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Marcelo Gleiser thinks we have the story of the universe all wrong. And that its time to restore Earth and humanity to the center of the cosmos. The Brazilian physicist, astronomer, and winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize thinks modern science has fallen prey to an increasingly bleak perspectivea view of Earth as an insignificant speck alone in a cold, dark universe.

Gleiser, a noted theoretical physicist who teaches at Dartmouth College, has published a string of books on high energy physics, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. In his latest, The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanitys Future, he writes that ever since Copernicus, the more we learn about the universe, the smaller and less important planet Earth seems. Its a toxic narrative, he thinks, that set the stage for reckless use and abuse of the planets resources. There arent that many writers who could make the story of the Big Bang, expansion of the universe, and galaxy formation relevant to fossil fuel consumption and the climate crisis. In Gleisers hands, the story of the universe becomes a call to action.

In a recent conversation, he seemed energized by the flood of new data raising questions about the current model of the universeand by the very real possibility that humans will never truly understand the universe, a lesson he felt personally after a devastating loss in childhood.

You have argued that findings from the James Webb telescope are calling the story of our universe into question. What, specifically, makes you think cosmology may be due for a conceptual revolution?

We always thought stars were made when the universe was about 100 million years old. So the usual narrative is that first you have a bunch of big, big stars. They collect, they form black holes, they attract more stars, and then you have galaxies. And this takes a while. The idea was that it would take about a billion years for you to have big galaxies.

But in comes the James Webb, and we find that, nopethere were huge galaxies right around the same time that the first stars were being formed. So somehow we have to find a way of increasing the speed at which galaxies form.

So were surrounded by mystery.

Absolutely. I wrote a book called The Island of Knowledge a few years ago, where I said that the island of knowledge is surrounded by the ocean of the unknown. And as the island grows, so does its periphery, which is the boundary between the known and the unknown. So the paradox of knowledge is that the more you learn, the more you discover that you dont know.

That sounds like a profoundly depressing realization for a scientist.

If youre a card-carrying reason will solve everything and science is truth, person, then maybe. But in my case, I think its inspiring because it means there is no end to the quest; we humans will always have a limited grasp of what reality is. And what could be more fascinating than being surrounded by mystery?

If youre someone who likes mystery. I think we humans tend to have a contentious relationship with the unknown.

Yeah, you know, in my other life, where I do all these extreme sports like endurance running, we have this sayingyou have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I think that applies here tooyou have to be comfortable with the fact that we will never know everything, that there are questions that have no answers, and thats not a bad thing.

The paradox of knowledge is that the more you learn, the more you discover that you dont know.

As a theoretical physicist, youve been working with big questions and mysteries for most of your career, but what drew you in that direction to begin with? I know your mother died when you were very young. Do you think that helped shape you as someone who was drawn to those questions?

Yes, absolutely, I have no doubt about that. I was 6 when my mother died, and it was a time of darkness in my life. There was just this void, the emotional void of not having a mom, you know? All your friends have moms, who come and pick them up from school and hold their hands. My dad sometimes came by, but he was a busy man. So what do you do with that kind of loss?

Did you have any kind of faith tradition to help explain it?

My family is Jewishand I had a pretty traditional Jewish educationwith traditions, but not so much belief in all of the details of the Old Testament. But theres an element of the supernatural in all the big monotheistic religions, and I tried to connect with that. I was obsessed by supernatural stories and supernatural beings. When I was about 11 years old, vampires in particular were fascinating to me because they were both living and non-living, they had a foot in the world of the dead and a foot in the world of the living. So I said, Hey, maybe if I became a vampire, I could go and connect with my mom!

And you were growing up in Rio de Janeiro, which must have been filled with stories of the supernatural?

Oh, big time. There were spirits everywhere, according to my nannies. My dad was superstitious too. Every Monday was Souls Day, so people would go to the crossroads and light up candles and leave offerings for the spirits. Yeah, in Rio, you cant avoid the other dimension.

Did you ever feel like you were able to be in touch with your mother?

Many times. In fact, if you had asked me when I was 9, I would have sworn that I could see her sometimes hovering in the big, long corridor of my house. I was desperate for that connection.

