From an economic wellness perspective, the entire world is experiencing a reset of how life is organized on the planet. For a great majority of the almost seven billion persons around the world, life is not happy, peaceful, safe nor barely prosperous.

Because the basis of all life is energy, the issues, conditions and realities of one person affects the energy and reality of all others. More importantly for our discussion about an economic recession, the financial situation of the majority must always affect the whole.

If the financial and economic structure that societies support and use does not serve the majority of human beings in those societies, the structure can exist only as long as mass consciousness remains unquestioning and supportive.

The moment a shift in consciousness questioning the validity and authenticity of structures that do not serve the majority occurs, change is afoot. If consciousness then turns to a mass choosing for transformation so that all societal structures better reflect the needs of the majority, change takes root and begins to cement.

All around the world, billions of persons are effectively left out of sharing in the wealth of the planet. Economic, social, political, educational and other societal structures that organize life on the planet work to keep this in place.

But as in all shifts and evolutionary phases in human and social development, mass consciousness has outgrown these old ways of organizing, managing, distributing and controlling the planet’s collective resources.

The current economic recession is but one phase in a series of many re-settings to bring reality into alignment with evolving consciousness. This process will result in focused, creative energy being directed to imagining then implementing real, practical and out-of-the-box solutions to solve the common problems that affect billions of persons all around the world.

The first galaxies formed very long ago, when our almost 14 billion year old Universe was less than a billion years of age. Our own Milky Way Galaxy likewise is very ancient–a large starlit pinwheel twirling in space that is thought to be about 13.6 billion years old–give or take 8 million years. Indeed, the oldest known star in our Galaxy is 13.7 billion years old. Altogether, the Milky Way is thought to host approximately 300 billion stars. But, even though our Galaxy has many galactic neighbors, one of its enormous starlit siblings has gone missing, disappearing mysteriously billions of years ago. In July 2018, astronomers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, announced that they have finally found our Milky Way’s long lost sibling. Alas, the team of scientists have deduced that our current closest large galactic neighbor shredded and cannibalized this massive sister of our Milky Way two billion years ago.

Even though it was mostly devoured and shredded, this massive sister galaxy left behind, as a lingering tattle-tale relic of its former existence, a trail of evidence revealing that it was once here. This rich trail of evidence is composed of an almost invisible halo of stars that is larger than our Milky Way’s largest spiral neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy itself. The evidence also consists of an elusive stream of stars, as well as a separate mysterious and enigmatic galaxy named M32. Discovering and observing this partly devoured doomed galaxy will help astronomers understand how disk galaxies like our Milky Way evolve and manage to survive large and violent mergers wth other enormous galaxies.

Our Galaxy And Its General Neighborhood

The group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way is appropriately named the Local Group, and it hosts more than 54 galaxies, most of which are relatively small dwarfs. Astronomers have predicted that sometime between 1 billion and 1 trillion years from now, all of the galactic constituents of the Local Group will crash into one another, and these collisions and resulting mergers will create a single enormous galaxy. The gravitational center of the Local Group today is situated between our Milky Way and Andromeda, and the entire group sports the impressive diameter of about 3.1 million parsecs. It also displays a binary (dumbell) distribution. The Local Group itself is a constituent of the larger Virgo Supercluster that may, in turn, be a part of the recently discovered Laniakea Supercluster.

The unfortunate, decimated galaxy, dubbed M32p, was once the third-largest member of the Local Group, after our Milky Way and Andromeda. Using supercomputer models, Dr. Richard D’Souza and Dr. Eric Bell of the University of Michigan’s Department of Astronomy were able to piece together the lingering tattle-tale evidence of this galactic crime, revealing all that is left of the tragically cannibalized sister of our own Galaxy.

Currently, the three largest member galaxies of the Local Group (in decreasing order) are the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy. The larger duo of these three spiral galaxies each have their own system of orbiting satellite galaxies. Both the Milky Way and Andromeda are majestic spirals that display starlit spiral arms that whirl majestically in space. Andromeda is, at present, a safe 2 million light-years away from our Milky Way. However, this will not always be the case. The relentless and merciless pull of powerful gravity is tugging Andromeda towards our Galaxy at the breathtaking speed of 250,000 miles per hour. In about 5 billion years, our Milky Way and Andromeda will crash into one another, merging to create one single enormous Galaxy.

Indeed, the future collision of our Galaxy with Andromeda will create an entirely new Galaxy, one that will likely display an elliptical shape, instead of the elegant starlit spiral “pinwheel” arms of its two badly disrupted galactic parents. This strange new Galaxy has been given the name Milkomeda, even though there will likely be no human life left on Earth to witness the enormous new Galaxy that will rise from the wreckage of this monumental merger.

Such galactic wrecks may not be quite as violent as once thought. These collisions have been observed in distant galaxies throughout the Cosmos, and even though galaxies have been seen smashing into one another, it is not likely that any two of their constituent stars will meet up and merge. The splattered wreckage that would be left behind in the wake of a two-star collision would create a big stellar mess. The good news is that the space between stars within a host galaxy is usually vast. For this reason violent stellar smash-ups rarely occur.

In contrast, the floating clouds of gas and dust that swirl around together within their host galaxies, will probably suffer as a result of a smash-up and merger. That sort of unfortunate and catastrophic event will be violent and make a horrific mess. This is because such a wreck will trigger star-birth within churning, writhing clouds of gas and dust. These cold dark clouds serve as the strange cradles of bright new baby stars, that are born in a dramatic, brilliant, blaze of newborn glory.

Galactic head-long collisions occur over long stretches of time–they can last as long as millions to billions of years, and they are not quickly over for the suffering parties. However, our Milky Way has been lucky because a violent collision with a similarly large galaxy has not occurred throughout its entire 13.6 billion year history–at least, not yet.

When Andromeda crashes into our Milky Way, our entire night sky will experience a sea-change. About 3.75 billion years from now, the sky above our planet will literally be filled with Andromeda, as it mercilessly makes its fatal approach towards our Galaxy. For the next few billion years, as a result of Andromeda’s approach, there will be brilliant blasts of fiery stellar birth lighting up Earth’s night sky.

In about 7 billion years, the sky above our planet will become even more strange and alien. The glaring core of the newborn Milkomeda Galaxy–now our own host Galaxy–will take over the entire sky. However, the prospect of human beings still being around to view this sight is remote. This is because our Sun will probably evolve into an enormous, swollen, dying red giant star approximately 5 billion years from now, and will have already incinerated its inner planets–Mercury, Venus, and Earth–long before the head-long smash-up between the two galaxies has occurred.

Both our Milky Way and Andromeda are approximately the same age. Although the two sister galaxies are considered to be almost identical twins, it is a little difficult to predict which one of the doomed duo will suffer the most when the end comes. However, since Andromeda is a bit larger than our own Galaxy, technically it will be Andromeda that will feast on our Milky Way.

A Sister Galaxy Gone Missing

Astronomers have known for a long time that nearly invisible large halos of stars surround galaxies, and that these halos contain the sad relics of smaller cannibalized galaxies. Indeed, a large galaxy like Andromeda is thought to have devoured literally hundreds of its smaller companions in this galaxy-eat-galaxy Universe. For this reason, many astronomers believed it would be a difficult task to learn about the history of any particular one of these unfortunate little galaxies.

However, the team of astronomers using new supercomputer simulations were able to come to a new understanding. The scientists found that even though a large number of companion galaxies were devoured by Andromeda, most of the stellar inhabitants of that galaxy’s outer dim halo were the unfortunate children of a shredded single large galaxy.

“It was a ‘eureka’ moment. We realized we could use this information of Andromeda’s outer stellar halo to infer the properties of the largest of these shredded galaxies,” commented study lead author Dr. D’Souza in a July 23, 2018 University of Michigan Press Release. Dr. D’Souza is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan.

“Astronomers have been studying the Local Group–the Milky Way, Andromeda and their companions–for so long. It was shocking to realize that the Milky Way had a large sibling, and we never knew about it,” said co-author Dr. Bell in the same Press Release. Dr. Bell is a University of Michigan professor of astronomy.

This unfortunate sister galaxy of our Milky Way, M32p, which was shredded mercilessly by the voracious Andromeda galaxy, was at least 20 times larger than any galaxy which merged with the Milky Way over the course of its more than 13 billion year existence. M32p would have been quite massive, and likely would have been the third largest galaxy in the Local Group, after Andromeda and our Milky Way, had it not been shredded and consumed by Andromeda.

