title: Guatemala

text: A significant number of Guatemalans live outside of their country. The majority of the Guatemalan diaspora is located in the United States of America, with estimates ranging from 480,665 to 1,489,426. Emigration to the United States has led to the growth of Guatemalan communities in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Rhode Island and elsewhere since the 1970s. However, as of July 2019, the United States and Guatemala signed a deal to restrict migration and asylum seekers from Guatemala.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala is populated by a variety of ethnic, cultural, racial, and linguistic groups. According to the 2018 Census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 56% of the population is Ladino reflecting mixed indigenous and European heritage. Indigenous Guatemalans are 43.6% of the national population, which is one of the largest percentages in Latin America, behind only Peru and Bolivia. Most indigenous Guatemalans (41.7% of the national population) are of the Maya people, namely K'iche' (11.0% of the total population), Q'eqchi (8.3%), Kaqchikel (7.8%), Mam (5.2%), and "other Maya" (7.6%). 2% of the national population is indigenous non-Maya. 1.8% of the population is Xinca (mesoamerican), and 0.1% of the population is Garifuna (African/Carib mix). "However, indigenous rights activists put the indigenous figure closer to 61 per cent."


title: Guatemala

text: White Guatemalans of European descent, also called Criollo, are not differentiated from Ladinos (mixed-race) individuals in the Guatemalan census. Most are descendants of German and Spanish settlers, and others derive from Italians, British, French, Swiss, Belgians, Dutch, Russians and Danes. German settlers are credited with bringing the tradition of Christmas trees to Guatemala.


title: Guatemala

text: The population includes about 110,000 Salvadorans. The Garífuna, descended primarily from Black Africans who lived and intermarried with indigenous peoples from St. Vincent, live mainly in Livingston and Puerto Barrios. Afro-Guatemalans and mulattos are descended primarily from banana plantation workers. There are also Asians, mostly of Chinese descent but also Arabs of Lebanese and Syrian descent.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala's sole official language is Spanish, spoken by 93 percent of the population as either the first or second language.


title: Guatemala

text: Twenty-one Mayan languages are spoken, especially in rural areas, as well as two non-Mayan Indigenous languages: Xinca, which is indigenous to the country, and Garifuna, an Arawakan language spoken on the Caribbean coast. According to the Language Law of 2003, these languages are recognized as national languages.


title: Guatemala

text: Throughout the 20th century there have been many developments in the integration of Mayan languages into the Guatemalan society and educational system. Originating from political reasons, these processes have aided the revival of some Mayan languages and advanced bilingual education in the country.


title: Guatemala

text: In 1945, in order to overcome "the Indian problem", the Guatemalan government founded The Institute Indigents ta National (NH), the purpose of which was to teach literacy to Mayan children in their mother tongue instead of Spanish, to prepare the ground for later assimilation of the latter. The teaching of literacy in the first language, which received support from the UN, significantly advanced in 1952, when the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics), located in Dallas, Texas, partnered with the Guatemalan Ministry of Education; within 2 years, numerous written works in Mayan languages had been printed and published, and vast advancement was done in the translation of the New Testament. Further efforts to integrate the indigenous into the Ladino society were made in the following years, including the invention of a special alphabet to assist Mayan students transition to Spanish, and bilingual education in the Q'eqchi' area. When Spanish became the official language of Guatemala in 1965, the government started several programs, such as the Bilingual Castellanizacion Program and the Radiophonic Schools, to accelerate the move of Mayan students to Spanish. Unintentionally, the efforts to integrate the indigenous using language, especially the new alphabet, gave institutions tools to use Mayan tongues in schools, and while improving Mayan children's learning, they left them unequipped to learn in a solely Spanish environment. So, an additional expansion of bilingual education took place in 1980, when an experimental program in which children were to be instructed in their mother tongue until they are fluent enough in Spanish was created. The program proved successful when the students of the pilot showed higher academic achievements than the ones in the Spanish-only control schools. In 1987, when the pilot was to finish, bilingual education was made official in Guatemala.


title: Guatemala

text: Christianity is very influential in nearly all of Guatemalan society, both in cosmology and social-politic composition. The country, once dominated by Roman Catholicism (introduced by the Spanish during the colonial era), is now influenced by a diversity of Christian denominations. The Roman Catholic Church remains the largest Church denomination, passing from 57.7% in 2001 to 47.9% (SEPAL 2001, CID Gallup 2012). During 2001-2012, the already numerous Protestant population, grew from little more than a quarter of the population to 38.2%. Those claiming no religious affiliation were down from 13.9% to 11.6%. The remainder, including Mormons and adherents of Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, continued to register at more than 2 percent of the population.


title: Guatemala

text: Since the 1960s, and particularly during the 1980s, Guatemala has experienced the rapid growth of Protestantism, especially evangelical varieties. Guatemala has been described as the most heavily evangelical nation in Latin America, with multitudes of unregistered churches, although Brazil or Honduras may be.


title: Guatemala

text: Over the past two decades, particularly since the end of the civil war, Guatemala has seen heightened missionary activity. Protestant denominations have grown markedly in recent decades, chiefly Evangelical and Pentecostal varieties; growth is particularly strong among the ethnic Maya population, with the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala maintaining 11 indigenous-language presbyteries. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown from 40,000 members in 1984 to 164,000 in 1998, and continues to expand.


title: Guatemala

text: The growth of Eastern Orthodox Church in Guatemala has been especially strong, with hundreds of thousands of converts in the last five years, giving the country the highest proportion of Orthodox adherents in the Western Hemisphere.


title: Guatemala

text: Traditional Maya religion persists through the process of inculturation, in which certain practices are incorporated into Catholic ceremonies and worship when they are sympathetic to the meaning of Catholic belief. Indigenous religious practices are increasing as a result of the cultural protections established under the peace accords. The government has instituted a policy of providing altars at every Maya ruin to facilitate traditional ceremonies.


title: Guatemala

text: During the colonial era Guatemala received immigrants (settlers) only from Spain. Subsequently, Guatemala received waves of immigration from Europe in the mid 19th century and early 20th century. Primarily from Germany, these immigrants installed coffee and cardamom fincas in Alta Verapaz, Zacapa, Quetzaltenango, Baja Verapaz and Izabal. To a lesser extent people also arrived from Spain, France, Belgium, England, Italy, Sweden, etc.


title: Guatemala

text: Many European immigrants to Guatemala were politicians, refugees, and entrepreneurs as well as families looking to settle. Up to 1950 Guatemala was the Central American country that received the most immigrants, behind Costa Rica, and large numbers of immigrants are still received today. Since the 1890s, there has been immigration from East Asia. Also, beginning with the First World War, the immigrant population is being strengthened by Jewish immigration.


title: Guatemala

text: During the second half of the twentieth century, Latin American immigration increased in Guatemala, particularly from other Central American countries, Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina, although most of these immigrants stayed only temporarily before going to their final destinations in the United States.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala has among the worst health outcomes in Latin America with some of the highest infant mortality rates, and one of the lowest life expectancies at birth in the region. With about 16,000 doctors for its 16 million people, Guatemala has about half the doctor-citizen ratio recommended by the WHO. Since the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1997, the Ministry of Health has extended healthcare access to 54% of the rural population.


title: Guatemala

text: Healthcare has received different levels of support from different political administrations who disagree on how best to manage distribution of services – via a private or a public entity – and the scale of financing that should be made available. , the Ministry of Health lacked the financial means to monitor or evaluate its programs.


title: Guatemala

text: Total healthcare spending, both public and private, has remained constant at between 6.4 and 7.3% of the GDP. Per-capita average annual healthcare spending was only $368 in 2012. Guatemalan patients choose between indigenous treatments or Western medicine when they engage with the health system.


title: Guatemala

text: 74.5% of the population aged 15 and over is literate, the lowest literacy rate in Central America. Guatemala has a plan to increase literacy over the next 20 years.


title: Guatemala

text: The government runs a number of public elementary and secondary-level schools, as youth in Guatemala do not fully participate in education. These schools are free, though the cost of uniforms, books, supplies, and transportation makes them less accessible to the poorer segments of society and significant numbers of poor children do not attend school. Many middle and upper-class children go to private schools. Guatemala has one public university (USAC or Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala), and fourteen private ones (see List of universities in Guatemala). USAC was the first university in Guatemala and one of the first Universities of America.


title: Guatemala

text: Organizations such as Child Aid, Pueblo a Pueblo, and Common Hope, which train teachers in villages throughout the Central Highlands region, are working to improve educational outcomes for children. Lack of training for rural teachers is one of the key contributors to Guatemala's low literacy rates.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala City is home to many of the nation's libraries and museums, including the National Archives, the National Library, and the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, which has an extensive collection of Maya artifacts. It also boasts private museums such as the Ixchel Museum of Indigenous Textiles and Clothing and the Museo Popol Vuh, which focuses on Maya archaeology. Both these museums are housed on the Universidad Francisco Marroquín campus. Most of the 329 municipalities in the country have at least a small museum.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala has produced many indigenous artists who follow centuries-old Pre-Columbian traditions. Reflecting Guatemala's colonial and post-colonial history, encounters with multiple global art movements also have produced a wealth of artists who have combined the traditional primitivist or naive aesthetic with European, North American, and other traditions.


title: Guatemala

text: The Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas "Rafael Rodríguez Padilla" is Guatemala's leading art school, and several leading indigenous artists, also graduates of that school, have work in the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in the capital city. Contemporary Guatemalan artists who have gained reputations outside of Guatemala include Dagoberto Vásquez, Luis Rolando Ixquiac Xicara, Carlos Mérida, Aníbal López, Roberto González Goyri, and Elmar René Rojas.


title: Guatemala

text: The Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante has gained an international audience with his films focused on Guatemalan contemporary society and politics : "Ixcanul" in 2015, and "Temblores" and "La Llorona" (The Weeping Woman) in 2019.


title: Guatemala

text: Major national newspapers in Guatemala include "Prensa Libre", "El Periodico" and "Siglo21". Guatemala also has a few major local channels and radio stations, such as one of Guatemala's major radio stations, "Emisoras Unidas".