But then I started to transition from that to nature and to being in the natural world by myself. Thats when I began to fish. I was 12, and I would go all by myself to Copacabana Beach and spend hours alone fishing. I mean, what kid does that? I was surrounded by all these retired men, who were always like, what is this kid doing here? And I was just there, hanging out, looking at the horizon for 2 or 3 hours, you know, three or four times a week. For years, I did that. It was really trying to connect with, I dont know what, the vagueness of the horizon? Because it is a weird place, the horizon, when you think about itwhere the earth and the heavens join. The line of connection between one worldoursand another world, which is up there.

I can see you feeling drawn to thatas though you yourself, in your life, were hovering there, stuck on the horizon in a way, because your mothers death propelled you into this in-between place?

Exactly. And then I discovered Einstein. And that changed everything because I realized that some of these questions about space, about time, about duration, about the origins of everything, were actually also scientific questions.

How do you go from being a boy who thinks maybe he could see his mothers ghost and who believes in spirits, to being a scientist working in the materialist paradigm?

Well you can see that I didnt choose to work on superconductors or lasers or bacteria! I chose to work on the nature of space and time and the Big Bang and the origin of life. These are really boundary questions between scientific and philosophical or religious thinking. So I think I found a way to be what you could possibly call a rational mystic.

You have to be comfortable with the fact that we will never know everything.

Did that ever create problems for you in the scientific community, among other scientists?

No, simply because I never told them. Likeand Im not comparing myself to Einsteinbut Im sure that Einstein also didnt talk about his Spinoza notion that God is everywhere.

Thats what he thought?

He had a very wonderfuland I would say mysticalway of relating to this intelligence that he found embedded in nature, which was some sort of divine presence. He didnt associate it with a Jewish God or anything like that, but there was something and he thought that science was a portal to connecting with this kind of intelligence.

Thats way more mystical than I thought Einstein was. I mean, theres his famous remark, God does not play dice with the universe.

Yeah, but that was a joke. He had a much deeper connection, what I would call truly a mystic connection to the natural world, and to this kind of hidden intelligence in the depths of nature that we can never quite understand, but which is there. He has this famous quote that I love, which is: the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. I mean, who would write that? Krishnamurti, yesbut that was Einstein!

So were circling around the subject of storytelling. Lately youve been saying that we need a new story of the universe, that ever since Copernicus, science has been telling the story of cosmological history wrong. Thats a pretty big rewrite.

Im saying we have to rethink the story of who we are and how we relate to the planet. A little bit of deep time history here: Homo sapiens have been here on this planet 300,000 years, more or less. Of that time, about 95 percent, almost all of it, we were hunter gatherers moving about the planet. And we had a completely different relationship to the world than the agrarian civilizations did. For the hunter gatherers, the world was sacred. They understood that there were powers in nature that were beyond themselves, that they were not above nature.

But that was 10,000 years ago, so how do we know? Are you extrapolating from what current Indigenous cultures and traditions have to say?

No, we have anthropological evidence of how earlier hunter-gatherers congregated and how and what they ate. Its amazing that we can tell that story. And of course, there is a dark side, and maybe overhunting was what caused the extinction of the mastodon and other mammals. But yes, I think current Indigenous cultures carry that tradition of coexisting with the natural world and respecting the sacredness of a place. Agrarian societies ushered in a complete phase transition: look, we can actually control nature. We can tame the plants and animals to serve our purposes, and we can be the masters of the world. No wonder the monotheistic religions say God created the world for humans.

And suddenly we get stories of paradise. Gardens of Eden given to us.

And most importantly, look what happened to the gods. Once, they were part of the trees, the rivers, the waterfalls, the winds, the volcanoes. Now, the gods are way up there, far away from the world. The world is not divine anymore. It becomes an object.

We carry the whole history of the universe in ourselves.

And this is the precursor to the revolutionary moment when Copernicus says Earth is also not the center of the universe?