This new study might also solve an intriguing mystery: the formation of Andromeda’s puzzling M32 satellite galaxy. The astronomers now suggest that the compact and dense M32 is really the surviving central heart of our Milky Way’s long-lost sister. The team of astronomers compare M32 to the pit of a plum.

“M32 is a weirdo. While it looks like a compact example of an old, elliptical galaxy, it actually has lots of young stars. It’s one of the most compact galaxies in the Universe. There isn’t another galaxy like it,” Dr. Bell noted in the July 23, 2018 University of Michigan Press Release.

The new research may change the currently most widely accepted scientific understanding of the way galaxies evolve. The astronomers realized that Andromeda’s disk had managed to survive a smash-up with a massive galaxy. This impact would challenge the traditional viewpoint that such large interactions would invariably destroy the orderly disks of spirals, thus creating only elliptical galaxies.

The timing of the impact may also shed new light on the thickening of Andromeda’s disk, as well as on a mysterious blast of brilliant star-birth that occurred about two billion years ago. This finding was independently reached by a team of French astronomers early in 2018.

“The Andromeda Galaxy, with a spectacular burst of star formation, would have looked so different 2 billion years ago. When I was at graduate school, I was told that understanding how the Andromeda Galaxy and its satellite galaxy M32 formed would go a long way towards unraveling the mysteries of galaxy formation,” Dr. Bell explained in the July 23, 2018 University of Michigan Press Release.

The good news is that this study can also be used for other galaxies. This would enable astronomers to measure their most massive past galaxy mergers. Armed with this new knowledge, scientists can go on to untangle the intricate and complicated tapestry of cause and effect that triggers galaxy growth, as well as learn about what mergers do to the galaxies that must suffer through them.

A vast multitude of incandescent stars emit their lovely glittering light within the more than 100 billion galaxies that float around in the observable Universe. The observable, or visible, Universe is that region of our Cosmos that we are able to see, both with our unaided eyes and with some very sophisticated telescopes. We cannot observe what may (or may not) exist beyond the edge (the horizon) of our observable, or visible, Universe. This is because the light of whatever may exist beyond the cosmological horizon has not had enough time to reach us since our Universe was born in the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago.

Our own large barred spiral Galaxy, the Milky Way, is much like a very large number of other galaxies dispersed throughout our Universe. Its constituent stars and gas reside primarily in a disk, rotating around a central bulge where stars reside much closer together, and where there also lurks a supermassive black hole. Supermassive black holes weigh as much as millions to billions of times more than the Sun. The supermassive black hole believed to reside at the center of our Milky Way is a relative light-weight. It weighs “only” millions, rather than billions, of solar-masses. The Sun, and its enchanting retinue of familiar planets, moons, and assorted smaller objects is located about 25,000 light-years from the Galactic center, where the black hole dwells. Light travels about 9.46 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles in one Earth-year.

From where we are situated, in the far suburbs of our Galaxy in one of its spiral arms, the other stars appear to be concentrated in a stripe across the sky–that stripe is the Milky Way. Because of light pollution on our planet, many of its inhabitants have never had the opportunity to see the band of stars in the night sky that compose our Galaxy. For those of us who have seen this awesome band, it is an impressive sight, and one that truly drives home to any observer on Earth that we are just an exquisitely tiny component of that which is immense, majestic, and mighty. The stars that we see in this band are circling around the Galactic center, taking over 100 million Earth-years to complete a single orbit. The Andromeda Galaxy is our Galaxy’s nearest large neighbor in space. It is a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way, but it is a larger spiral, and it hosts a larger supermassive black hole in its heart.

The Andromeda Galaxy is 2 million light-years away–at present. Like our own Galaxy, it contains stars of all ages and a rich supply of gas. Gravity is drawing Andromeda towards us at approximately 100 kilometers a second. In about 5 billion years, our Galaxy will collide and merge with Andromeda.

Our large Galaxy, the Milky Way, and the even larger spiral, Andromeda, together with at least 20 smaller galaxies, constitute what is called the Local Group. The Local Group is a few million light-years across. However, this is small when compared to entire galaxy clusters. Immense clusters of galaxies exist in our Universe, and some of them contain hundreds of constituent galaxies. Our Local Group is situated near the outer limits of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, whose core is 50 million light-years away from us. The many groups of galaxies and clusters of galaxies are themselves smaller constituents of gigantic web-like filaments and wide, thin expanses. The so-called Great Wall of galaxies is, for example, a sheet-like collection of galaxies situated about 200 million light-years away from us, and a similar enormous structure is termed the Great Attractor. The Great Attractor is pulling relentlessly, with its mighty gravitational grip, on the entire Virgo Cluster of galaxies. We go along for the ride, of course, together with the rest of the Local Group, at approximately several hundred kilometers per second.

As we probe deeper and deeper into ever-more-remote regions of Space with increasingly improved telescopes, both Space-borne and Earth-bound, we see larger numbers of more distant galaxies, more and more clusters similar to Virgo, and more and more gigantic sheet-like and filamentary structures like the Great Attractor and the Great Wall. But if we observe the galaxies from a cosmological perpective, the galaxies themselves are just beautiful beads of light dispersed throughout the Universe. These luminous beads of light outline for us how the contents of the Universe are distributed. The immense filaments and sheets that those lovely beads of light illuminate–and are strung out along like dewdrops on the web of some gigantic spider–are composed of exotic and bizarre material known as dark matter. Dark matter is not composed of ordinary atomic material of which stars, planets and people are made. Dark matter is composed of some as yet unidentified exotic particle that does not interact with light and is, therefore, invisible. However, we do strongly suspect that it is there because it interacts with ordinary atomic matter by way of gravitation. Therefore, we can observe the gravitational effects of dark matter on the ordinary matter that we can see, such as brilliantly starlit galaxies.

The Milky Way is an enormous disk, 100,000 light-years across. It contains a hundred million stars. The most ancient stars in the Milky Way formed more than 10 billion years ago, long before our middle-aged Sun was born about 4.56 billion years ago. The primordial brew that composed our Galaxy during its youth was a comparatively uncomplicated soup of only the simplest atoms. There was no carbon, oxygen, or iron. In our Galaxy’s early youth, chemistry was very simple. Before more complicated chemical compounds could emerge, and before a Solar System such as ours could appear, ancient stars had to transmute, recombine, and re-use the chemical elements. The chemically exciting atoms, those that were the precursors to complexity and life in our Solar System, were initially forged inside the first generation of ancient stars dwelling in our Galaxy more than 10 billion years ago. A carbon atom that had been built up from the fusion of helium atoms inside an ancient star that ultimately blew itself to pieces in a gigantic supernova blast in the remote past–sending the carbon atom screaming into Space–might have taken an aimless journey between the stars for hundreds of millions of years before it found itself residing in a frigidly cold and dense knot, inside a dark, interstellar molecular cloud, which ultimately collapsed under its own gravity to give birth to a new baby star. For billions of years, stars have decorated the unimaginably enormous number of galaxies in our Universe with their beautiful glittering light.

It is generally thought that small galaxies, or protogalaxies, were the first galactic structures to form in the Universe. According to this “bottom up” theory of galactic formation, smaller protogalaxies formed first and then collided and merged together in the ancient Cosmos, to eventually form the majestic, enormous galaxies that we see today. The birthplace of a galaxy is in a cradle of invisible dark matter, termed a halo. In the very ancient Universe, it is believed, that dark matter and “normal” atomic matter clumped together, forming a web of slender, intertwining filaments.

The galaxies that we see today in the Universe divide into specific types, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda, which contain stars of all ages. Elliptical, or football-shaped galaxies, are enormous even when compared with spirals, and they contain mostly older, redder stars traveling around chaotically Ellipticals often form after the collision and merger of two or more spiral galaxies. In about 5 billion years, when the Milky Way and Andromeda collide and merge, they will form a large elliptical galaxy that is twice as large as the two former spirals. The supermassive black holes of both galaxies will also merge, creating an even more massive solitary supermassive black hole in the new elliptical galaxy’s center.

The galaxies that dwelled in the early Universe, however, were different–or so astronomers thought. The early galaxies showed much greater diversity, and there was a much larger population of irregular galaxies. Irregulars are usually small galaxies of low mass, and with no specific form–such as the beautiful pinwheel shape of spirals and the football shape of ellipticals.