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemalan music comprises a number of styles and expressions. Guatemalan social change has been empowered by music such as nueva cancion, which blends together histories, present-day issues, and the political values and struggles of common people. The Maya had an intense musical practice, as documented by their iconography. Guatemala was also one of the first regions in the New World to be introduced to European music, from 1524 on. Many composers from the Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and contemporary music styles have contributed works of all genres. The marimba, which is like a wooden xylophone, is the national instrument and its music is widely found in Guatemala. It has developed a large repertoire of very attractive pieces that have been popular for more than a century.


title: Guatemala

text: The "Historia General de Guatemala" has published a series of CDs compiling the historical music of Guatemala, in which every style is represented, from the Maya, colonial, independent and republican eras to the present. Many contemporary music groups in Guatemala play Caribbean music, salsa, Garifuna-influenced punta, Latin pop, Mexican regional, and mariachi.


title: Guatemala

text: Many traditional foods in Guatemalan cuisine are based on Mayan cuisine and prominently feature maize, chilies and black beans as key ingredients. Traditional dishes also include a variety of stews including Kak'ik "(Kak-ik)", which is a tomato-based stew with turkey, pepian, and cocido. Guatemala is also known for its "antojitos", which include small tamales called "chuchitos", fried plantains, and tostadas with tomato sauce, guacamole or black beans. Certain foods are also commonly eaten on certain days of the week; for example, a popular custom is to eat "paches" (a kind of tamale made from potatoes) on Thursday. Certain dishes are also associated with special occasions, such as fiambre for All Saints' Day on 1 November, or tamales and "ponche" (fruit punch), which are both very common around Christmas.


title: Guatemala

text: Football is the most popular sport in Guatemala and its national team has appeared in 18 editions of the CONCACAF Championship, winning it once, in 1967. However, the team has failed to qualify to a FIFA World Cup so far. Established in 1919, the National Football Federation of Guatemala organizes the country's national league and its lower-level competitions.


title: Guatemala

text: Futsal is probably the most successful team sport in Guatemala. Its national team won the 2008 CONCACAF Futsal Championship as hosts. It was also the runner-up in 2012 as hosts and won the bronze medal in 2016.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala participated for the first time in the FIFA Futsal World Cup in 2000, as hosts, and has played in every competition from 2008 onwards. It has never passed the first round. It has also participated in every Grand Prix de Futsal since 2009, reaching the semifinals in 2014.


title: Guatemala

text: The Guatemalan Olympic Committee was founded in 1947 and recognized by the International Olympic Committee that same year. Guatemala participated in the 1952 Summer Olympics, and in every edition since the 1968 Summer Olympics. It has also appeared in a single Winter Olympics edition, in 1988.


title: Guatemala

text: Erick Barrondo won the only Olympic medal for Guatemala so far, silver in race walking at the 2012 Summer Olympics.


title: Guatemala

text: Guatemala also keeps national sports teams in several disciplines such as basketball or beach volleyball.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: His Dark Materials is a fantasy drama television series based on the trilogy of novels of the same name by Philip Pullman. It is produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Productions, for BBC One and HBO, with the latter handling international distribution. The show follows the orphan Lyra, played by Dafne Keen, as she searches for a missing friend and discovers a kidnapping plot related to an invisible cosmic substance called Dust.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: The eight-episode first series premiered on 3 November 2019 on BBC One in the United Kingdom, and on 4 November on HBO in the United States and other markets. The seven-episode second series premiered on 8 November 2020 in the United Kingdom, and on 16 November 2020 in the United States. The eight-episode third and final series premiered first on HBO on 5 December 2022, and on 18 December 2022 in the United Kingdom. Both the first and second series received generally positive reviews.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: "His Dark Materials" is set in a multi-world reality, with the action moving from one world to another. The series is based on Philip Pullman's trilogy of the same name. It begins in an alternative world where all humans' souls manifest as animal companions called daemons. The series follows the life of a young girl named Lyra who is an orphan living with the scholars at Jordan College, Oxford, in a world governed by the Magisterium, a religious and political body. Lyra discovers a dangerous secret that involves Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter, and is the subject of a witches' prophecy that she will change the world. In her search for a missing friend, Lyra also uncovers a series of kidnappings and a link to a mysterious substance called Dust, which leads her on a journey of epic proportions and ultimately to other worlds. The witches' prophecy also links Lyra's destiny to Will, a teenager from our world, who is himself being pursued by figures connected to his vanished father.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Additionally, lead puppeteer Brian Fisher provides the uncredited vocalisations for Mrs Coulter's golden lion tamarin daemon.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: The three "His Dark Materials" novels, written by Philip Pullman from 1995 to 2000, achieved critical and commercial success and were adapted into a 2007 feature film, "The Golden Compass". The film was criticised by both religious organisations, who objected to the story's anti-religious elements, as well as by fans of the trilogy who disliked the dilution of these elements. Despite earning $372 million worldwide, the film underperformed at the box office in North America, making any sequels unlikely.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: After several years, the rights reverted to Pullman. In November 2015, BBC One announced that it had commissioned a television adaptation of the trilogy, to be produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema. The eight-part adaptation had a planned premiere date in 2017. In April 2017 writer Jack Thorne told "Radio Times" that the series was still in pre-production. He said, "It's at an exciting point where we're just throwing things at the page and trying to work out what works and what doesn't", and that he wanted to ensure that they were being loyal to the books. Director Otto Bathurst explained that some elements of the book and film had been changed to give the series a more modern feel, compared to the original's Victoriana fantasy.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: On 12 September 2018, HBO was announced as the co-producer and international distributor of the series. On 10 October 2018, Miranda reported that he had wrapped up filming for his role. On 14 December 2018, it was announced that filming for the first series was complete.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Before the series premiered, it was renewed for a second series of eight episodes, which is primarily adapting the second book in the trilogy, "The Subtle Knife". Filming of the second series began before the premiere of the first, which was considered "a necessary move considering the age of the show's young star". While filming for series 2 was mostly completed before the COVID-19 pandemic, a standalone episode focusing on Lord Asriel was left unfinished. As a consequence the series ultimately only consisted of seven episodes. Although McAvoy completed a small amount of filming before production was shut down, his appearance in the series' final episode was filmed during the pandemic, repurposed from material written for the abandoned episode.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: By November 2020, work had begun on six of eight scripts for a third series adapting "The Amber Spyglass." The commission was confirmed in December 2020, for a series of eight episodes, and production began in early 2021. Filming for the third series took place between 24 May and 31 October 2021.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: On 8 March 2018, it was announced that Dafne Keen had signed on to star in the series to play Lyra with director Tom Hooper signed on to direct. Lin-Manuel Miranda would star as Lee Scoresby. On 8 June 2018, it was reported that James McAvoy, Clarke Peters, and Ruth Wilson had joined the cast.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Additional casting for the third series was announced on 22 June 2021, including Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Commander Ogunwe, Jamie Ward as Father Gomez, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Balthamos, Simon Harrison as Baruch, and Amber Fitzgerald-Woolfe as Ama. Chipo Chung was also reported as playing the angel Xaphania, who was voiced by Sophie Okonedo in series 2.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: On 20 September 2021, it was announced that Sian Clifford and Jonathan Aris had been cast in the series 3.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: On 14 August 2019, it was announced that Lorne Balfe was hired to score the series. Speaking about the job, Balfe stated that he "wanted to write a musical letter to the creators of the show", also mentioning that the series was a "mammoth task" and one of his biggest projects yet. Scoring primarily took place in St David's Hall in Cardiff, Wales with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, while the ethnic Bulgarian choir was recorded in Bulgaria with additional remote sessions taking place at the Synchron Scoring Stage in Vienna, Austria with the Synchron Stage Orchestra. Also featured on the score are cellist Tina Guo, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, classical French horn player Sarah Willis, violinist Lindsey Stirling, and recordist Richard Harvey. Two soundtrack albums were released: a musical anthology with thematic pieces and an album containing all the cues used in the series. Silva Screen Records released the albums digitally on 3 November 2019 and 20 December 2019 respectively.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Lorne Balfe's "His Dark Materials" score was nominated for two awards: for Best Original Score for a Television Series at the 2020 International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) awards and for Music – Original Title at the 2020 Royal Television Society awards.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: On 24 July 2019, it was announced that the series would premiere in the fourth quarter of 2019 in the United Kingdom and the United States. On 12 September 2019, sources revealed that the series was set to premiere on 3 November 2019 on BBC One and the following night on HBO. In New Zealand, the series is broadcast by Sky TV and is available on streaming service Neon. The series began on 5 November 2019. In Australia, the series is distributed by the cable and satellite television company Foxtel through their HBO output deal.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: The second series premiered on 8 November 2020 in the United Kingdom, and on 16 November 2020 in the United States. The third series premiered on HBO on 5 December 2022, and premiered in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2022, with the series being released in full on BBC iPlayer, and airing weekly on BBC One.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Series one received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first series has an approval rating of 77% based on reviews from 114 critics, with an average rating of 6.99/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "The daemon is in the details and while "His Dark Materials" visual splendor and exceptional performances deftly capture the essence of Philip Pullman's seminal novels, it could use a little more magic." On Metacritic, the series has a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Dan Fienberg of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that "this effort nails much of what makes the books pop, and both the special effects and a star-studded cast led by Dafne Keen and Ruth Wilson are in fine form." However he followed that by saying "What never fully worked for me in the four episodes ... sent to critics is the necessary feeling of narrative and thematic momentum. It's vastly better than the movie, but neither fun nor smart enough to quite succeed." Caroline Framke of "Variety" wrote: "Despite the rich complexities of the novel's world of daemons, power-hungry players and warring faiths, HBO's "His Dark Materials" feels like it could have been plucked from most any other fantasy epic out there." Beth Elderkin of Gizmodo was critical of the show's inability to capture the connection between humans and daemons.