Right. And then when Copernicus says, Look, the Earth is not even the center of everything, the sun is, then the Earth became not the center of creation, but just another world. Which further disrupted the vertical hierarchy of us here on Earth and the gods up in the skies. Now that Earth is revolving around the sun, it becomes less important. And we become less important too, because immediately after Copernicus, people started to speculate: Wait a second. If there are other worlds, why should life only be here?

Really, right afterward?

Very, very quickly. Copernicus published his book in 1543. In the 1580s, Giordano Bruno was saying, look, the stars are just like the sun, so they should also have planets moving around them, and those planets should have life, just like here. In the early 1600s, Johannes Kepler, who came up with the mathematical laws of planetary motion, wrote a fictional story about a trip to the moon.

So people were already beginning to think about escaping the Earth and heading to other planets.

It was all over the place. In 1686, one year before Newton published his famous book that changed the world, a French philosopher, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, published a book called Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. And then as science advanced, we learned more about stars and galaxies and the expansion of the universe. But within the framework of the Copernican narrative, the more we learned about the universe, the less important we and this planet became.

And today we talk about multiverses.

Yeah, thats the final insult, right? Hey, theres not just our universe, there are countless universes! Ours is just one.

Theres this thing people talk about in astronomy, the principle of mediocritymeaning we are not important at all. I think this is just completely wrong. Because there is a fundamental element missing in this whole story: We have no clue what life is or how it emerged on this planet. I mean, we dont even know how to define life very well. We have an operational definition: a biochemical network system that is capable of metabolism and of Darwinian evolution. But thats what life doesit doesnt tell me anything about what life is.

In the meantime, theres a lot of money going into looking for exoplanets that might support life. Elon Musk thinks we can terraform Mars. Theres the whole narrative of when weve wrecked this planet, well head to another. Youre pushing back on all that?

Okay, lets qualify. Searching for other planets, and in particular searching for biosignatures, meaning the signs of life, is essential research right now. I work on this. But Elon Musk and terraforming Mars? Thats just silly stuff. Our problem right now is the next few decades on this planetnot if, in 500 years, were going to have a colony on Mars. I mean, thats useless.

Then why even bother looking for exoplanets? Why not focus our attention on this one?

Because thats how we advance knowledge, by asking profound questions about the universe and matter. Looking for life on other planets is essential because for now, as far as we know, Earth is the only planet that has life. The post-Copernican narrative decreased the value of our world, and we constructed a whole civilization based on the idea that we can use and abuse it. We built giant cities and industries by essentially consuming the entrails of our planet. Oil, gas, and coalthe insides of the planetfed our technologies, and it all worked until it didnt.

Without our voice, the universe itself would have no memory.

At this point, it almost seems like the problems are too big to do anything about.

So what can we do? Well, we can tell a different story. First of all, when you look at the evolution of life, you realize that its completely dependent on the history of the planet. If you change or tweak something that happened here on our planet a long time ago, life would be different, which means we wouldnt be here.

The most famous example is 66 million years ago, the big asteroid hits the Yucatan Peninsula. It wipes out the dinosaurs and a bunch of other creatures, with the exception, maybe, of the birds and some little mammals. It completely changed the evolution of life on the planet. And it was a cosmic accident.

So your point is, its not about counting up the number of planets that could possibly support life because theyve got the right chemistry and the right mass. Its that there were so many little contingencies without which you could never get this form of life again. Although, you might get a better one.

What Im trying to say is that instead of thinking of the Earth as just another planet and life as ubiquitous in the universe, the truth is that Earth is not just another planet. The Earth is a very rare oasis that has supported life for at least three and a half billion years, which allowed for life to change and adapt to different environments that coincidentally and completely randomly evolved to generate a species that is able to reconstruct this entire story and to tell it. And without our voice, the universe itself would have no story, would have no memory. It would be a dead universe. So its not just that we are we are stardust, as Carl Sagan used to saywe are how the universe is telling its own story.

I think this is only possible because of this incredibly spectacular and rare planet that we live on. Look at Mars, a horrible frozen desert. Look at Venus, a boiling soup of sulfuric acid. Other planets, you cant even stand on them because theyre gas giants. So this is not just another world; its a rare gem in the universe. And yes, there could be other planets with life on them, maybe. But probably very simple lifesingle celled organisms. Never or very rarely complex organisms.

