Dear diary, The strangest thing happened the other day. Phoebe came up to me and asked me if I would like to go for a walk with her. In all these months we’ve been living together, that was the first time she actually asked me to accompany her to one of her regular walks. I agreed immediately of course as… Read more →
International Poetry Day today and I thought it’d be a great idea to share one of my favorite poems with you guys. It is called The Beloved and it’s by Paul Eluard, one of the most important French poets of the 20th century, as well as one of the founders of the surrealistic movement. So here it is: The Beloved… Read more →
I left the Ark fuming and started wandering in the busy city centre streets, wishing that Alex would run after me to apologize. He did not of course ―I was the one who started the fight after all― and that made me even madder. I walked and walked and walked, having no idea where I was going, until my feet… Read more →
Growing up with two boys, who smart as they may be, tend to be reckless and stubborn and sometimes even mindless to the point of driving me mad, is not an easy task. Add Rosie with her manipulating ways to the equation and things get trickier. In order to remain as calm and careless as it is humanly possible when… Read more →
I think I want to become a poet when I grow up. For me poets are creatures of power. With just a few words they can change the world. Their verses are like little candles that shed some light to the darkness that has covered the past. When I feel lost or low or just fed up, I find comfort… Read more →
Huge. Imposing. Magnificent. And full of treasures. I spent hours wandering in there. Admiring, smelling, touching, watching the accompanying videos, absorbing as much information as I could, wondering what the world of the old looked like, how was life back then. I suppose every great adventure starts with a tiny little spark. I think that spark was ignited that day.… Read more →
Not really that long before my time, 77 miles away from Cambridge, lived a great man whose talent is still widely celebrated all over the world today. His name brings into mind famous lines from his work and is associated with the best ever written theatre works there have ever been. His name William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, whose birthday is unknown,… Read more →
Once upon a time the world was full of breathtaking landscapes. Massive forests and high mountains, valleys and meadows covered in flowers, extensive wastelands and deserts, huge icebergs and cities so beautiful they seemed to be taken out of fairytales. All that is left now is a vast unending ocean and a few scattered islands here and there. Just thinking… Read more →
19th century painter. He was born in Holland in 1853 and was brought up in a religious environment, as his father was a pastor, and he himself aspired to be one. He only discovered his artistic gift later in life and started drawing at the age 27. Within a time span of 10 years he created thousands of works of… Read more →
It was my fourteenth birthday. We were staying still at the place Flavio offered us at the favelas area. I had slept in late. When I got up I realized I was alone at the attic. I headed to the small furnished area that served as both our kitchen and our living room, made myself a nice cup of tea… Read more →
What is it that makes us fall for somebody? Their looks? Their attitude towards life? The way they speak? Or smile? Or look at you? And what is it that separates this kind of love from brotherly and friendly love? I don’t hold any answers to these questions. All I know is that when you fall in love, you suddenly… Read more →
I suppose it is a fact not commonly known among 16th century girls, but the art of tattoos is among the most ancient forms of art in the human history. Scientists trace it as far back as the 5.000 BC. It was used as part of religious rituals or as a symbol for social status, or simply for aesthetic reasons.… Read more →
Here is the thing. I can’t be a girly girl. I can’t do girl-talk, flash my eyelashes, flirt or pretend to be a damsel in distress. I don’t change the tone of my voice when I speak to boys or try to attract their attention. I don’t look intensely at people for no reason or use a mysterious smile when… Read more →
It’s strange how the change in my appearance changed people’s attitude towards me. It was as if they now took more notice of me, as if they paid closer attention. It kind of bothered me. For me it’s the inside that matters, not the outside. Appearances create illusions that can be dissolved within a blink of an eye. A word… Read more →
Sooo, as I said, just as I changed on the inside, I also felt the need to change on the outside. I didn’t want to be called or be treated like a little girl anymore. Cause I wasn’t. Alex was regarded with respect in our new neighborhood because of his confidence, his fearlessness, his easy and friendly ways towards everyone.… Read more →
If one thing can be said about Flavio is that he always keeps his word. Meeting him was the best thing that happened to us since our escape from the orphanage. A couple of days after the police chase incident, we returned to the eastern part of the city looking for him. It wasn’t difficult at all to find him.… Read more →
People talked often about the Covent Garden Square. It was laid down in 1630s, and the first small shops around it had already made a name for themselves. People always talk about the good things when they want to forget all the tragic ones. I must have been less than 12 months old, in 1665, when the Great Plague came… Read more →
