Filler : Francesco Clemente

by Francesco Clemente

Italian contemporary artist born on 23 March, 1952.

Austra and Francesca

		Today we will explore a vibrating electronic world envisioned by Austra together with the photo manipulation works of Francesca "Oedipa Drake".

Austra

Austra is a Canadian electronic music band consisting of Katie Stelmanis (vocals, keyboard), Maya Postepski and Dorian Wolf. The song is from their Olympia album released in June 18, 2013 and is entitled "Painful like". What attracted me to this song was its bombastic feel, somehow reminding me of Michael Jackson's "Bad". The vocals are clearly resembling Bjork, but to be fair this vocal style gained some amount of popularity. In case you don't understand the lyrics I've wrote them down for you at the end of the article, after the photo gallery. The song has its charm even without paying much attention to the words.

Respect the band, buy the album. Link: http://www.austramusic.com/

Francesca "Oedipa Drake"

Opulent and extravagant in ideas, combative in rendition and sometimes contemplative, this is how I see "Oedipa" or more exactly this is what I have chosen to see in her. An artist of the digital age, she has chosen a variety of subjects with which to express herself and so doing realized some very impressive works. What particularly caught my attention are "Traveling and Dreaming" and "Waiting at the Airport" so I have situated them at the beginning and the end of her gallery.

Link: DeviantArt page / Her blog

Late Night Post #13

by Mallory Morrison

Bon Jovi - It's my life / acoustic version

When I first listened to this version of the song a few years ago I was lying down on the sand at the beach with my headphones on and watching the waves crashing to the ground. It was a hot day, sunny and joyful, quite different from the snow and cold of today. This song, so different from what most people listen to on vacations, I suppose, somehow gave me almost four minutes of... something different.

A couple of children were playing near the water, trying to catch in little buckets some small fish. Someday they too will grow, in their own different ways. Who will they be, in what will their soul transform and what will their heart finally end up embracing. I'm not the one to answer such questions but I sure do feel like asking them... to whom... to nobody, to anyone who can hear.

Today I walked on someone else's footsteps and climbed to the heights of despair. With freezing winds and bustling streets, bellow, is where we are still moving forth. I passed by my own self, my old self and felt so strange. Let's grow, let's change, remaining young for always.

Passing Thoughts: Worthy Things to Share

Vatican Museum, Rome, Italy / copyright John Kehaylas

I remember going down these very same stairs, what wonderful memories. Staring at all the art and history that palace of knowledge has to offer makes you wish you'd had the entire place for yourself. But it's better to share that which you consider worthy otherwise there will be no more worthy things at all.

Bringing Christianity together

On December 1st, Pope Francis met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Istanbul and apparently the Pope bowed down to the Patriarch in order to receive his blessing. This moment impresses me with its symbolism and humility but it might signal, above all, a turning point in the evolution of the Christian religion. The Pope himself said that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches will not submit to nor assimilate the other and will, instead, work towards the restoration of full Communion. A meeting with the Russian Church Patriarch Kirill was also mentioned however its planning has yet to begin.

Nightly Poem #10 - Sand

Painting by Gustave Caillebotte

We leave our mark in sand,
with water taking bit by bit
our parts into the sea,
into the shallow depths.
And with confusion we try
to leave this place behind
but is our faith still powerful
and is our love still placed in truth
or do we struggle in confusion
unknowing where our sand will stand.

Late Night Post #12 - the Word

Fragment of "St Michael Vanquishing the Devil" by Bonifacio Veronese from c.1530

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" is one of the most beautiful and powerful things I have ever heard. What makes it so interesting is that this power comes from its simplicity which is an opposite mirror of its true complexity, which we can not rationally understand. What we can do is to develop our intuition, to learn to think with the heart, at least from time to time. I can guarantee that once you think with your heart you will forever want to come back to this feeling for it is closer to the truth than any amount of encyclopedic knowledge.

Nightly Poem #9 - Rebirth

Through clouds, victorious faces gather.

This white fog that grew between us

from yesterday is our home and solitude.

Crows in white tall trees are trembling
and yellow leafs are scattered by winds.

Not listening? To the ground with you!

A carpet of illusions, fragments of dreams

you laid under our feet. Hyenas, I'll tell you

From today, fear will no longer be.

Printre nori se ivesc fețe de învingători

Această ceață alburie ce ne separă

de ieri ne este casă, beznă și pustiu.