The other thing I was thinking about is James Lovelocks Gaia Theory and the suggestion that at some point the universe would develop consciousness. It sounds like youre saying it already hasin the form of humans.

Thats the beauty of this whole story. We carry the whole history of the universe in ourselves. The atoms in your bodythe iron in your blood, the calcium in your bonescame from stars that exploded 5 billion years ago. They traveled gazillions of light-years to fall four and a half billion years ago into this nebula that was collapsing to become the sun and the planets. And then in one of these planets, which happens to have water and carbon and magnesium and phosphorus, molecules organized themselves and became aliveand then began to evolve, three and a half billion years ago, into a species that is telling this story. That is not something that is going to be happening all over the universe!

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful concept called interbeing, which he described this way. He said: Lets say youre reading a poem, and the poem is printed on a sheet of paper. Well, that paper came from a tree. The tree only grew because there is water and there is sunlight. But the sun is a star, and the star is shining because there is a universe that developed stars. So every time you look at a piece of paper, you are connected to the rest of the universe.

And thats what Im talking about: the re-sacralization of the planet.

Do you think doing science can be sacred?

Absolutely. Not everybody will agree with me, but thats how I wake up every dayto go do my calculations and write my papers and try to figure out if there is life on another planet. To me, thats a sacred engagement with the universe. And I know Im in very good company saying that, because Einstein used to say the same thing.

Lead image: Benjavisa Ruangvaree Art / Shutterstock

Posted on November 8, 2023

Anne Strainchamps is the host of To The Best Of Our Knowledge. She co-founded the show, along with Steve Paulson and Jim Fleming, and has been a featured interviewer on the program for more than a decade. She has worked in public broadcasting at WAMU in Washington, DC, and at NPR. She has been a reporter, producer, news director, live talk show host, a food and wine columnist, andin a former lifea chocolatier.

Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.

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A New Story for the Universe, and Other Lessons About the Big ... - Nautilus Magazine

Over four billion years ago, a young Earth collided with another large object thought to be around the size of Mars. Luckily it was mostly a glancing blow.

However, the planetary bump resulted in huge chunks of both Earth and the other objects coming loose and floating in orbit nearby.

Over millions of years these formed into our single moon. The moon has been constantly pelted by asteroids and other cosmic bullies just as the Earth has, but due to the lack of an atmosphere, the moon bears the scars from these attacks for a very long time. Many of the dark spots that we see on the surface are in fact huge impact craters that were filled with lava long after their creation.

These lava flows are so immense that they can cause gravitational anomalies that disrupt orbiting spacecraft. Our moon is unusually large and dense compared to other known moons, and this contributes to the profound changes that it has on the Earths climates and oceans.

Through the billions of years that the Earth and our moon have been locked together by gravity, our movements have changed significantly.

It is believed that the moon originally moved four times faster around the Earth than it does currently. This had profound impacts on the global tides, which follow the moons movements in their rising and falling. The Earths gravitational pull helped slow the moons pace to the current synchronous rotation, which is around 29 days to both rotate itself and orbit the Earth. This means that we always see the same side of the moon.

The gravity from the moon has also impacted the Earths movements as well, leading to slower spinning and less global wobbling. In short, the moon allows for more reliable seasons and winds that are less intense than seen elsewhere in the solar system.

Huge gravitational forces can also trap other objects in specific areas, and scientists believe they recently discovered proof of multiple ghost moons made up of dust clouds circling the planet. While these clouds lack the ability to be as bright as the moon, in truth the lunar surface is not the pearly white it can appear. Astronauts and scientists have compared the color of the moon to asphalt, which looks bright mainly due to reflective dust and the darkness of the space behind it.

Excitement for Martian exploration is causing many nations to leave our moon in the shadows in terms of further on-the-ground missions. Recent data is showing that the moon may have more to offer than previously thought, however.

It is believed that as comets and other celestial objects impact the moon and Earth, they bring with them traces of water, among other things. While most water on the lunar surface is quickly boiled away in sunlight due to the extremely thin atmosphere, scientists predict that more than 5,000 square miles of the surface is constantly dark.

