Atomic clocks are proving Einstein’s theory of relativity. The higher you live, the faster you age!

Eintstein’s theory of relativity was a huge leap for the time he came up with it, and it’s only beginning to be proven now. Einstein’s theories were based in the realization that gravity is basically acceleration. 

Extrapolating from that idea, you can come to the understanding that the stronger gravity, the slower time would run. Time actually moves slower at different altitudes. Time is not a clearly defined absolute, rather it is based on relative perspectives, and as we are now discovering height away from the ground, since that affects gravitational pull.

By placing highly accurate clocks at different altitudes, researchers were able to record this difference. These clocks used aluminum atom trapped in an electric field. These atoms vibrated, which caused the clock to measure time to an extremely accurate degree. Researchers found that height actually did affect the progression of time, and would affect the progression of aging. 

They have estimated that for a person who lived 79 years, that person would 90 billionths of a second faster for every foot off the ground. A person in a pent house would age faster than someone living at a low altitude.

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The city of Chicago was raised several feet to fix a drainage problem.

The city of Chicago was built on very low ground, almost as low as Lake Michigan. This meant that throughout the 1800s the city had virtually no drainage. This caused a lot of sitting water, which made living conditions poor. 

Diseases like dysentery and typhoid fever abounded, and the sitting water was blamed for the outbreak of cholera as well, which killed 6% of Chicago’s population at the time. The plan they came up with was to raise the city a few feet in order to provide some drainage area. 

The first building to be raised was a masonry building on the corner of Randolph and Dearborn Street. It was raised with 200 jackscrews up 6 feet and 2 inches. The building was raised without being damaged at all. Boston engineer James Brown and Chicago engineer James Hollingsworth were in charge of raising that first house and would go on to raise many more. At one point they managed to raise a 200-foot building! 

The city was also starting to bloom at the time. Many people didn't like the old, wood framed houses, considering them to be inappropriate for the increasingly wealthier city. Many houses weren't just raised, but also moved outside the city, something that was common in Chicago for the following years. 

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Iceland used Facebook to rewrite its constitution!

In 2011, Iceland finally took on the task of rewriting its constitution as it had been hoping to do for many years, but had never got around to doing. When Iceland broke from Denmark in 1944, it merely took the Danish constitution and made minor changes. For example, the title of king was changed to president. 

The Icelandic people were driven to change their constitution after their financial troubles in 2008. Their currency, the krona, last values and banks failed. The hope was that with some reformation and checks and balances another financial breakdown could be prevented. 

The actual draft of the new constitution was being written by 25 people as part of a council. The council put their draft on Facebook for users to make suggestions about amendments and to have debates with one another about the constitution. They also streamed the proceedings of the council not only on their website, but also on Facebook. 

The writing of the constitution took influence from all those on social media. The finished result came from the combined efforts of those 25 council member, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Do you think politics will flow more onto social media than it already has? 

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The Iliad and the Odyssey were recited orally for centuries before they were written down, despite containing more than 10,000 lines.

The epic is the oldest genre of writing, at least it is the oldest surviving genre. Even 2,000 years before the Greeks had a form of writing, epics were being created and told for entertainment. The first two tales written in Greek were Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer was supposedly a blind poet, who created the Iliad and the Odyssey, however, it’s not clear whether he actually existed, much less created the two epics. 

It is truly incredible how long these orally told stories were. The Iliad was more than 12,000 lines and the Odyssey was more than 15,000 lines. Bards through the years had taken it upon themselves to actually memorize these gigantic poems called epics. They maintained the stories for more than a century before they were recorded in the newly created Greek. The two epics still contain clear signs of having been orally told stories. 

For example, the bards would have used the epithets like “clever Odysseus” and “brave Achilles” repeated throughout the epic to make memorization easier. There were also several other repeated phrases in the stories. Nevertheless, memorization would have been an impressive feat! 

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According to data, the military occupation with the highest number of suicides is French horn player.

Researchers in the pentagon have been doing research into military suicide in the U.S. Army. In particular, they have been looking into the prevalence of suicide in different occupations within the military. Unfortunately, though the study looks at some interesting data, the reporters of the data have come to the conclusion that there isn’t enough to come to any distinct conclusion. 

What they have said is that they are continuing to work to figure out how to prevent suicides in different occupations. It is a very serious issue, and even though there are no clear conclusions from the research, there is always the opportunity to try and prevent the tragedy of suicide. 

The rate of suicides isn’t high enough to draw any conclusion on one occupation versus the other because just one suicide skews the data. However, the job that has had the most suicides is the job of the French horn player. The job with the second most suicides is interior electrician and the job with the third most is information services chief. Interesting, but like the researchers said, not conclusive. 

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