Ciorile din copac cutremurându-se și

vântul spulberând frunze îngălbenite,

Nu ne ascultați? La pământ cu voi!

Un covor de iluzii, de cioburi de vise

ați așternut sub noi. Hienelor, vă spun

de azi temeri și frici nu mai sunt.

I wrote this on my way home from work a few days ago and translated it into English today. I won't explain my thoughts behind the poem because it would be redundant, there is however a small note to make, from time to time we should garner the courage to jump ahead of ourselves because the forces that want to keep us still must be overcome. 

Passing Thought: Seed

Life, I'm sure, is a different pie for each of us but there are things we share, common views, tastes and dreams. Without carving a too narrow niche, this blog is not something you can stumble into. It's like a seed that you must plant into your heart without knowing what plant it will end up being. The plant actually depends on you, its beauty, its flowers, its fruits, if any, are the result of your heart and this seed.

Filler : Cyril Rolando

We are dancing by Cyril Rolando
http://aquasixio.deviantart.com/

Nightly Poem #8 - Butterflies

Butterfly by "svetlana"

Today the butterflies are free but a day will come
when their wings will be gravel and with hearts of sand
to fly to the sky they will desire, but from that
only despair they'll have.
Who is that, walking these lands, hidden,
many truly will wonder for she again gives hope.
That day they will remember flying
with wings made of silver and eyes seeking upwards 
with flaming hearts reflecting their love. Today,
the butterflies are free.

Astăzi fluturii sunt liberi dar va veni o zi
când aripile lor, pietriș vor fi, și cu inimi de nisip
a zbura către cer vor dori, dar din aceasta
numai disperarea lor va rodi.
Cine-i acolo, călcând pe acele pământuri, ascunsă
mulți se vor intreba fiindcă ea speranță aduce.
În ziua aceea își vor aminti de zbor
cu aripi din argint făcute și ochi indreptați spre cer
cu inimi arzând reflectându-le iubirea. Astăzi,
fluturii sunt liberi.

Top 10 Romanian Rock

This top 10 of Romanian rock songs was created by taking into account all of the following: artistic merit, popularity, longevity, impact, international potential, personal preferences.

Rock music in Romania has a long but uneven history. Due to the cultural masterplan of the Communist regime prior to 1989 much of what can be described as rock has been heavily censored and tempered. This reluctance to accept the Western cultural wave redirected the creative power of some musicians towards a style that tried to plant its roots in the cultural heritage of Romania. When this was not the case, the regime viewed with distrust the "artistic merits" of the bands in question.

Saturday Special : Notre Dame de Paris 1999

Notre Dame de Paris, French version from 1999

This French language musical debuted in Paris in 1998. Based on the novel published by Victor Hugo in 1831, Luc Plamondon created together with composer Riccardo Cocciante one of the most successful such shows in history. Its popularity grew and versions in other languages soon were produced. This 1999 version remains in my opinion the best because it is the only one which successfully transmits the emotional power of the story.

Late Night Post #11

A bird is singing on a tree branch, might be a sparrow, a messenger of good luck, creativity and joy. She looks at me, I see her beak, she sees my nose and flies away. A pigeon walking on my left stops to peck the ground, another pigeon comes, they meet, touch beak to beak and slowly walk away. The sky, neither cloudy nor clear, some rain drops nevertheless appear. One of these drops hit an ant, how would we be with rain drops the size of cars... I wonder.

There is a world in front of us which we can see with our senses yet few are quite that attentive. A bowl of dirt could be interesting, in fact I find it highly inspirational, many thoughts can have their origin in a simple bowl of dirt.

We tend to believe that good things must come in big boxes with red ribbons of silk. The ribbons are optional but the size is important, either in value or in mass but who can still find happiness in simple things. A bowl of dirt is a small world, a life just waiting to arrive. We should feel joy of having the chance to see the world's beauty, and little by little to renounce our feelings of vanity and greed, for we alone are our tormentors.

From time to time, look at the flowers, the birds and everything; but don't just look because there is God in everything and more so in all the beauties of the world. I guess what I'm trying to say is feel and know the price of real things.