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Ben Lawrence of "The Telegraph" gave the first episode 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "a fine piece of drama, capturing the strangeness and childlike wonder of the books, but also their rigour and bite. This is intelligent populism writ large." Huw Fullerton of the "Radio Times" gave the first episode a positive review: "While there is a slight element of table-setting in the series' first hour the appeal of the actors and setting are beguiling enough to pull you through all the exposition and explanation." Fullerton praised Wilson for her performance, saying she "nearly walks away with the whole series". David Levesley of British GQ wrote that "His Dark Materials" as a whole illustrates the fundamental problem with remaking adaptations: "the execution doesn't feel far enough removed from the previous version to actually make for a significantly better product".


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Series two received generally positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the second series has an approval rating of 85% based on reviews from 33 critics, with an average rating of 6.87/10. The website's critical consensus reads: ""His Dark Materials" chilly emotional core and imposing complexity is unlikely to win over the unconverted, but its sophomore season rewards the faithful with impeccable production values and cerebral thrills." On Metacritic, series 2 has a score of 71 out of 100 based on reviews from 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: His Dark Materials (TV series)

text: Stuart Jeffries of "The Guardian" praised the series and in particular the villainous Mrs Coulter, calling Pullman's creation a compelling monster that writer Jack Thorne clearly "revels in punching up Coulter as a combination of Iago and Lady Macbeth with a hint, at her most pantomimic, of Cruella de Vil" and "you never know what she might do next". Jeffries was critical of the musical score, comparing it to the "boy who cried wolf", leaving audiences in doubt if the next dramatic moment was quite as significant as the music was suggesting, and undermining the two good lead actors who convey the necessary dramatic tension in their performances. Ed Cumming of "The Independent" wrote: "His Dark Materials looks great, it's robustly made, and there are great actors everywhere, occupying well-built universes. But it doesn't inspire as much wonder as it ought to." Ed Power of "The Irish Times" was critical of the series. Despite the strong cast, he called it "slow-moving and inhospitable towards newcomers" and plodding in its execution. Power blames Pullman's source material: "frankly the whole thing is a bit of a drag. It's never fun being preached to, not even by an atheist." He concludes ""His Dark Materials" has a lot going for it. But it desperately lacks a sense of fun and, crucial for fantasy, the promise of escapism."


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: The 2022 French presidential election was held on 10 and 24 April 2022. As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held, in which Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen and was re-elected as President of France. Macron, from La République En Marche! (LREM), had defeated Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, once already in the 2017 French presidential election, for the term which expired on 13 May 2022. Macron became the first President of France to win a re-election bid since Jacques Chirac won in 2002.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In the first round, Macron took the lead with 27.9% of votes, followed by Le Pen with 23.2%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise with 22%, and Éric Zemmour of Reconquête with 7.1%. Valérie Pécresse of The Republicans took 4.8% of the vote, and Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris and Socialist Party candidate, 1.8%. Both the Republicans and Socialist parties, considered to be the dominant parties until 2017, received their worst results in a presidential election.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In the second round, Macron beat Le Pen with 58.5% of the vote to her 41.5%, a narrower margin than in the 2017 election. Turnout was 72.0%, the lowest in a presidential election run-off since 1969. Le Pen conceded defeat after exit projections became available. The presidential election was followed by the 2022 French legislative election, held on 12–19 June, to elect the 577 members of the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Under Article 7 of the Constitution of France, the president is elected to a five-year term in a two-round election. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of votes in the first round, a second round is held two weeks later between the two candidates who received the most votes. According to the Constitution of France, the first round of the presidential election must be held between 20 and 35 days before the transition of power at the end of the five-year term of the incumbent officeholder. As Emmanuel Macron took office on 14 May 2017, the transition of power is expected to take place on 13 May 2022. Correspondingly, the first round of the presidential election was to be held between 8 and 23 April 2022, with the second round held two weeks after the first. On 13 July 2021, Government Spokesman Gabriel Attal announced the dates for the election, respectively 10 April 2022 for the first round and 24 April 2022 for the eventual second round.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: To be listed on the first-round ballot, candidates needed to secure 500 signatures (often referred to as "parrainages" in French) from national or local elected officials from at least 30 different departments or overseas collectivities, with no more than a tenth of these signatories from any single department. The signatures were submitted to the Constitutional Council, which is the sole authority to designate participants.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Following the 2017 presidential election, The Republicans (LR) sent its members a questionnaire on the topic of the "re-foundation" of the party; of the 40,000 respondents, 70% voted against an open primary like that which was held in 2016 to determine the party nominee. In a document dated 17 October 2017, the Socialist Party (PS) wrote that the financing of the 2022 presidential campaign was not assured despite "economic restructuring" but still planned to spend €12,000,000, the maximum legally permitted before the first round. According to the report, the party's leadership had seriously considered the possibility of not presenting a PS candidate in 2022.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Rally (RN), announced on 16 January 2020 that she would be running in the election. She previously ran in the 2012 and 2017 presidential elections as the party's candidate, then called the National Front (FN). She came third in 2012 with 17.9% of the vote in the first round and second in 2017 with 21.3% of the vote in the first round and 33.9% of the vote in the second round. Le Pen was elected to the National Assembly in the 2017 French legislative election.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Jean Lassalle, who ran in the 2017 presidential election under the Résistons! banner, coming in seventh place with 1.2% of the vote, announced that he would run again. In 2020, MP Joachim Son-Forget, a radiologist who was elected to the National Assembly for La République En Marche! (LREM) in 2017, formed a new political party called Valeur Absolue and announced his intention to enter the race for the presidency. He had resigned from the LREM group after posting tweets in 2018 that were deemed sexist; he then joined the UDI and Independents group in 2019 before resigning his membership later that year.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: On 8 November 2020, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of La France Insoumise (LFI), announced that he would be running in the election. He previously ran in the 2012 presidential election for the Left Front (coming fourth with 11.1% of the vote in the first round) and in the 2017 presidential election for LFI (coming fourth again with 19.5% of the vote in the first round). Mélenchon was elected to the National Assembly in 2017.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In November 2021, Ensemble Citoyens was founded. It is a political coalition composed of the presidential majority led under Emmanuel Macron.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In January 2022, Éric Zemmour's party Reconquête, which was founded the month prior, gained a member of the National Assembly in Guillaume Peltier, previously elected as a member of LR, as well as two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) when Jérôme Rivière and Gilbert Collard defected from Le Pen's RN. Previously, Son-Forget, who had declared he would run for the presidency, rallied behind Zemmour's candidacy. In early February 2022, the party gained a third MEP when Maxette Grisoni-Pirbakas defected from the RN. Stéphane Ravier became Zemmour's first supporter in the Senate after he left the RN mid-February 2022.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In February 2022, a wave of defections hit Valérie Pécresse, candidate put forward by LR, in favour of Macron. She was accused by members of the party's centrist wing of trying to pander to the voters of Zemmour, whose sharp rise in the polls has been qualified as "meteoric". During a rally in February 2022, Pécresse said "in ten years time ... will we be a sovereign nation, a US satellite or a Chinese trading post? Will we be unified or divided? Nothing is written, whether it is loss of economic status, or the Great Replacement." She was criticised for referring to the Great Replacement; she later said that her mention was not an endorsement of what she considered to be a "theory of hate".


