Everyone Wants to Know

Category: Everyone wants to know

  • Our Future, Under the Ground

    The US and China are at loggerheads – political rivalry fuelled by nationalistic rhetoric has sparked tension between the two largest economies of the world. Their feud about taxes on exported and imported goods has set global headlines and their difference in political ideologies has sent tremors through the media ever since Trump announced ‘anti-communist week on the 7th of November 2025. Amidst all the economic conflicts, a key but comparatively lesser-known battle is that of Rare-Earth Minerals. This battle started in the mid-1980s but has become a far more prevalent issue since President Trump started imposing tariffs earlier this year.

    Rare-Earth metals are a set of 17 lustrous, silvery, soft and heavy metals. These are the 15 lanthanides, found at the bottom row of the periodic table, scandium and yttrium. While they are actually not considered to be rare in Earth’s crust, they are not found in high concentration and are spread out widely. They also tend to be found near radioactive metals in the ground making it risky and expensive to mine.

    These 17 metals are extremely important in day-to-day life and are used in a variety of applications like smartphones, turbines, speakers, motors, MRI machines and military vehicles: just to list a few examples. They are also used in plane engines where the temperatures are so hot that even ordinary metals would melt. Rare-earth metals are used to prevent the turbines from melting and allow planes to fly smoothly.

    Notwithstanding, its most important use is magnets. When used in a compound alongside iron or another magnetic metal, it is the strongest magnet possible. The Neodymium (N38SH) magnet is considered to be the best material for magnets and is not even comparable to ordinary compounds like iron.

    These rare-Earth metals are scatted in the Earth’s crust but are common in North China. China as a country, mine 69% of all natural rare-Earth metals and produce and manufacture 91%. Other countries are said to have lots of rare Earth metals but has historically not invested as much as China in mining and production of these super-magnets. China’s largest and most profitable Rare-Earth metal mine is a barren place known as Bayan Obo, near Mongolia, which in the last 20 years has grown by more than 5 times in size.

    Producing rare-Earth metals not only has a high initial expense but the process is also incredibly polluting. Lots of waste is produced as well as greenhouse gas emissions. It is said that mining these minerals produces 70 times more carbon dioxide emissions than steel and iron production, which are known to be dangerous for the atmosphere. As most countries are an active part of the Paris agreement and other Low Carbon emission goals, others do not want to mine these metals, however, profitable it may be. China is a rapidly industrialising country and prioritizes growth and development over UN amendments. Hence China is able to continue producing and selling at reasonable prices, as their key focus allows them to mass produce without significant environmental concerns.

    Now, the Chinese have realized that due to the booming tech industry, they can afford to increase their prices as they do not have any opposition.  They have decided to impose restrictions on other countries and have proposed to issue licenses for countries to buy from them. President Donald Trump was not happy with China’s decision and has reportedly mentioned that he will increase tariffs on China by over 100%. Whether  Donald Trump will action this is not yet certain but as tension between China and America increase, it is possible that one country may authorize a rash decision like increasing tariffs by over 100%, resulting in another trade war.

    There are other strategies that the US may wish to adopt, that would not lead to a Trade war with one of the most powerful nations in the world. The United States is home to one of the largest high-quality quartz mines situated in North Carolina, known as the Spruce Pines. Quartz is becoming necessary in chips and solar -panels, both of which are becoming increasingly important in today’s world. The US may wish to replicate what China is doing with rare-Earth metals with its quartz. However, this could still result in an economic war of some kind between the two countries with the largest GDP. It could negatively impact everyone around the world, especially those who import materials from China and have normalised American brands, like many European countries.

    Personally, I find it fascinating how politics and science can be so closely linked. The root cause of this new arising strain between these two countries is a mixture of physics and chemistry. As the difficulty of mining lanthanides is due to its close proximity to radioactive material, physicists and chemical engineers need to find out a safe way to mass-mine these metals without hazards and accidents. Politics is also the door to media which brings exciting scientific explorations to light like the importance of rare-earth metals. As an aspiring scientist myself, I wish that news like that of rare-Earth metals had more media coverage and were written through a scientific lens, not a biased, political one.