These shadowy nooks and crannies, mostly near the poles and at the bottom of craters, were found to have the lowest temperatures ever recorded by a spacecraft at around -400 degrees Fahrenheit. Multiple projects used reflective analysis and other measures to determine that there is a surprising amount of frozen water sheltered in the dark.

Small amounts of water are also believed to be sheltered under layers of Martian dust, which is made of rocks and volcanic glass. Lunar water stores are estimated to be about as rich as those of the driest deserts on Earth. Perhaps they could be enough to help support a human colony in the future.

Brannen Basham and his wife, Jill Jacobs, operate Sprigglys Beescaping, a business dedicated to the preservation of pollinators. He can be reached at brannen.basham@gmail.com.

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The moon has shaped Earth in many ways - The Sylva Herald

Philip Geller has mixed emotions.

The 28-year-old Mtis playwright and actor has had a play, titled who will save the night sky?, selected as the in-person opening night piece for this years Weesageechak Begins to Dance (W Festival).

This marks the 36th year of the Native Earth Performing Arts annual festival, which features new Indigenous works and works-in development.

Gellers piece will be performed on Nov. 7 at the Aki Studio in Toronto. A second performance of who will save the night sky? will be held on Nov. 16, also at the Aki Studio.

Geller is thrilled but also nervous.

Im so scared, Geller said. For me I love to be in process and to be in experimentation and to see whats going to happen. And theres a certain kind of pressure about sharing on an opening night. Also, very honoured. Obviously, very honoured and excited.

Gellers play is a story that is told through the perspective of a pair of mystical creatures, who gather the wisdom of the stars before satellites change the appearance of the night sky.

Its about our relationship to the stars, our relationship to star stories, Geller said. And it really started for me when I realized I dont know many star stories. I cant navigate with the stars at all. And moving to this city, you can barely see them. And so, it just started with me thinking about my relationship to the star world.

Geller was born in Winnipeg but grew up in Thompson, Man. They moved to Toronto four years ago, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in directing from York University.

Its a show thats totally in development, Geller said. I started developing it earlier in the year, around February or March.

Geller then took the piece to the Banff Centre for the Arts and developed it at the Indigenous Dramaturgies Exchange this past May.

The project has morphed and shifted now to this sharing at the W Festival, they said. The play references numerous projects currently in space.

Theres over 40,000 satellites now, with planned extensions in the future to create Internet across the world, Geller said. Even that completely shifts the way we perceive our night sky. So, it all started with me thinking what is that relationship for me. What does it mean to come back to those stories. And then, also. think about re-inventing those narratives based on a contemporary understanding from my perspective as a Michif on my moms side and Jewish on my dads side. A lot of the work draws from those cultural roots.

Gellers play is about 45 minutes long.

My dream is people will leave thinking about their relationship to the stars and whats important to them in that relationship, they said. And what stories, what teachings are out there in the stars that maybe we need right now in our life. And do we need them. And, also, thinking about our relationship to this wild world of space travel thats impending. Like soon there will be a colony on Mars.

Geller plans to continue working on who will save the night sky? after the W Festival.

Its quite self-contained, Geller said. So, I think, eventually, it could be a fun piece that I could tour and have conversations around star stories afterwards.

Geller is pleased, however, to present the current version of the play for the first time in Toronto.

I think theres something about Toronto as a space where lots of Indigenous people gather from many different nations, different practices and protocols, and to share a story that, yes, is very specific to me and to my experience, they said.

The play talks about being lost and people trying to find themselves.

I feel thats what Toronto is in a lot of ways, they said.

Geller is the lone actor in the production.

The show, on top of all the star pieces, is based on trickster and the fool mindset, they said. Lots of parts are improvised. Some is scripted. Lots of it is based on the relationship I develop with the audience. So, it will be a big experiment.

The W Festival begins on Nov. 6 with a digital opening, followed Nov. 7 with the in-person component.

More festival details are available at https://www.nativeearth.ca/shows/w36/

Continued here:

Mtis actor opens festival with play about gathering wisdom from the ... - Windspeaker.com

Good morning, Chicago.