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February had significant implications for the campaign. As media coverage switched to covering the war, Macron's polling improved significantly during the crisis. Le Pen and Zemmour were made to explain historic statements of praise for Vladimir Putin. In a 14 March 2022 interview with newspaper "Le Figaro", Gérard Larcher, Senate President and a supporter of Pécresse, put into question the legitimacy of a possible second Macron term, stating: "If there is no campaign, the question of the legitimacy of the winner will arise." Those comments echoed Macron's refusal to participate in any debate with the other candidates prior to the election's first round.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Macron formally announced his candidacy for re-election on 3 March 2022, by which time he had already received well more than the sponsorships from elected officials to qualify for the ballot.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Marion Maréchal of the Le Pen family, granddaughter of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of its current leader Marine Le Pen, formalised her support for Zemmour at a large rally in Toulon on 6 March 2022. In the final days before the first round of voting, Le Pen's polling numbers improved to within the margin of error of defeating Macron in the second round, while those of Pécresse and Zemmour fell.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Mélenchon's polling numbers also surged in the final days of campaigning. Left-leaning independent candidate Christiane Taubira, former Minister of Justice (2012–2014) under President François Hollande and winner of the 2022 People's Primary vote, withdrew her candidacy on 2 March 2022, endorsing Mélenchon.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In September 2021, the Ecology Pole organised a presidential primary to determine their candidate. The following candidates participated in this primary:


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: In October 2021, the Socialist Party had its primary. Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo won with 72% of the vote.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Independent activists launched a primary with the intention of nominating a unity left-wing candidate. The voting took place online from 27 to 30 January 2022. Of the seven candidates listed in the primary, three declined to participate. The primary was conducted according to a majority judgment voting system, in which all voters are to rate all candidates, with the candidate with the highest median rating winning.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: The Republicans selected their candidate via a congress of party members. On 4 December 2021, Valérie Pécresse won the nomination with 60.95% of the votes against Éric Ciotti.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: On 7 March 2022, the Constitutional Council published names of the 12 candidates who received 500 valid sponsorships, with the order determined by drawing lots.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: A candidate must secure 500 "Présentation" signatures from elected officials in order to appear on the first-round ballot, with the signature collection period ending on 4 March. The table below lists sponsorships received by the Constitutional Council by candidate. On the form, this is named a "présentation" but is more widely known as "parrainage". There were 46 persons who received sponsorship as of the closing date deadline of 4 March 2022. Some of them received sponsorship without being candidates, and one sponsored himself. Candidates labeled SE ("sans etiquette") do not belong to any political party.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Arthaud and Lassalle both said they would vote blank, with Lassalle saying he trusts the French people to do what is right. Mélenchon, Poutou, and Roussel stated their opposition to Le Pen but did not endorse Macron.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: On 14 April 2022, Le Pen said if elected she would hold a referendum on whether to reinstate capital punishment in France, if such a proposal garnered enough signatures under the citizens' initiative referendum system she wants to implement. Le Pen had also campaigned for a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves in public.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: On 20 April, the only election debate of the campaign (moderated by Léa Salamé and Gilles Bouleau) to feature both major candidates was held. Polls conducted after the debate to ascertain which candidate performed best, showed that 59% of viewers thought that Macron had performed better, compared to 39% for Le Pen.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Macron was re-elected with 58.55% of the vote to 41.45% for Le Pen in the second round of the election. Exit poll projections by Ipsos and Sopra Steria for France Télévisions and Radio France, released as voting closed, estimated that Macron defeated Le Pen with 58.2% of the vote to 41.8%. He became the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002. The projections, based on actual ballot papers, also showed that 28% of registered voters did not show up to the second round, making it the lowest turnout since 1969. Official results showed that the turnout was 71.99%, with over 13 million abstentions in the second round, in addition to over 8.6% of ballots cast being blank or invalid (a marked increase over the first round).


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: "The New York Times" commented that the race was much closer than in 2017, when Macron won 66.1% of the vote to Le Pen's 33.9%, but that Macron's margin was wider than expected prior to the election. Le Pen conceded defeat minutes after the estimated results were released, but still called the outcome a victory for her political movement and for the upcoming parliamentary elections. It was the best result for the far right in France since the founding of the Fifth French Republic in 1958.


title: 2022 French presidential election

text: Olivier Véran, Minister for Solidarity and Health, stated that the government has "heard the French people's message", referring to the increasing number of votes for the far-right, and that "there will be a change of method". Macron reflected on the results of the elections self-critically, assuming that many voters voted for him to counter the far right rather than in support of his political positions. Macron was congratulated by several world leaders on his re-election, with his first call coming from German chancellor Olaf Scholz.


title: Speed of light

text: The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter or energy (and thus any signal carrying information) can travel through space.


title: Speed of light

text: All forms of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, travel at the speed of light. For many practical purposes, light and other electromagnetic waves will appear to propagate instantaneously, but for long distances and very sensitive measurements, their finite speed has noticeable effects. Starlight viewed on Earth left the stars many years ago, allowing humans to study the history of the universe by viewing distant objects. When communicating with distant space probes, it can take minutes to hours for signals to travel from Earth to the spacecraft and vice versa. In computing, the speed of light fixes the ultimate minimum communication delay between computers, to computer memory, and within a CPU. The speed of light can be used in time of flight measurements to measure large distances to extremely high precision.


title: Speed of light

text: Ole Rømer first demonstrated in 1676 that light travels at a finite speed (non-instantaneously) by studying the apparent motion of Jupiter's moon Io. Progressively more accurate measurements of its speed came over the following centuries. In a paper published in 1865, James Clerk Maxwell proposed that light was an electromagnetic wave and, therefore, travelled at speed . In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light with respect to any inertial frame of reference is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. He explored the consequences of that postulate by deriving the theory of relativity and, in doing so, showed that the parameter had relevance outside of the context of light and electromagnetism.


title: Speed of light

text: Massless particles and field perturbations, such as gravitational waves, also travel at speed in a vacuum. Such particles and waves travel at regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial reference frame of the observer. Particles with nonzero rest mass can be accelerated to approach but can never reach it, regardless of the frame of reference in which their speed is measured. In the special and general theories of relativity, interrelates space and time and also appears in the famous equation of mass–energy equivalence, .


title: Speed of light

text: In some cases, objects or waves may appear to travel faster than light (e.g., phase velocities of waves, the appearance of certain high-speed astronomical objects, and particular quantum effects). The expansion of the universe is understood to exceed the speed of light beyond a certain boundary.


title: Speed of light

text: The speed at which light propagates through transparent materials, such as glass or air, is less than ; similarly, the speed of electromagnetic waves in wire cables is slower than . The ratio between and the speed at which light travels in a material is called the refractive index of the material (). For example, for visible light, the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at ; the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is about slower than .


title: Speed of light

text: The speed of light in vacuum is usually denoted by a lowercase , for "constant" or the Latin (meaning 'swiftness, celerity'). In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch had used for a different constant that was later shown to equal times the speed of light in vacuum. Historically, the symbol "V" was used as an alternative symbol for the speed of light, introduced by James Clerk Maxwell in 1865. In 1894, Paul Drude redefined with its modern meaning. Einstein used "V" in his original German-language papers on special relativity in 1905, but in 1907 he switched to , which by then had become the standard symbol for the speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: Sometimes is used for the speed of waves in any material medium, and for the speed of light in vacuum. This subscripted notation, which is endorsed in official SI literature, has the same form as related electromagnetic constants: namely, "μ" for the vacuum permeability or magnetic constant, "ε" for the vacuum permittivity or electric constant, and "Z" for the impedance of free space. This article uses exclusively for the speed of light in vacuum.


title: Speed of light

text: Since 1983, the constant has been defined in the International System of Units (SI) as "exactly" ; this relationship is used to define the metre as exactly the distance that light travels in a vacuum in of a second. By using the value of , as well as an accurate measurement of the second, one can thus establish a standard for the metre. As a dimensional physical constant, the numerical value of is different for different unit systems. For example, in imperial units, the speed of light is approximately miles per second, or roughly 1 foot per nanosecond.


title: Speed of light

text: In branches of physics in which appears often, such as in relativity, it is common to use systems of natural units of measurement or the geometrized unit system where . Using these units, does not appear explicitly because multiplication or division by1 does not affect the result. Its unit of light-second per second is still relevant, even if omitted.


