AMOC will weaken significantly before 2100, but pinpointing exactly when the biggest change will happen is tricky.

Because direct measurements go back only 20 years, scientists often extrapolate from historical data to estimate when Atlantic currents might reach a tipping point. Tipping points are thresholds in some of Earth's systems that, once exceeded, can flip these systems from one stable state into a profoundly different one.

A good analogy to explain tipping points is a chair, Ben-Yami said. A chair is stable when it is standing on four legs or lying down; any position between these two is unstable. A person sitting on the chair can tip it backward slightly, but past a certain threshold, the chair tumbles to the ground.

An attention-grabbing study in 2023 concluded that the AMOC could reach a tipping point as early as this year. The authors used sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre between 1870 and 2020 to calculate fluctuations in the AMOC's resilience and strength. Their model suggested Atlantic currents are growing less resilient and weaker, to the point of possibly tipping before mid-century.

In a 2024 paper, however, Ben-Yami and other experts argued that there is too much uncertainty in data from before 2004 to predict when the AMOC might tip. "Once you take all these uncertainties into account, you don't get a practical prediction," she said.

Not having robust predictions is perhaps worse than knowing when the system will fail, because the future is so unclear, Ben-Yami said. "We should be even more careful" in the face of this uncertainty, she cautioned.

While some researchers are looking to the past for answers, others are searching for early warning signals that hold clues about future changes in the AMOC. One of these signals is the amount of fresh water flowing into the Atlantic at a latitude of 34 degrees south, near the tip of South Africa. Models suggest fresh water transport there will hit a minimum about 25 years before the AMOC reaches a tipping point, meaning experts could accurately predict shifts in the AMOC before the biggest changes occur.

But knowing about this minimum won't help anyone prevent the AMOC from weakening significantly, because it will be too late to reverse the driver — human-caused climate change — by the time the minimum is reached, said E.J.V. (Emma) Smolders, a doctoral student who specializes in AMOC early warning signals at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

"We're getting more and more worried," Smolders told Live Science, adding that her research group is trying to find other warning signals that will help scientists make predictions with more lead time to act.

Her group described one of these alternative signals in a study published to the preprint database arXiv in June 2024. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, found that salinity in the Atlantic near the tip of South Africa may be a better indicator than fresh water of when the AMOC will weaken.

Based on patterns in this salt transport, Smolders and colleagues estimated that the AMOC will "collapse" around 2050, which agrees with previous, peer-reviewed research.

Looking for early warning signals is important, because "it could be that we need as much advanced knowledge as possible to prepare civilian, even military, assets" to deal with the consequences of AMOC weakening, Marsh said. These assets may be needed to shield infrastructure and communities from unpredictable weather, he said.

Ultimately, regardless of whether we know exactly when the AMOC will decline, the takeaway is the same, Marsh and others said: Stop global warming by slashing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

The possibility that the AMOC could be approaching a tipping point "should be enough incentive, alongside knowing what the impact would be, for us to want to stop what we're doing," Thornalley said. "We might not be able to say exactly how long we've got left, but [the evidence] suggests we could have a tipping point, and we really want to avoid that."

• Editor's note: This article was updated at 5:14 E.D.T on April 25 to correct an error in the introduction. The blob in the North Atlantic is cold, not warm.
• This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

{ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth }

28-04-2025 om 00:27 geschreven door peter  

Microplastics have been in 'pristine streams' for half a century — what could that mean for human health?

"The inclusion of plastic in the casing of a caddisfly means plastic is entering the food chain," said lead study author Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a doctoral candidate in evolutionary ecology at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

"Many birds and fish eat these caddisfly larvae, and some swallow them including their casing," Hiemstra told Live Science in an email. "If caddisflies have been affected by microplastics for over half a century, that means the broader ecosystem is affected too."

Related: 

• Recycled black plastic can contain flame retardants, viral study found. That's still true — but their math was off

The casing specimens in the study are part of the natural history collections at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands. The researchers used a technique called energy dispersive X-ray analysis to reveal chemical elements and additives commonly associated with plastics inside the casings.

This provided a rare snapshot into the impact of microplastics on freshwater systems, which represent less than 4% of current studies on microplastics, Hiemstra said. Generally, the presence of microplastics in the 2000s is well documented, but the historical timeline of microplastic pollution has remained vague. This lack of historical data has made it difficult to assess how long ecosystems and human populations have been exposed to microplastics, thus complicating risk assessments and epidemiological studies.

So, how might this study change our understanding of the history of microplastic exposure and its potential impacts on human health?

Microplastics in nature and the body

Microplastics are tiny fragments of synthetic polymers that can take anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years to degrade. They're defined as being between 1 micrometer and 5 millimeters long. Today, they seem to be found virtually everywhere: in clouds, the air we breathe, food, drinking water, and human blood and breast milk. These particles stem from the breakdown of larger plastics, and in some cases, they are intentionally manufactured for use in certain cosmetics and cleaning products.

Research suggests that the human body clears out some larger microplastics measuring up to 150 micrometers long, while fragments smaller than 10 micrometers may be absorbed into tissues. But recent research suggests that some plastics in our bodies are even tinier than that.

While what qualifies as "nanoplastic" is still under debate, these ultrasmall particles are typically considered to be any plastic fragments smaller than 1 micrometer (or 1,000 nanometers) in diameter. A human hair, by comparison, is around 80,000 nanometers wide. Nanoplastics are small enough to potentially pass through cell membranes, studies suggest.

Matthew Campen, a toxicologist at the University of New Mexico, recently led a study that pointed to the presence of nanoplastics in human tissues. Using advanced, high-resolution imaging techniques, his team identified plastic fragments measuring no more than 200 nanometers in length — thin enough that they were translucent — in brain tissue from a few dozen organ donors.

After its publication, some of the analytical techniques used in the study were criticized, so the exact quantities of different types of plastic may be off, experts told Live Science. But by detecting nanoplastics, the findings expand upon previous work that relied on microscopes that could only detect particles up to 25 times larger.