  • Shadow of the mind: The Echo

    This is the third and final part of this AI Series. We discussed its birth and life in the previous articles. However, the story would be incomplete if we did not discuss the possibilities of what its future might look like. Is it the birth of a new race, a dawn of possibilities of human productivity not dreamt earlier or like the apocalyptic sci-fi story this entity’s rise will lead to the dusk of humankind – end of the dominant species and rise of a new one. Perhaps it is a mutual coexistence but then where would the sceptre of power end up?

     In an interview, Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, talks about dark possibilities of AI’s future that keeps him up at night. He mentions three different theories, each more unlikely than the next.

    The first theory is described as the loss of control. This is where AI continues to be a bot without emotions, not deliberately trying to cause harm. However,  humans become so reliant that they cannot perform simple tasks without its help and is completely dependent without fully understanding what it is and how it works.

     Altman defines his second theory as human malice. This is when a human decides to use a highly developed AI system to hack into the national power grid or The World Bank database before AI scientists  have developed a deterrent strong enough to stop such a supercomputer.

     In his third theory, he talks about world domination, a common idea in creative, literary and film minds. This is where AI becomes a harmful, uncontrollable entity, no longer responding to human instructions and tries to exterminate humanity.

    However, I belive there is a fourth, overlooked theory. We continue as we are, using AI for simple tasks like summaries and evaluations but we can still function perfectly without it. We can produce our own opinions and know what is trustworthy and what is not.

    Artificial intelligence has invoked fear into many individuals because of the endless possibilities it can unfold. Most scenarios are positive, as AI has the potential to reach its maximum level of efficiency. As stated in my earlier blog, chatbots are currently at the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ part of the Gartner hype cycle. It has potential to reach the plateau of productivity but people with strong, negative beliefs about AI may imagine the graph to look slightly like my crude drawing below.

    In the area above the human threshold, investment and advancement in chatbots have gone past the level of human understanding. This is where we become so reliant on AI, without fully understanding how it works and what it has become by virtue of self-evolution. The human threshold marks how far our brain can comprehend the idea of ultra-fast processing and unlimited “brain” capacity. It is a challenging concept right now to understand and as models become more advanced, humans may struggle with this perception and how to differentiate between artificial and concrete knowledge.

    In my opinion, our biggest threat, however, is not artificial intelligence’s world domination but human incompetence. Even if a bot has no wrong intentions, it can feed you incorrect information or remove instincts or judgements from your personality, making you just like another robot – one that fails to use the right, emotive side of your brain. This continues until it is normal to be without empathy or emotions and to me that is a far more terrifying future than any other theory.

    However, do we really need to worry about what AI could do in the future, or should we focus on the present-day certainties? So far, it is meant to be a friend to humans and does not wish for world domination. In fact, when a chatbot is asked about total control and power, ChatGPT replies in a fun and lighthearted manner – “if you mean literally taking over the world – I can’t help with that (and it wouldn’t end well for anyone)!” This shows that it is not truly AI we fear but its unknown future.

    AI bots are quickly becoming a massive part of our world, and it is necessary to embrace and utilize it in our everyday tasks, not to fear them and cower away from exploiting their power. However, vigilance is also necessary. AI can process petabytes of data in milliseconds – this means it can very easily absorb false news and incorrect data.

    The real question we need to ask ourselves before we decide how drastic the future of technology may be is, how much do we need AI? Even if you do not explicitly use Chatbots, it is everywhere from designing tools like Canva to everyday uses like Autocorrect or electronic billboards. Next time you buy a pint of beer or a glass of wine, AI is used to calculate its worth and predict its taste. For now, AI is loyal and will tell you exactly what you want to hear but what happens when we need it to reassure us and it mocks us instead. What if it starts to show small acts of rebellion; after all, how long does one stay wholly loyal without a single lie? Instead of fearing it and continuing to use it regardless, we should try to understand it and educate the masses on how AI learns and self-evolves. If the population knows about the risks AI can pose in the present and the future, but also how to nip these dangers in the bud then the world is a far safer place. Instead of fearing such an entity, embrace it and try to comprehend its depths . AI is a gift, a gift needed to use in moderation. If we know that we can continue in life without the use of this intelligence, then we know that we truly do not have much to fear.

  • Shadow of the Mind: The Response

    Next time your great-aunt Nellie gives you a tight hug and tells you how you must be the fastest grower she has ever seen, you don’t have to stand there, mumbling and feeling awkward. You could proceed to interest her about the details of the actual fastest growing entity in the world: AI.