title: Speed of light

text: The speed at which light waves propagate in vacuum is independent both of the motion of the wave source and of the inertial frame of reference of the observer. This invariance of the speed of light was postulated by Einstein in 1905, after being motivated by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and the lack of evidence for the luminiferous aether; it has since been consistently confirmed by many experiments. It is only possible to verify experimentally that the two-way speed of light (for example, from a source to a mirror and back again) is frame-independent, because it is impossible to measure the one-way speed of light (for example, from a source to a distant detector) without some convention as to how clocks at the source and at the detector should be synchronized. However, by adopting Einstein synchronization for the clocks, the one-way speed of light becomes equal to the two-way speed of light by definition. The special theory of relativity explores the consequences of this invariance of "c" with the assumption that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference. One consequence is that "c" is the speed at which all massless particles and waves, including light, must travel in vacuum.


title: Speed of light

text: Special relativity has many counterintuitive and experimentally verified implications. These include the equivalence of mass and energy , length contraction (moving objects shorten), and time dilation (moving clocks run more slowly). The factor "γ" by which lengths contract and times dilate is known as the Lorentz factor and is given by , where "v" is the speed of the object. The difference of "γ" from1 is negligible for speeds much slower than "c", such as most everyday speedsin which case special relativity is closely approximated by Galilean relativitybut it increases at relativistic speeds and diverges to infinity as "v" approaches "c". For example, a time dilation factor of "γ" = 2 occurs at a relative velocity of 86.6% of the speed of light ("v" = 0.866 "c"). Similarly, a time dilation factor of "γ" = 10 occurs at 99.5% the speed of light ("v" = 0.995 "c").


title: Speed of light

text: The results of special relativity can be summarized by treating space and time as a unified structure known as spacetime (with "c" relating the units of space and time), and requiring that physical theories satisfy a special symmetry called Lorentz invariance, whose mathematical formulation contains the parameter "c". Lorentz invariance is an almost universal assumption for modern physical theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, the Standard Model of particle physics, and general relativity. As such, the parameter "c" is ubiquitous in modern physics, appearing in many contexts that are unrelated to light. For example, general relativity predicts that "c" is also the speed of gravity and of gravitational waves, and observations of gravitational waves have been consistent with this prediction. In non-inertial frames of reference (gravitationally curved spacetime or accelerated reference frames), the "local" speed of light is constant and equal to "c", but the speed of light along a trajectory of finite length can differ from "c", depending on how distances and times are defined.


title: Speed of light

text: It is generally assumed that fundamental constants such as "c" have the same value throughout spacetime, meaning that they do not depend on location and do not vary with time. However, it has been suggested in various theories that the speed of light may have changed over time. No conclusive evidence for such changes has been found, but they remain the subject of ongoing research.


title: Speed of light

text: It also is generally assumed that the speed of light is isotropic, meaning that it has the same value regardless of the direction in which it is measured. Observations of the emissions from nuclear energy levels as a function of the orientation of the emitting nuclei in a magnetic field (see Hughes–Drever experiment), and of rotating optical resonators (see Resonator experiments) have put stringent limits on the possible two-way anisotropy.


title: Speed of light

text: According to special relativity, the energy of an object with rest mass "m" and speed "v" is given by , where "γ" is the Lorentz factor defined above. When "v" is zero, "γ" is equal to one, giving rise to the famous formula for mass–energy equivalence. The "γ" factor approaches infinity as "v" approaches "c", and it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light. The speed of light is the upper limit for the speeds of objects with positive rest mass, and individual photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light. This is experimentally established in many tests of relativistic energy and momentum.


title: Speed of light

text: More generally, it is impossible for signals or energy to travel faster than "c". One argument for this follows from the counter-intuitive implication of special relativity known as the relativity of simultaneity. If the spatial distance between two events A and B is greater than the time interval between them multiplied by "c" then there are frames of reference in which A precedes B, others in which B precedes A, and others in which they are simultaneous. As a result, if something were travelling faster than "c" relative to an inertial frame of reference, it would be travelling backwards in time relative to another frame, and causality would be violated. In such a frame of reference, an "effect" could be observed before its "cause". Such a violation of causality has never been recorded, and would lead to paradoxes such as the tachyonic antitelephone.


title: Speed of light

text: There are situations in which it may seem that matter, energy, or information-carrying signal travels at speeds greater than "c", but they do not. For example, as is discussed in the propagation of light in a medium section below, many wave velocities can exceed "c". The phase velocity of X-rays through most glasses can routinely exceed "c", but phase velocity does not determine the velocity at which waves convey information.


title: Speed of light

text: If a laser beam is swept quickly across a distant object, the spot of light can move faster than "c", although the initial movement of the spot is delayed because of the time it takes light to get to the distant object at the speed "c". However, the only physical entities that are moving are the laser and its emitted light, which travels at the speed "c" from the laser to the various positions of the spot. Similarly, a shadow projected onto a distant object can be made to move faster than "c", after a delay in time. In neither case does any matter, energy, or information travel faster than light.


title: Speed of light

text: The rate of change in the distance between two objects in a frame of reference with respect to which both are moving (their closing speed) may have a value in excess of "c". However, this does not represent the speed of any single object as measured in a single inertial frame.


title: Speed of light

text: Certain quantum effects appear to be transmitted instantaneously and therefore faster than "c", as in the EPR paradox. An example involves the quantum states of two particles that can be entangled. Until either of the particles is observed, they exist in a superposition of two quantum states. If the particles are separated and one particle's quantum state is observed, the other particle's quantum state is determined instantaneously. However, it is impossible to control which quantum state the first particle will take on when it is observed, so information cannot be transmitted in this manner.


title: Speed of light

text: Another quantum effect that predicts the occurrence of faster-than-light speeds is called the Hartman effect: under certain conditions the time needed for a virtual particle to tunnel through a barrier is constant, regardless of the thickness of the barrier. This could result in a virtual particle crossing a large gap faster than light. However, no information can be sent using this effect.


title: Speed of light

text: So-called superluminal motion is seen in certain astronomical objects, such as the relativistic jets of radio galaxies and quasars. However, these jets are not moving at speeds in excess of the speed of light: the apparent superluminal motion is a projection effect caused by objects moving near the speed of light and approaching Earth at a small angle to the line of sight: since the light which was emitted when the jet was farther away took longer to reach the Earth, the time between two successive observations corresponds to a longer time between the instants at which the light rays were emitted.


title: Speed of light

text: A 2011 experiment where neutrinos were observed to travel faster than light turned out to be due to experimental error.


title: Speed of light

text: In models of the expanding universe, the farther galaxies are from each other, the faster they drift apart. This receding is not due to motion through space, but rather to the expansion of space itself. For example, galaxies far away from Earth appear to be moving away from the Earth with a speed proportional to their distances. Beyond a boundary called the Hubble sphere, the rate at which their distance from Earth increases becomes greater than the speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: In classical physics, light is described as a type of electromagnetic wave. The classical behaviour of the electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's equations, which predict that the speed "c" with which electromagnetic waves (such as light) propagate in vacuum is related to the distributed capacitance and inductance of vacuum, otherwise respectively known as the electric constant "ε" and the magnetic constant "μ", by the equation


title: Speed of light

text: In modern quantum physics, the electromagnetic field is described by the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED). In this theory, light is described by the fundamental excitations (or quanta) of the electromagnetic field, called photons. In QED, photons are massless particles and thus, according to special relativity, they travel at the speed of light in vacuum.


title: Speed of light

text: Extensions of QED in which the photon has a mass have been considered. In such a theory, its speed would depend on its frequency, and the invariant speed "c" of special relativity would then be the upper limit of the speed of light in vacuum. No variation of the speed of light with frequency has been observed in rigorous testing, putting stringent limits on the mass of the photon. The limit obtained depends on the model used: if the massive photon is described by Proca theory, the experimental upper bound for its mass is about 10 grams; if photon mass is generated by a Higgs mechanism, the experimental upper limit is less sharp,   (roughly 2 × 10 g).


title: Speed of light

text: Another reason for the speed of light to vary with its frequency would be the failure of special relativity to apply to arbitrarily small scales, as predicted by some proposed theories of quantum gravity. In 2009, the observation of gamma-ray burst GRB 090510 found no evidence for a dependence of photon speed on energy, supporting tight constraints in specific models of spacetime quantization on how this speed is affected by photon energy for energies approaching the Planck scale.


title: Speed of light

text: In a medium, light usually does not propagate at a speed equal to "c"; further, different types of light wave will travel at different speeds. The speed at which the individual crests and troughs of a plane wave (a wave filling the whole space, with only one frequency) propagate is called the phase velocity "v". A physical signal with a finite extent (a pulse of light) travels at a different speed. The overall envelope of the pulse travels at the group velocity "v", and its earliest part travels at the front velocity "v".


