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Ronnie Raymond is back! Robbie Amell, who played half of the original Firestorm, is making a guest appearance on Season 8 of The Flash. While details of his return to the Arrowverse are locked away somewhere in the Speed Force, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Amell will appear in two episodes of the superhero series current season, starting with Episode 11.

Amells character Ronnie was introduced in the first season of The Flash as the fianc of Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) and a structural engineer for the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator. Ronnie disappeared the night of the particle accelerator explosion and was originally thought to be dead. However, the team learned that the accident didnt in fact kill him but instead fused him and Martin Stein (Victor Garber), creating the metahuman Firestorm.

Sadly, this did not mean that he and Caitlin got to live happily ever after. Ronnie died saving Central City from a giant wormhole (otherwise known as The Singularity) in the Season 1 finale. Amells last appearance in the role was in the Season 3 episode "Into the Speed Force," when said abstract power source appeared to Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) in the form of Ronnie.

Amells Ronnie is another former Flash cast member set to appear on the hit superhero series from The CW. In October, it was confirmed that Rick Cosnett, a series regular on The Flashs first season as Detective Eddie Thawne and fianc to Iris West (Candice Patton), would be back for the shows eighth season. (Huh. Lot of dead fiancs coming back. Wonder if thats just a coincidence or if that means anything more substantial?)

But not so fast, Amell fans. Were still a long way to go before Episode 11. The Flash is still in the middle of its five-part Armageddon arc which is loaded with its own batch of crossover guest stars, after which the series will go on hiatus until March. If you're jonesing for more Amell, guess youll all just have to watch him in Resident Evil: Raccoon City to tide you over in the meantime.

The current Armageddon crossover event is giving Barry the opportunity to fight alongside such other DC heroes as Batwoman (Javicia Leslie) and Black Lightning (Cress Williams, whose solo series ended in May).

"Armageddon, Part 3" airs tonight (Nov. 30) at 8 p.m. EST on The CW. Click here for our official ranking of all the Arrowverse crossover events thus far.

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Is there a new Firestorm brewing? Robbie Amell to return for 2 episodes of 'The Flash' Season 8 - SYFY WIRE

We are only a couple of months out of the CDL 2022 season starting. Now, there are discussions starting in order to figure out which CDL rookie will make the most noise. This comes from the starting teams and lineups for each team in the league.

This CDL Rookie is currently on the Florida Mutineers. Davpadie is looking to prove people right as David Maslowski has had short stints with teams like Triumph, UYU, Fantastic Four, and Team Canada.

This rookie is showing why Florida made a good pick up as they, so far, have made two runners-up finishes. This team, along with Davpadie could prove to be a dark horse to have a shot at the World Championship. If Davpadie lives up to the hype, it could very well happen along with being Rookie of the Year.

Another player who can light up the league as a rookie is Nastie, a player for the London Royal Ravens. He previously played with the team until he got loaned out to Connect 4 and then was let go to go to the team Orgless. After being a part of the league for so long and being so great in EU challengers. He could be the new spark that the team needs to win at a high level and for him to be the Rookie of the Year.

By far the most unproven of the two rookies on the London Royal Ravens is Gismo. At only 19 years of age, Gismo has lit up the challengers scene as he has had recent success from playing with teams like Team Singularity, House Tarth, Orgless, and the Atlas Lions. As he is the most technically gifted of the rookies.

He is a highly aggressive and fast player. He has the ability to get out of hairy situations to make a play and win for the team in key gunfights. If he has a great year, could he be rookie of the year?

The Australian to prove everyone wrong is Pred, a player on the Seattle Surge. He dominated the Asia-Pacific Call of Duty scene as he has won multiple championships in his already prestigious career. With his style of play and gun skill, Pred could be the rookie of the year and quite possibly show that the Asian-Pacific region has great COD players.

The player with the rawest talent of the five. He has already played for FaZes academy team as well as playing for top-tier challengers teams. This player has the mind to be one of the best players in the league. He is looking to turn the Surge around to being a powerhouse along with fellow rookie in Pred.

The one thing to worry about is his attitude problem, as many former teammates say he has. However, over the past couple of weeks of the new season, he is proving to be the leading candidate for rookie of the year.

Featured Image Courtesy of the Call of Duty League

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Which CDL Rookie Will Make the Most Noise? - The Game Haus

While there is no shortage of books available on the New England Patriots dynasty, Seth Wickershams new work may be the best yet.