(continuing from part 2…) That split moment before the police officers attacked us, Alex made an unexpected move and dashed sideways into the couple next to us. I took a deep breath, blocked my brain from thinking anything, and rushed to the opposite direction. We started pushing people on to one another and then slip away, grabbed anything we could… Read more →
Every myth bares a fragment of truth. That’s what my father used to say. You see, his interests did not lay solely in the field of science but in the realms of myth as well. He believed that if one penetrated deep into the core of myth, they discover wonders. He was a keen collector of myths – always looking… Read more →
We were scurrying around one of the busiest quarters in Virtus, looking for things to steal, when a quarrel broke out a few meters away from us. A party of four police officers had grabbed a young man and he was fighting to get free. A thick crowd of curious people gathered quickly around them. There was a lot of… Read more →
Living in the streets was like taking a deep breath, jumping from a high cliff into deep dark cold waters, struggling to emerge on the surface, feeling that you are running out of oxygen and just when you feel that everything is lost, your head is out of the water and you are breathing again. After escaping from the orphanage,… Read more →
It’s been some time since I first found small hints in Isaac Newton’s work referring to Alchemy! To be honest I always had my suspicions, mainly due to what my father told me about him. He seemed always to be hiding something. Most of the people thought it was just his discoveries and experiments. But I knew it was more… Read more →
… (continuation of the post: The night of our escape) Every minute seemed like a small eternity. My heart kept beating like crazy, my imagination run wild, coming up with a billion horrible scenarios for Max’s fate. “Where is he, Alex?”, I muttered, my voice strained with worry. “Right behind you!”, a small voice answered making me and Alex jump.… Read more →
Hi guys, I would like to put to your attention this sweet idea of the ‘two times physics’ by Itzhak Bars, from University of Southern California. He proposed his idea of time being not ‘one dimensional’ , but ‘two dimensional’. So, instead of thinking about it as a straight line, we must think of it as a plane, an infinite… Read more →
Even now, years after our escape from the orphanage, the night of our actual escape seems to me like a far dream; like something that happened to someone else, long ago, something I’ve read about it, or heard of. I am proud of it though. I just do not believe we fount the strength to go on with the whole… Read more →
Dear diary, While waiting in the museum today for Alex to finish his morning shift, so we could enjoy our lunch together I happened upon a family of 4 – the parents, along with their twin baby girls , of about 3 years of age. The little girls were playing with a tablet (something which still surprises me to see…honestly…every… Read more →
My mom loved books, especially the old-fashioned ones. You know, the ones made out of actual paper. The ones that survived the flooding of the old world. Battered, worn, dirty as they were, but beautiful. So beautiful! Now a days, in Virtus everything is in digital format. You just project out of your smart watch on to any surface and… Read more →
Being alone seems in the beginning an easy way out. You do not mingle with anyone, you do not make friends, no feelings, you don’t risk of getting hurt. Then, you need to find things to do. I mean other than just attending school and everyday stuff. Really something to do to keep your mind occupied at all times. Science… Read more →
My rational self fought against the whole venture at first. The risks were just too high. If we got caught, isolation would be the least of our problems. We had all heard the stories about the orphans that were sent to high level security institutions to receive special education to prevent them from turning into criminals. But life at the… Read more →
The fight in the yard cost both Alex and me three days in the isolation wing. It was cold and dark, but I really didn’t mind. Because our cells were next to each other and we spent our time talking. We shared our stories, our fears and thoughts, our hopes for the future. It was fascinating to hear him speak;… Read more →
Beatles in the 1960s wrote: All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong? I found out about loneliness long after discovering how angry I was. For months the only thing I felt was anger. Not for the people in the orphanage, nor for all the older boys who teased… Read more →
It was during one of those long grey early evenings ―when I spent hours trying to keep Max away from the bullies and to make him interested in the world again― that it happened. I arrived late at the yard, having being held back at the art class to help clean the mess some of the youngsters had created. I… Read more →
Kheme in Ancient Egyptian language means ‘black earth’, as opposed to the red earth, the sand in the desert is the Egyptian name for ‘Egypt’. Kheme means Egypt. From that the ancient Greeks created the word Chemia (which means Chemistry in modern Greek). The Arabs borrowed the Ancient Greek word Chemia to interpret ‘not the black earth’, but the ‘Black… Read more →
When travelling to Alexandria (I am sure those of you who have read our novel The Secret of the Cosmographer will remember), we were at the great Ancient Library of Alexandria. I must say here, that the Ancient Library of Alexandria was nothing like modern libraries where people stay quiet and just read. It was a loud place where people… Read more →