title: Speed of light

text: The phase velocity is important in determining how a light wave travels through a material or from one material to another. It is often represented in terms of a "refractive index". The refractive index of a material is defined as the ratio of "c" to the phase velocity "v" in the material: larger indices of refraction indicate lower speeds. The refractive index of a material may depend on the light's frequency, intensity, polarization, or direction of propagation; in many cases, though, it can be treated as a material-dependent constant. The refractive index of air is approximately 1.0003. Denser media, such as water, glass, and diamond, have refractive indexes of around 1.3, 1.5 and 2.4, respectively, for visible light. In exotic materials like Bose–Einstein condensates near absolute zero, the effective speed of light may be only a few metres per second. However, this represents absorption and re-radiation delay between atoms, as do all slower-than-"c" speeds in material substances. As an extreme example of light "slowing" in matter, two independent teams of physicists claimed to bring light to a "complete standstill" by passing it through a Bose–Einstein condensate of the element rubidium. However, the popular description of light being "stopped" in these experiments refers only to light being stored in the excited states of atoms, then re-emitted at an arbitrarily later time, as stimulated by a second laser pulse. During the time it had "stopped", it had ceased to be light. This type of behaviour is generally microscopically true of all transparent media which "slow" the speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: In transparent materials, the refractive index generally is greater than 1, meaning that the phase velocity is less than "c". In other materials, it is possible for the refractive index to become smaller than1 for some frequencies; in some exotic materials it is even possible for the index of refraction to become negative. The requirement that causality is not violated implies that the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant of any material, corresponding respectively to the index of refraction and to the attenuation coefficient, are linked by the Kramers–Kronig relations. In practical terms, this means that in a material with refractive index less than 1, the wave will be absorbed quickly.


title: Speed of light

text: A pulse with different group and phase velocities (which occurs if the phase velocity is not the same for all the frequencies of the pulse) smears out over time, a process known as dispersion. Certain materials have an exceptionally low (or even zero) group velocity for light waves, a phenomenon called slow light.


title: Speed of light

text: The opposite, group velocities exceeding "c", was proposed theoretically in 1993 and achieved experimentally in 2000. It should even be possible for the group velocity to become infinite or negative, with pulses travelling instantaneously or backwards in time.


title: Speed of light

text: None of these options, however, allow information to be transmitted faster than "c". It is impossible to transmit information with a light pulse any faster than the speed of the earliest part of the pulse (the front velocity). It can be shown that this is (under certain assumptions) always equal to "c".


title: Speed of light

text: It is possible for a particle to travel through a medium faster than the phase velocity of light in that medium (but still slower than "c"). When a charged particle does that in a dielectric material, the electromagnetic equivalent of a shock wave, known as Cherenkov radiation, is emitted.


title: Speed of light

text: The speed of light is of relevance to communications: the one-way and round-trip delay time are greater than zero. This applies from small to astronomical scales. On the other hand, some techniques depend on the finite speed of light, for example in distance measurements.


title: Speed of light

text: In computers, the speed of light imposes a limit on how quickly data can be sent between processors. If a processor operates at 1gigahertz, a signal can travel only a maximum of about in a single clock cycle — in practice, this distance is even shorter since the printed circuit board itself has a refractive index and slows down signals. Processors must therefore be placed close to each other, as well as memory chips, to minimize communication latencies, and care must be exercised when routing wires between them to ensure signal integrity. If clock frequencies continue to increase, the speed of light may eventually become a limiting factor for the internal design of single chips.


title: Speed of light

text: Given that the equatorial circumference of the Earth is about and that "c" is about , the theoretical shortest time for a piece of information to travel half the globe along the surface is about 67 milliseconds. When light is traveling in optical fibre (a transparent material) the actual transit time is longer, in part because the speed of light is slower by about 35% in optical fibre, depending on its refractive index "n". Furthermore, straight lines are rare in global communications and the travel time increases when signals pass through electronic switches or signal regenerators.


title: Speed of light

text: Although this distance is largely irrelevant for most applications, latency becomes important in fields such as high-frequency trading, where traders seek to gain minute advantages by delivering their trades to exchanges fractions of a second ahead of other traders. For example, traders have been switching to microwave communications between trading hubs, because of the advantage which radio waves travelling at near to the speed of light through air have over comparatively slower fibre optic signals.


title: Speed of light

text: Similarly, communications between the Earth and spacecraft are not instantaneous. There is a brief delay from the source to the receiver, which becomes more noticeable as distances increase. This delay was significant for communications between ground control and Apollo 8 when it became the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon: for every question, the ground control station had to wait at least three seconds for the answer to arrive. The communications delay between Earth and Mars can vary between five and twenty minutes depending upon the relative positions of the two planets. As a consequence of this, if a robot on the surface of Mars were to encounter a problem, its human controllers would not be aware of it until later. It would then take a further for commands to travel from Earth to Mars.


title: Speed of light

text: Receiving light and other signals from distant astronomical sources takes much longer. For example, it takes 13 billion (13) years for light to travel to Earth from the faraway galaxies viewed in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field images. Those photographs, taken today, capture images of the galaxies as they appeared 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than a billion years old. The fact that more distant objects appear to be younger, due to the finite speed of light, allows astronomers to infer the evolution of stars, of galaxies, and of the universe itself.


title: Speed of light

text: Astronomical distances are sometimes expressed in light-years, especially in popular science publications and media. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Julian year, around 9461 billion kilometres, 5879 billion miles, or 0.3066 parsecs. In round figures, a light year is nearly 10 trillion kilometres or nearly 6 trillion miles. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth after the Sun, is around 4.2 light-years away.


title: Speed of light

text: Radar systems measure the distance to a target by the time it takes a radio-wave pulse to return to the radar antenna after being reflected by the target: the distance to the target is half the round-trip transit time multiplied by the speed of light. A Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver measures its distance to GPS satellites based on how long it takes for a radio signal to arrive from each satellite, and from these distances calculates the receiver's position. Because light travels about () in one second, these measurements of small fractions of a second must be very precise. The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, radar astronomy and the Deep Space Network determine distances to the Moon, planets and spacecraft, respectively, by measuring round-trip transit times.


title: Speed of light

text: There are different ways to determine the value of "c". One way is to measure the actual speed at which light waves propagate, which can be done in various astronomical and Earth-based setups. However, it is also possible to determine "c" from other physical laws where it appears, for example, by determining the values of the electromagnetic constants "ε" and "μ" and using their relation to "c". Historically, the most accurate results have been obtained by separately determining the frequency and wavelength of a light beam, with their product equalling "c". This is described in more detail in the "Interferometry" section below.


title: Speed of light

text: In 1983 the metre was defined as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of a second", fixing the value of the speed of light at by definition, as described below. Consequently, accurate measurements of the speed of light yield an accurate realization of the metre rather than an accurate value of "c".


title: Speed of light

text: Outer space is a convenient setting for measuring the speed of light because of its large scale and nearly perfect vacuum. Typically, one measures the time needed for light to traverse some reference distance in the Solar System, such as the radius of the Earth's orbit. Historically, such measurements could be made fairly accurately, compared to how accurately the length of the reference distance is known in Earth-based units.


title: Speed of light

text: Ole Christensen Rømer used an astronomical measurement to make the first quantitative estimate of the speed of light in the year 1676. When measured from Earth, the periods of moons orbiting a distant planet are shorter when the Earth is approaching the planet than when the Earth is receding from it. The distance travelled by light from the planet (or its moon) to Earth is shorter when the Earth is at the point in its orbit that is closest to its planet than when the Earth is at the farthest point in its orbit, the difference in distance being the diameter of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The observed change in the moon's orbital period is caused by the difference in the time it takes light to traverse the shorter or longer distance. Rømer observed this effect for Jupiter's innermost major moon Io and deduced that light takes 22 minutes to cross the diameter of the Earth's orbit.


title: Speed of light

text: Another method is to use the aberration of light, discovered and explained by James Bradley in the 18th century. This effect results from the vector addition of the velocity of light arriving from a distant source (such as a star) and the velocity of its observer (see diagram on the right). A moving observer thus sees the light coming from a slightly different direction and consequently sees the source at a position shifted from its original position. Since the direction of the Earth's velocity changes continuously as the Earth orbits the Sun, this effect causes the apparent position of stars to move around. From the angular difference in the position of stars (maximally 20.5 arcseconds) it is possible to express the speed of light in terms of the Earth's velocity around the Sun, which with the known length of a year can be converted to the time needed to travel from the Sun to the Earth. In 1729, Bradley used this method to derive that light travelled times faster than the Earth in its orbit (the modern figure is times faster) or, equivalently, that it would take light 8 minutes 12 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.


title: Speed of light

text: An astronomical unit (AU) is approximately the average distance between the Earth and Sun. It was redefined in 2012 as exactly . Previously the AU was not based on the International System of Units but in terms of the gravitational force exerted by the Sun in the framework of classical mechanics. The current definition uses the recommended value in metres for the previous definition of the astronomical unit, which was determined by measurement. This redefinition is analogous to that of the metre and likewise has the effect of fixing the speed of light to an exact value in astronomical units per second (via the exact speed of light in metres per second).