For the second year in a row, a new book on the New England Patriots dynasty has arrived, hoping to be the definitive work on the most successful team in modern NFL history. Following 2020s The Dynasty by Jeff Benedict is Seth Wickershams Its Better to Be Feared, a nearly 500-page work by a writer who has been covering the Patriots for nearly two decades. With so many books already written on this dynasty, and the two men at its center (Tom Brady and Bill Belichick), convincing fans to read yet another tome on this team may be a difficult sell. However, Wickershams is so good that even casual NFL fans will want to check out this new book.

With so many ways to tell the story of the Patriots dynasty, Wickersham opts for paring down the story to the psychodrama between, and within, Brady and Belichick. The focus is not only on what the two achieved together, but what has driven them as well. Brady, doubted throughout his entire career until finding success in New England, comes across as a man still plagued by those who underestimated him, perpetually eager to prove them wrong. Even after two decades of unprecedented success, that drive has yet to evaporate and he appears as someone who cannot imagine a life outside of football.

Belichick meanwhile is presented as a man who has winnowed his life down to the pursuit of winning football games. He seems almost anhedonic, unable to find pleasure in anything apart from the pursuit of some winning edge while watching game tape for hours on end. There is also the feeling that he enjoys not only being able to outsmart opposing coaches tactically but being able to predict their habits so he can defeat them psychologically as well. Of the many books written on these two men, it seems that Wickersham delivers the deepest and most insightful portrait of either of them within these pages.

He also focuses on the uniqueness of these two men, coming to the conclusion that There was no Patriot Way. There was only Bill Belchick and Tom Brady. Nothing about them was replicable what stood out as much as their brilliance was their singularity. Time and time again, teams hired Patriots assistants or tried to ape their management strategies in the hopes of capturing their success for themselves, failing every time. It was not that these other teams were necessarily doing anything wrong; they just werent Belichick and Brady.

One difference between this book and Jeff Benedicts is that Benedicts The Dynasty was more focused on the team as an organization. The first 150 pages covered Robert Krafts years-long struggle to buy the team and transform it into a winning organization in the years before Tom Brady joined the team. Meanwhile, Wickersham focuses almost exclusively on Brady and Belichick. Kraft does appear more in the books latter half though it is less his dealings with the Patriots that are focused upon than his work with the league, as it tries to avoid stoppages in play due to labor disputes. The book tacitly argues then that Kraft was not as essential to the teams success as some others may claim, that this is indeed the story of Belichick and Brady and that anyone else even the man bankrolling the whole operation is ultimately disposable.

Altogether Wickershams book makes the argument that, if youre looking to form and maintain the most successful and long-lasting dynasty in NFL history, it is indeed better to be feared, the portraits its paints of Belichick and Brady also argue that even if you reach your goal, it may not be all that fulfilling. The very desire and restless drive that compels one to pursue such greatness could also keep you from enjoying it once you achieve it.

How embedded Wickersham was in the world of New England football is evident by looking at the books sources. In the bibliography, many of the chapter notes say that The information in this chapter comes primarily from events I witnessed firsthand. While he did not interview Brady or Belichick specifically for this project, his time spent with them in the past is evident throughout the book. There is new information here about a number of pivotal moments in the dynastys history from the controversies of Spygate and Deflategate to how the team reacted to Bill Belichicks writing a letter endorsing Donald Trump before the 2016 election. Altogether, the book is full of minor revelations that cast every other moment in a new light.

Wickershams book is perhaps the best book on the Patriots dynasty yet to emerge. It is engaging and artfully written, drawing the reader into the events he describes, making them feel as if they are witnessing these meetings and games themselves. Any book about the New England Patriots coming out has to justify itself in light of how many already exist; Wickershams does so time and time again, and is one of the best books on the NFL to appear in recent years.

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New book on Patriots dynasty may be the best yet - FanSided

11/30/2021 at 4:25 PM CET

Ruben D. Rodriguez

The heavy weight that Oscar Garcia Maceiras (A Corua, 1975) he had acquired in the banking sector until January 2021, he now reinforces it in the business field with his appointment with immediate effect as CEO of Inditex, less than a year after leaving Santander to join the textile giant as secretary general and council. The professional life of this Law graduate from the University of Corua (UDC) has had a solid twenty-year run in the legal field and since March of last year it has adapted to another field of management, that of fashion, in which now, hand in hand with Marta Ortega, appointed new president of Inditex, assume the executive function of the company.

