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We have reached a turning point in society. According to renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, the next 100 years of science will determine whether we perish or thrive. Will we remain a Type 0 civilization, or will we advance and make our way into the stars?

Experts assert that, as a civilization grows larger and becomes more advanced, its energy demands will increase rapidly due to its population growth and the energy requirements of its various machines. With this in mind, the Kardashev scale was developed as a way of measuring a civilization's technological advancement based upon how much usable energy it has at its disposal (this was originally just tied to energy available for communications, but has since been expanded).

Meet the Kardashev Scale

The scale was originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev (who was looking for signs of extraterrestrial life within cosmic signals). It has 3 base classes, each with an energy disposal level: Type I (10¹⁶W), Type II (10²⁶W), and Type III (10³⁶W). Other astronomers have extended the scale to Type IV (10⁴⁶W) and Type V (the energy available to this kind of civilization would equal that of all energy available in not just our universe, but in all universes and in all time-lines). These additions consider both energy access as well as the amount of knowledge the civilizations have access to.

First, it is important to note that the human race is not even on this scale yet. Since we still sustain our energy needs from dead plants and animals, here on Earth, we are a lowly Type 0 civilization (and we have a LONG way to go before being promoted to a type I civilization). Kaku tends to believe that, all things taken into consideration, we will reach Type I in 100 - 200 years time. But what does each of these categories actually stand for in literal terms?

A Type I designation is a given to species who have been able to harness all the energy that is available from a neighboring star, gathering and storing it to meet the energy demands of a growing population. This means that we would need to boost our current energy production over 100,000 times to reach this status. However, being able to harness all Earth's energy would also mean that we could have control over all natural forces. Human beings could control volcanoes, the weather, and even earthquakes! (At least, that is the idea.) These kinds of feats are hard to believe, but compared to the advances that may still be to come, these are just basic and primitive levels of control (it's absolutely nothing compared to the capabilities of societies with higher rankings).

The next step up - a Type II civilization - can harness the power of their entire star (not merely transforming starlight into energy, but controlling the star). Several methods for this have been proposed. The most popular of which is the hypothetical 'Dyson Sphere.' This device, if you want to call it that, would encompass every single inch of the star, gathering most (if not all) of its energy output and transferring it to a planet for later use. Alternatively, if fusion power (the mechanism that powers stars) had been mastered by the race, a reactor on a truly immense scale could be used to satisfy their needs. Nearby gas giants can be utilized for their hydrogen, slowly drained of life by an orbiting reactor.

What would this much energy mean for a species? Well, nothing known to science could wipe out a Type II civilization. Take, for instance, if humans survived long enough to reach this status, and a moon sized object entered our solar system on a collision course with our little blue planet--we'd have the ability to vaporize it out of existence. Or if we had time, we could move our planet out of the way, completely dodging it. But let's say we didn't want to move Earth... are there any other options? Well yes, because we'd have the capability to move Jupiter, or another planet of our choice, into the way - pretty cool, right?

So we've gone from having control over a planet, to a star, which has resulted in us harboring enough "disposable" energy to essentially make our civilization immune to extinction. But now, onto Type III, where a species then becomes galactic traversers with knowledge of everything having to do with energy, resulting in them becoming a master race. In terms of humans, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution - both biological and mechanical - may result in the inhabitants of this type III civilization being incredibly different from the human race as we know it. These may be cyborgs (or cybernetic organism, beings both biological and robotic), with the descendants of regular humans being a sub-species among the now-highly advanced society. These wholly biological humans would likely be seen as being disabled, inferior, or unevolved by their cybernetic counterparts.

At this stage, we would have developed colonies of robots that are capable of 'self replication'; their population may increase into the millions as they spread out across the galaxy, colonizing star after star. And these being might build Dyson Spheres to encapsulate each one, creating a huge network that would carry energy back to the home planet. But stretching over the galaxy in such a manner would face several problems; namely, the species would be constrained by the laws of physics. Particularly, light-speed travel. That is, unless they develop a working warp drive, or use that immaculate energy cache to master wormhole teleportation (two things that remain theoretical for the time being), they can only get so far.

Kardashev believed a Type IV civilization was 'too' advanced and didn't go beyond Type III on his scale. He thought that, surely, this would be the extent of any species' ability. Many think so, but a few believe there is a further level that could be achieved. (I mean, surely there is a limit?) Type IV civilizations would almost be able to harness the energy content of the entire universe and with that, they could traverse the accelerating expansion of space (furthermore, advance races of these species may live inside supermassive black holes). To previous methods of generating energy, these kinds of feats are considered impossible. A Type IV civilization would need to tap into energy sources unknown to us using strange, or currently unknown, laws of physics.

Type V. Yes, Type V might just be the next possible advancement to such a civilization. Here beings would be like gods, having the knowledge to manipulate the universe as they please. Now, as I said, humans are a very, very long way from ever reaching anything like this. But it's not to say that it cannot be achieved as long as we take care of Earth and each other. To do so, the first step is to preserve our tiny home, extinguish war, and continue to support scientific advances and discoveries.

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The Kardashev Scale - Can We Advance Beyond a Type 3 Civilization?

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Type 1 civilization designation on the Kardashev scale may be possible in the next 100 years, which could influence the survival of mankind.