Which brings us to the bizarre existence of a galaxy that should not be there. The galaxy, with the unglamorous name of BX442, is truly an enigma wrapped in mystery. It is a spiral galaxy that dwelled in the early Universe billions of years before most other spiral galaxies had the time to form. In a study reported in the July 19, 2012 issue of the journal Nature, astronomers said they discovered the strange structure while using the venerable Hubble Space Telescope to take photographs of around 300 extremely remote galaxies dwelling in the early Universe. This very remote spiral galaxy was discovered as it existed only about three billion years after the Big Bang birth of our Universe. The light from this remote region of the observable Universe has been wandering to our planet for roughly 10.7 billion years. Dr. Alice Shapley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, and co-author of the study, commented in the July 18, 2012 e! Science News: “As you go back in time to the early Universe, galaxies look really strange, clumpy and irregular, not symmetric. The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks. Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?”

This lovely galaxy should not exist. It is a so-called grand-design galaxy, indicating that it has well-formed, prominent spiral arms–and grand-design galaxies were thought not to exist at such early times in the history of the Universe. BX442 is also relatively large when compared to other galaxies that dwelled in the early Universe–only about 30 of the galaxies observed in this study, whose lead author is Dr. David Law, a Dunlap Institute postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, are as massive as this strange spiral.

Why does this mysterious galaxy look the way galaxies look today, but not the way galaxies looked in early times?

Study co-authors, Drs. Law and Shapley, think the answer may lie in the existence of a nearby, companion dwarf galaxy, and the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies. Support for this theory is suggested by a numerical simulation conducted by Dr. Charlotte Christensen, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Arizona, and a co-author of the Nature paper. Eventually, the dwarf galaxy is likely to collide and merge with BX442.

Galaxies dwelling in the early Universe were much more likely to collide and merge together than galaxies of today’s Universe. Gas pouring down from intergalactic space fed stars that were forming at a much more rapid rate as well. The Universe today is rather dull in comparison to the way it was in early times.

As Dr. Shapley noted in the same issue of e! Science News: “We first thought this could just be an illusion, and that perhaps we were being led astray by the picture. What we found (was) that the spiral arms do belong to this galaxy. It wasn’t an illusion. We were blown away.”

The misuse and abuse of alcohol and drugs can have various repercussions, not only on the individuals doing that and their families, but also on the society as a whole. One of its major consequences is financial burden. Besides causing health complications and raising concerns for public safety, alcohol and drugs cost the United States billions of dollars every year.

Like the impact, the economic cost of these substances varies immensely from one place to another. In fact, the cost of alcohol misuse is relatively far greater than the cost of drug misuse in most counties in the U.S. Since studies related to economic and social costs of alcohol and drug abuse are generally conducted at the state and national levels, this allows policymakers to better assess the problems within their jurisdiction and come up with countermeasures.

Similarly, a study, led by author Ted Miller and conducted at the Prevention Research Center of Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, sought to find out the consequences of alcohol and drug misuse in California and was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (ACER).

Alcohol abuse cost California $129 billion in 2010

The study highlighted the eye-opening economic burden of alcohol and drug related problems on the Californian taxpayer’s money across all 58 counties and 50 midsized cities. It was found that alcohol-related problems are more prevalent and costlier than drug-related problems in California. Moreover, both costs and repercussions varied greatly from one place to another. Some other findings are as follows:

• While alcohol-related problems cost $129 billion in 2010, which comes to $3,450 for every Californian, drug-related problems cost $44 billion in the same year.
• The highest per capita cost ($7,819) of alcohol problem was more than three times the lowest per capita cost ($2,588). Among the counties with drug-related problems the per capita cost varied between $608 and $3,786.
• The rates of alcohol and drug-related problems were found to be higher in the Californian cities. The highest per capita cost of alcohol-related problems in a city was $10,734, 11 times higher than the city with the lowest costs. Among the cities, the highest per capita cost of drug-related problems was $7,159, almost 19 times higher than the city with the lowest cost.

Correspondingly, the breakup of alcohol and drug-related costs are as follows:

• Crashes and accidents under the influence of alcohol cost $26 billion in 2010.
• Of the $10 billion cost borne due to violence associated to substance use, 73 percent was attributed to alcohol, while the remaining 27 percent was attributed to drugs.
• Of the $127 billion expenditure incurred due to other illnesses and injuries, 73 percent of the costs resulted from alcohol-related problems. Similarly, 82 percent of the $4 billion cost incurred due to nonviolent crimes were attributed to drug abuse.
• 74 percent of $2 billion incurred due to treatment expenditure was attributed to drug-related problems.

The study authors believe that the findings can assist policymakers and help the state in planning and allocating resources for substance abuse problems. In addition, this study provides a crucial tool for predicting and averting alcohol and drug-related problems, as well as a crucial means to plot localized cost estimates.

According to Dr. Miller, “Efficient funding of substance abuse prevention, enforcement and treatment hinges upon understanding the variation of alcohol and other drug problems from place to place. Because estimated costs combine data across many health and social issues, they provide an effective, comprehensible, and comprehensive measure for use in understanding how communities shape their distinctive social environments and for monitoring the effectiveness of our intervention strategies.”

Avoid the death trap

In 2010, problems related to alcohol and drugs in California led to 22,281 and 5,533 deaths, respectively. In addition, crimes related to alcohol and drugs were responsible for 350,000 and 164,000 deaths, respectively. These large and unsettling numbers are pertaining to only one of the 50 U.S. states, signaling a far greater magnitude of the problem.

When astronomers look deeper and deeper into Space, they are staring further and further back in time. This is because the more remote a shining object is in Space, the longer it has taken its fleeing beams of light to reach us. There is no known signal that can fly faster than light in a vacuum, and the light that travels from distant objects in the Universe cannot flow faster than this universal speed limit will allow. Supermassive black holes . that possess extraordinary masses of millions to billions of times that of our Sun, are thought to haunt the hidden hearts of probably every large galaxy in the Universe – including our own starlit pin-wheel in Space and Time, our large spiral Milky Way Galaxy . In December 2017, a team of astronomers led by the Carnegie Institution's Dr. Eduardo Banados, used Carnegie's Magellan telescopes to discover the most-distant dark-hearted supermassive beast ever observed. This enormous black hole resides in sinister secret within a brilliantly luminous quasar , and its traveling light reaches us from the very ancient time when the Universe was only 5% of its current age – a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang. A paper describing this new discovery is published in the journal Nature.

Quasars are glaring, brilliant objects, composed of enormous hungry black holes that are in the process of accreting matter. This unfortunate material is paying the ultimate price for wandering too close to where the supermassive beast lurks secretively in the centers of massive galaxies – waiting for its dinner. This recently discovered supermassive black hole sports a mass that is 800 million times the mass of our Sun.

But how did a black hole of this amazingly large mass manage to evolve so soon after the Big Bang birth of the Universe, thought to have occurred almost 14 billion years ago? Astronomers have suggested that the primordial Universe might have had conditions that would permit the formation of black holes of incredibly enormous masses – reaching 100,000 times solar-mass. This is very different from the way black holes are born in the Universe today. The more recent generation of supermassive beasts rarely grow to be a few dozen times the mass of our Sun.

Dr. Bram Venemans of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, noted in a December 6, 2017 Carnegie Science Press Release that " Quasars are among the brightest and most-distant known celestial objects and are crucial to understanding the early Universe.

Supermassive black holes are the largest of their kind in the Cosmos. Black holes of "only" stellar mass are born when an extremely massive star blasts itself to pieces in the raging tantrum of a supernova explosion. A supernova marks the death of a star, that has ended its hydrogen-burning "life" on the main-sequence of the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram of Stellar Evolution. After a stellar mass black hole has formed from its own progenitor star's funeral pyre, it can continue to grow by devouring its environment. Many astronomers think that by eating unfortunate stars and clouds of doomed gas, and by merging with others of its kind, the most massive black holes form. Astronomers have realized for years that probably every large galaxy in the Cosmos hosts a central supermassive beast in its heart, hiding there in voracious secret. These enormous gravitational monsters are bewildering, bewitching, and mysterious entities. This is primarily because they apparently already existed when the Universe was young.