Seriousness and pragmatism are the qualities that scar Garca Maceiras highlights in the profiles published each time he has changed positions. He cultivated these virtues in his university career, culminating with the Extraordinary Award and End of Degree Award at the UDC, and completed with postgraduate studies at the IESE Business School, The Valley Digital Business School and Singularity University. And it was not long before he reflected them in his experience, first as a state attorney in A Corua, where he was part, with less than 30 years, of the legal team in charge of managing the Prestige oil tanker incident, and later in the private sector.

The Pastor Bank He trusted him as Secretary General and of the Council; Banco Popular, as vice secretary of the Board and director of the Institutional Advisory; the Society for the Management of Assets from Bank Restructuring (Sareb) entrusted him with the general direction of Corporate Development and Legal Affairs; and Santander, which in 2017 had absorbed Pastor and Popular, arrived to take care of the legal defense of the interests of the entity chaired by Ana Patricia Botn as director of the Legal Department and deputy secretary of the Board of Directors. He landed there at the hand of Beln Romana, a bank advisor and former boss in Sareb, and after rejecting an offer from El Corte Ingls. A few years earlier, in 2012, he had joined the Nueva Pescanova Council, but he only stayed for a few weeks.

These credentials and the relevance of the positions he has held have given the Amancio lawyer a discreet and effective profile, one that is so popular in the multinational founded by Amancio Ortega. I assume with great responsibility and enthusiasm the new functions entrusted to me, with the tranquility of having a great human team, full of youth, experience and talent in all the fields and countries in which we are present, of which it is a good example the Management Committee that we have appointed & rdquor ;, Maceiras said yesterday through the statement released by the company.

Maceiras is the fourth CEO of Inditex. The first was Jose Maria Castellanos, from 1997 to 2005. He was replaced by Pablo Isla, who, like the lawyer from A Corua, began his career as a state attorney. Carlos Crespo was the third. At his side will be the new president, Marta Ortega, daughter of the founder and first shareholder of the group, Amancio Ortega, after Islas resignation. Both appointments will be effective as of April 1, 2022.

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This is scar Garca Maceiras, the right hand of Marta Ortega - Central Valley Business Journal

Sky has revealed its exciting line-up of TV shows, films and live sport for January.

January on Sky includes the return of Billions, the arrival of A Quiet Place Part II to Sky Cinema, and North London and Old Firm derbies on Sky Sports.

You can get Sky TV here.

These are some of the shows, films and exciting sporting events we cant wait to watch on Sky in the new year.

A Discovery of Witches Series 3, Sky Max

Credit: Sky

In the final instalment of this adaptation of Deborah Harkness All Souls trilogy, vampire Matthew and witch Diana return from 1590 to find tragedy.

They must finding the missing pages from the Book of Life and the Book itself before its too late, but a monster from Matthews past is lying in wait for his return.

You can get Sky TV here.

The Gilded Age, Sky Atlantic

Credit: Sky

From the creators of Downton Abbey comes a new drama set in 1882. Marian Brook, a young, orphaned daughter of a southern general, moves in with her aunts in New York.

With the help of her maid, Marian gets caught up in the dazzling lives of her rich neighbours as she struggles to forge her own path.

You can get Sky TV here.

Euphoria Series 2, Sky Atlantic

Credit: Sky

Starring Emmy award winner Zendaya, the eight-episode drama returns.

Amidst the intertwining lives in the town of East Highland, Rue (Zendaya) must find hope while balancing the pressures of love, loss and addiction.

You can get Sky TV here.

Billions Series 6, Sky Atlantic

Credit: Sky

Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti return in the hugely popular Billions in January.

All the players must sharped their weapons and look for new alliances in order to survive.

The ground is ever shifting and the stakes absolute. New king, new war, new rules.

You can get Sky TV here.

The Simpsons Series 33, Sky Showcase

Credit: Sky

The worlds most evergreen or should that be everyellow? family return for all-new episodes exclusive to Sky Showcase.

Smithers finally finds true love, we flashback to Homers teenage years, and Marge is inspired to reunite with old friends and restage their high school play.

You can get Sky TV here.

A Quiet Place Part II

Credit: Sky

The sequel to 2018s horror hit, the Abbott family must now face the terrors of the outside world as they continue to fight for their survival in silence.