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The Little Prince Trailer (2016) - Paramount Pictures

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Mountains. Whales. The distant stars. All these things exist in space, and so do we. Our bodies take up a certain amount of space. When we walk to work, we are moving through space. But what is space? Is it even an actual, physical entity? In 1717, a battle was waged over this question. Exactly 300 years later, it continues.

You might think physicists have "solved" the problem of space. The likes of mathematician Hermann Minkowski and physicist Albert Einstein taught us to conceive space and time as a unified continuum, helping us to understand how very large and very little things such as individual atoms move. Nonetheless, we haven't solved the question of what space is. If you sucked all the matter out of the universe, would space be left behind?

Twenty-first century physics is arguably compatible with two very different accounts of space: "relationism" and "absolutism". Both these views owe their popularity to Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), a German-born Queen of Great Britain, who stuck her oar into the philosophical currents swirling around her.

Caroline was a keen philosopher, and in the early 18th century she schemed to pit the leading philosophies of her period against each other. On the continent, philosophers were stuck in " rationalism ", spinning world theories from armchairs. Meanwhile, British philosophers were developing science-inspired "empiricism" - theories built on observations. They were worshipping scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton.

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Caroline asked two philosophers to exchange letters. One was the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, rationalist par excellence. The other was the English philosopher Samuel Clarke, a close friend of Newton. The two men agreed, and their exchange was published in 1717 as A Collection of Papers. The dull title doesn't sound like much, but these papers were revolutionary. And one of their central issues was the nature of space.

Everything or nothing?

Is there space between the stars? The relationist Leibniz argued that space is the spatial relations between things. Australia is "south of" Singapore. The tree is "three meters left of" the bush. Sean Spicer is "behind" the bush. That means space would not exist independently of the things it connects. For Leibniz, if nothing existed, there couldn't be any spatial relations. If our universe were destroyed, space would not exist.

In contrast, the absolutist Clarke argued that space is a sort of substance that is everywhere. Space is a giant container, containing all the things in the universe: stars, planets, us. Space allows us to make sense of how things move from one place to another, of how our entire material universe could move through space. What's more, Clarke argued that space is divine: space is God's presence in the world. In a way, space is God. For Clarke, if our universe were destroyed, space would be left behind. Just as you can't delete God, you can't delete space.

The Leibniz-Clarke letters exploded early 18th century thought. Thinkers like Newton, who were already involved in the debate, were dragged deeper in. Newton argued that space was more than the relations between material objects. He argued it was an absolute entity, that everything moves in relation to it. This led to the distinction between "relative" and "absolute" motion. The Earth moves relative to other material things, such as the sun, but it also moves absolutely - with regard to space.

Others joined the party later, like Immanuel Kant. He believed space is just a concept humans use to make sense of the world, rather than a real entity. It wasn't just philosophers and physicists who had views on space either. All sorts of people had their say, from stocking makers to tenant farmers. One especially unlikely discussion of space turns up in Thomas Amory's 1755 Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain.

The problem with God

People were especially edgy about Clarke's view that space is God. Does that mean we're moving through God all the time? God doesn't just see everything, he is everywhere? They also became worried about Big Things. As a whale takes up more space than a holy man, is a whale holier? As mountains are so large, are they like God?

The 20th century philosopher Bertrand Russell once argued we shouldn't worship mere size. "Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less than the larger beast," he wrote. Some 18th century thinkers would have disagreed - they were worried they should be worshipping a hippopotamus over Newton.

Today, the concept of God is disappearing from the debate. Yet some contemporary philosophers, such as Tim Maudlin and Graham Nerlich think that current theories in physics do support Clarke's view (minus the religious parts). Spacetime is one big container, and all of us move around in it.

Other philosophers, such as Kenneth Manders and Julian Barbour, think our best physics is compatible with both views, and there are other reasons to believe Leibniz's theory was right. If the physics really is compatible with absolutism or relationism, then perhaps we should prefer relationism as the simpler theory? After all, why posit a giant entity that acts like a container if we don't have to?

As a historian of space and time, I'm fascinated by how the debate has evolved, how something that started 300 years ago has unfurled and grown. Clearly, though the Leibniz-Clarke papers are not well known outside of philosophy, the debate they started continues. Caroline of Ansbach has a lot to answer for.

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What is space? The 300-year-old philosophical battle that is still raging today

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Mountains. Whales. The distant stars. All these things exist in space, and so do we. Our bodies take up a certain amount of space. When we walk to work, we are moving through space. But what is space? Is it even an actual, physical entity? In 1717, a battle was waged over this question.

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"We almost didn't believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most distant star," Brian Welch, a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of a Nature paper detailing the discovery, stated in a NASA press release. "Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges. The galaxy hosting this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that we named the 'Sunrise Arc.'"

By studying this arc in detail, as part of Hubble's RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) program-which analyzes images taken through these gravitational lenses to peer into the early universe-Welch was able to spot Earendel, which "popped" out from the general glow of its home galaxy, thanks to the lensing effect that amplified its brightness. Welch is a fan of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein and named the star after a character from The Silmarillion whose name means morning star. "We thought that was very apropos, because this is a star from the dawn of stellar formation, the dawn of time," says Thaler.

