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In the short term, it's nothing. The most perfect vacuum ever created by humans is not as empty as the emptiness of interstellar space. And there is a great deal of this nothingness until you get to the next bit of something. Our nearest neighbor in the cosmos, Proxima Centauri, which is part of the three-star cluster known as Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away, a sissy skip in galactic terms, but that is still a hundred million times farther than a trip to the Moon. To reach it by spaceship would take at least twenty-five thousand years, and even if you made the trip you still wouldn't be anywhere except at a lonely clutch of stars in the middle of a vast nowhere. To reach the next landmark of consequence, Sirius, would involve another 4.6 light-years of travel. And so it would go if you tried to star-hop your way across the cosmos. Just reaching the center of our own galaxy would take far longer than we have existed as beings. Space, let me repeat, is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is 20 million million miles. Even at speeds approaching those of light, these are fantastically challenging distances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely. Still, statistically the probability that there are other thinking beings out there is good. Nobody knows how many stars there are in the Milky Way—estimates range from 100 billion or so to perhaps 400 billion—and the Milky Way is just one of 140 billion or so other galaxies, many of them even larger than ours.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
Third, in the majority of studies that show HIIT to be efficacious, without high-injury dropout rates, HIIT is incorporated in small and potent doses spread sparingly throughout the week—in contrast to the frequent, often daily CrossFit-style intense intervals combined with heavy weight training. For example, at the 2010 USA Triathlon Art and Science of Triathlon Coaching Symposium, an HIIT researcher named Stephen McGregor introduced an HIIT training routine that research has shown to lead to incredible increases in power output, peak power, and VO2 max. It goes like this: Start with four thirty-second max sprints, with two to four minutes of rest after each sprint, just three times a week. Gradually increase to ten thirty-second max sprints with two-and-a-half minutes of rest, just three times a week. Do this for seven weeks, for a total of six-and-a-half to fifteen minutes of actual HIIT a week. But instead of this minimalist, high-quality approach, many people incorporating HIIT into their training (including CrossFitters) are easily doing twice that volume —not just in a week, but in a single day!
Beyond Training
Ben Greenfield
That culture is rooted in a belief in the potential of all students. Instead of singling out the best and brightest, Finnish schools are designed to give every student the opportunity to grow. On the PISA, their achievement gaps between schools and between students were the smallest in the world. Being disadvantaged was less of a disadvantage in Finland than anywhere else: along with the highest rate of high performers, they had the lowest rate of low performers. In Finnish schools, a popular mantra is “We can’t afford to waste a brain.” This ethos makes their educational culture distinct. They know that the key to nurturing hidden potential is not to invest in students who show early signs of high ability. It’s to invest in every student regardless of apparent ability.
Hidden Potential
Adam Grant
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