You can get Sky TV here.

Nobody

Credit: Sky

Bob Odenkirk stars as Hutch. As an overlooked and underestimated father and husband, he takes lifes indignities on the chin and never rocks the boat.

But what happens when a pushover finally pushes back? Hutch flips from regular dad to fearless fighter by taking his enemies on a wild ride of explosive revenge.

You can get Sky TV here.

Naked Singularity

Casi (John Boyega) is a promising young NYC public defender whose idealism is beginning to crack under the daily injustices of the justice system.

Doubting all he has worked for he is pulled into a dangerous high stakes drug heist. Also starring Bill Skarsgard, Olivia Cooke and Ed Skrein.

You can get Sky TV here.

Premier League

Credit: PA

Sky Sports will kick off the month with a thrilling triple header on New Years Day, including Chelseas clash with Liverpool.

The North London Derby will also be shown in January, along with a host of other games.

You can get Sky TV here.

SPFL

Credit: PA

The New Year kicks off with the Old Firm derby on Sky Sports in January.

Last years New Year Derby saw Rangers defeat Celtic, but both sides are much changed from 12 months ago.

You can get Sky TV here.

European Tour Golf

The European Tour swings into action in 2022 with two events in the Rolex series, both carrying prize purses of more than $8million.

The Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship will be held at Yas Links, before we head to Emirates Gold Club in Dubai for the Dubai Desert Classic.

You can get Sky TV here.

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Sky reveals return of Billions, The Simpsons, A Quiet Place Part II and other shows in January - North Wales Pioneer

Researchers in many fields are yet to fully understand what they are studying, but every day we move closer to uncovering the answers to some of the most difficult questions.

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Outlined in this article are just seven questions that have puzzled researchers for quite some time, and while they are extremely difficult to answer, they aren't impossible. In all of the questions, scientists have a basic understanding of the topic but haven't yet been able to fully answer the entire question.

As time continues and technology advances, it can be assumed that some of these questions will be answered and replaced by others.

Newsweek reports that researchers believe that observable objects such as planets, stars galaxies only make up 5% of the total mass of the universe and that 26.8% of the universes' total mass is an invisible substance called "dark matter".

The European Space Agency (ESA) describes dark matter as "although thought to be invisible, neither emitting nor absorbing light, dark matter can be detected through its gravitational influence on the movements and appearance of other objects in the Universe, such as stars or galaxies."

The remaining 68% of the universe is believed to be "dark energy", and according to the American Space Agency, the amount of dark energy contained in the universe is being tracked as they are measuring how it affects the expansion of the universe.

American Space Agency, "we know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery."

A simple explanation for quantum entanglement is to think of one particle on one side of the universe and another particle on the other side of the universe. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement is these two particles are linked with each other and copy the behavior of its partner. Researchers suspect the particles are sending signals that are faster than the speed of light, which is impossible with our current model of physics rules.

Researchers believe there are millions of black holes scattered throughout the universe, and while a general understanding of how a black hole works has been achieved, researchers are yet to understand what happens at the center of a black hole. Scientists calculate that there is what is called the singularity at the center of the black hole. All matter, time, and space are compressed down to an infinitely tiny point.

Uncovering this mystery may assist physicists in understanding quantum gravity and why we can predict gravity's influence on larger objects such as planets, but cannot when it comes to quantum particles.

The European Space Agency explains, "Time, space and matter all began with the Big Bang. In a fraction of a second, the universe grew from smaller than a single atom to bigger than a galaxy. And it kept on growing at a fantastic rate. It is still expanding today."

The James Webb Space Telescope that's launching very soon may answer this mystery. More on that here.

A NASA-built instrument called the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) detected radio waves from distant stars, and these radio waves were much louder than the researchers anticipated.

Cosmic rays were first discovered in 1912 and consist of high-energy particles from outer space smashing into Earth. Earth's magnetic field protects cosmic rays from reaching humans, but due to their nature, they have been known to cause issues in electronic equipment such as satellites and computers. The origin of cosmic rays has yet to be discovered.

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Scientists are stumped by these 7 mysteries about our universe - TweakTown

Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a mans accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. In Khaled Hosseinis novel about life in Afghanistan, A Thousand Splendid Suns, the character Nana, a poor unwed mother, gives this grim advice to her five-year-old daughter, Mariam. In 25 words, she tries to sum up the way the world thinks men govern the lives of women in the world of Islam.

