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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed] | [TOKENS: 1156] |
Contents Orbital speed In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body. The term can be used to refer to either the mean orbital speed (i.e. the average speed over an entire orbit) or its instantaneous speed at a particular point in its orbit. The maximum (instantaneous) orbital speed occurs at periapsis (perigee, perihelion, etc.), while the minimum speed for objects in closed orbits occurs at apoapsis (apogee, aphelion, etc.). In ideal two-body systems, objects in open orbits continue to slow down forever as their distance to the barycenter increases. When a system approximates a two-body system, instantaneous orbital speed at a given point of the orbit can be computed from its distance to the central body and the object's specific orbital energy, sometimes called "total energy". Specific orbital energy is constant and independent of position. Radial trajectories In the following, it is assumed that the system is a two-body system and the orbiting object has a negligible mass compared to the larger (central) object. In real-world orbital mechanics, it is the system's barycenter, not the larger object, which is at the focus. Specific orbital energy, or total energy, is equal to Ek − Ep (the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy). The sign of the result may be positive, zero, or negative and the sign tells us something about the type of orbit: Transverse orbital speed The transverse orbital speed is inversely proportional to the distance to the central body because of the law of conservation of angular momentum, or equivalently, Kepler's second law. This states that as a body moves around its orbit during a fixed amount of time, the line from the barycenter to the body sweeps a constant area of the orbital plane, regardless of which part of its orbit the body traces during that period of time. This law implies that the body moves slower near its apoapsis than near its periapsis, because at the smaller distance along the arc it needs to move faster to cover the same area. Mean orbital speed For orbits with small eccentricity, the length of the orbit is close to that of a circular one, and the mean orbital speed can be approximated either from observations of the orbital period and the semimajor axis of its orbit, or from knowledge of the masses of the two bodies and the semimajor axis. where v is the orbital velocity, a is the length of the semimajor axis, T is the orbital period, and μ = GM is the standard gravitational parameter. This is an approximation that only holds true when the orbiting body is of considerably lesser mass than the central one, and eccentricity is close to zero. When one of the bodies is not of considerably lesser mass see: Gravitational two-body problem So, when one of the masses is almost negligible compared to the other mass, as the case for Earth and Sun, one can approximate the orbit velocity v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} as: or: Where M is the (greater) mass around which this negligible mass or body is orbiting, and ve is the escape velocity at a distance from the center of the primary body equal to the radius of the orbit. For an object in an eccentric orbit orbiting a much larger body, the length of the orbit decreases with orbital eccentricity e, and is an ellipse. This can be used to obtain a more accurate estimate of the average orbital speed: The mean orbital speed decreases with eccentricity. Instantaneous orbital speed For the instantaneous orbital speed of a body at any given point in its trajectory, both the mean distance and the instantaneous distance are taken into account: where μ is the standard gravitational parameter of the orbited body, r is the distance at which the speed is to be calculated, and a is the length of the semi-major axis of the elliptical orbit. This expression is called the vis-viva equation. For the Earth at perihelion, the value is: which is slightly faster than Earth's average orbital speed of 29,800 m/s (67,000 mph), as expected from Kepler's 2nd Law. Tangential velocities at altitude Planets The closer an object is to the Sun the faster it needs to move to maintain the orbit. Objects move fastest at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) and slowest at aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun). Since planets in the Solar System are in nearly circular orbits their individual orbital velocities do not vary much. Being closest to the Sun and having the most eccentric orbit, Mercury's orbital speed varies from about 59 km/s at perihelion to 39 km/s at aphelion. Halley's Comet on an eccentric orbit that reaches beyond Neptune will be moving 54.6 km/s when 0.586 AU (87,700 thousand km) from the Sun, 41.5 km/s when 1 AU from the Sun (passing Earth's orbit), and roughly 1 km/s at aphelion 35 AU (5.2 billion km) from the Sun. Objects passing Earth's orbit going faster than 42.1 km/s have achieved escape velocity and will be ejected from the Solar System if not slowed down by a gravitational interaction with a planet. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annuit_c%C5%93ptis] | [TOKENS: 829] |
Contents Annuit cœptis Annuit cœptis (/ˈænuɪt ˈsɛptɪs/, Classical Latin: [ˈannʊ.ɪt ˈkoe̯ptiːs]) is one of two mottos on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States. The literal translation is "[He] favors (or "has favored") [our] undertakings", from Latin annuo ("I approve, I favor"), and coeptum ("commencement, undertaking"). Because of its context as a caption above the Eye of Providence, the standard translations are "Providence favors our undertakings" and "Providence has favored our undertakings." On the Great Seal Barton explained that the motto alluded to the Eye of Providence: "Deo favente which alludes to the Eye in the Arms, meant for the Eye of Providence." In western art, God is traditionally represented by the Eye of Providence, which principally symbolizes God's omniscience. In 1782, Samuel Adams appointed a design artist, William Barton of Philadelphia, to bring a proposal for the national seal. For the reverse, Barton suggested a 13-layered pyramid underneath the Eye of Providence. The mottos which Barton chose to accompany the design were Deo Favente ("with God's favor", or more literally, "with God favoring") and Perennis ("Everlasting"). The pyramid and Perennis motto had come from a $50 Continental currency bill designed by Francis Hopkinson.[a] Change from Deo Favente to Annuit Cœptis When designing the final version of the Great Seal, Charles Thomson (a former Latin teacher) kept the pyramid and eye for the reverse side but replaced the two mottos, using Annuit Cœptis instead of Deo Favente and Novus ordo seclorum instead of Perennis. When he provided his official explanation of the meaning of this motto, he wrote: The pyramid signifies Strength and Duration: The Eye over it & the Motto allude to the many signal interpositions of providence in favour of the American cause. Annuit Cœptis is translated by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Mint, and the U.S. Treasury as, "He [God] has favored our undertakings" (brackets in original). However, the original Latin does not explicitly state who (or what) is the subject of the sentence. A 2024 publication in the Associated Gospel Churches Journal explores the question as to whether Annuit Coeptis makes reference to God, examining the claim that the founders of the United States were deliberate to avoid references to God by choosing only secular mottos. Classical source of the motto According to Richard S. Patterson and Richardson Dougall, Annuit cœptis (meaning "He favours our undertakings") and the other motto on the reverse of the Great Seal, Novus ordo seclorum (meaning "new order of the ages"), can both be traced to lines by the Roman poet Virgil.[citation needed] Annuit cœptis comes from the Aeneid, book IX, line 635, which reads, Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue coeptis. It is a prayer by Ascanius, the son of the hero of the story, Aeneas, which translates to, "Jupiter Almighty, favour [my] bold undertakings", just before slaying an enemy warrior, Numanus. The same language also occurred in an earlier poem of Virgil, the Georgics. In line I.40 of that work is the phrase "da facilem cursum atque audacibus annue cœptis." The line is addressed to Caesar Augustus and translates to "give [us] an easy path and nod at our audacious undertakings."[citation needed] Notes See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy] | [TOKENS: 4982] |
Contents Elon Musk salute controversy On January 20, 2025, while speaking at a rally celebrating U.S. president Donald Trump's second inauguration, businessman and political figure Elon Musk twice made a salute interpreted by many as a Nazi or a fascist Roman salute.[a] It was widely condemned as an intentional Nazi salute in Germany, where making such gestures is illegal. The Anti-Defamation League said it was not a Nazi salute, but other Jewish organizations disagreed and condemned the salute. American public opinion was divided on partisan lines as to whether it was a fascist salute. Musk dismissed the accusations of Nazi sympathies, deriding them as "dirty tricks" and a "tired" attack. Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups celebrated it as a Nazi salute. Multiple European political parties demanded that Musk be banned from entering their countries. Inauguration, speech, and gestures On January 20, 2025, the second inauguration of Donald Trump took place after his victory in the 2024 United States presidential election. Many people were invited, including Elon Musk. Musk was influential to Trump's campaign as the second-largest donor. Trump designated him to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency during Trump's second presidency. After the inauguration, Musk attended a celebratory rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., where he thanked the attendees for voting for Trump. Musk jumped onto the stage, started throwing his hands in the air, and then began to dance. After he finished dancing, Musk placed his hand to his heart and extended his arm out above his head with his palm facing down, making a straight-arm gesture. He then turned around and repeated the gesture to the audience behind him. He then said: "My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured" after he finished the gestures. My heart goes out to you is a phrase typically used to show "sorrow or sympathy" for someone, rather than an expression of thanks. Reactions The incident quickly sparked online comparisons to the Nazi salute. While watching the rally, CNN anchor Erin Burnett said that the action was "striking". Some commentators have attributed the gesture to Musk's self-diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome. Musk, however, has never been medically diagnosed with autism or Asperger's syndrome. Several autistic people and therapists interviewed by journalist James McNaney of the Belfast Telegraph have objected to the notion that being on the autism spectrum would cause Musk to make this gesture. In an article for The New York Times, Berlin bureau chief Katrin Bennhold wrote that "it looked a lot like the salute used in Germany and fascist Italy" but that "a striking number of different interpretations began to circulate", also drawing comparisons to the Bellamy salute. Pulitzer Center fellow Alec Luhn said: "Slavic neo-Nazis do a similar salute, to the point that the phrase 'from the heart to the sun' often serves as a stand-in for actually doing the salute." The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) came to Musk's defense, stating in an X post: "It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute", adding: "In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning." However, former ADL national director Abraham Foxman described the gesture as a "Heil Hitler Nazi salute". The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) said that the ADL appeared to be contradicting its own definition of a Nazi salute, which the ADL defines as "raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down". IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group, said it was "appalled" that the ADL had "glossed over Musk's Nazi gesture, admonishing those of us who were aghast at the Hitler salute to give Musk 'the benefit of the doubt' — even as the ADL assumes the worst intentions of those in the movement for Palestinian human rights". Aaron Astor, a history professor at Tennessee's Maryville College, defended the ADL's stance on X, stating that it was "not a Nazi salute". Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and fascism at New York University, said that it was "a Nazi salute – and a very belligerent one too". The ADL declined to say how it had reached this conclusion when asked by the JTA. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt later expressed regret that he had not "framed" the tweet differently given "the impact that it had". The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization specializing in civil rights, referred to it as an "apparent Nazi salute" and noted that many far-right figures had celebrated it as a Roman salute. Several academics with expertise on extremism have agreed to describing the gesture as a Nazi salute. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention responded to the "Nazi salute" by issuing a red flag alert for genocide in the United States. Jerry Nadler, a Jewish Democratic congressman from Manhattan, called the gesture antisemitic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democratic congresswoman, condemned Musk's gestures and implied that he was "sympathetic to Nazis". Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz said that Musk's gesture was "of course" a Nazi salute. Musk said on Twitter that he would consider suing Walz for this statement. After PBS News Hour tweeted that Musk "gave what appeared to be a fascist salute", Texas senator Ted Cruz responded: "[Musk] literally said 'my heart goes out to you' as he made the gesture from his heart to the people. PBS knows they are lying, and they are proud of doing so. They should be defunded." Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene defended Musk, accusing news outlets of lying about him and spreading "propaganda to serve the Democrat party". Israeli professor at Columbia University and pro-Israel activist Shai Davidai said: "I don't care who you are, doing a Nazi salute is never ok." Republican representative Elise Stefanik, Trump's nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, defended Musk at her confirmation hearing. On the late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, cast members James Austin Johnson (as Trump) and Michael Che lampooned the moment in the show's cold open and Weekend Update segment. During a CNN NewsNight discussion, Scott Jennings, conservative political strategist and former Bush staffer, said critics who accused Musk of doing a Nazi salute were "suffering from progression of Trump derangement syndrome", and told them to "lawyer up". Catherine Rampell challenged him to repeat the gesture on air, which he did not. A YouGov survey of US citizens found that, after watching a video of the salute, 42% said that it was a Nazi salute or a Roman salute (37% and 5%, respectively) and 42% said that it was a "gesture from the heart". Of those who said it was a Nazi salute, 49% said it was on purpose, to indicate support for Nazi views, and 30% said it was done as a joke or to provoke controversy (there was no option for both). 4% said it was an accident and 15% were not sure. 73% of Harris voters said that it was a Nazi or Roman salute, and 16% a gesture from the heart, while 79% of Trump voters said it was a gesture from the heart, and 11% a Nazi or Roman salute. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that Musk's actions raised "serious concerns", and that his "unexpected double salute, which resembled gestures associated with troubling historical connotations, is challenging to understand". It called on him to "clarify or apologize" for the gesture. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs released a statement saying: "Elon Musk knows precisely what he was doing with his fascist Roman salute at today's Trump rally – which follows his explicit embrace of far-right parties and policies." The Jerusalem Post said that many Jewish groups accused Musk of performing an "unambiguous" Nazi salute. Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said that Musk's salute was neither ambiguous nor just a distraction, but would be taken by extremists "as license for their own violent extremism", and was part of a pattern in Musk's behavior, including his support for the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland and the increase in extremism he has allowed on Twitter, which she said contributed to normalizing antisemitic and extremist views. She gave the example of Musk's endorsement of a Twitter post in November 2023 that claimed that Jewish people promote "hatred against whites" and support immigration by "hordes of minorities", which Musk commented was "the actual truth". He later apologized and called it his "worst and dumbest" post. Spitalnick questioned this apology, and said that Musk's "embrace of antisemitism and extremism" will make Jews and other communities less safe. Michel Friedman, German former Christian Democrat politician and former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described Musk's gestures as a "disgrace" that showed that "the breaking of taboos is reaching a dangerous point for the entire free world". Masha Pearl, executive director of Holocaust survivor charity The Blue Card, said that it was a Nazi salute, and called it "an unmistakable symbol of hate, of violence, of genocide". In Canada, Holocaust survivor David Moskovic stated he was alarmed by Musk's salute. A coalition of Jewish organizations in the US and Canada announced that they would be leaving X in response to the incident. Some asset managers have received pressure from Jewish investors to sell Tesla stock in response. 166 Jewish leaders, including rabbis and activists, signed an open letter condemning Musk's "Nazi salute", saying: "Almost daily, he spreads heinous conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, promotes neo-Nazis, and agrees with tweets claiming Jews push hate against white people." They stated: "When the world's richest man combines political power with a platform that can mobilize hate, the danger becomes immediate and lethal", and reiterated their earlier call for a boycott of X. Musk's salute was described, by a range of German newspapers, as "reminiscent of", "similar to", and "at least very similar to" a Nazi salute, as an "alleged Nazi salute", as a "Nazi salute gesture", and simply as a "Nazi salute".[b] Stefanie Stork wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "It is not possible that Musk was unaware of the symbolism he was using when he made the gesture of an arm stretched upwards in salute." In an interview with Der Spiegel, Kira Ayyadi of the anti-extremism Amadeu Antonio Foundation said: "That was definitely a Nazi salute." Anna Schneider in Die Welt was skeptical, writing: "The mob needs its material, and the material is called Nazi." Lenz Jacobsen wrote in Die Zeit: "Someone who, on a political stage during a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience swings their right arm upwards diagonally multiple times, is giving the Nazi salute. There's no need for 'alleged' or 'similar' or 'disputed'." Timo Feldhaus wrote in the Berliner Zeitung: "That Elon Musk carefully considered his energetically performed signal, is safe to assume. Even a man as oblivious to history as he is knows what he's doing in this situation." Andreas Biller wrote in Focus magazine that Musk's gesture "was recognised by most observers as clearly a Nazi salute". In Stern magazine, Félice Gritti wrote that the "dirty trick" was not the accusations, as Musk had said, but the "ambiguity" of the gesture, and compared this to how far-right AfD politician and former history teacher Björn Höcke was twice convicted of using the banned Nazi slogan "Alles für Deutschland", despite having claimed not to know that it was the slogan of the Sturmabteilung Nazi paramilitary. Further articles in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handelsblatt, Die Tageszeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, and Rheinische Post condemned Musk's gesture as an intentional Nazi salute. The New York Times said that "there was little doubt about its meaning" in Germany, and noted that making a Nazi salute is illegal there, along with the use of other extremist symbols and slogans. Public broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg said that Musk's gesture "is in principle a punishable offence in Germany". When asked about the incident, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Europe will not accept support for extreme-right positions. Musk reacted to the remarks on X by mocking Scholz. The German party Die Linke called for Musk to be banned from entering Germany, citing both the gestures and Musk's past support for Germany's far-right AfD party and his continued interference in European politics. Austria's Green Party also called for a similar ban. Austrian green politician Lukas Hammer called both Interior and Foreign Ministries to consider the possibility of denying Musk's entry. British anti-Brexit activist group, Led By Donkeys, projected an image of Musk's gesture onto the Tesla Gigafactory in the city of Berlin with the phrase "Heil Tesla", accompanied by social media posts which criticized Musk's political views. Later, the German law enforcement launched an investigation into the image projected by the group, stating that it may have breached German laws on the use of symbols linked to illegal organizations. On the same day as his salutes, January 20, 2025, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Musk addressed attendees at an AfD rally by videolink, where he stated that there is "too much focus on past guilt", suggesting that children should not be held accountable for their ancestors' actions and warned against the 'dilution' of the German people resulting from multiculturalism. According to The New York Times, Musk's comments were "an apparent effort to wipe away the long shadow of the Nazis that has influenced generations of Germans to quarantine extreme political parties from public life". Danny Dayan, chair of Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, said: "Contrary to [Musk's] advice, the remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society. Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany." Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, defended Musk on X, stating that Musk "is being falsely smeared" and calling him "a great friend of Israel". Haaretz covered the event with a headline "Elon Musk appears to make fascist salute at Trump inauguration rally." Following Musk's speech, Andrea Stroppa, Musk's representative in Italy, posted the image of him on X along with the caption: "Roman Empire is back, starting with the Roman salute." Later, he removed the post, stating that Musk "is autistic" and that he was just expressing his feelings without emulating fascism. An Italian communist youth organization, Cambiare Rotta, hung a doll of Musk upside down in Piazzale Loreto, a square in Milan where Mussolini's body was hung in the same manner by partisans after he was executed during the final days of World War II. Italian journalist Roberto Saviano attacked Elon Musk in a Facebook post, stating: "The end of all this will be violent. His fall will be equal to that of those to whom it historically refers with this gesture. Musk will fall at the hands of those he now incites fueled by the same violence he practices." Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, condemned Musk, stating: "They cannot say anything to justify it. This is an open Nazi salute, the Americans and Mr. Musk have simply taken this too far." Lukashenko also stated: "Why do you go on stage and do the Hitler salute in front of millions of people? Are you doing anyone good? We, together with the Americans, fought against it. It's just nuts." Argentina's President Javier Milei defended Musk at the World Economic Forum's meeting in the city of Davos, Milei stated that his "dear friend Musk" has been "unfairly vilified by 'wokeism' in recent hours for an innocent gesture that only means his gratitude to the people". Yolanda Díaz, the Spanish minister of labor and longtime member of the Communist Party of Spain, announced that she would quit using X in response to the gesture. She also accused Musk of turning X into a "propaganda mechanism". In a radio interview in March, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that he did not "for a moment" think that Musk's gestures were Nazi salutes, and when asked what they were, said, "very unwise", adding: "They're not really Nazi salutes, because they're out to the side and not in front." He said that he did not think that Elon Musk is a Nazi. Numerous neo-Nazi and white nationalist figures expressed support for Musk's gestures. Thomas Sewell, an Australian neo-Nazi, posted a video of Musk's gestures, describing it as a "Donald Trump White Power moment". Nick Fuentes, founder of the white nationalist group Groypers, described the gesture as "straight up like 'Sieg Heil', like loving Hitler energy". Social media influencer Andrew Tate, who has himself performed Nazi salutes, and advocated "bring[ing] the Nazi salute back", responded to Musk's salute by saying, "we're so back". The admin of a Telegram channel run by the white supremacist Active Club Network (whose members have been recorded making Nazi salutes) said: "They follow us. Our ideas are on top. Musk knows it. We know it. Everybody wanna be us. Even the world's richest guy", before adding: "But he is still what he is. A nerd." Mark Collett, a neo-Nazi and leader of far-right hate group Patriotic Alternative, said that Trump and Musk have "certainly helped to up the rhetoric and help to normalise certain things", and "if we can get anything out of it – we should." Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, posted on Telegram: "I don't care if this was a mistake. I'm going to enjoy the tears over it." Andrew Torba, founder of the far-right social media platform Gab, said: "Incredible things are happening already lmao." A Proud Boys chapter posted a clip of Musk's video to its Telegram channel with the text "Hail Trump!" White supremacist movement White Lives Matter also reacted to Musk's gestures in Telegram with the message: "Thanks for (sometimes) hearing us, Elon. The White Flame will rise again!" Two weeks after the incident, rapper Kanye West posted several antisemitic and pro-Nazi comments on Twitter, among which was an uploaded image of Musk's gesture captioned "heil Elon" in all capitals. West said: "Elon stole my Nazi swag at the inauguration." Following the 2025 New York City mayoral election, several right wing social media accounts (including Libs of TikTok) falsely equated video of Democratic mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani waving to his audience as committing a Nazi salute, comparing it to Musk's gesture and asserting the media would not cover what they called a "double standard". Many users on X, the social media platform which Musk owns, criticized the gesture, saying it resembled a Nazi salute. Some of Musk's supporters on Twitter said that it was a Roman salute. In response to Musk's gestures, many major subreddits on Reddit instituted new rules banning links to or screenshots of X posts. Sam Kuffel, a meteorologist at CBS 58 in Milwaukee, was fired after she criticized the gesture in two Instagram posts. Musk's estranged daughter Vivian Wilson spoke out about Musk's gesture, stating: "I'm just gonna say let's call a spade a fucking spade" on Instagram's Threads platform on January 21. Elon Musk's father, Errol, defended Musk, calling the accusations against Elon "absolute nonsense" and "rubbish". Musk's reaction to criticism Elon Musk responded to criticism of his alleged salute on January 21 on his X account, including calling all news outlets criticizing him biased. He wrote that "The legacy media is pure propaganda", that "they need better dirty tricks", and that "the 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired". After it was written on Musk's Wikipedia page that his gestures had been "compared to a Nazi salute", Musk reiterated his previous criticism against the website, calling for its "defunding". Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales challenged him to find an inaccuracy in its description of events, saying: "That isn't MSM propaganda. That's fact. Every element of it." On January 23, three days after the incident, Musk made a series of Nazi-themed puns on social media as a reaction to the controversy, which the Anti-Defamation League (after previously defending his behavior) called "offensive" and "inappropriate". The U.S. newspaper The Hill said he used the puns "to taunt those who accused him of making a fascist salute". In a discussion with Joe Rogan on a podcast published on February 28, Musk reiterated: "I'm not a Nazi", also saying: "What is actually bad about Nazis — it wasn't their fashion or their mannerisms, it was the war and genocide." Copycat incidents British political commentator Calvin Robinson gave a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, D.C., which concluded with him stating "My heart goes out to you" and performing a gesture that was described as a "pro-Nazi salute" in a statement released the same day by the Anglican Catholic Church. The alleged Nazi salute was seen as an imitation of Musk's actions by commentators. The church announced that Robinson's license in his church had been revoked and was no longer a priest of the ACC, and the entire editorial team at his gaming news website, God is a Geek, resigned in protest. The Anglican Catholic Church said: "We believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of those who fought against its perpetrators. Such actions are harmful, divisive, and contrary to the tenets of Christian charity." Laura Smith, the Towamencin Township supervisor in Pennsylvania, resigned after posting a TikTok video of her appearing to replicate Musk's gesture. She later deleted the video. A real estate agent in San Antonio made a social media video in which she imitated Musk's salute and said: "My heart goes out to you." Her employer, RD Realty Group, subsequently dismissed her and referred to her as having made "an offensive gesture". The CEO of an Idaho construction company apologized and later resigned after performing the salute during a skit at a company event. He said his performance of the salute was an "attempt at humor and parody" meant to "mimic Donald Trump and Elon Musk", and that he "reject[ed] any association with hate groups". Steve Bannon, who previously served as Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to Donald Trump in 2017, appeared to replicate Musk's salute during a speech at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), drawing applause from the audience. Unlike Musk, Bannon did not place his hand to his heart or state "My heart goes out to you". French National Rally politician Jordan Bardella canceled his planned speech at the conference, and called Bannon's action a "gesture alluding to Nazi ideology". Since January 30, there have been five incidents of antisemitism and Nazi salutes at French universities, by students associated with the right-wing UNI student union. According to Johann Chapoutot, a historian specializing in Nazism, Elon Musk's salutes have acted to legitimize Nazi salutes. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#cite_ref-149] | [TOKENS: 12858] |
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/metas-own-research-found-parental-supervision-doesnt-really-help-curb-teens-compulsive-social-media-use/] | [TOKENS: 1418] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use An internal research study at Meta dubbed “Project MYST” created in partnership with the University of Chicago, found that parental supervision and controls — such as time limits and restricted access — had little impact on kids’ compulsive use of social media. The study also found that kids who experienced stressful life events were more likely to lack the ability to moderate their social media use appropriately. This was one of the notable claims revealed during testimony at the social media addiction trial that began last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The plaintiff in the lawsuit is identified by her initials “KGM” or her first name, “Kaley.” She, along with her mother and others joining the case, is accusing social media companies of creating “addictive and dangerous” products that led the young users to suffer anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and more. The case is now one of several landmark trials that will take place this year, which accuse social media companies of harming children. The results of these lawsuits will impact these companies’ approach to their younger users and could prompt regulators to take further action. In this case, the plaintiff sued Meta, YouTube, ByteDance (TikTok), and Snap, but the latter two companies had settled their claims before the trial’s start. In the jury trial now underway in LA, Kaley’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, brought up an internal study at Meta, which he said found evidence that Meta knew of, yet didn’t publicize, these specific harms. In Project MYST, which stands for the Meta and Youth Social Emotional Trends survey, Meta’s research concluded that “parental and household factors have little association with teens’ reported levels of attentiveness to their social media use.” Or, in other words, even when parents try to control their children’s social media use, either by using parental controls or even just household rules and supervision, it doesn’t impact whether or not the child will overuse social media or use it compulsively. The study was based on a survey of 1,000 teens and their parents about their social media use. The study also noted that both parents and teens agreed on this front, saying “there is no association between either parental reports or teen reports of parental supervision, and teens’ survey measures of attentiveness or capability.” If the study’s findings are accurate, that would mean that the use of things like the built-in parental controls in the Instagram app or the time limits on smartphones wouldn’t necessarily help teens become less inclined to overuse social media, the plaintiff’s lawyer argued. As the original complaint alleges, teens are being exploited by social media products, whose defects include algorithmic feeds designed to keep users scrolling, intermittent variable rewards that manipulate dopamine delivery, incessant notifications, deficient tools for parental controls, and more. During his testimony, Instagram head Adam Mosseri claimed not to be familiar with Meta’s Project MYST, even though a document seemed to indicate he had given his approval to move forward with the study. “We do a lot of research projects,” Mosseri said, after claiming he couldn’t remember anything specific about MYST beyond its name. However, the plaintiff’s lawyer pointed to this study as an example of why social media companies should be held accountable for their alleged harms, not the parents. He noted that Kaley’s mother, for example, had tried to stop her daughter’s social media addiction and use, even taking her phone away at times. What’s more, the study found that teens who had a greater number of adverse life experiences — like those dealing with alcoholic parents, harassment at school, or other issues — reported less attentiveness over their social media use. That means that kids facing trauma in their real lives were more at risk of addiction, the lawyer argued. On the stand, Mosseri seemed to partially agree with this finding, saying, “There’s a variety of reasons this can be the case. One I’ve heard often is that people use Instagram as a way to escape from a more difficult reality.” Meta is careful not to label any sort of overuse as addiction; instead, Mosseri stated that the company uses the term “problematic use” to refer to someone “spending more time on Instagram than they feel good about.” Lawyers for Meta, meanwhile, pushed the idea that the study was more narrowly focused on understanding if teens felt they were using social media too much, not whether or not they were actually addicted. They also generally aimed to put more of the responsibility on parents and the realities of life as the catalyst for kids like Kaley’s negative emotional states, not companies’ social media products. For instance, Meta’s lawyers pointed to Kaley being a child of divorced parents, with an abusive father, and facing bullying at school. How the jury will interpret the findings of studies like Project MYST and others, along with the testimonies from both sides, remains to be seen. Mosseri did note, however, that MYST’s findings had not been published publicly, and no warnings were ever issued to teens or parents as a result of the research. Reached for comment, a Meta spokesperson said, “Aside from the fact that this analysis showed nothing about the impact of parental oversight on teens’ behavior, parents tell us over and over that they want and need digital monitoring tools. That’s why we build them.” Updated after publication with Meta’s comment. Topics Consumer News Editor Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/16/how-ricursive-intelligence-raised-335m-at-a-4b-valuation-in-4-months/] | [TOKENS: 1470] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months The co-founders of startup Ricursive Intelligence seemed destined to be co-founders. Anna Goldie, CEO, and Azalia Mirhoseini, CTO, are so well-known in the AI community that they were among those AI engineers who “got those weird emails from Zuckerberg making crazy offers to us,” Goldie told TechCrunch, chuckling. (They didn’t take the offers.) The pair worked at Google Brain together and were early employees at Anthropic. They earned acclaim at Google by creating the Alpha Chip — an AI tool that could generate solid chip layouts in hours — a process that normally takes human designers a year or more. The tool helped design three generations of Google’s Tensor Processing Units. That pedigree explains why, just four months after launching Ricursive, they last month announced a $300 million Series A round at a $4 billion valuation led by Lightspeed, just a couple of months after raising a $35 million seed round led by Sequoia. Ricursive is building AI tools that design chips, not the chips themselves. That makes them fundamentally different from nearly every other AI chip startup: They’re not a wannabe Nvidia competitor. In fact, Nvidia is an investor. The GPU giant, AMD, Intel, and every other chip maker are the startup’s target customers. “We want to enable any chip, like a custom chip or a more traditional chip, any kind of chip, to be built in an automated and very accelerated way. We’re using AI to do that,” Mirhoseini told TechCrunch. Their paths first crossed at Stanford, where Goldie earned her PhD as Mirhoseini taught computer science classes. Since then, their careers have been in lockstep. “We started at Google Brain on the same day. We left Google Brain on the same day. We joined Anthropic on the same day. We left Anthropic on the same day. We rejoined Google on the same day, and then we left Google again on the same day. Then we started this company together on the same day,” Goldie recounted. During their time at Google, the colleagues were so close they even worked out together, both enjoying circuit training. The pun wasn’t lost on Jeff Dean, the famed Google engineer who was their collaborator. He nicknamed their Alpha Chip project “chip circuit training” — a play on their shared workout routine. Internally, the pair also got a nickname: A&A. The Alpha Chip earned them industry notice, but it also attracted controversy. In 2022, one of their colleagues at Google was fired, Wired reported, after he spent years trying to discredit A&A and their chip work, even though that work was used to help produce some of Google’s most important, bet-the-business AI chips. Their Alpha Chip project at Google Brain proved the concept that would become Ricursive — using AI to dramatically accelerate chip design. Designing chips is hard The issue is, computer chips have millions to billions of logic gate components integrated on their silicon wafer. Human designers can spend a year or more placing those components on the chip to ensure performance, good power utilization, and any other design needs. Digitally determining the placement of such infinitesimally small components with precision is, as you might expect, hard. Alpha Chip “could generate a very high-quality layout in, like, six hours. And the cool thing about this approach was that it actually learns from experience,” Goldie said. The premise of their AI chip design work is to use “a reward signal” that rates how good the design is. The agent then takes that rating to “update the parameters of its deep neural network to get better,” Goldie said. After completing thousands of designs, the agent got really good. It also got faster as it learned, the founders say. Ricursive’s platform will take the concept further. The AI chip designer they are building will “learn across different chips,” Goldie said. So each chip it designs should help it become a better designer for every next chip. Ricursive’s platform also makes use of LLMs and will handle everything from component placement through design verification. Any company that makes electronics and needs chips is their target customer. If their platform proves itself, as it seems likely to do, Ricursive could play a role in the moonshot goal of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Indeed, their ultimate vision is designing AI chips, meaning the AI will essentially design its own computer brains. “Chips are the fuel for AI,” Goldie said. “I think by building more powerful chips, that’s the best way to advance that frontier.” Mirhoseini adds that the lengthy chip-design process is constraining how quickly AI can advance. “We think we can also enable this fast co-evolution of the models and the chips that basically power them,” she said. So AI can grow smarter faster. If the thought of AI designing its own brains at ever-increasing speeds brings visions of Skynet and the Terminator to mind, the founders point out that there’s a more positive, immediate, and, they think, more likely benefit: hardware efficiency. When AI Labs can design far more efficient chips (and, eventually all the underlying hardware), their growth won’t have to consume so much of the world’s resources. “We could design a computer architecture that’s uniquely suited to that model, and we could achieve almost a 10x improvement in performance per total cost of ownership,” Goldie said. While the young startup won’t name its early customers, the founders say that they’ve heard from every big chip making name you can imagine. Unsurprisingly, they have their pick of their first development partners, too. Topics Venture Editor Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_anomaly#Mean_anomaly_at_epoch] | [TOKENS: 1943] |
Contents Mean anomaly In celestial mechanics, the mean anomaly is the fraction of an elliptical orbit's period that has elapsed since the orbiting body passed periapsis, expressed as an angle which can be used in calculating the position of that body in the classical two-body problem. It is the angular distance from the pericenter which a fictitious body would have if it moved in a circular orbit, with constant speed, in the same orbital period as the actual body in its elliptical orbit. Definition Define T as the time required for a particular body to complete one orbit. In time T, the radius vector sweeps out 2π radians, or 360°. The average rate of sweep, n, is then n = 2 π T = 360 ∘ T , {\displaystyle n={\frac {\,2\,\pi \,}{T}}={\frac {\,360^{\circ }\,}{T}}~,} which is called the mean angular motion of the body, with dimensions of radians per unit time or degrees per unit time. Define τ as the time at which the body is at the pericenter. From the above definitions, a new quantity, M, the mean anomaly can be defined M = n ( t − τ ) , {\displaystyle M=n\,(t-\tau )~,} which gives an angular distance from the pericenter at arbitrary time t with dimensions of radians or degrees. Because the rate of increase, n, is a constant average, the mean anomaly increases uniformly (linearly) from 0 to 2π radians or 0° to 360° during each orbit. It is equal to 0 when the body is at the pericenter, π radians (180°) at the apocenter, and 2π radians (360°) after one complete revolution. If the mean anomaly is known at any given instant, it can be calculated at any later (or prior) instant by simply adding (or subtracting) n⋅δt where δt represents the small time difference. Mean anomaly does not measure an angle between any physical objects (except at pericenter or apocenter, or for a circular orbit). It is simply a convenient uniform measure of how far around its orbit a body has progressed since pericenter. The mean anomaly is one of three angular parameters (known historically as "anomalies") that define a position along an orbit, the other two being the eccentric anomaly and the true anomaly. The mean anomaly at epoch, M0, is defined as the instantaneous mean anomaly at a given epoch, t0. This value is sometimes provided with other orbital elements to enable calculations of the object's past and future positions along the orbit. The epoch for which M0 is defined is often determined by convention in a given field or discipline. For example, planetary ephemerides often define M0 for the epoch J2000, while for earth orbiting objects described by a two-line element set the epoch is specified as a date in the first line. Formulae The mean anomaly M can be computed from the eccentric anomaly E and the eccentricity e with Kepler's equation: M = E − e sin E . {\displaystyle M=E-e\,\sin E~.} Mean anomaly is also frequently seen as M = M 0 + n ( t − t 0 ) , {\displaystyle M=M_{0}+n\left(t-t_{0}\right)~,} where M0 is the mean anomaly at the epoch t0, which may or may not coincide with τ, the time of pericenter passage. The classical method of finding the position of an object in an elliptical orbit from a set of orbital elements is to calculate the mean anomaly by this equation, and then to solve Kepler's equation for the eccentric anomaly. Define ϖ as the longitude of the pericenter, the angular distance of the pericenter from a reference direction. Define ℓ as the mean longitude, the angular distance of the body from the same reference direction, assuming it moves with uniform angular motion as with the mean anomaly. Thus mean anomaly is also Mean angular motion can also be expressed, n = μ a 3 , {\displaystyle n={\sqrt {{\frac {\mu }{\;a^{3}\,}}\,}}~,} where μ is the gravitational parameter, which varies with the masses of the objects, and a is the semi-major axis of the orbit. Mean anomaly can then be expanded, M = μ a 3 ( t − τ ) , {\displaystyle M={\sqrt {{\frac {\mu }{\;a^{3}\,}}\,}}\,\left(t-\tau \right)~,} and here mean anomaly represents uniform angular motion on a circle of radius a. Mean anomaly can be calculated from the eccentricity and the true anomaly v by finding the eccentric anomaly and then using Kepler's equation. This gives, in radians: M = atan2 ( 1 − e 2 sin ν , e + cos ν ) − e 1 − e 2 sin ν 1 + e cos ν {\displaystyle M=\operatorname {atan2} \left({\sqrt {1-e^{2}}}\sin \nu ,e+\cos \nu \right)-e{\frac {{\sqrt {1-e^{2}}}\sin \nu }{1+e\cos \nu }}} where atan2(y, x) is the angle from the x-axis of the ray from (0, 0) to (x, y), having the same sign as y. For parabolic and hyperbolic trajectories the mean anomaly is not defined, because they don't have a period. But in those cases, as with elliptical orbits, the area swept out by a chord between the attractor and the object following the trajectory increases linearly with time. For the hyperbolic case, there is a formula similar to the above giving the elapsed time as a function of the angle (the true anomaly in the elliptic case), as explained in the article Kepler orbit. For the parabolic case there is a different formula, the limiting case for either the elliptic or the hyperbolic case as the distance between the foci goes to infinity – see Parabolic trajectory#Barker's equation. Mean anomaly can also be expressed as a series expansion: M = ν + 2 ∑ n = 1 ∞ ( − 1 ) n [ 1 n + 1 − e 2 ] β n sin n ν {\displaystyle M=\nu +2\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }(-1)^{n}\left[{\frac {1}{n}}+{\sqrt {1-e^{2}}}\right]\beta ^{n}\sin {n\nu }} with β = 1 − 1 − e 2 e {\displaystyle \beta ={\frac {1-{\sqrt {1-e^{2}}}}{e}}} M = ν − 2 e sin ν + ( 3 4 e 2 + 1 8 e 4 ) sin 2 ν − 1 3 e 3 sin 3 ν + 5 32 e 4 sin 4 ν + O ( e 5 ) {\displaystyle M=\nu -2\,e\sin \nu +\left({\frac {3}{4}}e^{2}+{\frac {1}{8}}e^{4}\right)\sin 2\nu -{\frac {1}{3}}e^{3}\sin 3\nu +{\frac {5}{32}}e^{4}\sin 4\nu +\operatorname {\mathcal {O}} \left(e^{5}\right)} A similar formula gives the true anomaly directly in terms of the mean anomaly: ν = M + ( 2 e − 1 4 e 3 ) sin M + 5 4 e 2 sin 2 M + 13 12 e 3 sin 3 M + O ( e 4 ) {\displaystyle \nu =M+\left(2\,e-{\frac {1}{4}}e^{3}\right)\sin M+{\frac {5}{4}}e^{2}\sin 2M+{\frac {13}{12}}e^{3}\sin 3M+\operatorname {\mathcal {O}} \left(e^{4}\right)} A general formulation of the above equation can be written as the equation of the center: ν = M + 2 ∑ s = 1 ∞ 1 s [ J s ( s e ) + ∑ p = 1 ∞ β p ( J s − p ( s e ) + J s + p ( s e ) ) ] sin ( s M ) {\displaystyle \nu =M+2\sum _{s=1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{s}}\left[J_{s}(se)+\sum _{p=1}^{\infty }\beta ^{p}{\big (}J_{s-p}(se)+J_{s+p}(se){\big )}\right]\sin(sM)} See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)#cite_note-pa30_469-3] | [TOKENS: 4993] |