Perpetual 

VNV Nation

Find it in you, raise your eyes
Look beyond the place you stand
Towards the furthest reaches
And to the smallest of things
The sound you're hearing
Is the symphony of what we are
Revelation will not come
With heart and mind closed and divided

No need of sun to light the way
Across the ages, we have reigned as we endured
Through the storm fronts we will ever surely pass
To stand as never ending light

Throw away the mantle
Awake from your uncertain hesitation
No way to describe or equate the feeling
No end to what is at your command
A million thoughts run through you
Concentric circles, ever greater
But you have always known
That this is not all that there is
To your questions there'll be answers

Let there be, let there always be
Never ending light 

Lermontov & Balakirev

Portrait of the poet done in 1837,
the year he went on exile
and when Balakirev was born.
by Pyotr Zabolotsky

Moscow, October. A cold wind was blowing thousands of yellow dried leaves, sometimes circling in high tornado like swirls but usually ending under the feet of the few that ventured on the streets that night. A few drops of rain began to fall when at the door of a white two story house a man was knocking, nervously shouting "open, it's me, Yuri". Mikhail Lermontov was born in this house on 15 October 1814 to captain Yuri Petrovich Lermontov, who prided himself with a Scottish descent, and Maria Mikhaylovna Lermontova. Their marriage was a total failure ending with Maria's death at the age of 21, as a result of finding about her husband's infidelity (and her tuberculosis). Mikhail grew up in the village of Tarkany being raised by his maternal grandmother in luxurious comfort and enjoying an excellent education. He became fluent in French and German and learned to play some musical instruments. Eventually, because of bad health, he was sent to the Caucasus, a place that greatly influenced him and where he will eventually return to.

Ode to life : William Oxer & Device

The Kiss from 2014		William Oxer is a refined British artist whose subject matter is centered around love and sensuality which he effortlessly portrays in a sincere way, his figurative art expresses unity and an emotional longing. "Who says" by Device is a rollercoaster of emotional ambiguities, a inner struggle for freedom, a fight between lust and love.

Gallery

2013 - The Dream

2013 - Seduction

Filler : Pink Turns Blue - Walking on both sides

Pink Turns Blue is a German rock/dark wave band which began its activity in 1985 and this song, "Walking on both sides", is from their debut album "If two worlds kiss" from 1987. The song, as it is, lends itself to restless hearts, the lyrics, if read and studied, hold surprises. To my knowledge the video is not official but made by the Youtube user Asinus Aureus. It nevertheless goes well with the song and in some regards even being complementary.


Lyrics:
I don't know I thing outside (?)
suffering endless through my life
I've seen too much I'm all alone
Who likes to sit around and wait
but to act that means to fail
All I ever thought was wrong
Damn the madness of my pride
the price I paid was much too high
My dreams became reality
Cause I'm walking on both sides
Much more real than my life
I am caged by thick ice
Makes me gloomy and morose
Why I dared to go so far
lost my strength and lost my heart
I've to stay somewhere between
Cause I'm walking on both sides
Can't escape reality
always traveling in my dreams
Nothing I could take for true
How should I know whether I love you
whether I love you
I'm walking on both sides

Nightly Poem #7 - Ruby

"Naiad" by David Cheifetz

Why do you want to talk so much
You'd better listen to what's not spoken.
In the deafening silence of thoughts
the most expensive of dreams, rubies,
washed by waters, like river rocks,
forgotten in mountains, in dried river beds.
Here, red stars hidden inside clouds,
imagined by a mind, created by hearts. 

De ce vorbesti atat de mult,
mai bine asculta ce nu se spune.
In tacerea asurzitoare a gandurilor
cele mai scumpe vise, niste rubine,
spalate de ape ca pietre de rau
la munte uitate in albii aride.
Aici, stelele rosii ascunse in nori,
imaginate de minte, create de inimi.

Buran versus the Shuttle

We should start by pointing out  that the Energia-Buran program ended with the fall of the USSR with only one unmanned flight taking place in 1988. The Space Shuttle on the other hand was a full fledged program spanning three decades.

The Soviet Union already had a very successful spacecraft, the Soyuz (which is still used by Russia) and a number of launch systems tailored for the military and for any possible civilian needs like exploration and manned spaceflight. Buran and her sister ships would have been, without a doubt, a source of pride for the soviets, however if this was the only reason of sustaining such a costly project ,it was doomed to failure. A number of new technologies were developed and applied for this space system, a part coming from their defunct Moon program. Unlike its American counterpart, the boosters were reusable having large parachutes that opened during descent and the shuttle would have been fitted with turbojets in order to fly to secured military airstrips once its space mission was completed.