The first blow was the separation. For the first time in our lives Max and I were forced to split. Max cried and screamed and I begged them not to do this. We had just lost our parents; we couldn’t bear to lose each other as well. My pleas fell into the void. Our guardians were unmovable. “These are the… Read more →
Thinking about Cambridge today and feeling slightly homesick. As I was browsing today at photos online (wow! I would have never thought of it when in Cambridge of the 17th century – how bizarre to have access to all this vast amount of information at the click of a button… but the absurdity of that, and how unbelievable I find… Read more →
Three years. That’s how long Max and I remained in the orphanage. Three years that stunk of fear and hopelessness. Three years full of a cold silence, cruel faces, darkness and a constant feeling of pain that turned into physical pain. They could drive you mad. Some of us did go mad. You could tell by the feverous gleam in… Read more →
Trying to understand the universe when one can not understand the natural laws of Earth seems almost impossible. But Renaissance is very much about trying to understand how the Universe worked and then create formulae that could describe and explain it without contradicting religion. Was Earth the center of the Universe or the Sun? Was the planets made of the… Read more →
Hmmm…busy, busy, busy…so many things to catch up on. Had a wonderful spring break with my friends, just chilling in Virtus but in the meantime all the things that I have yet to discover… The things I missed in all those years. Scientific discoveries, world wars, kingdoms falling apart, books and poetry.. Thankfully, with all the help I can get,… Read more →
Hey there, I want to point out a TED X talk by Steward Brand, an environmentalist & futurist. It is really short 3min https://www.ted.com/playlists/29/our_future_in_cities He talks about the Squatter Cities. Ghettos, poor cities where people live in any way they can. In any case his points are a few but mind blowing! Take care world! Listen and think before it’s… Read more →
I want to start telling you a few things about Kepler, this great Mathematician, Astronomer and Astrologist. He played such an important role in our quests, in my father’s work, in Newton’s research and so on. Kepler had quite a turbulent life. He was a complicated man and a really bright mind. It is worth talking about him. It will… Read more →
Hmmmm…to all my fellow astronomy geek-lovers out there, this is dedicated to you my friends. It’ about time we talked about… well time really, or better the way it is measured in Earth – linearly, with clocks and things like that. Not time travels. This is for later! The division of the day into 24 hours originates from the Babylonians,… Read more →
Hi guys, for all of you who know our story please excuse the fact that you may know some of this, for all the other visitors here is a short description of what happened to us, me and my brother Max: Our parents died during an experiment. They got infected by a deadly virus that killed them within a couple… Read more →
“One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheelwork of the universe […] and the very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery”. – Nikola Tesla I remember sitting by the fire when my Dad explained again and again physics and mathematics, all of the secrets of… Read more →
How unbelievable my life turned out to be? It’s really hard to imagine, even now that it’s been quite some time since Cambridge…well I wouldn’t want to dwell on that now though. My thoughts today revolve around my kaleidoscope. Ever since I can remember myself, my father – quite a brilliant man and scientist – would potter around the house,… Read more →
Newton’s most important work is the ‘PRINCIPIA’ or the ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principiæ Mathematica’ which means Mathematical principles of the Physics Philosophy. With this work he established the foundations of mechanics using a very strict but also analytic model. These foundations were so rigid that lasted at least 250 years. The first earthquake came by Albert Einstein in 1905, with his… Read more →
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas of 1642 according to the old English calendar, in Woolsthorpe of Lincolnshire. This was the year Galileo Galilei died. He was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, alchemist and theologian. Obviously in the times You live in, times of extreme specialization this seems almost impossible. But back then (and believe you me) in times that… Read more →
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was born near Naples (Italy) and went to Naples to be educated. At the age of 17 he joint the monastery at San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and changed his name from Filippo to Giordano after his tutor Giordano Crispo. He started working on how to expand the forces of the mind via a method called ‘the… Read more →
In our journey we’ve met several scientists as you’ll discover by reading BOOK ONE, but there are also many that we haven’t got the chance to meet – yet. One of them is definitely Michael Faraday, born 1791 in Surrey of South London. He was born poor, much like me and my sister Phoebe. He wasn’t an orphan though.… Read more →
Some believe that the Scientific Renaissance (1450-1630) is the first part of the Scientific Revolution which started in the 17th century. I was born in Cambridge (England) at the end of the Scientific Renaissance, just as we were passing on to the next level of scientific discoveries. And then something remarkable happened and I was given the chance – a… Read more →