title: Speed of light

text: Previously, the inverse of  expressed in seconds per astronomical unit was measured by comparing the time for radio signals to reach different spacecraft in the Solar System, with their position calculated from the gravitational effects of the Sun and various planets. By combining many such measurements, a best fit value for the light time per unit distance could be obtained. For example, in 2009, the best estimate, as approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), was:


title: Speed of light

text: The relative uncertainty in these measurements is 0.02 parts per billion (), equivalent to the uncertainty in Earth-based measurements of length by interferometry. Since the metre is defined to be the length travelled by light in a certain time interval, the measurement of the light time in terms of the previous definition of the astronomical unit can also be interpreted as measuring the length of an AU (old definition) in metres.


title: Speed of light

text: A method of measuring the speed of light is to measure the time needed for light to travel to a mirror at a known distance and back. This is the working principle behind the Fizeau–Foucault apparatus developed by Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault, based on a suggestion by François Arago.


title: Speed of light

text: The setup as used by Fizeau consists of a beam of light directed at a mirror away. On the way from the source to the mirror, the beam passes through a rotating cogwheel. At a certain rate of rotation, the beam passes through one gap on the way out and another on the way back, but at slightly higher or lower rates, the beam strikes a tooth and does not pass through the wheel. Knowing the distance between the wheel and the mirror, the number of teeth on the wheel, and the rate of rotation, the speed of light can be calculated.


title: Speed of light

text: The method of Foucault replaces the cogwheel with a rotating mirror. Because the mirror keeps rotating while the light travels to the distant mirror and back, the light is reflected from the rotating mirror at a different angle on its way out than it is on its way back. From this difference in angle, the known speed of rotation and the distance to the distant mirror the speed of light may be calculated.


title: Speed of light

text: Today, using oscilloscopes with time resolutions of less than one nanosecond, the speed of light can be directly measured by timing the delay of a light pulse from a laser or an LED reflected from a mirror. This method is less precise (with errors of the order of 1%) than other modern techniques, but it is sometimes used as a laboratory experiment in college physics classes.


title: Speed of light

text: An option for deriving "c" that does not directly depend on a measurement of the propagation of electromagnetic waves is to use the relation between "c" and the vacuum permittivity "ε" and vacuum permeability "μ" established by Maxwell's theory: "c" = 1/("ε""μ"). The vacuum permittivity may be determined by measuring the capacitance and dimensions of a capacitor, whereas the value of the vacuum permeability was historically fixed at exactly through the definition of the ampere. Rosa and Dorsey used this method in 1907 to find a value of . Their method depended upon having a standard unit of electrical resistance, the "international ohm", and so its accuracy was limited by how this standard was defined.


title: Speed of light

text: Another way to measure the speed of light is to independently measure the frequency "f" and wavelength "λ" of an electromagnetic wave in vacuum. The value of "c" can then be found by using the relation "c" = "fλ". One option is to measure the resonance frequency of a cavity resonator. If the dimensions of the resonance cavity are also known, these can be used to determine the wavelength of the wave. In 1946, Louis Essen and A.C. Gordon-Smith established the frequency for a variety of normal modes of microwaves of a microwave cavity of precisely known dimensions. The dimensions were established to an accuracy of about ±0.8 μm using gauges calibrated by interferometry. As the wavelength of the modes was known from the geometry of the cavity and from electromagnetic theory, knowledge of the associated frequencies enabled a calculation of the speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: The Essen–Gordon-Smith result, , was substantially more precise than those found by optical techniques. By 1950, repeated measurements by Essen established a result of .


title: Speed of light

text: A household demonstration of this technique is possible, using a microwave oven and food such as marshmallows or margarine: if the turntable is removed so that the food does not move, it will cook the fastest at the antinodes (the points at which the wave amplitude is the greatest), where it will begin to melt. The distance between two such spots is half the wavelength of the microwaves; by measuring this distance and multiplying the wavelength by the microwave frequency (usually displayed on the back of the oven, typically 2450 MHz), the value of "c" can be calculated, "often with less than 5% error".


title: Speed of light

text: Interferometry is another method to find the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation for determining the speed of light. A coherent beam of light (e.g. from a laser), with a known frequency ("f"), is split to follow two paths and then recombined. By adjusting the path length while observing the interference pattern and carefully measuring the change in path length, the wavelength of the light ("λ") can be determined. The speed of light is then calculated using the equation "c" = "λf".


title: Speed of light

text: Before the advent of laser technology, coherent radio sources were used for interferometry measurements of the speed of light. However interferometric determination of wavelength becomes less precise with wavelength and the experiments were thus limited in precision by the long wavelength (~) of the radiowaves. The precision can be improved by using light with a shorter wavelength, but then it becomes difficult to directly measure the frequency of the light. One way around this problem is to start with a low frequency signal of which the frequency can be precisely measured, and from this signal progressively synthesize higher frequency signals whose frequency can then be linked to the original signal. A laser can then be locked to the frequency, and its wavelength can be determined using interferometry. This technique was due to a group at the National Bureau of Standards (which later became the National Institute of Standards and Technology). They used it in 1972 to measure the speed of light in vacuum with a fractional uncertainty of .


title: Speed of light

text: Until the early modern period, it was not known whether light travelled instantaneously or at a very fast finite speed. The first extant recorded examination of this subject was in ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks, Arabic scholars, and classical European scientists long debated this until Rømer provided the first calculation of the speed of light. Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity concluded that the speed of light is constant regardless of one's frame of reference. Since then, scientists have provided increasingly accurate measurements.


title: Speed of light

text: Empedocles (c. 490–430 BCE) was the first to propose a theory of light and claimed that light has a finite speed. He maintained that light was something in motion, and therefore must take some time to travel. Aristotle argued, to the contrary, that "light is due to the presence of something, but it is not a movement". Euclid and Ptolemy advanced Empedocles' emission theory of vision, where light is emitted from the eye, thus enabling sight. Based on that theory, Heron of Alexandria argued that the speed of light must be infinite because distant objects such as stars appear immediately upon opening the eyes.


title: Speed of light

text: Early Islamic philosophers initially agreed with the Aristotelian view that light had no speed of travel. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published the "Book of Optics", in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing the emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This led Alhazen to propose that light must have a finite speed, and that the speed of light is variable, decreasing in denser bodies. He argued that light is substantial matter, the propagation of which requires time, even if this is hidden from the senses. Also in the 11th century, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī agreed that light has a finite speed, and observed that the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound.


title: Speed of light

text: In the 13th century, Roger Bacon argued that the speed of light in air was not infinite, using philosophical arguments backed by the writing of Alhazen and Aristotle. In the 1270s, Witelo considered the possibility of light travelling at infinite speed in vacuum, but slowing down in denser bodies.


title: Speed of light

text: In the early 17th century, Johannes Kepler believed that the speed of light was infinite since empty space presents no obstacle to it. René Descartes argued that if the speed of light were to be finite, the Sun, Earth, and Moon would be noticeably out of alignment during a lunar eclipse. (Although this argument fails when aberration of light is taken into account, the latter was not recognized until the following century.) Since such misalignment had not been observed, Descartes concluded the speed of light was infinite. Descartes speculated that if the speed of light were found to be finite, his whole system of philosophy might be demolished. Despite this, in his derivation of Snell's law, Descartes assumed that some kind of motion associated with light was faster in denser media. Pierre de Fermat derived Snell's law using the opposing assumption, the denser the medium the slower light travelled. Fermat also argued in support of a finite speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: In 1629, Isaac Beeckman proposed an experiment in which a person observes the flash of a cannon reflecting off a mirror about one mile (1.6 km) away. In 1638, Galileo Galilei proposed an experiment, with an apparent claim to having performed it some years earlier, to measure the speed of light by observing the delay between uncovering a lantern and its perception some distance away. He was unable to distinguish whether light travel was instantaneous or not, but concluded that if it were not, it must nevertheless be extraordinarily rapid. In 1667, the Accademia del Cimento of Florence reported that it had performed Galileo's experiment, with the lanterns separated by about one mile, but no delay was observed. The actual delay in this experiment would have been about 11 microseconds.


title: Speed of light

text: The first quantitative estimate of the speed of light was made in 1676 by Ole Rømer. From the observation that the periods of Jupiter's innermost moon Io appeared to be shorter when the Earth was approaching Jupiter than when receding from it, he concluded that light travels at a finite speed, and estimated that it takes light 22 minutes to cross the diameter of Earth's orbit. Christiaan Huygens combined this estimate with an estimate for the diameter of the Earth's orbit to obtain an estimate of speed of light of , which is 27% lower than the actual value.


title: Speed of light

text: In his 1704 book "Opticks", Isaac Newton reported Rømer's calculations of the finite speed of light and gave a value of "seven or eight minutes" for the time taken for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth (the modern value is 8 minutes 19 seconds). Newton queried whether Rømer's eclipse shadows were coloured; hearing that they were not, he concluded the different colours travelled at the same speed. In 1729, James Bradley discovered stellar aberration. From this effect he determined that light must travel 10,210 times faster than the Earth in its orbit (the modern figure is 10,066 times faster) or, equivalently, that it would take light 8 minutes 12 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.