The United States decided to go with a reusable space shuttle because of several reasons: it offered a  potentially more economical way of getting payloads into low-Earth orbit; it was part of a larger plan of creating a permanent American presence in space along with the proposed Space Station Freedom; and it was also meant to be a symbol of America's high technology.

	Buran1	Space Shuttle2
Developer	Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy at EKK Energia	NASA
Beginning of the programe	12 February 1976	26 July 1972
First flight	15 November 1988	12 April 1981
Dimensions and weight	Length = 36.37 m Wingspan = 23.92 Maximum weight = 105 tons Maximum payload weight = 30 tons	Length = 37.18 m Wingspan = 23.77 Maximum weight = 110 tons Maximum payload weight = 25 tons
Number of boosters	5 (4 side boosters and the main tank-booster rocket)	2 (plus the actual shuttle)
Crew	2-10	2-11 (mostly used 7)
Volume of crew compartment	73 m3	66 m3
Orbital maneuvering engine thrust	17600 kgf	5440 kgf

1. Buran - www.buran.su
2. Space Shuttle - www.nasa.org

More space articles, click here

Nightly Poem #6 - Change

Weaknesses will win if we won't start
to clear our veins of vices.
Darkness will triumph if we don't love
to burn the veil before our eyes
and all there is will fall pray to mice
if we don't choose to be wise

Late Night Post #10

Image from an artwork by Matteo Cattonar

How bright the flame is, twisting round my finger, shivering and trembling. How can I stop the fever for if I will descend the stairs to see the rivers of silver I will be blinded from the entrance.

The question is how to change one's life in order to incorporate one's ideals and give a sense of permanent happiness, let me rephrase, and actually give permanent happiness. Baudelaire comes to my mind with one of his poems, we should "Get drunk and stay that way. / On what? / On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. / But get drunk". Compromises are like weights for the soul, the more of them you make the fatter you feel, I know because I've made some myself. The world as it is doesn't come with a helping hand, most of the times it just kicks you back into place, but that's alright 'cause in the end only the strong survive. I am your helping hand fellow travelers through this world of the absurd.

Filler: Rainbow - "Catch the Rainbow" live in 1977

From the Past: Queen Marie of Romania

Queen consort Marie of Romania was a fundamental figure in the history of Romania remaining close to her people in the times of great struggle and despair of World War One and also making a reality the centuries long dream of the Greater Romania. 

Daughter of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, she was born on 29 October 1875 as a member of the British royal family and titled Princess Marie of Edinburgh. In order to secure the succession to the throne of Crown Prince Ferdinand, King Carol I of Romania accepted the proposal of Grand Duchess Maria (her mother) to arrange a meeting between the two. They eventually got married in Sigmaringen Castle on 10 January 1893 in three ceremonies, one civil, one Catholic and one Anglican with Karl von Wendel, the German Emperor, being the first of the witnesses to sign the marriage act. On 11 October 1914 she and Ferdinand were proclaimed king and queen, their coronation had to wait till 15 October 1922 due to the war.

From the Past: Five Races of Mankind

Published in 1911 by a German magazine, this poster is a sad, yet artistically interesting, example of European exceptionalism and racism. Originating in the Age of Discovery, this Eurocentric mentality flourished in the Age of Reason and imposed itself on the world with the start of the Industrial Revolution. The Chinese Empire and the Muslim world have witnessed both their own periods of growth, development, stagnation and regress. The illustration was made by G. Ellka.

Nelina Trubach-Moshnikova and Erja Lyytinen

		The relation between the song and the paintings is not like the one between two shades of red, which would have made the duo more united and also dull. It's more like red and violet, the fiery and intense emotions of the music are like a hand offered to the viewer in order to help him enter a fine realm of imagination.

Nelina Trubach-Moshnikova

Nelina was born in Belarus in a family that originated from Poland. She took up art college in Minsk after which she moved to Yalta in the Crimea peninsula. Nelina's art is a voyage in color beyond the obvious reality. Her subject-matter, while not surreal, hides a certain element of mystery that is intriguing and alluring.

Filler - Ratt "Round and Round"

Ratt released this song in 1984 and rapidly became one of their most powerful hits. The music video is very interesting for a song that, in my opinion, doesn't ask for much when it comes to imagery. You basically have a rich family hosting a rock band in the attic of their house, the band starts playing and so annoys the rich and arrogant owners right when they were starting dinner. The one girl that's drawn by the music (also a member at the dinner table) eventually goes to the attic and along with the butler are the two that go through some sort of metamorphosis.