That study, which included samples collected between 2016 and 2024, also suggested that later samples carried higher concentrations of plastics, and that the brains of individuals who died with dementia contained more plastic than healthy brains. These results raised questions about whether the public's plastic exposure has been increasing over time.

Hiemstra's new findings feed into that broader discussion and may have implications for how we understand the health risks of microplastics. If the pollutants have been present throughout the environment — not only near industrial sites — since the 1970s, that might reframe our understanding of where people have been exposed and for how long. Plastics not only accumulate in the environment, but also in the body, so better understanding the timeline and extent of exposure can help scientists unpack its long-term health outcomes.

As Hiemstra's study was focused on only the Netherlands, though, other work will need to be done to understand the history of microplastic pollution on a global scale.

Related: 

• 'Very concerning': Microplastics can accumulate in cancer cells and may help them spread, study hints

What do microplastics do to our bodies?

Scientists are still working to understand exactly how microplastics and the chemicals within plastics — such as phthalates and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — might affect our bodies, Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who studies how pollutants affect reproductive and developmental health, told Live Science.

Early research has linked plastic exposure to the risk of various health conditions, including heart disease, lung disorders, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. In each of these cases, the link is correlative, so it's not clear if or how the plastics might be contributing to the diseases. In addition, in lab-dish studies, some types of plastics appear to be relatively harmless, while others have been shown to kill human cells in vitro.

In 2024, Woodruff and her team at UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment published a systematic review of nearly 2,000 studies on the health effects of microplastics as part of a California state-commissioned report aimed at guiding policy decisions. The review identified potential health effects on respiratory, digestive and reproductive health, and particularly on sperm.

"While a link between chemicals in plastics and chronic diseases is clear, it's hard to separate the effects of the microplastic from its chemical additives," Woodruff noted.

She added that, "with rising cancer rates among younger people and increasing exposure [to microplastics] from early life, the potential long-term health risks — especially for those exposed in utero — remain a major concern," Woodruff said. Exposure to pollution is one of several competing theories for why the rates of certain cancers are rising in people under 50.

"More data will help address the uncertainty in the findings, but we're being exposed to [microplastics] right now, so it would be prudent to reduce exposures," Woodruff said.

While it's suspected that microplastics have negative impacts on human health, the World Health Organization emphasizes that the evidence for these effects is still limited and inconclusive.

"Our understanding of the potential harms of microplastic exposure is very preliminary at this stage," said Bernardo Lemos, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona and an adjunct professor of environmental epigenetics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Lemos has led research to document the effects of microplastic exposure in humans and in model organisms, such as fruit flies, mice and fish.

"I am sure there will be many more studies documenting an abundance of microplastics in historical samples," Lemos told Live Science in an email. "It will be interesting to document how microplastics' abundance and quality change over decades." The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental organization, predicts that plastic production may triple by 2060.

Related: 

• Humans inhale a staggering amount of microplastic every week. Here's where it ends up

Is it possible to avoid microplastics?

While Woodruff noted it would be prudent to reduce microplastic exposure, it's unclear what levels of micro- and nanoplastics we're realistically taking in on a daily basis. "Plastics can degrade into smaller fragments, but they persist, so we're going to be exposed to them for a very long time," Woodruff said.

She suggested that, at the individual level, people can reduce their exposure to microplastics and the chemicals in them by consuming fewer ultraprocessed foods, which are more likely to come into contact with plastic than whole or less-processed foods. She also suggested that it may help to avoid plastic containers, bottles and packaging where possible.

"There is still so little known about the history of microplastics," Hiemstra said. But thanks to collections that include specimens like the caddisfly casings, we may have unknowingly collected more evidence than we thought about the early days of this pollutant.

Other natural history collections around the world may harbor even older casings with microplastics, he suggested, highlighting the untapped value of such collections as tools for environmental science. They may offer a way to establish historical baselines of microplastic pollution, which are still largely missing from the record and could help us trace the true health impact of plastics.

{ https://www.livescience.com/health }

27-04-2025 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 23:41 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 23:29 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 23:00 geschreven door peter  

Found On Mars! Alien figure carved in stone, New Discovery Today! April 27, 2025, UFO UAP Sighting News.

Date of discovery: April 27, 2025

Location of discovery: Mars

Source photo used: 

 

Guys I found this on Mars this morning while having my coffee. I can't imagine what I will find by my second coffee. 

 

This figure carved in stone is similar to another figure I found long ago, the woman on Mars. Maybe you remember, but how is it similar you ask? Well, the woman on mars is wearing a green toga like robe. Here again we have a bipedal species, clearly not human, but wearing a robe or toga. Similar to those worn in Ancient Greece and Rome. 

 

The eyes of this creature are very large and round, its ears smaller but visible on the side of its head. Its mouth is round and a little long like that of a small dog, but not as long. It's wearing a robe that really is unique, you see its sleeves are so long they touch the ground. One arm is bent at the elbow at waist level with its fingers in a certain position which has meaning in the species culture. The folds of the toga are visible as well as the belt area around the waist. 

There is also a large skull nearby, which has similarities to that of a prehistoric creature...like a pterodactyl. 

 

Wow, just undeniable proof of a non human species living on Mars thousand or millions of years ago. 

Scott C. Waring - Utah, USA

 

 { https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

Alien Orb Followed By US Military Helicopter! April 23, 2025, UFO UAP Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 23, 2025

Location of sighting: Flagstaff, Arizona

Source: Email report, scwaring @ yahoo.com

 

This just sent in last night, a person caught a glowing orb being followed by a US military helicopter passion over his neighborhood in Flagstaff. He said the object had a strange smell left behind as if something was on fire. Similar reports of strange smells exist in eyewitness reports from the MJ12 files. Often an ionized iron...often called ozone, past reports said that such powerful odors is produced by the high voltages interaction between the UFO and static electricity in the atmospheric oxygen. Basically smells like fireworks. This smell is absolute evidence of an alien craft flying low and bold over Flagstaff. 