The portrayal of Muslim women in the media is grim and sombre. The public perception of them is one of stubborn stereotypes: supposedly powerless and oppressed, bereft of even fundamental rights. This picture keeps reinforcing itself, largely because this is how the Western media caricatures women in Islam. Recurring images beamed into our homes and phones keep strengthening the belief that Muslim women are being denied access to education, social space, privacy and educational and development programmes for socio-economic uplift.

It has also reduced Muslim women to a stereotyped singularity, plastering a handy cultural icon over much more complicated historical and political dynamics. This powerfully flawed narrative dominates our newsfeeds. It overshadows the reality that nine Muslim women have led their countries in the last three decades, while the US couldnt even elect its first real female presidential candidate in 2016. In many Arab countries and Iran, more women are in university than men.

In Egypt, women make up a larger percentage of engineering and medical faculties than women do in the US. It is true that in societies trapped in poverty, illiteracy and ignorance, women continue to receive abominable and oppressive treatment. But then, this is true of all societies. Muslims cannot be singled out for such a flawed social order. This distortion, however, should not deflect our focus from some path-breaking and stellar contributions of Muslim women not just to Islamic civilization but the secular society as well.

Muslim women, like their counterparts in other creeds, are an empowered community. They believe that rights have been accorded to them in foundational Islamic texts, but that interpretation of these same documents with the prevalent cultural lens disallows what is rightfully theirs. They do not call this a feminist struggle but describe it as a reclamation of their faith.

The tragic irony of Islam is that the Quran, is particularly solicitous of womens well-being and development, yet Islamic traditions discriminate against girls. The Quranic description of marriage suggests closeness, mutuality, and equality, but tradition defines a husband as his wifes god in earthly terms. The Quran provides rights that address the common complaints of women such as lack of freedom to make decisions for themselves and the inability to earn an income.

One example is a verse in the Quran (4:34) that is frequently interpreted as giving women complete control over their income and property. This article also explains how Islam has been used as a method of controlling women, particularly in the practices of veiling and purdah (seclusion). The Quran permits divorce without fault, but Muslim societies have made divorce both legally and socially very difficult for women.

The challenge for all women, and especially Muslim women, is to move from a reactive mindset, in which women must assert their autonomy over patriarchal opposition, to a proactive mindset, in which they can speak of themselves as full and independent human beings with minds and spirits as well as bodies. Central to Islamic belief is the importance and high value placed on education. From the true Islamic point of view, education should be freely and equally available to women as much as men.

Although traditionally excluded from the male public domain, Muslim women have been privately involved in the study and oral transmission of Islamic source texts (the Quran and Hadith). In modern times, they have entered both secular and religious forms of education with enthusiasm, supporting their long-standing role as family educators and moral exemplars, as well as training for professional careers in the workplace outside the home.

Islamic scholar Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwis epic work al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam, stands as a riposte to the notion, peddled from Jakarta to Morocco, that Islamic knowledge is mens work and always has been. I do not know of another religious tradition in which women were so central, so present, so active in its formative history, Akram writes.

Women scholars taught judges and imams, issued fatwas, and travelled to distant cities. Some made lecture tours across the Middle East. The Qurans messages of equality resonated in the teaching that women and men have been created from a single self and are each others guides who have the mutual obligation to enjoin what is right and to forbid what is wrong. None of the inspired women who were strong, vocal, and fighting for their rights during the era of the Prophet felt that their faith was at odds with their conviction that they, as women, should be equal citizens.

Muslim womens activism around education and equal opportunities are often underpinned by their emancipatory readings of foundational Islamic texts. They are also challenging patriarchy that all women experience around unequal power hierarchies in society and the objectification of womens bodies in some sections of the media. In this regard, they stand with their sisters of all backgrounds. Feminism in Islam is grounded in Quranic values and not in notions of western sociology.

Women do not accept that being feminist means being western and believe that western women should be respectful of other paths to social change. Western thinkers and practitioners must reconsider their assumptions about the role of Islam in womens rights and approach this topic with a more nuanced lens.

They must understand the necessity of recognising and consciously accepting the broad cultural differences between western and non-western conceptions of autonomy as well as respecting social standards that reflect non-western values. Muslim women must work in full partnership with Muslim men, rejecting Western models of liberation, but also, and more importantly,asserting their own.