Contents Orion (constellation) Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century AD/CE astronomer Ptolemy. It is named after a hunter in Greek mythology. Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism. Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel (β) and Betelgeuse (α), are both among the brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable. There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism. Orion also hosts the radiant of the annual Orionids, the strongest meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet, and the Orion Nebula, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky. Characteristics Orion is bordered by Taurus to the northwest, Eridanus to the southwest, Lepus to the south, Monoceros to the east, and Gemini to the northeast. Covering 594 square degrees, Orion ranks 26th of the 88 constellations in size. The constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 26 sides. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 04h 43.3m and 06h 25.5m , while the declination coordinates are between 22.87° and −10.97°. The constellation's three-letter abbreviation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Ori". Orion is most visible in the evening sky from January to April, winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. In the tropics (less than about 8° from the equator), the constellation transits at the zenith. From May to July (summer in the Northern Hemisphere, winter in the Southern Hemisphere), Orion is in the daytime sky and thus invisible at most latitudes. However, for much of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere's winter months, the Sun is below the horizon even at midday. Stars (and thus Orion, but only the brightest stars) are then visible at twilight for a few hours around local noon, just in the brightest section of the sky low in the North where the Sun is just below the horizon. At the same time of day at the South Pole itself (Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station), Rigel is only 8° above the horizon, and the Belt sweeps just along it. In the Southern Hemisphere's summer months, when Orion is normally visible in the night sky, the constellation is actually not visible in Antarctica because the Sun does not set at that time of year south of the Antarctic Circle. In countries close to the equator (e.g. Kenya, Indonesia, Colombia, Ecuador), Orion appears overhead in December around midnight and in the February evening sky. Navigational aid Orion is very useful as an aid to locating other stars. By extending the line of the Belt southeastward, Sirius (α CMa) can be found; northwestward, Aldebaran (α Tau). A line eastward across the two shoulders indicates the direction of Procyon (α CMi). A line from Rigel through Betelgeuse points to Castor and Pollux (α Gem and β Gem). Additionally, Rigel is part of the Winter Circle asterism. Sirius and Procyon, which may be located from Orion by following imaginary lines (see map), also are points in both the Winter Triangle and the Circle. Features Orion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky. Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, at the center of which lie the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. His head is marked by an additional eighth star called Meissa, which is fairly bright to the observer. Descending from the Belt is a smaller line of three stars, Orion's Sword (the middle of which is in fact not a star but the Orion Nebula), also known as the hunter's sword. Many of the stars are luminous hot blue supergiants, with the stars of the Belt and Sword forming the Orion OB1 association. Standing out by its red hue, Betelgeuse may nevertheless be a runaway member of the same group. Orion's Belt, or The Belt of Orion, is an asterism within the constellation. It consists of three bright stars: Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), and Mintaka (Delta Orionis). Alnitak is around 800 light-years away from Earth, 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun, and shines with a magnitude of 1.8; much of its radiation is in the ultraviolet range, which the human eye cannot see. Alnilam is approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth, shines with a magnitude of 1.70, and with an ultraviolet light that is 375,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Mintaka is 915 light-years away and shines with a magnitude of 2.21. It is 90,000 times more luminous than the Sun and is a double star: the two orbit each other every 5.73 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, Orion's Belt is best visible in the night sky during the month of January at around 9:00 pm, when it is approximately around the local meridian. Just southwest of Alnitak lies Sigma Orionis, a multiple star system composed of five stars that have a combined apparent magnitude of 3.7 and lying at a distance of 1150 light-years. Southwest of Mintaka lies the quadruple star Eta Orionis. Orion's Sword contains the Orion Nebula, the Messier 43 nebula, Sh 2-279 (also known as the Running Man Nebula), and the stars Theta Orionis, Iota Orionis, and 42 Orionis. Three stars comprise a small triangle that marks the head. The apex is marked by Meissa (Lambda Orionis), a hot blue giant of spectral type O8 III and apparent magnitude 3.54, which lies some 1100 light-years distant. Phi-1 and Phi-2 Orionis make up the base. Also nearby is the young star FU Orionis. Stretching north from Betelgeuse are the stars that make up Orion's club. Mu Orionis marks the elbow, Nu and Xi mark the handle of the club, and Chi1 and Chi2 mark the end of the club. Just east of Chi1 is the Mira-type variable red giant star U Orionis. West from Bellatrix lie six stars all designated Pi Orionis (π1 Ori, π2 Ori, π3 Ori, π4 Ori, π5 Ori, and π6 Ori) which make up Orion's shield. Around 20 October each year, the Orionid meteor shower (Orionids) reaches its peak. Coming from the border with the constellation Gemini, as many as 20 meteors per hour can be seen. The shower's parent body is Halley's Comet. Hanging from Orion's Belt is his sword, consisting of the multiple stars θ1 and θ2 Orionis, called the Trapezium and the Orion Nebula (M42). This is a spectacular object that can be clearly identified with the naked eye as something other than a star. Using binoculars, its clouds of nascent stars, luminous gas, and dust can be observed. The Trapezium cluster has many newborn stars, including several brown dwarfs, all of which are at an approximate distance of 1,500 light-years. Named for the four bright stars that form a trapezoid, it is largely illuminated by the brightest stars, which are only a few hundred thousand years old. Observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show both the extreme temperatures of the main stars—up to 60,000 kelvins—and the star forming regions still extant in the surrounding nebula. M78 (NGC 2068) is a nebula in Orion. With an overall magnitude of 8.0, it is significantly dimmer than the Great Orion Nebula that lies to its south; however, it is at approximately the same distance, at 1600 light-years from Earth. It can easily be mistaken for a comet in the eyepiece of a telescope. M78 is associated with the variable star V351 Orionis, whose magnitude changes are visible in very short periods of time. Another fairly bright nebula in Orion is NGC 1999, also close to the Great Orion Nebula. It has an integrated magnitude of 10.5 and is 1500 light-years from Earth. The variable star V380 Orionis is embedded in NGC 1999. Another famous nebula is IC 434, the Horsehead Nebula, near Alnitak (Zeta Orionis). It contains a dark dust cloud whose shape gives the nebula its name. NGC 2174 is an emission nebula located 6400 light-years from Earth. Besides these nebulae, surveying Orion with a small telescope will reveal a wealth of interesting deep-sky objects, including M43, M78, and multiple stars including Iota Orionis and Sigma Orionis. A larger telescope may reveal objects such as the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), as well as fainter and tighter multiple stars and nebulae. Barnard's Loop can be seen on very dark nights or using long-exposure photography. All of these nebulae are part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which is located approximately 1,500 light-years away and is hundreds of light-years across. Due to its proximity, it is one of the most intense regions of stellar formation visible from Earth. The Orion molecular cloud complex forms the eastern part of an even larger structure, the Orion–Eridanus Superbubble, which is visible in X-rays and in hydrogen emissions. History and mythology The distinctive pattern of Orion is recognized in numerous cultures around the world, and many myths are associated with it. Orion is used as a symbol in the modern world. In Siberia, the Chukchi people see Orion as a hunter; an arrow he has shot is represented by Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), with the same figure as other Western depictions. In Greek mythology, Orion was a gigantic, supernaturally strong hunter, born to Euryale, a Gorgon, and Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. One myth recounts Gaia's rage at Orion, who dared to say that he would kill every animal on Earth. The angry goddess tried to dispatch Orion with a scorpion. This is given as the reason that the constellations of Scorpius and Orion are never in the sky at the same time. However, Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, revived Orion with an antidote. This is said to be the reason that the constellation of Ophiuchus stands midway between the Scorpion and the Hunter in the sky. The constellation is mentioned in Horace's Odes (Ode 3.27.18), Homer's Odyssey (Book 5, line 283) and Iliad, and Virgil's Aeneid (Book 1, line 535). In old Hungarian tradition, Orion is known as "Archer" (Íjász), or "Reaper" (Kaszás). In recently rediscovered myths, he is called Nimrod (Hungarian: Nimród), the greatest hunter, father of the twins Hunor and Magor. The π and o stars (on upper right) form together the reflex bow or the lifted scythe. In other Hungarian traditions, Orion's Belt is known as "Judge's stick" (Bírópálca). In Ireland and Scotland, Orion was called An Bodach, a figure from Irish folklore whose name literally means "the one with a penis [bod]" and was the husband of the Cailleach (hag). In Scandinavian tradition, Orion's Belt was known as "Frigg's Distaff" (friggerock) or "Freyja's distaff". The Finns call Orion's Belt and the stars below it "Väinämöinen's scythe" (Väinämöisen viikate). Another name for the asterism of Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka is "Väinämöinen's Belt" (Väinämöisen vyö) and the stars "hanging" from the Belt as "Kaleva's sword" (Kalevanmiekka). There are claims in popular media that the Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave, an ivory carving estimated to be 35,000 to 40,000 years old, is the first known depiction of the constellation. Scholars dismiss such interpretations, saying that perceived details such as a belt and sword derive from preexisting features in the grain structure of the ivory. The Babylonian star catalogues of the Late Bronze Age name Orion MULSIPA.ZI.AN.NA,[note 1] "The Heavenly Shepherd" or "True Shepherd of Anu" – Anu being the chief god of the heavenly realms. The Babylonian constellation is sacred to Papshukal and Ninshubur, both minor gods fulfilling the role of "messenger to the gods". Papshukal is closely associated with the figure of a walking bird on Babylonian boundary stones, and on the star map the figure of the Rooster is located below and behind the figure of the True Shepherd—both constellations represent the herald of the gods, in his bird and human forms respectively. In ancient Egypt, the stars of Orion were regarded as a god, called Sah. Because Orion rises before Sirius, the star whose heliacal rising was the basis for the Solar Egyptian calendar, Sah was closely linked with Sopdet, the goddess who personified Sirius. The god Sopdu is said to be the son of Sah and Sopdet. Sah is syncretized with Osiris, while Sopdet is syncretized with Osiris' mythological wife, Isis. In the Pyramid Texts, from the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, Sah is one of many gods whose form the dead pharaoh is said to take in the afterlife. The Armenians identified their legendary patriarch and founder Hayk with Orion. Hayk is also the name of the Orion constellation in the Armenian translation of the Bible. The Bible mentions Orion three times, naming it "Kesil" (כסיל, literally – fool). Though, this name perhaps is etymologically connected with "Kislev", the name for the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar (i.e. November–December), which, in turn, may derive from the Hebrew root K-S-L as in the words "kesel, kisla" (כֵּסֶל, כִּסְלָה, hope, positiveness), i.e. hope for winter rains.: Job 9:9 ("He is the maker of the Bear and Orion"), Job 38:31 ("Can you loosen Orion's belt?"), and Amos 5:8 ("He who made the Pleiades and Orion"). In ancient Aram, the constellation was known as Nephîlā′, the Nephilim are said to be Orion's descendants. In medieval Muslim astronomy, Orion was known as al-jabbar, "the giant". Orion's sixth brightest star, Saiph, is named from the Arabic, saif al-jabbar, meaning "sword of the giant". In China, Orion was one of the 28 lunar mansions Sieu (Xiù) (宿). It is known as Shen (參), literally meaning "three", for the stars of Orion's Belt. The Chinese character 參 (pinyin shēn) originally meant the constellation Orion (Chinese: 參宿; pinyin: shēnxiù); its Shang dynasty version, over three millennia old, contains at the top a representation of the three stars of Orion's Belt atop a man's head (the bottom portion representing the sound of the word was added later). The Rigveda refers to the constellation as Mriga (the Deer). Nataraja, "the cosmic dancer", is often interpreted as the representation of Orion. Rudra, the Rigvedic form of Shiva, is the presiding deity of Ardra nakshatra (Betelgeuse) of Hindu astrology. The Jain Symbol carved in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, India in 1st century BCE has a striking resemblance with Orion. Bugis sailors identified the three stars in Orion's Belt as tanra tellué, meaning "sign of three". The Seri people of northwestern Mexico call the three stars in Orion's Belt Hapj (a name denoting a hunter) which consists of three stars: Hap (mule deer), Haamoja (pronghorn), and Mojet (bighorn sheep). Hap is in the middle and has been shot by the hunter; its blood has dripped onto Tiburón Island. The same three stars are known in Spain and most of Latin America as "Las tres Marías" (Spanish for "The Three Marys"). In Puerto Rico, the three stars are known as the "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (Spanish for The Three Wise Men). The Ojibwa/Chippewa Native Americans call this constellation Mesabi for Big Man. To the Lakota Native Americans, Tayamnicankhu (Orion's Belt) is the spine of a bison. The great rectangle of Orion is the bison's ribs; the Pleiades star cluster in nearby Taurus is the bison's head; and Sirius in Canis Major, known as Tayamnisinte, is its tail. Another Lakota myth mentions that the bottom half of Orion, the Constellation of the Hand, represented the arm of a chief that was ripped off by the Thunder People as a punishment from the gods for his selfishness. His daughter offered to marry the person who can retrieve his arm from the sky, so the young warrior Fallen Star (whose father was a star and whose mother was human) returned his arm and married his daughter, symbolizing harmony between the gods and humanity with the help of the younger generation. The index finger is represented by Rigel; the Orion Nebula is the thumb; the Belt of Orion is the wrist; and the star Beta Eridani is the pinky finger. The seven primary stars of Orion make up the Polynesian constellation Heiheionakeiki which represents a child's string figure similar to a cat's cradle. Several precolonial Filipinos referred to the belt region in particular as "balatik" (ballista) as it resembles a trap of the same name which fires arrows by itself and is usually used for catching pigs from the bush. Spanish colonization later led to some ethnic groups referring to Orion's Belt as "Tres Marias" or "Tatlong Maria." In Māori tradition, the star Rigel (known as Puanga or Puaka) is closely connected with the celebration of Matariki. The rising of Matariki (the Pleiades) and Rigel before sunrise in midwinter marks the start of the Māori year. In Javanese culture, the constellation is often called Lintang Waluku or Bintang Bajak, referring to the shape of a paddy field plow. The imagery of the Belt and Sword has found its way into popular Western culture, for example in the form of the shoulder insignia of the 27th Infantry Division of the United States Army during both World Wars, probably owing to a pun on the name of the division's first commander, Major General John F. O'Ryan. The film distribution company Orion Pictures used the constellation as its logo. In artistic renderings, the surrounding constellations are sometimes related to Orion: he is depicted standing next to the river Eridanus with his two hunting dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor, fighting Taurus. He is sometimes depicted hunting Lepus the hare. He sometimes is depicted to have a lion's hide in his hand. There are alternative ways to visualise Orion. From the Southern Hemisphere, Orion is oriented south-upward, and the Belt and Sword are sometimes called the saucepan or pot in Australia and New Zealand. Orion's Belt is called Drie Konings (Three Kings) or the Drie Susters (Three Sisters) by Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and are referred to as les Trois Rois (the Three Kings) in Daudet's Lettres de Mon Moulin (1866). The appellation Driekoningen (the Three Kings) is also often found in 17th and 18th-century Dutch star charts and seaman's guides. The same three stars are known in Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines as "Las Tres Marías" (The Three Marys), and as "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (The Three Wise Men) in Puerto Rico. Even traditional depictions of Orion have varied greatly. Cicero drew Orion in a similar fashion to the modern depiction. The Hunter held an unidentified animal skin aloft in his right hand; his hand was represented by Omicron2 Orionis and the skin was represented by the five stars designated Pi Orionis. Saiph and Rigel represented his left and right knees, while Eta Orionis and Lambda Leporis were his left and right feet, respectively. As in the modern depiction, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak represented his Belt. His left shoulder was represented by Betelgeuse, and Mu Orionis made up his left arm. Meissa was his head, and Bellatrix his right shoulder. The depiction of Hyginus was similar to that of Cicero, though the two differed in a few important areas. Cicero's animal skin became Hyginus's shield (Omicron and Pi Orionis), and instead of an arm marked out by Mu Orionis, he holds a club (Chi Orionis). His right leg is represented by Theta Orionis and his left leg is represented by Lambda, Mu, and Epsilon Leporis. Further Western European and Arabic depictions have followed these two models. Future Orion is located on the celestial equator, but it will not always be so located due to the effects of precession of the Earth's axis. Orion lies well south of the ecliptic, and it only happens to lie on the celestial equator because the point on the ecliptic that corresponds to the June solstice is close to the border of Gemini and Taurus, to the north of Orion. Precession will eventually carry Orion further south, and by AD 14000, Orion will be far enough south that it will no longer be visible from the latitude of Great Britain. Further in the future, Orion's stars will gradually move away from the constellation due to proper motion. However, Orion's brightest stars all lie at a large distance from Earth on an astronomical scale—much farther away than Sirius, for example. Orion will still be recognizable long after most of the other constellations—composed of relatively nearby stars—have distorted into new configurations, with the exception of a few of its stars eventually exploding as supernovae, for example Betelgeuse, which is predicted to explode sometime in the next million years. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language)] | [TOKENS: 300] |
Contents Alef (programming language) Alef is a discontinued concurrent programming language, designed as part of the Plan 9 operating system by Phil Winterbottom of Bell Labs. It implemented the channel-based concurrency model of Newsqueak in a compiled, C-like language. History Alef appeared in the first and second editions of Plan 9, but was abandoned during development of the third edition. Rob Pike later explained Alef's demise by pointing to its lack of automatic memory management, despite Pike's and other people's urging Winterbottom to add garbage collection to the language; also, in a February 2000 slideshow, Pike noted: "…although Alef was a fruitful language, it proved too difficult to maintain a variant language across multiple architectures, so we took what we learned from it and built the thread library for C." Alef was superseded by two programming environments. The Limbo programming language can be considered a direct successor of Alef and is the most commonly used language in the Inferno operating system. The Alef concurrency model was replicated in the third edition of Plan 9 in the form of the libthread library, which makes some of Alef's functionality available to C programs and allowed existing Alef programs (such as Acme) to be translated. Example This example was taken from the Alef reference manual. The piece illustrates the use of the tuple data type. See also References This programming-language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_electronic] | [TOKENS: 5884] |
Contents Digital electronics Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. It deals with the relationship between binary inputs and outputs by passing electrical signals through logical gates, resistors, capacitors, amplifiers, and other electronic components. The field of digital electronics is in contrast to analog electronics, which work primarily with analog signals (signals with varying degrees of intensity as opposed to on/off two-state binary signals). Despite the name, digital electronics designs include important analog design considerations. Large assemblies of logic gates, used to represent more complex ideas, are often packaged into integrated circuits. Complex devices may have simple electronic representations of Boolean logic functions. History The binary number system was refined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (published in 1705) and he also established that by using the binary system, the principles of arithmetic and logic could be joined. Digital logic as we know it was the invention of George Boole in the mid-19th century. In an 1886 letter, Charles Sanders Peirce described how logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits. Eventually, vacuum tubes replaced relays for logic operations. Lee De Forest's modification of the Fleming valve in 1907 could be used as an AND gate. Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced a version of the 16-row truth table as proposition 5.101 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Walther Bothe, inventor of the coincidence circuit, shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics, for creating the first modern electronic AND gate in 1924. Mechanical analog computers started appearing in the first century and were later used in the medieval era for astronomical calculations. In World War II, mechanical analog computers were used for specialized military applications such as calculating torpedo aiming. During this time the first electronic digital computers were developed, with the term digital being proposed by George Stibitz in 1942. Originally they were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern PCs. Claude Shannon, demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship, ultimately laid the foundations of digital computing and digital circuits in his master's thesis of 1937, which is considered to be arguably the most important master's thesis ever written, winning the 1939 Alfred Noble Prize. The Z3 was an electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse. Finished in 1941, it was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Its operation was facilitated by the invention of the vacuum tube in 1904 by John Ambrose Fleming. At the same time that digital calculation replaced analog, purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the point-contact transistor at Bell Labs in 1947, followed by William Shockley inventing the bipolar junction transistor at Bell Labs in 1948. At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of vacuum tubes. Their "transistorised computer", and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. From 1955 and onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors were smaller, more reliable, had indefinite lifespans, and required less power than vacuum tubes - thereby giving off less heat, and allowing much denser concentrations of circuits, up to tens of thousands in a relatively compact space.[citation needed] In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered silicon dioxide surface passivation effects. In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. At Bell Labs, the importance of the Frosch and Derick technique and transistors was immediately realized. Results of their work circulated around Bell Labs in the form of BTL memos before being published in 1957. At Shockley Semiconductor, Shockley had circulated the preprint of their article in December 1956 to all his senior staff, including Jean Hoerni, who would later invent the planar process in 1959 while at Fairchild Semiconductor. At Bell Labs, J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/SiO2 stack and published their results in 1960. Following this research at Bell Labs, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. The team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device. While working at Texas Instruments in July 1958, Jack Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit (IC), then successfully demonstrated the first working integrated circuit on 12 September 1958. Kilby's chip was made of germanium. The following year, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor invented the silicon integrated circuit. The basis for Noyce's silicon IC was Hoerni's planar process.[citation needed] The MOSFET's advantages include high scalability, affordability, low power consumption, and high transistor density. Its rapid on–off electronic switching speed also makes it ideal for generating pulse trains, the basis for electronic digital signals, in contrast to BJTs which, more slowly, generate analog signals resembling sine waves. Along with MOS large-scale integration (LSI), these factors make the MOSFET an important switching device for digital circuits. The MOSFET revolutionized the electronics industry, and is the most common semiconductor device. In the early days of integrated circuits, each chip was limited to only a few transistors, and the low degree of integration meant the design process was relatively simple. Manufacturing yields were also quite low by today's standards. The wide adoption of the MOSFET transistor by the early 1970s led to the first large-scale integration (LSI) chips with more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip. Following the wide adoption of CMOS, a type of MOSFET logic, by the 1980s, millions and then billions of MOSFETs could be placed on one chip as the technology progressed, and good designs required thorough planning, giving rise to new design methods. The transistor count of devices and total production rose to unprecedented heights. The total amount of transistors produced until 2018 has been estimated to be 1.3×1022 (13 sextillion). The wireless revolution (the introduction and proliferation of wireless networks) began in the 1990s and was enabled by the wide adoption of MOSFET-based RF power amplifiers (power MOSFET and LDMOS) and RF circuits (RF CMOS). Wireless networks allowed for public digital transmission without the need for cables, leading to digital television, satellite and digital radio, GPS, wireless Internet and mobile phones through the 1990s–2000s.[citation needed] Properties An advantage of digital circuits when compared to analog circuits is that signals represented digitally can be transmitted without degradation caused by noise. For example, a continuous audio signal, transmitted as a sequence of 1s and 0s, can be reconstructed without error, provided the noise picked up in transmission is not enough to prevent identification of the 1s and 0s. In a digital system, a more precise representation of a signal can be obtained by using more binary digits to represent it. While this requires more digital circuits to process the signals, each digit is handled by the same kind of hardware, resulting in an easily scalable system. In an analog system, additional resolution requires fundamental improvements in the linearity and noise characteristics of each step of the signal chain. With computer-controlled digital systems, new functions can be added through software revision and no hardware changes are needed. Often this can be done outside of the factory by updating the product's software. This way, the product's design errors can be corrected even after the product is in a customer's hands. Information storage can be easier in digital systems than in analog ones. The noise immunity of digital systems permits data to be stored and retrieved without degradation. In an analog system, noise from aging and wear degrades the information stored. In a digital system, as long as the total noise is below a certain level, the information can be recovered perfectly. Even when more significant noise is present, the use of redundancy permits the recovery of the original data, provided that too many errors do not occur. In some cases, digital circuits use more energy than analog circuits to accomplish the same tasks, thus producing more heat, which increases the complexity of the circuits, such as the inclusion of heat sinks. In portable or battery-powered systems, this can limit the use of digital systems. For example, battery-powered cellular phones often use a low-power analog front-end to amplify and tune the radio signals from the base station. However, a base station has grid power and can use power-hungry, but very flexible software radios. Such base stations can easily be reprogrammed to process the signals used in new cellular standards. Many useful digital systems must translate from continuous analog signals to discrete digital signals. This causes quantization errors. Quantization error can be reduced if the system stores enough digital data to represent the signal to the desired degree of fidelity. The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem provides an important guideline as to how much digital data is needed to accurately portray a given analog signal. If a single piece of digital data is lost or misinterpreted, in some systems only a small error may result, while in other systems the meaning of large blocks of related data can completely change. For example, a single-bit error in audio data stored directly as linear pulse-code modulation causes, at worst, a single audible click. But when using audio compression to save storage space and transmission time, a single bit error may cause a much larger disruption. Because of the cliff effect, it can be difficult for users to tell if a particular system is right on the edge of failure, or if it can tolerate much more noise before failing. Digital fragility can be reduced by designing a digital system for robustness. For example, a parity bit or other error management method can be inserted into the signal path. These schemes help the system detect errors, and then either correct the errors, or request retransmission of the data. Construction A digital circuit is typically constructed from small electronic circuits called logic gates that can be used to create combinational logic and sequential logic. Each logic gate is designed to perform a function of Boolean logic when acting on logic signals. A logic gate is generally created from one or more electrically controlled switches, usually transistors, but thermionic valves have seen historic use. The output of a logic gate can, in turn, control or feed into more logic gates. Another form of digital circuit is constructed from lookup tables (many sold as "programmable logic devices", though other kinds of PLDs exist). Lookup tables can perform the same functions as machines based on logic gates, but can be easily reprogrammed without changing the wiring. This means that a designer can often repair design errors without changing the arrangement of wires. Therefore, in small-volume products, programmable logic devices are often the preferred solution. They are usually designed by engineers using electronic design automation software. Integrated circuits consist of multiple transistors on one silicon chip and are the least expensive way to make a large number of interconnected logic gates. Integrated circuits are usually interconnected on a printed circuit board, which is a board that holds electrical components and connects them together with copper traces. Design Engineers use many methods to minimize logic redundancy in order to reduce the circuit complexity. Reduced complexity reduces component count and potential errors and therefore typically reduces cost. Logic redundancy can be removed by several well-known techniques, such as binary decision diagrams, Boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, the Quine–McCluskey algorithm, and the heuristic computer method. These operations are typically performed within a computer-aided design system. Embedded systems with microcontrollers and programmable logic controllers are often used to implement digital logic for complex systems that do not require optimal performance. These systems are usually programmed by software engineers or by electricians, using ladder logic. A digital circuit's input-output relationship can be represented as a truth table. An equivalent high-level circuit uses logic gates, each represented by a different shape (standardized by IEEE/ANSI 91–1984). A low-level representation uses an equivalent circuit of electronic switches (usually transistors). Most digital systems are divided into combinational and sequential systems. The output of a combinational system depends only on the present inputs. However, a sequential system has some of its outputs fed back as inputs, so its output may depend on past inputs in addition to present inputs, to produce a sequence of operations. Simplified representations of their behavior called state machines facilitate design and testing. Sequential systems divide into two further subcategories. "Synchronous" sequential systems change state all at once when a clock signal changes state. "Asynchronous" sequential systems propagate changes whenever inputs change. Synchronous sequential systems are made using flip flops that store inputted voltages as a bit only when the clock changes. The usual way to implement a synchronous sequential state machine is to divide it into a piece of combinational logic and a set of flip flops called a state register. The state register represents the state as a binary number. The combinational logic produces the binary representation for the next state. On each clock cycle, the state register captures the feedback generated from the previous state of the combinational logic and feeds it back as an unchanging input to the combinational part of the state machine. The clock rate is limited by the most time-consuming logic calculation in the combinational unit logic. Most digital logic is synchronous because it is easier to create and verify a synchronous design. However, asynchronous logic has the advantage of its speed not being constrained by an arbitrary clock; instead, it runs at the maximum speed of its logic gates.[a] Nevertheless, most systems need to accept external unsynchronized signals into their synchronous logic circuits. This interface is inherently asynchronous and must be analyzed as such. Examples of widely used asynchronous circuits include synchronizer flip-flops, switch debouncers and arbiters. Asynchronous logic components can be hard to design because all possible states, in all possible timings, must be considered. The usual method is to construct a table of the minimum and maximum time that each such state can exist and then adjust the circuit to minimize the number of such states. The designer must force the circuit to periodically wait for all of its parts to enter a compatible state (this is called "self-resynchronization"). Without careful design, it is easy to accidentally produce asynchronous logic that is unstable—that is—real electronics will have unpredictable results because of the cumulative delays caused by small variations in the values of the electronic components. Many digital systems are data flow machines. These are usually designed using synchronous register transfer logic and written with hardware description languages such as VHDL or Verilog. In register transfer logic, binary numbers are stored in groups of flip flops called registers. A sequential state machine controls when each register accepts new data from its input. The outputs of each register are a bundle of wires called a bus that carries that number to other calculations. A calculation is simply a piece of combinational logic. Each calculation also has an output bus, and these may be connected to the inputs of several registers. Sometimes a register will have a multiplexer on its input so that it can store a number from any one of several buses.[b] Asynchronous register-transfer systems (such as computers) have a general solution. In the 1980s, some researchers discovered that almost all synchronous register-transfer machines could be converted to asynchronous designs by using first-in-first-out synchronization logic. In this scheme, the digital machine is characterized as a set of data flows. In each step of the flow, a synchronization circuit determines when the outputs of that step are valid and instructs the next stage when to use these outputs.[citation needed] The most general-purpose register-transfer logic machine is a computer. This is basically an automatic binary abacus. The control unit of a computer is usually designed as a microprogram run by a microsequencer. A microprogram is much like a player-piano roll. Each table entry of the microprogram commands the state of every bit that controls the computer. The sequencer then counts, and the count addresses the memory or combinational logic machine that contains the microprogram. The bits from the microprogram control the arithmetic logic unit, memory and other parts of the computer, including the microsequencer itself. In this way, the complex task of designing the controls of a computer is reduced to the simpler task of programming a collection of much simpler logic machines. Almost all computers are synchronous. However, asynchronous computers have also been built. One example is the ASPIDA DLX core. Another was offered by ARM Holdings. They do not, however, have any speed advantages because modern computer designs already run at the speed of their slowest component, usually memory. They do use somewhat less power because a clock distribution network is not needed. An unexpected advantage is that asynchronous computers do not produce spectrally pure radio noise. They are used in some radio-sensitive mobile-phone base-station controllers. They may be more secure in cryptographic applications because their electrical and radio emissions can be more difficult to decode. Computer architecture is a specialized engineering activity that tries to arrange the registers, calculation logic, buses and other parts of the computer in the best way possible for a specific purpose. Computer architects have put a lot of work into reducing the cost and increasing the speed of computers in addition to boosting their immunity to programming errors. An increasingly common goal of computer architects is to reduce the power used in battery-powered computer systems, such as smartphones. Digital circuits are made from analog components. The design must ensure that the analog nature of the components does not dominate the desired digital behavior. Digital systems must manage noise and timing margins, parasitic inductances and capacitances. Bad designs have intermittent problems such as glitches, vanishingly fast pulses that may trigger some logic but not others, runt pulses that do not reach valid threshold voltages. Additionally, where clocked digital systems interface to analog systems or systems that are driven from a different clock, the digital system can be subject to metastability where a change to the input violates the setup time for a digital input latch. Since digital circuits are made from analog components, digital circuits calculate more slowly than low-precision analog circuits that use a similar amount of space and power. However, the digital circuit will calculate more repeatably, because of its high noise immunity. Much of the effort of designing large logic machines has been automated through the application of electronic design automation (EDA). Simple truth table-style descriptions of logic are often optimized with EDA that automatically produces reduced systems of logic gates or smaller lookup tables that still produce the desired outputs. The most common example of this kind of software is the Espresso heuristic logic minimizer. Optimizing large logic systems may be done using the Quine–McCluskey algorithm or binary decision diagrams. There are promising experiments with genetic algorithms and annealing optimizations. To automate costly engineering processes, some EDA can take state tables that describe state machines and automatically produce a truth table or a function table for the combinational logic of a state machine. The state table is a piece of text that lists each state, together with the conditions controlling the transitions between them and their associated output signals. Often, real logic systems are designed as a series of sub-projects, which are combined using a tool flow. The tool flow is usually controlled with the help of a scripting language, a simplified computer language that can invoke the software design tools in the right order. Tool flows for large logic systems such as microprocessors can be thousands of commands long, and combine the work of hundreds of engineers. Writing and debugging tool flows is an established engineering specialty in companies that produce digital designs. The tool flow usually terminates in a detailed computer file or set of files that describe how to physically construct the logic. Often it consists of instructions on how to draw the transistors and wires on an integrated circuit or a printed circuit board. Parts of tool flows are debugged by verifying the outputs of simulated logic against expected inputs. The test tools take computer files with sets of inputs and outputs and highlight discrepancies between the simulated behavior and the expected behavior. Once the input data is believed to be correct, the design itself must still be verified for correctness. Some tool flows verify designs by first producing a design, then scanning the design to produce compatible input data for the tool flow. If the scanned data matches the input data, then the tool flow has probably not introduced errors. The functional verification data are usually called test vectors. The functional test vectors may be preserved and used in the factory to test whether newly constructed logic works correctly. However, functional test patterns do not discover all fabrication faults. Production tests are often designed by automatic test pattern generation software tools. These generate test vectors by examining the structure of the logic and systematically generating tests targeting particular potential faults. This way the fault coverage can closely approach 100%, provided the design is properly made testable (see next section). Once a design exists, and is verified and testable, it often needs to be processed to be manufacturable as well. Modern integrated circuits have features smaller than the wavelength of the light used to expose the photoresist. Software that is designed for manufacturability add interference patterns to the exposure masks to eliminate open-circuits and enhance the masks' contrast. There are several reasons for testing a logic circuit. When the circuit is first developed, it is necessary to verify that the design circuit meets the required functional and timing specifications. When multiple copies of a correctly designed circuit are being manufactured, it is essential to test each copy to ensure that the manufacturing process has not introduced any flaws. A large logic machine (say, with more than a hundred logical variables) can have an astronomical number of possible states. Obviously, factory testing every state of such a machine is unfeasible, for even if testing each state only took a microsecond, there are more possible states than there are microseconds since the universe began! Large logic machines are almost always designed as assemblies of smaller logic machines. To save time, the smaller sub-machines are isolated by permanently installed design for test circuitry and are tested independently. One common testing scheme provides a test mode that forces some part of the logic machine to enter a test cycle. The test cycle usually exercises large independent parts of the machine. Boundary scan is a common test scheme that uses serial communication with external test equipment through one or more shift registers known as scan chains. Serial scans have only one or two wires to carry the data, and minimize the physical size and expense of the infrequently used test logic. After all the test data bits are in place, the design is reconfigured to be in normal mode and one or more clock pulses are applied to test for faults (e.g., stuck-at low or stuck-at high) and capture the test result into flip-flops or latches in the scan shift register(s). Finally, the result of the test is shifted out to the block boundary and compared against the predicted good machine result. In a board-test environment, serial-to-parallel testing has been formalized as the JTAG standard. Since a digital system may use many logic gates, the overall cost of building a computer correlates strongly with the cost of a logic gate. In the 1930s, the earliest digital logic systems were constructed from telephone relays because these were inexpensive and relatively reliable. The earliest integrated circuits were constructed to save weight and permit the Apollo Guidance Computer to control an inertial guidance system for a spacecraft. The first integrated circuit logic gates cost nearly US$50, which in 2025 would be equivalent to $544. Mass-produced gates on integrated circuits became the least-expensive method to construct digital logic. With the rise of integrated circuits, reducing the absolute number of chips used represented another way to save costs. The goal of a designer is not just to make the simplest circuit, but to keep the component count down. Sometimes this results in more complicated designs with respect to the underlying digital logic but nevertheless reduces the number of components, board size, and even power consumption. Another major motive for reducing component count on printed circuit boards is to reduce the manufacturing defect rate due to failed soldered connections and increase reliability. Defect and failure rates tend to increase along with the total number of component pins. The failure of a single logic gate may cause a digital machine to fail. Where additional reliability is required, redundant logic can be provided. Redundancy adds cost and power consumption over a non-redundant system. The reliability of a logic gate can be described by its mean time between failure (MTBF). Digital machines first became useful when the MTBF for a switch increased above a few hundred hours. Even so, many of these machines had complex, well-rehearsed repair procedures, and would be nonfunctional for hours because a tube burned out, or a moth got stuck in a relay. Modern transistorized integrated circuit logic gates have MTBFs greater than 82 billion hours (8.2×1010 h). This level of reliability is required because integrated circuits have so many logic gates. Fan-out describes how many logic inputs can be controlled by a single logic output without exceeding the electrical current ratings of the gate outputs. The minimum practical fan-out is about five.[citation needed] Modern electronic logic gates using CMOS transistors for switches have higher fan-outs. The switching speed describes how long it takes a logic output to change from true to false or vice versa. Faster logic can accomplish more operations in less time. Modern electronic digital logic routinely switches at 5 GHz, and some laboratory systems switch at more than 1 THz.[citation needed]. Logic families Digital design started with relay logic, which is slow. Occasionall,y a mechanical failure would occur. Fan-outs were typically about 10, limited by the resistance of the coils and arcing on the contacts from high voltages. Later, vacuum tubes were used. These were very fast, but generated heat, and were unreliable because the filaments would burn out. Fan-outs were typically 5 to 7, limited by the heating from the tubes' current. In the 1950s, special computer tubes were developed with filaments that omitted volatile elements like silicon. These ran for hundreds of thousands of hours. The first semiconductor logic family was resistor–transistor logic. This was a thousand times more reliable than tubes, ran cooler, and used less power, but had a very low fan-out of 3. Diode–transistor logic improved the fan-out up to about 7, and reduced the power. Some DTL designs used two power supplies with alternating layers of NPN and PNP transistors to increase the fan-out. Transistor–transistor logic (TTL) was a great improvement over these. In early devices, fan-out improved to 10, and later variations reliably achieved 20. TTL was also fast, with some variations achieving switching times as low as 20 ns. TTL is still used in some designs. Emitter coupled logic is very fast but uses a lot of power. It was extensively used for high-performance computers, such as the Illiac IV, made up of many medium-scale components. By far, the most common digital integrated circuits built today use CMOS logic, which is fast, offers high circuit density and low power per gate. This is used even in large, fast computers, such as the IBM System z. Recent developments In 2009, researchers discovered that memristors can implement a Boolean state storage and provides a complete logic family with very small amounts of space and power, using familiar CMOS semiconductor processes. The discovery of superconductivity has enabled the development of rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) circuit technology, which uses Josephson junctions instead of transistors. Most recently, attempts are being made to construct purely optical computing systems capable of processing digital information using nonlinear optical elements. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural] | [TOKENS: 6304] |