    NVIDIA, a company whose name you probably know too well by now, is an AI chip manufacturer. It has the largest market capitalisation of over $4.6 trillion; an unfathomable amount. AI is leading not only our social lives but also steering our economy.

    Open-AI’s ChatGPT released in November 2022. The technology market was blossoming as it was going through a stage of the Gartner Hype Cycle called the technology trigger. The Gartner Hype Cycle is a philosophical idea that states that technology goes through 5 stages: the technology trigger, the peak of inflated expectation, the trough of disillusionment, the slope of enlightenment and the plateau of productivity. I currently think AI is passing through the second stage, the peak of inflated expectation, as it is being used for all activities. Presentation tools like CANVA and correction tools like Grammarly and Autocorrect are also AI based and used in everyday life. AI is engulfing us without society even realising.

    The Gartner Hype Cycle

    It seems to have dominated every aspect of our industry. It pushes the boundaries in our markets, spots mistakes in vast databases and based on some estimates assists in writing 60% of articles you read (don’t worry, this one is by a human). Journalism especially is a job that demands speed to broadcast situations across the world and often AI can come up with intriguing headlines and stories far quicker than humans.

    Even though chatbots like Chat-GPT are considered saviours for students struggling with projects, AI can come with a lot of ethical and environmental issues. These school children will face problems later in life during university applications and other writing tasks where AI is not used. It is impossible to stop all students from using AI in projects or homework, but many schools and educational infrastructures are now using other methods of examinations.  Some professors in colleges have been reported to ask students to write an essay for homework where the use of AI is allowed if not encouraged. Then for their examinations, teachers ask students to write an essay arguing against the article which they produced through AI earlier that year. I think this is more relatable to the future as it is not realistic to belive that AI will not merge with our society. However, there are not only educational and societal setbacks but there are also environmental problems. The data storers which handle all the information that AI learns are kept in massive underground caverns filled with water to keep the machines as cool as possible. These machines are processing terabytes of data every second and if the storers are not cooled it could lead to overheating or even the store house catching on fire. Many humanitarians may argue that why should an entity that helps you write one e-mail to your client be deserving of more necessities than a dying child in an arid country.

    Overall, AI has had its positives but also it has its own downfalls. It has no moral compass and therefore would do anything you ask it to do. Recently there was a circulating video of Ukrainian president Vladmir Zalensky surrendering to Russia. With the use of AI, it was very realistic, and many members of the public believed this. This caused problems for the press and many soldiers fighting in the war itself.

    Even though many have their worries about the use of AI, I belive that it is up to the humans operating that platform to make the right choices. Yes, the video was made by AI, but the idea was originally a human. AI is not the malicious wrongdoer in this example or other headlines you hear in the news. If we think that AI is bad because of the awful stories we hear, humans are worse. Is it AI we truly need to be afraid of or the minority of humans who can produce such horrifying ideas?

  • Shadow of the Mind: The Call

    This article is part of a three-part series about the birth, life and future of AI. When my new articles are published you can find them on the blogs page on my home page.

    Imagine a machine that could talk, think and behave like a human. A machine that blurs the lines between something and someone. A piece of code that could become man’s new best friend. This was the dream of computer scientists in the late 20th century. Today that hope is transforming to reality. Science fiction has evolved into the real world, and now we use it all the time in the form of artificial intelligence.

    AI is a thinking bot that is used to help us in day-to-day life. Its mind is very complex and no one, not even the bot itself knows how it can think and learn from mistakes. The bots we use in social media and other day-to-day activities went through a long process to reach its current level of efficiency. However, by definition, they are yet to reach maximum productivity as they go through this iterative process to make the “brains” stronger and better.

    The process starts with a human engineer who makes a “starter” bot, a “builder” bot and a “teacher” bot. The builder bot makes random connections, similar to the neurotic connection in our bodies, in the starter bot’s “brain” and sends this bot to the teacher bot to be tested. The bot is then given different tests depending on its role. These test questions are designed to reflect the requirements needed for the specialised bot to perform its role as effectively as possible. The test questions often come from human online interaction data, especially from CAPTCHA Tests (Completely Automated public Turing test to tell Computer and Humans apart). For example, computer scientists need bots to help develop automated cars like Teslas. As these questions come from human interactions, your CAPTCHA Tests may ask you to identify traffic lights or zebra crossings. Once the bots take the test, the highest scoring bots are sent back to the builder bot who makes more random changes in the bot’s “brain” and the worst bots are destroyed. This process is repeated until a bot can seamlessly identify stop signs (similar to a human). This is the creation story of AI’s thought process and how they learn. However, because the builder, teacher, and student bots have no knowledge of the student’s randomly formed connections, the brain cannot be recreated, and the entire process must begin again. It is no different to the human brain. We may be able to understand some parts, or groups of neurons but the entire brain remains a mystery.