Blobs of ill-fated gas and the shredded remains of unfortunate stars whirl down into the turbulent maelstrom surrounding supermassive black holes . This tragic buffet creates an enormous disk encircling the hungry black hole , termed an accretion disk. The tumbling banquet becomes hotter and hotter, as it hurls out radiation, as it flies ever closer and closer to the point of no return called the event horizon . The event horizon is located at the innermost portion of the accretion disk.

Quasar, Quasar Burning Bright

Many supermassive black holes were apparently already present in the primeval Universe, hungrily haunting the secretive hearts of the most ancient galaxies. These bizarre gravitational tigers reveal themselves as quasars to the prying eyes of curious observers. Quasars are actually the ferociously glaring accretion disks swirling brilliantly around these voracious, active supermassive beasts. These shining objects are vigorous, youthful Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), that are powered by infalling material from the accretion disk. Some astronomers search for distant objects inhabiting the Universe, that sparkled like a myriad of celestial glow worms, when the baby Cosmos was still in the earliest stages of its existence. Quasars –or quasi stellar objects– are like dazzling celestial glow worms that ignited very long ago – and far away.

In astronomy, time and distance, as well as the wavelength of light at which the observations are being conducted, are all closely related. Because light zips through Space at a finite speed and, as a consequence, inevitably must take a finite amount of time to reach our waiting telescopes, objects that are very far away are seen the way they were in the distant past. Astronomers use what is termed the redshift (z) to discover how long ago and far away a luminous cosmic object is. The measurable quantity 1+ z is the factor by which the Universe has expanded – between the long ago era when a distant, ancient source first tossed its light out into Space, and the current Time, when it at last could be observed by Earthly astronomers. The redshift also indicates the factor by which the wavelength of traveling light now approaching us has been stretched as a result of the expansion of the Universe – it is the shift of a luminous object's spectrum toward longer and longer wavelengths – or towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, as it zips away from us.

Supermassive tigers and their encircling, glaring accretion disks can be – at least – as vast as our entire Solar System. These gravitational beasts are described by their heavy weight, greed, hunger, and repulsive table manners. When its outside source of energy at last runs out, the quasar switches off. The best current calculations indicate that most galaxies went through a quasar stage in the ancient Cosmos, and that they now contain a remnant, often dormant, supermassive black hole that exhibits a mere shadow of its former youthful appetite. This is thought to be how the supermassive hole that haunts the heart of our own Milky Way Galaxy evolved through Time. As supermassive black holes go, our Galaxy's resident beast is a small one, with a small appetite – and it is "merely" millions, as opposed to billions, of solar-masses. Once, very long ago, our Galaxy's supermassive black hole dazzled the ancient Cosmos as a brilliant quasar –but it is a quiet old tiger now, except for those rare occasion when it goes on an eating binge, and swallows an enormous helping of shredded stars and / or disrupted clouds of gas that unfortunately wandered too close to its waiting maw. Our Milky Way's resident beast has been named Sagittarius A * (Sagittarius-a-star), and it is tired out, as it slumbers peacefully in its old age – except when it now and then wakes up and feasts on its wandering prey with the greedy hunger of its youth – but only for one brief shining moment.

History Of The Hunt

In the 18th century, John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace predicted the existence of massive black holes. Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity (1915) predicted the existence of bizarre objects with such deep gravitational wells that anything unlucky enough to travel too close to their waiting maws would be devoured. However, the prospect of the true existence in nature of such graviational beasts seemed so preposterous at the time that even Einstein at first rejected the idea – even though his own calculations showed otherwise.

In 1916, Karl Schwarzschild derived the first modern solution of the Theory of General Relativity that was able to describe a black hole. However, its interpretation as a portion of space, from which absolutely nothing could escape, was not well understood for another forty years. For decades, black holes were thought to be mere mathematical oddities, and it was not until the 1960s that theoretical work demonstrated that black holes are a generic predictton of General Relativity.

Dr. Donald Lynden-Bell and Dr. Martin Rees proposed back in 1971 that the center of our Galaxy would host a supermassive black hole. Sagittarius A * was discovered and given a name on February 13 and 15, 1974, by astronomers Dr. Bruce Blalick and Dr. Robert Brown, using the baseline interferometer of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) . They discovered a radio source that emits synchrotron radiation – as well as being both immobile and dense because of its powerful gravitation. This proved to be the first hint that a supermassive black hole haunts the heart of our Milky Way.

The origin of supermassive black holes is a mystery. However, most astrophysicists agree that once a black hole has invaded a galaxy's center, it can grow by accreting more and more matter from its surroundings, as well as by merging with other black holes. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the formation mechanisms of these strange supermassive hearts of darkness, in addition to the original masses of their progenitors – the "seeds" that grow in size to become enormous black holes of billions of solar-masses . One of the most apparent explanations is that the "seeds" are actually smaller black holes of tens – or maybe hundreds – of solar-masses. These smaller black holes of stellar mass are the relics left behind by the supernova blasts that tore a massive star to pieces. These primordial objects then went on to merge and accrete additional matter. A second model suggests that an immense cloud of gas, that floated around in the ancient Cosmos before the first stars were born, collapsed to create a "quasi-star", and then a black hole . This smaller black hole then quickly gained sufficient mass to become an intermediate-mass black hole –or possibly a supermassive one, if the accretion-rate did not shut off at higher masses. The initial "quasi-star" would be unstable to radial perturbations. This is because of electron-positron production in the core. A positron is an electron's anti-matter twin, possessing a positive charge, as opposed to an electron's negative charge. This "quasi-star" may finally collapse directly into a black hole, without a supernova explosion, which would hurl most of its mass into Space, and prevent it from leaving behind a black hole as a tattle-tale remnant.

A third scenario evokes a dense stellar cluster experiencing core-collapse as the negative heat capacity of the system shoots the velocity dispersion in the core to relativistic speed. A fourth model proposes that primordial black holes that may have been born directly from external pressure in the first moments following the Big Bang birth of the Universe almost 14 billion years ago. Black hole birth from the deaths of the first generation of stars has been both studied and corroborated by observations. A fifth proposal states that all of the other models for black hole formation – mentioned above – are merely theoretical.

The problem inherent in forming a supermassive beast is that there is a necessity for enough matter to be squashed into a small enough space. This matter must have very little angular momentum in order for this to occur. Usually, the process of accretion requires moving a large initial amount of angular momentum outwards, and this is thought to be a limiting factor in black hole growth. This is one of the most important components of the theory of accretion disks. The accretion of gas is considered to be the most efficient way – as well as the most conspicuous way – in which smaller black holes grow larger. Most of the mass growth of supermassive black holes is generally believed to occur through episodes of speedy gas accretion, which can be seen as AGN –or quasars. Observations reveal that quasars were much more abundant when the Universe was young. This suggests that supermassive tigers formed and grew early in the ancient Universe. Indeed, the existence of these distant, dazzling quasars indicates that supermassive black holes of billions of solar masses had already formed when the Universe was less than one billion years old. This means that these gravitational beasts were born in the primordial Universe, tucked within the hearts of the first massive galaxies.

The Banados quasar is particularly fascinating because it is from the time termed the epoch of reionization , which was the ancient era when the Universe emerged from its mysterious dark ages –and dancing light was finally free to wander its lovely way through a now-transparent Cosmos.

The Most Distant Dark Heart

The Big Bang started the Universe off as a searing-hot, murky, witch's cauldron of extremely energetic particles that was very rapidly expanding. As it expanded, it cooled. Approximately 400,000 years later – a blink of the eye on the Cosmic time scale – these particles cooled and then coalesced to create neutral hydrogen gas. The Universe remained dark, devoid of dazzling sources of light, until gravity condensed matter into the first generation of brilliant fiery baby stars and newborn galaxies. The energy liberated by these primeval galaxies caused the neutral hydrogen, that swirled throughout the Cosmos, to become excited and ionize –meaning that the neutral hydogen atoms lost an electron, a condition that it has remained in ever since. Once the Universe became reionized , the liberated photons (packets of light) could fly freely through the previously dark Cosmos.

The new analysis of the Banados quasar reveals that a large percentage of the hydrogen in its nearby neighborhood is neutral. This means that the astronomers have discovered a source that existed in the very ancient epoch of reionization– long before the first stars and galaxies switched on to fully reionize the Universe.

