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The Human Brain: Mapping the Most Complex Object in the Known Universe

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Sitting inside your skull, protected by bone and bathed in cerebrospinal fluid, is the most complex object known to exist in the universe. It contains roughly 86 billion neurons, each one connected to thousands of others, forming a network of trillions of connections. This three-pound organ is the source of all human thought, memory, emotion, and consciousness. It allows you to read these words, to feel curiosity, to fall in love, to create art, to ponder its own existence. Understanding the brain is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time, and researchers around the world are engaged in a massive, multi-disciplinary effort to map its structure, decode its function, and ultimately unravel the mysteries of the mind.

The Human Brain: Mapping the Most Complex Object in the Known Universe

the human brain

The Cellular Landscape: Neurons and Glia

The brain’s fundamental building blocks are two main classes of cells. Neurons are the brain’s information processors. They are specialized cells that receive, integrate, and transmit electrical and chemical signals. A typical neuron has a cell body, branching dendrites that receive signals from other neurons, and a long, slender axon that transmits signals to other neurons, muscles, or glands. The points of communication between neurons are called synapses, where chemical neurotransmitters carry messages across tiny gaps. The human brain has trillions of synapses, and the pattern of these connections is constantly changing in response to experience—a property called plasticity that underlies learning and memory.

For decades, neuroscientists focused almost exclusively on neurons. But we now know that neurons are outnumbered by another class of cells called glia, from the Greek word for “glue.” Glia were once thought to be mere support cells, holding the brain together. We now understand that they play active and essential roles. They regulate blood flow, provide nutrients to neurons, maintain the blood-brain barrier, prune unnecessary synapses, and even participate in information processing. Some glial cells, called astrocytes, can release their own chemical signals and modulate neuronal activity. The more we learn, the more we realize that glia are not just passive helpers but active partners in brain function.

Mapping the Connectome

One of the most ambitious projects in modern neuroscience is the effort to create a complete map of the brain’s wiring diagram, known as the connectome. Just as the human genome project mapped the sequence of our DNA, the connectome project aims to map every single connection between every single neuron in the brain. This is a staggering task. The human brain has more connections than there are stars in the Milky Way. Even mapping the connectome of a tiny worm, C. elegans, which has only 302 neurons, took over a decade and resulted in a Nobel Prize.

Why go to all this trouble? Because the connectome is the physical substrate of everything the brain does. The pattern of connections determines how information flows, how memories are stored, and how computations are performed. By understanding the connectome, we can begin to understand how the brain’s structure gives rise to its function. Advanced imaging techniques, such as diffusion MRI, are allowing researchers to trace the major fiber pathways in the living human brain. At the microscopic level, researchers are using electron microscopes to slice brains into impossibly thin sections and reconstruct the detailed wiring of small volumes of tissue. The ultimate goal—a complete human connectome—is still far in the future, but each small step brings new insights.

The Brain’s Electrical Symphony

Neurons communicate through electrical impulses called action potentials. When a neuron receives enough stimulation, it fires, sending a brief electrical pulse down its axon. This pulse triggers the release of neurotransmitters at synapses, which then influence the activity of downstream neurons. The coordinated firing of millions of neurons gives rise to brain waves, rhythmic patterns of electrical activity that can be measured with an electroencephalogram (EEG).

Different patterns of brain waves are associated with different states of consciousness. Fast, desynchronized beta waves dominate when we are alert and focused. Slower, more synchronized alpha waves appear when we are relaxed with our eyes closed. The deepest stages of sleep are characterized by very slow delta waves. These rhythms are not just epiphenomena; they play functional roles in coordinating activity across different brain regions, in consolidating memories, and in regulating attention.

The Seat of Consciousness

Perhaps the deepest mystery of the brain is consciousness—the subjective experience of being aware, of seeing the color red, of feeling pain, of having a sense of self. How does three pounds of electrical and chemical activity give rise to this inner world? This is often called the “hard problem” of consciousness. We know a great deal about the neural correlates of consciousness—which brain regions are active when we are consciously aware of something—but we do not yet understand how or why brain activity produces subjective experience.