Women are now elbowing their way into political and civil society, and universities. Despite present cultural and political obstacles, they are finding opportunities to rise and to bring their societies up with them. They feel the key is to do so within Islamic paradigms. There is a need to engage in Islam from a position of knowing, and to ensure that Muslim women have access to this knowledge.

It is only through this knowledge that women can assert their rights and challenge patriarchal interpretations of slam. While giving priority to a literal, puritanical reading of the Quran, they want to discard the historical reality of the Muslim world in favour of the ideal society of Prophet Muhammad and his companions. Their unifying vision has made collective action possible.

There is no denying the fact that the Muslim world has a great amount of ground to cover to protect womens rights and freedoms, and the quest for gender equality remains paramount. However, the idea that all Muslim women are oppressed because Muslim men are misogynists is wide off the mark, because womens oppression manifests itself in several ways, and not all Muslim men are the oppressors.

The protagonists of the western brand of feminism should heed what the then First Lady Michelle Obama expressed to hijab-wearing students when she told them: You wonder whether anyone ever sees beyond your headscarf to see who you are, instead of being blinded by the fears and misperceptions in their minds. And I know how painful and how frustrating all of that can be.

(The writer is the author of Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He canbe reached at [emailprotected])

The rest is here:

Women in Islam - The Statesman

Danish esports organisation Team Singularity has announced a partnership with gaming chair manufacturer AndaSeat.

According to the release, the deal will see AndaSeat equip Team Singularitys players and influencers with its gaming chairs.

RELATED: EXCEL ESPORTS partners with AndaSeat

In addition, the gaming chair manufacturer will giveaway products through Team Singularitys academy, as well as to students within its development programme. AndaSeat and Team Singularity will also work together to create a special edition Singularity-branded gaming chair next year.

Allen He, AndaSeats Global Brand and Marketing Director, noted that the company hopes to utilise the partnership to gain more brand exposure in the European Union and Denmark. Moreover, he cites that the partnership with Team Singularity will provide AndaSeat with more acceptance from more gamers.

Team Singularity joins the likes of Fnatic, EXCEL ESPORTS and NAVI as partners of the gaming chair manufacturer.

RELATED: Fnatic extends partnership with AndaSeat

Atle S. Stehouwer, Founder and CEO of Team Singularity, commented: Im thrilled to partner up with AndaSeat on the Team Singularity journey, and Im looking forward to be extra comfortable in their gaming chairs.

This partnership also gives us a great opportunity to provide gaming chairs for all our players and staff, to all corners of the world.

The partnership follows on from Team Singularitys decision to team up with the University of Roehampton for the NLC, League of Legends Nordic, UK and Ireland regional league.

Esports Insider says: AndaSeat is steadily becoming a strong contender in the gaming chair market. Its most recent partnership with Team Singularity, alongside its established partners in Fnatic and NAVI, will see the company gain more exposure in Europe.

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Team Singularity secures AndaSeat sponsorship - Esports Insider

The lunar surface is a record of the solar systems violent origins. But look closely enough and we may find something even more exotic therethe cratered remains of an impact with a black hole the size of an atom, birthed in the first moments of the universe.

According to a theory proposed by Bernard Carr and Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, the conditions just after the Big Bang were so energetic, the matter so tightly packed, that density fluctuations in the primordial soup collapsed into black holes of all sizes.

On one end of the spectrum, the ancestors of supermassive black holes emergedon the other end, tiny black holes, some no larger than atoms.

The Big Bang would have created these primordial black holes in such abundance that some scientists believe they could make up a fraction of the universes dark matter. The thing is, no one knows if primordial black holes, massive or microscopic, exist.

Which is where a new study comes in.

If swarms of tiny black holes have ever zipped through the solar system, a select few of them may have punched holes in planets and moons.

On Earth, the scars of such collisions would have long healed, eroded away by the work of wind, water, and plate tectonics. But the moons surface is another matter. If a mini black hole punctured the moon, the crater could still be there. We could find it.

According to the paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in June, a collision with a mini black hole ought to leave a distinct signature. The studys authors, Matthew Caplan and Almog Yalinewich, propose we survey the moons surface for craters with the right attributes. If we find one (or more) such craters, and confirm its origin, wed have found evidence not only of primordial black holes but a dark matter candidate too.

Caplan admits it sounds a little wild, but thats kind of the point. When people think about dark matter, theyre usually fixated about trying to extend existing methods, for the most part, he told CNET. Its very rare that people try to think outside the box.