Although Earendel is long dead, looking at its "baby pictures" can give us important clues about the nature of the universe and the origins of matter. "You're actually looking at the time when most of the chemical elements that make up our bodies were formed," Thaler says. "The universe began with just hydrogen and helium gas. That's it. Everything else, like the calcium in my teeth or the iron in my blood, had to be formed inside stellar cores that then blew up. And so this first generation of stars produced a huge amount of these heavier, richer chemicals, the things that make life possible."

Researchers have been able to make basic inferences about Earendel based on its luminosity and color profile. But to find out more-and confirm that it is indeed a single star rather than a binary or triple star system-more observations will be needed. That's where the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope could play an important role. Hubble is 32 years old and has maybe a decade of life left, so the fact that the star has lined up with the gravitational lens during the brief window when both Hubble and the JWST are available to image it is another stroke of good fortune for scientists. "The two working together will reveal so much more about the universe than we've ever known before," says Smethurst.

Unlike Hubble, which sees mostly in the visible light spectrum, the JWST sees in infrared, which will give it more information about the chemical composition of Earendel. "Webb can actually hone in on that, do some spectroscopy, separate the light into a rainbow to figure out what the chemistry is, what the temperature of the star is, all of that," says Thaler.

There's a small chance that Earendel could be what's known as a Population III star-a hypothetical category of stellar objects comprised purely of hydrogen and helium, which were around immediately after the Big Bang. "We haven't got any of them like that in the Milky Way because it's a lot older," says Smethurst. "It could prove this one last piece of this theory of nucleosynthesis-how elements come to be formed in stars."

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The Farthest Star Sheds New Light on the Early Universe

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"We almost didn't believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most distant star," Brian Welch, a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of a Nature paper detailing the discovery, stated in a NASA press release. "Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges.

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A new simulation aims to determine whether the standard view of dark matter can explain how unique our galaxy's neighborhood is.

In the 1980s and '90s, when Carlos Frenk worked on some of the first theories of cold dark matter-"cold" refers to the invisible particles' relatively slow speed-he thought the idea wouldn't last very long. He and his colleagues had already tested a theory of faster-moving "hot" dark matter, the possibility that it is made of particles like neutrinos, and quickly ruled it out. Instead, the theory of cold dark matter became astrophysicists' "standard model" for two decades, a mantle it still carries.

Now Frenk's trying to poke holes in his cold dark-matter theory again. With a new simulation, he hopes to tackle open questions which may or may not be answered in the theory's favor. "That's how science works. One of my ambitions today is to shoot down the theory I've worked on," says Frenk, an astrophysicist at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Frenk and his colleagues at Durham and in Helsinki, Finland, just completed the first part of a computer simulation of the dark-matter universe; it's dubbed the Simulations Beyond the Local Universe project, or SIBELIUS, after the Finnish composer. The project was led by Stuart McAlpine and Till Sawala, both of whom previously conducted research with Frenk at Durham. Theirs isn't just any dark-matter simulation, but one with galaxies modeled in it, providing a detailed, three-dimensional picture of what our galaxy and our corner of the universe likely looks like-if the standard view of cold dark matter is right. They published their new research this month.

"This is the first attempt to simulate our patch of the universe, with all the structures we know and love, including the Coma cluster and the Virgo cluster," Frenk says, referring to large conglomerations of galaxies. Those kinds of cosmic landmarks, which lie tens of millions of light years from Earth or even farther away, might matter for understanding the assembly and evolution of our own galaxy over billions of years. They might also affect physicists' perspective on how fast the universe is expanding. Frenk and his team hope their simulation will be a useful tool for addressing such weighty questions. And if it can't answer them, it could mean that current dark-matter theories have problems.

Past efforts by theorists, including by Frenk himself, have either simulated a huge piece of the universe that only resembles the real one in a statistical sense, getting the number of galaxies and galaxy clusters about right, or they've zoomed in and focused only on our own Milky Way. But there's plenty to learn from our galaxy's surroundings too. Astronomers have thoroughly mapped out our local region, spotting dozens of small and faint "satellite" galaxies, like the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbit the Milky Way similar to the way the moon orbits the Earth. For decades, if not longer, they've also charted galaxy clusters and other objects beyond the neighborhood. (The French astronomer Charles Messier first discovered the Virgo cluster in 1781, in the constellation of the same name.)

SIBELIUS is more complex, because it builds on these impressive observations of our cosmic neighborhood and it actually tries to reproduce, to some extent, that local geography. The SIBELIUS simulation box is a big one, meant to resemble a 3D space that's 3.3 billion light-years on a side. By design, in this virtual cosmos, we're the center of the universe-the Milky Way resides in the middle, along with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

SIBELIUS is something called a "constrained realization," meaning that simulations of these and other local galaxies must closely match what's known about them in the real universe. By mapping them in a broader context, the team wants to see whether this region is representative of the entire universe, or rather atypical. Atypical might mean that there are many more-or fewer-galaxies in the surrounding environs than the expected average.