Various theories have been proposed. Some suggest that consciousness arises from the integration of information across different brain regions. Others propose that it is related to specific patterns of feedback loops in the cortex. Still others take a more radical view, suggesting that consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe, like mass or charge. This is not just a philosophical question. Understanding consciousness has profound implications for how we treat patients in vegetative states, for the development of artificial intelligence, and for our understanding of what it means to be human.

The Future of Brain Science

The next decades promise explosive progress in brain science. New tools are allowing researchers to record from thousands of neurons simultaneously, to turn specific populations of neurons on and off with light (a technique called optogenetics), and to create detailed atlases of gene expression in the brain. Large-scale initiatives, like the US BRAIN Initiative and the European Human Brain Project, are coordinating efforts across hundreds of labs. We are learning how the brain develops, how it changes with age, and what goes wrong in devastating neurological and psychiatric disorders. The journey to understand the brain is a journey to understand ourselves, and it is one of the most exciting adventures in all of science.

Climate Science: Understanding Our Changing Planet

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The Earth’s climate is a complex, dynamic system that has been in a constant state of change for billions of years. Ice ages have come and gone. Continents have drifted. Atmospheric composition has shifted. But the change we are witnessing today is different. It is happening at a pace that is unprecedented in human history, and it is overwhelmingly driven by a single species: us. Climate science is the discipline dedicated to understanding these changes—their causes, their consequences, and the potential pathways to a sustainable future. It is a field that synthesizes knowledge from physics, chemistry, biology, oceanography, and geology, and its findings are among the most thoroughly vetted and rigorously established in all of science.

Climate Science: Understanding Our Changing Planet

climate science

The Greenhouse Effect: A Fundamental Physical Principle

At the heart of climate science is a simple, well-understood physical principle: the greenhouse effect. The Sun bombards the Earth with energy, primarily in the form of visible light. About 30% of this energy is reflected back into space by clouds, ice, and other bright surfaces. The rest is absorbed by the land and oceans, warming the planet. The Earth then radiates this energy back toward space, but because the Earth is much cooler than the Sun, it radiates it in the form of infrared radiation, or heat.

Certain gases in the atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and others—act like a blanket. They are transparent to visible light but absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat and preventing it from escaping directly into space. This trapped heat is then re-radiated in all directions, including back down to the surface. This natural greenhouse effect is what makes Earth habitable. Without it, the average temperature on Earth would be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius), a frozen wasteland. The problem is that human activities are dramatically increasing the concentration of these greenhouse gases, thickening the blanket and trapping more and more heat.

The Evidence: What the Data Shows

The evidence that the planet is warming is overwhelming and comes from multiple, independent lines of inquiry. Thermometer records from around the world show that the global average temperature has risen by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century. The vast majority of this warming has occurred in the last 50 years. This might sound like a small number, but it represents an enormous amount of trapped energy. The oceans have absorbed most of this excess heat, and they are warming at an accelerating rate.

Beyond temperature, the evidence is everywhere. Glaciers are retreating on every continent. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate. Arctic sea ice is shrinking dramatically, both in extent and thickness. Sea levels are rising, both because of meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets and because warming ocean water expands. The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events—heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, heavy rainfall, and flooding—are increasing in ways consistent with a warming planet. The pattern of change matches what climate models predict for a world with increasing greenhouse gases and rules out natural causes like solar variability or volcanic activity.

The Cause: Human Activity

The link between human activity and the increase in greenhouse gases is clear. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been burning vast quantities of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—for energy. This process takes carbon that was locked away underground for millions of years and releases it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. We have also deforested large areas of the planet, removing trees that would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 50% since pre-industrial times, from about 280 parts per million to over 420 parts per million today. This is higher than at any point in at least the last 800,000 years, and probably much longer.

The isotopic signature of the carbon in the atmosphere confirms that it comes from fossil fuels. Carbon from fossil fuels has a different ratio of carbon isotopes than carbon from natural sources, and the atmospheric signature matches the fossil fuel signature perfectly. The science is settled on this point: the observed warming is overwhelmingly due to human activities.

The Consequences: A Changing World

The consequences of this warming are already being felt around the world, and they will intensify in the coming decades. Sea-level rise threatens coastal communities, from Miami to Mumbai to Shanghai. Hundreds of millions of people live in low-lying areas that could be inundated by the end of the century. Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns are disrupting agriculture, threatening food security. Heatwaves are becoming more deadly. Ecosystems are struggling to adapt; coral reefs are experiencing mass bleaching events, and species are migrating toward the poles or to higher elevations in search of suitable conditions.

