Art by Mandelsage
syn·the·sis
/ˈsinTHəsəs/
noun: synthesis; plural noun: syntheses
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the combination of ideas to form a theory or system.
"the synthesis of intellect and emotion in his work"
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the production of chemical compounds by reaction from simpler materials.
"the synthesis of methanol from carbon monoxide and hydrogen"
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(in Hegelian philosophy) the final stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis.
síntesis
Sustantivo: síntesis; sustantivo plural: síntesis
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La combinación de ideas para formar una teoría o sistema.
"La síntesis del intelecto y la emoción en su obra"
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La producción de compuestos químicos mediante la reacción a partir de materiales más simples.
"La síntesis del metanol a partir de monóxido de carbono e hidrógeno"
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(En la filosofía hegeliana) la etapa final del proceso de razonamiento dialéctico, en la que una nueva idea resuelve el conflicto entre la tesis y la antítesis.
Virus-X (2020)
You think that Covid-19 has been crazy? Changed the world? I say, this is nothing. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, we'll face another pathogen that will make Covid-19 seem cute and friendly. And when it comes, this quote will seem oracular, just as these ones do now:
From 2007: "Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb." ~ Vincent C. C. Cheng, Susanna K. P. Lau, Patrick C. Y. Woo, and Yuen Kwok-yung, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection
From 2018: "As experience has taught us more often than not the thing that is gonna hit us is something that we did not anticipate. Just the way we didn't anticipate Zika, we didn't think there would be an Ebola that would hit cities. [...] If you develop an understanding of the commonalities of those, you can respond more rapidly." ~ Anthony Fauci
Nanovirus (2021)
Covid-19 has changed our world forever, impacting billions of lives all over the planet, mostly negatively. But how might it drive innovation in the perhaps not-so-distant future?
Bio-engineering is a buzzword that inspires awe and fear, and it should. If a programmable virus were to be created and were to fall into dangerous hands, we might all end up looking back at the Covid-19 years with warm nostalgia.
But more optimistic possibilities exist too... A programmable virus might mean..: fast, safe vaccines for any possible new viral diseases? .. a cure for Age-related Macular Degeneration? .. specialised oncolytic viruses for killing different kinds of cancer cells? .. Or perhaps the perfect gene therapy, involving the perfect virus injected at birth that augments our immune system and optimizes our whole system so that we never fall ill and, in fact, have perfect vision/hearing etc for all our lives?
A human can dream, can't they?
Time Crystal (2021)
It sounds like something straight out of Doctor Who, and indeed, the Doctor's TARDIS does need something called a "Trachoid Time Crystal" to function.
But the main inspiration for this came from something quite real, if not less exciting and bizarre. Time crystals are a new state of matter that are absurdly hard to understand; or at least, certainly, hard for me to understand. To quote one article "...their atoms are arranged in a repeating pattern just like a regular crystalline structure. The difference is that time crystals follow a pattern that repeats in time instead of space." ... I'll leave it to you to google further.
And no, time-travel is not included in the list of their possible practical applications (aww) .. Other cool things are being looked at though, like super-sensitive magnetic field detectors, and memory for quantum computers.
The really crazy part, for me, is that they were theorized to exist relatively recently (in 2012) by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, and then in almost no time (pun intended!), they were created in multiple labs around the world.
What an awesome age to have been born in.
Nuclear (2021)
Atomic energy. The power of splitting the very building blocks of matter itself... With this piece, I wanted to zoom right in and attempt to capture what that might look like, right at the moment of nuclear fission.
It's with great awe that I ponder the significance of this prodigious invention... Prodigious as in: immense, colossal - one of the greatest potentials for taking our race into the far future, by harnessing the energy contained within atoms themselves. But prodigious as in unnatural and abhorrent, too, because of the same potential for such utter ruin. Will humanity survive itself?
The explosion you hear is the actual sound (edited) taken from some footage of one of the atomic bomb tests done on Bikini Atoll in 1946.