Most physicists believe that huge yet hidden webs of dark matter hold galactic structures together. In some spots in the SIBELIUS box, there's a little more dark matter than in others. Here, dark matter starts clumping together, and then those clumps grow. Frenk and his colleagues model how galaxies build up and grow within those clumps, and then they compare what happens in this simulation to what's known about the real world.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin whose research involves simulations of dark matter and galaxies, likens the situation to someone counting present-day urban metropolises and then developing a more nuanced picture that includes their interconnected histories and the roads that link them. "It's like, if you know the number of big cities in the US, that's fine. But if you start to know where they are in relation to one another and their geography, then you can understand more about the history and how they formed," he says. And in terms of our galaxy's cosmic history, he says, we want to know how dark matter and other galaxies beyond the Milky Way's borders shaped its past. "Does it matter that we have a certain distribution of galaxies around us? How rare are certain attributes of the Milky Way, and how much of that is related to the larger-scale environment?" he asks. "All of those questions I think you can only really answer with a simulation of the kind these people are producing."

Astronomers have naturally focused their telescopes on the part of the universe closest to us, since those stars and galaxies can be examined in the greatest detail. But astrophysicists have sometimes struggled to square the population of our own galactic neighborhood with dark-matter theories. For example, earlier models predicted more neighboring galaxies than have actually been spotted in the real universe, an issue dubbed the "missing satellites" problem.

Big clumps of dark matter should have enough gravitational pull to bring in the gas that builds up into stars and, later, galaxies. But another problem is that some simulations end up producing big, orbiting dark matter clumps, which look like the ones that should host satellite galaxies-but they don't seem to have any real-universe counterparts. This is called the "too-big-to-fail" problem, since huge blobs of dark matter are thought to be too massive to fail to form galaxies within them.

A third challenge comes from the fact that the satellite galaxies swirling around the Milky Way and Andromeda seem to be orbiting in a plane, rather than spread out all around-something dark-matter physicists hadn't predicted.

There are also cosmological problems that Frenk and his colleagues want to address. Astronomers using nearby supernova explosions and other local phenomena to measure how fast the universe is currently expanding get different answers than those probing the early universe. If dark-matter models are right, there has to be a way to resolve the troubling and persistent discrepancy between past and current observations.

But simulations like SIBELIUS might help. It might turn out that where a galaxy lives on the cosmic web of dark matter really does make a difference for measurements of the universe's expansion rate. What if the Milky Way lies sort of in a "hole" in the web-if it's more like a rural area between dark matter metropolises? If our part of the universe isn't actually representative, then our local measurements of how fast the universe is blowing outward might be a little biased.

The Milky Way might happen to be situated in a fairly dense region of dark matter or in a sparse one, says Priyamvada Natarajan, a Yale University astrophysicist and dark-matter expert. "What is cool about this simulation is that they can address: How typical or unusual is our local volume? How rare is the distribution of matter that we see around us? Are we on a mountain or are we in a valley?" she says.

When comparing galaxies observed with telescopes to what's seen in simulations, it's necessary to compare apples to apples, says Jenny Sorce, an astrophysicist at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, who helped design a similar kind of simulation, called CLONE, focused on galaxies in the Virgo cluster. "It's not like you can compare one type of cluster with another one if they don't share the same history or the same environment," she says.

Frenk and his team did plenty of initial tests with their own computers at low resolution. But time on supercomputers, like on telescopes, is limited. They only had a single chance to run their full simulation, which took millions of hours of computing time on thousands of computer cores. But based on their simulation's results, they find that the Milky Way's neighborhood indeed seems atypical: We live in a cosmic region with fewer than average galaxies, but there are also more big galaxy clusters than on average. It's like living in a low-elevation city, like Los Angeles, that nonetheless has mountain ranges in the distance.

If the Milky Way is indeed an oddball, it might help explain some dark matter mysteries, Frenk and Boylan-Kolchin speculate. If we're in a sparse part of the universe, that might explain why local measurements of the expansion rate are different than one would expect based on measurements of the faraway universe.

And if our galaxy is in the middle of an atypical neighborhood, that might explain why the satellites are in an unusual configuration-maybe they were pulled into the Milky Way's orbit in a particular way.

In other words, if the Milky Way's neighborhood is indeed unusual, it means the cold dark-matter theory will survive these challenges-for now.

The jury's still out. And there's plenty of room for improvement with the SIBELIUS simulation. It would be an even better resource if their galaxy formation model incorporated fluid dynamics to follow the gas clouds that form new stars and make galaxies grow, Sorce says. That way, galaxies would emerge more naturally within dark matter clumps, which could prove helpful for investigating the more subtle dark-matter problems. Frenk and his team plan to do exactly that, though it will take much more supercomputer time.

In the meantime, Frenk will keep using these simulations to explore challenges to the still-favored cold dark-matter model. "If it's wrong," he says, "I want to be the one who proves it wrong."

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Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way

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A new simulation aims to determine whether the standard view of dark matter can explain how unique our galaxy's neighborhood is. In the 1980s and '90s, when Carlos Frenk worked on some of the first theories of cold dark matter-"cold" refers to the invisible particles' relatively slow speed-he thought the idea wouldn't last very long.

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Is the universe a hologram? Looking inside a black hole suggests it might be

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The idea that the universe is a hologram has been misinterpreted, perhaps partially due to the popularity of films such as The Matrix.

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Nasa is taking a step in a distinctly Star Trek direction with a new communication method it tested on the International Space Station (ISS).

It's called 'holoporting' and, as you'd expect, is a mix between a hologram and teleportation.

And it resulted in Nasa flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid appearing on the space station as a hologram and able to talk to the astronauts in real time.

'This is completely new manner of human communication across vast distances,' Schmid said.