Scott C. Waring - Utah, USA

 

 { https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 22:24 geschreven door peter  

30 misconceptions that have become modern-day 'facts'

©Getty Images

Coffee is made from beans, penguins mate for life, and chameleons change color to match their surroundings... These are all 'facts' you probably believe to be true. After all, most people believe them to be so. However, experts have pointed out that many so-called 'facts' are simple misconceptions. Then there are some that are just downright myths!

©Getty Images

The Earth revolves around the Sun
Technically, the Sun, Earth, and all the other planets are orbiting around the center of the solar system.

©Getty Images

Mount Everest is the "tallest" mountain in the world
While Mount Everest is deemed the tallest mountain in the world, experts claim that, in technical terms, this isn't true. The summit of Mount Everest is officially higher above sea level than the summit of any other mountain. However, Mauna Kea is the tallest when measured from base to summit.

©Getty Images

Vikings wore horned helmets
While this may well be true, historians say there's actually no evidence to suggest that Vikings ever wore horned helmets.

©Getty Images

One human year is equivalent to seven dog years
While it may be true for some dogs, it's not a rule of thumb. It all depends on the size and breed of the dog.

©Getty Images

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds
This isn't true, as goldfish have very good memories for fish. They can be trained to respond in various ways to certain colors of light and different kinds of music.

©Getty Images

Sushi means "raw fish"
Although one of the common ingredients may be raw fish, sushi actually translates from Japanese to "sour tasting."

©Getty Images

You lose your body heat the fastest through your head
While this is widely believed to be true, some experts say it's just a myth, and that humans would be just as cold if they went without a hat as if they went without pants.

©Getty Images

Different parts of your tongue detect different tastes
This was scientifically disproven, as researchers found that all taste sensations come from all regions of the tongue. However, different parts are more sensitive to certain tastes, which may be where this popular belief comes from.

 

©Getty Images

People use just 10% of their brain
Neurologists say this is entirely untrue. Humans use nearly every part of their brain, and most of the brain is active all the time.

©Getty Images

Coffee is made from beans
While many assume that coffee comes from coffee beans, experts say they're actually made from seeds called a bean.

©Getty Images

Chameleons change color to match their surroundings
The truth is chameleons actually change color as a response to mood, temperature, communication, and light, instead of the object they're touching.

©Getty Images

Fortune cookies are a Chinese tradition
Fortune cookies were originally a Japanese-American invention before being widely adopted by Chinese culture.

©Getty Images

There's a dark side of the Moon
As the Moon is constantly rotating on its own axis, there's no area of the satellite that's in permanent darkness.

©Getty Images

Blood is blue before it's oxygenated
While many believe that deoxygenated blood is blue, it's actually a myth because human blood is always red. However, the level of redness differs depending on how oxygenated it is.

©Getty Images

Handling a baby bird will make its mother reject it
Most birds have a very poor sense of smell, so in most cases they are unable to even notice human scent on a baby bird.

©Getty Images

Alcohol keeps you warm
Alcohol causes your blood vessels to dilate, moving warm blood closer to the surface of the skin. This can make you feel warmer temporarily. However, those same veins pumping blood closer to the skin's surface also cause you to lose core body heat.

©Getty Images

The Great Wall of China can be seen from space
The Apollo astronauts confirmed that you can't see the Great Wall of China from the Moon. In fact, all you can see from the Moon is the white and blue marble of Earth.

©Getty Images

Waking sleepwalkers harms them
Waking a sleepwalker won't cause them any physical harm, but it could leave them startled or disoriented.

©Getty Images

Penguins mate for life
Penguins are mostly monogamous, but there are some species, such as the emperor penguin, which are only serially monogamous. They'll mate with one penguin for a season, then move onto another penguin the following season.

©Getty Images

having your leg hair will make it grow back quicker
Many believe shaving body hair makes it grow back quicker, but shaving hair doesn't change its thickness, color, or rate of growth. It might just feel coarse for a period of time as it grows out.

©Getty Images

Caffeine dehydrates you
While caffeinated drinks do have a mild diuretic effect, experts say they don't appear to increase the risk of dehydration.

©Getty Images

Eating cheese before bed will give you nightmares
Cheese is believed to give you more emotionally charged dreams, but not necessarily nightmares.

©Getty Images

Peanuts are a type of nut
Actually, peanuts, along with beans and peas, belong to the single plant family leguminosae.

©Getty Images

Bulls are enraged by the color red
It's a proven fact that bulls only see blue and yellow. They only react to the red cape during bullfights because of the movements.

©Getty Images

Fingernails continue to grow after you die
The dehydration of the body after death can cause retraction of the skin around hair and nails, giving the illusion that they've grown. However, all tissues require energy to sustain their functions, which isn't possible when dead.

©Getty Images

Eating lots of chocolate will give you spots
There's no concrete evidence that suggests eating more chocolate can cause spots.

©Getty Images

Vitamin C is an effective treatment for a cold
Flu sufferers are often encouraged to increase their vitamin C dosage, but most experts have stated that there's little to no evidence that the vitamin can help with treatment of a cold. Instead, it's believed to help build up the immune system to ward off potential flu viruses.

©Getty Images

Ostriches bury their head in the sand when they're scared
Ostriches swallow sand and pebbles to help grind up food in their stomachs. This means they have to bend down and briefly stick their heads in the earth to collect the pebbles. It has nothing to do with them being scared.

©Getty Images

Microwave radiation can cause cancer
Most experts believe that microwave ovens don't give off enough energy to damage the genetic material in cells, so they can't cause cancer.

©Getty Images

Houseflies only live for around 24 hours

The adult housefly can actually live up to one month in the wild.

Sources:

• (Daily Mail)

See also:  Popular misconceptions about each American president

RELATED VIDEOS

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

27-04-2025 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

Story by Theo Burman 

The pyramids may have been built using a sophisticated hydraulic system, according to a new study in Egypt.