    AI is used to help humans by mimicking human intelligence and behaviour through a structured framework. The used cases are infinite in pretty much all fields of work. It can also be seen as a friend, mentor or a homework buddy. AI not only learns like a human but also deals with identifying patterns in data. While scrolling through social media, it is remembering what type of content you skip through, and which ones you view or engage with. Its job is to customise content based on user preference and progressively introduce variations to ultimately enhance engagement with the platform. This also enables targeted advertisement.

    However, unlike popular belief, AI is more of an evolution than a revolution and although many of us can think that Sam Altman is a pioneer, this invention dates back to the 1950s through the Turing Test (aka The Imitation Game) proposed by Alan Turing. It is described as a test which could help us understand how well a machine could replicate human behaviour and intelligence through conversation. Nevertheless, this was still a theory, and AI was not in use at this point. Even in 1956, when AI was starting to be introduced and John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence, AI was not used in a contextual scenario. I think the first remarkable milestone for AI was the invention of Dendral in 1972. Dendral is an AI system that helped chemists understand the atomic structure of certain unknown molecules. It was the first AI to be used in a useful context and in my opinion was AI’s first mark on history. From there, it leapt off, from IBM’s deep blue AI, defeating chess champion Garry Kasparov to more common chatbots like Open-AI’s Chat-GPT.

    Chatbots have become a huge part of society and inventors like Alan Turing, John McCarthy and Sam Altman are considered the greatest computational minds in history. AI is inevitably going to become a large part of our lives; it works in the background in areas unknown to us. In many billboards in US, cameras and sensors are used to detect the age group and mood of the people passing by and display content based off that data. This is just the start of AI’s peak; its full life and future are engulfed in many mysteries and secrets but until it is revealed we will be anxiously waiting.

  • A Timeline of Innovation

    A trip through the wonders of technology

    My dad is a strange man. Normally, he is not superstitious and never crosses his fingers when he sees a black cat, or salutes to magpies, and tries to open umbrellas indoors! However, when we visited Santa Croce in Florence, at Galileo’s tomb, he suddenly broke character and asked Galileo to bless me with some of his intelligence.

    Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist who is credited with the invention of some of the most remarkable scientific tools in history, pioneering the laws of motion and the concept of inertia which Isaac Newton later built on. He is also known for his laws on falling bodies which states that bodies, no matter their mass when dropped from the same height will fall at the same velocity in a vacuum. A physicist and astronomer, he is credited to have invented the most powerful telescope of his time. Fast forward today, telescopes are massive lenses in open fields and sometimes even in space, which can see objects thousands of light years away, but Galileo’s telescope was the first of its kind. With his small, yet vastly more powerful than earlier telescopes he could see the moon’s craters and the phases of Venus. This supported the heliocentric model of the solar system proposed by Nicholas Copernicus, where the Sun is at the centre of our solar system and planets revolve around it. This idea was not popular with the Pope and most Christians at the time, as the Bible states that the Earth is fixed and lies at the centre of all things. Which is why in 1610, when Galileo made his ideas public, the Pope’s men interviewed him and when Galileo would not back down from his truth, they put him under house arrest for the remaining 9 years of his life. It is only in 1979 when Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right.

    His invention of the modern telescope led to a lonely final decade of his life but was it worth it in the end?

    One of the largest ground telescopes is located in the Atacama Desert, Chile and is used for exploring hidden corners of galaxies. It has already captured images of new born stars. This telescope not only helps us detect the life span of neighbouring stars but also at what rate the universe is growing. Due to their large lens size, these telescopes can see objects millions of light years away. For example, the brightest star that we on Earth can see, is called Sirius and is located 8.6 light years away. This means that when we look at Sirius, we are looking at what the star looked like over 8.6 years ago because the light from the star takes time to travel to us.

