Why did people believe in the existence of witches? Detailed answer

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Why did people believe in the existence of witches? Detailed answer

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Why did people believe in the existence of witches?

Man is afraid of many things. When he cannot understand what is happening, especially if it frightens or harms him, he tries to explain this phenomenon in some mysterious way.

Belief in witchcraft was the only way to explain phenomena such as drought, thunder, lightning, mental and physical illness. It was assumed that the witch is a person of great strength and power. She uses her power to do evil. Some people believed that the devil helps witches in their evil deeds. Usually the witch was a woman. People assumed that at night she jumped around on a broomstick. If it was a man, then he was called a magician or sorcerer.

Belief in witchcraft originated hundreds of years ago and is based on the imagination of illiterate people. That is why it was easy to explain unforeseen calamities to them. In early Christian times, it was believed that witches sold their souls to the devil, the Antichrist, or other evil spirits in exchange for supernatural power.

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull in which he officially condemned witchcraft and, in particular, accused him of a terrible plague that swept through Europe. During the seventeenth century, both Roman Catholics and Protestants began witch-hunts that caused the death of many thousands of people.

There were professional witch hunters in England. They traveled around the country, looking for witch signs on people and determining who was a witch or sorcerer. Between 1647 and 1663, hundreds of people in Massachusetts and Connecticut were accused of witchcraft. Doctors today believe that many of the dreams and visions believed to be caused by witchcraft were in fact the products of hysteria and mental illness.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Why is it warmer in summer than in winter?

Isn't it strange: when winter reigns in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is closer to the Sun by 4 km than when it is summer there. The fact is that in this case, the weather is determined not by the distance from our planet to the Sun, but by the tilt of the earth's axis in relation to the plane of the earth's orbit. The angle of this inclination is 500 degrees.

The earth revolves around the sun in such a way that its axis is always directed towards the North Star. Therefore, for one half of the year, the North Pole of the earth leans towards the Sun, and for the rest it deviates from it. In the first case, summer reigns in the Northern Hemisphere, in the second - winter. In the South, of course, the opposite is true.

The weather in a particular region of the earth depends on the angle at which the sun's rays fall on a given area of the earth's surface. In winter, the low sun illuminates the earth with gliding rays, and in summer they fall vertically. Glancing rays heat the Earth's surface less for two reasons.

First, because the same amount of heat is distributed over a larger area in winter than in summer. Secondly, in this case, the rays pass through a thicker layer of air in the Earth's atmosphere, which leads to large losses of their thermal energy. The climate is determined not only by the amount of heat entering a particular part of the Earth's surface from the Sun, but also by other factors.

For example, in the expanses of the seas and in the areas adjacent to them, temperature changes with the change of seasons are not so great. On the contrary, in the depths of the continents, the difference between the temperature in winter and summer is much more significant. This is due to the fact that the earth cools and heats up much faster than water.

Another factor that affects the weather is the difference in altitude above sea level. As altitude increases, air density decreases, and hence its ability to retain heat. As a result, the climate in the mountainous regions is much colder than in the plains.

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Laser satellite communications 07.12.2022

With the help of a new satellite, developed by engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a new record for data transmission between satellites and the Earth has been set. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) terabit infrared transmission system used lasers to transfer huge amounts of data at speeds up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).

This data rate is much faster than most sky-to-ground connections. For example, SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet offers premium customers speeds of up to 500 Mbps. And the data transfer rate between the Earth and the International Space Station reaches around 600 Mbps. This makes the TBIRD system 200 times faster.

The main difference of the new system is the method of data transmission. While most satellites communicate with ground stations using radio waves, the TBIRD system uses laser light. It can transfer 1000 times more data in one session. However, lasers also have their drawbacks. A laser beam is much narrower than a radio wave and therefore requires a more precise position matching between transmitter and receiver. In addition, the light may be distorted by the atmosphere, in which case data may be lost.

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With regard to alignment with position matching, the system does not use special hangers to align the laser beams. A special error signal system is provided that aligns the entire satellite so that the beam is clearly aimed at the receiver. According to representatives of the development team, this allows the use of smaller optical components in the system.

“If the signal disappears, we can retransmit the data, but if the retransmission is inefficient, that is, if we spend all the time sending retransmissions instead of transmitting new data, we can lose a lot of bandwidth,” said Kurt Schiller, TBIRD systems engineer. "In our ARQ protocol, the receiver informs which frames it received correctly, so it knows which frames need to be retransmitted."

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