This is after all a filler, so feel free to browse the site.

From the Past: Tzar Nicholas II at two factories

On 20 April 1915, Tzar Nicholas II visited as factory in Bryansk which was making explosives. What began as a sawmill grew with time into a factory specialized in metals and minerals, then railways and now locomotives. At present it is called BMZ.

This image could prove more interesting. I don't know when it was taken but it shows Tzar Nicholas II in a visit at Putilov Works in Petrograd, back then it was one of the largest factories in the world. During the war it was awarded a state order for artillery of around 113 million ruble (60 million dollars at the 1914 exchange rate), The factory could not keep with the huge demands and its owner supposedly benefited from part of the money. This meant that in 1917 the factory was bankrupt, on 18 February 20 000 workers went on strike, the following day the total number of strikers went up to 90 000 with over 850 factories closed. Such events were not isolated they escalated in intensity and spread like a wildfire, ultimately marking the start of the February Revolution that preceded the October Revolution.

Filler: black and white

artist: Piotr Pardiak
title: Point of View
country: Poland

Nightly Poem #5

Between lips, in times of rain somebody was saying, sometime, maybe, that our hearts stopped beating that our minds are welded to long beams of steel. The long girders, columns of silence.

Printre buze, printre ploi, cineva spunea, cândva, poate, că Inimile noastre au încetat să bată, că mințile noastre sunt sudate de grinzi lungi de oțel. Grinzile lungi, ale mincinoaselor coloane.

Late Night Post #9

Self portrait by Ella Ruth

- One Man Tango by Axel Manrico Heilhecker from the album "Fishmoon"

In the backyard of your house, a small stream is flowing, a stream that acts as the blood of society. You will rarely be conscious of it but it's water is priceless.

Our world is composed of segregated groups who no longer talk to each other or tolerate each other. We managed to arrive here in around ten years of important technological developments in the field of, ironically, communication. Our mentalities are unleashed, petty instincts dictate our actions, obsessions dictate our motives. What is to be done? Learn to refrain, to see yourself as a vehicle of change, if you can't build, at least don't destroy.

There are links connecting all of us, it would be foolish to poison these streams that nourish our lives, this however is exactly what we do, usually out of ignorance or unmanaged feelings.

From the Past: Battle scenes and Aspras from Angkor Wat

Photo by

Jason Eppink

More about the Angkor Wat bas-reliefs can be read here.

Photo by Sunny Merindo, Apsara depicted on the Angkor Wat.

In Hindu and Buddhist mythology an Apsara is a female spirit of the clouds and water. Sometimes they are compared to Ancient Greek muses because these too are associated with the arts. Beautiful and elegant they are also thought of being sent to ascetics in order to seduce them.

Nightly Poem #4 - Beyond

If you go beyond the park,
through a dusty side-street
next to a wooden bench
with boards now broken,
you'll find a house, a palace,
beautiful, some say
as a Gothic church,
the former temple of a world
that was like a garden.
Just between its walls,
witnesses of change,
on dusty, rusty shelves,
books, waiting to be read,
maybe someone from the past
for only he can understand
their thoughts, forgotten.

Our world: Zinaida Serebriakova and Vladimir Kuzmin

This Duo is again dedicated to the wonderful art that emerged from the Russian space, let it bring us together, breaking the barriers some want to create.

Vladimir Kuzmin (Russian: Влади́мир Борисович Кузьмин) is a Russian rock artist born on May 31, 1955. After gaining a degree in a musical college he became lead guitarist in various VIA bands. In 1981 he became a member of Carnival releasing one album. From 1982 till the present he plays with Dynamic. Apparently in 2011 he was awarded by President Medvedev. The song's title is Семь морей and means Seven Seas.

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (Russian: Зинаи́да Евге́ньевна Серебряко́ва) was a Russian painter born on 12 December 1884. She grew up in Kharkov (which is now situated in Ukraine) into a refined family, descendants of the Benois family. Her grandfather (Nicholas Benois) was the chairman of the Society of Architects and a member of the Russian Academy of Science, her uncle (Alexandre Benois), a famous painter himself and founder of the Mir iskusstva art group and her father, Yevgeny Nikolayevich Lanceray, was a well known sculptor. These are just a few highlights.