'Furthermore, it is a brand-new way of human exploration, where our human entity is able to travel off the planet.

'Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there. It doesn't matter that the space station is traveling 17,500 mph and in constant motion in orbit 250 miles above Earth, the astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later and with the system running, we will be there in that spot, live on the space station.'

In a nutshell, the process uses bespoke capture technology to record 3D models of people which are then reconstructed, compressed and transmitted in real time.

The receivers use a mixed reality display - in this case, a Microsoft HoloLens - to see, hear and interact with the holograms.

Nasa says its plans are to use this next with two-way communication, where people on Earth are holoported to space and astronauts are placed back on earth.

'We'll use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences and to bring VIPs onto the space station to visit with astronauts,' the space agency said in a statement.

Schmid added: 'Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it.

'Furthermore, we will combine augmented reality with haptics. You can work on the device together, much like two of the best surgeons working during an operation. This would put everyone at rest knowing the best team is working together on a critical piece of hardware,' he said.

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Nasa 'holoported' a doctor onto the International Space Station

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Nasa is taking a step in a distinctly Star Trek direction with a new communication method it tested on the International Space Station (ISS). It's called 'holoporting' and, as you'd expect, is a mix between a hologram and teleportation.

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The Planck scientists noticed the larger-than-expected lensing effect years ago; the anomaly showed up most prominently in their final analysis of the full data set, released last year. If the universe is flat, cosmologists expect a curvature measurement to fall within about one "standard deviation" of zero, due to random statistical fluctuations in the data. But both the Planck team and the authors of the new paper found that the CMB data deviates by 3.4 standard deviations. Assuming that the universe is flat, this is a major fluke - about equivalent to getting heads in a coin toss 11 times in a row, which happens less than 1% of the time. The Planck team attributes the measurement to just such a fluke, or to some unaccounted-for effect that blurs the CMB light, mimicking the effect of extra matter.

Or perhaps the universe is really closed. Di Valentino and co-authors point out that a closed model resolves other anomalous findings in the CMB. For instance, researchers deduce the values of key ingredients of our universe, such as the amount of dark matter and dark energy, by measuring variations in the color of the CMB light coming from different regions of the sky. But curiously, they get different answers when they compare small regions of the sky and when they compare large regions. The authors point out that when you recalculate these values assuming a closed universe, they don't differ.

Will Kinney, a cosmologist at the University at Buffalo in New York, called this bonus benefit of the closed universe model "really interesting." But he noted that the discrepancies between small and large-scale variations seen in the CMB light could easily be statistical fluctuations themselves, or they might stem from the same unidentified error that may affect the lensing measurement.

There are only six of these key properties that shape the universe, according to the standard theory of cosmology, which is known as ΛCDM (named for dark energy, represented by the Greek letter Λ, or lambda, and cold dark matter). With only six numbers, ΛCDM accurately describes almost all features of the cosmos. And ΛCDM does not predict any curvature; it says the universe is flat.

The new paper effectively argues that we may need to add a seventh parameter to ΛCDM: a number that describes the curvature of the universe. For the lensing measurement, adding a seventh number improves the fit with the data.

But other cosmologists argue that before taking an anomaly seriously enough to add a seventh parameter to the theory, we need to take into account all the other things that ΛCDM gets right. Sure, we can focus on this one anomaly - a coin coming up heads 11 times in a row - and say that something's off. But the CMB is such a huge data set that it's like flipping a coin hundreds or thousands of times. It's not too hard to imagine that in doing so, we'll encounter one random run of 11 heads. Physicists call this the "look elsewhere" effect.

Furthermore, researchers note that the seventh parameter isn't needed for most other measurements. There's a second way of gleaning the spatial curvature from the CMB, by measuring correlations between light from sets of four points in the sky; this "lensing reconstruction" measurement indicates that the universe is flat, with no seventh parameter needed. In addition, the BOSS survey's independent observations of cosmological signals called baryon acoustic oscillations also point to flatness. Planck, in their 2018 analysis, combined their lensing measurement with these two other measurements and arrived at an overall value for the spatial curvature within one standard deviation of zero.

Di Valentino, Melchiorri and Silk think that pulling these three different data sets together masks the fact that the different data sets don't actually agree. "The point here is not that the universe is closed," Melchiorri said by email. "The problem is the inconsistency between the data. This indicates that there is currently no concordance model and that we are missing something." In other words, ΛCDM is wrong or incomplete.

All other researchers consulted for this article think the weight of the evidence points to the universe being flat. "Given the other measurements," Addison said, "the clearest interpretation of this behavior of the Planck data is that it's a statistical fluctuation. Maybe it's caused by some slight inaccuracy in the Planck analysis, or maybe it's completely just noise fluctuations or random chance. But either way, there's not really a reason to take this closed model seriously."

That's not to say pieces aren't missing from the cosmological picture. ΛCDM seemingly predicts the wrong value for the current expansion rate of the universe, causing a controversy known as the Hubble constant problem. But assuming the universe is closed doesn't fix this problem - in fact, adding curvature worsens the prediction of the expansion rate. Other than Planck's anomalous lensing measurement, there's no reason to think the universe is closed.