"It was the Universe's last major transition and one of the current frontiers of astrophysics," Dr. Banados noted in the December 6, 2017 Carnegie Science Press Release.

It took more than 13 billion years for the traveling light emanating from the Banados quasar to reach us. The investigation of the quasar's host galaxy was conducted using the IRAM / NOEMA and JVLA interferometer . The new findings are reported in a companion article published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters led by Dr. Wendy Bram Venemans.

"This great distance makes such objects extremely faint when viewed from Earth. Early quasars are also very rare on the sky. Only one quasar was known to exist at a redshift greater than seven before now, despite extensive searching," commented Dr. Xiaohui Fan in the December 6, 2017 Carnegie Science Press Release. Dr. Fan is of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory.

Between 20 and 100 quasars as remote and brilliant as the quasar discovered by Dr. Banados and his team are predicted to exist over the whole sky. For this reason, it is a major discovery that will provide important information about the primordial Cosmos when it was only 5% its current age.

"This is a very exciting discovery, found by scouring the new generation of wide-area, sensitive surveys astronomers are conducting using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in orbit and ground-based telescopes in Chile and Hawaii. With several next-generation, even-more-sensitive facilities currently being built, we can expect many exciting discoveries in the very early Universe in the coming years, "said Dr. Daniel Stern in the Carnegie Science Press Release. Dr. Stern is of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The team of astronomers used a duo of Magellan Telescope instruments to observe the supermassive black hole; FIRE , which made the discovery, and Fourstar , which was used to obtain additional images.

Las Campanas Director Dr. Leopoldo Infante noted in the December 6, 2017 Carnegie Science Press Release that "This important discovery – together with the detection of distant galaxies – is elucidating the conditions of the Universe during the reionization epoch. While we wait for the construction of the new generation of giant telescopes, such as the GMT , telescopes such as the Magellans at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile will continue to play a crucial role in the study of the early Universe. "

Music truly can make the world go round. Music has the ability to unify people in a single thought, may it be peace, harmony, joy, or a specific cause, and it has changed the word one song at a time. But music used to be limited and under appreciated by many. Not because music then was of poor quality but because it was not as accessible as it is today. We have a freedom today to gain access to all kinds of music through the help of technology therefore awareness and appreciation of the music industry has grown significantly in such a short span of time.

Long before the internet had its glory, music was confined to a smaller audience. Some of the most powerful songs written were sung and played underground in fear of other bigger issues like communism, capitalism and war. With the emergence of ecommerce, the world became a giant playground for music of different ages, stages, and styles. Ecommerce has opened a new way for music to be heard in other places where it can be appreciated to the fullest. Online music purchase has become so easy and fast that it has broken the barriers of not only geography but perhaps culture as well. When music started its way online, there became a new profit making industry.

Little did we know then that the music industry would be as big as it is now? Today, song sales on iTunes, eBay and Amazon total to billions of dollars daily and that is only counting the United States. Through ecommerce, stars have been born like Coldplay and Beyonce. These artists could have been famous only in their countries but the internet has created them into international super stars because ecommerce has enabled their songs to be purchased by anyone all over the world. Even smaller indie artists and underground bands can now showcase their talent online through ecommerce giving each artist a chance to make it big where the music field is a little more leveled.

Buying songs online has also allowed the consumer more liberty to choose what songs they want to spend on. During the older days, songs had to be bought with the whole album but today, you can buy the song as an individual. This has increased sales more than ever. Not only are the songs available but they too are available as soon as the album hits the market. This makes them available online to anyone around the world as soon as the song is out. This feature of ecommerce helps make music more globally competitive and effective. There is no more discrimination as to who and when these song can only be heard.

Some negative effects though have also hurt the music industry. Because the internet is so accessible and easy to use, the exchange of illegal downloads have also flourished. This development slows down the profits of ecommerce because now, the music can be taken for free. Current ways are being tried to control this phenomenon.

It is early July, well before this article goes online, yet the landscape is pretty clear from where I stand. The U.S. and China both raised tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods Friday, July 6. This did not deter the S&P 500 from continuing its charge up to the January 26 all-time high. To boot, unemployment is historically low and the Fed is set to raise rates twice before the year ends – all this amidst a stealth discretionary spending recession.

So, how about that trade war? Let’s recap. Most folks would agree that the free trade of goods would be best for all concerned. Goods would be less expensive and those that could not compete on price would do so on quality, leading to a beneficial improvement of goods. All is well and good until protectionism and nationalism rear their ugly heads. Some nations have goods that find it difficult to compete on the basis of price and/or quality. Globally, world leaders of such nations are unapologetic in pursuing their nation’s interests at the expense of others. In trying to avoid the image of the ugly American, we have often placed ourselves at a disadvantage. Nowhere is this more evident than in trade were our trading partners often have a clear advantage.

U.S. Census Data shows that we have a trade deficit with every trading region except for South and Central America and Australia/Oceania. At only $33.14 and $14.38 billion, respectively, the last four years and a combined trade of $310.44 billion this pales in comparison with the deficit for the rest of the world, -$844.66 billion, whose combined trade is $3.578 trillion. Below are 2014-2017 averages for most of the world in billions:

Canada: -$20.01

European Union: -$149.61

Asia: -$547.49

Africa: -$2.60

China is a case in point. Aware of the huge financial benefit that comes with their 1.38 billion consumers, they extract huge concessions from their trading partners, including the U.S. When they have not barred certain U.S. business sectors, they restrict or regulate business, place tariffs on goods, or coerce intellectual property release. Note this goes one way; there is no intellectual property sharing.

These noncompetitive business practices are not fair, but until now, U.S. companies have accepted them without much push back as the cost of doing business there. That is until Trump. What Chinese leaders need to realize is that they are not in a good bargaining position and the longer they hold out the more harm will come to their economy.

Here is why. Leaders of the government-run economy are well aware of their history and realize the huge Chinese population is not going to put up with poor conditions forever. To keep discontent at bay, they have a policy of inflated economic growth. According to Trading Economics, they have averaged 11.7% GDP growth for the past 10 years but chinks in their armor are showing. From the 2010-2011 heyday, where GDP grew 19% and 24%, growth has dropped steadily and sometimes precipitously. It was 5.56% and 1.14% in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Little wonder that worried central government figures have made a big push since then for increasing their global exports, including those to the U.S., resulting in a resumption of GDP growth to 9.35% in 2017. The prospect of increased tariffs, which would make their goods less competitive, runs afoul of those plans. China’s economy is struggling and their stock market is testament to that. The smaller Shenzhen composite moved into bear market territory in February and the Shanghai composite closed in bear territory on Tuesday, June 27. The indexes went as low as -26.5% and -25.0 on July 5 but have recently recovered to -22.5 and -21.2%, respectively, as global markets have climbed in tandem with U.S. markets. That is still in bear market territory, which will curtail much need foreign investment. Meanwhile, U.S. GDP is growing steadily, the economy seems to be healthy, and the stock market is nearing new heights. Trump can ratchet up the tariff game longer knowing he has more economic wiggle room. Moreover, he can inflict more pain to the Chinese economy than they can to ours.

To see why, let’s look at the trade numbers. The trade deficit with China has averaged -$358.68 billion the last four years in a rising trend. While U.S. exports have vacillated between $110-129 billion since 2012, Chinese imports have steadily increased from $315 to 375 billion. Last year the deficit was -$375.58 billion, of which $129.89 billion were U.S. exports to China and $505.47 billion were U.S. Chinese imports. Not only is trade unbalanced, so are tariffs. Prior to this year, U.S. tariffs on Chinese agricultural and non-agricultural goods were 2.5% and 2.9%, respectively, while Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods were 9.7% and 5% for the same. True, these had been going down from a 14.1% average prior to 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organization but that was part of the price and tariffs are much higher for some industries.

Below are the top 10 U.S. exports to China in 2017 according to the International Trade Centre Trade Map http://www.intracen.org/marketanalysis:

Aircraft, spacecraft – $16.3 billion

Vehicles – $13.2 billion

Oil Seed – $13 billion

Machinery – $12.9 billion

Electronic equipment – $12.1 billion

Medical, technical equipment – $8.8 billion

Mineral fuels including oil – $8.6 billion

Plastics – $5.7 billion

Woodpulp – $3.4 billion

Wood – $3.2 billion

Total – $97.7 billion

Together they account for 74.8% of all exports that year. Note that except for oil seed, mostly soybeans, the rest are non-agricultural products. But their tariffs are not the same and depend on how strategic the product is. For example, Chinese cars cannot compete with American ones so the latter have duties ranging between 21% and 30%. Compare that to a maximum of 2.5% for Chinese car imports to the U.S.