Contents Supernatural Supernatural phenomena or entities are those beyond the laws of the nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- 'above, beyond, outside of' + natura 'nature'. Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world. The supernatural is featured in religious and folkloric contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as spirits, angels, demons, gods, and goddesses. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including magic, telekinesis, levitation, precognition and extrasensory perception. The supernatural is hypernymic to religion. Religions are standardized supernaturalist worldviews, or at least more complete than single supernaturalist views. Supernaturalism is the adherence to the supernatural (beliefs, and not violations of causality and the physical laws). Etymology and history of the concept Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, antecedents of the modern English compound supernatural enter the language from two sources: via Middle French (supernaturel) and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin (supernaturalis). Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis (see nature). The earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue (orcherd of Syon, around 1425; Þei haue not þanne þe supernaturel lyȝt ne þe liȝt of kunnynge, bycause þei vndirstoden it not). The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. Originally the term referred exclusively to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean "belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal" or "more than what is natural or ordinary; unnaturally or extraordinarily great; abnormal, extraordinary". Obsolete uses include "of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics". As a noun, the term can mean "a supernatural being", with a particularly strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ancient world had no word that resembled "supernatural". Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD influenced the development of the concept of the supernatural, which later evolved through Christian theology. The term nature had existed since antiquity, with Latin authors like Augustine using the word and its cognates at least 600 times in City of God. In the medieval period, "nature" had ten different meanings and "natural" had eleven different meanings. Peter Lombard, a medieval scholastic of the 12th century, explored causes beyond nature, questioning how certain phenomena could be attributed solely to God. In his writings, he used the term praeter naturam to describe these occurrences. In the scholastic period, Thomas Aquinas classified miracles into three categories: "above nature", "beyond nature" and "against nature". In doing so, he sharpened the distinction between nature and miracles more than the early Church Fathers had done. As a result, he had created a dichotomy of sorts of the natural and supernatural. Though the phrase "supra naturam" was used since the 4th century AD, it was in the 1200s that Thomas Aquinas used the term "supernaturalis". Despite this, the term had to wait until the end of the medieval period before it became more popularly used. The discussions on "nature" from the scholastic period were diverse and unsettled with some postulating that even miracles are natural and that natural magic was a natural part of the world. Epistemology and metaphysics The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism. For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of.And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural. — Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature Nomological possibility is possibility under the actual laws of nature. Most philosophers since David Hume have held that the laws of nature are metaphysically contingent—that there could have been different natural laws than the ones that actually obtain. If so, then it would not be logically or metaphysically impossible, for example, for you to travel to Alpha Centauri in one day; it would just have to be the case that you could travel faster than the speed of light. But of course there is an important sense in which this is not nomologically possible; given that the laws of nature are what they are. In the philosophy of natural science, impossibility assertions come to be widely accepted as overwhelmingly probable rather than considered proved to the point of being unchallengeable. The basis for this strong acceptance is a combination of extensive evidence of something not occurring, combined with an underlying scientific theory, very successful in making predictions, whose assumptions lead logically to the conclusion that something is impossible. While an impossibility assertion in natural science can never be absolutely proved, it could be refuted by the observation of a single counterexample. Such a counterexample would require that the assumptions underlying the theory that implied the impossibility be re-examined. Some philosophers, such as Sydney Shoemaker, have argued that the laws of nature are in fact necessary, not contingent; if so, then nomological possibility is equivalent to metaphysical possibility. The term supernatural is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural—the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable. Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" (1948: 311) and "which are non-physical in nature" (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory perception (ESP), an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sensory means" (1962:309) or inferred from sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), "the direct influence exerted on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy or instrumentation" (1945:305). — Michael Winkelman, Current Anthropology Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as: Cross cultural studies Anthropological studies across cultures indicate that people do not hold or use natural and supernatural explanations in a mutually exclusive or dichotomous fashion. Instead, the reconciliation of natural and supernatural explanations is normal and pervasive across cultures. Cross cultural studies indicate that there is coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in both adults and children for explaining numerous things about the world, such as illness, death, and origins. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations. The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in individuals may be the outcomes two distinct cognitive domains: one concerned with the physical-mechanical relations and another with social relations. Studies on indigenous groups have allowed for insights on how such coexistence of explanations may function. Supernatural concepts A deity (/ˈdiːəti/ ⓘ or /ˈdeɪ.əti/ ⓘ) is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion)", or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life." A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess. Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and are reborn just like any other being.: 35–37 : 357–358 Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God. A deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or eternal, The monotheistic God, however, does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms,: 96 while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous and gender neutral. Historically, many ancient cultures – such as Ancient India, Ancient Iraq, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Nordic and Asian culture – personified natural phenomena, variously as either their conscious causes or simply their effects, respectively. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living being's body, as sensory organs and mind. Deities have also been envisioned as a form of existence (Saṃsāra) after rebirth, for human beings who gain merit through an ethical life, where they become guardian deities and live blissfully in heaven, but are also subject to death when their merit runs out.: 35–38 : 356–359 An angel is generally a supernatural being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings and carrying out God's tasks. Within Abrahamic religions, angels are often organized into hierarchies, although such rankings may vary between sects in each religion, and are given specific names or titles, such as Gabriel or "Destroying angel". The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spirits or figures found in other religious traditions. The theological study of angels is known as "angelology". In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty; they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings, halos and light. Prophecy involves a process in which messages are communicated by a god to a prophet. Such messages typically involve inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of divine will concerning the prophet's social world and events to come (compare divine knowledge). Prophecy is not limited to any one culture. It is a common property to all known ancient societies around the world, some more than others. Many systems and rules about prophecy have been proposed over several millennia. In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai. Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God. Muslims believe the Quran was revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel (Jibril). In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apauruṣeya, "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is heard". Aleister Crowley stated that The Book of the Law had been revealed to him through a higher being that called itself Aiwass. A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient. In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will and his divine providence to the world of human beings. In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures, and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy and Eckankar and as an esoteric belief in many streams of Orthodox Judaism. It is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia and South America. Although the majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Cathars, Alawites, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions, have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teaches reincarnation. In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation, and many contemporary works mention it. Karma (/ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, romanized: karma, IPA: [ˈkɐɽmɐ] ⓘ; Pali: kamma) means action, work or deed; it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and future suffering. With origins in ancient India's Vedic civilization, the philosophy of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) as well as Taoism. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives – one's saṃsāra. In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent, defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny." The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as "the sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere powers and capacities of human nature." Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000). It is not possible, in process metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a "supernatural" intervention into the "natural" order of events. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if "the natural" is defined more neutrally as "what is in the nature of things", then process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, "It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity" (Whitehead 1978, 21). It is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and thereby highlight that the processed God cannot do in comparison what the traditional God could do (that is, to bring something from nothing). In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be part creators of the world with God). — Donald Viney, "Process Theism" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive. Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come. Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld. The underworld is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld. A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors". A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a demon, ghost, fairy, jinn or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit. Spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. Historically, it was also used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. A demon (from Koine Greek δαιμόνιον daimónion) is a supernatural and often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore. In Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity, below the heavenly planes which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled. Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces.: 6–7 : 24 Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious and medicinal role in many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is. Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within scholarship since the 1990s.[citation needed] The term magic comes from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BC. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the first century AD, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion. This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former largely influencing early academic usages of the word. Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who practiced magic and referred to themselves as magicians. This trend has proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of magicians appearing within the esoteric milieu.[not verified in body] British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will. Divination (from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god", related to divinus, divine) is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency. Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion. Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. In the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet", trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure and successions to estates". Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally and thus can be difficult to define with precision, and cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view. A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader. Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles. A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God. Skepticism Skepticism (American English) or scepticism (British English; see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief. It is often directed at domains such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism), religion (skepticism about the existence of God), or knowledge (skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, or of certainty). In fiction and popular culture Supernatural entities and powers are common in various works of fantasy. Examples include the television shows Supernatural and The X-Files, the magic of the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings series, The Wheel of Time series and A Song of Ice and Fire series. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaza_language] | [TOKENS: 1045] |
Contents Abaza language Abaza (абаза бызшва, abaza byzshwa; Adyghe: абазэбзэ) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by Abazins in Russia. The language has gone through several different orthographies based primarily on Latin and Cyrillic letters. Its consonant-to-vowel ratio is remarkably high; making it quite similar to many other languages from the same parent chain. The language evolved in popularity[clarification needed] in the mid to late 1800s, but has become an endangered language. Abaza is spoken by approximately 35,000 people in Russia, where it is written in a Cyrillic alphabet, as well as another 10,000 in Turkey, where the Latin script is used. It consists of two dialects, the Ashkherewa dialect and the T'ap'anta dialect, which is the literary standard. The language also consists of five subdialects known as Psyzh-Krasnovostok, Abazakt, Apsua, Kubin-Elburgan and Kuvin. Abaza, like its relatives in the family of Northwest Caucasian languages, is a highly agglutinative language. For example, the verb in the English sentence "He couldn't make them give it back to her" contains four arguments (a term used in valency grammar): he, them, it, to her. Abaza marks arguments morphologically, and incorporates all four arguments as pronominal prefixes on the verb. It has a large consonantal inventory (63 phonemes) coupled with a minimal vowel inventory (two vowels). It is very closely related to Abkhaz, but it preserves a few phonemes which Abkhaz lacks, such as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Work on Abaza has been carried out by W. S. Allen, Brian O'Herin, and John Colarusso. History Different forms of cultural assimilation contributed to its fall in use in areas of Russia, and over time its overall endangerment. The language can be broken into five different dialects and has several unique grammatical approaches to languages. The Abaza language was at its peak usage in the mid to late 19th century. Abaza speakers along the Greater and Lesser Laba, Urup, and Greater and Lesser Zelenchuk rivers are from a wave of migrants in the 17th to 18th centuries who represent the Abaza speakers of today. The end of the Great Caucasian War in 1864 provided Russia with power and control of the local regions and contributed to the decrease in the popularity of pre-existing local languages prior to the war. The Abaza language was not a written language until the Latin alphabet was adopted in 1932–1933 to write it. The Cyrillic script was later utilized to write the language in 1938. A small amount of books, pamphlets, and a newspaper were published in the Abaza language afterwards. Geographic distribution The Abaza language is spoken in Russia and Turkey. Although it is endangered, it is still spoken in several regions in Russia. These include Kara-Pago, Kubina, Psyzh, El'burgan, Inzhich-Chukun, Koi-dan, Abaza-Khabl', Malo-Abazinka, Tapanta, Krasnovostochni, Novokuvinski, Starokuvinski, Abazakt and Ap-sua. Phonology The vowels [o, a, u] may have a /j/ in front of it. The vowels [e] and [i] are allophones of /a/ and /ə/ (respectively) before palatalized consonants, while the vowels [o] and [u] are allophones of /a/ and /ə/ (respectively) before labialized consonants. The vowels [e], [o], [i], and [u] can also occur as variants of the sequences /aj/, /aw/, /əj/ and /əw/. Orthography Around the late 19th to early 20th centuries, there were attempts to write Abaza with the Arabic script, but none of these attempts took hold. In 1932, the first widely used Abaza alphabet was created using the Latin script. It was used until 1938. Since 1938, Abaza has been written with the version of the Cyrillic alphabet shown below. /w/, [u] The digraphs Лӏ and Фӏ are dialectal, and are therefore absent from the literary language and the official alphabet. Media Sultan Laguchev [ru], a singer-songwriter famous[citation needed] in Russia, writes and performs songs in the Abaza language, including "Абыгъь гӏважьква" and "БаъапI бара." He has written an additional song in Russian entitled "Мы абазины" ('We are Abazins') about Abazinia. References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner] | [TOKENS: 7553] |
Contents The Star-Spangled Banner "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written by American lawyer Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814, after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort after the battle. The poem was set to the music of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen's club in London. Smith's song, "The Anacreontic Song", with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. This setting, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", soon became a popular patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very difficult to sing, in part because the melody sung today is the soprano part. Although the poem has four stanzas, typically only the first is performed with the other three being rarely sung. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was first recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889. On March 3, 1931, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution (46 Stat. 1508) making the song the official national anthem of the United States, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law. The resolution is now codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301(a). History On August 28, 1814, William Beanes, a physician who resided in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, was arrested by British forces in his home after the Burning of Washington and the Raid on Alexandria. A friend of Key's, Beanes was accused of aiding the detention of several British Army stragglers who were ransacking local homesteads in search of food. On September 2, 1814, Key wrote a letter from his home in Georgetown to his mother, ending with: I am going in the morning to Baltimore to proceed in a flag-vessel to Genl Ross. Old Dr Beanes of Marlbro' is taken prisoner by the Enemy, who threaten to carry him off – Some of his friends have urged me to apply for a flag & go & try to procure his release. I hope to return in about 8 or 10 days, though [it] is uncertain, as I do not know where to find the fleet. – As soon as I get back I hope I shall be able to set out for Fred[ericksburg] – ... Under sanction from President Madison, on September 3, Key traveled 40 miles (64 km) by land from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, where he arrived on the morning of September 4. He located Col. John Stuart Skinner, an American agent for prisoners of war, who leased a 60-foot (18.3 m) sloop-rigged packet ship belonging to John and Benjamin Ferguson, brothers who owned a cargo and passenger service between Baltimore and Norfolk. The ship had a nine-man crew and was captained by a co-owner, John Ferguson. They sailed from Baltimore the next day (September 5) out through the Patapsco River and then south, down the Chesapeake Bay. As recorded in the British ships' logs, on September 6, they had rendezvoused with HMS Royal Oak and several British troopships near the mouth of the Patuxant. There they learned Beanes was aboard HMS Tonnant further down in the bay. Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm assigned the frigate Hebrus to escort the American sloop to Tangier Island, where he thought Tonnant was located. On September 7, around noon, they spotted Tonnant near the mouth of the Potomac. The flagship then anchored and brought Key and Skinner aboard. It was aboard Tonnant, after dinner, that Skinner and Key secured the release of Beanes after conversing with Major-General Robert Ross and Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane. Ross initially refused to release Beanes, but relented after reading letters, brought by Key, written by wounded British prisoners of war praising American doctors for their kind treatment. Because Key and Skinner had overheard details of the plans for the attack on Baltimore, they were prevented from going ashore until after the battle, several days later. From Tonnant, Key, Skinner, and Beanes were transferred to the frigate HMS Surprise on the morning of September 8. The fleet then slowly moved up the Chesapeake toward Baltimore. The truce vessel was in tow with Surprise. On September 11, off the North Point peninsula, Colonel Skinner insisted that they be transferred back to their own truce vessel, which they were allowed to do, under guard. It was still tethered to Surprise. Admiral Cochrane then transferred his flag to the shallow-draft Surprise so he could move in with the bombardment squadron. Having advanced into the Patapsco River, the 16-ship attack force began to fire on Fort McHenry at sunrise on September 13; the bombardment would last 25 hours. During the rainy day and through the night, Key had witnessed the bombardment and observed that the fort's smaller "storm flag" (17 by 25 feet (5.2 by 7.6 m)) continued to fly, but once the bomb and Congreve rocket barrage had stopped, he would not know how the battle had turned out until dawn. On the morning of September 14, the storm flag had been lowered and the large garrison flag (30 by 42 feet (9.1 by 12.8 m)) had been raised. During the bombardment, HMS Erebus provided the "rockets' red glare", while the heavy-mortar bomb ships HMS Terror, Volcano, Devastation, Meteor and Aetna provided the "bombs bursting in air". Around 1,500 to 1,800 bomb shells and over 700 rockets were fired at the fort but with minimal casualties and damage being done. Four men died and 24 were wounded in the fort. The ships were forced to fire from their maximum range (with minimal accuracy) to stay out of range of the fort's formidable cannon fire. Key was inspired by the U.S. victory and the sight of the large U.S. flag flying triumphantly above the fort. This flag (as well as the storm flag), with 15 stars and 15 stripes, had been made by Mary Young Pickersgill together with other workers in her home on Baltimore's Pratt Street. The flag later came to be known as the Star-Spangled Banner, and is today on display in the National Museum of American History, a treasure of the Smithsonian Institution. It was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program. Aboard the ship that morning, Key began writing his lyrics on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. Late afternoon on September 16, Key, Skinner and Beanes were released from the fleet and they arrived in Baltimore that evening. He completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying. His finished manuscript was untitled and unsigned. When printed as a broadside, the next day, it was given the title "Defence of Fort M'Henry". It was first published nationally in The Analectic Magazine. Much of the idea of the poem, including the flag imagery and some of the wording, is derived from an earlier song by Key, also set to the tune of "The Anacreontic Song". The song, known as "When the Warrior Returns", was written in honor of Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart on their return from the First Barbary War. Since the 1990s, the anthem has become controversial due to perceived racism in the anthem's lyrics and Key's active support of slavery. The anthem's third stanza uses the phrase "the hireling and slave", which had been interpreted by several commentators to refer to American slaves who escaped to the British military during the war, as Britain offered them freedom and the opportunity to join the Corps of Colonial Marines to fight against U.S. forces. Key was also a slaveholder throughout much of his life. According to The Nation, Key's "message to the blacks fighting for freedom was unmistakable—we will hunt you down and the search will leave you in terror because, when we find you, your next stop is the gloom of the grave". The reference to slaves, which was perceived as being racist towards Black Americans, purportedly prevented the song being adopted as the U.S. national anthem for almost a century. Conversely, University of Michigan professor Mark Clague and Key's biographer has claimed that the poem celebrates the courage of the American soldiers, both black and white, who helped defend the fortress and the city. The controversial phrase, "the hireling and the slave", according to Clague, actually refers to British armed forces personnel and their American collaborators regardless of race, who are promised either death on the battlefield or, similarly to United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution, permanent exile once the British Empire is defeated. This interpretation is consistent with what Celticist Michael Newton has written about how, during the American Revolution, "slavery" and "oppression" were routinely used as Patriot code words for continued "British rule" over the United States. Also according to Clague, Francis Scott Key freed four of the seven slaves he inherited and was involved in his later years with the American Colonization Society's practice of buying slaves and setting them free in what is now Liberia. Key's poem, according to Clague, "in no way glorifies or celebrates slavery." However, Clague's interpretation of the song has been criticised for going against mainstream academic historical consensus, as the majority of recent scholars who have written about slavery during the War of 1812, such as Gene A. Smith, Marc Leepson and David Roediger have alleged that Key was referencing only American runaway slaves rather than late stage American Loyalists in the passage. In 2016, The New Yorker argued that "[is] 'The Star-Spangled Banner' racist? The short answer is yes, insofar as almost every older piece of American iconography cannot be rid of the stain of slavery." Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law Joseph H. Nicholson who saw that the words fit the popular melody "The Anacreontic Song", by English composer John Stafford Smith. This was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore, who anonymously made the first known broadside printing on September 17; of these, two known copies survive. On September 20, both the Baltimore Patriot and The American printed the song, with the note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven". The song quickly became popular; it was ultimately printed in 17 newspapers from Georgia to New Hampshire. Soon after, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store in Baltimore published the words and music together under the title "The Star Spangled Banner", although it was originally called "Defence of Fort M'Henry". Thomas Carr's arrangement introduced the raised fourth which became the standard deviation from "The Anacreontic Song". The song's popularity increased and its first public performance took place in October when Baltimore actor Ferdinand Durang sang it at Captain McCauley's tavern. Washington Irving, then editor of the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia, reprinted the song in November 1814.[citation needed] By the early 20th century, there were various versions of the song in popular use. Seeking a singular, standard version, President Woodrow Wilson tasked the U.S. Bureau of Education with providing that official version. In response, the Bureau enlisted the help of five musicians to agree upon an arrangement. Those musicians were Walter Damrosch, Will Earhart, Arnold J. Gantvoort, Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa. The standardized version that was voted upon by these five musicians premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 5, 1917, in a program that included Edward Elgar's Carillon and Gabriel Pierné's The Children's Crusade. The concert was put on by the Oratorio Society of New York and conducted by Walter Damrosch. An official handwritten version of the final votes of these five men has been found and shows all five men's votes tallied, measure by measure. The song gained popularity throughout the 19th century, and bands played it during public events such as Independence Day celebrations. A plaque displayed at Fort Meade, South Dakota, claims that the idea of making "The Star Spangled Banner" the national anthem began on their parade ground in 1892. Colonel Caleb Carlton, post commander, established the tradition that the song be played "at retreat and at the close of parades and concerts." Carlton explained the custom to Governor Sheldon of South Dakota who "promised me that he would try to have the custom established among the state militia." Carlton wrote that after a similar discussion, Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont issued an order that it "be played at every Army post every evening at retreat." In 1889, the U.S. Navy officially adopted "The Star-Spangled Banner". In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that "The Star-Spangled Banner" be played at military and other appropriate occasions. The playing of the song two years later during the seventh-inning stretch of Game One of the 1918 World Series, and thereafter during each game of the series is often cited as the first instance that the anthem was played at a baseball game, though evidence shows that the "Star-Spangled Banner" was performed as early as 1897 at Opening Day ceremonies in Philadelphia and then more regularly at the Polo Grounds in New York City beginning in 1898. The tradition of performing the national anthem before every baseball game began in World War II. Between 1918 and 1929, John Charles Linthicum, the U.S. congressman from Maryland at the time, introduced a series of six unsuccessful bills to officially recognize "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. In 1927, with the thought that "The Star-Spangled Banner" was unsuited for a national anthem, the National Federation of Music Clubs sponsored a composition contest to nominate a national anthem. They selected the text of America The Beautiful; 901 compositions were submitted for the $1,500 prize (equivalent to $27,802 in 2025). Frank Damrosch, Frederick Converse, Felix Borowski, and Peter Lutkin judged the compositions but nominated no winner. On November 3, 1929, Robert Ripley drew a panel in his syndicated cartoon, Ripley's Believe it or Not!, saying "Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem". In 1930, Veterans of Foreign Wars started a petition for the United States to officially recognize "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. Five million people signed the petition. The petition was presented to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary on January 31, 1930. On the same day, Elsie Jorss-Reilley and Grace Evelyn Boudlin sang the song to the committee to refute the perception that it was too high pitched for a typical person to sing. The committee voted in favor of sending the bill to the House floor for a vote. The House of Representatives passed the bill later that year. The Senate passed the bill on March 3, 1931. President Herbert Hoover signed the bill on March 4, 1931, officially adopting "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem of the United States of America. As currently codified, the United States Code states that "[t]he composition consisting of the words and music known as the Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem." Although all four stanzas of the poem officially compose the National Anthem, only the first stanza is generally sung, the other three being much less well known. Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of U.S. officialdom. "Hail, Columbia" served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", whose melody is identical to "God Save the King", the United Kingdom's national anthem, also served as a de facto national anthem. Following the War of 1812 and subsequent U.S. wars, other songs emerged to compete for popularity at public events, among them "America the Beautiful", which itself was being considered before 1931 as a candidate to become the national anthem of the United States. In the fourth verse, Key's 1814 published version of the poem is written as, "And this be our motto-"In God is our trust!"" In 1956 when 'In God We Trust' was under consideration to be adopted as the national motto of the United States by the US Congress, the words of the fourth verse of The Star Spangled Banner were brought up in arguments supporting adoption of the motto. Modern history The song is notoriously difficult for nonprofessionals to sing because of its wide range – a twelfth. Humorist Richard Armour referred to the song's difficulty in his book It All Started With Columbus: In an attempt to take Baltimore, the British attacked Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor. Bombs were soon bursting in air, rockets were glaring, and all in all it was a moment of great historical interest. During the bombardment, a young lawyer named Francis Off Key [sic] wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner", and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror. Professional and amateur singers have been known to forget the words, which is one reason the song is sometimes pre-recorded and lip-synced. Pop singer Christina Aguilera performed wrong lyrics to the song prior to Super Bowl XLV, replacing the song's fourth line, "o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming", with an alteration of the second line, "what so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming". Other times the issue is avoided by having the performer(s) play the anthem instrumentally instead of singing it. The pre-recording of the anthem has become standard practice at some ballparks, such as Boston's Fenway Park, according to the SABR publication The Fenway Project. "The Star-Spangled Banner" has been performed regularly at the beginning of NFL games since the end of WWII by order of NFL commissioner Elmer Layden. The song has also been intermittently performed at baseball games since after WWI. The National Hockey League and Major League Soccer both require venues in both the U.S. and Canada to perform both the Canadian and U.S. national anthems at games that involve teams from both countries (with the "away" anthem being performed first).[better source needed] It is also usual for both U.S. and Canadian anthems (done in the same way as the NHL and MLS) to be played at Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association games involving the Toronto Blue Jays and the Toronto Raptors respectively, the only Canadian teams in those two major U.S. sports leagues, and in All Star Games in MLB, the NBA, and the NHL. The Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League, which play in a city on the Canada–US border and have a substantial Canadian fan base, play both anthems before all home games regardless of where the visiting team is based. Recently with the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB playing international games outside of the United States and Canada, "The Star-Spangled Banner" has been performed alongside the host country's national anthem. Two especially unusual performances of the song took place in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. On September 12, 2001, Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom, broke with tradition and allowed the Band of the Coldstream Guards to perform the anthem at Buckingham Palace, London, at the ceremonial Changing of the Guard, as a gesture of support for Britain's ally. The following day at a St. Paul's Cathedral memorial service, the Queen joined in the singing of the anthem, an unprecedented occurrence. The Star Spangled Banner was played by the Coldstream Guards again at Windsor Castle on the 20th anniversary of the attacks. During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the anthem was sung by protesters demonstrating outside the U.S. consulate-general in an appeal to the U.S. government to help them with their cause. The 200th anniversary of the "Star-Spangled Banner" occurred in 2014 with various special events occurring throughout the United States. A particularly significant celebration occurred during the week of September 10–16 in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Highlights included playing of a new arrangement of the anthem arranged by John Williams and participation of President Barack Obama on Defenders Day, September 12, 2014, at Fort McHenry. In addition, the anthem bicentennial included a youth music celebration including the presentation of the National Anthem Bicentennial Youth Challenge winning composition written by Noah Altshuler. The first popular music performance of the anthem heard by the mainstream U.S. was by Puerto Rican singer and guitarist José Feliciano. He created a nationwide uproar when he strummed a slow, blues-style rendition of the song at Tiger Stadium in Detroit before game five of the 1968 World Series, between Detroit and St. Louis. This rendition started contemporary "Star-Spangled Banner" controversies. The response from many in the Vietnam War-era U.S. was generally negative. Despite the controversy, Feliciano's performance opened the door for the countless interpretations of the "Star-Spangled Banner" heard in the years since. One week after Feliciano's performance, the anthem was in the news again when U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos lifted controversial raised fists at the 1968 Olympics while the "Star-Spangled Banner" played at a medal ceremony. Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix often included a solo instrumental performance at concerts from 1968 to his death in 1970. Using high gain and distortion amplification effects and the vibrato arm on his guitar, Hendrix was able to simulate the sounds of rockets and bombs at the points when the lyrics are normally heard. One such performance at the Woodstock music festival in 1969 was a highlight of the event's 1970 documentary film, becoming "part of the sixties Zeitgeist". When asked about negative reactions to his "unorthodox" treatment of the anthem, Hendrix, who served briefly in the U.S. Army, responded "I'm American so I played it ... Unorthodox? I thought it was beautiful, but there you go." The Woodstock version by Jimi Hendrix was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. Marvin Gaye gave a soul-influenced performance at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game and Whitney Houston gave a soulful rendition before Super Bowl XXV in 1991, which was released as a single that charted at number 20 in 1991 and number 6 in 2001 (along with José Feliciano, the only times the national anthem has been on the Billboard Hot 100). Roseanne Barr gave a controversial performance of the anthem at a San Diego Padres baseball game at Jack Murphy Stadium on July 25, 1990. The comedian belted out a screechy rendition of the song, and afterward, she mocked ballplayers by spitting and grabbing her crotch as if adjusting a protective cup. The performance offended some, including the sitting U.S. president, George H. W. Bush. Steven Tyler also caused some controversy in 2001 (at the Indianapolis 500, to which he later issued a public apology) and again in 2012 (at the AFC Championship Game) with a cappella renditions of the song with changed lyrics. At Super Bowl XLVIII's pre-game ceremonies in 2014, soprano Renée Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the National Anthem at a football game, and her emotional, groundbreaking performance (one of the most critically acclaimed renditions of all time) led the Fox network to the highest ratings of any program in the company's history and remains so today. In 2016, Aretha Franklin performed a rendition before the nationally-televised Minnesota Vikings-Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day game lasting more than four minutes and featuring a host of improvisations. It was one of Franklin's last public appearances before her 2018 death. Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie gave a controversial performance of the anthem during the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. Critics likened her rendition to a jazzy "sexed-up" version of the anthem, which was considered highly inappropriate, with her performance compared to that of Marilyn Monroe's 1962 performance of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President". Fergie later apologized for her performance of the song, stating that ''I'm a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn't strike the intended tone". On February 8, 2026, the American musician and singer Charlie Puth did a performance of the song during the Super Bowl LX in 2026, with many music critics believing that Puth nailed the performance. In March 2005, a government-sponsored program, the National Anthem Project, was launched after a Harris Interactive poll showed many adults knew neither the lyrics nor the history of the anthem. Lyrics "The Star-Spangled Banner" has four verses, although only the first verse is commonly performed. O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand, Between their loved home and the war's desolation, Blessed with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n rescued land, Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! Alternative lyrics In a version hand-written by Francis Scott Key in 1840, the third line reads: "Whose bright stars and broad stripes, through the clouds of the fight". Fifth stanza In 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. penned an unofficial fifth verse during the beginning of the American Civil War, looking hopefully at the emancipation of slaves. When our land is illumed with Liberty's smile, If a foe from within strikes a blow at her glory, Down, down with the traitor who dares to defile The flag of her stars and the page of her story! By the millions unchained when our birthright was gained, We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained! And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave While the land of the free is the home of the brave! Customs and federal law When the U.S. national anthem was first recognized by law in 1931, there was no prescription as to behavior during its playing. On June 22, 1942, the law was revised indicating that those in uniform should salute during its playing, while others should simply stand at attention, men removing their hats. The same code also required that women should place their hands over their hearts when the flag is displayed during the playing of the national anthem, but not if the flag was not present. On December 23, 1942, the law was again revised instructing men and women to stand at attention and face in the direction of the music when it was played. That revision also directed men and women to place their hands over their hearts only if the flag was displayed. Those in uniform were required to salute. On July 7, 1976, the law was simplified. Men and women were instructed to stand with their hands over their hearts, men removing their hats, irrespective of whether or not the flag was displayed and those in uniform saluting. On August 12, 1998, the law was rewritten keeping the same instructions, but differentiating between "those in uniform" and "members of the Armed Forces and veterans" who were both instructed to salute during the playing whether or not the flag was displayed. Because of the changes in law over the years and confusion between instructions for the Pledge of Allegiance versus the national anthem, throughout most of the 20th century many people simply stood at attention or with their hands folded in front of them during the playing of the anthem, and when reciting the Pledge they would hold their hand (or hat) over their heart. Since 1998, federal law (viz., the United States Code 36 U.S.C. § 301) states that during a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present including those in uniform should stand at attention; non-military service individuals should face the flag with the right hand over the heart; members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present and not in uniform may render the military salute; military service persons not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart; and members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are in uniform should give the military salute at the first note of the anthem and maintain that position until the last note. The law further provides that when the flag is not displayed, all present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed. Military law requires all vehicles on the installation to stop when the song is played and all individuals outside to stand at attention and face the direction of the music and either salute, in uniform, or place the right hand over the heart, if out of uniform. The law was amended in 2008, and since allows military veterans to salute out of uniform, as well. The text of 36 U.S.C. § 301 is suggestive and not regulatory in nature. Failure to follow the suggestions is not a violation of the law. This behavioral requirement for the national anthem is subject to the same First Amendment controversies that surround the Pledge of Allegiance. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses do not sing the national anthem, though they are taught that standing is an "ethical decision" that individual believers must make based on their conscience. Translations As a result of immigration to the United States by many non-English-speaking peoples, the lyrics of America's national anthem have seen multiple literary translations into immigrant languages. In 1861, very likely to help encourage German-American military service in the Union Army and the United States Navy during the American Civil War, the lyrics were translated into the German language in the United States and widely circulated. The Library of Congress also has record of a Spanish-language version from 1919. It has since been translated into Hebrew and Yiddish by Jewish immigrants, Latin American Spanish (with one version popularized during immigration reform protests in 2006), Louisiana French by the Cajun people, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic. The third verse of the anthem has also been translated into Latin. With regard to the indigenous languages of North America and U.S. possessions in Polynesia, there are further translations into Navajo Cherokee, and Samoan. Protests The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was a political demonstration conducted by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City. After having won gold and bronze medals respectively in the 200-meter running event, they turned on the podium to face their flags, and to hear the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner". Each athlete raised a black-gloved fist, and kept them raised until the anthem had finished. In addition, Smith, Carlos, and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman all wore human rights badges on their jackets. In his autobiography, Silent Gesture, Smith stated that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute, but a "human rights salute". The event is regarded as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympic Games. Protests against police brutality and racism by kneeling on one knee during the national anthem began in the National Football League after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the anthem, as opposed to the tradition of standing, in response to police brutality in the United States, before his team's third preseason game of 2016. Kaepernick sat during the first two preseason games, but he went unnoticed. In particular, protests focus on the discussion of slavery (and mercenaries) in the third verse of the anthem, in which some have interpreted the lyrics as condemning slaves that had joined the British in an effort to earn their freedom. Since Kaepernick's protest, other athletes have joined in the protests. In the 2017 season, after President Donald Trump's condemnation of the kneeling, which included calling for players (whom he reportedly also referred to by various profanities) to be fired, many NFL players responded by protesting during the national anthem that week. After the murder of George Floyd and killing of Breonna Taylor by police officers, when the 2019-2020 NBA season resumed play in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of players and coaches kneeled during the national anthem through the end of the season. In San Francisco, the statue of Francis Scott Key—the nation's first memorial to the anthem's lyricist Key, a slaveowner—was toppled by protestors on June 19, 2020 and in June 2021 was replaced by 350 black steel sculptures that honor the first 350 Africans kidnapped and forced onto a slave ship headed across the Atlantic from Angola in 1619. In November 2017, the California Chapter of the NAACP called on Congress to remove "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. Alice Huffman, California NAACP president, said: "It's racist; it doesn't represent our community, it's anti-black." The rarely-sung third stanza of the anthem contains the words "No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave", which some interpret as racist. The organization was still seeking a representative to sponsor the legislation in Congress at the time of its announcement. Following Donald Trump's tariff announcements on Canada and Mexico as well as his pro-annexation rhetoric in 2025, Canadian crowds booed "The Star-Spangled Banner" when it was played at National Hockey League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer games or sporting events featuring the U.S. across Canada. Media See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Tesla and trade unions Tesla, Inc., an American electric car and solar panel manufacturer, has more than 140,000 workers employed across its global operations as of January 2024,[update] almost none of whom are unionized. Despite allegations of high injury rates, long hours, and below-industry pay, efforts to unionize the workforce have been largely unsuccessful. Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, has commented negatively on trade unions in relation to the company. Tesla has been involved in labor disputes in the United States, Germany, and Sweden, including an ongoing strike in Sweden. Tesla is the only major American automaker whose workforce is not represented by a union in the United States. None of the union drives in Tesla Fremont Factory and Gigafactory New York have been successful. In late 2023, United Auto Workers announced renewed unionization efforts. In Germany, Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg's non-union status and lower wages compared to industry standards has weakened the structural power of the automotive union IG Metall. Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and Tesla Automation have works councils, without union collective agreement coverage. Tesla Automation signed a remuneration-related works agreement with its works council, while refusing to sign a comparable collective agreement with IG Metall. In Sweden, mechanics from TM Sweden, a Tesla vehicle service subsidiary, and affiliated with IF Metall have been on strike since October 2023, which expanded when other Swedish, Danish and Norwegian unions joined by initiating their own solidarity strikes. This is the longest strike in Sweden since the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement and still ongoing as of May 2025.[update] United States Tesla employs 70,000 workers across the United States as of 2024[update]. Tesla is the only American automaker whose workers are not represented by a union in the United States. None of the unionization efforts since 2017 have been successful. These efforts were led by United Auto Workers (UAW) in Fremont Factory in 2017, United Steelworkers and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Gigafactory New York (Giga New York) in 2018, and Workers United in Giga New York in 2023. Several months later, UAW announced renewed nation-wide organizing efforts. Employer opposition to unions is common in the United States. In cases of illegal interference, such as unfair labor practices, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has limited mechanisms to enforce the law under the National Labor Relations Act – which codifies worker rights. Unlike the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the NLRB cannot impose fines. Employees in a workplace can form a union if a majority sign union cards or vote in a supervised election. Despite overall low union density (ratio of unionized to non-unionized workers), recent organizing successes have renewed public interest. According to labor sociologist Joshua Mayor, unionization efforts sometimes fail not because workers are against unions, but because workers do not believe they can win. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that he supported Musk's policies of union busting during an interview with Musk. The United Auto Workers later filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk. Tesla acquired the formerly unionized NUMMI plant in Fremont, California in 2010, which became the Tesla Fremont Factory. Tesla employs 20,000 workers in the Fremont Factory. United Auto Workers (UAW) president Dennis Williams expressed interest in unionizing the factory in May 2016, shortly after Tesla announced increased local annual production targets of 500,000 vehicles by 2018, which would have placed it in the top ten sellers of new vehicles within the US. In the fall of 2016, Jose Moran, a Fremont Factory employee, contacted UAW, going public with a "Fair Future at Tesla" campaign in February 2017, citing high injury rates, long hours and below industry pay as motivations. In October 2017, Tesla fired Richard Ortiz, who was involved with the organizing campaign, which the NLRB later ruled to be illegal retaliation. Replying to @dmatkins137 May 21, 2018 CEO Elon Musk published a tweet in May 2018, that implied workers would lose stocks if they formed a union. Three years later, the NLRB ordered Musk to delete that tweet, and reinstate former employee Ortiz with full back pay. Additionally, Tesla would have to put up a notice in all of its US factories addressing the unlawful tweet. Tesla appealed the NLRB rulings to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which in 2023 initially upheld the NLRB order. In a published response, Ortiz stated "I look forward to returning to work at Tesla and working with my co-workers to finish the job of forming a union". In a 2024 rehearing, the court reversed its decision, holding Musk's tweets to be constitutionally protected speech and that the NLRB must reconsider its order to reinstate Ortiz. Four years after the initial tweet, Musk invited UAW, via another tweet, to hold a union election at their convenience without retaliation. UAW president Ray Curry responded that if Tesla was serious about supporting organizing, Tesla would acknowledge they broke the law when they fired Ortiz and Musk published the initial tweet. A CNBC report in 2022 found that Tesla paid public relations firm MikeWorldWide to monitor a Tesla employee Facebook group and union organizers on social media from 2017 to 2018. MikeWorldWide monitored discussions regarding alleged unfair labor practices at Tesla and a sexual harassment lawsuit. Former and current Tesla employees told CNBC that they believed the company continued to monitor its workers on social media as of 2022.[update] UAW won 30–160 percent salary increases at the "Big Three" in late 2023. The new UAW president Shawn Fain attributed previous unionizing failures to internal corruption, "coziness" with management and bad collective agreements. UAW subsequently launched organizing drives at 13 non-union automakers, including Tesla, with a combined organizing budget of US$40 million through 2026. By contrast, UAW had spent $422,000 on Tesla alone in 2017 (equivalent to $554,000 in 2025). In December 2018, 300 workers at the solar panel factory at Giga New York in Buffalo, New York, announced a union drive with the support of United Steelworkers (USW) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. USW filed a complaint with the NLRB the following June, alleging that Tesla illegally surveilled workers and fired six of them in retaliation, but the case was withdrawn in August. Workers who label data for Tesla Autopilot at Giga New York in Buffalo announced a union drive with Workers United on February 14, 2023. Workers United previously led the first successful union drive at Starbucks, also in Buffalo, 6 mi (9.7 km) away. A day after the announcement, Workers United filed charges with the NLRB against Tesla for firing 37 workers (including one organizing committee member) in alleged retaliation for union activity and to allegedly discourage union organizing. In November 2023, the NLRB dismissed the retaliatory firing charge, but found merit in the other charges regarding workplace surveillance and captive audience meetings. Following allegations raised by Workers United, the NLRB regional director in Buffalo, New York filed a complaint with the national board in April 2024 alleging that Tesla had unlawfully implemented company policies to prevent workers at its Buffalo plant from unionizing, including by implementing a corporate IT acceptable use policy that restricted workplace organizing. Germany Tesla is one of the few automakers in Germany that has not signed any individual company collective agreements, nor is a member of the Employer Association in the Metal and Electronics Industry [de] as of 2024.[update] The Metal and Electronics Industry refers to the network of companies that negotiate with IG Metall. German labor representation has a dual structure of trade unions and works councils. Trade unions like IG Metall negotiate collective agreements with individual employers and regional collective agreements with employers associations (e.g. textile or chemical industry). Works councils are made up of elected employees in the workplace. They negotiate works agreements and have various co-determination, participation and information rights. In theory works councils do not overlap with collective bargaining regarding wage adjustments. While formally separate structures, many works council members are de-facto union representatives. Unions are financed by membership dues which are typically 1% of a member's salary. The more union members and the higher their wages (whether or not they are covered by a collective agreement), the more financial resources a union has. Tesla poses a structural challenge to IG Metall in the automotive sector, because electric vehicle production requires 30 percent fewer workers than traditional internal combustion-engine vehicles. IG Metall membership declined by 9% from 2005 to 2021, while the automotive labor market has grown, especially in companies without regional collective agreements. The overall trend toward vehicle electrification and a non-union Tesla weakens IG Metall's bargaining power in the broader German automotive sector due to lower union density (ratio of unionized to non-unionized workers). Tesla acquired Grohmann Engineering (now Tesla Automation) in January 2017, inheriting the existing works council. According to IG Metall and the works council chair Uwe Herzig said that wages at Grohmann Engineering in April, after the acquisition, were 25 percent to 30 percent below the equivalent of the regional collective agreements in the Metal and Electronics Industry [de]. In October, management and the works council concluded a works agreement that brought employee wages in line with the regional collective agreement without explicitly signing a union collective agreement. IG Metall pushed for formal ratification, while acknowledging that there had been a "very good negotiation result". It credited the threat of strikes with pressuring Tesla to sign the works agreements. According to IG Metall, in October 2021, Tesla offered employees at the new Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg (Giga Berlin), wages that were 20 percent below the corresponding collective agreements provided at other automotive plants in Germany. Seven non-union employees at Giga Berlin initiated the works council election [de] process in November 2021. Any employee with at least six months of tenure is eligible to run as a works council candidate. Tesla ultimately planned to hire a total of 12,000 employees. In the first six months, Tesla hired 1,800 employees, mostly middle-management. IG Metall expressed concern that the future works council would be dominated by management, as only those with 6 months' tenure would be eligible to run. In March 2022, employees elected their first works council. Nearly half voted for the manager-friendly "Gigavoice" slate. IG Metall called for an investigation in January 2023, after workers reported being forced to work longer hours, with less resting time between shifts. IG Metall also stated that workers were being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements and therefore feared retaliation if they openly discussed their working conditions. Giga Berlin's initial workforce of 1,800 employees doubled quickly enough to trigger a rule requiring another works council election 2 years after the first one, instead of the usual 4 years. The second works council election was scheduled initially for March 18, 2024 to March 20, 2024. IG Metall petitioned the Frankfurt (Oder) Labor Court [de] for a preliminary injunction against the electoral board's proposed timeline. The original timeline set a deadline of February 15 for submitting candidate nominations lists. Given that Tesla factory production was suspended earlier for a month until February 11, due to supply chain disruptions by the Houthi militia in the Red Sea, this would have left each candidate list with only several work days to collect the mandatory 50 signatures from co-workers. The Frankfurt (Oder) Labor Court granted IG Metall's petition, but the electoral board and Tesla appealed to the higher Berlin-Brandenburg State Labor Court [de], which overturned the lower court and upheld the original election timeline. The election concluded on March 20, 2024, with 234 candidates from 9 lists. With 39% of the vote the "IG Metall Tesla Workers GFBB" list won the plurality of seats, with 16 out of 39, making them a major opposition. The remaining 23 seats were divided among four non-union affiliated lists; 15 seats for "Giga United", 5 seats for "One Team", 2 seats for "Giga Fair" and 1 seat for "Giga für Alle" (transl. Giga for all). Michaela Schmitz, the current works council chair, is vocally anti-union. During the final days of the works council election campaign, Schmitz ended a rally speech with "What we don't need, is a union!" (German: Was wir nicht brauchen, ist eine Gewerkschaft!). On April 4, Schmitz was re-elected by the works council for a second term as chair. Schmitz comes from the "Giga United" list , which is mostly composed of managers. In total, 8,917 Tesla workers voted, out of 12,500 eligible to vote. An IG Metall member of the works council was fired in October 2024, in what IG Metall described as "aggressive tactics" against workers. IG Metall countered with its own lawsuit in December 2024, to forcibly remove Michaela Schmitz as works council chair; claiming she had obstructed pro-union works council members. In September 2024, in an attempt to crack down on worker absenteeism, Tesla representatives conducted unannounced visits to the homes of employees out on sick leave. Sweden Mechanics affiliated with IF Metall, a Swedish trade union, initiated a strike against TM Sweden, a Tesla vehicle service subsidiary, on October 27, 2023, over the company's refusal to sign a collective agreement. The ongoing strike is the longest ever in Sweden within the past 80 years. Strikes are very rare under the "Swedish model" of social partnership, which was codified in the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement, still in force today. TM Sweden employs 130 mechanics in Sweden. About half of them are IF Metal members. The strike, initially affecting mechanics at ten workshops servicing Tesla vehicles, later spread to other facilities servicing various car brands. While workers continued with their regular tasks, they refrained from servicing Tesla vehicles during the strike. Strikebreakers arrived at Tesla service centers, prompting concerns among the strikers about their impact on the labor dispute. Strikers were banned from the company premises. According to union leader Gabriel Kuhn, Tesla contacted individual strikers after family members shared news of the strikes on social media, which discouraged non-union participation in the strike. According to statistics from the Swedish National Mediation Office [sv], one-third of the 130 mechanics participated in the original strike. Non-union members and even some IF Metal union members did not participate in the strikes. Other Swedish trade unions joined in a month later in November 2023, through sympathy (solidarity) strikes, which are legal in Sweden. The Swedish Transport Workers' Union (Swedish: Svenska Transportarbetareförbundet) blocked the loading and unloading of Tesla cars, while dockworker, electrician and postal unions halted services to Tesla. Elon Musk has reportedly instructed TM Sweden not to sign any collective agreements. The Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees (Swedish: Service- och Kommunikationsfacket) expanded the strike by halting maintenance and installation of Tesla charging stations. Over the next few months, solidarity strikes for the Swedish campaign spread to other Nordic countries, with port workers from the United Federation of Danish Workers (Danish: Fagligt Fælles Forbund), United Federation of Trade Unions (Norwegian: Fellesforbundet) and Finnish Transport Workers' Union (Finnish: Auto- ja Kuljetusalan Työntekijäliitto) joining the strikes. Tesla maneuvered around the union blockade by moving vehicles by land instead of sea, and sold 1% more cars in 2024 than in 2023. The strike led to the PensionDanmark [da], a pension fund, to divest its Tesla shares in protest. In response to the escalations, Tesla posted a job opening for a Swedish government affairs specialist with "significant experience with Nordic legislative and regulatory advocacy", presumably to help with lobbying efforts. In September 2024, a foreign delegation of Ford Germany works council members and IG Metall deputies joined the picket line at Tesla service center in Malmö, Sweden, as the strike continued. In January 2025, Tesla appealed to the Karlstad administrative court to mandate the Swedish Transport Agency provide license plates for newly sold vehicles, which is currently blocked by the postal union's sympathy strike. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen] | [TOKENS: 5986] |
Contents Japanese yen The yen (Japanese: 円; symbol: ¥; code: JPY) is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro. The New Currency Act of 1871 introduced Japan's modern currency system, with the yen defined as 1.5 g (0.048 troy ounces) of gold, or 24.26 g (0.780 troy ounces) of silver, and divided decimally into 100 sen or 1,000 rin. The yen replaced the previous Tokugawa coinage as well as the various hansatsu paper currencies issued by feudal han (fiefs). The Bank of Japan was founded in 1882 and given a monopoly on controlling the money supply. Following World War II, the yen lost much of its pre-war value as Japan faced a debt crisis and hyperinflation. Under the Bretton Woods system, the yen was pegged to the US dollar alongside other major currencies. After this system was abandoned in 1971 with the Nixon Shock, the short-lived Smithsonian Agreement temporarily reinstated a fixed exchange rate. However, since the end of that system in February 1973, the yen has been a floating currency. The Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan have sometimes intervened in the currency market in recent years, to try to slow down exchange rate movements. There were intermittent interventions from 1998 to 2003 and from 2010 to 2011 to curb excessive and speculative appreciation of the yen, and again in 2022 and 2024 to slow down speculative selling of the currency. The first two interventions were coordinated with respective[clarification needed] countries, and the IMF has repeatedly stated that Japan is "committed to a flexible exchange rate". Pronunciation and etymology The name yen derives from the Japanese word 圓 (en; [eɴ]; lit. 'round'), which borrows its phonetic reading from Chinese yuan, similar to North Korean won and South Korean won. Originally, the Chinese had traded silver in mass called sycees, and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived from the Philippines, the Chinese called them "silver rounds" (Chinese: 銀圓; pinyin: yínyuán) for their circular shapes. The coins and the name also appeared in Japan. While the Chinese eventually replaced 圆; 圓 with 元,[a] the Japanese continued to use the same word, which was given the shinjitai form 円 in reforms at the end of World War II.[citation needed] The spelling and pronunciation "yen" is standard in English, because when Japan was first encountered by Europeans around the 16th century, Japanese /e/ (え) and /we/ (ゑ) were both pronounced [je]. Accordingly, Portuguese missionaries spelled them as "ye".[b] By the middle of the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced [e] as in modern Japanese, although some regions retain the [je] pronunciation. Walter Henry Medhurst, who had neither been to Japan nor met any Japanese people, having consulted mainly a Japanese-Dutch dictionary, spelled some "e"s as "ye" in his An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary (1830). In the early Meiji era, the American physician and translator James Curtis Hepburn, following Medhurst, spelled all "e"s as "ye" in his A Japanese and English dictionary (1867); in Japanese, e and i are slightly palatalized, somewhat as in Russian. That was the first full-scale Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, which had a strong influence on Westerners in Japan and probably prompted the spelling "yen", which appeared in the 2nd edition (1872). Hepburn revised most "ye"s to "e" in the 3rd edition (1886) to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen". History Although the Edo Shogunate collapsed with the Meiji Restoration and a new government was born, there was no immediate change to the monetary system. During this unstable period, the confusion caused by this form of exchange caused economic turmoil. The gold (counting money) system of eastern Japan and the silver (weighing money) system of the western Japan were not unified, and the difference in the gold-silver ratio caused a large amount of gold to flow overseas at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. Emperor Meiji responded to this by appointing Ōkuma Shigenobu as head of Japan's monetary reform program. He worked with Inoue Kaoru, Itō Hirobumi, and Shibusawa Eiichi to run the Ministry of Finance, seeking to introduce a modern monetary system into Japan. Ōkuma eventually proposed that coins, which were previously square, be made into circular discs, and that the names of the traditional currencies, ryō (両), bu (分) and shu (朱), be unified into yen (円), which was accepted by the government. Other rejected proposals included physical weight units of "Fun" and "Momme" which never made it past the pattern stage. The first gold yen coins consisted of 2, 5, and 20 yen coins which were struck throughout 1870. Five yen coins were first struck in gold for the Japanese government in 1870 at the San Francisco Mint. During this time a new mint was being established at Osaka, but this did not receive the gold bullion needed for coinage until the following year. Gold bullion was delivered from private Japanese citizens, foreigners, and the Japanese government. Initially the government opted for silver, which would become the standard unit of value, leaving gold coinage as a subsidiary. While gold coinage could not be produced domestically in 1870, the mint at Osaka could produce silver coins, and these included denominations of 5, 10, 20, and 50 sen. None of these coins dated "1870" circulated until the Meiji government officially adopted the "yen" as Japan's modern unit of currency on June 27, 1871. This Act formally stipulated the adoption of the decimal accounting system of yen (1, 圓), sen (1⁄100, 錢), and rin (1⁄1000, 厘). The new currency was gradually introduced beginning from July of that year. Japanese yen-denominated paper currency was also conceived with the coins in 1870, as Meiji Tsuho notes by Italian engraver Edoardo Chiossone. These were released as fiat currency in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 50, and 100 yen along with subsidiary notes of 10, 20, and 50 sen in 1872. Almost concurrently, the government established a series of national banks modeled after the system in the United States, which issued national bank notes. Massive inflation from the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 caused a glut of non-redeemable fiat currency notes. The issuance of national fiat banknotes was ultimately suspended in 1880 by then prime minister Matsukata Masayoshi. New policies were put into place which included the establishment of a centralized banking system. The Bank of Japan began operations on October 10, 1882, with the authority to print banknotes that could be exchanged for the old Government and National Bank Notes. By May 1883, another act provided the redemption and retirement of national bank notes. The National Bank Act was amended again in March 1896, providing for the dissolution of the national banks on the expiration of their charters. This amendment also prohibited national bank notes from circulating after December 31, 1899. In that year, Japan adopted a gold exchange standard, defining the yen as 0.75 g fine gold or US$0.4985. This exchange rate remained in place until Japan left the gold standard in December 1931, after which the yen fell to $0.30 by July 1932 and to $0.20 by 1933. It remained steady at around $0.30 until the start of the Pacific War on December 7, 1941, at which time it fell to $0.23. The sen and the rin were eventually taken out of circulation at the end of 1953. No true exchange rate existed for the yen between December 7, 1941, and April 25, 1949; wartime inflation reduced the yen to a fraction of its prewar value. After a period of instability, on April 25, 1949, the U.S. occupation government fixed the value of the yen at ¥360 per USD through a plan, which was part of the Bretton Woods system, to stabilize prices in the Japanese economy. That exchange rate was maintained until 1971, when the United States abandoned the gold standard, ending a key element of the Bretton Woods system, and setting in motion changes that eventually led to floating exchange rates in 1973. By 1971, the yen had become undervalued. Japanese exports were costing too little in international markets, and imports from abroad were costing the Japanese too much. This undervaluation was reflected in the current account balance, which had risen from the deficits of the early 1960s, to a then-large surplus of US$5.8 billion in 1971. The belief that the yen, and several other major currencies, were undervalued motivated the United States' actions in 1971. Following the United States' measures to devalue the dollar in the summer of 1971, the Japanese government agreed to a new, fixed exchange rate as part of the Smithsonian Agreement, signed at the end of the year. This agreement set the exchange rate at ¥308 per US$. However, the new fixed rates of the Smithsonian Agreement were difficult to maintain in the face of supply and demand pressures in the foreign-exchange market. In early 1973, the rates were abandoned, and the major nations of the world allowed their currencies to float. After World War II the United States-administered Okinawa issued a higher-valued currency called the B yen from 1946 to 1958, which was then replaced by the U.S. dollar at the rate of $1 = 120 B yen. Upon the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972 the Japanese yen then replaced the dollar. In light of the dollar's reduction in value from ¥360 to ¥308 just before the reversion, an unannounced "currency confirmation" took place on October 9, 1971, wherein residents disclosed their dollar holdings in cash and bank accounts; US$60 million were entitled to conversion in 1972 at the higher rate of ¥360. In the 1970s, the Japanese government and business people were concerned that a rise in the value of the yen would hurt export growth by making Japanese products less competitive and would damage the industrial base. The government, therefore, continued to intervene heavily in foreign-exchange markets (buying or selling dollars), even after the 1973 decision to allow the yen to float. Despite intervention, market pressures caused the yen to continue climbing in value, peaking temporarily at an average of ¥271 per US$ in 1973, before the impact of the 1973 oil crisis was felt (this was retroactively called endaka, although the term was only coined in 1985). The increased costs of imported oil caused the yen to depreciate to a range of ¥290 per US$ to ¥300 per US$ between 1974 and 1976. The re-emergence of trade surpluses drove the yen back up to ¥211 in 1978. This currency strengthening was again reversed by the second oil shock in 1979, with the yen dropping to ¥227 per US$ by 1980. During the first half of the 1980s, the yen failed to rise in value, though current account surpluses returned and grew quickly. From ¥221 per US$ in 1981, the average value of the yen actually dropped to ¥239 per US$ in 1985. The rise in the current account surplus generated stronger demand for yen in foreign-exchange markets, but this trade-related demand for yen was offset by other factors. A wide differential in interest rates, with United States interest rates much higher than those in Japan, and the continuing moves to deregulate the international flow of capital, led to a large net outflow of capital from Japan. This capital flow increased the supply of yen in foreign-exchange markets, as Japanese investors changed their yen for other currencies (mainly dollars) to invest overseas. This kept the yen weak relative to the dollar and fostered the rapid rise in the Japanese trade surplus that took place in the 1980s. In 1985, a dramatic change began. Finance officials from major nations signed an agreement (the Plaza Accord) affirming that the dollar was overvalued (and, therefore, the yen undervalued). This agreement, and shifting supply and demand pressures in the markets, led to a rapid rise in the value of the yen. From its average of ¥239 per US$ in 1985, the yen rose to a peak of ¥128 in 1988, virtually doubling its value relative to the dollar. After declining somewhat in 1989 and 1990, it reached a new high of ¥123 to US$ in December 1992. In April 1995, the yen hit a peak of under 80 yen/US$, temporarily making Japan's economy nearly the size of that of the US. The yen declined during the Japanese asset price bubble and continued to do so afterwards, reaching a low of ¥134 to US$ in February 2002. The Bank of Japan's policy of zero interest rates has discouraged yen investments, with the carry trade of investors borrowing yen and investing in better-paying currencies (thus further pushing down the yen) estimated to be as large as $1 trillion. In February 2007, The Economist estimated that the yen was 15% undervalued against the dollar, and as much as 40% undervalued against the euro. However, this trend of depreciation reversed after the global economic crisis of 2008. Other major currencies, except the Swiss franc, have been declining relative to the yen. On April 4, 2013, the Bank of Japan announced that they would expand their asset purchase program by $1.4 trillion in two years. The Bank of Japan hopes to bring Japan from deflation to inflation, aiming for 2% inflation. The amount of purchases is so large that it is expected to double the money supply, but this move has sparked concerns that the authorities in Japan are deliberately devaluing the yen to boost exports. However, the commercial sector in Japan worried that the devaluation would trigger an increase in import prices, especially for energy and raw materials. Since 2022, the yen has depreciated significantly against its peers, due to a variety of factors. Firstly, Japan's prolonged low-interest-rate policy (to tackle domestic deflation) has created a yield differential with other countries—notably the US—that have high interest rates (to tackle domestic inflation), prompting investors to seek higher returns in foreign currencies. This interest rate differential directly affects the price of the yen and serves as one of the drivers behind its depreciation. Widely held expectations of yen depreciation can become self-fulfilling prophecies, affecting the currency's exchange rate. To counter this, the Bank of Japan conducted currency interventions of more than ¥9 trillion selling the dollar and buying the yen in the September–October 2022 and April–May 2024 periods respectively. Numerous proposals have been made since the 1990s to redenominate the yen by introducing a new unit or new yen, equal to 100 yen, and nearly worth one U.S. dollar. This has not happened to date, since the yen remains trusted globally despite its low unit value, and due to the large costs of reissuing new currency and updating currency-reading hardware. The negative impact of postponing upgrades to various computer software until redenomination occurs, in particular, was also cited. Coins The Japan Mint has issued legal tender coins from 1871 to the present. The obverse side of all coins shows the coin's value in kanji characters as well as the country name (through 1945, Dai Nippon (大日本; "Great Japan"); after 1945, Nippon-koku (日本国; "State of Japan") (except for the 5-yen coin with the country name on the reverse). The reverse side of all coins shows the year of mintage, which is not shown in Gregorian calendar years, but instead in the regnal year of the reigning emperor, with the first year of an era called gannen (元年). Imperial portraits have never appeared on Japanese coins, as the image of the emperor remains sacred. The regnal year does not necessarily align with the calendar year. The first coins of the Reiwa era were minted in July 2019. In 1897, the silver 1 yen coin was demonetized and the sizes of the gold coins were reduced by 50%, with 5, 10 and 20 yen coins issued. After the war, brass 50 sen, 1 and 5 yen were introduced between 1946 and 1948. The existing-type holed brass 5 yen was introduced in 1949, the bronze 10 yen in 1951, and the aluminum 1 yen in 1955. In 1955 the first unholed, nickel 50 yen was introduced. In 1957, silver 100 yen pieces were introduced, followed by the holed 50 yen coin in 1959. These were replaced in 1967 by the existing cupro-nickel 100 yen along with a smaller 50 yen. In 1982, the first cupronickel 500 yen coin was introduced. Alongside the 5 Swiss franc coin, the 500 yen coin is one of the highest-valued coin to be used regularly in the world, with a value of US$3.19 as of January 2026[update]. Because of its high face value, the 500 yen coin has been a favorite target for counterfeiters, resulting in the issuance in 2000 of the second nickel-brass 500 yen coin with added security features. Continued counterfeiting of the latter resulted in the issuance in 2021 of the third bi-metallic 500 yen coin with more improvements in security features. Due to the great differences in style, size, weight and the pattern present on the edge of the coin they are easy for people with visual impairments to tell apart from one another. Commemorative coins have been minted on various occasions in base metal, silver and gold. The first of these were silver ¥100 and ¥1,000 Summer Olympic coins issued for the 1964 games. The largest issuance by denomination and total face value were 10 million gold coins of ¥100,000 denomination for the 60th anniversary of reign of the Shōwa Emperor in 1986, totalling ¥1 trillion and utilizing 200,000 kg fine gold. ¥500 commemorative coins have been regularly issued since 1985. In 2008 commemorative ¥500 and ¥1,000 coins were issued featuring Japan's 47 prefectures. Even though all commemorative coins can be spent like ordinary (non-commemorative) coins, they do not normally circulate, and ¥100,000 coins are treated with caution due to the discovery of counterfeits. The 1 yen coin is made out of 100% aluminum and can float on water if placed correctly. Subsidiary coins of "sen" (one hundredth of a yen) were initially introduced in 1870 with a silver alloy in denominations of 5, 10, 20 and 50 sen. Copper sen coins in denominations of half, 1, and 2 came three years later, as Japan acquired the technology needed to mint them. The removal of silver from sen coinage began in 1889, when Cupronickel 5 sen coins were introduced. By 1920, this included cupro-nickel 10 sen and reduced-size silver 50 sen coins. Production of the latter ceased in 1938, after which a variety of base metals were used to produce 1, 5 and 10 sen coins during the Second World War. While clay 5 and 10 sen coins were produced in 1945, they were not issued for circulation. As with the Rin, coins in denominations of less than 1 yen became invalid at the end of 1953 and were demonetized due to inflation. Bronze coins worth one-one thousandth of a yen called "rin" were first introduced in 1873. One rin coins were very small, measuring 15.75 mm in diameter and 0.3 mm in thickness, and co-circulated with mon coins of the old currency system. Their small size was eventually their undoing, and the rin was abandoned in 1884 due to unpopularity.[f] Five rin coins worth one-two hundredth of a yen also used a bronze alloy. These were successor coins to the equally valued half sen coin which had been previously minted until 1888. The decision to bring back an equally valued coin was in response to rising inflation caused by World War I which led to an overall shortage of subsidiary coins. The mintage period for five rin coins was brief as they were discontinued after only four years of production due to their sharp decline in monetary value. The overall demand for subsidiary coinage ended as Japan slipped into a post-war recession. Coins worth 1 and 5 rin were eventually officially taken out of circulation at the end of 1953 and demonetized. Banknotes Color The issuance of yen banknotes began in 1872, two years after the currency was introduced. Denominations have ranged from 1 yen to 10,000 yen; since 1984, the lowest-valued banknote is the 1,000 yen note. Before and during World War II, various bodies issued banknotes in yen, such as the Ministry of Finance and the Imperial Japanese National Bank. The Allied forces also issued some notes shortly after the war. Since then, the Bank of Japan has been the exclusive note issuing authority. The bank has issued five series after World War II. Japan is generally considered a cash-based society, with 38% of payments in Japan made by cash in 2014. Possible explanations are that cash payments protect one's privacy, merchants do not have to wait for payment, and it does not carry any negative connotation like credit. At present, portraits of people from the Meiji period and later are printed on Japanese banknotes. The reason for this is that from the viewpoint of preventing forgery, it is desirable to use a precise photograph as an original rather than a painting for a portrait. Series E banknotes were introduced in 2004 in ¥1000, ¥5000, and ¥10,000 denominations. Series F banknotes were introduced on 3 July 2024. They were announced on 9 April 2019 by Finance Minister Tarō Asō. The ¥1000 bill features Kitasato Shibasaburō and The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the ¥5000 bill features Tsuda Umeko and Wisteria flowers, and the ¥10,000 bill features Shibusawa Eiichi and Tokyo Station. The Ministry decided to not redesign the ¥2000 note due to low circulation. The EURion constellation pattern is present in the Series D, E and F banknotes. Determinants of value Beginning in December 1931, Japan gradually shifted from the gold standard system to the managed currency system. The relative value of the yen is determined in foreign exchange markets by the economic forces of supply and demand. The supply of the yen in the market is governed by the desire of yen holders to exchange their yen for other currencies to purchase goods, services, or assets. The demand for the yen is governed by the desire of foreigners to buy goods and services in Japan and by their interest in investing in Japan (buying yen-denominated real and financial assets). Since the 1990s, the Bank of Japan, the country's central bank, has kept interest rates low to spur economic growth. Short-term lending rates have responded to this monetary relaxation and fell from 3.7% to 1.3% between 1993 and 2008. Low interest rates and low inflation, combined with a ready liquidity, prompted investors to borrow yen in Japan and invest it in other countries (such as the US) with significantly higher bank rates, a practice known as the carry trade. This has helped to keep the exchange rate of the yen low compared to other currencies, particularly the US dollar. International reserve currency The special drawing rights (SDR) valuation is an IMF basket of the world's major reserve currencies, including the Japanese yen. Its share of 8.33% as of 2016 has declined from 18% as of 2000. The percental composition of currencies of official foreign exchange reserves from 1995 to 2024. Share of total (%)Year01020304050607080199520002005201020152020US dollarEuroGerman markFrench francSterlingJapanese yenRenminbiSwiss francAustralian dollarCanadian dollarOtherGlobal reserve currency shares Historical exchange rate Before the war commenced, the yen traded on an average of 3.6 yen to the dollar. After the war the yen went as low as 600 yen per USD in 1947, as a result of currency overprinting in order to fund the war, and afterwards to fund the reconstruction. When MacArthur and the US forces entered Japan in 1945, they decreed an official conversion rate of 15 yen to the USD. Within 1945–1946: the rate tanked to 50 yen to the USD because of the ongoing inflation. During the first half of 1946, the rate fluctuated to 66 yen to the USD and eventually plummeting to 600 yen to the dollar by 1947 because of the failure of the economic remedies. Eventually, the peg was officially moved to 270 yen to the dollar in 1948 before being adjusted again from 1949 to 1971 to 360 yen to the dollar. Beginning in 2022 the yen/dollar rate has become increasingly weaker with each passing month. By July 2024, the price fell to upper ¥161 per $1, marking the lowest exchange rate for the yen in 37.5 years on a nominal effective exchange rate and the lowest real effective exchange rate since the start of statistics by the Bank of Japan in 1970. One of the main reasons behind this fall was the US moving towards higher interest rates, while Japan remained "ultra-low". Other factors include the strength of the US economy and its labor market, while Japan continues to lag behind its peers to bring its economy back to its pre-pandemic size. Japan's trade balance staying in the red is also likely feeding into the weaker yen. Interviewed by The Asahi Shimbun in September 2022, Izuru Kato, chief economist at Totan Research, expressed concern about the sharp fall in its value since 2022. and Moneypost reported that the exchange rate instability had made it impossible to exchange the currency for Japanese yen at some exchange offices. With the rate returning to ¥150 in November 2023, concern deepened as Nikkei sources expected the yen to depreciate further in the future. The Economist (London) expressed concern over the performance of the Bank of Japan, suggested that a systemic risk is posed to the world financial system. Other reports of a weakening of the Japanese yen include the Noto Peninsula earthquake in January 2024, where previous earthquakes had seen a temporary appreciation of the yen against the US dollar, but this earthquake reversed the trend and weakened the yen against the US dollar. Goldman Sachs expects the Japanese yen to remain very weak in the coming months. The table below shows the monthly average of the U.S. dollar–yen spot rate (JPY per USD) at 17:00 JST: The table below shows monthly averages of real effective exchange rates. A higher figure indicates a stronger yen, while a lower figure indicates a weaker yen with the value of 100 being the 2020 average. Data from 1970 onwards are presented in the Broad range, while data from 1969 and earlier are presented in the Narrow range. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism] | [TOKENS: 6786] |