Evidence of ancient Egyptians using water pressure to lift stone blocks was discovered at the Step Pyramid of Djoser, with a research team concluding its architecture matched that of a "hydraulic elevation mechanism."

Why It Matters

The theory could be the earliest evidence of hydraulic engineering in monumental architecture, and provides an explanation of how the pyramids were erected with tools previously thought unavailable at the time. If correct, it means that the Egyptians had a far greater understanding of hydraulic technology than previously thought.

What To Know

Most mainstream theories propose that the Egyptians used ramps and brute manpower as the primary methods for lifting the limestone blocks that make up the pyramids.

However, the study argues that the internal layout of the Step Pyramid, combined with the surrounding landscape, suggests that engineers may have used a volcano-style mechanism in which water-driven pressure helped elevate stones from within the structure.

The system would have operated in tandem with natural topography and artificially created reservoirs, potentially linking to a tributary of the Nile to create a temporary lake.

Stock Image: General view of the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara on February 9, 2024 in Giza, Egypt.

Getty Images© Getty Images

The main pieces of evidence supporting the hydraulic theory were the discovery of a "dry moat" surrounding the pyramid, as well as a massive stone structure known as the Gisr el-Mudir. These features resemble components of a modern water treatment system, including sedimentation and purification basins.

The Gisr el-Mudir could have functioned as a check dam to trap and regulate water flow, which in turn could have powered the lifting mechanism inside the pyramid. However, this setup implies a level of hydraulic sophistication way beyond all prior assumptions about how advanced ancient Egyptian engineering was.

What People Are Saying

In the abstract of the report, the researchers said: "The Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqâra, Egypt, is considered the oldest of the seven monumental pyramids built about 4,500 years ago. From transdisciplinary analysis, it was discovered that a hydraulic lift may have been used to build the pyramid.

"Based on our mapping of the nearby watersheds, we show that one of the unexplained massive Saqqâra structures, the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure, has the features of a check dam with the intent to trap sediment and water.

"The ancient architects may have raised the stones from the pyramid centre in a volcano fashion using the sediment-free water from the Dry Moat's south section. Ancient Egyptians are famous for their pioneering and mastery of hydraulics through canals for irrigation purposes and barges to transport huge stones."

What Happens Next

Researchers continue to investigate how the pyramids were built, with more focus being put into the possibility of hydraulic power.

Related Articles

• Camel Protests Hit Pyramids
• Pyramids Scheme: Egypt Tries to End Tourist Chaos
• MrBeast Offers to Explore Giza Pyramids Amid New Claims
• Giza Pyramid Mystery Addressed by former Egyptian Official

RELATED VIDEOS

 

{ www.newsweek.com/ }

 

27-04-2025 om 19:55 geschreven door peter  

Panicking Over AI? What 2,000 Years of Chinese History Can Teach Us (Part I)

In the sweltering summer of 18 AD, a desperate chant echoed across China’s sun-scorched plains: “Heaven has gone blind!” Thousands of starving farmers, their faces smeared with ox blood, marched toward the opulent vaults held by the Han dynasty’s elite rulers.

As recorded in the ancient text Han Shu (book of Han), these farmers’ calloused hands held bamboo scrolls – ancient “tweets” accusing the bureaucrats of hoarding grain while the farmers’ children gnawed tree bark. The rebellion’s firebrand warlord leader, Chong Fan, roared: “Drain the paddies!”

Within weeks, the Red Eyebrows, as the protesters became known, had toppled local regimes, raided granaries and – for a fleeting moment – shattered the empire’s rigid hierarchy.

The Han Dynasty of China (202 BC-AD 220) was one of the most developed civilisations of its time, alongside the Roman Empire. Its development of cheaper and sharper iron ploughs enabled the gathering of unprecedented harvests of grain.

But instead of uplifting the farmers, this technological revolution gave rise to agrarian oligarchs who hired ever-more officials to govern their expanding empire. Soon, bureaucrats earned 30 times more than those tilling the soil.

Revolutionary iron ploughs from the Han dynasty.

(Windmemories/CC BY-SA 4.0).

And when droughts struck, the farmers and their families starved while the empire’s elites maintained their opulence. As a famous poem from the subsequent Tang dynasty put it: “While meat and wine go to waste behind vermilion gates, the bones of the frozen dead lie by the roadside.”

• The Great Wall of China Construction Project that Spanned Generations, Centuries and Dynasties
• High-Technology Discovered in Classical Mythology Reveals The Ancient Origins of Artificial Intelligence

Two millennia later, the role of technology in increasing inequality around the world remains a major political and societal issue. AI-driven “technology panic” – exacerbated by the disruptive efforts of Donald Trump’s new administration in the US – gives the feeling that everything has been upended. New tech is destroying old certainties; populist revolt is shredding the political consensus.

And yet, as we stand at the edge of this technological cliff, seemingly peering into a future of AI-induced job apocalypses, history whispers: “Calm down. You’ve been here before.”

The Link Between Technology and Inequality

Technology is humanity’s cheat code to break free from scarcity. The Han Dynasty’s iron plough didn’t just till soil; it doubled crop yields, enriching landlords and swelling tax coffers for emperors while – initially, at least – leaving peasants further behind. Similarly, Britain’s steam engine didn’t just spin cotton; it built coal barons and factory slums. Today, AI isn’t just automating tasks; it’s creating trillion-dollar tech fiefdoms while destroying myriads of routine jobs.

Technology amplifies productivity by doing more with less. Over centuries, these gains compound, raising economic output and increasing incomes and lifespans. But each innovation reshapes who holds power, who gets rich – and who gets left behind.

As the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter warned during the second world war, technological progress is never a benign rising tide that lifts all boats. It’s more like a tsunami that drowns some and deposits others on golden shores, amid a process he called “creative destruction”.

A decade later, Russian-born US economist Simon Kuznets proposed his “inverted-U of inequality”, the Kuznets curve. For decades, this offered a reassuring narrative for citizens of democratic nations seeking greater fairness: inequality was an inevitable – but temporary – price of technological progress and the economic growth that comes with it.