The impacts are not distributed evenly. The poorest and most vulnerable communities, which have contributed the least to the problem, are often the hardest hit. This is a profound issue of climate justice. The choices we make in the next decade will determine the severity of these impacts for centuries to come.

The Solutions: A Path Forward

Addressing climate change requires a fundamental transformation of our energy systems, our economies, and our societies. The core task is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, meaning that any remaining emissions are balanced by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere. This requires a massive shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which have become dramatically cheaper in recent years. It requires electrifying transportation, heating, and industry. It requires improving energy efficiency. It requires protecting and restoring forests and other natural carbon sinks. And it likely requires developing technologies to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The challenge is immense, but it is not insurmountable. The tools we need exist. What is required now is the political will, the economic investment, and the collective action to deploy them at scale. Climate science has given us a clear diagnosis and a roadmap. The rest is up to us.

The James Webb Space Telescope, A New Window Into the Universe

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For more than thirty years, the Hubble Space Telescope was humanity’s greatest eye on the universe. It captured images of distant galaxies, gave us a window into the birth and death of stars, and helped determine the age of the cosmos. Hubble became a beloved icon of science, bringing the wonders of the universe into our living rooms. But even Hubble has its limits. It sees primarily in visible and ultraviolet light, and it cannot penetrate the dust clouds that shroud the earliest stars and galaxies. To see further, to look closer to the beginning of time, astronomers needed a new kind of telescope. After decades of development, countless delays, and a price tag of ten billion dollars, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally launched on Christmas Day 2021. What it has shown us since has exceeded even the wildest expectations.

The James Webb Space Telescope: A New Window Into the Universe

The James Webb Space Telescope

A Telescope Like No Other

The James Webb Space Telescope is not just a bigger, better version of Hubble. It is a fundamentally different kind of instrument. While Hubble observes the universe primarily in optical and ultraviolet light, Webb is an infrared telescope. This is crucial for two reasons. First, as light from the earliest stars and galaxies travels across the expanding universe, its wavelength gets stretched, a phenomenon known as redshift. By the time this light reaches us, it has been shifted from visible light into the infrared part of the spectrum. To see the first objects that formed after the Big Bang, you need an infrared eye. Second, infrared light can penetrate the dense dust clouds where stars and planets are born, allowing Webb to peer into stellar nurseries that are opaque to visible light.

To detect these faint infrared signals, Webb’s instruments must be kept incredibly cold. Any heat from the telescope itself would create infrared “noise” that would swamp the faint signals from distant objects. This is why Webb does not orbit Earth like Hubble. Instead, it orbits a special point called Lagrange Point 2 (L2) , about a million miles from Earth, where it can keep its sunshield permanently between itself and the Sun, Earth, and Moon. That sunshield is the size of a tennis court, and it keeps the telescope’s mirrors and instruments at a frigid minus 388 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 233 degrees Celsius).

The centerpiece of Webb is its primary mirror, a massive 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) diameter array of 18 hexagonal, gold-coated beryllium segments. The mirror is so large that it had to be folded up to fit inside the rocket that launched it. Once in space, the mirror underwent an intricate, weeks-long deployment process, with each segment slowly moving into place with nanometer precision. It was one of the most complex and nerve-wracking deployments in spaceflight history, and it worked flawlessly.

The First Images and Discoveries

When the first full-color images from Webb were released in July 2022, the world gasped. The images were not just beautiful; they were scientifically profound. The first deep-field image showed thousands of galaxies in a tiny patch of sky, some of them so distant that their light has been traveling for over 13 billion years. We were seeing galaxies as they existed not long after the Big Bang.

One of the most stunning early images was of the Carina Nebula, a massive star-forming region. Webb’s infrared vision pierced through the dusty clouds to reveal hundreds of never-before-seen stars, as well as detailed structures in the gas and dust that were completely invisible to Hubble. It was like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time.

Webb has already made discoveries that are reshaping our understanding of the early universe. Astronomers expected to find small, immature galaxies in the very early universe. Instead, Webb has revealed a surprising number of large, bright, and surprisingly mature-looking galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. These “impossibly early” galaxies are challenging our models of how quickly galaxies can form and grow. Either our models are wrong, or there is something fundamental we don’t yet understand about the early universe.