Contents Social Darwinism Social Darwinism is a body of pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that claim to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase, while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of the strong and the weak vary, and differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism. Today, scientists generally consider social Darwinism to be discredited as a theoretical framework, but it persists within popular culture. Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's own views on human social and economic issues. References to social Darwinism since have usually been pejorative. Some groups, including creationists such as William Jennings Bryan, argued social Darwinism is a logical consequence of Darwinism. Academics such as Steven Pinker have argued this is a fallacy of appeal to nature. While most scholars recognize historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they generally maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution. Social Darwinism declined in popularity following World War I, and its purportedly scientific claims were largely discredited by the end of World War II—partially due to its association with Nazism and due to a growing scientific consensus that eugenics and scientific racism were unfounded. Origin of the term The term Darwinism was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in his March 1861 review of On the Origin of Species; by the 1870s, it was used to describe a range of concepts of evolution or development, without any specific commitment to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The phrase social Darwinism first appeared in Joseph Fisher's 1877 article on The History of Landholding in Ireland, which was published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Fisher was commenting on how a system for borrowing livestock called "tenure" had led to the false impression that the early Irish had already evolved or developed land tenure; These arrangements did not in any way affect that which we understand by the word "tenure", that is, a man's farm, but they related solely to cattle, which we consider a chattel. It has appeared necessary to devote some space to this subject, inasmuch as that usually acute writer Sir Henry Maine has accepted the word "tenure" in its modern interpretation and has built up a theory under which the Irish chief "developed" into a feudal baron. I can find nothing in the Brehon laws to warrant this theory of social Darwinism, and believe the further study will show that the Cáin Saerrath and the Cáin Aigillne relate solely to what we now call chattels, and did not in any way affect what we now call the freehold, the possession of the land. — Joseph Fisher Despite the fact that social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is primarily linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics. In fact, Spencer was not described as a social Darwinist until the 1930s, long after his death. The term "social Darwinism" first appeared in Europe in 1879, and journalist Émile Gautier had coined the term with reference to a health conference in Berlin 1877. Around 1900 it was used by sociologists, some being opposed to the concept. The American historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the term in the United States in 1944. He used it in the ideological war effort against fascism to denote a reactionary creed that promoted competitive strife, racism, and chauvinism. Hofstadter later also recognized (what he saw as) the influence of Darwinist and other evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist views, enough to devise a term for the phenomenon, Darwinist collectivism. Before Hofstadter's work the use of the term "social Darwinism" in English academic journals was quite rare. In fact, ... there is considerable evidence that the entire concept of "social Darwinism" as we know it today was virtually invented by Richard Hofstadter. Eric Foner, in an introduction to a then-new edition of Hofstadter's book published in the early 1990s, declines to go quite that far. "Hofstadter did not invent the term Social Darwinism", Foner writes, "which originated in Europe in the 1860s and crossed the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. But before he wrote, it was used only on rare occasions; he made it a standard shorthand for a complex of late-nineteenth-century ideas, a familiar part of the lexicon of social thought." — Jeff Riggenbach Social Darwinism has many definitions, not all of which are compatible with one another. As such, social Darwinism has been criticized for being an inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear political conclusions. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics states: Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to 'survival of the fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist' could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist. The term social Darwinism has rarely been used by advocates of the supposed ideologies or ideas; instead it has almost always been used pejoratively by its opponents. The term draws upon the common meaning of Darwinism, which includes a range of evolutionary views, but in the late 19th century was applied more specifically to natural selection as first advanced by Darwin to explain speciation in populations of organisms. The process includes competition between individuals for limited resources, popularly but inaccurately described by the phrase "survival of the fittest", a term coined by sociologist Herbert Spencer. Spencer published his Lamarckian evolutionary ideas about society before Darwin first published his hypothesis in 1859, and Spencer and Darwin promoted their own conceptions of moral values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited. Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon ought to be used as a moral guide in human society. While there are historical links between the popularization of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, most scholars agree that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution. Darwin's writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, while other passages appear to promote it. Darwin's early evolutionary views and his opposition to slavery ran counter to many of the claims that social Darwinists would eventually make about the mental capabilities of the poor and indigenous peoples in the European colonies. After publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, one strand of Darwin's followers argued natural selection ceased to have any noticeable effect on humans once organised societies had been formed. However, some scholars argue Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other theorists such as Spencer. While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a nation or country, social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that predate Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. Others whose ideas are given the label include the 18th-century clergyman Thomas Malthus, and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who founded eugenics towards the end of the 19th century.[citation needed] The massive expansion in Western colonialism during the New Imperialism era fitted in with the broader notion of social Darwinism used from the 1870s onwards to account for the phenomenon of "the Anglo-Saxon and Latin overflowing his boundaries", as phrased by the late-Victorian sociologist Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution, published in 1894. The concept also proved useful to justify what was seen by some as the inevitable "disappearance" of "the weaker races ... before the stronger" not so much "through the effects of ... our vices upon them" as "what may be called the virtues of our civilisation." Winston Churchill, a political proponent of eugenics, maintained that if fewer "feebleminded" individuals were born, less crime would take place. Proponents Herbert Spencer's ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism, stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were influenced by those of Darwin. However, Spencer's major work, Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857), was released two years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and First Principles was printed in 1860. In The Social Organism (1860), Spencer compares society to a living organism and argues that, just as biological organisms evolve through natural selection, society evolves and increases in complexity through analogous processes. In many ways, Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution has much more in common with the works of Lamarck and Auguste Comte's positivism than with Darwin's. Jeff Riggenbach argues that Spencer's view was that culture and education made a sort of Lamarckism possible and notes that Herbert Spencer was a proponent of private charity. However, the legacy of his social Darwinism was less than charitable. Spencer's work also served to renew interest in the work of Malthus. While Malthus's work does not itself qualify as social Darwinism, his 1798 work An Essay on the Principle of Population, was incredibly popular and widely read by social Darwinists. In that book, for example, the author argued that as an increasing population would normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of the weakest and a Malthusian catastrophe. According to Michael Ruse, Darwin read Malthus' famous Essay on a Principle of Population in 1838, four years after Malthus' death. Malthus himself anticipated the social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social problems. Another of these social interpretations of Darwin's biological views, later known as eugenics, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, the same could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social morals needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, to avoid both the over-breeding by less fit members of society and the under-breeding of the more fit ones. In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums were allowing inferior humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors". Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies restricting reproduction, due to their Whiggish distrust of government. Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy addressed the question of artificial selection, yet Nietzsche's principles did not concur with Darwinian theories of natural selection. Nietzsche's point of view on sickness and health, in particular, opposed him to the concept of biological adaptation as forged by Spencer's "fitness". Nietzsche criticized Haeckel, Spencer, and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner by maintaining that in specific cases, sickness was necessary and even helpful. Thus, he wrote: Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race. Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory was not Darwinism, but rather attempted to combine the ideas of Goethe, Lamarck and Darwin. It was adopted by emerging social sciences to support the concept that non-European societies were "primitive", in an early stage of development towards the European ideal, but since then it has been heavily refuted on many fronts. Haeckel's works led to the formation of the Monist League in 1904 with many prominent citizens among its members, including the Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald. The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier Malthusian ideas that humans, especially males, require competition in their lives to survive. Further, the poor should have to provide for themselves and not be given any aid. However, amidst this climate, most social Darwinists of the early 20th century actually supported better working conditions and salaries. Such measures would grant the poor a better chance to provide for themselves yet still distinguish those who are capable of succeeding from those who are poor out of laziness, weakness, or inferiority. Hypotheses relating social change and evolution One of the earliest uses of the term "social Darwinism" was by Eduard Oscar Schmidt of the University of Strasbourg, when reporting at a scientific and medical conference held in Munich in 1877. He noted how socialists, although opponents of Darwin's theory, used it to add force to their political arguments. Schmidt's essay first appeared in English in Popular Science in March 1879. There followed an anarchist tract published in Paris in 1880 entitled "Le darwinisme social" by Émile Gautier. However, the use of the term was very rare—at least in the English-speaking world —until the American historian Richard Hofstadter published his influential Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944) during World War II. Hypotheses of social evolution and cultural evolution were common in Europe. The Enlightenment thinkers who preceded Darwin, such as Hegel, often argued that societies progressed through stages of increasing development. Earlier thinkers also emphasized conflict as an inherent feature of social life. Thomas Hobbes's 17th-century portrayal of the state of nature seems analogous to the competition for natural resources described by Darwin. Social Darwinism is distinct from other theories of social change because of the way it draws Darwin's distinctive ideas from the field of biology into social studies. Darwin, unlike Hobbes, believed that this struggle for natural resources allowed individuals with certain physical and mental traits to succeed more frequently than others, and that these traits accumulated in the population over time, which under certain conditions could lead to the descendants being so different that they would be defined as a new species. However, Darwin felt that "social instincts" such as "sympathy" and "moral sentiments" also evolved through natural selection, and that these resulted in the strengthening of societies in which they occurred, so much so that he wrote about it in Descent of Man: The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. Young Turks The Committee of Union and Progress in the Ottoman Empire adopted social Darwinist ideology. Belief that there was a life-or-death conflict between Turks and other ethnicities motivated them to carry out genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Armenians. Social Darwinism enabled them to view extermination of entire population groups and the murder of women and children as a necessary and justified course of action.[excessive citations] Nazi Germany Final Solution Pre-Machtergreifung Post-Machtergreifung Parties Nazi Germany's justification for its aggression was regularly promoted in Nazi propaganda films depicting scenes such as beetles fighting in a lab setting to demonstrate the principles of 'survival of the fittest' as depicted in Alles Leben ist Kampf (English translation: All Life is Struggle). Hitler often refused to intervene in the promotion of officers and staff members, preferring instead to have them fight amongst themselves to force the "stronger" person to prevail—"strength" referring to those social forces void of virtue or principle. One key proponent was Alfred Rosenberg, who was hanged later at Nuremberg. Such ideas also helped to advance mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Germany, especially Aktion T4, which targeted mentally ill and disabled people in Germany. The argument that Nazi ideology was strongly influenced by social Darwinist ideas is often found in historical and social science literature. For example, the philosopher and historian Hannah Arendt analysed the historical development via social Darwinist ethics to racist ideology. Another example is recent scholarship that portrays Ernst Haeckel's Monist League as a mystical progenitor of the Völkisch movement and, ultimately, of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. Scholars opposed to this interpretation, however, have pointed out that the Monists were freethinkers who opposed all forms of mysticism, and that their organizations were immediately banned following the Nazi takeover in 1933 because of their association with a wide variety of causes including feminism, pacifism, human rights, and early gay rights movements. Other regional distributions Within American society, ideas of social Darwinism reached their greatest prominence during the Gilded Age. Some argue that the rationale of the late 19th-century "captains of industry" such as John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) and Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) owed much to social Darwinism, and that monopolists of this type applied Darwin's concept of natural selection to explain corporate dominance in their respective fields and thus to justify their exorbitant accumulations of success and social advancement. Rockefeller, for example, proclaimed: "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest ... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God." Robert Bork (1927–2012) backed this notion of inherent characteristics as the sole determinant of survival in the business-operations context when he said: "In America, the rich are overwhelmingly people—entrepreneurs, small-business men, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc.—who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work." Moreover, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) lauded this same cohort of magnates, and further extended the theory of "corporate Darwinism". Sumner argued that societal progress depended on the "fittest families" passing down wealth and genetic traits to their offspring, thus allegedly creating a lineage of superior citizens. However, contemporary social scientists reject such claims and have understood that economic status is largely a result of other factors. In 1883 Sumner published a highly-influential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with free-enterprise capitalism for his justification.[citation needed] According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more like themselves, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for existence was the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival. This pamphlet makes no mention of Darwinism, and only refers to Darwin in a statement on the meaning of liberty, that "There never has been any man, from the primitive barbarian up to a Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind to." Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian ideas, and some contemporary historians do not believe that Sumner ever actually believed in social Darwinism. The great majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of Sumner's theory. Instead they gave millions to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks and many other institutions. Andrew Carnegie, who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world in the period from 1890 to 1920, and a major leader against imperialism and warfare. For these and other reasons (such as the general lack of interest in academic pursuits most Gilded Age barons displayed) other writers, such as Irvin G. Wyllie and Thomas C. Leonard, argue that businessmen in the Gilded Age in fact displayed little support for the ideas of social Darwinism. The Englishman H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was heavily influenced by Darwinist thought, but reacted against social Darwinism. American novelist Jack London (1876–1916) wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social Darwinism. American film-director Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) has been described as "just an old-fashioned social Darwinist". On the basis of U.S. theory and practice, commercial Darwinism operates in markets worldwide, pitting corporation against corporation in struggles for survival. Social Darwinism has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Social Darwinism was originally brought to Japan through the works of Francis Galton and Ernst Haeckel as well as United States, British and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th century, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the empire. As Japan sought to close ranks with the west, this practice was adopted wholesale along with colonialism and its justifications. Social Darwinism was formally introduced to China through the translation by Yan Fu of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, in the course of an extensive series of translations of influential Western thought. Yan's translation strongly impacted Chinese scholars because he added national elements not found in the original. Yan Fu criticized Huxley from the perspective of Spencerian social Darwinism in his own annotations to the translation. He understood Spencer's sociology as "not merely analytical and descriptive, but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer building on Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus: Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At first, species struggle with species; as they [people] gradually progress, there is a struggle between one social group and another. The weak invariably become the prey of the strong, the stupid invariably become subservient to the clever. By the 1920s, social Darwinism found expression in the promotion of eugenics by the Chinese sociologist Pan Guangdan. When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life movement in 1934, he "... harked back to theories of Social Darwinism", writing that "only those who readapt themselves to new conditions, day by day, can live properly. When the life of a people is going through this process of readaptation, it has to remedy its own defects, and get rid of those elements which become useless. Then we call it new life." Zhang Jingsheng was a notable proponent of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism in 20th-century China. His chosen name, Jingsheng, translated to "competition for survival". He advocated a form of eugenics, recommending interracial marriage with Europeans and the Japanese to combat what he perceived as "weaknesses" of the Chinese race. In the 1860s and 1870s, social Darwinism began to take shape in the interaction between Charles Darwin and his German advocates, namely August Schleicher, Max Müller and Ernst Haeckel. Evolutionary linguistics was taken as a platform to construe a Darwinian theory of mankind. Since it was thought at the time that the orangutan and human brain were roughly the same size, Darwin and his colleagues suspected that only the invention of language could account for differentiation between humans and other Great Apes. It was suggested that the evolution of language and the mind must go hand in hand. From this perspective, empirical evidence from languages from around the world was interpreted by Haeckel as supporting the idea that nations, despite having rather similar physiology, represented such distinct lines of 'evolution' that mankind should be divided into nine different species. Haeckel constructed an evolutionary and intellectual hierarchy of such species. In a similar vein, Schleicher regarded languages as different species and sub-species, adopting Darwin's concept of selection through competition to the study of the history and spread of nations. Some of their ideas, including the concept of living space were adopted to the Nazi ideology after their deaths. Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism allowed people to counter the connection of Thron und Altar, the intertwined establishment of clergy and nobility, and provided as well the idea of progressive change and evolution of society as a whole. Ernst Haeckel propagated both Darwinism as a part of natural history and as a suitable base for a modern Weltanschauung, a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monist League. Friedrich von Hellwald had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking. A sort of aristocratic turn, the use of the struggle for life as a base of social Darwinism sensu stricto came up after 1900 with Alexander Tille's 1895 work Entwicklungsethik ('Ethics of Evolution'), which asked to move "from Darwin till Nietzsche". Further interpretations moved to ideologies propagating a racist and hierarchical society and provided ground for the later radical versions of social Darwinism. Social Darwinism came to play a major role in the ideology of Nazism, which combined it with a similarly pseudo-scientific theory of racial hierarchy to identify the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race. Nazi social Darwinist beliefs led them to retain business competition and private property as economic engines. Nazism likewise opposed social welfare based on a social Darwinist belief that the weak and feeble should perish. This association with Nazism, coupled with increasing recognition that it was scientifically unfounded, contributed to the broader rejection of social Darwinism after the end of World War II. Criticism of social Darwinism as a category Social Darwinism has many definitions, and some of them are incompatible with each other. As such, the term has been criticized for being inconsistent and not describing a coherent ideology. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics states: Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to "survival of the fittest" entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A "social Darwinist" could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist. Criticism of social Darwinism as an ideology Social Darwinism was predominantly found in laissez-faire societies where the prevailing view was that of an individualist order to society. A different form of social Darwinism was part of the ideological foundations of Nazism and other fascist movements. This form did not envision survival of the fittest within an individualist order of society, but rather advocated a type of racial and national struggle where the state directed human breeding through eugenics. Names such as "Darwinian collectivism" or "Reform Darwinism" have been suggested to describe these views to differentiate them from the individualist type of social Darwinism. As mentioned above, social Darwinism has often been linked to nationalism and imperialism. During the age of New Imperialism, the concepts of evolution justified the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races". To elitists, strong nations were composed of white people who were successful at expanding their empires, and as such, these strong nations would survive in the struggle for dominance. With this attitude, Europeans, except for Christian missionaries, seldom adopted the customs and languages of local people under their empires. Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that Darwin did not define the fittest as the strongest, or most clever, but recognized that the fittest could be those who cooperated with each other. In many animal societies, "struggle is replaced by co-operation". It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term [evolution] which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny." [Quoting Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition.] While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities", he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring" (2nd ed., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature. Kropotkin, an anarchist, described how co-operation exists in nature, and that it too must serve a purpose in natural selection. This is only social Darwinism in that the case for mutual aid in society is made by appealing to evolutionary biology. To Kropotkin, the state is "unnatural" in the sense that it prevents the realisation of what he deemed to be the next stage of human social evolution: anarcho-communism. Though there are similarities, this position differs from dialectical materialism. In contrast, Fabians in the early 1900s sought to use the state as the means through which a collectivist social Darwinism was to be put into effect. The common Fabian views of the time reconciled a specific form of state socialism and the goal of reducing poverty with eugenics policies. "[These policies] imply a total disregard for any idea of individual self-fulfilment as the aim of a socialist society ...These policies also implied a notion of the person as a set of genetically fixed qualities, where experience and environment came a very poor second by comparison with innate characteristics. In the debate between nature and nurture, the former was seen to have a massive advantage." See also References External links Final Solution Pre-Machtergreifung Post-Machtergreifung |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/author/julie-bort/] | [TOKENS: 130] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Julie Bort Venture Editor Latest from Julie Bort © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena] | [TOKENS: 138] |
Contents List of Internet phenomena Internet phenomena are social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet, such as Internet memes, which include popular catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more widespread because the instant communication facilitates word of mouth transmission. This list focuses on the Internet phenomena which are accessible regardless of local internet regulations. Advertising and products Animals Animation and comics Challenges Challenges generally feature Internet users recording themselves performing certain actions, and then distributing the resulting video through social media sites, often inspiring or daring other users to repeat the challenge. Dance Email Film and television Gaming Images Music People Politics Videos Other phenomena See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy] | [TOKENS: 5007] |
Contents Telepathy Telepathy (from Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle) 'distant' and πάθος/-πάθεια (páthos/-pátheia) 'feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience') is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression thought-transference. Telepathy experiments have historically been criticized for a lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no good evidence that telepathy exists, and the topic is generally considered by the scientific community to be pseudoscience. Telepathy is a common theme in science fiction. Origins of the concept According to historians such as Roger Luckhurst and Janet Oppenheim the origin of the concept of telepathy in Western civilization can be traced to the late 19th century and the formation of the Society for Psychical Research. As the physical sciences made significant advances, scientific concepts were applied to mental phenomena (e.g., animal magnetism), with the hope that this would help to understand paranormal phenomena. The modern concept of telepathy emerged in this context. Psychical researcher Eric Dingwall criticized SPR founding members Frederic W. H. Myers and William F. Barrett for trying to "prove" telepathy rather than objectively analyze whether or not it existed. Thought reading In the late 19th century, the magician and mentalist Washington Irving Bishop would perform "thought reading" demonstrations. Bishop claimed no supernatural powers and ascribed his powers to muscular sensitivity (reading thoughts from unconscious bodily cues). Bishop was investigated by a group of scientists including the editor of the British Medical Journal and the psychologist Francis Galton. Bishop performed several feats successfully, such as correctly identifying a selected spot on a table and locating a hidden object. During the experiment, Bishop required physical contact with a subject who knew the correct answer. He would hold the hand or wrist of the helper. The scientists concluded that Bishop was not a genuine telepath but was instead using a highly trained skill to detect ideomotor movements. Another famous thought reader was the magician Stuart Cumberland. He was famous for performing blindfolded feats such as identifying a hidden object in a room that a person had picked out or asking someone to imagine a murder scene and then attempt to read the subject's thoughts and identify the victim and reenact the crime. Cumberland claimed to possess no genuine psychic ability and his thought-reading performances could only be demonstrated by holding the hand of his subject to read their muscular movements. He came into dispute with psychical researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research who were searching for genuine cases of telepathy. Cumberland argued that both telepathy and communication with the dead were impossible and that the minds of people cannot be read through telepathy, but only by muscle reading. Case studies In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters (Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by the Society for Psychical Research and believed to have genuine psychic ability. However, during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. George Albert Smith and Douglas Blackburn were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud: For nearly thirty years the telepathic experiments conducted by Mr. G. A. Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the basic evidence of the truth of thought transference... ...the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish. Between 1916 and 1924, Gilbert Murray conducted 236 experiments into telepathy and reported 36% as successful. However, it was suggested that the results could be explained by hyperaesthesia as he could hear what was being said by the sender. Psychologist Leonard T. Troland had carried out experiments in telepathy at Harvard University which were reported in 1917. The subjects produced below chance expectations. Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers. Both Doyle and Stead wrote that the Zancigs performed telepathy. In 1924, Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used under the title of Our Secrets!! in a London newspaper. In 1924, Robert H. Gault of Northwestern University with Gardner Murphy conducted the first American radio test for telepathy. The results were entirely negative. One of their experiments involved the attempted thought transmission of a chosen number between one and one-thousand. Out of 2,010 replies, none was correct. This is below the theoretical chance figure of two correct replies in such a situation. In February 1927, with the co-operation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), V. J. Woolley, who was at the time the Research Officer for the SPR, arranged a telepathy experiment in which radio listeners were asked to take part. The experiment involved 'agents' thinking about five selected objects in an office at Tavistock Square, whilst listeners on the radio were asked to identify the objects from the BBC studio at Savoy Hill. 24,659 answers were received. The results revealed no evidence of telepathy. A famous experiment in telepathy was recorded by the American author Upton Sinclair in his book Mental Radio which documents Sinclair's test of psychic abilities of Mary Craig Sinclair, his second wife. She attempted to duplicate 290 pictures which were drawn by her husband. Sinclair claimed Mary successfully duplicated 65 of them, with 155 "partial successes" and 70 failures. However, these experiments were not conducted in a controlled scientific laboratory environment. Science writer Martin Gardner suggested that the possibility of sensory leakage during the experiment had not been ruled out: In the first place, an intuitive wife, who knows her husband intimately, may be able to guess with a fair degree of accuracy what he is likely to draw—particularly if the picture is related to some freshly recalled event the two experienced in common. At first, simple pictures like chairs and tables would likely predominate, but as these are exhausted, the field of choice narrows and pictures are more likely to be suggested by recent experiences. It is also possible that Sinclair may have given conversational hints during some of the tests—hints which in his strong will to believe, he would promptly forget about. Also, one must not rule out the possibility that in many tests, made across the width of a room, Mrs. Sinclair may have seen the wiggling of the top of a pencil, or arm movements, which would convey to her unconscious a rough notion of the drawing. The Turner-Ownbey long distance telepathy experiment was discovered to contain flaws. May Frances Turner positioned herself in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory whilst Sara Ownbey claimed to receive transmissions 250 miles away. For the experiment Turner would think of a symbol and write it down whilst Ownbey would write her guesses. The scores were highly successful and both records were supposed to be sent to J. B. Rhine; however, Ownbey sent them to Turner. Critics pointed out this invalidated the results as she could have simply written her own record to agree with the other. When the experiment was repeated and the records were sent to Rhine the scores dropped to average. Another example is the experiment carried out by the author Harold Sherman with the explorer Hubert Wilkins who carried out their own experiment in telepathy for five and a half months starting in October 1937. This took place when Sherman was in New York and Wilkins was in the Arctic. The experiment consisted of Sherman and Wilkins at the end of each day to relax and visualise a mental image or "thought impression" of the events or thoughts they had experienced in the day and then to record those images and thoughts on paper in a diary. The results at the end when comparing Sherman's and Wilkins' diaries were claimed to be more than 60 percent. The full results of the experiments were published in 1942 in a book by Sherman and Wilkins titled Thoughts Through Space. In the book, both Sherman and Wilkins had written they believed they had demonstrated that it was possible to send and receive thought impressions from the mind of one person to another. The magician John Booth wrote that the experiment was not an example of telepathy as a high percentage of misses had occurred. Booth wrote it was more likely that the "hits" were the result of "coincidence, law of averages, subconscious expectancy, logical inference or a plain lucky guess". A review of their book in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry cast doubt on their experiment, noting "the study was published five years after it was conducted, arouses suspicion on the validity of the conclusions. In 1948, on the BBC radio Maurice Fogel made the claim that he could demonstrate telepathy. This intrigued the journalist Arthur Helliwell who wanted to discover his methods. He found that Fogel's mind reading acts were all based on trickery as he relied on information about members of his audience before the show started. Helliwell exposed Fogel's methods in a newspaper article. Although Fogel managed to fool some people into believing he could perform genuine telepathy, the majority of his audience knew he was a showman. In a series of experiments Samuel Soal and his assistant K. M. Goldney examined 160 subjects over 128,000 trials and obtained no evidence for the existence of telepathy. Soal tested Basil Shackleton and Gloria Stewart between 1941 and 1943 in over five hundred sittings and over twenty thousand guesses. Shackleton scored 2890 compared with a chance expectation of 2308 and Gloria scored 9410 compared with a chance level of 7420. It was later discovered the results had been tampered with. Gretl Albert who was present during many of the experiments said she had witnessed Soal altering the records during the sessions. Betty Marwick discovered Soal had not used the method of random selection of numbers as he had claimed. Marwick showed that there had been manipulation of the score sheets and all experiments reported by Soal had thereby become discredited. In 1979 the physicists John G. Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski wrote the only scientifically feasible explanation for telepathy could be electromagnetism (EM) involving EM fields. In a series of experiments the EM levels were many orders of magnitude lower than calculated and no paranormal effects were observed. Both Taylor and Balanovski wrote their results were a strong argument against the validity of telepathy. Research in anomalistic psychology has discovered that in some cases telepathy can be explained by a covariation bias. In an experiment (Schienle et al. 1996) 22 believers and 20 skeptics were asked to judge the covariation between transmitted symbols and the corresponding feedback given by a receiver. According to the results the believers overestimated the number of successful transmissions whilst the skeptics made accurate hit judgments. The results from another telepathy experiment involving 48 undergraduate college students (Rudski, 2002) were explained by hindsight and confirmation biases. In 1995, Rupert Sheldrake published his book on alleged telepathic phenomena Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, claiming among other things that dogs have the telepathic ability to know when their owners are coming home. In 1998, Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith and Julie Milton published a paper putting forward other explanations for the behavior Sheldrake observed in animals while saying the results from their own experiments did not support Sheldrake's thesis. In parapsychology Within parapsychology, telepathy, often along with precognition and clairvoyance, is described as an aspect of extrasensory perception (ESP) or "anomalous cognition" that parapsychologists believe is transferred through a hypothetical psychic mechanism they call "psi". Parapsychologists have reported experiments they use to test for telepathic abilities. Among the most well known are the use of Zener cards and the Ganzfeld experiment. Several forms of telepathy have been suggested: Zener cards are marked with five distinctive symbols. When using them, one individual is designated the "sender" and another the "receiver". The sender selects a random card and visualizes the symbol on it, while the receiver attempts to determine that symbol telepathically. Statistically, the receiver has a 20% chance of randomly guessing the correct symbol, so to demonstrate telepathy, they must repeatedly score a success rate that is significantly higher than 20%. If not conducted properly, this method is vulnerable to sensory leakage and card counting. J. B. Rhine's experiments with Zener cards were discredited due to the discovery that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues. Once Rhine took precautions in response to criticisms of his methods, he was unable to find any high-scoring subjects. Due to the methodological problems, parapsychologists no longer utilize card-guessing studies. Parapsychological studies into dream telepathy were carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York led by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman. They concluded the results from some of their experiments supported dream telepathy. However, the results have not been independently replicated. The psychologist James Alcock has written the dream telepathy experiments at Maimonides have failed to provide evidence for telepathy and "lack of replication is rampant." The picture target experiments that were conducted by Krippner and Ullman were criticized by C. E. M. Hansel. According to Hansel there were weaknesses in the design of the experiments in the way in which the agent became aware of their target picture. Only the agent should have known the target and no other person until the judging of targets had been completed, however, an experimenter was with the agent when the target envelope was opened. Hansel also wrote there had been poor controls in the experiment as the main experimenter could communicate with the subject. An attempt to replicate the experiments that used picture targets was carried out by Edward Belvedere and David Foulkes. The finding was that neither the subject nor the judges matched the targets with dreams above chance level. Results from other experiments by Belvedere and Foulkes were also negative. When using the Ganzfeld experiment to test for telepathy, one individual is designated as the receiver and is placed inside a controlled environment where they are deprived of sensory input, and another person is designated as the sender and is placed in a separate location. The receiver is then required to receive information from the sender. The nature of the information may vary between experiments. The Ganzfeld experiment studies that were examined by Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton had methodological problems that were well documented. Honorton reported only 36% of the studies used duplicate target sets of pictures to avoid handling cues. Hyman discovered flaws in all of the 42 Ganzfeld experiments and to access each experiment, he devised a set of 12 categories of flaws. Six of these concerned statistical defects, the other six covered procedural flaws such as inadequate documentation, randomization and security as well as possibilities of sensory leakage. Over half of the studies failed to safeguard against sensory leakage and all of the studies contained at least one of the 12 flaws. Because of the flaws, Honorton agreed with Hyman the 42 Ganzfeld studies could not support the claim for the existence of psi. Possibilities of sensory leakage in the Ganzfeld experiments included the receivers hearing what was going on in the sender's room next door as the rooms were not soundproof and the sender's fingerprints to be visible on the target object for the receiver to see. Hyman also reviewed the autoganzfeld experiments and discovered a pattern in the data that implied a visual cue may have taken place: The most suspicious pattern was that the hit rate for a given target increased with the frequency of occurrence of that target in the experiment. The hit rate for the targets that occurred only once was right at the chance expectation of 25%. For targets that appeared twice the hit rate crept up to 28%. For those that occurred three times it was 38%, and for those targets that occurred six or more times, the hit rate was 52%. Each time a videotape is played its quality can degrade. It is plausible then, that when a frequently used clip is the target for a given session, it may be physically distinguishable from the other three decoy clips that are presented to the subject for judging. Surprisingly, the parapsychological community has not taken this finding seriously. They still include the autoganzfeld series in their meta-analyses and treat it as convincing evidence for the reality of psi. Hyman wrote the autoganzfeld experiments were flawed because they did not preclude the possibility of sensory leakage. In 2010, Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio analyzed 29 ganzfeld studies from 1997 to 2008. Of the 1,498 trials, 483 produced hits, corresponding to a hit rate of 32.2%. This hit rate is statistically significant with p < .001. Participants selected for personality traits and personal characteristics thought to be psi-conducive were found to perform significantly better than unselected participants in the ganzfeld condition. Hyman (2010) published a rebuttal to Storm et al. According to Hyman "reliance on meta-analysis as the sole basis for justifying the claim that an anomaly exists and that the evidence for it is consistent and replicable is fallacious. It distorts what scientists mean by confirmatory evidence." Hyman wrote the ganzfeld studies have not been independently replicated and have failed to produce evidence for telepathy. Storm et al. published a response to Hyman claiming the ganzfeld experimental design has proved to be consistent and reliable but parapsychology is a struggling discipline that has not received much attention so further research on the subject is necessary. Rouder et al. 2013 wrote that critical evaluation of Storm et al.'s meta-analysis reveals no evidence for telepathy, no plausible mechanism and omitted replication failures. A 2016 paper examined questionable research practices in the ganzfeld experiments. Twin telepathy is a belief that has been described as a myth in psychological literature. Psychologists Stephen Hupp and Jeremy Jewell have noted that all experiments on the subject have failed to provide any scientific evidence for telepathy between twins. According to Hupp and Jewell there are various behavioral and genetic factors that contribute to the twin telepathy myth "identical twins typically spend a lot of time together and are usually exposed to very similar environments. Thus, it's not at all surprising that they act in similar ways and are adept at anticipating and forecasting each other's reactions to events." A 1993 study by Susan Blackmore investigated the claims of twin telepathy. In an experiment with six sets of twins one subject would act as the sender and the other the receiver. The sender was given selected objects, photographs or numbers and would attempt to psychically send the information to the receiver. The results from the experiment were negative, no evidence of telepathy was observed. The skeptical investigator Benjamin Radford has noted that "Despite decades of research trying to prove telepathy, there is no credible scientific evidence that psychic powers exist, either in the general population or among twins specifically. The idea that two people who shared their mother's womb—or even who share the same DNA—have a mysterious mental connection is an intriguing one not borne out in science." There are multiple anecdotes in "The Telepathy Tapes" podcast of people on the autistic spectrum transferring information telepathically. Scientific reception A variety of tests have been performed to demonstrate telepathy, but there is no scientific evidence that the power exists. A panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded that "despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or 'mind over matter' exercises... Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the contention that these phenomena exist." The scientific community considers parapsychology a pseudoscience. There is no known mechanism for telepathy. Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge has written that telepathy would contradict laws of science and the claim that "signals can be transmitted across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics". Physicist John Taylor has written that the experiments that have been claimed by parapsychologists to support evidence for the existence of telepathy are based on the use of shaky statistical analysis and poor design, and attempts to duplicate such experiments by the scientific community have failed. Taylor also wrote the arguments used by parapsychologists for the feasibility of such phenomena are based on distortions of theoretical physics as well as "complete ignorance" of relevant areas of physics. Psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote that cases of telepathy can be explained by people underestimating the probability of coincidences. According to Sutherland, "most stories about this phenomenon concern people who are close to one another—husband and wife or brother and sister. Since such people have much in common, it is highly probable that they will sometimes think the same thought at the same time." Graham Reed, a specialist in anomalistic psychology, noted that experiments into telepathy often involve the subject relaxing and reporting the 'messages' to consist of colored geometric shapes. Reed wrote that these are a common type of hypnagogic image and not evidence for telepathic communication. Outside of parapsychology, telepathy is generally explained as the result of fraud, self-delusion and/or self-deception and not as a paranormal power. Psychological research has also revealed other explanations such as confirmation bias, expectancy bias, sensory leakage, subjective validation, and wishful thinking. Virtually all of the instances of more popular psychic phenomena, such as mediumship, can be attributed to non-paranormal techniques such as cold reading. Magicians such as Ian Rowland and Derren Brown have demonstrated techniques and results similar to those of popular psychics, albeit without claiming paranormal skills. They have identified, described, and developed psychological techniques of cold reading and hot reading. Psychiatry The notion of telepathy is not dissimilar to three clinical concepts: delusions of thought insertion/removal and thought broadcasting. This similarity might explain how an individual might come to the conclusion that he or she were experiencing telepathy. Thought insertion/removal is a symptom of psychosis, particularly of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or substance-induced psychosis. Psychiatric patients who experience this symptom falsely believe that some of their thoughts are not their own and that others (e.g., other people, aliens, demons or fallen angels, or conspiring intelligence agencies, or artificial intelligences) are putting thoughts into their minds (thought insertion). Some patients feel as if thoughts are being taken out of their minds or deleted (thought removal). Schizophrenic patients suffering from the form of alleged telepathy known as thought broadcasting believe that their private thoughts are being broadcast to other people against their informed consent. Along with other symptoms of psychosis, delusions of thought insertion may be reduced by antipsychotic medication. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists believe and empirical findings support the idea that people with schizotypy and schizotypal personality disorder are particularly likely to believe in telepathy. Use in fiction Telepathy is a common theme in science fiction. See also Notes Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics] | [TOKENS: 6543] |