The Kuznets Curve.

(Кривая Кузнеца/CC0).

In recent years, however, this analysis has been sharply questioned. Most notably, French economist Thomas Piketty, in a reappraisal of more than three centuries of data, argued in 2013 that Kuznets had been misled by historical fluke. The postwar fall in inequality he had observed was not a general law of capitalism, but a product of exceptional events: two world wars, economic depression, and massive political reforms.

In normal times, Piketty warned, the forces of capitalism will always tend to make the rich richer, pushing inequality ever higher unless checked by aggressive redistribution.

So, who’s correct? And where does this leave us as we ponder the future in this latest, AI-driven industrial revolution? In fact, both Kuznets and Piketty were working off quite narrow timeframes in modern human history. Another country, China, offers the chance to chart patterns of growth and inequality over a much longer period – due to its historical continuity, cultural stability, and ethnic uniformity.

• Spectacular Royal Han Tombs Reveal Wealth and Glory of China’s Golden Age
• Artificial Intelligence Inching Closer to Deciphering Long Lost Languages

Unlike other ancient civilisations such as the Egyptians and Mayans, China has maintained a unified identity and unique language for more than 5,000 years, allowing modern scholars to trace thousand-year-old economic records. So, with colleagues Qiang Wu and Guangyu Tong, I set out to reconcile the ideas of Kuznets and Piketty by studying technological growth and wage inequality in imperial China over 2,000 years – back beyond the birth of Jesus.

To do this, we scoured China’s extraordinarily detailed dynastic archives, including the Book of Han (111 AD) and Tang Huiyao (961 AD), in which meticulous scribes recorded the salaries of different ranking officials. And here is what we learned about the forces – good and bad, corrupt and selfless – that most influenced the rise and fall of inequality in China over the past two millennia.

Chinese dynasties and their most influential technologies. Black text denotes historical events in the west; grey text denotes important interactions between China and the west.

(Peng Zhou/CC BY-NC-SA).

China’s Cycles of Growth and Inequality

One of the challenges of assessing wage inequality over thousands of years is that people were paid different things at different times – such as grain, silk, silver and even labourers.

The Book of Han records that “a governor’s annual grain salary could fill 20 oxcarts”. Another entry describes how a mid-ranking Han official’s salary included ten servants tasked solely with polishing his ceremonial armour. Ming dynasty officials had their meagre wages supplemented with gifts of silver, while Qing elites hid their wealth in land deals.

To enable comparison over two millennia, we invented a “rice standard” – akin to the gold standard that was the basis of the international monetary system for a century from the 1870s. Rice is not just a staple of Chinese diets, it has been a stable measure of economic life for thousands of years.

While rice’s dominion began around 7,000 BC in the Yangtze river’s fertile marshes, it was not until the Han dynasty that it became the soul of Chinese life. Farmers prayed to the “Divine Farmer” for bountiful harvests, and emperors performed elaborate ploughing rituals to ensure cosmic harmony. A Tang Dynasty proverb warned: “No rice in the bowl, bones in the soil.”

Using price records, we converted every recorded salary – whether paid in silk, silver, rent or servants – into its rice equivalent. We could then compare the “real rice wages” of two categories of people we called either “officials” or “peasants” (including farmers), as a way of tracking levels of inequality over the two millennia since the start of the Han Dynasty in 202 BC. This chart shows how real-wage inequality in China rose and fell over the past 2,000 years, according to our rice-based analysis.

Official-peasant wage ratio in imperial China over 2,000 years. The ratio describes the multiple by which the ‘real rice wage’ of the average ‘official’ exceeds that of the average ‘peasant’, giving an indication of changing inequality levels over two millennia. 

(Peng Zhou /CC BY-SA).

The chart’s black line describes a tug-of-war between growth and inequality over the past two millennia. We found that, across each major dynasty, there were four key factors driving levels of inequality in China: technology (T), institutions (I), politics (P), and social norms (S). These followed the following cycle with remarkable regularity.

1. Technology triggers an explosion of growth and inequality

During the Han dynasty, new iron-working techniques led to better ploughs and irrigation tools. Harvests boomed, enabling the Chinese empire to balloon in both territory and population. But this bounty mostly went to those at the top of society. Landlords grabbed fields, bureaucrats gained privileges, while ordinary farmers saw precious little reward. The empire grew richer – but so did the gap between high officials and the peasant majority.

Even when the Han fell around 220 AD, the rise of wage inequality was barely interrupted. By the time of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD), China was enjoying a golden age. Silk Road trade flourished as two more technological leaps had a profound impact on the country’s fortunes: block printing and refined steelmaking.

Block printing enabled the mass production of books – Buddhist texts, imperial exam guides, poetry anthologies – at unprecedented speed and scale. This helped spread literacy and standardise administration, as well as sparking a bustling market in bookselling.

Meanwhile, refined steelmaking boosted everything from agricultural tools to weaponry and architectural hardware, lowering costs and raising productivity. With a more literate populace and an abundance of stronger metal goods, China’s economy hit new heights. Chang’an, then China’s cosmopolitan capital, boasted exotic markets, lavish temples, and a swirl of foreign merchants enjoying the Tang Dynasty’s prosperity.

While the Tang Dynasty marked the high-water mark for levels of inequality in Chinese history, subsequent dynasties would continue to wrestle with the same core dilemma: how do you reap the benefits of growth without allowing an overly privileged – and increasingly corrupt – bureaucratic class to push everyone else into peril?

2. Institutions slow the rise of inequality

Throughout the two millennia, some institutions played an important role in stabilising the empire after each burst of growth. For example, to alleviate tensions between emperors, officials and peasants, imperial exams known as “Ke Ju” were introduced during the Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD). And by the time of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) that followed the demise of the Tang, these exams played a dominant role in society.