Therein lies the rub. The Chinese can only raise imports so much more on these goods, some of which have few suppliers outside the U.S. As a result, some of the announced tariff hikes are empty rhetoric with few teeth. Just as an example, China announced 25% tariffs on aircraft, but not all aircraft – just those with an “empty weight” of 15,000 to 45,000 kilograms. While it may seem like China is taking aim at Boeing, it turns out the stipulations only target older 737’s being phased out of production, while not touching the larger models comprising the bulk of Boeing’s trade. China desperately needs to grow their airline industry. It is estimated 7000 new planes will be needed in the next 20 years. With Airbus working at near full capacity, there is no alternative but to turn to Boeing for the remainder.

The same goes for soybeans, the bulk of Chinese agricultural imports. China is the world’s top pork market and they need soybeans for feed. It turns out Brazil and the U.S. are the top two global soybean suppliers. Brazil has been cranking up production for years and now constitutes 57% of Chinese soybean imports. This came mostly at the expense of the U.S., but Brazil does not have the capacity to make up for the remaining 31% in U.S. soybean exports to China. As a result, the planned 25% increase in tariffs will hurt Chinese pork farmers directly.

Ultimately, the sheer size of the trade imbalance will play in Trump’s favor. With $500 billion dollars of goods at risk for China vs. only $130 billion for the U.S., China’s fate is sealed. That is, provided Trump is persistent in raising the bar while keeping disgruntled American businessmen at bay. Historians may recall a similar unrelenting raising of the bar eventually caused Russia to capitulate during Reagan’s tenure. It does not help China that it is already running up against its tariff limit.

We are already seeing that endgame play out. Just four days after both countries raised taxes equilaterally, Trump announced 10% tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. There was no equilateral retaliation China could muster after the late Tuesday, July 10 announcement. Instead, China announced it would hit back in other ways – probably by selling U.S. Treasuries, which would flood the medium- and long-term bond market causing bond prices to fall and yields to rise.

Regarding the latter, Trump’s victory will come at a cost. Bolstered by his success with China, Trump will continue to pursue his trade normalization agenda with other trade partners. Although trade is fairly balanced with the U.K., the European Union had a $173.58 billion trade advantage last year on a $839 billion trade. Not only that, but the E.U. has made it a habit to go after American tech giants it cannot compete with. Think Qualcomm in 2018, Google in 2017, Facebook in 2017, Apple in 2016, and Microsoft in 2013. Japan is on the same boat. Our deficit with Japan averaged -$68.59 billion from 2014-2017 and stood last year at -$68.88 billion on a $204 billion trade. Although government regulations have eased under Prime Minister Abe, Japan has a culture of impeding foreign investment, particularly in the financial sector. Moreover, they have high tariffs on dairy (up to 40%) and meat (38.5% on beef) products, which account for $6.1 billion of U.S. exports to the country. Trump has made it clear they are also in play and they have fired salvos in return.

Given the posturing by all parties involved, tariffs will be higher going forward than they were before. This will raise the price of U.S. goods abroad, making them less competitive. This will, in turn, impact earnings for our larger, international firms. Our stock market may be flirting with highs right now, but I believe this will be the catalyst to the market downturn as Investors, looking ahead, bid down these stocks. Moreover, tariffs on imports will inevitably lead to inflation. We are already at the Fed’s 2% comfort level so any visibility on higher inflation will incite the Fed to head it off by hiking fed funds rates beyond their current path. Their incentive to do so will be bolstered if China retaliates with a Treasury selling program, as higher 10-year Treasury rates relieve the Fed of yield curve inversion worries.

A stock market downturn will reverse the wealth effect we have been seeing recently on our economy and combined with export losses, this undoubtedly will lead to job losses and higher unemployment. On top of all that, the stealth discretionary recession we have been experiencing, will make itself clearly evident as U.S. peak spender populations continue to decline all the way until 2023. This is not an incident unique to the U.S. World population growth increased from 1946 to 1968, peaking at 2.09% per year that year, coinciding with the bulk of our Baby Boomer bulge. Since then it has been steadily decreasing until it reached 1.09% at the beginning of this year. Peak spenders are those 46-50 years old and if we take 1968 as the mid-point of their population zenith, they topped out in 2016. That is a main reason populous nations, like China, have been concerned with slowing consumerism the past couple of years. The upshot is we will see a global drop in discretionary spending for at least the next five years. This will result in an accelerated global economic downturn for the next five years and plummeting global stock markets for the next few years.

Just after our Universe was born 13.8 billion years ago in the Big Bang, there was a mysterious era when it was black, and there were no stars around to cast their streaming, sparkling light into this swath of darkness. Today, when we stare up at our sky at night, we see a vast dark background lit by the star-fire emitted by its billions upon billions of brilliant stellar inhabitants. However, the way that our Universe’s first-born stars came into existence remains one of the most tantalizing mysteries haunting the dreams of astronomers. Where did the first stars come from, and when did they appear on this ancient swath of blackness–lighting up what was originally featureless and dark? In February 2018, astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Arizona State University in Tempe, reported that a table-sized radio antenna in a remote region of western Australia has detected faint signals of hydrogen gas from the primordial Universe. This signal indicates the existence of the Universe’s first-born stars only about 180 million years after the Big Bang.

The primordial Universe cooled and then went dark for millions of years after its birth. Ultimately, gravity pulled matter together until stars were born and burst brilliantly into life, bringing the Cosmic Dawn that chased away the blackness of the Cosmic Dark Ages. The new-found signal marks the closest astronomers have been able to see of that ancient, brilliant moment when the first stars blasted away the Universe’s primeval, featureless night.

“Finding this minuscule signal has opened a new window on the Universe,” study lead author, Dr. Judd Bowman, commented in a March 1, 2018 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Press Release. Dr. Bowman is of Arizona State University. The CSIRO Observatory is in Western Australia.

Dr. Bowman has been conducting his Experiment to Detect the Global EoR (Epoch of Reionization) Signature (EDGES) for 12 years. Nine years ago, he began performing the observations from CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), after searching for the best spot on Earth for his work.

The radio signal that Dr. Bowman and his colleagues discovered was extremely faint, arriving as it did from 13.6 billion years back in the Universe’s history.

It also fell in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum used by FM radio stations. This made the detection of this weak signal from most Earth-based sites literally impossible.

Fortunately, the MRO observatory is in a naturally “radio-quiet” area. This valuable and unique location is protected by a legislated “radio quiet” zone up to 260 kilometers across, which keeps human-made activities that manufacture interfering radio signals to an absolute minimum.

The MRO’s development was managed by Antony Schinckel, CSIRO’s Head of Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Construction and Planning.

“Finding this signal is an absolute triumph, a triumph made possible by the extreme attention to detail by Judd’s team, combined with the exceptional radio quietness of the CSIRO site,” Schinckel commented in the March 1, 2018 CSIRO Press Release.

“We worked hard to select this site for the long-term future of radio astronomy after exhaustive investigations across the country. We believe we have the gold standard in radio quietness, the best site in the world,” he added.

Schinckel further noted that “This is one of the most technically challenging radio astronomy experiments ever attempted. The lead authors include two of the best radio astronomy experimentalists in the world and they have gone to great lengths to design and calibrate their equipment in order to have convincing evidence for a real signal.”

The MRO was developed by CSIRO for its Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

Dr. Robert Braun noted in the March 1, 2018 CSIRO Press Release that “(T)his is a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved with the combination of an excellent site and world-class engineering, boding well for the great discoveries that will be enabled by the SKA.” Dr. Braun is Science Director at the SKA Organisation.

The Darkness Before The Dawn

In your “mind’s eye” imagine the newborn Universe. The baby Cosmos was filled with an extremely hot “stew” of charged protons and electrons. But, as the ancient Universe expanded, its temperature plummeted uniformly. When the Universe was approximately 400,000 years old, it was finally cool enough for these charged protons and electrons to merge together to create neutral hydrogen atoms. That great era in the Universe’s history is termed recombination, and during this epoch the Universe was suffused by a strange “fog” composed of neutral atoms. As time went by, the Universe’s first-born stars and the galaxies that hosted them began to form, and their ultraviolet light ionized (energized) the hydrogen atoms. This means that the hydrogen atoms were torn apart into their component protons and electrons again.