Not long after Hawking and Carr suggested primordial black holes could still be wandering the cosmos, researchers realized they could solve another riddle: the nature of dark matter. Stars orbit their galaxies much too fast given all the matter we can see. This invisible component, whose gravity can clearly be observed in stellar orbits, is called dark matter. To this day, no one knows what it is.

Over the years, the most popular dark matter theory has suggested its made up of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS), but scientists have yet to find any such particles.

In parallel, the notion that primordial black holes could comprise some of the universes dark matter has gone in and out of fashion as evidence has tipped the scales this way and that. But in 2016, the first detection of gravity waves jolted the idea back to life.

That scientists had recorded ripples in the fabric of space-time, caused by the enormous collision and merger of two black holes, was mind-boggling enough. But after a closer look, the masses of the two black holes involved made researchers do a double take.

Star-sized black holes commonly form when a giant star, many times the size of our sun, exhausts its internal fuel and collapses in on itself. The stars outer shell is blasted away in a brilliant explosion called a supernova, while the core, unable to resist gravity, implodes into a point of extreme density. Gravity becomes so strong near the center of a black hole that, beyond a threshold called the event horizon, nothing, not even light, can escape.

Before the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected its first black hole merger, the largest star-sized black holes astronomers had discovered were about 20 times the mass of our sun. The black holes in LIGOs first observation were over 30 solar masses, the biggest yet discovered.

Many of the subsequent 90 detections have involved black holes with masses in the same range or even larger, with some weighing as much as 100 solar masses. Primordial black holes, its believed, ought to be found in this larger mass range (and also in ranges smaller than a single solar mass).

The peculiar size of merging black holes, combined with the sheer number observed, may help scientists confirm the existence of large primordial black holes. But what about the little ones on the other end of the spectrum? To estimate what fraction of dark matter primordial black holes make up (if they exist), scientists need to set bounds in the size distribution.

We already know, for example, that the very smallest black holesthose with masses below your average asteroidwould have evaporated by now. Others might still be around but should emit X-rays we could observe and measure.

Hawking famously established that black holes radiate energy away, and given a long enough time, they disappear in a flash. But primordial black holes with slightly larger masses, yet still not much larger than atoms, would have lifespans longer than the current age of the universe and wouldnt otherwise be detectable.

This is why our paper is significant, Yalinewich told CNET. We prove a range that cant be proven by other methods.

Focusing on black holes in this range, Caplan and Yalinewich modeled the impact of an average asteroid or meteorite and compared it to that of a mini black hole. They found the two would be noticeably different.

The former would be roughly the same density as the moon and transfer all its energy on impact; the latter would be far more dense than the moon and would punch straight through to the other side with little resistance.

Theyre going at incredible speeds, 200 kilometers a second, Caplan told New Scientist. Its like a bullet punching through cotton candy.

But heres the key: In a standard impactand this would apply to most of the moons cratersthe ring of material ejected at impact would pile up at a shallower angle than that ejected by a mini primordial black hole. This steep ejecta blanket is a critical signature.

Caplan and Yalinewich write that primordial black hole craters ought to be at least a meter across, within the resolution of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Of course, the moon is not lacking for craters. So, the pair suggest training a machine learning algorithm to scour orbiter images of the moons surface for just the right ones.

Even then, the work isnt over. Some craters with steep ejecta blankets arent of exotic origins. Final confirmation would require future missions to sample lunar regolith and look for silica and quartz fused by the extreme conditions in such an impact.

Still, its not certain wed find anything.

Even if all dark matter were explained by mini primordial black holes, Caplan and Yalinewich calculate the odds of a lunar impact at 10 percent. So, the real likelihood is lower than that. Also, although they estimate such craters would last a billion years on the moon before being erased by time and showers of meteorites, Purdues David Minton questioned that numbersuggesting it might be more on the order of just 13 million years.

Yalinewich agreed, but countered that the ejecta itself should last longer and still be identifiable. And there are other well-preserved surfaces in the solar system. Future missions could look for evidence of mini primordial black hole impacts on Mercury, Mars, Pluto, or rocky moons in the outer solar system.

If you look at the combined surface area of all these, Yalinewich said, you should expect at least one of these exotic craters to appear.