They addressed high levels of inequality by promoting social mobility: ordinary civilians were granted greater opportunities to ascend the income ladder by achieving top marks. This induced greater competition among officials – and strengthened emperors’ authority over them in the later dynasties. As a result, both the wages of officials and wage inequality went down as their bargaining power gradually diminished.

However, the rise of each new dynasty was also marked by a growth of bureaucracy that led to inefficiencies, favouritism and bribery. Over time, corrupt practices took root, eroding trust in officialdom and heightening wage inequality as many officials commanded informal fees or outright bribes to sustain their lifestyles.

As a result, while the emergence of certain institutions was able to put a break on rising inequality, it typically took another powerful – and sometimes highly destructive – factor to start reducing it.

Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy (circa AD601-670). This famous Chinese painting depicts the expansion of Chinese influence during the Tang Dynasty. 

(Public Domain).

3. Political infighting and external wars reduce inequality

Eventually, the rampant rise in inequality seen in almost every major Chinese dynasty bred deep tensions – not only between the upper and lower classes, but even between the emperor and their officials.

These pressures were heightened by the pressures of external conflict, as each dynasty waged wars in pursuit of further growth. The Tang’s three century-rule featured conflicts such as the Eastern Turkic-Tang war (AD626), the Baekje-Goguryeo-Silla war (666), and the Arab-Tang battle of Talas (751).

The resulting demand for more military spending drained imperial coffers, forcing salary cuts for soldiers and tax hikes on the peasants – breeding resentment among both that sometimes led to popular uprisings. In a desperate bid for survival, the imperial court then slashed officials’ pay and stripped away their bureaucratic perks.

The result? Inequality plummeted during these times of war and rebellion – but so did stability. Famine was rife, frontier garrisons mutinied, and for decades, warlords carved out territories while the imperial centre floundered.

So, this shrinking wage gap cannot be said to have resulted in a happier, more stable society. Rather, it reflected the fact that everyone – rich and poor – was worse off in the chaos. During the final imperial dynasty, the Qing (from the end of the 17th century), real-terms GDP per person was dropping to levels that had last been seen at the start of the Han Dynasty, 2,000 years earlier.

4. Social norms emphasise harmony, preserve privilege

One other common factor influencing the rise and fall of inequality across China’s dynasties was the shared rules and expectations that developed within each society.

A striking example is the social norms rooted in the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism, which emerged in the Song dynasty at the end of the first millennium – a period sometimes described as China’s version of the Renaissance. It blended the moral philosophy of classical Confucianism – created by the philosopher and political theorist Confucius during the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) – with metaphysical elements drawn from both Buddhism and Daoism.

Neo-Confucianism emphasised social harmony, hierarchical order and personal virtue – values that reinforced imperial authority and bureaucratic discipline. Unsurprisingly, it quickly gained the support of emperors keen to ensure control of their people, and became the mainstream school of thought in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Statue of Confucius, in Parque Rodó in Montevideo.

(Ezarate/CC BY-SA 4.0).

However, Neo-Confucianist thinking proved a double-edged sword. Local gentry hijacked this moral authority to fortify their own power. Clan leaders set up Confucian schools and performed elaborate ancestral rites, projecting themselves as guardians of tradition.

Over time, these social norms became rigid. What had once fostered order and legitimacy became brittle dogma, more useful for preserving privilege than guiding reform. Neo-Confucian ideals evolved into a protective veil for entrenched elites. When the weight of crisis eventually came, they offered little resilience.

To be continued …

• Top image: Collection of Han Dynasty tomb bricks, featuring statue of Han stonecutter, on display at Nanyang Museum of Han Dynasty Stone Carving, Henan Province, China.
• Source: Gary Todd/Flickr/CC0.
• This article was originally published under the title ‘What 2,000 years of Chinese history reveals about today’s AI-driven technology panic – and the future of inequality’ by Peng Zhou on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/science-space }

27-04-2025 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

Panicking Over AI? What Chinese, British, and American History Can Teach Us (Part 2)

China’s final dynasty experienced severe difficulties based on its internal contradictions, and was unable to absorb the introduction of important new technologies without disruption. The historical experiences of Britain and the United States also have lessons to teach us about the impact of significant new technologies, and about how those impacts can be managed—or mismanaged—to promote the greater good, or to harm it.

The Last Dynasty

China’s final imperial dynasty, the Qing, collapsed under the weight of multiple uprisings both from within and without. Despite achieving impressive economic growth during the 18th century – fuelled by agricultural innovation, a population boom, and the roaring global trade in tea and porcelain – levels of inequality exploded, in part due to widespread corruption.

The infamous government official Heshen, widely regarded as the most corrupt figure in the Qing dynasty, amassed a personal fortune reckoned to exceed the empire’s entire annual revenue (one estimate suggests he amassed 1.1 billion taels of silver, equivalent to around US$270 billion (£200bn), during his lucrative career).

Imperial institutions failed to restrain the inequality and moral decay that the Qing’s growth had initially masked. The mechanisms that once spurred prosperity – technological advances, centralised bureaucracy and Confucian moral authority – eventually ossified, serving entrenched power rather than adaptive reform.

• How Technology is Changing the Face of Archaeology
• Forging a Nation: The Iron Age Tribes of Britain

When shocks like natural disasters and foreign invasions struck, the system could no longer respond. The collapse of the empire became inevitable – and this time there was no groundbreaking technology to enable a new dynasty to take the Qing’s place. Nor were there fresh social ideals or revitalised institutions capable of rebooting the imperial model. As foreign powers surged ahead with their own technological breakthroughs, China’s imperial system collapsed under its own weight. The age of emperors was over.

A grandfather and grandson beg for food amid the collapse of China’s Qing dynasty in the late 19th century. 

(UtCon Collection/Alamy Stock Photo).

The world had turned. As China embarked on two centuries of technological and economic stagnation – and political humiliation at the hands of Great Britain and Japan – other nations, led first by Britain and then the US, would step up to build global empires on the back of new technological leaps.