At the instant of our Universe’s birth there was a powerful burst of brilliant light. Photons (packets of light) of high-energy radiation were blasted out by the searing-hot matter of the ancient Universe. But, during that very ancient era, light was not permitted to travel throughout the Cosmos freely. This is because at the extremely hot temperatures of the ancient Universe, the ionized atoms that had managed to form were rapidly ripped apart soon after their birth, since the positively charged atomic nuclei could not hold on to their encircling clouds of negatively charged electrons. Particles that possess an electrical charge are in a perpetual state of absorbing and then emitting electrons. For this reason, during the Universe’s first 400,000 years, light was continually being absorbed, and then emitted, over and over and over again. This cycle continued for a much longer time than human civilization has existed on our planet. Indeed, this cycle went on for literally hundreds of thousands of years, and only came to an end when the temperature of the Universe finally plummeted to five thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

For the first several hundred thousand years of the Universe’s existence, it dazzled with raging fires that glared much more brilliantly than our Sun does today. When atoms could finally congeal and survive during the era of recombination, matter and light could at last go their free and separate ways. The streaming, dancing light has been shining its lovely way through Spacetime ever since.

Today, the Universe is transparent, cooling off, and expanding towards its own death. But, just before the era of recombination, the entire newborn Cosmos looked like the surface of a star, like our Sun. It was extremely hot, opaque, and suffused with brilliant, glaring, imprisoned light. The primordial Universe was considerably smaller than it is today. The galaxies formed after the era of recombination.

Imagine that black, mysterious, primordial era before the stars were born, and there were no galaxies around to brighten up this murky expanse with the flames of their constituent stars. The Cosmic Dark Ages began only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. At this time, the lingering, left-over radiation of the Big Bang itself had faded, and atomic nuclei had at last managed to congeal to create neutral hydrogen. Neutral hydrogen atoms absorb radiation. The Cosmic Dark Ages lasted for about half a billion years, and this murky ancient era remains veiled in mystery. At the beginning of this primordial epoch, the first atoms of hydrogen formed. By the time this era had ended, the very first light-emitting objects had begun to send their light streaming through space to chase the bewitching blackness away. However, this era was not peaceful. Matter was smoothly and evenly distributed throughout the baby Universe when it first formed. However, by the conclusion of the Cosmic Dark Ages, this matter had somehow clumped together to construct extremely massive large-scale structures.

Hidden deep within the clumps of matter that contained higher-than-average densities, some regions formed clouds that began to bud off and then collapse. Those collapsing primeval clouds were the ancient cradles of the Universe’s first-born stars. The first generation of stars sent their stellar fires raging through the darkness of the Universe–and lit up the entire swath of Spacetime. Like the rays of our sparkling Sun, when it rises at dawn, that lovely newborn starlight overwhelmed the universal darkness. The stellar fires of these baby stars forced the opaque gas of the primeval Universe to become transparent. The sea-change from foggy, opaque darkness to a transparent star-blasted Universe, took hundreds of millions of years. However, at last, the Universe’s first-born stars burned away this foggy universal blackness. During this lengthy transition, foggy and opaque regions of the Universe were interspersed with regions of light and recently ionized, transparent gas.

Astronomers currently think that the Universe’s first-born stars were not like the stars we see today. This is because they were born directly from primeval gases that billowed out of the Big Bang itself. These very ancient gases were mostly hydrogen and helium, and these two lightest of atomic elements are thought to have pulled themselves together to create ever tighter and tighter objects. The cores of the first stars (protostars) to inhabit the Cosmos started to light up within the mysterious cold, dark hearts of these extremely dense knots of pristine primordial hydrogen and helium–and they then collapsed under their own relentless gravitational pull. Many astronomers think that the Universe’s first-born stars were giants–compared with later generations of stars–because they did not form the same way, or from the same mix of atomic elements, as stars do now. The Universe’s first-born stars, called Population III stars, were likely “megastars”. Our Sun is a member of the most recent generation of stars, which are called Population I stars. Between the first and most recent generation of stars are, of course, Population II stars.

The extremely massive Population III stars were also glaring and brilliant, and their existence is responsible for triggering the sea-change of our Universe from what it was to what it is. These huge, brilliant stars changed the dynamics of our Universe by heating it and thus ionizing the ambient hydrogen and helium gases.

Youthful galaxies in the ancient Universe are often discovered by their prominent emission of Lyman-alpha photons. The Lyman-alpha line represents the transition of neutral hydrogen. Galaxies undergoing very powerful bouts of star-birth show strong Lyman-alpha emission lines. This is because they host searing-hot, massive baby stars, and these young stars hurl out enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation–which ionizes the neutral hydrogen, ripping up its atoms into a free proton and a free electron. These particles later recombined to create neutral hydrogen again. However, this hydrogen is in an excited state when formed, and as it relaxes back to the ground state, it emits a series of line photons. Most of the time, this series concludes with the emission of a Lyman-alpha photon.

Cold Nursery For First-Born Stars

The astronomers, who picked up the first signals of hydrogen gas in the primordial Universe, also determined that the gas was in a state that would have been possible only in the presence of the Universe’s first-born stars. This is because these stars–igniting for the first time in a Universe that had previously been devoid of light–emitted ultraviolet radiation that interacted with the ambient hydrogen gas. Because of this, hydrogen atoms throughout the entire Universe started to absorb background radiation–an important event that the astronomers were able to spot in the form of radio waves. These new findings provide important evidence that the first generation of stars may have switched on only about 180 million years after the Big Bang.

“This is the first real signal that stars are starting to form, and starting to affect the medium around them. What’s happening in this period is that some of the radiation from the very first stars is starting to allow hydrogen to be seen. It’s causing hydrogen to start absorbing the background radiation, so you start seeing it in silhouette, at particular radio frequencies,” explained study co-author, Dr. Alan Rogers, in a February 28, 2018 MIT Press Release. Dr. Rogers is a scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory.

There are also certain indications, seen in the radio waves, that hydrogen gas is floating around within the entire ancient Universe. This means that the Universe as a whole must have been twice as cold as astronomers had estimated earlier–with a temperature of about 3 Kelvins (-454 degrees Fahrenheit). Dr. Rogers and his team are not certain why the primeval Cosmos was so much colder than expected, but some scientists have proposed that interactions with a mysterious form of matter, called dark matter, may have played some kind of role. Most of the matter in our Universe is thought to be dark matter, that is not composed of atoms like the familiar “ordinary” matter that we are used to in our world–the stuff of stars, planets, moons, trees, cats, and people, for example. Dark matter is bizarre stuff–it does not interact with light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation. This makes it invisible. Yet it is generally thought that the largest structures in the Universe are made of this strange, dark, non-atomic stuff. Even though “ordinary” atomic matter accounts for literally all of the elements listed in the familiar Periodic Table, there is much less of it than there is of the dark matter.

“These results require some changes in our current understanding of the early evolution of the Universe. It would affect cosmological models and require theoriests to put their thinking caps back on to figure out how that would happen,” commented Dr. Colin Lonsdale in the February 28, 2018 MIT Press Release. Dr. Lonsdale is director of the Haystack Observatory.

The astronomers spotted the primordial hydrogen gas using EDGES–the small ground-based radio antenna, located in western Australia. EDGES gets its funding from the National Science Foundation.

The antennas and parts of the receiver were created and constructed by Dr. Rogers and the Haystack Observatory team, along with the Arizona State University team. The scientists added an automated antenna reflection measurement system to the receiver, outfitted a control hut armed with electronics, constructed the ground plane, and conducted the field work as well for the ambitious and successful project. Australia’s CSIRO provided on site infrastructure for the EDGES project.

The EDGES instrument was originally designed to detect radio waves sent forth from the ancient Epoch of Reionization. During this primordial era, the first luminous objects, such as galaxies, quasars, and stars, were born in the Universe. Quasars are a particularly brilliant form of active galactic nuclei, inhabiting the hearts of ancient galaxies. They are thought to be the dazzling accretion disks surrounding enormous supermassive black holes that weigh-in at millions to billions of solar-masses. It is thought that every large galaxy in the Universe hosts a supermassive black hole in its hidden, hungry heart–including our own Milky Way.