Before David Davey Bauer made history at Northwestern Medicine for a double lung transplant assisted by a pair of DD breast implants, he considered himself a fairly healthy guy.

So when Bauer entered an urgent care clinic outside of St. Louis in April with the flu, he expected to recover fast.

The flu had turned into a lung infection resistant to antibiotics. On April 17, Bauer entered the intensive care unit at Saint Louis University Hospital. He was moved onto a ventilator, then into a medically induced coma.

SLU Hospital refused to perform a lung transplant, saying Bauer was too sick to survive. After the hospital called the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, he was relocated to Chicago.

Bauers surgery was uncharted territory for the program, said Dr. Rade Tomic, medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute Lung Transplant Program.

Read the full story.

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Striking SAG-AFTRA members pick out signs for a picket line outside Netflix studios, Nov. 8, 2023, in Los Angeles. (Chris Pizzello/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

SAG-AFTRA negotiators have approved a tentative agreement that will end the longest actors strike against the film and TV studios in Hollywood history.

President Joe Biden speaks June 28, 2023, about his economic policies at the Old Post Office in Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Belvidere today, celebrating the United Auto Workers contract agreement with Stellantis that includes the companys vow to invest millions of dollars and reopen its manufacturing plant in the northern Illinois town for electric vehicles and creating an EV battery assembly.

Underscoring the strike-ending UAW agreement, Bidens visit is an effort to show his post-COVID economic strategy dubbed Bidenomics is working. The reelection-seeking president has said his plans to use the government to help fuel economic expansion is assisting with job creation and growing manufacturing jobs.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testifies before a Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 31, 2023. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

The U.S. launched an airstrike on a facility in eastern Syria linked to Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the region for the past several weeks, the Pentagon said.

Former President Donald Trump acknowledges attendees after speaking at the Republican Party of Florida Freedom Summit, Nov. 4, 2023, in Kissimmee, Fla. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)

The states high court declined to become the first in history to use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to prevent someone from running for the presidency. The court dodged the central question of the lawsuit does Donald Trumps role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualify him from the presidency by ruling that state law allows parties to put whomever they want on the primary ballot.

Special prosecutors Lawrence Oliver II, left, and David Hoffman speak during an evidentiary hearing on the fourth day of the trial of Nicholas Trutenko and Andrew Horvat, former Cook County assistant state's attorneys, on misconduct charges related to the Jackie Wilson prosecution on Nov. 7, 2023, at the Rolling Meadows courthouse. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

The move pushes the criminal case into an indefinite holding pattern, as the sides argue over key concepts such as attorney-client privilege and the right to a speedy trial. Indeed, the issues are so critical to American jurisprudence, the trial judge took the unusual step of immediately releasing a transcript of his ruling so the public could better understand the reasoning for his decision.

Former 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke arrives for his alleged political corruption trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse Nov. 6, 2023, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

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Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.

The landmark corruption trial of former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke is expected to kick off in earnest with opening statements this afternoon as a four-day slog of jury selection is nearing its end.

Louise Bernard, director of the Obama Presidential Center museum, with a mock-up of the presidential center at the Barack Obama Foundations headquarters. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

The tower of the Obama Presidential Center has gotten a lot of attention as it rises in Jackson Park on the South Side. Meanwhile, Louise Bernard is trying to build the centerpiece museums interior: balancing former President Barack Obamas philosophy and his namesake foundations mission with historical accuracy in a time of corrosive partisanship.

Bears quarterback Tyson Bagent tries to outrun Saints defensive end Carl Granderson during the second quarter Nov. 5, 2023, at the Superdome in New Orleans. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

Rookie quarterback Tyson Bagent will make his fourth consecutive start for the Bears tonight against the Panthers, as Justin Fields continues to recover from the dislocated right thumb he suffered in Week 6.