In these modern empires, we see the same four key influences on their cycles of growth and inequality – technology, institutions, politics and social norms – but playing out at an ever-faster rate. As the saying goes: history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Rule Britannia

If imperial China’s inequality saga was written in rice and rebellions, Britain’s industrial revolution featured steam and strikes. In Lancashire’s “satanic mills”, steam engines and mechanised looms created industrialists so rich that their fortunes dwarfed small nations.

In 1835, social observer Andrew Ure enthused: “Machinery is the grand agent of civilisation.” Yet for many decades, the steam engines, spinning jennies and railways disproportionately enriched the new industrial class, just as in the Han dynasty of China 2,000 years earlier. The workers? They inhaled soot, lived in slums – and staged Europe’s first symbolic protest when the Luddites began smashing their looms in 1811.

A spinning jenny.

(Elcapito22/CC BY-SA 3.0).

During the 19th century, Britain’s richest 1% hoarded as much as 70% of the nation’s wealth, while labourers toiled 16-hour days in mills. In cities like Manchester, child workers earned pennies while industrialists built palaces.

But as inequality peaked in Britain, the backlash brewed. Trade unions formed (and became legal in 1824) to demand fair wages. Reforms such as the Factory Acts (1833–1878) banned child labour and capped working hours.

Although government forces intervened to suppress the uprisings, unrest such as the 1830 Swing Riots and 1842 General Strike exposed deep social and economic inequalities. By 1900, child labour was banned and pensions had been introduced. The 1900 Labour Representation Committee (later the Labour Party) vowed to “promote legislation in the direct interests of labour” – a striking echo of how China’s imperial exams had attempted to open paths to power.

Slowly, the working class saw some improvement: real wages for Britain’s poorest workers gradually increased over the latter half of the 19th century, as mass production lowered the cost of goods and expanding factory employment provided a more stable livelihood than subsistence farming.

And then, two world wars flattened Britain’s elite – the Blitz didn’t discriminate between rich and poor neighbourhoods. When peace finally returned, the Beveridge Report gave rise to the welfare state: the NHS, social housing, and pensions.

Income inequality plummeted as a result. The top 1%’s share fell from 70% to 15% by 1979. While China’s inequality fell via dynastic collapse, Britain’s decline resulted from war-driven destruction, progressive taxation, and expansive social reforms.

Wealth share of top 1% in the UK, inequality before 1895 is not well documented; dotted curve is conjectured based on Kuznets curve. Sources: Alvaredo et al (2018), World Inequality Database. 

(Peng Zhou/CC BY-SA).

However, from the 1980s onwards, inequality in Britain has begun to rise again. This new cycle of inequality has coincided with another technological revolution: the emergence of personal computers and information technology — innovations that fundamentally transformed how wealth was created and distributed.

The era was accelerated by deregulation, deindustrialisation and privatisation — policies associated with former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, that favoured capital over labour. Trade unions were weakened, income taxes on the highest earners were slashed, and financial markets were unleashed. Today, the richest 1% of UK adults own more 20% of the country’s total wealth.

The UK now appears to be in the worst of both worlds – wrestling with low growth and rising inequality. Yet renewal is still within reach. The current UK government’s pledge to streamline regulation and harness AI could spark fresh growth – provided it is coupled with serious investment in skills, modern infrastructure, and inclusive institutions geared to benefit all workers.

At the same time, history reminds us that technology is a lever, not a panacea. Sustained prosperity comes only when institutional reform and social attitudes evolve in step with innovation.

The American Century

While China’s growth-and-inequality cycles unfolded over millennia and Britain’s over centuries, America’s story is a fast-forward drama of cycles lasting mere decades. In the early 20th century, several waves of new technology widened the gap between rich and poor dramatically.

By 1929, as the world teetered on the edge of the Great Depression, John D. Rockefeller had amassed such a vast fortune – valued at roughly 1.5% of America’s entire GDP – that newspapers hailed him the world’s first billionaire. His wealth stemmed largely from pioneering petroleum and petrochemical ventures including Standard Oil, which dominated oil refining in an age when cars and mechanised transport were exploding in popularity.

• American People Suffering Historical Amnesia With Many Citizens Knowing “Virtually Nothing” About Their History
• America: A Nation Defined by its Mythology (Part 1)

Yet this period of unprecedented riches for a handful of magnates coincided with severe imbalances in the broader US economy. The “roaring Twenties” had boosted consumerism and stock speculation, but wage growth for many workers lagged behind skyrocketing corporate profits. By 1929, the top 1% of Americans owned more than a third of the nation’s income, creating a precariously narrow base of prosperity.

When the US stock market crashed in October 1929, it laid bare how vulnerable the system was to the fortunes of a tiny elite. Millions of everyday Americans – living without adequate savings or safeguards – faced immediate hardship, ushering in the Great Depression. Breadlines snaked through city streets, and banks collapsed under waves of withdrawals they could not meet.

Unemployed men queued outside a Great Depression soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931.

 (National Archives at College Park/Public Domain). 

In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reshaped American institutions. It introduced unemployment insurance, minimum wages, and public works programmes to support struggling workers, while progressive taxation – with top rates exceeding 90% during the second world war. Roosevelt declared: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much – it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

In a different way to the UK, the second world war proved a great leveller for the US – generating millions of jobs and drawing women and minorities into industries they’d long been excluded from. After 1945, the GI Bill expanded education and home ownership for veterans, helping to build a robust middle class. Although access remained unequal, especially along racial lines, the era marked a shift toward the norm that prosperity should be shared.

Meanwhile, grassroots movements led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. reshaped social norms about justice. In his lesser-quoted speeches, King warned that “a dream deferred is a dream denied” and launched the Poor People’s Campaign, which demanded jobs, healthcare and housing for all Americans. This narrowing of income distribution during the post-war era was dubbed the “Great Compression” – but it did not last.

As oil crises of the 1970s marked the end of the preceding cycle of inequality, another cycle began with the full-scale emergence of the third industrial revolution, powered by computers, digital networks and information technology.