Exoplanets and the Search for Life

Beyond distant galaxies, Webb is revolutionizing the study of exoplanets—planets orbiting other stars. While Webb cannot directly image most exoplanets, it can study their atmospheres using a technique called transit spectroscopy. When a planet passes in front of its host star, a tiny fraction of the star’s light filters through the planet’s atmosphere. Different molecules in that atmosphere absorb different wavelengths of light, leaving a kind of fingerprint in the starlight. By analyzing that fingerprint, Webb can determine the chemical composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

In its first year, Webb detected water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, and other molecules in the atmospheres of several exoplanets. It has found evidence of clouds and even possible signs of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is only produced by life, on a distant planet called K2-18b. These results are preliminary and far from definitive proof of life, but they hint at the possibilities to come. In the coming years, Webb will study the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets, looking for combinations of gases that could only be explained by the presence of living organisms.

The Future of Discovery

The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to operate for at least five years, but with careful fuel management, it could last for a decade or more. Every observation brings new data, new images, and new surprises. It is already one of the most successful scientific instruments ever built, and its greatest discoveries may still lie ahead. It may find the first generation of stars, the first galaxies, and perhaps even signs of life on a distant world. Webb is not just a telescope; it is a time machine, carrying us closer to the dawn of creation and showing us our place in the vast, beautiful, and mysterious universe.

CRISPR and Gene Editing: Rewriting the Code of Life

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For most of human history, the genetic code of life was fixed. You inherited your DNA from your parents, and that was that. If a gene carried a disease-causing mutation, it was a roll of the dice, a matter of fate. But that era is ending. In the past decade, a revolutionary technology has emerged that gives humanity the power to edit the very blueprint of life. It’s called CRISPR, and it has transformed genetic engineering from a slow, expensive, imprecise art into a fast, cheap, and relatively simple science. With this power comes the potential to cure devastating diseases, create better crops, and even alter the course of human evolution. It also brings profound ethical questions that we are only beginning to grapple with.

CRISPR and Gene Editing: Rewriting the Code of Life

CRISPR and Gene Editing: Rewriting the Code of Life

The Discovery: A Bacterial Immune System

The story of CRISPR begins not in a human genetics lab, but in the study of bacteria. Scientists noticed that many bacteria had unusual repeating sequences in their DNA, which they named CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). For years, the function of these sequences was a mystery. Then, in the 2000s, researchers realized that CRISPR was part of a bacterial immune system.

When a virus attacks a bacterium, the bacterium can capture a small piece of the virus’s DNA and insert it into its own genome, between the CRISPR repeats. This serves as a “wanted poster.” If the same virus attacks again, the bacterium produces a short piece of RNA that matches the stored viral DNA. This RNA guides a cutting enzyme, usually one called Cas9, to the invading viral DNA. The Cas9 enzyme then snips the viral DNA, destroying it and protecting the bacterium.

The key insight was that this system could be repurposed. If bacteria use it to target viral DNA, scientists could program it to target any DNA sequence they chose. In 2012, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published a groundbreaking paper showing that they could harness the CRISPR-Cas9 system as a gene-editing tool. They had effectively created a pair of molecular scissors that could be programmed to cut DNA at any desired location. For this discovery, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.

How It Works

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is elegantly simple. It consists of two main components. The first is a guide RNA, a short piece of synthetic RNA that is designed to match the DNA sequence you want to edit. The second is the Cas9 enzyme, the molecular scissors that cuts DNA.

When you introduce these components into a cell, the guide RNA leads the Cas9 enzyme to the exact spot in the genome you want to target. Cas9 then makes a precise cut, breaking both strands of the DNA double helix. This break triggers the cell’s natural DNA repair machinery. And here’s where the magic happens. The cell has two main ways to repair the break. The first is a quick-and-dirty process called non-homologous end joining, which often introduces small insertions or deletions that can disrupt a gene’s function. This is useful for “turning off” a disease-causing gene. The second repair pathway is more precise. If you provide the cell with a template DNA sequence, it can use that template to repair the break, effectively writing new genetic information into that spot. This allows scientists to correct mutations or even insert entirely new genes.