St. Ritas Morez Johnson looks to get past St. Laurences Caleb Davis during a Catholic League crossover game in Burbank on Dec. 13, 2022. Johnson, now at Thornton, signed with Illinois on Nov. 8, 2023. (Vincent D. Johnson/Daily Southtown)

College basketballs early signing period began Wednesday and runs through Nov. 15. Any high school seniors who dont sign a letter of intent in the next week must wait until the regular signing period from April 17 to May 15. Heres a look at the players who have signed with the mens teams of area schools.

From left: Masha Mashkova and Joel Kinnaman in Season 4 of "For All Mankind. (Apple TV+)

Meet the new planet, same as the old planet.

In Season 4 of For All Mankind, Apple TV+s alternate history series about space exploration, the year is 2003 and theres a multinational colony on Mars, writes critic Nina Metz. Would it surprise you to learn all the fractious class issues on Earth are being replicated on Mars?

A father (Saleh Bakri) comforts his war-ravaged son (Nimrod Peleg) in "The Boy." (Go2Films/Courtesy of The New Yorker)

Everyday life on both sides of the Israel/Palestine border: What can we learn from filmmakers who set out to capture the harsh truth of it, long before the latest, horrific escalation of the Israel-Hamas war? Critic Michael Phillips examines two short, urgent 25-minute films providing humane context for the mounting casualties heading toward 12,000 dead in five weeks time.

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Daywatch: Northwestern lung transplant assisted by breast implants - Chicago Tribune

BlizzCon 2023 has been host to a ton of news for all of Blizzard's top games, with the developer's beloved hero shooter Overwatch 2 opening the show on November 3. After some heartfelt comments from Game Director Aaron Keller, attendees and viewers around the world were treated to a number of exciting announcements and reveals more of which then came over the course of the weekend.

Below, you'll find a complete overview of everything that was shown for Overwatch 2 at BlizzCon 2023. This includes the game's next hero, reveals of characters coming to the game in the future, a fresh upcoming PvP game mode, and more.

The Overwatch 2 showcase kicked off with its premier reveal: Mauga, a new tank hero coming to the game in Season 8, which is slated to begin on December 5, 2023. Fans have been pleading with Blizzard to make this Samoan juggernaut a hero ever since he was first seen in a short story four years ago, and the developer has finally given the people what they want. With dual-wielded chainguns "Gunny" and "Cha-Cha" as well as abilities that help him both take space and stay alive throughout a fight, Mauga is poised to become one of the strongest mid-range tanks in Overwatch 2.

Mauga isn't coming to the game fully until Overwatch 2 Season 7 ends next month, but from now until the end of BlizzCon weekend on November 5, he's freely playable in all Overwatch 2 PvP modes other than Competitive. That means you can take him into Quick Play or the Arcade to try him out, which is worth doing if you're on the fence about getting the Premium tier of the Season 8 Battle Pass to unlock him right away when he releases.

The core of Mauga's kit revolves around his dual chainguns, which he relies on for consistent damage output. The rest of his abilities are designed to maximize the effectiveness of these weapons and help Mauga get into the best possible positions to use them.

We've listed out each of these abilities below, including their names and how they work in-game.

Overrun allows Mauga to charge into the fray and get into medium or close range, while Cardiac Overdrive sustains him and his teammates with healing as he starts to pump damage into his foes. His Incendiary Chaingun is the perfect tool for "priming" enemies so that he can deal critical hits with his Volatile Chaingun and doing so then gives him Overhealth thanks to his Berserker passive.

Following the announcement of Mauga, Aaron Keller also announced Overwatch 2's next two heroes: a damage character named Venture, and a support hero with the codename "Space Ranger." Both are scheduled to come to the game in 2024, with Venture's release planned for Season 10 and Space Ranger set to arrive in Season 12.

During the second day of BlizzCon, we got some closer looks at these heroes. Detailed concept art for Space Ranger (see above) was shown, with Blizzard revealing that she's from a colony on Mars and that she'll be a "highly mobile support hero who has quite a bit of vertical mobility," and also that a lot of her gameplay will revolve around thrusters.

Next, we actually got to see some early gameplay of Venture, which you can view in the embed above. They're heavily inspired by miners and mining gear, which is reflected in the design of their drill weapon that operates both as a long-range rifle-type weapon with explosive projectiles as well as a tool for performing a fast charge. They can also burrow underground and drill up under enemies, and become invincible while doing so. Sadly, though, we didn't get to see their Ultimate.

