Five Bullets 11.3.23
The Book of the Dead, The Big Whack, The Beatles & more
Good morning and happy Friday everyone!
Welcome back to Circles in Space.
Today’s Bullets:
Archaeology: Seven funerary scrolls from the Egyptian Book of the Dead will be publicly displayed for the first time. The scrolls have helped researchers understand ancient Egyptian funerary rites and their beliefs about the afterlife. Dated 1450 BC to 100 BC, the writings are a collection of spells to help a deceased person’s soul navigate the underworld including spells for avoiding traps and monsters meant to keep the unworthy out of realm of the gods. The photo above depicts Spell 125 in which a man’s soul is weighed by Anubis. Will he pass or perish?
Music: Who knew that in 2023 we’d be hearing a new Beatles song? Now and Then, The Beatles’ last song was released this week. The track features all four band members, using Lennon’s isolated vocal from an earlier demo. During the The Beatles Anthology sessions, McCartney, Starr and Harrison worked on three unfinished songs of Lennon’s, including Real Love and Free as a Bird. The third song’s crude recording made it difficult to add more instrumentation. Using technology developed by Peter Jackson’s team for the Get Back documentary, McCartney and Starr were able to build a proper track around Lennon’s original vocal part and Harrison’s earlier guitar parts. Watch this short documentary about the making of Now and Then.
NYC: Last December I shared the New York Times survey asking readers to plot out their neighborhoods. The map was published earlier this week. Check out the neighborhood guide which dives into the map’s details and surprises.
Phrases: Where does the phrase ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ come from? Etymologists aren’t sure.
Science: The Big Whack theory states that the moon was created when protoplanet Theia collided with the Earth, throwing debris into orbit which eventually formed the moon. There wasn’t any evidence to support this until a recent study showed that the answer may exist deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Seismic waves slow down when traveling through two areas within the Earth - possibly large deposits from Theia. Though it’s impossible to know for sure the origin of the deposits, the theory holds some interesting implications on how the collision affected Earth’s evolution.