Image Credit: Nicolle R. Fuller/NSF

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Scientists Model What Would Happen if a Mini Black Hole Punched Through the Moon - Singularity Hub

Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesnt exist outside the minds of the people who use it.

But the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece held a different view. Its proponents believed reality is fundamentally mathematical. More than 2,000 years later, philosophers and physicists are starting to take this idea seriously.

As I argue in a new paper, mathematics is an essential component of nature that gives structure to the physical world.

Bees in hives produce hexagonal honeycomb. Why?

According to the honeycomb conjecture in mathematics, hexagons are the most efficient shape for tiling the plane. If you want to fully cover a surface using tiles of a uniform shape and size while keeping the total length of the perimeter to a minimum, hexagons are the shape to use.

Charles Darwin reasoned that bees have evolved to use this shape because it produces the largest cells to store honey for the smallest input of energy to produce wax.

The honeycomb conjecture was first proposed in ancient times, but was only proved in 1999 by mathematician Thomas Hales.

Heres another example. There are two subspecies of North American periodical cicadas that live most of their lives in the ground. Then, every 13 or 17 years (depending on the subspecies), the cicadas emerge in great swarms for a period of around two weeks.

Why is it 13 and 17 years? Why not 12 and 14? Or 16 and 18?

One explanation appeals to the fact that 13 and 17 are prime numbers.

Imagine the cicadas have a range of predators that also spend most of their lives in the ground. The cicadas need to come out of the ground when their predators are lying dormant.

Suppose there are predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 years. What is the best way to avoid them all?

Well, compare a 13-year life cycle and a 12-year life cycle. When a cicada with a 12-year life cycle comes out of the ground, the 2-year, 3-year, and 4-year predators will also be out of the ground, because 2, 3, and 4 all divide evenly into 12.

When a cicada with a 13-year life cycle comes out of the ground, none of its predators will be out of the ground, because none of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 divides evenly into 13. The same is true for 17.

It seems these cicadas have evolved to exploit basic facts about numbers.

Once we start looking, it is easy to find other examples. From the shape of soap films, to gear design in engines, to the location and size of the gaps in the rings of Saturn, mathematics is everywhere.

If mathematics explains so many things we see around us, then it is unlikely that mathematics is something weve created. The alternative is that mathematical facts are discovered: not just by humans, but by insects, soap bubbles, combustion engines, and planets.

But if we are discovering something, what is it?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato had an answer. He thought mathematics describes objects that really exist.

For Plato, these objects included numbers and geometric shapes. Today, we might add more complicated mathematical objects such as groups, categories, functions, fields, and rings to the list.

Plato also maintained that mathematical objects exist outside of space and time. But such a view only deepens the mystery of how mathematics explains anything.

Explanation involves showing how one thing in the world depends on another. If mathematical objects exist in a realm apart from the world we live in, they dont seem capable of relating to anything physical.

The ancient Pythagoreans agreed with Plato that mathematics describes a world of objects. But, unlike Plato, they didnt think mathematical objects exist beyond space and time.

Instead, they believed physical reality is made of mathematical objects in the same way matter is made of atoms.

If reality is made of mathematical objects, its easy to see how mathematics might play a role in explaining the world around us.

In the past decade, two physicists have mounted significant defenses of the Pythagorean position: Swedish-US cosmologist Max Tegmark and Australian physicist-philosopher Jane McDonnell.

Tegmark argues reality is just one big mathematical object. If that seems weird, think about the idea that reality is a simulation. A simulation is a computer program, which is a kind of mathematical object.

McDonnells view is more radical. She thinks reality is made of mathematical objects and minds. Mathematics is how the universe, which is conscious, comes to know itself.

I defend a different view: the world has two parts, mathematics and matter. Mathematics gives matter its form, and matter gives mathematics its substance.

Mathematical objects provide a structural framework for the physical world.

It makes sense that Pythagoreanism is being rediscovered in physics.

In the past century physics has become more and more mathematical, turning to seemingly abstract fields of inquiry such as group theory and differential geometry in an effort to explain the physical world. As the boundary between physics and mathematics blurs, it becomes harder to say which parts of the world are physical and which are mathematical.

But it is strange that Pythagoreanism has been neglected by philosophers for so long. I believe that is about to change. The time has arrived for a Pythagorean revolution, one that promises to radically alter our understanding of reality.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: geralt / 23640 images /Pixabay

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Humans Didn't Invent Mathematics, It's What the World Is Made Of - Singularity Hub