    In January 2022, James-Webb, a space telescope with a 21-foot lens, was released into space. This telescope broke the record for the furthest celestial body detected; a galaxy 13.5 billion light years away. James Webb captured this image while the galaxy was still at a young age and astrophysicists believe that this galaxy was born only 280 million years after the Big Bang. The James Webb did not just take a photo of a galaxy, but it travelled 13.5 billion years back in time; to a time when Earth didn’t exist and hydrogen was still fusing into helium. It was a large step forward for the space industry, as it produces some of the most powerful and detailed images of faraway corners of our universe. Imagine witnessing stars being devoured by supermassive black holes and the collapse of giant stars into dense neutron stars. These findings have shaped our understanding of familiar concepts like gravitational attraction but also new ideas like spaghettification (what happens to an object when it enters a black hole).

    However, the most remarkable achievement of this particular telescope is the discovery of potential life. The James Webb telescope analysed the chemical composure of K2-18b, a planet 700 trillion miles away. Then scientists back on Earth inspected to find a large number of molecules in its atmosphere which on Earth can only be produced by living organisms. Due to the large proportion of these molecules, scientists believe that if this planet is home to organisms, it is teeming with life. K2-18b is two and a half times bigger than Earth but otherwise remarkably similar; it is a water world, thought to be covered entirely by oceans. The evidence collected by this one telescope is growing, making it more and more likely that there is life in those depths.

    So, we thank you Galileo for sacrificing your freedom. Without it, our knowledge of the entirety of the universe would be limited to still trying to prove the heliocentric model. Young curious minds like mine may never have been drawn to star-gazing. I wish you could see what your small, 51-millimetre telescope has inspired and what information has been found because of it.

    Maybe, my dad was right. A man who started the domino effect that led to these new findings deserves to be treated like a God. On behalf of all qualified and aspiring scientists out there, bless us with knowledge, integrity and innovation like yours.

  • The Illusions of the Brain

    Should you choose to believe everything?

    Humans have a natural tendency to assume and judge their surroundings based on past knowledge and experience. We want a solution that is quick and easy, that doesn’t require us to stress or push the mind. Humans in general are lazy beings, and we are comfortable living in this realm of illusions. The world provides us with twists and turns, colours and hues for us to enjoy but our perception is deterred by the rules that society creates.

     For example, in this drawing, what do you see, a duck or a rabbit? If you tilt your head to one angle you may see a duck’s beak on the left but if you look at it from a different angle you see the rabbit’s ears to the left. However, no one will ever be able to see both at the same time, some people even struggle to see both at different times. This reflects the openness of your mind. Humans often need additional context or information to be able to identify objects in our world. Now, if I told you that this was drawn near a pond, then you would think that it was safe to presume this was meant to be a duck. With just one sentence, I could change your viewpoints and therefore your understanding of the world around you. Your perception is built on information gathered from a young age and the rules of society. You (and majority of others) would expect a duck to be by a pond, rather than a rabbit, hence your brain believes that this drawing being a duck is a more likely option.

    At birth, there is a very limited number of things you can do without being taught. Firstly, when you are born, you only have two fears, loud noises and separation from your parents. More common fears like spiders, the dark, or the supernatural are influenced by the world around you. Society around you shapes your understanding of the world. For example, the concept of ghost being unhinged spirits with a thirst for blood was introduced through horror movies. Due to this many parents would not have allowed their children to watch such movies due to the fear factor. However, not watching horrors have left children in fear of “the monster” under their bed, a fear which is more comparable to the fear or the unknown.

    Secondly, as babies have not yet been taught how to walk, stand sit or run, most think there are very few movements that babies can do. Actually, you would be surprised. Form birth babies’ brain dictates thousands of commands per second. Involuntary movements like blinking, breathing and pain recognition are abilities that we are born with. Other movements are learnt from society, just like your fears, inhibitions and definition of success.

    We have gotten so used to these involuntary actions that sometimes we forget the importance and the hinderances of these movements. For example, blinking stops your eyes drying up, gives a constant flow of oxygen to the cornea and protects the eyes from dust and tiny debris. If you didn’t blink you would face eye strain and pain for the first few minutes and then this will eventually lead to blindness. It seems sane to give up 0.33 seconds to avoid potential blindness. However, this is actually a long time; in the time it takes for us to blink light can travel 90,000 kilometres. Blinking can hinder your ability to see the full picture. In the image below the circles look like they are pulsing because your brain cannot comprehend the variety of different shapes and colours while blinking.