"Time will tell, but I am not, personally, terribly worried about this one," Kinney said, referring to the suggestion of curvature in the CMB data. "It's of a kind with similar anomalies that have proven to be vapor."
Update: July 15, 2020
New measurements of the cosmic microwave background by the Atacama Cosmology Telescopefind that the universe is flat, with a density matching the critical density. "We find no evidence of deviation from flatness," the ACT scientists write, "supporting the interpretation that the [deviation seen by Planck] is a statistical fluctuation." Corrected on November 4, 2019: The original version of this article referred to the BOSS satellite. In fact, the BOSS survey was conducted on a ground-based telescope.
This article was reprinted in Spanish at Investigacionyciencia.es.

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What Shape Is the Universe? A New Study Suggests We've Got It All Wrong

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The Planck scientists noticed the larger-than-expected lensing effect years ago; the anomaly showed up most prominently in their final analysis of the full data set, released last year. If the universe is flat, cosmologists expect a curvature measurement to fall within about one "standard deviation" of zero, due to random statistical fluctuations in the data.

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Short on space? Take inspiration from Japan’s courtyard gardens | Alys Fowler

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Overlooked side returns, tiny front yards and basement entrances can be transformed into peaceful, thoughtful spaces

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If you're in on the flower and plant game, you probably already know about this year's trending florals and have maybe even designed a few of your own arrangements. Maybe you've started naming some of your houseplants and love the sense of responsibility you get from caring for that fiddle-leaf fig on your balcony garden. (As for the most advanced owners, you're off collecting rare plants.) Whatever level you're on, you obviously make sure that all of your plants and flowers get the best of everything: from extra lighting to plenty of water.

But have you ever thought about the way you present your plants and flowers in a space, as in the objects you use to display them? Don't get us wrong, we love shopping for pots and vases as much as the next person, but they're not the only vessels that can add a pop of color, life, and vibrancy into a room. To give you some ideas, we spoke with eight florists about all the ways they think outside of the pot.

Look for fake or dried flowers

First things first, we have to address the reality that comes with alternative ways of displaying flowers. For the most part, if your flowers aren't in vases with water, you'll have to use dried ones or fake florals. Luckily, "there are so many nice artificial ones out there, nowadays, that look so realistic," says Heather Wingate, a wedding and special events florist based in Crown Point, Indiana. With a few notable exceptions, like air plants, the same is true for plants.

If you're interested in recreating any of these chic designs, you'll likely want to start by searching for some faux greenery and blossoms. You can also hit up your favorite flower shop for some dried blooms, or even grow and immortalize them yourself.

Floating arbors

Heather recently uploaded a video on TikTok showing a floating arbor she designed with plants and flowers from her yard. Working in the wedding industry, these unique flower arrangements aren't unusual for her. "People get married under it if they want a floating arch," she says. However, it's also something anyone could replicate in their home for a more permanent display. The one that Heather made, which used live flowers, died in just a couple of hours. "I could see people doing this for a photo op or using silk flowers for something more permanent," she adds.

Most of these displays are made with chicken wire and fishing line, which are basically florists' secret weapons when it comes to hanging installations. The chicken wire is flexible enough that it can be molded into various shapes, and fishing line has the perfect balance between strength and invisibility. It's easy to shape the chicken wire into various shapes, so long as it has a tunnel-like interior so you can thread the plants through it. "Then, the stems become interlocked as you push them in," she adds.

As a general rule of thumb, Heather suggests using three different types of greenery if you want to create something similar. "All three need to have a different leaf size, shape, or texture for interest," she recommends.

Hanging florals

Similarly, Amanda Mota and Jp Guay used fishing lines to create a cascading floral installation in their photo studio, Post Creative Studio. Packed with midcentury pieces like Cesca chairs and vintage teak, the falling flowers are just another beautiful addition to the sunbathed studio. "We installed a grid on the ceiling using hooks people use for hanging plants or light fixtures," Amanda says. The grid is about four inches below the ceiling; then, they attached the fishing lines with flowers, every two grids. "It's probably about a foot between each string," she adds.

In the middle, they left a four-by-four-foot square blank so that people could stand in the middle of the flowers to experience the project from the inside. "You can't really see the opening from the outside because there are so many flowers," she explains. They've also done something similar to frame an early 2000s IKEA Storvik Rattan Cane Lounge Chair by Carl Öjerstam.

Pampas clouds

"The best thing about dried flowers is that they are extremely versatile and can be used to create many different flower pieces," says Rochelle Moseley, owner of Jasmine Blooms. Using dried flowers opens up even more possibilities for innovative flower displays, and believe us when we say these blooms are making a comeback in the home and design space.

For a big statement, consider a pampas cloud, which is like a flower chandelier. "Looking at them is like an explosion of pampas grass, which is very eye-catching," Rochelle says, noting that these designs also often have other stems in them to add layers, texture, color, and visual interest.

Usually, pampas clouds are styled as centerpieces, and Rochelle explains that these hanging versions are called 360 clouds since they can be seen from all angles. Alternatively, they can be mounted on walls for homes with less space, in which case they're referred to as 180 pieces.

Though Rochelle says there is "no limit" to how pampas clouds can make their mark on a home, she explains it's really common to see 360 clouds in entryways or above a dining room table. "A 180-degree display can be placed above a mantelpiece, above the headboard of a bed, as the focal point of a feature wall, or even attached to a floor-standing mirror," she offers.