Blizzard also revealed Clash, a new PvP mode coming to Overwatch 2 in 2024. Like many other modes in the game, it will feature capture point objectives for both teams to fight over. What separates Clash from other gametypes, though, is its win condition.

Clash features five capture points in a row, with the central point unlocked at the start of a round. In order to win, your team first needs to capture the center point, then also push forward and capture the two points in the enemy team's territory. The other team, meanwhile, has to defend these points while also trying to counter-attack and push back. Whichever team captures all five points or reaches a round's score limit will emerge victorious.

If you've ever played Team Fortress 2, the structure of Clash probably sounds familiar. That's because it's extremely similar to 5CP, which is one of the most popular competitive modes in that game. One thing Clash has that 5CP doesn't, though, is a score limit; 5CP sometimes results in drawn-out stalemates in TF2, so Blizzard likely wanted to prevent them from happening in Overwatch.

To go along with the reveal of Clash, Blizzard announced a new map for it: Hanaoka. This map will ship alongside the mode in 2024, and is a remake of the Hanamura Assault (also known as 2CP) map from the original Overwatch. Like the original stage, Hanaoka will be set in the home of the Shimada clan that Overwatch 2 heroes Genji and Hanzo came from.

The map will prominently feature Japanese architecture and cherry blossom trees, and portions of the original Hanamura map will even be visible in the map's background scenery. This is because Hanaoka is actually a street located right next to Hanamura itself. You can get a closer look at some screenshots of the map above.

Alongside a new highest rank above Grandmaster called Ultimate, a rework to Overwatch 2's Competitive mode was announced at BlizzCon 2023 as well, and it's coming early in 2024 when Season 9 launches. Its main goals are to give more feedback to players, introduce new rewards for them to pursue, and improve the overall Competitive play experience.

One way the developers are achieving this is by overhauling Competitive with a new Competitive Overview page. This screen gives you updates on your rank and your upward progress (or the loss thereof) after every match, allowing you to track your climb on the skill ladder more precisely. You also won't have to play a certain amount of games before your rank updates, either.

Notably, Competitive matches will also display the range of ranks of the players in each lobby, and the developers are "removing most grouping restrictions." This means you'll be able to matchmaking with friends who are in a rank much higher or lower than yours, with the matchmaker doing its best to find you a group of players with a similar rank spread to play against.

Season 9 will also feature a rank reset and the return of placement matches, which were taken out of the Competitive system when the original Overwatch became Overwatch 2. Though there won't be a full MMR reset, this rank reset, along with placement matches that have much more of an impact on your placement on the Competitive ladder than they did previously, will give players a chance to make a significant change to their rank. Blizzard says it wants to do resets and placements like this "every year, along with some big changes to our systems and hero balance."

In terms of rewards, emerald weapons (see above) are coming in Season 9 to offer fans an alternative to golden weapons to spend their Competitive Points on. Wins and losses will also contribute to end-of-season Competitive Point payouts, and players will be able to earn role-specific player titles that reflect the rank they reached in a Competitive season.

Earlier this year, Hero Mastery courses were introduced to Overwatch 2. These stages act as training levels that help players learn and master the mechanics and abilities of specific heroes, with three distinct difficulty levels available to choose from.

When they were introduced, there were only courses available for Reinhardt, Mercy, Tracer, Sojourn, and Winston. However, Blizzard has revealed that when Season 8 launches, levels for Mei, D.Va, Echo, Lcio, and Genji will be added to Overwatch 2 as well. Presumably courses for every hero will come eventually, though this will likely take a long time.

Overwatch 2is one of thebest Xbox gameson the market for fans of multiplayer shooters, and it's available now for free on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PS5, and PS4. The Overwatch 2: Complete Hero Collection costs $20, and gives you instant access to every hero in the game along with three Epic skins, three Legendary skins, 1,000 Overwatch Coins, and 1,500 Overwatch Credits.

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Here's every Overwatch 2 announcement from BlizzCon 2023 - Windows Central