After graduating the gymnasium she went to an art school founded by Princess M. K. Tenisheva. In 1901 she studied under Repin, followed by Osip Braz from 1903 to 1905. Like all aspiring artists she went for a year to Italy in 1902. After completing her education in Russia she continued to study in Paris. Life was pleasant and fruitful up till the Bolshevik revolution. In 1919 her husband died of typhus contracted in jail and so was faced without any income, with four children and her sick mother. Things however began to improve after long moments of hunger and poverty. Even in the most difficult of periods she was lucky, her grandfather's apartment in Petrograd (in which she moved in December 1920) was shared with artists from the Moscow Art Theater. This sharing of private apartments was forced upon their owners who never had a say on who will be assigned to them.

In 1924 she went to Paris after receiving a commission. It is not entirely clear if she wanted or not to return to the Soviet Union, what is known is that out of her four children she managed to bring to Paris only two in 1926 and 1928. She went on to explore Africa arriving in Morocco for a limited period. In 1947 she became a French citizen. Only after Khrushchev came to power she was allowed to come back to the Union.

Her work was exhibited in the Soviet Union in 1966 in cities like Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. She enjoyed a complete success with millions of albums sold. Zinaida died a year later in Paris and is buried at the Russian cemetery.

Gallery

1909 - Self portrait

Passing Thought: Ice Buckets and the Age of Aquarius

Strange and sometimes infantile trends develop in society mainly through the use of social media and mass-media. As you may know, not long ago the "selfie" flourished, why that happened is a question to be answered another time. For a couple of days we see a new trend being formed, the so-called ice bucket challenge. Sure, it's made to raise awareness to a disease and to gather funds but the moment I saw the image of a guy dumping a bucket of ice water on his head something looked familiar. I'm not saying that the age of Aquarius concept is linked to this trend but since we are expected to enter the age or already have entered, the current trend is symbolically similar. This thought is however just for the sake of it, after all, all the people throwing water from a bucket for millennia did not have an age of Aquarius in mind.

Aquarius by Hakon Soreide

Nightly Poem #3 - The mast, the sail

Ride as fast as the winds last,
your body like a mast, your soul its sail.
A life, unwritten tale becoming good,
becoming wise.
And always eager to search the skies,
I started through my eyes to see
the world, yet something more is what
I saw, the winds that blow
for all of us, for some quite strong
for others gentle, will finally
and brotherly bring us towards
the common place under the sea.

I wrote this piece tonight after seeing the painting by Ivan Aivazovsky entitled "The Black Sea at Night" from 1879.

Silent Passion: Robert Lubanski and Hamrasmus

Life can be as simple as this, light up the fire inside you and burn with love and peace. The theme for this Duo is "Silent Passion".
- Robert Lubanski's deviantart page
- "Silence" by Hamrasmus

Ti senti libero?

Hunger for Energy, Nuclear Fusion

(from the first issue of Thoughts in Perspective)

      The quest for energy eventually brought man to nuclear fusion, the process by which two atomic nuclei join to form a new nucleus. This process generates energy if the two nuclei have lower masses than iron. The problem is that at large distances the two nuclei repel each other because of the electrostatic force caused by their protons. Bringing them closer, just enough for the attractive nuclear force to take over is the key.

Description of a fusion reaction between deuterium and tritium
source: dailytech.com

   

In 1950, Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm proposed a nuclear fusion reactor they named "tokamak". This model proved so important that to this day the tokamak reactor is the most well developed and well funded of all the proposed reactor systems. It basically is a device that confines plasma by using a magnetic field.

Right: Igor Tamm (1895-1971) Bottom: Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989)

The power of fusion was also observed by the armies of the two superpowers of the time. The US detonated the 10.4 megatons bomb (450 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki) on the 1st of November 1952 called "Ivy Mike" (left image) and the USSR tested their Tsar Bomba on October 30, 1961, with the incredible yield of almost 58 megatons.

 

The history of fusion energy offers some very interesting moments and even today it tends to surprise. The reason is not necessarily scientific as we shall see. Like many scientific developments of the second half of the 20th century there is some suspicion that research into nuclear fusion enjoyed a forgotten help from Germany. I would like to give some, I believe, interesting examples to at least offer a possibility for this claim like Von Braun's well-known space ambitions, the Me 262 (or more likely the FW- Ta 183) that proved a stepping stone for the Soviet MiG 15, the popular soft drink Fanta which apparently originated in 1941 at the desire of Max Keith, the head of Coca-Cola in Germany and the more specific product methadone used by those with opioid dependence.