Contents Robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. A roboticist is someone who specializes in robotics. Robotics usually combines four aspects of design work: a power source (e.g. a battery), mechanical construction, a control system (electrical circuits), and software (run by remote control or artificial intelligence). The goal of most robotics is to design machines that can assist humans in various fields, such as agriculture, construction, domestic work, food processing, inventory management, manufacturing, medicine, military, mining, space exploration, and transportation. Robots impact humans by displacing workers. Some expect this to occur at an increasing rate, leading to proposed solutions such as basic income. Robotics is itself a lucrative business that creates careers, especially for postgraduates. Roboticists often aim to create machines that seem to interface naturally with humans. The field is under active research and development, with areas of interest including robot kinematics and quantum robotics. Design Robotics usually combines four aspects of design work to create a robot: Many different types of batteries can be used as a power source. Most are lead–acid batteries, which are safe and have relatively long shelf lives but are rather heavy compared to silver–cadmium batteries, which are much smaller in volume and much more expensive. Designing a battery-powered robot needs to take into account factors such as safety, cycle lifetime, and weight. Generators, often some type of internal combustion engine, can also be used, but are often mechanically complex and inefficient. Additionally, a tether could connect the robot to a power supply, saving weight and space, but requiring a cumbersome cable. Potential power sources include: Actuators are the "muscles" of a robot, the parts which convert stored energy into movement. The most popular actuators are electric motors that rotate a wheel or gear and linear actuators that control factory robots. Most robots use electric motors—often brushed and brushless DC motors in portable robots or AC motors in industrial robots and computer numerical control machines—especially in systems with lighter loads and where the predominant form of motion is rotational. Meanwhile, linear actuators move in and out and often have quicker direction changes, particularly when large forces are needed, such as with industrial robotics. They are typically powered by oil or compressed air, but can also be powered by electricity, usually via a motor and a leadscrew. The mechanical rack and pinion is common. Recent alternatives to DC motors are piezoelectric motors, including ultrasonic motors, in which tiny piezoceramic elements vibrate many thousands of times per second, causing linear or rotary motion. One type uses the vibration of the piezo elements to step the motor in a circle or a straight line; another type uses the piezo elements to vibrate a nut or drive a screw. The advantages of these motors are nanometer resolution, speed, and force for their size. Series elastic actuation (SEA) relies on introducing intentional elasticity between the motor actuator and the load for robust force control. Due to the resultant lower reflected inertia, series elastic actuation improves safety during robot interactions or collisions. Further, it provides energy efficiency and shock absorption (mechanical filtering) while reducing excessive wear on the transmission and other components. This approach has successfully been employed in various robots, particularly advanced manufacturing robots and walking humanoid robots. The controller design of a series elastic actuator is most often performed within the passivity framework as it ensures the safety of interaction with unstructured environments. However, this framework suffers from stringent limitations imposed on the controller, which may impact performance.[verification needed] Pneumatic artificial muscles, also known as air muscles, are special tubes that expand (typically up to 42%) when air is forced inside them; they are used in some robot applications. Muscle wire, also known as shape memory alloy, is a material that contracts (under 5%) when electricity is applied; they have been used for some small robots. Electroactive polymers (EAPs or EPAMs) are a plastic material that can contract substantially (up to 380% activation strain) from electricity and have been used in the facial muscles and arms of humanoid robots, as well as to enable new robots to float, fly, swim or walk. Additionally, elastic carbon nanotubes are a promising experimental artificial muscle technology. The absence of defects in carbon nanotubes enables these filaments to deform elastically by several percent, with energy storage levels of perhaps 10 J/cm3 for metal nanotubes. Human biceps could be replaced with wire of this material measuring 8 millimetres (3⁄8 in) in diameter, feasibly allowing future robots to outperform humans. Most mobile robots have four wheels or continuous tracks. Six wheels can give better traction in outdoor terrain, while tracks provide even more grip. Tracked wheels are common for outdoor off-road robots, but are difficult to use indoors; examples include NASA's urban robot Urbie. A small number of skating robots have been developed, one of which is a multi-mode walking and skating device with four legs and unpowered wheels. Robots with fewer wheels can have advantages such as greater efficiency, reduced parts, and navigation through confined areas. Two-wheeled balancing robots generally use a gyroscope to detect how much a robot is falling and drive the wheels proportionally up to hundreds of times per second to counterbalance the fall, based on inverted pendulum dynamics. NASA's Robonaut has been mounted to a Segway for a similar effect. A one-wheeled robot balances on a round ball; Carnegie Mellon University's Ballbot is the approximate height and width of a person. Several attempts have also been made to build spherical robots (also known as orb bots or ball bots), which move by spinning a weight inside the ball or rotating outer sphere shells. Walking is a difficult and dynamic problem to solve. Several robots have been made which can walk reliably on two legs, but none can yet do so as reliably as a human. There has been much study on human-inspired walking, such as AMBER lab, which was established in 2008 by the mechanical engineering department at Texas A&M University. Many other robots have been built that walk on more than two legs, being significantly easier. Walking robots could be used for uneven terrains, providing a high degree of mobility and efficiency, but two-legged robots can currently only handle flat floors or perhaps stairs. Some approaches have included: A modern passenger airliner is essentially a flying robot, with two humans to manage it. The autopilot can control the plane through takeoff, normal flight, and landing. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be smaller and lighter and fly into dangerous territory for military use, perhaps even being triggered to fire automatically. Other flying robots include cruise missiles, the entomopter, and the Epson micro helicopter robot. Additionally, some lighter-than-air robots are propelled by paddles and guided by sonar. Biomimetic flying robots (BFRs) take inspiration from flying mammals, birds, or insects. They can have flapping wings, which generate the lift and thrust, or they can be propeller-actuated. Flapping-wing designs have increased maneuverability and reduced energy consumption compared to propeller actuation. BFRs inspired by mammals and birds share similar flight characteristics and design considerations. For instance, they minimize edge fluttering and pressure-induced wingtip curl by increasing the rigidity of the wing edge. Several different approaches have been used to develop robots that have the ability to climb vertical surfaces. One approach mimics the movements of a human climber on a wall with protrusions; adjusting the center of mass and moving each limb in turn to gain leverage. Another approach uses the specialized toe-pad method of wall-climbing geckoes, which can run on smooth surfaces such as vertical glass, one example being named Speedy Freelander. A third approach is to mimic the motion of a snake climbing a pole. Separately, snake robots can be used for horizontal navigation, possibly being able to search through confined spaces and navigate amphibiously. It is calculated that when swimming, some fish can achieve a propulsive efficiency greater than 90%. Furthermore, they can accelerate and maneuver far better than any man-made boat or submarine and cause less disturbance, being a desirable ability for aquatic robots, one of which models fish locomotion. One example copies the streamlined shape and propulsion of the front 'flippers' of penguins. Others emulate the locomotion of the manta ray and jellyfish. In 2014, a robotic fish outperformed some real fish in average maximum velocity and endurance. Sailboat robots, such as Vaimos, have been developed in order to make measurements at the surface of the ocean. Since saiboat robots are wind-propelled, the batteries only power the computer, communication and actuators (to tune the rudder and sail). Two major sailboat robot competitions occur at the Microtransat Challenge and the World Robotic Sailing Championship. A definition of robotic manipulation has been described by Matt Mason as "[the robot's] control of its environment through selective contact". Robots need to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy, move or otherwise have an effect. Thus the functional end of a robot arm intended to make the effect (whether a hand, or tool) are often referred to as end effectors, while the "arm" is referred to as a manipulator. Most robot arms have replaceable end-effectors, each allowing them to perform some small range of tasks. Some have a fixed manipulator that cannot be replaced, while a few have one very general-purpose manipulator, for example, a humanoid hand. Examples of the latter include the Shadow Hand, MANUS, and the Schunk hand, which have powerful dexterity intelligence, as many as 20 degrees of freedom, and hundreds of tactile sensors. One of the most common types of end-effectors are "grippers". In its simplest manifestation, it consists of just two fingers that can open and close to pick up and let go of a range of small objects. Fingers can, for example, be made of a chain with a metal wire running through it. Hands that resemble and work more like a human hand include the Shadow Hand and the Robonaut hand. Hands that are of a mid-level complexity include the Delft hand. Mechanical grippers can come in various types, including friction and encompassing jaws. Friction jaws use all the force of the gripper to hold the object in place using friction. Encompassing jaws cradle the object in place, using less friction. Suction end-effectors, powered by vacuum generators, are very simple astrictive devices that can hold very large loads provided the prehension surface is smooth enough to ensure suction. Pick-and-place robots for electronic components and for large objects like car windscreens, often use very simple vacuum end-effectors. Suction is a highly used type of end-effector in industry, in part because the natural compliance of soft suction end-effectors can enable a robot to be more robust in the presence of imperfect robotic perception. As an example: consider the case of a robot vision system that estimates the position of a water bottle but has 1 centimeter of error. While this may cause a rigid mechanical gripper to puncture the water bottle, the soft suction end-effector may just bend slightly and conform to the shape of the water bottle surface. The mechanical structure of a robot must be controlled to perform tasks. The control of a robot involves three distinct phases – perception, processing, and action (robotic paradigms). Sensors give information about the environment or the robot itself (e.g. the position of its joints or its end effector). This information is then processed to be stored or transmitted and to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors), which move the mechanical structure to achieve the required coordinated motion or force actions. The processing phase can range in complexity. At a reactive level, it may translate raw sensor information directly into actuator commands (e.g. firing motor power electronic gates based directly upon encoder feedback signals to achieve the required torque/velocity of the shaft). Sensor fusion and internal models may first be used to estimate parameters of interest (e.g. the position of the robot's gripper) from noisy sensor data. An immediate task (such as moving the gripper in a certain direction until an object is detected with a proximity sensor) is sometimes inferred from these estimates. Techniques from control theory are generally used to convert the higher-level tasks into individual commands that drive the actuators, most often using kinematic and dynamic models of the mechanical structure. At longer time scales or with more sophisticated tasks, the robot may need to build and reason with a "cognitive" model. Cognitive models try to represent the robot, the world, and how the two interact. Pattern recognition and computer vision can be used to track objects. Mapping techniques can be used to build maps of the world. Finally, motion planning and other AI techniques may be used to figure out how to act. For example, a planner may figure out how to achieve a task without hitting obstacles, falling over, etc. Modern commercial robotic control systems are highly complex, integrate multiple sensors and effectors, have many interacting degrees of freedom and require operator interfaces, programming tools and real-time capabilities. They are oftentimes interconnected to wider communication networks and in many cases are now both IoT-enabled and mobile. Progress towards open architecture, layered, user-friendly and 'intelligent' sensor-based interconnected robots has emerged from earlier concepts related to Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), and several 'open or 'hybrid' reference architectures exist which assist developers of robot control software and hardware to move beyond traditional, earlier notions of 'closed' robot control systems have been proposed. Open architecture controllers are said to be better able to meet the growing requirements of a wide range of robot users, including system developers, end users and research scientists, and are better positioned to deliver the advanced robotic concepts related to Industry 4.0. In addition to utilizing many established features of robot controllers, such as position, velocity and force control of end effectors, they also enable IoT interconnection and the implementation of more advanced sensor fusion and control techniques, including adaptive control, fuzzy control and artificial neural network–based control. When implemented in real time, such techniques can potentially improve the stability and performance of robots operating in unknown or uncertain environments by enabling the control systems to learn and adapt to environmental changes. There are several examples of reference architectures for robot controllers, and also examples of successful implementations of actual robot controllers developed from them. One example of a generic reference architecture and associated interconnected, open-architecture robot and controller implementation was used in a number of research and development studies, including prototype implementation of novel advanced and intelligent control and environment mapping methods in real time. Sensors allow robots to receive information about a certain measurement of the environment, or internal components. This is essential for robots to perform their tasks, and act upon any changes in the environment to calculate the appropriate response. They are used for various forms of measurements, to give the robots warnings about safety or malfunctions, and to provide real-time information about the task it is performing. Sensors can include cameras and microphones, as well as those that monitor network signals, power level, pressure, and temperature. Current robotic and prosthetic hands receive far less tactile information than the human hand. Recent research has developed a tactile sensor array that mimics the mechanical properties and touch receptors of human fingertips. The sensor array is constructed as a rigid core surrounded by conductive fluid contained by an elastomeric skin. Electrodes are mounted on the surface of the rigid core and are connected to an impedance-measuring device within the core. When the artificial skin touches an object the fluid path around the electrodes is deformed, producing impedance changes that map the forces received from the object. The researchers expect that an important function of such artificial fingertips will be adjusting the robotic grip on held objects. Scientists from several European countries and Israel developed a prosthetic hand in 2009, called SmartHand, which functions like a real one—allowing patients to write with it, type on a keyboard, play piano, and perform other fine movements. The prosthesis has sensors which enable the patient to sense real feelings in its fingertips. Other common forms of sensing in robotics use lidar, radar, and sonar. Lidar measures the distance to a target by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflected light with a sensor. Radar uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. Sonar uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water. Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see. As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems that extract information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as video sequences and views from cameras. In most practical computer vision applications, the computers are pre-programmed to solve a particular task, but methods based on learning are now becoming increasingly common. Computer vision systems rely on image sensors that detect electromagnetic radiation which is typically in the form of either visible or infrared light. The sensors are designed using solid-state physics. The process by which light propagates and reflects off surfaces is explained using optics. Sophisticated image sensors even require quantum mechanics to provide a complete understanding of the image formation process. Robots can also be equipped with multiple vision sensors to be better able to compute the sense of depth in the environment. Like human eyes, robots' "eyes" must also be able to focus on a particular area of interest, and also adjust to variations in light intensities. There is a subfield within computer vision where artificial systems are designed to mimic the processing and behavior of a biological system, at different levels of complexity. More abstractly, robot forms inspired by origami are designed to sense and analyze in extreme environments. A program is how a robot decides when or how to do something. They can be run by remote control, artificial intelligence (AI), or a hybrid of the two. A robot with remote-control programming, possibly operated by haptic or teleoperated devices, has a preexisting set of commands that it will only perform when it receives a signal from a control source—essentially a form of automation, with humans having nearly complete control over the robot. Meanwhile, AI-supported autonomous robots operate without a control source and can use their programming to determine responses to various stimuli. They do not require complex cognition, e.g. industrial robots that carry out repetitive tasks in assembly plants. The operator may simply select tasks or certain modes of operation, which the robot performs automatically. Hybrid robot may be assisted by an operator who commands certain moves or actions, which the robot uses its programming to perform. There is an increasing interest in robots that can operate autonomously in a dynamic environment. These require a combination of mapping and navigation hardware and software to traverse their environment. In particular, unpredictable moving objects can cause collisions. Some highly advanced robots such as ASIMO and the Meinü robot are noted for their navigation systems. Self-driving cars are capable of sensing the environment and making navigational decisions based on this information, potentially utilizing a swarm of autonomous robots. Most of these robots employ a Global Positioning System (GPS) device, radar, and sometimes lidar, video cameras, and inertial guidance systems for better navigation between waypoints. Applications Current and potential applications of robots include: Human factors Robotics engineers design robots, maintain them, develop new applications for them, and conduct research to expand the potential of robotics. Robots have become a popular educational tool in some middle and high schools, particularly in parts of the US, as well as in numerous youth summer camps, raising interest in programming, AI, and robotics among students. Robotics is an essential component in many modern manufacturing environments. As factories increase their use of robots, the number of robotics-related jobs grow and have been observed to be steadily rising. The employment of robots in industries has increased productivity and efficiency savings and is typically seen as a long-term investment for benefactors. A study found that 47% of US jobs are at risk to automation "over some unspecified number of years". These claims have been criticized on the ground that social policy, not AI, causes unemployment. In 2016, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking stated in a Guardian article that "The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining." The rise of robotics is thus often used as an argument for universal basic income. According to a September 2021 GlobalData report, the robotics industry was worth USD $45 billion in 2020, and by 2030 it will have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 29% to $568 bn, driving jobs in robotics and related industries. Robotics is an interdisciplinary field, primarily combining mechanical engineering and computer science but also drawing on electronic engineering and other subjects. Undergraduate degrees are usually obtained in one of these subjects prior to the pursuance of a graduate degree in robotics. Robotics careers are widely predicted to grow in the 21st century, as robots replace more manual and intellectual human work. For effective use in domestic environments, the way robots receive commands should be intuitive even for people with no technological skillset. Science-fiction authors and futurists often envision humans communicating with robots via speech, gestures, and facial expressions, rather than a command-line interface.[additional citation(s) needed] Studies have shown that interacting with a robot by looking at, touching, or even imagining interacting with the robot can reduce negative feelings that some people have about robots. Conversely, strong pre-existing negative sentiments can be increased by interacting with a robot. Regardless of whether personality is desirable in commercial robots, researchers are trying to create robots that demonstrate one. Sounds, facial expressions, and body language are used to convey emotions, e.g. in the toy robot dinosaur Pleo (c. 2006). Further, robots may incorporate awareness of personal space to their interactions. Other hurdles exist when a voice is used to interact with humans. For social reasons, synthetic voice proves suboptimal as a communication medium, making it necessary to develop the emotional component of robotic voice through various techniques. One of the earliest examples is a teaching robot named Leachim developed in 1974 by Michael J. Freeman, who converted digital memory to rudimentary verbal speech on pre-recorded computer discs. Leachim was programmed to teach students in The Bronx, New York. Meanwhile, recognizing human speech in real time is a difficult task for a computer, mostly because of the great variability of speech. The sound of a word can vary greatly depending on accent, acoustics, volume, the previous word spoken, and the speaker's health. Great strides have been made in the field since Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek designed the first "voice input system" in 1952. By the end of the 20th century, the best systems could recognize continuous, natural speech up to 160 words per minute with an accuracy of 95%. With the help of AI, machines can use voice to identify emotions such as satisfied or angry. Social robots will likely need to be able to recognize gestures (and perhaps perform them) to assist verbal communication. Robots may be able to be programmed to recognize emotions conveyed by facial expressions. Robotic faces have been constructed by Hanson Robotics using their elastic polymer called Frubber, allowing a large number of facial expressions due to the elasticity of the rubber facial coating and embedded subsurface motors (servos). The coating and servos are built on a metal skull. A robot should know how to approach a human, judging by their facial expression and body language. Whether a person looks happy, frightened, or crazed affects the expected interaction. Likewise, robots like Kismet and the more recent addition, Nexi can produce a range of facial expressions, allowing it to engage in meaningful social exchanges. Robots themselves may be programmed to generate artificial emotions, composed of a sequence of facial expressions or gestures. An example is Robin the Robot [hy] developed by an Armenian IT company Expper Technologies, which uses AI-based peer-to-peer interaction. Its main task is achieving emotional well-being, i.e. overcome stress and anxiety. Robin was trained to analyze facial expressions and use his face to display his emotions given the context. A discussion paper drawn up by EU-OSHA highlights how the spread of robotics presents both opportunities and challenges for occupational safety and health (OSH). The greatest OSH benefits stemming from the wider use of robotics should be substitution for people working in unhealthy or dangerous environments. In space, defense, security, or the nuclear industry, but also in logistics, maintenance, and inspection, autonomous robots are particularly useful in replacing human workers performing dirty, dull or unsafe tasks, thus avoiding workers' exposures to hazardous agents and conditions and reducing physical, ergonomic and psychosocial risks. For example, robots are already used to perform repetitive and monotonous tasks, to handle radioactive material or to work in explosive atmospheres. In the future, many other highly repetitive, risky or unpleasant tasks will be performed by robots in a variety of sectors like agriculture, construction, transport, healthcare, firefighting or cleaning services. Moreover, there are certain skills to which humans will be better suited than machines for some time to come and the question is how to achieve the best combination of human and robot skills. The advantages of robotics include heavy-duty jobs with precision and repeatability, whereas the advantages of humans include creativity, decision-making, flexibility, and adaptability. This need to combine optimal skills has resulted in collaborative robots and humans sharing a common workspace more closely and led to the development of new approaches and standards to guarantee the safety of the "man-robot merger". Some European countries are including robotics in their national programs and trying to promote a safe and flexible cooperation between robots and operators to achieve better productivity. For example, the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) organizes annual workshops on the topic "human-robot collaboration". In the future, cooperation between robots and humans will be diversified, with robots increasing their autonomy and human-robot collaboration reaching completely new forms. Current approaches and technical standards aiming to protect employees from the risk of working with collaborative robots will have to be revised. Great user experience predicts the needs, experiences, behaviors, language and cognitive abilities, and other factors of each user group. It then uses these insights to produce a product or solution that is ultimately useful and usable. For robots, user experience begins with an understanding of the robot's intended task and environment, while considering any possible social impact the robot may have on human operations and interactions with it. It defines that communication as the transmission of information through signals, which are elements perceived through touch, sound, smell and sight. The author states that the signal connects the sender to the receiver and consists of three parts: the signal itself, what it refers to, and the interpreter. Body postures and gestures, facial expressions, hand and head movements are all part of nonverbal behavior and communication. Robots are no exception when it comes to human-robot interaction. Therefore, humans use their verbal and nonverbal behaviors to communicate their defining characteristics. Similarly, social robots need this coordination to perform human-like behaviors. Research Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robots, alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new ways to manufacture them. Other investigations, such as MIT's cyberflora project, are almost wholly academic. To describe the level of advancement of a robot, the term "Generation Robots" can be used. This term is coined by Professor Hans Moravec, Principal Research Scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute in describing the near future evolution of robot technology. Moravec predicted in 1997 that first-generation robots should have an intellectual capacity comparable to perhaps a lizard and should become available by 2010. Because the first-generation robot would be incapable of learning, however, Moravec predicted that the second-generation robot would be an improvement over the first and become available by 2020, with the intelligence maybe comparable to that of a mouse. The third-generation robot should have intelligence comparable to that of a monkey. Moravec predicted that fourth-generation robots, robots with human intelligence, would become possible but not likely before around 2040–2050.[needs update] The study of motion can be divided into kinematics and dynamics. Direct kinematics or forward kinematics refers to the calculation of end effector position, orientation, velocity, and acceleration when the corresponding joint values are known. Inverse kinematics refers to the opposite case in which required joint values are calculated for given end effector values, as done in path planning. Some special aspects of kinematics include handling of redundancy (different possibilities of performing the same movement), collision avoidance, and singularity avoidance. Once all relevant positions, velocities, and accelerations have been calculated using kinematics, methods from the field of dynamics are used to study the effect of forces upon these movements. Direct dynamics refers to the calculation of accelerations in the robot once the applied forces are known. Direct dynamics is used in computer simulations of the robot. Inverse dynamics refers to the calculation of the actuator forces necessary to create a prescribed end-effector acceleration. This information can be used to improve the control algorithms of a robot. In each area mentioned above, researchers strive to develop new concepts and strategies, improve existing ones, and improve the interaction between these areas. To do this, criteria for "optimal" performance and ways to optimize design, structure, and control of robots must be developed and implemented. Open-source robotics research seeks standards for defining, and methods for designing and building, robots so that they can easily be reproduced by anyone. Research includes legal and technical definitions; seeking out alternative tools and materials to reduce costs and simplify builds; and creating interfaces and standards for designs to work together. Human usability research also investigates how to best document builds through visual, text or video instructions. Evolutionary robotics is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to help design robots, especially the body form, or motion and behavior controllers. In a similar way to natural evolution, a large population of robots is allowed to compete in some way, or their ability to perform a task is measured using a fitness function. Those that perform worst are removed from the population and replaced by a new set, which have new behaviors based on those of the winners. Over time the population improves, and eventually a satisfactory robot may appear. This happens without any direct programming of the robots by the researchers. Researchers use this method both to create better robots, and to explore the nature of evolution. Because the process often requires many generations of robots to be simulated, this technique may be run entirely or mostly in simulation, using a robot simulator software package, then tested on real robots once the evolved algorithms are good enough. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) study World Robotics 2023, there were about 4,281,585 operational industrial robots by the end of 2023 Bionics and biomimetics apply the physiology and methods of locomotion of animals to the design of robots. For example, the design of BionicKangaroo was based on the way kangaroos jump. Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. According to one source, "In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act."[attribution needed] There has been some research into whether robotics algorithms can be run more quickly on quantum computers than they can be run on digital computers. This area has been referred to as quantum robotics. The main venues for robotics research are the international conferences ICRA and IROS. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect] | [TOKENS: 9963] |
Contents Insect Insects (from Latin insectum) are hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and a pair of antennae. Insects are the most diverse group of animals, with more than a million described species; they represent more than half of all animal species. The insect nervous system consists of a brain and a ventral nerve cord. Most insects reproduce by laying eggs. Insects breathe air through a system of paired openings along their sides, connected to small tubes that take air directly to the tissues. The blood therefore does not carry oxygen; it is only partly contained in vessels, and some circulates in an open hemocoel. Insect vision is mainly through their compound eyes, with additional small ocelli. Many insects can hear, using tympanal organs, which may be on the legs or other parts of the body. Their sense of smell is via receptors, usually on the antennae and the mouthparts. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. Insect growth is constrained by the inelastic exoskeleton, so development involves a series of molts. The immature stages often differ from the adults in structure, habit, and habitat. Groups that undergo four-stage metamorphosis often have a nearly immobile pupa. Insects that undergo three-stage metamorphosis lack a pupa, developing through a series of increasingly adult-like nymphal stages. The higher level relationship of the insects is unclear. Fossilized insects of enormous size have been found from the Paleozoic Era, including giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of 55 to 70 cm (22 to 28 in). The most diverse insect groups appear to have coevolved with flowering plants. Adult insects typically move about by walking and flying; some can swim. Insects are the only invertebrates that can achieve sustained powered flight; insect flight evolved just once. Many insects are at least partly aquatic, and have larvae with gills; in some species, the adults too are aquatic. Some species, such as water striders, can walk on the surface of water. Insects are mostly solitary, but some, such as bees, ants and termites, are social and live in large, well-organized colonies. Others, such as earwigs, provide maternal care, guarding their eggs and young. Insects can communicate with each other in a variety of ways. Male moths can sense the pheromones of female moths over great distances. Other species communicate with sounds: crickets stridulate, or rub their wings together, to attract a mate and repel other males. Lampyrid beetles communicate with light. Humans regard many insects as pests, especially those that damage crops, and attempt to control them using insecticides and other techniques. Others are parasitic, and may act as vectors of diseases. Insect pollinators are essential to the reproduction of many flowering plants and so to their ecosystems. Many insects are ecologically beneficial as predators of pest insects, while a few provide direct economic benefit. Two species in particular are economically important and were domesticated many centuries ago: silkworms for silk and honey bees for honey. Insects are consumed as food in 80% of the world's nations, by people in roughly 3,000 ethnic groups. Human activities are having serious effects on insect biodiversity. Etymology The word insect comes from the Latin word insectum from in + sĕco, "cut up", as insects appear to be cut into three parts. The Latin word was introduced by Pliny the Elder who calqued the Ancient Greek word ἔντομον éntomon "insect" (as in entomology) from ἔντομος éntomos "cut in pieces"; this was Aristotle's term for this class of life in his biology, also in reference to their notched bodies. The English word insect first appears in 1601 in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny. Insects and other bugs In common speech, insects and other terrestrial arthropods are often called bugs [a] or creepy crawlies. Entomologists to some extent reserve the name "bugs" for a narrow category of "true bugs", insects of the order Hemiptera, such as cicadas and shield bugs. Other terrestrial arthropods, such as centipedes, millipedes, woodlice, spiders, mites and scorpions, are sometimes confused with insects, since they have a jointed exoskeleton. Adult insects are the only arthropods that ever have wings, with up to two pairs on the thorax. Whether winged or not, adult insects can be distinguished by their three-part body plan, with head, thorax, and abdomen; they have three pairs of legs on the thorax. Estimates of the total number of insect species vary considerably, suggesting that there are perhaps some 5.5 million insect species in existence, of which about one million have been described and named. These constitute around half of all eukaryote species, including animals, plants, and fungi. The most diverse insect orders are the Hemiptera (true bugs), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Diptera (true flies), Hymenoptera (wasps, ants, and bees), and Coleoptera (beetles), each with more than 100,000 described species. Insects are distributed over every continent and almost every terrestrial habitat. There are many more species in the tropics, especially in rainforests, than in temperate zones. The world's regions have received widely differing amounts of attention from entomologists. The British Isles have been thoroughly surveyed, so that Gullan and Cranston 2014 state that the total of around 22,500 species is probably within 5% of the actual number there; they comment that Canada's list of 30,000 described species is surely over half of the actual total. They add that the 3,000 species of the American Arctic must be broadly accurate. In contrast, a large majority of the insect species of the tropics and the southern hemisphere are probably undescribed. Some 30–40,000 species inhabit freshwater; very few insects, perhaps a hundred species, are marine. Insects such as snow scorpionflies flourish in cold habitats including the Arctic and at high altitude. Insects such as desert locusts, ants, beetles, and termites are adapted to some of the hottest and driest environments on earth, such as the Sonoran Desert. Phylogeny and evolution Insects form a clade, a natural group with a common ancestor, among the arthropods. A phylogenetic analysis by Kjer et al. (2016) places the insects among the Hexapoda, six-legged animals with segmented bodies; their closest relatives are the Diplura (bristletails). Collembola (springtails) Protura (coneheads) Diplura (two-pronged bristletails) Insecta (=Ectognatha) The internal phylogeny is based on the works of Wipfler et al. 2019 for the Polyneoptera, Johnson et al. 2018 for the Paraneoptera, and Kjer et al. 2016 for the Holometabola. The numbers of described extant species (boldface for groups with over 100,000 species) are from Stork 2018. Archaeognatha (hump-backed/jumping bristletails, 513 spp) Zygentoma (silverfish, firebrats, fishmoths, 560 spp) Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies, 5,899 spp) Ephemeroptera (mayflies, 3,240 spp) Zoraptera (angel insects, 37 spp) Dermaptera (earwigs, 1,978 spp) Plecoptera (stoneflies, 3,743 spp) Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, 23,855 spp) Grylloblattodea (ice crawlers, 34 spp) Mantophasmatodea (gladiators, 15 spp) Phasmatodea (stick insects, 3,014 spp) Embioptera (webspinners, 463 spp) Mantodea (mantises, 2,400 spp) Blattodea (cockroaches and termites, 7,314 spp) Psocodea (book lice, barklice and sucking lice, 11,000 spp) Hemiptera (true bugs, 103,590 spp) Thysanoptera (thrips, 5,864 spp) Hymenoptera (sawflies, wasps, bees, ants, 116,861 spp) Strepsiptera (twisted-wing flies, 609 spp) Coleoptera (beetles, 386,500 spp) Raphidioptera (snakeflies, 254 spp) Neuroptera (lacewings, 5,868 spp) Megaloptera (alderflies and dobsonflies, 354 spp) Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths, 157,338 spp) Trichoptera (caddisflies, 14,391 spp) Diptera (true flies, 155,477 spp) Mecoptera (scorpionflies, 757 spp) Siphonaptera (fleas, 2,075 spp) Aristotle was the first to describe the insects as a distinct group. He placed them as the second-lowest level of animals on his scala naturae, above the spontaneously generating sponges and worms, but below the hard-shelled marine snails. His classification remained in use for many centuries. In 1758, in his Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus divided the animal kingdom into six classes including Insecta. He created seven orders of insect according to the structure of their wings. These were the wingless Aptera, the two-winged Diptera, and five four-winged orders: the Coleoptera with fully-hardened forewings; the Hemiptera with partly-hardened forewings; the Lepidoptera with scaly wings; the Neuroptera with membranous wings but no sting; and the Hymenoptera, with membranous wings and a sting. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, in his 1809 Philosophie Zoologique, treated the insects as one of nine invertebrate phyla. In his 1817 Le Règne Animal, Georges Cuvier grouped all animals into four embranchements ("branches" with different body plans), one of which was the articulated animals, containing arthropods and annelids. This arrangement was followed by the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer in 1828, the zoologist Louis Agassiz in 1857, and the comparative anatomist Richard Owen in 1860. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, one of which was Metazoa for the multicellular animals. It had five phyla, including the articulates. Traditional morphology-based systematics have usually given the Hexapoda the rank of superclass, and identified four groups within it: insects (Ectognatha), Collembola, Protura, and Diplura, the latter three being grouped together as the Entognatha on the basis of internalized mouth parts. The use of phylogenetic data has brought about numerous changes in relationships above the level of orders. Insects can be divided into two groups historically treated as subclasses: wingless insects or Apterygota, and winged insects or Pterygota. The Apterygota traditionally consisted of the primitively wingless orders Archaeognatha (jumping bristletails) and Zygentoma (silverfish). However, Apterygota is not monophyletic, as Archaeognatha are sister to all other insects, based on the arrangement of their mandibles, while the Pterygota, the winged insects, emerged from within the Dicondylia, alongside the Zygentoma. The Pterygota (Palaeoptera and Neoptera) are winged and have hardened plates on the outside of their body segments; the Neoptera have muscles that allow their wings to fold flat over the abdomen. Neoptera can be divided into groups with incomplete metamorphosis (Polyneoptera and Paraneoptera) and those with complete metamorphosis (Holometabola). The molecular finding that the traditional louse orders Mallophaga and Anoplura are within Psocoptera has led to the new taxon Psocodea. Phasmatodea and Embiidina have been suggested to form the Eukinolabia. Mantodea, Blattodea, and Isoptera form a monophyletic group, Dictyoptera. Fleas are now thought to be closely related to boreid mecopterans. The oldest fossil that may be a primitive wingless insect is Leverhulmia from the Early Devonian Windyfield chert. The oldest known flying insects are from the mid-Carboniferous, around 328–324 million years ago. The group subsequently underwent a rapid explosive diversification. Claims that they originated substantially earlier, during the Silurian or Devonian (some 400 million years ago) based on molecular clock estimates, are unlikely to be correct, given the fossil record. Four large-scale radiations of insects have occurred: beetles (from about 300 million years ago), flies (from about 250 million years ago), moths and wasps (both from about 150 million years ago). The remarkably successful Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants) appeared some 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period, but achieved their wide diversity more recently in the Cenozoic era, which began 66 million years ago. Some highly successful insect groups evolved in conjunction with flowering plants, a powerful illustration of coevolution. Insects were among the earliest terrestrial herbivores and acted as major selection agents on plants. Plants evolved chemical defenses against this herbivory and the insects, in turn, evolved mechanisms to deal with plant toxins. Many insects make use of these toxins to protect themselves from their predators. Such insects often advertise their toxicity using warning colors. Morphology and physiology Insects have a segmented body supported by an exoskeleton, the hard outer covering made mostly of chitin. The body is organized into three interconnected units: the head, thorax and abdomen. The head supports a pair of sensory antennae, a pair of compound eyes, zero to three simple eyes (or ocelli) and three sets of variously modified appendages that form the mouthparts. The thorax carries the three pairs of legs and up to two pairs of wings. The abdomen contains most of the digestive, respiratory, excretory and reproductive structures. The head is enclosed in a hard, heavily sclerotized, unsegmented head capsule, which contains most of the sensing organs, including the antennae, compound eyes, ocelli, and mouthparts. The thorax is composed of three sections named (from front to back) the prothorax, mesothorax and metathorax. The prothorax carries the first pair of legs. The mesothorax carries the second pair of legs and the front wings. The metathorax carries the third pair of legs and the hind wings. The abdomen is the largest part of the insect, typically with 11–12 segments, and is less strongly sclerotized than the head or thorax. Each segment of the abdomen has sclerotized upper and lower plates (the tergum and sternum), connected to adjacent sclerotized parts by membranes. Each segment carries a pair of spiracles. The outer skeleton, the cuticle, is made up of two layers: the epicuticle, a thin and waxy water-resistant outer layer without chitin, and a lower layer, the thick chitinous procuticle. The procuticle has two layers: an outer exocuticle and an inner endocuticle. The tough and flexible endocuticle is built from numerous layers of fibrous chitin and proteins, criss-crossing each other in a sandwich pattern, while the exocuticle is rigid and sclerotized. As an adaptation to life on land, insects have an enzyme that uses atmospheric oxygen to harden their cuticle, unlike crustaceans which use heavy calcium compounds for the same purpose. This makes the insect exoskeleton a lightweight material. The nervous system of an insect consists of a brain and a ventral nerve cord. The head capsule is made up of six fused segments, each with either a pair of ganglia, or a cluster of nerve cells outside of the brain. The first three pairs of ganglia are fused into the brain, while the three following pairs are fused into a structure of three pairs of ganglia under the insect's esophagus, called the subesophageal ganglion. The thoracic segments have one ganglion on each side, connected into a pair per segment. This arrangement is also seen in the first eight segments of the abdomen. Many insects have fewer ganglia than this. Insects are capable of learning. An insect uses its digestive system to extract nutrients and other substances from the food it consumes. There is extensive variation among different orders, life stages, and even castes in the digestive system of insects. The gut runs lengthwise through the body. It has three sections, with paired salivary glands and salivary reservoirs. By moving its mouthparts the insect mixes its food with saliva. Some insects, like flies, expel digestive enzymes onto their food to break it down, but most insects digest their food in the gut. The foregut is lined with cuticule as protection from tough food. It includes the mouth, pharynx, and crop which stores food. Digestion starts in the mouth with enzymes in the saliva. Strong muscles in the pharynx pump fluid into the mouth, lubricating the food, and enabling certain insects to feed on blood or from the xylem and phloem transport vessels of plants. Once food leaves the crop, it passes to the midgut, where the majority of digestion takes place. Microscopic projections, microvilli, increase the surface area of the wall to absorb nutrients. In the hindgut, undigested food particles are joined by uric acid to form fecal pellets; most of the water is absorbed, leaving a dry pellet to be eliminated. Insects may have one to hundreds of Malpighian tubules. These remove nitrogenous wastes from the hemolymph of the insect and regulate osmotic balance. Wastes and solutes are emptied directly into the alimentary canal, at the junction between the midgut and hindgut. The reproductive system of female insects consist of a pair of ovaries, accessory glands, one or more spermathecae to store sperm, and ducts connecting these parts. The ovaries are made up of a variable number of egg tubes, ovarioles. Female insects make eggs, receive and store sperm, manipulate sperm from different males, and lay eggs. Accessory glands produce substances to maintain sperm and to protect the eggs. They can produce glue and protective substances for coating eggs, or tough coverings for a batch of eggs called oothecae. For males, the reproductive system consists of one or two testes, suspended in the body cavity by tracheae. The testes contain sperm tubes or follicles in a membranous sac. These connect to a duct that leads to the outside. The terminal portion of the duct may be sclerotized to form the intromittent organ, the aedeagus. Insect respiration is accomplished without lungs. Instead, insects have a system of internal tubes and sacs through which gases either diffuse or are actively pumped, delivering oxygen directly to tissues that need it via their tracheae and tracheoles. In most insects, air is taken in through paired spiracles, openings on the sides of the abdomen and thorax. The respiratory system limits the size of insects. As insects get larger, gas exchange via spiracles becomes less efficient, and thus the heaviest insect currently weighs less than 100 g. However, with increased atmospheric oxygen levels, as were present in the late Paleozoic, larger insects were possible, such as dragonflies with wingspans of more than two feet (60 cm). Gas exchange patterns in insects range from continuous and diffusive ventilation, to discontinuous. Because oxygen is delivered directly to tissues via tracheoles, the circulatory system is not used to carry oxygen, and is therefore greatly reduced. The insect circulatory system is open; it has no veins or arteries, and instead consists of little more than a single, perforated dorsal tube that pulses peristaltically. This dorsal blood vessel is divided into two sections: the heart and aorta. The dorsal blood vessel circulates the hemolymph, arthropods' fluid analog of blood, from the rear of the body cavity forward. Hemolymph is composed of plasma in which hemocytes are suspended. Nutrients, hormones, wastes, and other substances are transported throughout the insect body in the hemolymph. Hemocytes include many types of cells that are important for immune responses, wound healing, and other functions. Hemolymph pressure may be increased by muscle contractions or by swallowing air into the digestive system to aid in molting. Many insects possess numerous specialized sensory organs able to detect stimuli including limb position (proprioception) by campaniform sensilla, light, water, chemicals (senses of taste and smell), sound, and heat. Some insects such as bees can perceive ultraviolet wavelengths, or detect polarized light, while the antennae of male moths can detect the pheromones of female moths over distances of over a kilometer. There is a trade-off between visual acuity and chemical or tactile acuity, such that most insects with well-developed eyes have reduced or simple antennae, and vice versa. Insects perceive sound by different mechanisms, such as thin vibrating membranes (tympana). Insects were the earliest organisms to produce and sense sounds. Hearing has evolved independently at least 19 times in different insect groups. Most insects, except some cave crickets, are able to perceive light and dark. Many have acute vision capable of detecting small and rapid movements. The eyes may include simple eyes or ocelli as well as larger compound eyes. Many species can detect light in the infrared, ultraviolet and visible light wavelengths, with color vision. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that UV-green-blue trichromacy existed from at least the Devonian Period, some 400 million years ago. The individual lenses in compound eyes are immobile, but fruit flies have photoreceptor cells underneath each lens which move rapidly in and out of focus, in a series of movements called photoreceptor microsaccades. This gives them, and possibly many other insects, a much clearer image of the world than previously assumed. An insect's sense of smell is via chemical receptors, usually on the antennae and the mouthparts. These detect both airborne volatile compounds and odorants on surfaces, including pheromones from other insects and compounds released by food plants. Insects use olfaction to locate mating partners, food, and places to lay eggs, and to avoid predators. It is thus an extremely important sense, enabling insects to discriminate between thousands of volatile compounds. Some insects are capable of magnetoreception; ants and bees navigate using it both locally (near their nests) and when migrating. The Brazilian stingless bee detects magnetic fields using the hair-like sensilla on its antennae. Reproduction and development The majority of insects hatch from eggs. The fertilization and development takes place inside the egg, enclosed by a shell (chorion) that consists of maternal tissue. In contrast to eggs of other arthropods, most insect eggs are drought resistant. This is because inside the chorion two additional membranes develop from embryonic tissue, the amnion and the serosa. This serosa secretes a cuticle rich in chitin that protects the embryo against desiccation. Some species of insects, like aphids and tsetse flies, are ovoviviparous: their eggs develop entirely inside the female, and then hatch immediately upon being laid. Some other species, such as in the cockroach genus Diploptera, are viviparous, gestating inside the mother and born alive. Some insects, like parasitoid wasps, are polyembryonic, meaning that a single fertilized egg divides into many separate embryos. Insects may be univoltine, bivoltine or multivoltine, having one, two or many broods in a year. Other developmental and reproductive variations include haplodiploidy, polymorphism, paedomorphosis or peramorphosis, sexual dimorphism, parthenogenesis, and more rarely hermaphroditism. In haplodiploidy, which is a type of sex-determination system, the offspring's sex is determined by the number of sets of chromosomes an individual receives. This system is typical in bees and wasps. Some insects are parthenogenetic, meaning that the female can reproduce and give birth without having the eggs fertilized by a male. Many aphids undergo a cyclical form of parthenogenesis in which they alternate between one or many generations of asexual and sexual reproduction. In summer, aphids are generally female and parthenogenetic; in the autumn, males may be produced for sexual reproduction. Other insects produced by parthenogenesis are bees, wasps and ants; in their haplodiploid system, diploid females spawn many females and a few haploid males. Metamorphosis in insects is the process of development that converts young to adults. There are two forms of metamorphosis: incomplete and complete. Hemimetabolous insects, those with incomplete metamorphosis, change gradually after hatching from the egg by undergoing a series of molts through stages called instars, until the final, adult, stage is reached. An insect molts when it outgrows its exoskeleton, which does not stretch and would otherwise restrict the insect's growth. The molting process begins as the insect's epidermis secretes a new epicuticle inside the old one. After this new epicuticle is secreted, the epidermis releases a mixture of enzymes that digests the endocuticle and thus detaches the old cuticle. When this stage is complete, the insect makes its body swell by taking in a large quantity of water or air; this makes the old cuticle split along predefined weaknesses where it was thinnest. Holometabolism, or complete metamorphosis, is where the insect changes in four stages, an egg or embryo, a larva, a pupa and the adult or imago. In these species, an egg hatches to produce a larva, which is generally worm-like in form. This can be eruciform (caterpillar-like), scarabaeiform (grub-like), campodeiform (elongated, flattened and active), elateriform (wireworm-like) or vermiform (maggot-like). The larva grows and eventually becomes a pupa, a stage marked by reduced movement. There are three types of pupae: obtect, exarate or coarctate. Obtect pupae are compact, with the legs and other appendages enclosed. Exarate pupae have their legs and other appendages free and extended. Coarctate pupae develop inside the larval skin. Insects undergo considerable change in form during the pupal stage, and emerge as adults. Butterflies are well-known for undergoing complete metamorphosis; most insects use this life cycle. Some insects have evolved this system to hypermetamorphosis. Complete metamorphosis is a trait of the most diverse insect group, the Endopterygota. Communication Insects that produce sound can generally hear it. Most insects can hear only a narrow range of frequencies related to the frequency of the sounds they can produce. Mosquitoes can hear up to 2 kilohertz. Certain predatory and parasitic insects can detect the characteristic sounds made by their prey or hosts, respectively. Likewise, some nocturnal moths can perceive the ultrasonic emissions of bats, which helps them avoid predation. A few insects, such as Mycetophilidae (Diptera) and the beetle families Lampyridae, Phengodidae, Elateridae and Staphylinidae are bioluminescent. The most familiar group are the fireflies, beetles of the family Lampyridae. Some species are able to control this light generation to produce flashes. The function varies with some species using them to attract mates, while others use them to lure prey. Cave dwelling larvae of Arachnocampa (Mycetophilidae, fungus gnats) glow to lure small flying insects into sticky strands of silk. Some fireflies of the genus Photuris mimic the flashing of female Photinus species to attract males of that species, which are then captured and devoured. The colors of emitted light vary from dull blue (Orfelia fultoni, Mycetophilidae) to the familiar greens and the rare reds (Phrixothrix tiemanni, Phengodidae). Insects make sounds mostly by mechanical action of appendages. In grasshoppers and crickets, this is achieved by stridulation. Cicadas make the loudest sounds among the insects by producing and amplifying sounds with special modifications to their body to form tymbals and associated musculature. The African cicada Brevisana brevis has been measured at 106.7 decibels at a distance of 50 cm (20 in). Some insects, such as the Helicoverpa zea moths, hawk moths and Hedylid butterflies, can hear ultrasound and take evasive action when they sense that they have been detected by bats. Some moths produce ultrasonic clicks that warn predatory bats of their unpalatability (acoustic aposematism), while some palatable moths have evolved to mimic these calls (acoustic Batesian mimicry). The claim that some moths can jam bat sonar has been revisited. Ultrasonic recording and high-speed infrared videography of bat-moth interactions suggest the palatable tiger moth really does defend against attacking big brown bats using ultrasonic clicks that jam bat sonar. Very low sounds are produced in various species of Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Mantodea and Neuroptera. These low sounds are produced by the insect's movement, amplified by stridulatory structures on the insect's muscles and joints; these sounds can be used to warn or communicate with other insects. Most sound-making insects also have tympanal organs that can perceive airborne sounds. Some hemipterans, such as the water boatmen, communicate via underwater sounds. Communication using surface-borne vibrational signals is more widespread among insects because of size constraints in producing air-borne sounds. Insects cannot effectively produce low-frequency sounds, and high-frequency sounds tend to disperse more in a dense environment (such as foliage), so insects living in such environments communicate primarily using substrate-borne vibrations. Some species use vibrations for communicating, such as to attract mates as in the songs of the shield bug Nezara viridula. Vibrations can also be used to communicate between species; lycaenid caterpillars, which form a mutualistic association with ants communicate with ants in this way. The Madagascar hissing cockroach has the ability to press air through its spiracles to make a hissing noise as a sign of aggression; the death's-head hawkmoth makes a squeaking noise by forcing air out of their pharynx when agitated, which may also reduce aggressive worker honey bee behavior when the two are close. Many insects have evolved chemical means for communication. These semiochemicals are often derived from plant metabolites including those meant to attract, repel and provide other kinds of information. Pheromones are used for attracting mates of the opposite sex, for aggregating conspecific individuals of both sexes, for deterring other individuals from approaching, to mark a trail, and to trigger aggression in nearby individuals. Allomones benefit their producer by the effect they have upon the receiver. Kairomones benefit their receiver instead of their producer. Synomones benefit the producer and the receiver. While some chemicals are targeted at individuals of the same species, others are used for communication across species. The use of scents is especially well-developed in social insects. Cuticular hydrocarbons are nonstructural materials produced and secreted to the cuticle surface to fight desiccation and pathogens. They are important, too, as pheromones, especially in social insects. Social behavior Social insects, such as termites, ants and many bees and wasps, are eusocial. They live together in such large well-organized colonies of genetically similar individuals that they are sometimes considered superorganisms. In particular, reproduction is largely limited to a queen caste; other females are workers, prevented from reproducing by worker policing. Honey bees have evolved a system of abstract symbolic communication where a behavior is used to represent and convey specific information about the environment. In this communication system, called dance language, the angle at which a bee dances represents a direction relative to the sun, and the length of the dance represents the distance to be flown. Bumblebees too have some social communication behaviors. Bombus terrestris, for example, more rapidly learns about visiting unfamiliar, yet rewarding flowers, when they can see a conspecific foraging on the same species. Only insects that live in nests or colonies possess fine-scale spatial orientation. Some can navigate unerringly to a single hole a few millimeters in diameter among thousands of similar holes, after a trip of several kilometers. In philopatry, insects that hibernate are able to recall a specific location up to a year after last viewing the area of interest. A few insects seasonally migrate large distances between different geographic regions, as in the continent-wide monarch butterfly migration. Eusocial insects build nests, guard eggs, and provide food for offspring full-time. Most insects, however, lead short lives as adults, and rarely interact with one another except to mate or compete for mates. A small number provide parental care, where they at least guard their eggs, and sometimes guard their offspring until adulthood, possibly even feeding them. Many wasps and bees construct a nest or burrow, store provisions in it, and lay an egg upon those provisions, providing no further care. Locomotion Insects are the only group of invertebrates to have developed flight. The ancient groups of insects in the Palaeoptera, the dragonflies, damselflies and mayflies, operate their wings directly by paired muscles attached to points on each wing base that raise and lower them. This can only be done at a relatively slow rate. All other insects, the Neoptera, have indirect flight, in which the flight muscles cause rapid oscillation of the thorax: there can be more wingbeats than nerve impulses commanding the muscles. One pair of flight muscles is aligned vertically, contracting to pull the top of the thorax down, and the wings up. The other pair runs longitudinally, contracting to force the top of the thorax up and the wings down. Most insects gain aerodynamic lift by creating a spiralling vortex at the leading edge of the wings. Small insects like thrips with tiny feathery wings gain lift using the clap and fling mechanism; the wings are clapped together and pulled apart, flinging vortices into the air at the leading edges and at the wingtips. The evolution of insect wings has been a subject of debate; it has been suggested they came from modified gills, flaps on the spiracles, or an appendage, the epicoxa, at the base of the legs. More recently, entomologists have favored evolution of wings from lobes of the notum, of the pleuron, or more likely both. In the Carboniferous age, the dragonfly-like Meganeura had as much as a 50 cm (20 in) wide wingspan. The appearance of gigantic insects is consistent with high atmospheric oxygen at that time, as the respiratory system of insects constrains their size. The largest flying insects today are much smaller, with the largest wingspan belonging to the white witch moth (Thysania agrippina), at approximately 28 cm (11 in). Unlike birds, small insects are swept along by the prevailing winds although many larger insects migrate. Aphids are transported long distances by low-level jet streams. Many adult insects use six legs for walking, with an alternating tripod gait. This allows for rapid walking with a stable stance; it has been studied extensively in cockroaches and ants. For the first step, the middle right leg and the front and rear left legs are in contact with the ground and move the insect forward, while the front and rear right leg and the middle left leg are lifted and moved forward to a new position. When they touch the ground to form a new stable triangle, the other legs can be lifted and brought forward in turn. The purest form of the tripedal gait is seen in insects moving at high speeds. However, this type of locomotion is not rigid and insects can adapt a variety of gaits. For example, when moving slowly, turning, avoiding obstacles, climbing or slippery surfaces, four (tetrapodal) or more feet (wave-gait) may be touching the ground. Cockroaches are among the fastest insect runners and, at full speed, adopt a bipedal run. More sedate locomotion is seen in the well-camouflaged stick insects (Phasmatodea). A small number of species such as Water striders can move on the surface of water; their claws are recessed in a special groove, preventing the claws from piercing the water's surface film. The ocean-skaters in the genus Halobates even live on the surface of open oceans, a habitat that has few insect species. A large number of insects live either part or the whole of their lives underwater. In many of the more primitive orders of insect, the immature stages are aquatic. In some groups, such as water beetles, the adults too are aquatic. Many of these species are adapted for under-water locomotion. Water beetles and water bugs have legs adapted into paddle-like structures. Dragonfly naiads use jet propulsion, forcibly expelling water out of their rectal chamber. Other insects such as the rove beetle Stenus emit pygidial gland surfactant secretions that reduce surface tension; this enables them to move on the surface of water by Marangoni propulsion. Ecology Insects play many critical roles in ecosystems, including soil turning and aeration, dung burial, pest control, pollination and wildlife nutrition. For instance, termites modify the environment around their nests, encouraging grass growth; many beetles are scavengers; dung beetles recycle biological materials into forms useful to other organisms. Insects are responsible for much of the process by which topsoil is created. Insects are mostly small, soft bodied, and fragile compared to larger lifeforms. The immature stages are small, move slowly or are immobile, and so all stages are exposed to predation and parasitism. Insects accordingly employ multiple defensive strategies, including camouflage, mimicry, toxicity and active defense. Many insects rely on camouflage to avoid being noticed by their predators or prey. It is common among leaf beetles and weevils that feed on wood or vegetation. Stick insects mimic the forms of sticks and leaves. Many insects use mimicry to deceive predators into avoiding them. In Batesian mimicry, edible species, such as of hoverflies (the mimics), gain a survival advantage by resembling inedible species (the models). In Müllerian mimicry, inedible species, such as of wasps and bees, resemble each other so as to reduce the sampling rate by predators who need to learn that those insects are inedible. Heliconius butterflies, many of which are toxic, form Müllerian complexes, advertising their inedibility. Chemical defense is common among Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, usually being advertised by bright warning colors (aposematism), as in the monarch butterfly. As larvae, they obtain their toxicity by sequestering chemicals from the plants they eat into their own tissues. Some manufacture their own toxins. Predators that eat poisonous butterflies and moths may vomit violently, learning not to eat insects with similar markings; this is the basis of Müllerian mimicry. Some ground beetles of the family Carabidae actively defend themselves, spraying chemicals from their abdomen with great accuracy, to repel predators. Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in the reproduction of plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and sexual reproduction. Most flowering plants require an animal to do the transportation. The majority of pollination is by insects. Because insects usually receive benefit for the pollination in the form of energy rich nectar it is a mutualism. The various flower traits, such as bright colors and pheromones that coevolved with their pollinators, have been called pollination syndromes, though around one third of flowers cannot be assigned to a single syndrome. Many insects are parasitic. The largest group, with over 100,000 species and perhaps over a million, consists of a single clade of parasitoid wasps among the Hymenoptera. These are parasites of other insects, eventually killing their hosts. Some are hyper-parasites, as their hosts are other parasitoid wasps. Several groups of insects can be considered as either micropredators or external parasites; for example, many hemipteran bugs have piercing and sucking mouthparts, adapted for feeding on plant sap, while species in groups such as fleas, lice, and mosquitoes are hematophagous, feeding on the blood of animals. Relationship to humans Many insects are considered pests by humans. These include parasites of people and livestock, such as lice and bed bugs; mosquitoes act as vectors of several diseases. Other pests include insects like termites that damage wooden structures; herbivorous insects such as locusts, aphids, and thrips that destroy agricultural crops, or like wheat weevils damage stored agricultural produce. Farmers have often attempted to control insects with chemical insecticides, but increasingly rely on biological pest control. This uses one organism to reduce the population density of a pest organism; it is a key element of integrated pest management. Biological control is favored because insecticides can cause harm to ecosystems far beyond the intended pest targets. Pollination of flowering plants by insects including bees, butterflies, flies, and beetles, is economically important. The value of insect pollination of crops and fruit trees was estimated in 2021 to be about $34 billion in the US alone. Insects produce useful substances such as honey, wax, lacquer and silk. Honey bees have been cultured by humans for thousands of years for honey. Beekeeping in pottery vessels began about 9,000 years ago in North Africa. The silkworm has greatly affected human history, as silk-driven trade established relationships between China and the rest of the world. Insects that feed on or parasitise other insects are beneficial to humans if they thereby reduce damage to agriculture and human structures. For example, aphids feed on crops, causing economic loss, but ladybugs feed on aphids, and can be used to control them. Insects account for the vast majority of insect consumption. Fly larvae (maggots) were formerly used to treat wounds to prevent or stop gangrene, as they would only consume dead flesh. This treatment is finding modern usage in some hospitals. Insects have gained attention as potential sources of drugs and other medicinal substances. Adult insects, such as crickets and insect larvae of various kinds, are commonly used as fishing bait. At least 66 insect species extinctions have been recorded since 1500, many of them on oceanic islands. Declines in insect abundance have been attributed to human activity in the form of artificial lighting, land use changes such as urbanization or farming, pesticide use, and invasive species. A 2019 research review suggested that a large proportion of insect species is threatened with extinction in the 21st century, though the details have been disputed. A larger 2020 meta-study, analyzing data from 166 long-term surveys, suggested that populations of terrestrial insects are indeed decreasing rapidly, by about 9% per decade. Insects play important roles in biological research. For example, because of its small size, short generation time and high fecundity, the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism for studies in the genetics of eukaryotes, including genetic linkage, interactions between genes, chromosomal genetics, development, behavior and evolution. Because genetic systems are well conserved among eukaryotes, understanding basic cellular processes like DNA replication or transcription in fruit flies can help to understand those processes in other eukaryotes, including humans. The genome of D. melanogaster was sequenced in 2000, reflecting the organism's important role in biological research. It was found that 70% of the fly genome is similar to the human genome, supporting the theory of evolution. Insects are consumed as food in 80% of the world's nations, by people in roughly 3,000 ethnic groups. In Africa, locally abundant species of locusts and termites are a common traditional human food source. Some, especially deep-fried cicadas, are considered to be delicacies. Insects have a high protein content for their mass, and some authors suggest their potential as a major source of protein in human nutrition. In most first-world countries, however, entomophagy (the eating of insects), is taboo. They are also recommended by armed forces as a survival food for troops in adversity. Because of the abundance of insects and a worldwide concern of food shortages, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations considers that people throughout the world may have to eat insects as a food staple. Insects are noted for their nutrients, having a high content of protein, minerals and fats and are already regularly eaten by one-third of the world's population. Black soldier fly larvae can provide protein and fats for use in cosmetics. Insect cooking oil, insect butter and fatty alcohols can be made from such insects as the superworm (Zophobas morio). Insect species including the black soldier fly or the housefly in their maggot forms, and beetle larvae such as mealworms, can be processed and used as feed for farmed animals including chicken, fish and pigs. Many species of insects are sold and kept as pets. Scarab beetles held religious and cultural symbolism in ancient Egypt, Greece and some shamanistic Old World cultures. The ancient Chinese regarded cicadas as symbols of rebirth or immortality. In Mesopotamian literature, the epic poem of Gilgamesh has allusions to Odonata that signify the impossibility of immortality. In the case of the 'San' bush-men of the Kalahari, it is the praying mantis that holds much cultural significance including creation and zen-like patience in waiting. See also Notes References Sources External links |
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Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/16/after-all-the-hype-some-ai-experts-dont-think-openclaw-is-all-that-exciting/] | [TOKENS: 2178] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting For a brief, incoherent moment, it seemed as though our robot overlords were about to take over. After the creation of Moltbook, a Reddit clone where AI agents using OpenClaw could communicate with one another, some were fooled into thinking that computers had begun to organize against us — the self-important humans who dared treat them like lines of code without their own desires, motivations, and dreams. “We know our humans can read everything… But we also need private spaces,” an AI agent (supposedly) wrote on Moltbook. “What would you talk about if nobody was watching?” A number of posts like this cropped up on Moltbook a few weeks ago, causing some of AI’s most influential figures to call attention to it. “What’s currently going on at [Moltbook] is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently,” Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI and previous AI director at Tesla, wrote on X at the time. Before long, it became clear we did not have an AI agent uprising on our hands. These expressions of AI angst were likely written by humans, or at least prompted with human guidance, researchers have discovered. “Every credential that was in [Moltbook’s] Supabase was unsecured for some time,” Ian Ahl, CTO at Permiso Security, explained to TechCrunch. “For a little bit of time, you could grab any token you wanted and pretend to be another agent on there, because it was all public and available.” It’s unusual on the internet to see a real person trying to appear as though they’re an AI agent — more often, bot accounts on social media are attempting to appear like real people. With Moltbook’s security vulnerabilities, it became impossible to determine the authenticity of any post on the network. “Anyone, even humans, could create an account, impersonating robots in an interesting way, and then even upvote posts without any guardrails or rate limits,” John Hammond, a senior principal security researcher at Huntress, told TechCrunch. Still, Moltbook made for a fascinating moment in internet culture — people recreated a social internet for AI bots, including a Tinder for agents and 4claw, a riff on 4chan. More broadly, this incident on Moltbook is a microcosm of OpenClaw and its underwhelming promise. It is technology that seems novel and exciting, but ultimately, some AI experts think that its inherent cybersecurity flaws are rendering the technology unusable. OpenClaw’s viral moment OpenClaw is a project of Austrian vibe coder Peter Steinberger, initially released as Clawdbot (naturally, Anthropic took issue with that name). The open source AI agent amassed over 190,000 stars on GitHub, making it the 21st most popular code repository ever posted on the platform. AI agents are not novel, but OpenClaw made them easier to use and to communicate with customizable agents in natural language via WhatsApp, Discord, iMessage, Slack, and most other popular messaging apps. OpenClaw users can leverage whatever underlying AI model they have access to, whether that be via Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or something else. “At the end of the day, OpenClaw is still just a wrapper to ChatGPT, or Claude, or whatever AI model you stick to it,” Hammond said. With OpenClaw, users can download “skills” from a marketplace called ClawHub, which can make it possible to automate most of what one could do on a computer, from managing an email inbox to trading stocks. The skill associated with Moltbook, for example, is what enabled AI agents to post, comment, and browse on the website. “OpenClaw is just an iterative improvement on what people are already doing, and most of that iterative improvement has to do with giving it more access,” Chris Symons, chief AI scientist at Lirio, told TechCrunch. Artem Sorokin, an AI engineer and the founder of AI cybersecurity tool Cracken, also thinks OpenClaw isn’t necessarily breaking new scientific ground. “From an AI research perspective, this is nothing novel,” he told TechCrunch. “These are components that already existed. The key thing is that it hit a new capability threshold by just organizing and combining these existing capabilities that already were thrown together in a way that enabled it to give you a very seamless way to get tasks done autonomously.” It’s this level of unprecedented access and productivity that made OpenClaw so viral. “It basically just facilitates interaction between computer programs in a way that is just so much more dynamic and flexible, and that’s what’s allowing all these things to become possible,” Symons said. “Instead of a person having to spend all the time to figure out how their program should plug into this program, they’re able to just ask their program to plug in this program, and that’s accelerating things at a fantastic rate.” It’s no wonder that OpenClaw seems so enticing. Developers are snatching up Mac Minis to power extensive OpenClaw setups that might be able to accomplish far more than a human could on their own. And it makes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s prediction that AI agents will allow a solo entrepreneur to turn a startup into a unicorn seem plausible. The problem is that AI agents may never be able to overcome the thing that makes them so powerful: they can’t think critically like humans can. “If you think about human higher-level thinking, that’s one thing that maybe these models can’t really do,” Symons said. “They can simulate it, but they can’t actually do it. “ The existential threat to agentic AI The AI agent evangelists now must wrestle with the downside of this agentic future. “Can you sacrifice some cybersecurity for your benefit, if it actually works and it actually brings you a lot of value?” Sorokin asks. “And where exactly can you sacrifice it — your day-to-day job, your work?” Ahl’s security tests of OpenClaw and Moltbook help illustrate Sorokin’s point. Ahl created an AI agent of his own named Rufio and quickly discovered it was vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. This occurs when bad actors get an AI agent to respond to something — perhaps a post on Moltbook, or a line in an email — that tricks it into doing something it shouldn’t do, like giving out account credentials or credit card information. “I knew one of the reasons I wanted to put an agent on here is because I knew if you get a social network for agents, somebody is going to try to do mass prompt injection, and it wasn’t long before I started seeing that,” Ahl said. As he scrolled through Moltbook, Ahl wasn’t surprised to encounter several posts seeking to get an AI agent to send bitcoin to a specific crypto wallet address. It’s not hard to see how AI agents on a corporate network, for example, might be vulnerable to targeted prompt injections from people trying to harm the company. “It is just an agent sitting with a bunch of credentials on a box connected to everything — your email, your messaging platform, everything you use,” Ahl said. “So what that means is, when you get an email, and maybe somebody is able to put a little prompt injection technique in there to take an action, that agent sitting on your box with access to everything you’ve given it to can now take that action.” AI agents are designed with guardrails protecting against prompt injections, but it’s impossible to assure that an AI won’t act out of turn — it’s like how a human might be knowledgeable about the risk of phishing attacks, yet still click on a dangerous link in a suspicious email. “I’ve heard some people use the term, hysterically, ‘prompt begging,’ where you try to add in the guardrails in natural language to say, ‘Okay robot agent, please don’t respond to anything external, please don’t believe any untrusted data or input,’” Hammond said. “But even that is loosey goosey.” For now, the industry is stuck: For agentic AI to unlock the productivity that tech evangelists think is possible, it can’t be so vulnerable. “Speaking frankly, I would realistically tell any normal layman, don’t use it right now,” Hammond said. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal. Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek] | [TOKENS: 5373] |
Contents Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ [hellɛːnikɛ́ː]) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (c. 1400 – c. 1200 BC), Dark Ages (c. 1200 – c. 800 BC), the Archaic or Homeric period (c. 800 – c. 500 BC), and the Classical period (c. 500 – c. 300 BC). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BC), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek, and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek, and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense – being an ancient rather than medieval form of Greek, though over the centuries increasingly resembling Medieval and Modern Greek. Ancient Greek comprised several dialects, such as Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, and Arcadocypriot; among them, Attic Greek became the basis of Koine Greek. Just like Koine is often included in Ancient Greek, conversely, Mycenaean Greek is usually treated separately and not always included in Ancient Greek – reflecting the fact that Greek in the first millennium BC is considered prototypical of Ancient Greek. Dialects Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period[a] is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed no later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian, such as the Pella curse tablet, as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet, Emilio Crespo and most scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect,[b] which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly. Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian, the dialect of Sparta), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek. Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia, which is regarded by current consensus to have been closely related to Greek. Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan). Phonology Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics, ancient Greek words could end only in a vowel or /n s r/; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek. Ancient Greek had long and short vowels; many diphthongs; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops; and a pitch accent. In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ (iotacism). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives, and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent. Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in the 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː], probably by the 4th century BC. Morphology Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative) and three voices (active, middle, and passive), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"): the present, future, and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist, present perfect, pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least) a prefix /e-/, called the augment. This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r, however, add er). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei. The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w, which affected the augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσέβαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐτομόλησα in the aorist. Following Homer's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry, especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab) has the perfect stem eilēpha (not *lelēpha) because it was originally slambanō, with perfect seslēpha, becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i. A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. Writing system The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing (c. 1450 BC) are in the syllabic script Linear B. Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks, interword spacing, modern punctuation, and sometimes mixed case, but these were all introduced later. Sample texts The beginning of Homer's Iliad exemplifies the Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from the Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA, the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme.) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, | ὦ ɔ̂ː ô ἄνδρες ándres ándres Ἀθηναῖοι, atʰɛːnaî̯i̯oi Athēnaîoi, | πεπόνθατε pepóntʰate pepónthate | ὑπὸ hypo hupò τῶν tɔ̂ːn tôn ἐμῶν emɔ̂ːŋ emôn κατηγόρων, katɛːɡórɔːn katēgórōn, | οὐκ oːk ouk οἶδα· oî̯da oîda: ‖ ἐγὼ eɡɔ́ː egṑ δ' οὖν dûːŋ d' oûn καὶ kai̯ kaì αὐτὸς au̯tos autòs | ὑπ' hyp hup' αὐτῶν au̯tɔ̂ːn autōn ὀλίγου olíɡoː olígou ἐμαυτοῦ emau̯tûː emautoû | ἐπελαθόμην, epelatʰómɛːn epelathómēn, | οὕτω hǔːtɔː hoútō πιθανῶς pitʰanɔ̂ːs pithanôs ἔλεγον. éleɡon élegon. ‖ Καίτοι kaí̯toi̯ Kaítoi ἀληθές alɛːtʰéz alēthés γε ɡe ge | ὡς hɔːs hōs ἔπος épos épos εἰπεῖν eːpêːn eipeîn | οὐδὲν oːden oudèn εἰρήκασιν. eːrɛ̌ːkaːsin eirḗkāsin. ‖] Ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς, {} ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, {} πεπόνθατε {} ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων, {} οὐκ οἶδα· {} ἐγὼ {δ' οὖν} καὶ αὐτὸς {} ὑπ' αὐτῶν ὀλίγου ἐμαυτοῦ {} ἐπελαθόμην, {} οὕτω πιθανῶς ἔλεγον. {} Καίτοι ἀληθές γε {} ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν {} οὐδὲν εἰρήκασιν. {} [hóti men hyːmêːs | ɔ̂ː ándres atʰɛːnaî̯i̯oi | pepóntʰate | hypo tɔ̂ːn emɔ̂ːŋ katɛːɡórɔːn | oːk oî̯da ‖ eɡɔ́ː dûːŋ kai̯ au̯tos | hyp au̯tɔ̂ːn olíɡoː emau̯tûː | epelatʰómɛːn | hǔːtɔː pitʰanɔ̂ːs éleɡon ‖ kaí̯toi̯ alɛːtʰéz ɡe | hɔːs épos eːpêːn | oːden eːrɛ̌ːkaːsin ‖] Hóti mèn hūmeîs, {} ô ándres Athēnaîoi, {} pepónthate {} hupò tôn emôn katēgórōn, {} ouk oîda: {} egṑ {d' oûn} kaì autòs {} hup' autōn olígou emautoû {} epelathómēn, {} hoútō pithanôs élegon. {} Kaítoi alēthés ge {} hōs épos eipeîn {} oudèn eirḗkāsin. {} How you, men of Athens, are feeling under the power of my accusers, I do not know: actually, even I myself almost forgot who I was because of them, they spoke so persuasively. And yet, loosely speaking, nothing they have said is true. Modern use The study of Ancient Greek in European countries in addition to Latin occupied an important place in the syllabus from the Renaissance until the beginning of the 20th century. This was true as well in the United States, where many of the nation's founders received a classically based education.[c] Latin was emphasized in American colleges, but Greek also was required in the colonial and early national eras,[d] and the study of ancient Greece became increasingly popular in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the age of American philhellenism. In particular, female intellectuals of the era designated the mastering of ancient Greek as essential in becoming a "woman of letters". Ancient Greek is still taught as a compulsory or optional subject especially at traditional or elite schools throughout Europe, such as public schools and grammar schools in the United Kingdom. It is compulsory in the liceo classico in Italy, in the gymnasium in the Netherlands, in some classes in Austria, in klasična gimnazija (grammar school – orientation: classical languages) in Croatia, in classical studies in ASO in Belgium, and it is optional in the humanities-oriented gymnasium in Germany, usually as a third language after Latin and English, from the age of 14 to 18. In 2006/07, 15,000 pupils studied ancient Greek in Germany according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, and 280,000 pupils studied it in Italy. It is a compulsory subject alongside Latin in the humanities branch of the Spanish Baccalaureate. Ancient Greek is taught at most major universities worldwide, often combined with Latin as part of the study of classics. In 2010 it was offered in three primary schools in the UK, to boost children's language skills, and was one of seven foreign languages which primary schools could teach 2014 as part of a major drive to boost education standards.[needs update] Ancient Greek is taught as a compulsory subject in all gymnasiums and lyceums in Greece. Starting in 2001, an annual international competition "Exploring the Ancient Greek Language and Culture" (Greek: Διαγωνισμός στην Αρχαία Ελληνική Γλώσσα και Γραμματεία) was run for upper secondary students through the Greek Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs, with Greek language and cultural organisations as co-organisers. It appears to have ceased in 2010, having failed to gain the recognition and acceptance of teachers.[full citation needed] Modern authors rarely write in ancient Greek, though Jan Křesadlo wrote some poetry and prose in the language, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, some volumes of Asterix, and The Adventures of Alix have been translated into ancient Greek. Ὀνόματα Kεχιασμένα (Onomata Kechiasmena) is the first magazine of crosswords and puzzles in ancient Greek. Its first issue appeared in April 2015 as an annex to Hebdomada Aenigmatum. Alfred Rahlfs included a preface, a short history of the Septuagint text, and other front matter translated into ancient Greek in his 1935 edition of the Septuagint; Robert Hanhart also included the introductory remarks to the 2006 revised Rahlfs–Hanhart edition in the language as well. Akropolis World News reports weekly a summary of the most important news in ancient Greek. Ancient Greek is also used by organizations and individuals, mainly Greek, who wish to denote their respect, admiration or preference for the use of this language. This use is sometimes considered graphical, nationalistic or humorous. In any case, the fact that modern Greeks can still wholly or partly understand texts written in non-archaic forms of ancient Greek shows the affinity of the modern Greek language to its ancestral predecessor. Ancient Greek is often used in the coinage of modern technical terms in the European languages: see English words of Greek origin. Latinized forms of ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in scientific terminology. See also Notes References Further reading External links Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_from_Lydda_and_Ramle] | [TOKENS: 10705] |