Flower baubles

Imogen Stuckes, founder of Flowers by Imogen, says flower baubles or ornaments make for delicate and personalized ways to show off some of your favorite blooms. Somewhat small flowers like daisies, lavender, strawflowers, or small stems of gypsophila work best in these bulbs, as they're the easiest to put inside. "They can look sculptural, too," Imogen says. "As if they're floating in the air."

She recommends searching for glass baubles over plastic ones, as they tend to look more sophisticated. "I think they look really nice hanging from some branches in a vase, on door or cupboard handles, or on the end of curtain rails," she says.

Moss and plant walls

Not to be confused with living walls, which are made with living plants and need water and care, moss art or moss walls are relatively easy and low-maintenance ways to add a splash of greenery into a room. They're made with various preserved mosses and other natural elements and also have great benefits, says Celia White, artist and owner of the Etsy shop, WhiteHausLiving. "This includes purifying the air of toxins, creating sound barriers to rooms, and creating a stress-free feel," Celia adds.

Most moss art can last for over seven years, and with great care up to 25. Since many moss walls are handcrafted by artists, there can be a lot of variety in the style and aesthetic. "There are pieces that are rustic, contemporary, and modern," Celia explains. "Picking the right moss art is in the eye of the buyer."

A similar look can also be achieved with fake plants, as Julie Sousa, an interior designer and content creator, demonstrates in her bathroom. "There aren't any windows in that bathroom so the greenery felt like the perfect way to contrast the moodiness and distract from the lack of windows," Julie says. She first attached turf to the wall before adding chicken wire and sticking different fake leaves and plants through the wire.

To keep it clean, she uses a Swiffer duster and occasionally sprays water, olive oil, vinegar, and lemon solution before wiping it down and blotting it with a paper towel. "If or when the dust ever gets unmanageable with that method, I built the wall to make it easy to remove the leaves for a good soak," she says. However, very little dust has accumulated on the wall since she installed it. "It would probably be a once-a-year kind of thing," she explains.

Organic vessels

Blooming Haus, a London-based floral studio that specializes in alternative ways to display their designs, borrowed from the art of basketry in the past to make unique, organic vessels in which to display florals.

"We used fresh willow," says cofounder Michal Kowalski. These branches were weaved and pulled together, similar to the way baskets are made, until the right tension was achieved. "To contrast the willow, we added a summer lilac placed at a horizontal," Michal explains.

If you want to create something similar, he suggests submerging the twigs or sticks in warm water for 30 minutes to 24 hours to soften them, which will make them more flexible. "Such pretreated and preconditioned materials are easy to work with, dry very well, and keep the shape afterward," he adds, noting that you can expect something like this to last for years.

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7 Creative Ways to Display Plants and Flowers In Your Space

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If you're in on the flower and plant game, you probably already know about this year's trending florals and have maybe even designed a few of your own arrangements. Maybe you've started naming some of your houseplants and love the sense of responsibility you get from caring for that fiddle-leaf fig on your balcony garden.

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Space Perspective is a company that plans to take people to the edge of space to appreciate Earth from above.

The cabin is luxurious and offers a 360-degree view of our planet during a six-hour journey.

Unlike a rocket-powered flight, this trip far above Earth is a peaceful ride that requires no special training.

Want to ride to Earth's upper atmosphere in a luxury space balloon? You could have your chance as soon as 2024-if your vacation budget is over six figures, that is.

Spaceship Neptune, a futuristic space balloon trip from Space Perspective, the "world's first luxury spaceflight experience company," will carry passengers almost 20 miles high to the upper one percent of our atmosphere. The company, headquartered at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, revealed an illustration of its cabin interior last week. Inside the pressurized Neptune capsule is an impressive "Space Lounge" designed to be both safe and luxurious with 360-degree views of Earth.

Below the base of the cabin compartment is a splashdown cone, making the underside of the compartment an upside-down cone shape that enters the water with minimal turbulence. That way, the ending of the flight is as smooth as the rest. When fully expanded, the silver balloon reaches 18 million cubic feet in volume-large enough to engulf an entire football stadium. At launch, it stands over 700 feet tall, higher than the Space Needle in Seattle.

Cabin Specs

A circular cabin

360-degree windows

Deep, comfortable seats for eight passengers and the pilot

Dark, purple tones and subdued lighting (to reduce glare and reflection)

A drinks and refreshments bar

WiFi connectivity with connections for live streaming

Accommodations for scientific instruments supporting research projects

Potential to rearrange seating for a dinner or a wedding

The great news is that you don't have to undergo any special training for this ride, because it doesn't use a rocket launch to boost passengers into outer space (beyond the internationally-recognized space border of 62 miles above sea level). Company co-founder Jane Poynter wanted to offer a more accessible spaceflight experience to people, she told AFP.

Some of the same people involved in the 2014 Stratex World Record-Breaking Flight that dropped a Google executive from a space balloon, and the Biosphere 2 project to model and study the world's ecosystems, founded Space Perspective. The company was developed to share the "transformative power of space travel with as many people as possible," according to the company website. It touts the Spaceship Neptune experience as a zero-emissions ride that climbs at a serene 12 miles per hour.