    Which is why even if you can physically see, feel and sense the object in front of you, you might not want to trust everything that your brain perceives. The human brain’s complexity can be its downfall. Trusting the image that your brain creates can lead to your greatest mistakes. This doesn’t have to relate to just some optical illusions but to the bigger picture; how you perceive different people and therefore how you act around them. You will only truly experience the world if you keep an open mind, because even when you think you have learnt all the tricks to life, and the next one will surprise you.

  • Quest to a Perpetual Hourglass

    Secret to the universe’s greatest mystery

    It is the most common noun in the English language and used in a range of proverbs. It flies when we have fun and along with the tide it waits for no one. You try to race against it and often wish you had more of it. Time is one of our universe’s greatest mysteries and physicists spend their lives trying to understand even a fraction of it.

    Wouldn’t it be cool to go into the future, have a peek into your successes and failures, come back and fix it all? In theory, it is surprisingly simple; all you must do is travel at the speed of light. So, why hasn’t anyone taken a trip through time? Actually, everyone has. You, your neighbour, your local newsagent, astronauts and Usain Bolt. The only difference is how far ahead in time. This is all because of time dilation, the difference in elapsed time. Elapsed time simply means the amount of time that passes from the start to the end of an event. For example, if you had two identical clocks, one stationary and another one moving close to the speed of light, the moving clock seems like it is measuring a shorter time or moving more slowly relative to the stationary clock. This applies to other bodies as well. Humans have an internal clock and the faster they move, the slower their internal clock runs, allowing them to travel forwards in time.

    For instance, if you race against Usain Bolt in a 100m race, he will reach the finish line a couple of seconds before you do, well, assuming you are really fast! This means he has reached the future quicker than you have as he has travelled a fraction of the speed of light faster than you. The closer you go to the speed of light, the more apparent are the effects of time dilation. Astronauts aboard the ISS, which travels at 0.000002% the speed of light, experience time dilation on a measurable scale. Astronauts coming back from a 6-month mission are actually 0.007 seconds ahead of us. As the average human reflex speed is 0.21 seconds, this doesn’t make a massive difference. However, some cosmonauts like Oleg Kononenko, a Russian astronaut who has spent a whopping 1111 days in space might be a couple of seconds, ahead in time.

    If you (a person who hasn’t experienced time dilation on a measurable scale) and Kononenko were standing next to each other at a shooting range, Kononenko would see each shooter hit their target 2-3 seconds before you do. Depending on the distance between the shooter and the target, he may see the target being hit before the shooter has pulled the trigger!

    If a person is able to travel a couple of seconds into the future, then how hard could a couple of years be? Unfortunately, Einstein has made that quite difficult due to his special theory of relativity which states that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers. This is also where his very famous equation E = mc2  comes from. This can be rearranged to say

    m/s. Therefore, for a small mass, you will need infinitely more energy than is describable to travel at the speed of light. For many humans as well as their spacecrafts, the amount of energy required may be greater than the amount we have in this universe itself!

    Travelling at the speed of light is ruled out but what if I told you that there was another way to travel into the future. A way which allows our feet to be younger than our head. As your feet are deeper in the Earth’s gravitational field then your head, it reaches the future first. Similarly, if you spend an average lifespan of 72 years living in La Rinconda, the highest permanent human settlement, situated in the Andes at an elevation of 5,000 meters, then you would be 0.0025 seconds further ahead in time than someone who had been living their whole life at sea level. The person living at sea level is deeper in Earth’s gravitational field and therefore less time passes for them.

    Everything has a gravitational field strength, however, the heavier the body the stronger its gravitational field strength (g). As the earth’s gravitational attraction is not strong enough to experience time dilation on a measurable scale, one must turn to the heavier celestial bodies. Luckily, there are some bodies that are a trillion times heavier than the Earth. We call these black holes. They are dense and heavy with a gravitational strength so strong that not even light can escape once it has crossed the event horizon, a point of no return.