The first personal computer, made by IBM. 

(Photographing Travis/CC BY-SA 2.0). 

As digitalisation transformed business models and labour markets, wealth flowed to those who owned the algorithms, patents and platforms – not those operating the machines. Hi-tech entrepreneurs and Wall Street financiers became the new oligarchs. Stock options replaced salaries as the true measure of success, and companies increasingly rewarded capital over labour.

By the 2000s, the wealth share of the richest 1% climbed to 30% in the US. The gap between the elite minority and working majority widened with every company stock market launch, hedge fund bonus and quarterly report tailored to shareholder returns.

But this wasn’t just a market phenomenon – it was institutionally engineered. The 1980s ushered in the age of (Ronald) Reaganomics, driven by the conviction that “government is not the solution to our problem; government  is the problem”. Following this neoliberalist philosophy, taxes on high incomes were slashed, capital gains were shielded, and labour unions were weakened.

Deregulation gave Wall Street free rein to innovate and speculate, while public investment in housing, healthcare and education was curtailed. The consequences came to a head in 2008 when the US housing market collapsed and the financial system imploded.

The Global Financial Crisis that followed exposed the fragility of a deregulated economy built on credit bubbles and concentrated risk. Millions of people lost their homes and jobs, while banks were rescued with public money. It marked an economic rupture and a moral reckoning – proof that decades of pro-market policies had produced a system that privatised gain and socialised loss.

Inequality, long growing in the background, now became a glaring, undeniable fault line in American life – and it has remained that way ever since.

Wealth share and income share of top 1% in the US: World Inequality Database; income share: Picketty & Saez (2003). Dotted curves are conjectured based on Kuznets curve. 

(Peng Zhou/CC BY-SA).

So is the US proof that the Kuznets model of inequality is indeed wrong? While the chart above shows inequality has flattened in the US since the 2008 financial crisis, there is little evidence of it actually declining. And in the short term, while Donald Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to do much for growth in the US, his low-tax policies won’t do anything to raise working-class incomes either.

The story of “the American century” is a dizzying sequence of technological revolutions – from transport and manufacturing to the internet and now AI – crashing one atop the other before institutions, politics or social norms could catch up. In my view, the result is not a broken cycle but an interrupted one. Like a wheel that never completes its turn, inequality rises, reform stutters – and a new wave of disruption begins.

Our Unequal AI Future?

Like any technological explosion, AI’s potential is dual-edged. Like the Tang dynasty’s bureaucrats hoarding grain, today’s tech giants monopolise data, algorithms and computing power. Management consultant firm McKinsey has predicted that algorithms could automate 30% of jobs by 2030, from lorry drivers to radiologists.

Yet AI also democratises: ChatGPT tutors students in Africa while open-source models such as DeepSeek empower worldwide startups to challenge Silicon Valley’s oligarchy.

The rise of AI isn’t just a technological revolution – it’s a political battleground. History’s empires collapsed when elites hoarded power; today’s fight over AI mirrors the same stakes. Will it become a tool for collective uplift like Britain’s post-war welfare state? Or a weapon of control akin to Han China’s grain-hoarding bureaucrats?

The answer hinges on who wins these political battles. In 19th-century Britain, factory owners bribed MPs to block child labour laws. Today, Big Tech spends billions lobbying to neuter AI regulation.

Meanwhile, grassroots movements like the Algorithmic Justice League demand bans on facial recognition in policing, echoing the Luddites who smashed looms not out of technophobia but to protest exploitation. The question is not if AI will be regulated but who will write the rules: corporate lobbyists or citizen coalitions.

The real threat has never been the technology itself, but the concentration of its spoils. When elites hoard tech-driven wealth, social fault-lines crack wide open – as happened more than 2,000 years ago when the Red Eyebrows marched against Han China’s agricultural monopolies.

To be human is to grow – and to innovate. Technological progress raises inequality faster than incomes, but the response depends on how people band together. Initiatives like “Responsible AI” and “Data for All” reframe digital ethics as a civil right, much like Occupy Wall Street exposed wealth gaps. Even memes – like TikTok skits mocking ChatGPT’s biases – shape public sentiment.

There is no simple path between growth and inequality. But history shows our AI future isn’t preordained in code: it’s written, as always, by us.

• Top image: Photo of an early IBM 7030 computer, in the 1960s, on display at National Cryptologic Museum.
• Source: ArnoldReinhold/Public Domain.
• This article was originally published under the title ‘What 2,000 years of Chinese history reveals about today’s AI-driven technology panic – and the future of inequality’ by Peng Zhou on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/science-space }

27-04-2025 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-04-2025 om 00:14 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

26-04-2025 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

Two UFOs Over Arlington, Illinois On April 22, 2025, NUFORC, UAP Drone Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 22, 2025

Location of sighting: Arlington, Illinois, USA

Source: from NUFORC website

 

A new report just came into NUFORC, a glowing object was seen with another smaller one seeming coming out of it. This larger craft has only a huge flashing light, so powerful we cannot see the shape of the craft, but I put it through a few filters until I found a yellow one that shows its true shape. This is 100% an alien craft. Very rare close up catch.

Scott C. Waring - Utah, USA

 

Eyewitness states: 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-04-2025 om 23:18 geschreven door peter  

Structure With Three Spheres On Planet Mercury, April 25, 2025, UFO UAP Sighting News.

 

Date of discovery: April 25, 2025

Location of discovery: Planet Mercury

Source photo: 

• https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02962

While searching over some NASA photos, I found on on Mercury that really caught my eye. There is a structure with three huge spheres on its top and a center tower that goes down to the ground. The object is big, I mean a mile high and a mile wide, but it's blocked by a black wall structure that goes 360 degrees around it to prevent it from being seen from far away. However the NASA satellite caught it. Proof of life? Mercury has more life on it than any planet in our solar system, including Earth. 

Scott C. Waring - Utah

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-04-2025 om 23:09 geschreven door peter