title: Speed of light

text: In the 19th century Hippolyte Fizeau developed a method to determine the speed of light based on time-of-flight measurements on Earth and reported a value of . His method was improved upon by Léon Foucault who obtained a value of in 1862. In the year 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch measured the ratio of the electromagnetic and electrostatic units of charge, 1/, by discharging a Leyden jar, and found that its numerical value was very close to the speed of light as measured directly by Fizeau. The following year Gustav Kirchhoff calculated that an electric signal in a resistanceless wire travels along the wire at this speed. In the early 1860s, Maxwell showed that, according to the theory of electromagnetism he was working on, electromagnetic waves propagate in empty space at a speed equal to the above Weber/Kohlrausch ratio, and drawing attention to the numerical proximity of this value to the speed of light as measured by Fizeau, he proposed that light is in fact an electromagnetic wave.


title: Speed of light

text: It was thought at the time that empty space was filled with a background medium called the luminiferous aether in which the electromagnetic field existed. Some physicists thought that this aether acted as a preferred frame of reference for the propagation of light and therefore it should be possible to measure the motion of the Earth with respect to this medium, by measuring the isotropy of the speed of light. Beginning in the 1880s several experiments were performed to try to detect this motion, the most famous of which is the experiment performed by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley in 1887. The detected motion was always less than the observational error. Modern experiments indicate that the two-way speed of light is isotropic (the same in every direction) to within 6 nanometres per second.


title: Speed of light

text: Because of this experiment Hendrik Lorentz proposed that the motion of the apparatus through the aether may cause the apparatus to contract along its length in the direction of motion, and he further assumed that the time variable for moving systems must also be changed accordingly ("local time"), which led to the formulation of the Lorentz transformation. Based on Lorentz's aether theory, Henri Poincaré (1900) showed that this local time (to first order in "v"/"c") is indicated by clocks moving in the aether, which are synchronized under the assumption of constant light speed. In 1904, he speculated that the speed of light could be a limiting velocity in dynamics, provided that the assumptions of Lorentz's theory are all confirmed. In 1905, Poincaré brought Lorentz's aether theory into full observational agreement with the principle of relativity.


title: Speed of light

text: In 1905 Einstein postulated from the outset that the speed of light in vacuum, measured by a non-accelerating observer, is independent of the motion of the source or observer. Using this and the principle of relativity as a basis he derived the special theory of relativity, in which the speed of light in vacuum "c" featured as a fundamental constant, also appearing in contexts unrelated to light. This made the concept of the stationary aether (to which Lorentz and Poincaré still adhered) useless and revolutionized the concepts of space and time.


title: Speed of light

text: In the second half of the 20th century, much progress was made in increasing the accuracy of measurements of the speed of light, first by cavity resonance techniques and later by laser interferometer techniques. These were aided by new, more precise, definitions of the metre and second. In 1950, Louis Essen determined the speed as , using cavity resonance. This value was adopted by the 12th General Assembly of the Radio-Scientific Union in 1957. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of the wavelength of a particular spectral line of krypton-86, and, in 1967, the second was redefined in terms of the hyperfine transition frequency of the ground state of caesium-133.


title: Speed of light

text: In 1972, using the laser interferometer method and the new definitions, a group at the US National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado determined the speed of light in vacuum to be "c" = . This was 100 times less uncertain than the previously accepted value. The remaining uncertainty was mainly related to the definition of the metre. As similar experiments found comparable results for "c", the 15th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1975 recommended using the value for the speed of light.


title: Speed of light

text: In 1983 the 17th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) found that wavelengths from frequency measurements and a given value for the speed of light are more reproducible than the previous standard. They kept the 1967 definition of second, so the caesium hyperfine frequency would now determine both the second and the metre. To do this, they redefined the metre as "the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/ of a second." As a result of this definition, the value of the speed of light in vacuum is exactly and has become a defined constant in the SI system of units. Improved experimental techniques that, prior to 1983, would have measured the speed of light no longer affect the known value of the speed of light in SI units, but instead allow a more precise realization of the metre by more accurately measuring the wavelength of krypton-86 and other light sources.


title: Speed of light

text: In 2011, the CGPM stated its intention to redefine all seven SI base units using what it calls "the explicit-constant formulation", where each "unit is defined indirectly by specifying explicitly an exact value for a well-recognized fundamental constant", as was done for the speed of light. It proposed a new, but completely equivalent, wording of the metre's definition: "The metre, symbol m, is the unit of length; its magnitude is set by fixing the numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum to be equal to exactly when it is expressed in the SI unit ." This was one of the changes that was incorporated in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, also termed the "New SI".


title: Brave New World

text: Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, "Brave New World Revisited" (1958), and with his final novel, "Island" (1962), the utopian counterpart. The novel is often compared to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949).


title: Brave New World

text: In 1999, the Modern Library ranked "Brave New World" at number 5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for "The Observer", included "Brave New World" chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Despite this, "Brave New World" has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication. It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990.


title: Brave New World

text: The title "Brave New World" derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", Act V, Scene I:


title: Brave New World

text: Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature: the French edition of the work is entitled "Le Meilleur des mondes" ("The Best of All Worlds"), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirised in "Candide, Ou l'Optimisme" by Voltaire (1759). The first Standard Chinese translation, done by novelist Lily Hsueh and Aaron Jen-wang Hsueh in 1974, is entitled "美麗新世界" (Pinyin: "Měilì Xīn Shìjiè", literally ""Beautiful New World"").


title: Brave New World

text: Huxley wrote "Brave New World" whilst living in Sanary-sur-Mer, France, in the four months from May to August 1931. By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to "Vanity Fair" and "Vogue" magazines, and had published a collection of his poetry ("The Burning Wheel", 1916) and four successful satirical novels: "Crome Yellow" (1921), "Antic Hay" (1923), "Those Barren Leaves" (1925), and "Point Counter Point" (1928). "Brave New World" was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.


title: Brave New World

text: A passage in "Crome Yellow" contains a brief pre-figuring of "Brave New World", showing that Huxley had such a future in mind already in 1921. Mr. Scogan, one of the earlier book's characters, describes an "impersonal generation" of the future that will "take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."


title: Brave New World

text: Huxley said that "Brave New World" was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including "A Modern Utopia" (1905), and as a parody of "Men Like Gods" (1923). Wells's hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novels, which became "Brave New World". He wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, that he had "been having a little fun pulling the leg of H. G. Wells", but then he "got caught up in the excitement of [his] own ideas." Unlike the most popular optimistic utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to "Brave New World" as a "negative utopia", somewhat influenced by Wells's own "The Sleeper Awakes" (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioural conditioning) and the works of D. H. Lawrence.


title: Brave New World

text: For his part Wells published, two years after "Brave New World", his own Utopian "Shape of Things to Come". Seeking to refute the argument of Huxley's Mustafa Mond - that moronic underclasses were a necessary "social gyroscope" and that a society composed solely of intelligent, assertive "Alphas" would inevitably disintegrate in internecine struggle - Wells depicted a stable egalitarian society emerging after several generations of a reforming elite having complete control of education throughout the world. In the future depicted in Wells' book, posterity remembers Huxley as "a reactionary writer".


title: Brave New World

text: The scientific futurism in "Brave New World" is believed to be appropriated from "Daedalus" by J. B. S. Haldane.


title: Brave New World

text: The events of the Depression in the UK in 1931, with its mass unemployment and the abandonment of the gold currency standard, persuaded Huxley to assert that stability was the "primal and ultimate need" if civilisation was to survive the present crisis. The "Brave New World" character Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, is named after Sir Alfred Mond. Shortly before writing the novel, Huxley visited Mond's technologically advanced plant near Billingham, north east England, and it made a great impression on him.


title: Brave New World

text: Huxley used the setting and characters in his science fiction novel to express widely felt anxieties, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave "Brave New World" much of its character. Huxley was outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, and sexual promiscuity, and the inward-looking nature of many Americans; he had also found the book "My Life and Work" by Henry Ford on the boat to America, and he saw the book's principles applied in everything he encountered after leaving San Francisco.


title: Brave New World

text: The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes (or castes) based on intelligence and labour. Lenina Crowne, a hatchery worker, is popular and sexually desirable, but Bernard Marx, a psychologist, is not. He is shorter in stature than the average member of his high caste, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-learning allows him to understand, and disapprove of, his society's methods of keeping its citizens peaceful, which includes their constant consumption of a soothing, happiness-producing drug called "soma." Courting disaster, Bernard is vocal and arrogant about his criticisms, and his boss contemplates exiling him to Iceland because of his nonconformity. His only friend is Helmholtz Watson, a gifted writer who finds it difficult to use his talents creatively in their pain-free society.