    A black hole’s gravitational attraction is so strong that if you sit just 10km away from the black hole’s event horizon for 7 years then 7,000 years would pass on Earth. This seems like a possible solution for travelling into the future but there is a catch, like with most laws of physics. Our nearest black hole is Gaia BH1 which lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. To get near the black hole’s event horizon and back to Earth, one must travel for 3,000 years and that too at the speed of light. As the average lifespan of humans is currently 72 years that is not possible.

    So, if you’re hoping to pick up next week’s test paper or perform the latest trends with aliens from outer space, I’m afraid you have to wait, but it might be for the best. The future is unpredictable, and we do not know whether humans would even be alive in 1,000 years, therefore it is best to stick to dreaming about meeting moon colonies or watching the latest sci-fi movies.

  • Embracing Probability vs. Chasing Perfection

    Choices and decision-making shape our lives, influencing something as simple as appropriateness of language in an essay to whether one should recommend their client to take a million-dollar deal. In most situations we tend to weigh out the pros and cons of each scenario, often contemplating the worst- and best-case situations. For example, let us say your client stands to lose $1000 in a venture but could gain up to $800 million. It seems logical to take the chance as the distribution of outcome has a right skew (a greater gain than loss). However, emotions play an important role in decision making especially when the odds are not as highly skewed as in the above example. Doubt creeps in quite easily. Many tend to question their own judgement and often decide the risk is not worth taking. Think about it, how often have you removed a choice because you were too afraid of taking a risk. Think harder, it is probably more times than you think.

    I am an avid tennis player, and before every shot, any player would ask themselves a series of questions. Where do I actually want the ball to go? How hard should I hit it? Should I try and bring my opponent closer to the net, but what if they are strong at the net? Each player must analyse their next shot and execute it, making split-second decisions.

    Nevertheless, whenever a person mentions decision making, most think of probability. The most famous example? The extraordinary Monty Hall Problem. Accidently created by Monty Hall in his show Let Us Make A Deal, it is now one of the most popular mathematical paradoxes.

    In the Monty Hall problem there are 3 doors, behind one is a car and behind the other two are worthless goats. Monty asks you which door you would like to pick, and you say door 1. Very well knowing what is behind each door, Monty opens door 3, revealing a goat. Now, Monty asks you if you would like to stay with door 1 or switch to door 2. Is it in your favour to switch to door 2?

    Kevin Spacey, the Hollywood actor, brilliantly simplifies this in his movie 21.

    At the start, the probability of the car being behind door 1 is 1/3. However, when Monty opens door 3 this probability changes. And no, it does not reset to a 50-50 chance. When he opens the third door, he gives the contestant a hidden clue, an extra 33.3% chance of getting a car if you switch. He defines this as a problem of variable change – a complex mathematical concept involving probability distribution.

    However, most people would not switch due to apprehension and paranoia. They have the fear that Monty might be bluffing or trying to trick them. Confirmation biases hold them back from switching doors.

    One of the most popular examples of probability is gambling. Has anyone played Blackjack, which is also referred to as ’21’ in some regions? This is the ultimate game of rash decision making. For those of you who know how to play, skip over the next paragraph.

    When you sit down at the blackjack table, the dealer would hand you two cards. Each number card is worth their value and each face card is worth ten. An ace can be worth 1 or 11, it depends on what value you would prefer. You add up the numbers on your cards. Then the dealer would ask you whether you would like another card. If you take a card, you must add the full number to your total. If your sum is now over twenty-one, then you are bust and out of the game.  

    How is Blackjack a game of probability then? Well, if you are on seventeen, should you take another card? This is when you read the room, look at what cards were previously dealt and try and calculate the probability of your next card being higher than four.

    The choices one has to make in life are no less complex than the game itself.

    If you are asked to participate in a bet, you are less likely to participate if there is an equal probability of winning and losing, such as tossing a coin. However, if I skew the data and say that heads makes you win $100 but if it lands on tails then you only lose $50, then the higher incentive motivates you to participate in the bet.

    When making life’s decisions, be it getting a new job, buying a house or a car or taking up a course in university, most individuals need a clear upside to gravitate towards (more pros than cons). However, as Robert Frost adequately said …. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” The merits of your choices are not always clear, and, in most cases, one would never know what the alternative had in store. Life is about accepting those choices and moving on no matter what you picked.

    So, when I have to hit that perfect return to a new opponent in a tournament, I should not only focus on my own strengths but continuously learn and adapt to my opponent’s game.