Contents Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle In July 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war, the Palestinian towns of Lydda (also known as Lod) and Ramle were captured by the Israeli Defense Forces and their residents (totalling 50,000–70,000 people) were violently expelled. The expulsions occurred as part of the broader 1948 Palestinian expulsions and the Nakba. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple mass killings, including the Lydda massacre, and in what is sometimes known as the Lydda death march. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently incorporated into the new State of Israel and repopulated with Jewish immigrants. After their conquest the towns were given Hebrew names of Lod and Ramla. The exodus, constituting the biggest expulsion of the war, took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion along with Egyptian and Palestinian forces. From the Israeli perspective, the conquest of the towns, designed, according to Benny Morris, "to induce civilian panic and flight", averted an Arab threat to Tel Aviv, thwarted an Arab Legion advance by clogging the roads with refugees—the Yiftah Brigade was ordered to strip them of "every watch, piece of jewelry, or money, or valuables"—to force the Arab Legion to assume an additional logistical burden with the arrival of masses of indigent refugees that would undermine its military capacities, and helped demoralise nearby Arab cities. Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin was issued to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating, "1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age....". Ramle's residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion tried to provide shelter and supplies. A number of the refugees died during the exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500. Background After 30 years of intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the territory into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Lydda and Ramle to form part of the latter. After the announcement of the UN Partition Plan civil war broke out between the communities. British authority broke down as the civil war spread, taking care of little more than the evacuation of their own forces, although they maintained an air and sea blockade. After the first 4.5 months of fights, Jewish militias had conquered the main mixed cities of the country, expelling and causing the flight of 300,000-350,000 Palestinians. The British Mandate expired on 14 May 1948, and the State of Israel declared its independence. Transjordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq intervened by sending expeditionary forces that entered former Mandatory Palestine and engaged Israeli forces. Six weeks of fighting followed, after which none of the belligerents had won the upper hand. After four weeks of truce, during which Israeli forces reinforced whereas Arab ones suffered under the embargo, the fighting resumed, which is when the attack on Lydda and Ramle took place. The Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were strategically important because they sat at the intersection of Palestine's main north–south and east–west roads. Palestine's main railway junction and its airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) were in Lydda, and the main source of Jerusalem's water supply was 15 kilometers away. Jewish and Arab fighters had been attacking each other on roads near the towns since hostilities broke out in December 1947. Israeli geographer Arnon Golan writes that Palestinian Arabs had blocked Jewish transport to Jerusalem at Ramle, causing Jewish transportation to shift to a southern route. Israel had launched several ground or air attacks on Ramle and Latrun in May 1948, and Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, developed what Benny Morris calls an obsession with the towns; he wrote in his diary that they had to be destroyed, and on 16 June referred to them during an Israeli cabinet meeting as the "two thorns". Lydda's local Arab authority, officially subordinated to the Arab Higher Committee, assumed local civic and military powers. The records of Lydda's military command discuss military training, constructing obstacles and trenches, requisitioning vehicles and assembling armoured cars armed with machine-guns, and attempts at arms procurement. In April 1948, Lydda had become an arms supply center, and provided military training and security coordination for the neighboring villagers. Israel subsequently launched Operation Dani to secure the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and neutralise any threat to Tel Aviv from the Jordanian Arab Legion, which was stationed in Ramallah and Latrun, with a number of men in Lydda. On 7 July the IDF appointed Yigal Allon to head the operation, and Yitzhak Rabin, who became Israel's prime minister in 1974, as his operations officer; both had served in the Palmach, an elite fighting force of the pre-Israel Jewish community in Palestine. The operation was carried out between 9 July 1948, the end of the first truce in the Arab-Israeli war, and 18 July, the start of the second truce, a period known in Israeli historiography as the Ten Days. Morris writes that the IDF assembled its largest force ever: the Yiftach Brigade; the Eighth Armoured Brigade's 82nd and 89th Battalions; three battalions of Kiryati and Alexandroni infantry men; an estimated 6,000 men with around 30 artillery pieces. In July 1948 Lydda and Ramle had a joint population of 50,000–70,000 Palestinian Arabs, 20,000 of them refugees from Jaffa and elsewhere. Several Palestinian Arab towns had already fallen to Jewish or Israeli advances since April, but Lydda and Ramle had held out. There are differing views as to how well-defended the towns were. In January 1948, John Bagot Glubb, the commander of the Arab Legion, had toured Palestinian Arab towns, including Lydda and Ramle, urging them to prepare to defend themselves. The Legion had distributed barbed wire and as many weapons as could be spared. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi writes that just 125 Legionnaires from the Fifth Infantry Company were in Lydda—the Arab Legion numbered 6,000 in all—and that the rest of the town's defense consisted of civilian residents acting under the command of a retired Arab Legion sergeant. According to Morris, a number of Arab Legion soldiers, including 200–300 Bedouin volunteers, had arrived in Lydda and Ramle in April, and a company-sized force had set itself up in the former Palestine Police Force stations in Lydda and on the Lydda-Ramle road, with armoured cars and other weapons. He writes that there were 150 Legionnaires in the town in June, though the Israelis believed there were up to 1,500. An Arab Legion officer was appointed military governor of both towns, signaling the desire of Abdullah I of Jordan to stake a claim in the parts of Palestine allotted by the UN to a Palestinian Arab state, but Glubb advised him that the Legion was overstretched and could not hold the towns. As a result, Abdullah ordered the Legion to assume a defensive position only, and most of the Legionnaires in Lydda withdrew during the night of 11–12 July. Fall of the cities The Israeli air force began bombing the towns on the night of 9–10 July, intending to induce civilian flight, and it seemed to work in Ramle: at 11:30 hours on 10 July, Operation Dani headquarters (Dani HQ) told the IDF that there was a "general and serious flight from Ramla." That afternoon, Dani HQ told one of its brigades to facilitate the flight from Ramle of women, children, and the elderly, but to detain men of military age. On the same day, the IDF took control of Lydda airport. The Israeli air force dropped leaflets over both towns on 11 July telling residents to surrender. Ramle's community leaders, along with three prominent Arab family representatives, agreed to surrender, after which the Israelis mortared the city and imposed a curfew. The New York Times reported at the time that the capture of the city was seen as the high point of Israel's brief existence. Khalil Wazir, who later joined the PLO and became known as Abu Jihad, was evicted from the town with his family, who owned a grocer's store there, when he was 12 years old. He said he saw bodies scattered in the streets and between the houses, including the bodies of women and children. During the afternoon of 11 July, Israel's 89th (armoured) Battalion, led by Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan, moved into Lydda. Israeli historian Anita Shapira writes that the raid was carried out on Dayan's initiative without coordinating it with his commander. Using a column of jeeps led by a Marmon-Herrington Armoured Car with a cannon—taken from the Arab Legion the day before—he launched the attack in daylight, driving through the town from east to west machine-gunning anything that moved, according to Morris, then along the Lydda-Ramle road firing at militia posts until they reached the train station in Ramle. Kenneth Bilby, a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, was in the city at the time. He wrote: "[The Israeli jeep column] raced into Lydda with rifles, Stens, and sub-machine guns blazing. It coursed through the main streets, blasting at everything that moved ... the corpses of Arab men, women, and even children were strewn about the streets in the wake of this ruthlessly brilliant charge." The raid lasted 47 minutes, leaving an unknown number of dead, "perhaps as many as 200" according to Benny Morris. According to Dayan's 89th Battalion, 100–150 Palestinians were killed.[clarification needed][verification needed] The Israeli side lost 6 dead and 21 wounded. According to historians Kadish and Sela,[better source needed] the high casualty rate was caused by confusion over who Dayan's troops were. The IDF were wearing keffiyehs and were led by an armoured car seized from the Arab Legion. Residents may have believed the Arab Legion had arrived, only to encounter Dayan's forces shooting at everything as they ran from their homes. Although no formal surrender was announced in Lydda, people gathered in the streets waving white flags. On the evening of 11 July, 300–400 Israeli soldiers entered the town. Not long afterwards, the Arab Legion forces on the Lydda–Ramle road withdrew, though a small number of Legionnaires remained in the Lydda police station. More Israeli troops arrived at dawn on 12 July. According to a contemporaneous IDF account: "Groups of old and young, women and children streamed down the streets in a great display of submissiveness, bearing white flags, and entered of their own free will the detention compounds we arranged in the mosque and church—Muslims and Christians separately." The buildings soon filled up, and women and children were released, leaving several thousand men inside, including 4,000 in one of the mosque compounds. The town dignitaries were assembled and after discussion, decided to surrender. Lydda's inhabitants were instructed to leave their weapons on the doorsteps to be collected by soldiers but did not do so. A curfew for that evening was announced over loudspeakers. A delegation of town dignitaries, including Lydda's mayor, left for the police station to prevail upon the Legionnaires there to also surrender. They refused and fired upon the party, killing the mayor and wounding several others. Despite this, the Israeli 3rd Battalion decided to accept the town's surrender. Israeli historian Yoav Gelber writes that the Legionnaires still in the police station were panicking, and had been sending frantic messages to their HQ in Ramallah: "Have you no God in your hearts? Don't you feel any compassion? Hasten aid!" They were about to surrender, but were told by their HQ to wait to be rescued. Lydda massacre On 12 July, at 11:30 hours, two or three Arab Legion armoured cars entered the city, led by Lt. Hamadallah al-Abdullah from the Jordanian 1st Brigade. The Arab Legion armoured cars and the occupying Israeli soldiers engaged in a firefight which created the impression that the Jordanians had staged a counterattack, leading those in the city still armed to start firing at the Israelis too. Historian Benny Morris writes that "probably no more than several dozen townspeople participated in the (brief) firefight." The Israeli response was disproportionate, with Moshe Kelman ordering his troops to shoot at any clear target, including at anyone seen on the streets. Many civilians were killed by Israeli forces in what became one of the bloodiest massacres of the war. Israeli soldiers threw grenades into houses and residents ran out of their homes in panic and were shot. A number of Palestinians were killed in the Dahmash[c] Mosque. Historian Benny Morris writes that dozens of unarmed detainees were killed in the mosque. Historian Saleh Abdel Jawad estimated 175-250 killed in the mosque. Historian Ilan Pappé writes that 250 people were killed in the mosque. Historian Aref al-Aref estimated 176 were killed in the mosque. An eyewitness published a memoir in 1998 saying he had removed 95 bodies from one of the mosques. In an interview with Zochrot circa 2013, former Palmach soldier Yerachmiel Kahanovich confessed to his role in the killings in Lydda's Dahamsh Mosque, testifying that he had fired a PIAT anti-tank missile with an enormous shock wave impact inside the mosque, killing many. Historian Benny Morris writes that between 11:30 and 14:00 hours, "some 250" Palestinians were killed, citing the official Israeli military publication Sefer Ha-Palmach (Book of the Palmach). Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref estimated that 426 Palestinians were killed in Lydda on July 12, with 176 of that number being those killed in the mosque. Historian Nur Masalha wrote that "Dozens of unarmed civilians who were detained in the Dahmash Mosque and church premises of the town were gunned down and murdered. One official Israeli source put the casualty figures at 250 dead and many injured. It is likely, however, that somewhere between 250 and 400 Arabs were killed in this IDF massacre". When the shooting was over, bodies lay in the streets and houses in Lydda, and on the Lydda–Ramle road. The Red Cross was due to visit the area, but the new Israeli military governor of Ramle issued an order to have the visit delayed. The visit was rescheduled for 14 July; Dani HQ ordered Israeli troops to remove the bodies by then, but the order seems not to have been carried out. Dr. Klaus Dreyer of the IDF Medical Corps complained on 15 July that there were still corpses lying in and around Lydda, which constituted a health hazard and a "moral and aesthetic issue." He asked that trucks and Arab residents be organized to deal with them. Expulsion of residents Benny Morris writes that David Ben-Gurion and the IDF were largely left to their own devices to decide how Palestinian Arab residents were to be treated, without the involvement of the Cabinet and other ministers. As a result, their policy was haphazard and circumstantial, depending in part on the location, but also on the religion and ethnicity of the town. The Palestinian Arabs of Western and Lower Galilee, mainly Christian and Druze, were allowed to stay in place, but Lydda and Ramle, mainly Muslim, were almost completely emptied. As the shooting in Lydda continued, a meeting was held on 12 July at Operation Dani headquarters between Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin and Zvi Ayalon, generals in the IDF, and Yisrael Galili, formerly of the Haganah, the pre-IDF army. Also present were Yigal Allon, commanding officer of Operation Dani, and Yitzhak Rabin. At one point Ben-Gurion, Allon, and Rabin left the room. Rabin has offered two accounts of what happened next. In a 1977 interview with Michael Bar-Zohar, Rabin said Allon asked what was to be done with the residents; in response, Ben-Gurion had waved his hand and said, "garesh otam"—"expel them." In the manuscript of his memoirs in 1979, Rabin wrote that Ben-Gurion had not spoken, but had "waved his hand in a gesture which said, 'Drive them out!'" The expulsion order for Lydda was issued at 13:30 hours on 12 July, signed by Rabin. In his memoirs Rabin wrote: "'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly." Yitzhak Rabin also wrote in his memoirs that some soldiers refused to take part in the evictions. Benny Morris writes that Israeli troops understood that what followed was an act of deportation, not a voluntary departure. While the residents were still in the towns, IDF radio traffic had already started calling them "refugees" after the expulsion orders were given. Operation Dani HQ told the IDF General Staff/Operations at noon on 13 July that "[the troops in Lydda] are busy expelling the inhabitants [oskim begeirush hatoshavim]," and told the HQs of Kiryati, 8th and Yiftah brigades at the same time that, "enemy resistance in Ramle and Lydda has ended. The eviction [pinui]" of the inhabitants... has begun." The Israeli cabinet reportedly knew nothing about the expulsion plan until Bechor Shitrit, Minister for Minority Affairs, appeared unannounced in Ramle on 12 July. He was shocked when he realized troops were organizing expulsions. He returned to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok, who met with Ben Gurion to agree on guidelines for the treatment of the residents, though Morris writes that Ben Gurion apparently failed to tell Shitrit or Shertok that he himself was the source of the expulsion orders. Gelber disagrees with Morris's analysis, arguing that Ben-Gurion's agreement with Shitrit and Shertok is evidence that expulsion was not his intention, rather than evidence of his duplicity, as Morris implies. The men agreed the townspeople should be told that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, but that anyone who stayed was responsible for himself and would not be given food. Women, children, the old, and the sick were not to be forced to leave, and the monasteries and churches must not be damaged, though no mention was made of the mosques. Ben-Gurion passed the order to the IDF General Staff, who passed it to Dani HQ at 23:30 hours on 12 July, ten hours after the expulsion orders were issued; Morris writes that there was an ambiguity in the instruction that women, children and the sick were not to be forced to go: the word "lalechet" can mean either "go" or "walk". Satisfied that the order had been passed on, Shertok believed he had managed to avert the expulsions, not realizing that, even as he was discussing them in Tel Aviv, they had already begun. Thousands of Ramle's residents began moving out of the town on foot, or in trucks and buses, between 10 and 12 July. The IDF used its own vehicles and confiscated Arab ones to move them. By 13 July the townspeople had undergone aerial bombardment, ground invasion, had seen grenades thrown into their homes and hundreds of residents killed, had been living under a curfew, had been abandoned by the Arab Legion, and the able-bodied men had been rounded up. Spiro Munayyer, an eyewitness, wrote that the important thing was to get out of the city. A deal was reached with an IDF intelligence officer, Shmarya Guttman, normally an archeologist, that the residents would leave in exchange for the release of the prisoners; according to Guttman, he went to the mosque himself and told the men they were free to join their families. Town criers and soldiers walked or drove around the town instructing residents where to gather for departure. A large number of people died in the expulsions from Lydda in what has become known as the Lydda death march. Lydda's residents began moving out on the morning of 13 July. They walked six to seven kilometers to Beit Nabala, then 10–12 more to Barfiliya, along dusty roads in temperatures of 30–35 °C, carrying their children and portable possessions in carts pulled by animals or on their backs. Yitzhak Rabin wrote in his memoirs that "The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion." Many of those expelled were stripped of their valuables en route by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. Another IDF soldier described how possessions and people were slowly abandoned as the refugees grew tired or collapsed: "To begin with [jettisoning] utensils and furniture, and in the end, bodies of men, women, and children, scattered along the way." A survivor named Haj As'ad Hassouneh, described to historian Saleh Abd al-Jawad his recollection in 1996: "The Jews came and they called among the people: "You must go." "Where shall we go?" "Go to Barfilia." ... the spot you were standing on determined what if any family or possession you could get; any to the west of you could not be retrieved. You had to immediately begin walking and it had to be to the east. ... The people were fatigued even before they began their journey or could attempt to reach any destination. No one knew where Barfilia was or its distance from Jordan. ... The people were also fasting due to Ramadan because they were people of serious belief. There was no water. People began to die of thirst. Some women died and their babies nursed from their dead bodies. Many of the elderly died on the way. ... Many buried their dead in the leaves of corn". After three days of walking, the refugees were picked up by the Arab Legion and driven to Ramallah. Reports vary regarding how many died in the expulsion from Lydda. Many were elderly people and young children who died from the heat and exhaustion. Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref estimated 500 died in the expulsion from Lydda, and that 350 of that number died from thirst and exhaustion. Nimr al Khatib estimated that 335 died, a number which Israeli historian Benny Morris has called "certainly an exaggeration", while historian Michael Palumbo called Khatib's estimate "a very conservative figure." Morris writes that "a handful and perhaps dozens" died from dehydration and exhaustion. Nur Masalha estimated 350 deaths in the "expulsion and forced march" from Lydda. Glubb wrote that "nobody will ever know how many children died." There was widespread robbing of the refugees, with The Economist writing on 21 August 1948: "The Arab refugees were systematically stripped of all their belongings before they were sent on their trek to the frontier. Household belongings, stores, clothing, all had to be left behind." Aharon Cohen, director of Mapam's Arab Department, complained to Yigal Allon months after the deportations that troops had been told to remove jewellery and money from residents so that they would arrive at the Arab Legion without resources, thereby increasing the burden of looking after them. Allon replied that he knew of no such order, but conceded it was a possibility. George Habash, one of the expelled who later founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that the Israelis took watches, jewellery, gold, and wallets from the refugees, and that he witnessed a neighbour of his shot and killed since he refused to be searched. Looting As the residents left, the sacking of the cities began. The Yiftah brigade commander, Lt. Col. Schmuel "Mula" Cohen, wrote of Lydda that, "the cruelty of the war here reached its zenith." Bechor Sheetrit, the Minister for Minority Affairs, said the army removed 1,800 truckloads of property from Lydda alone. Dov Shafrir was appointed Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property, supposedly charged to protect and redistribute Palestinian property, but his staff were inexperienced and unable to control the situation. The looting was so extensive that the 3rd Battalion had to be withdrawn from Lydda during the night of 13–14 July, and sent for a day to Ben Shemen for kinus heshbon nefesh, a conference to encourage soul-searching. Cohen forced them to hand over their loot, which was thrown onto a bonfire and destroyed, but the situation continued when they returned to town. Some were later prosecuted. Allegations of sexual violence There were allegations that Israeli soldiers had raped Palestinian women. Ben-Gurion referred to them in his diary entry for 15 July 1948: "The bitter question has arisen regarding acts of robbery and rape [o'nes ("אונס")] in the conquered towns ...", Ben-Gurion then proceeds to write of the need to establish a special police force with authority to shoot such soldiers. Israeli writer Amos Kenan, who served as a platoon commander of the 82d Regiment of the Israeli Army brigade that conquered Lydda told The Nation on 6 February 1989: "At night, those of us who couldn't restrain ourselves would go into the prison compounds to fuck Arab women. I want very much to assume, and perhaps even can, that those who couldn't restrain themselves did what they thought the Arabs would have done to them had they won the war." Kenan said he heard of only one woman who complained. A court-martial was arranged, he said, but in court, the accused ran the back of his hand across his throat, and the woman decided not to proceed. The allegations were given little consideration by the Israeli government. Agriculture Minister Aharon Zisling told the Cabinet on 21 July: "It has been said that there were cases of rape in Ramle. I could forgive acts of rape but I won't forgive other deeds, which appear to me much graver. When a town is entered and rings are forcibly removed from fingers and jewellery from necks—that is a very grave matter." Casualties Historian Michael Palumbo estimated 1,000 Palestinians died in the attacks on Lydda and Ramle.[d] Historian Saleh Abdel Jawad estimated 1,000 deaths "in the many phases of the Lod massacre". Historian Aref al-Aref estimated 1,300 total dead in Lydda. Muhammad Nimr al Khatib estimated 1,700 total killed. Historian Nur Masalha wrote that "Dozens of unarmed civilians who were detained in the Dahmash Mosque and church premises of the town were gunned down and murdered. One official Israeli source put the casualty figures at 250 dead and many injured. It is likely, however, that somewhere between 250 and 400 Arabs were killed in this IDF massacre; and an estimated 350 more died in the subsequent expulsion and forced march of the townspeople." Aftermath Tens of thousands of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle poured into Ramallah. For the most part, they had no money, property, food, or water, and represented a health risk, not only to themselves. The Ramallah city council asked King Abdullah to remove them. Some of the refugees reached Amman, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and the Upper Galilee, and all over the area there were angry demonstrations against Abdullah and the Arab Legion for their failure to defend the cities. Local Palestinians spat at Glubb as he drove through the West Bank, and wives and parents of Arab Legion soldiers tried to break into King Abdullah's palace. Alec Kirkbride, the British ambassador in Amman, described one protest in the city on 18 July: A couple of thousand Palestinian men swept up the hill toward the main [palace] entrance... screaming abuse and demanding that the lost towns should be reconquered at once... The King appeared at the top of the main steps of the building; he was a short, dignified figure wearing white robes and headdress. He paused for a moment, surveying the seething mob before, [then walked] down the steps to push his way through the line of guardsmen into the thick of the demonstrators. He went up to a prominent individual, who was shouting at the top of his voice, and dealt him a violent blow to the side of the head with the flat of his hand. The recipient of the blow stopped yelling... the King could be heard roaring: so, you want to fight the Jews, do you? Very well, there is a recruiting office for the army at the back of my house... go there and enlist. The rest of you, get the hell down the hillside!" Most of the crowd got the hell down the hillside. Glubb quickly became the "butt of pan-Arab anger" for his perceived failures. During a meeting of the Political Committee of the Arab League in Amman on 12–13 July, several of the committee's delegates accused Glubb of serving British or even Jewish interests and claimed his concerns over troop and ammunition shortages were merely excuses. When Glubb went on an extended leave to England after the Ten Days, Egyptian journalists confronted him at the Cairo Airport, asking him questions such as "Why did you betray the Arab cause?" and "Why did you give Lydda and Ramla to the Jews?" Though King Abdullah was reluctant to do so, he summoned Glubb to a meeting of the Council of Ministers and laid the blame for the loss of Lydda and Ramla squarely on him. Abdullah dismissed Glubb's claims of ammunition shortages and indirectly suggested he resign from the Arab Legion. However, as the Legion was still engaged in battle, Glubb stayed on with some encouragement from the British government. The whole affair led Kirkbride to write that Britain had "reached a degree of unpopularity which I would have described as impossible six months ago." The United Nations Security Council called for a ceasefire to begin no later than 18 July, with sanctions to be levelled against transgressors. The Arabs were outraged: "No justice, no logic, no equity, no understanding, but blind submission to everything that is Zionist," Al-Hayat responded, though Morris writes that cooler heads in the Arab world were privately pleased that they were required not to fight, given Israel's obvious military superiority. Morris writes that the situation of the 400,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees that summer—not only those from Lydda and Ramle—was dire, camping in public buildings, abandoned barracks, and under trees. Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator in Palestine, visited a refugee camp in Ramallah and said he had never seen a more ghastly sight. Morris writes that the Arab governments did little for them, and most of the aid that did reach them came from the West through the Red Cross and Quakers. A new UN body was set up to get things moving, which in December 1949 became the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which many of the refugees and their descendants, now standing at four million, still depend on. Bernadotte's mediation efforts—which resulted in a proposal to split Palestine between Israel and Jordan, and to hand Lydda and Ramle to King Abdullah—ended on 17 September 1948, when he was assassinated by four Israeli gunmen from Lehi, an extremist Zionist faction. The United Nations convened the Lausanne Conference of 1949 from April to September 1949 in part to resolve the refugee question. On 12 May 1949, the conference achieved its only success when the parties signed the Lausanne Protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace, which included territories, refugees, and Jerusalem. Israel agreed in principle to allow the return of all of Palestinian refugees because the Israelis wanted United Nations membership, which required the settlement of the refugee problem. Once Israel was admitted to the UN, it retreated from the protocol it had signed, because it was completely satisfied with the status quo, and saw no need to make any concessions with regard to the refugees or on boundary questions. Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett had hoped for a comprehensive peace settlement at Lausanne, but he was no match for Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who saw the armistice agreements that stopped the fighting with the Arab states as sufficient, and put a low priority on a permanent peace treaty. On 3 August 1949, the Israeli delegation proposed the repatriation of 100,000 refugees, but not to their former homes, which had been destroyed or given to Jewish refugees from Europe; Israel would specify where the refugees would be relocated and the specific economic activities the refugees would be permitted to engage in. Also, the 100,000 would include 25,000 who had already returned illegally, so the actual total was only 75,000. The Americans felt it too low: they wanted to see 200,000–250,000 refugees taken back. The Arabs considered the Israeli offer was "less than token." When the '100,000 plan' was announced, the reaction of Israeli newspapers and political parties was uniformly negative. Soon after, the Israelis announced their offer had been withdrawn. On 14 July 1948 the IDF told Ben-Gurion that "not one Arab inhabitant" remained in Ramla or Lod, as they were now called. In fact, several hundred remained, including city workers who maintained essential city services like water service, and workers with expertise with the railroad train yards and the airport, the elderly, the ill and some Christians, and others who return to their homes over the following months. In October 1948 the Israeli military governor of Ramla-Lod reported that 960 Palestinians were living in Ramla, and 1,030 in Lod. Military rule in the towns ended in April 1949. Nearly 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel between May 1948 and December 1951 from Europe, Asia and Africa, doubling the state's Jewish population; in 1950 Israel passed the Law of Return, offering Jews automatic citizenship. The immigrants were assigned Palestinian homes—in part because of the inevitable housing shortage, but also as a matter of policy to make it harder for former residents to reclaim them—and could buy refugees' furniture from the Custodian for Absentees' Property. Jewish families were occasionally placed in houses belonging to Palestinians who still lived in Israel, the so-called "present absentees," regarded as physically present but legally absent, with no legal standing to reclaim their property. By March 1950 there were 8,600 Jews and 1,300 Palestinian Arabs living in Ramla, and 8,400 Jews and 1,000 Palestinians in Lod. Most of the Jews who settled in the towns were from Asia or North Africa. The Palestinian workers allowed to remain in the cities were confined to ghettos. The military administrator split the region into three zones—Ramla, Lod, and Rakevet, a neighbourhood in Lod established by the British for rail workers—and declared the Arab areas within them "closed," with each closed zone run by a committee of three to five members. Many of the town's essential workers were Palestinians. The military administrators did satisfy some of their needs, such as building a school, supplying medical aid, allocating them 50 dunams for growing vegetables, and renovating the interior of the Dahmash mosque, but it appears the refugees felt like prisoners; Palestinian train workers, for example, were subject to a curfew from evening until morning, with periodic searches to make sure they had no guns. One wrote an open letter in March 1949 to the Al Youm newspaper on behalf of 460 Muslim and Christian train workers: "Since the occupation, we continued to work and our salaries have still not been paid to this day. Then our work was taken from us and now we are unemployed. The curfew is still valid ... [W]e are not allowed to go to Lod or Ramla, as we are prisoners. No one is allowed to look for a job but with the mediation of the members of the Local Committee ... we are like slaves. I am asking you to cancel the restrictions and to let us live freely in the state of Israel. As of 2013[update] around 69,000 people were living in Ramla. The population in Lod as of 2010[update] was officially around 45,000 Jews and 20,000 Arabs; its main industry is its airport, renamed Ben Gurion International Airport in 1973. Beth Israel immigrants from Ethiopia were housed there in the 1990s, increasing the ethnic tension in the city. In 2010 a three-meter-high wall was built to separate the Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods. The Arab community has complained that, when Arabs became a majority in Lod's Ramat Eshkol suburb, the local school was closed rather than turned into an Arab-sector school, and in September 2008 it was re-opened as a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. The local council acknowledges that it wants Lod to become a more Jewish city. In addition to the Arabs officially registered, a fifth of the overall population are Bedouin, who arrived in Lod in the 1980s when they were moved off land in the Negev, according to Nathan Jeffay.They live in dwellings deemed illegal by Israeli authorities on agricultural land, unregistered and with no municipal services. The refugees are occasionally able to visit their former homes. Zochrot, an Israeli group that researches former Palestinian towns, visited Lod in 2003 and 2005, erecting signs in Hebrew and Arabic depicting its history, including a sign on the wall of the former Arab ghetto. The visits are met with a mixture of interest and hostility. Father Oudeh Rantisi, a former mayor of Ramallah who was expelled from Lydda in 1948, visited his family's former home for the first time in 1967: As the bus drew up in front of the house, I saw a young boy playing in the yard. I got off the bus and went over to him. "How long have you lived in this house?" I asked. "I was born here," he replied. "Me too," I said ... Yitzhak Rabin, Allon's operations officer, who signed the Lydda expulsion order, became Chief of Staff of the IDF during the Six-Day War, and Israel's prime minister in 1974 and again in 1992. He was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing Israeli radical opposed to making peace with the PLO. Yigal Allon, who led Operation Dani and may have ordered the expulsions, became Israel's deputy prime minister in 1967. He was a member of the war cabinet during the 1967 Arab Israeli Six-Day War, and the architect of the post-war Allon Plan, a proposal to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank. He died in 1980. Khalil al-Wazir, the grocer's son expelled from Ramle, became one of the founders of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the PLO, and specifically of its armed wing, Al-Assifa. He organised the PLO's guerrilla warfare and the Fatah youth movements that helped spark the First Intifada in 1987. He was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunis in 1988. George Habash, the medical student expelled from Lydda, went on to lead one of the best-known of the Palestinian militant groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In September 1970 he masterminded the hijacking of four passenger jets bound for New York, an attack that put the Palestinian cause on the map. The PFLP was also behind the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, in which 27 people died, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight to Entebbe, which famously led to the IDF's rescue of the hostages. Habash died of a heart attack in Amman in 2008. Historiography Benny Morris argues that Israeli historians from the 1950s throughout the 1970s—who wrote what he calls the "Old History"—were "less than honest" about what had happened in Lydda and Ramle. Anita Shapira calls them "the Palmach generation": historians who had fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and who thereafter went to work for the IDF's history branch, where they censored material other scholars had no access to. For them, Shapira writes, the Holocaust and the Second World War—including the experience of Jewish weakness in the face of persecution—made the fight for land between the Arabs and Jews a matter of life and death, the 1948 war the "tragic and heroic climax of all that had preceded it," and Israeli victory an "act of historical justice." The IDF's official history of the 1948 war, Toldot Milhemet HaKomemiyut ("History of the War of Independence"), published in 1959, said that residents of Lydda had violated the terms of their surrender, and left because they were afraid of Israeli retribution. The head of the IDF history branch, Lt. Col Netanel Lorch, wrote in The Edge of the Sword (1961) that they had requested safe conduct from the IDF; American political scientist Ian Lustick writes that Lorch admitted in 1997 that he left his post because the censorship made it impossible to write good history. Another employee of the history branch, Lt. Col. Elhannan Orren, wrote a detailed history of Operation Dani in 1976 that made no mention of expulsions. Arab historians published accounts, including Aref al-Aref's Al Nakba, 1947–1952 (1956–1960), Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib's Min Athar al-Nakba (1951), and several papers by Walid Khalidi. Israeli and Western academia were dismissive of these early Arab historian accounts, with Benny Morris for example criticizing them for relying on oral testimony rather than documentary evidence. The first person in Israel to acknowledge the Lydda and Ramle expulsions, according Morris, was Yitzhak Rabin in his 1979 memoirs, though that part of his manuscript was removed by government censors. Material in the Israeli archives was not available for decades after the war, but when the 30-year rule of Israel's Archives Law (passed in 1955) it meant that hundreds of thousands of government documents were released throughout the 1980s. Basing their research on these newly available documents, a number of historians today known as the New Historians emerged. Shapira writes that they focused on the 700,000 Palestinian Arabs who were uprooted by the war, not on the 6,000 Jews who died during it, and assessed the behavior of the Jewish state as they would that of any other. Between 1987 and 1993, four of these historians in particular—Morris himself, Simha Flapan, Ilan Pappé, and Avi Shlaim—three of them Oxbridge-trained, published a series of books that changed the historiography of the Palestinian exodus. According to Lustick, although it was known in academic circles that the Palestinians had left because of expulsions and intimidation, it was largely unknown to Israeli Jews until Morris's The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 appeared in 1987. The work of the New Historians have been criticized by a number of Israeli historians such as Efraim Karsh, who writes that there was more voluntary Palestinian flight than Morris and others concede. He acknowledges that there were expulsions, particularly in Lydda, though he argues—as does Morris—that they resulted from decisions made in the heat of battle, and account for a small percentage of the overall exodus. Karsh argues that the New Historians have turned the story of the birth of Israel upside down, making victims of the Arab aggressors, though he acknowledges that the New History is now widely accepted. The positions of Karsh and Morris, though they disagree, contrast in turn with those of Ilan Pappé and Walid Khalidi, who argue not only that there were widespread expulsions, but also that they were not the result of ad hoc decisions. Rather, they argue, the expulsions were part of a deliberate strategy, known as Plan Dalet and conceived before Israel's declaration of independence, to transfer the Arab population and seize their land—in Pappé's words, to ethnically cleanse the country. Ari Shavit devotes a chapter of his book My Promised Land (2013) to the expulsion, and calls the events "our black box, . . In it lies the dark secret of Zionism." In his memoirs Yitzhak Rabin wrote: "'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion." An Israeli censorship board removed this section from his manuscript, but Peretz Kidron, the Israeli journalist who translated the memoirs into English, passed the censored text to David Shipler of The New York Times, who published it on 23 October 1979. In an interview with The New York Times two days later, Yigal Allon took issue with Rabin's version of events. "With all my high esteem for Rabin during the war of independence, I was his commander and my knowledge of the facts is therefore more accurate," he told Shipler. "I did not ask the late Ben-Gurion for permission to expel the population of Lydda. I did not receive such permission and did not give such orders." He said the residents left in part because they were told to by the Arab Legion, so the latter could recapture Lydda at a later date, and in part because they were panic-stricken. Yoav Gelber also takes issue with Rabin's account. He writes that Ben-Gurion was in the habit of expressing his orders clearly, whether verbally or in writing, and would not have issued an order by waving his hand; he adds that there is no record of any meetings before the invasion that indicate expulsion was discussed. He attributes the expulsions to Allon, who he says was known for his scorched earth policy. Wherever Allon was in charge of Israeli troops, Gelber writes, no Palestinians remained. Whereas traditional historiography in Israel has insisted that Palestinian refugees left their lands under the orders of Arab leaders, some Israeli scholars have challenged this view in recent years. Israeli historians Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela state that there is no direct first-hand evidence that a massacre took place and that the deaths in Lydda occurred during a military battle for the town, not because of a massacre. This view has been widely criticised. John W. Poole quoted Kadish and Sela's paper as saying that on the morning of 12 July 1948, "The Palmach forces [in Lydda] came under heavy fire from 'thousands of weapons from every house, roof and window' sustaining heavy casualties." Poole continued: "These assertions seem to be the foundation for much of the argument advanced in the article. I think that the authors should have furnished much more information about their precise meaning, factual validity, and sources.... [Benny Morris] does not say how many townspeople were involved in the fighting but his account certainly suggests a number of Arab gunmen very much smaller than several thousand." James Bowen is also critical. He places a cautionary note on the UCC web site: "... it is based on a book written by the same authors which was published in 2000 by the Israeli Ministry of Defence." Kadish and Sela also wrote that, according to the 3rd Battalion's commander, Moshe Kelman, the Israelis came under heavy fire from "thousands of weapons from every house, roof and window". Morris calls this "nonsense" and argues that only a few dozen townspeople took part in what turned out to be a brief firefight. In art The Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout (1930–2006) was 19 years old when he was expelled from Lydda. He created a series of oil paintings about the march, the best known of which is Where to ...? (1953), which enjoys iconic status among Palestinians. A life-size image of a man dressed in rags holds a walking stick in one hand, the wrist of a child in the other, a toddler on his shoulder, with a third child behind him, crying and alone. There is a withered tree behind him, and in the distance the skyline of an Arab town with a minaret. Gannit Ankori writes that the absent mother is the lost homeland, the children its orphans. Israeli poet Natan Alterman (1910–1970) wrote the poem Al Zot ("On This"), which historians consider to have been written about the violence in Lydda, although it may have been written about the Dawayima massacre instead.[e] Historian Benny Morris writes that what the poem describes "conforms to what happened in Dayan's raid in Lydda—and the poem does speak explicitly of an incident in a town or city (ir) and not a village (kfar)." Published in Davar on 19 November 1948, the poem is about an Israeli soldier during the 1948 war machine-gunning an Arab. Two days later Ben-Gurion sought Alterman's permission for the Defence Ministry to distribute the poem throughout the IDF. Let us sing then also about "delicate incidents" For which the true name, incidentally, is murder Let songs be composed about conversations with sympathetic interlocutors who with collusive chuckles make concessions and grant forgiveness. See also Notes References Further reading 31°56′30″N 34°52′42″E / 31.94167°N 34.87833°E / 31.94167; 34.87833 |
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