During the Cosmic Dark Ages, hydrogen, the most abundant atomic element in the Universe, was virtually invisible–embodying an energy state that cannot be distinguished from the ambient cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation–the relic radiation left from the Big Bang itself.

Astronomers think that when the Universe’s first-born stars ignited, they produced the ultraviolet radiation that caused sea-changes in the hydrogen atoms’ distribution of energy states. These dramatic alterations induced hydrogen’s solitary electron to spin in alignment or opposite to the spin of its lone proton, thus causing hydrogen (as a whole) to decouple from the CMB. This means that hydrogen gas began to either emit or absorb that radiation, at a characteristic wavelength of 21 centimeters, which is equivalent to a frequency of 1,420 megahertz. But as the Universe expanded over time, this radiation became red-shifted to lower and lower frequencies. By the time the 21-centimeter radiation managed to reach our planet at present, it landed somewhere in the range of 100 megahertz.

Dr. Rogers and his team have been using EDGES to spot hydrogen that floated around the ancient Cosmos in order to precisely determine when the first stars ignited.

“There is a great technical challenge to making this detection. Sources of noise can be a thousand times brighter than the signal they are looking for. It is like being in the middle of a hurricane and trying to hear the flap of a hummingbird’s wing,” noted Dr. Peter Kurczynski in the February 28, 2018 MIT Press Release. Dr. Kurczynski is program director for Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation, in the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the NSF.

The antenna of this instrument detects radio waves from the entire sky, and the scientists originally tuned it to listen in at a frequency range of 100 to 120 megahertz. However, when they looked within this range, they initially did not detect much of any signal. The researchers then realized that theoretical models had predicted that primordial hydrogen should emit within this range if the gas was hotter than the ambient medium. But what if the gas was in fact colder? Models predict that the hydrogen should then absorb radiation more strongly in the 50 to 100 megahertz frequency range.

“As soon as we switched our system to this lower range, we started seeing things that we felt might be a real signature,” Dr. Rogers commented in the February 28, 2018 MIT Press Release.

Specifically, the astronomers observed a flattened absorption profile–a dip in the radio waves, at about 78 megahertz.

“”We see this dip most strongly at about 78 megahertz, and that frequency corresponds to roughly 180 million years after the Big Bang. In terms of a direct detection of a signal from the hydrogen gas itself, this has got to be the earliest,” Dr. Rogers added.

This dip in radio waves was both much deeper and stronger than theoretical models had predicted. This suggests that the hydrogen gas at the time was much colder than previously believed. The radio waves’ profile also matches theoretical predictions of what would be produced if hydrogen was influenced by the Universe’s first-born stars.

“The signature of this absorption feature is uniquely associated with the first stars. Those stars are the most plausible source of radiation that would produce this signal,” Dr. Lonsdale explained in the February 28, 2018 MIT Press Release.

“It is unlikely that we’ll be able to see any earlier into the history of stars in our lifetimes. This project shows that a promising new technique can work and has paved the way for decades of new astrophysical discoveries,” study lead author Dr. Bowman noted in the same Press Release.

The scientists believe that this new detection lifts the veil from a previously mysterious era in the evolution of the Universe.

Dr. Lonsdale commented that “This is exciting because it is the first look into a particularly important period in the Universe, when the first stars and galaxies were beginning to form. This is the first time anybody’s had any direct observational data from that epoch.”

Video production is a very effective marketing tool in the modern business environment. The contemporary business landscape presents a unique combination of opportunities and challenges and it is important for companies to reposition their strategies to reflect the changing times. Social media has become the next frontier in modern marketing and it is important to tweak your marketing to target these users.

Video Production for Social Media

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), there are over 3.62 billion internet users and most of these are using social platforms. Facebook today boasts 1.71 billion monthly active users (MAUs), Twitter has 328 MAUs (monthly active users) and Instagram has reported over 500 million subscribers while WhatsApp has over 1 billion monthly customers. Of course, there are other popular social media networks including YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest among others and they boast billions of users.

Most of the content on these networks is visual and this should be your focus if you are targeting this audience. 82% of Twitter users watch visual content and share the same rapidly. 45% of internet users spend time on Facebook and YouTube watching visuals. These numbers give a strong argument for including a well prepared film in your marketing campaign.

A professional corporate video production will boost visibility for your brand when it is shared, increase conversion, build brand loyalty, enhance ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) and increase engagement with customers.

Whatever the size of your business, you need to use a professional video production company for the best results. These experts help to fill the gap existing in your company in terms of skills and resources in film making.

Boosting Your Video Production on Social Media

The question then becomes how your company can gain better visibility using this innovative technique. Of course, the competition is most likely using visual content marketing and as such, you need to be more creative with your corporate video production to stay ahead. Here are some ideas:

1. Cross promote on different platforms to build excitement and use teasers before the actual launch.
2. Engage your followers and let them know about what’s coming up. Ask for ideas from them and incorporate these in your project.
3. Encourage sharing of content and offer freebies as incentives.
4. Use auto-play on your website or blog to encourage users to continue watching.
5. Add playful subtitles.
6. Use a call to action (CTA) encouraging viewers to like, watch, comment or rate your film.
7. Use influencers to talk about your campaign such as bloggers, traditional media outlets etc.
8. Use opt-in mail to share links to your content with existing customers.
9. List on main search engines.
10. Make sure you appeal to emotions in your story because this is what people love sharing online.

There is no denying that visual content will help you unlock the potential to be found online. By using this tool on social networks, you will reach a larger target market and increase visibility of your brand. This is a marketing strategy that boasts high levels of ROI, which is what every business owner wants. Find an experienced video production company that understands your brand, goals and video needs so you can make a meaningful presence on social media platforms.

The opioid epidemic has not just had a devastating impact on the lifespan of Americans, but also on the country’s economy. It has cost billions of dollars to the nation as a large chunk of the population stayed away from workplace. This has been corroborated by a recently published study by the American Action Forum (AAF). The drugs had a profound effect on the productivity as nearly 1 million people (aged 25 to 54) remained absent from work in 2015 because of their opioid addiction problem, which grew each year from 1999 to 2015.

The study authors calculated that the loss of employees’ productivity took a heavy toll on the economy, costing a total loss of $702 billion or nearly $44 billion loss every year. Co-author Ben Gitis, director of labor market policy at the AAF, stated that there was a loss of work hours by 0.2 percent in the given period. The average growth rate was 2 percent and if the workers attended work, the growth rate would have been 2.2 percent.

Gitis said not only opioids are causing fatalities, they are majorly hindering the nation’s economic growth. He extrapolated the research results of Princeton University economist Alan Krueger, who stated that a decline in workforce participation of 20 percent and 25 percent was found for men and women, respectively due to an increase in the prescriptions for painkillers.

Kruger also noted that regions with the highest number of opioid prescriptions observed a high number of employees dropping off. According to Grtis’s research also, for women, more work hours were lost between 1999 and 2015 (6.4 billion) than men (5.7 billion). Unfortunately, employers across the nation are having a difficult time in filling the vacancies because people are not able to pass the drug test.

Effects of opioids on body

The long-term use of opioids can have a devastating effect on almost all the body parts. Opioids can cause daytime sleepiness for which a stimulant might be required to counter the effects. Prolonged use is also associated with the development of major depression. Regular use can lead to slow breathing, respiratory depression, leading to organ failure. Opioid abuse is also responsible for causing nausea, constipation and for slowing down the gastrointestinal motility, which can result in perforation, small bowel obstruction and peritonitis.

Opioid use can lead to psychomotor impairment in which there is an overall slowing of the physical movements and loss of coordination. Long-term use can also lead to hyperalgesia characterized by an increased sensitivity to pain and is also responsible for low immunity. People abusing opioids often take acetaminophen that can lead to acute liver injury. If alcohol is added to the mix, it can lead to liver failure as its capacity for excreting the toxins gets affected.

Seek drug-free life

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ), nearly 42,000 people succumbed to opioids in 2016 with 40 percent deaths involving prescription opioids. It’s time that health authorities understand the magnitude of the problem and accelerate efforts in combatting the harmful effects. Addiction to opioids not just harms the user but also his/her family. Before it is too late, one must seek intervention to set things straight.