A work of art that has captured the imagination of humanity. The mysterious smile, the penetrating eyes. The air of mystique surrounding the Mona Lisa cannot easily be explained but, it is more than just a supreme example of renaissance art, it encapsulates a unique spirit.
2. The Works of William Shakespeare.
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. "
Despite producing one of the earliest body of works in English, few have come close to matching William Shakespeare .. http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/william_shakespeare.html ..'s mastery of English in articulating the poetic range of human emotion and experience.
3. Ave Maria - Schubert / Bach
It is music which has the greatest capacity to lift humanity from the ordinary earth bound thoughts and emotions. The loftiest music can touch the psychic core of man and expand the consciousness of man. We could have chosen from the works of Beethoven, Mozart, or countless other musicians, but, Ave Maria remains one of the loftiest pieces in the pantheon of music.
The Wright brothers finally achieved man's eternal quest to achieve a powered flight. The short flight in 1901 revolutionised air travel in the twentieth century and remains one of the great technical achievements.
5. The Development of Vaccines.
For many centuries, the life expectancy of man was very low. Life was hard, short and painful. The great advances of medical science in the nineteenth and twentieth century have allowed people in many developed countries to have a much greater life expectancy. Some of the most important discoveries included the first vaccines developed by Louis Pasteur and the advent of Penicillin in the twentieth century. Perhaps our next greatest achievement would be ensuring access to this knowledge is widespread amongst all people on the planet.
It was a great scientific achievement to put man in space and then land on the thin atmosphere of the moon. It shows the horizons of man are not limited to this physical earth.
7. Four Minute Mile
Any great sporting achievement could have been used here. To run a marathon in close to 2 hours, is perhaps an even greater athletic achievement. Alternatively, we could have chosen the fastest 100 metre time of Usain bolts in under 9.6 seconds. Yet, no sporting record is more iconic than the first mile run under 4 minutes by British athlete Roger Bannister .. http://www.biographyonline.net/sport/athletics/roger-bannister.html . For many decades doctors and learned people had suggested it was physically impossible for man to run a mile under 4 minutes. But, once Roger Bannister had broken the psychological barrier many others soon followed. It showed the spirit of self-transcendence .. http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/articles/self-transcendence.html .. intrinsic to man.
8. Climbing Mount Everest.
On May 29th, 1953 Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay finally conquered the crown of the world reaching the top of Mount Everest. At 8,848 Metres, Mount Everest is the highest peak in the Himalayas, the Nepalese name it Sagarmatha - meaning Mother Goddess of the world.
9. The Great Pyramids.
Conventional wisdom suggests these were built with slaves, but, this view has become increasingly challenged. The truth is that there are many ancient structures such as Stonehenge which defy modern science even centuries later. The Great Pyramids remain a mystery but, they stand as a colossal and imposing figure in the sands of Egypt.
10. Michelangelo's Pieta
It is a work of art which captures the beauty, poignancy, poise and emotion of the greatest human dramas - love divine and love human.
Declaration of Human Rights
After centuries of religious persecution, injustice and disregard for human rights, the acceptance of human rights enshrined in law is one of the great achievements of modern history. Some of the earliest declarations can be seen in the US constitution, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. In the twentieth Century, the United Nations declaration of human rights cemented its importance for modern history.
The Olympics
The Olympics is one of mankind's greatest achievements. It can bring people together from all over the world, and promote international friendship and individual achievement. Although it has been marred by political protests in the past, recent Olympics have shown the capacity to unite the world. At the 2012 London Olympics, a woman represented every country, for the first time.
Published on Sep 6, 2013 by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft captured these sounds of interstellar space. Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and April to May 2013.
The graphic shows the frequency of the waves, which indicate the density of the plasma. Colors indicate the intensity of the waves, or how "loud" they are. Red indicates the loudest waves and blue indicates the weakest.
The soundtrack reproduces the amplitude and frequency of the plasma waves as "heard" by Voyager 1. The waves detected by the instrument antennas can be simply amplified and played through a speaker. These frequencies are within the range heard by human ears.
Scientists noticed that each occurrence involved a rising tone. The dashed line indicates that the rising tones follow the same slope. This means a continuously increasing density.
When scientists extrapolated this line even further back in time (not shown), they deduced that Voyager 1 first encountered interstellar plasma in August 2012.
The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Voyager 1 PWS electron plasma oscillations beyond the heliopause
Published on Sep 12, 2013 by VoyagerPWS
This animation combines two ways of displaying the Voyager Plasma Wave Science (PWS) observations of electron plasma oscillations which provide the basis for concluding that the spacecraft is now in interstellar space. The graphic is called a spectrogram that shows the amplitude of waves (in which reds are the most intense and blues the least intense) as a function of frequency (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis). In many respects, this spectrogram is like a voice print which shows the evolution of the spectrum of sounds as a function of time. The sound track reproduces the amplitude and frequency of the plasma waves observed. The vertical white bar that moves across the spectrogram links the sound track to the graphic.
The frequency range shown from about 1.75 kiloHertz to 3.5 kiloHertz is a portion of the actual frequency range detected by PWS and is well within the audio frequency range. Importantly, the frequency is directly related to the number of electrons per unit volume in the vicinity of Voyager and corresponds to about 1 electron per 10 cubic centimeters or a cube about 1 inch on a side. The time scale for this presentation represents 225 days or a bit more than 7 months, while it only takes about 12 seconds to play the audio file. Hence, the time compression is about 1.6 million to one. It should be noted that this compression was done in such a way as to not change the frequencies.
In this animation, there are two events of interest. In the October-November 2012 time frame there is a tone near 2.1 kHz which gradually increases in frequency. Again, in the April-May 2013 time frame there is another event, somewhat more intense and at a higher frequency near 2.6 kHz. We conclude that these two events indicate an ongoing trend to higher frequencies. The second graphic frame which appears in the animation includes a dashed line showing this increase in frequency and suggests that the density of electrons is continually increasing over this time interval as Voyager moves outwards from the heliopause (which was crossed on 25 August 2012).
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