During the six-hour ride, you'll spend two hours each ascending, gliding, and descending. The trip culminates in an ocean splashdown. From your perspective at the top-100,000 feet above Earth's surface-you will see what every astronaut sees just before breaking the barrier between sky and space: massive continental landforms in greens and browns; brilliant blue oceans; the thin, bright blue line illuminating the curvature of our planet; and a backdrop of stars.

The bad news is, you'll probably have to wait an extra year to go. The first year's 25 planned flights (600 tickets) are sold out already, and they cost $125,000 a pop. So start saving up!

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

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Peek Inside the Space Balloon Lifting Passengers 100,000 Feet Above Earth's Surface

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Space Perspective is a company that plans to take people to the edge of space to appreciate Earth from above. The cabin is luxurious and offers a 360-degree view of our planet during a six-hour journey. Unlike a rocket-powered flight, this trip far above Earth is a peaceful ride that requires no special training.

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Interstellar – Building A Black Hole – Official Warner Bros.

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In a groundbreaking space discovery, astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole.

Back when Warner Bros. released Christopher Nolan's " Interstellar," the film's scientific accuracy was championed by the cast and crew. Nolan wanted to ensure that "Interstellar" adhered as closely as possible to Real Science when it came to depicting wormholes and black holes, so he hired Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne as an executive producer and scientific consultant on the movie. Thorne worked closely with the VFX team to nail the look of the film's black hole, named Gargantua.

With the recent groundbreaking release of the first real black hole photo, it appears Thorne and the "Interstellar" team favorably predicted the the world's first look at the space phenomena. Astronomers captured the first image of a real black hole and made the image public on April 10.

The photograph shows a red-orange circle made out of dust and gas that forms the outline to the black hole, which is located 55 million light years away from Earth in the Messier 87 galaxy. The "Interstellar" black hole was created using a new CGI rendering software that was based on theoretical equations provided by Thorne and a group of researchers. The new technology led Thorne to discover information about the gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes.

The "Interstellar" black hole was also presented as a sphere and not two-dimensional, complete with disks of dust and gas that formed ring shapes. It appears Nolan's black hole correctly portrayed the orange dust and gas effect of a real black hole. In Thorne's companion book "The Science of Interstellar," he wrote the accretion disk of a black hole would be able to emit light because it is "anemic and at low temperature-about the temperature of the surface of the sun."

The black hole in the real photo is unseeable, but the disk pops in a similar fashion to what "Interstellar" portrayed. Claire Denis' " High Life," now playing in theaters, also depicts a black hole in somewhat similar fashion to Nolan's. Compare and contrast the real black hole to Nolan and Denis' films in the photos below.

EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE COLLABORATION/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

A24

#HighLife black hole (left) #RealBlackHole (right). Get yourself a Cosmic Consultant like @AurelienBarrau. pic.twitter.com/diLoDGeFJj

- A24 (@A24) April 10, 2019

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Black Hole Photo Shows Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' Wasn't So Far Off From the Real Thing

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In a groundbreaking space discovery, astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole. Back when Warner Bros. released Christopher Nolan's " Interstellar," the film's scientific accuracy was championed by the cast and crew.

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Nasa's interactive map of the universe - mapping out the images that they've taken of different nebula's, galaxies, star systems and other interstellar beings.

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Roam the night sky and zoom in to get a Hubble's-eye-view of cosmic objects.

The Hubble Skymap puts the night sky at your fingertips any time of day. Roam the Milky Way to find a selection of galaxies, stars, nebulae and more, and click for a Hubble's-eye-view of each object.

To explore the skymap, scroll, double click, or pinch/swipe to zoom in and out. Roll over an icon to see the object, click to zero in, and click again for a detailed view and a description. Drag the map to navigate.

Hubble's Messier Catalog

The objects in Charles Messier's catalog are nice targets for backyard astronomers with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope and a relatively dark sky.

The Messier catalog, begun by astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th Century and revised over the years, includes some of the most fascinating astronomical objects that can be observed from Earth's Northern Hemisphere. An interactive Skymap of just these Messier Catalog objects is also available.
Explore the Messier Catalog

Hubble's Caldwell Catalog

The Caldwell Catalog goes beyond the work of Charles Messier, offering backyard astronomers more cosmic wonders to explore.

In the 1980s, an Englishman named Sir Patrick Moore produced an additional list to highlight more cosmic wonders visible to amateur astronomers. Unlike the Messier catalog, which only features objects that were visible from Charles Messier's viewing location in Europe, Moore's Caldwell catalog includes celestial bodies that are found in both the northern and southern skies. An interactive Skymap of just these Caldwell Catalog objects is also available.
Explore the Caldwell Catalog

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The Hubble Skymap puts the night sky at your fingertips any time of day. Roam the Milky Way to find a selection of galaxies, stars, nebulae and more, and click for a Hubble's-eye-view of each object. To explore the skymap, scroll, double click, or pinch/swipe to zoom in and out.

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How small are we in the scale of the universe? - Alex Hofeldt

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Where is the coldest place in the Universe? - BBC Sky at Night Magazine

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Watch Headspace Guide to Meditation | Netflix Official Site

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Headspace takes a friendly, animated look at the benefits of meditation while offering techniques and guided meditations to jump-start your practice. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Stuck In the Sound - Let's Go [Official Video]

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The Largest Black Hole in the Universe - Size Comparison

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Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest

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We create beautiful animation videos to share our passion for knowledge. Get in touch to learn more about us!