The Promise: Curing Disease and More

The potential applications of CRISPR are staggering. In medicine, it offers the hope of curing genetic diseases at their source. Scientists are already conducting clinical trials using CRISPR to treat sickle cell disease, a devastating blood disorder caused by a single mutation. The approach involves removing a patient’s own blood stem cells, editing them to correct the mutation, and then infusing them back into the patient. Early results have been remarkably promising, with patients being effectively cured of their disease.

Beyond blood disorders, CRISPR is being explored as a treatment for muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, and even certain forms of blindness. It is also being used to engineer immune cells to better fight cancer, creating “living drugs” that can hunt down and destroy tumors.

In agriculture, CRISPR is being used to create better crops. Scientists have edited mushrooms that don’t brown, wheat with reduced gluten content, and soybeans with healthier oil profiles. These edits are precise and don’t involve introducing foreign DNA from other species, making them potentially more acceptable to consumers than traditional genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The Ethical Quagmire

With such immense power comes immense responsibility, and CRISPR raises profound ethical questions. The most controversial is the possibility of editing the human germline—making changes to sperm, eggs, or embryos that would be passed down to future generations. In 2018, a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui shocked the world by announcing that he had created the first gene-edited babies, using CRISPR to modify embryos to make them resistant to HIV. The scientific community universally condemned his work as irresponsible, unethical, and dangerous. The long-term effects of germline editing are unknown, and it opens the door to a future of “designer babies,” where parents could potentially select for traits like intelligence, height, or eye color.

There are also concerns about equity and access. Will these revolutionary treatments be available only to the wealthy? Will they create a genetic divide between those who can afford to edit their genes and those who cannot? And what about the environmental impact of releasing gene-edited organisms into the wild?

CRISPR has given us the power to rewrite the code of life. How we choose to use that power—wisely, cautiously, and ethically—is one of the defining questions of our time.

The Quantum Revolution, How Quantum Computing Will Change Everything

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For decades, computers have followed the same fundamental rules. They process information in bits—tiny switches that are either a 0 or a 1. Every calculation, every website, every video game, and every piece of artificial intelligence we’ve ever created is built upon this simple binary foundation. But that foundation is about to be shaken. On the horizon lies a new kind of computing, one that doesn’t just flip switches but harnesses the bizarre, counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics. Quantum computing promises to solve problems in minutes that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years. It is not just an incremental improvement; it is a complete paradigm shift.

The Quantum Revolution: How Quantum Computing Will Change Everything

quantum computing

The Bizarre World of Quantum Mechanics

To understand quantum computing, you first have to accept that the universe is far stranger than it appears. At the smallest scales, the rules of classical physics break down and are replaced by the probabilistic, fuzzy logic of quantum mechanics. Two phenomena are particularly important for quantum computing: superposition and entanglement.

Superposition is the idea that a quantum particle, such as an electron or a photon, can exist in multiple states simultaneously until it is measured. It’s not that we don’t know which state it’s in; it’s that it literally occupies all possible states at once. In the quantum world, a particle can be spinning both clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. It can be here and there simultaneously. This is the foundation of the quantum bit, or qubit. While a classical bit is either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or any quantum superposition of both. This might sound like a small difference, but it exponentially increases computing power.

Entanglement is even stranger. When two particles become entangled, their fates are linked in a way that defies our classical understanding of space and time. Measuring the state of one particle instantly influences the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are—even if they are on opposite sides of the galaxy. Einstein famously called this “spooky action at a distance.” In a quantum computer, entangled qubits can work together to perform calculations in ways that are impossible for classical bits.

What Quantum Computers Can Do

The power of quantum computing lies in its ability to explore many possibilities simultaneously. A classical computer solves a complex problem by trying one solution at a time, sequentially. A quantum computer, using superposition and entanglement, can effectively try all possible solutions at once. This makes it ideally suited for certain types of problems that are virtually impossible for classical machines.

One of the most famous applications is factorization—breaking down large numbers into their prime factors. This is the basis of much of modern encryption. The RSA encryption that secures your banking transactions and private messages relies on the fact that factoring a 300-digit number would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could do it in seconds. This is why governments and tech companies are racing to build quantum machines; the nation or company that gets there first will, in theory, be able to break much of the world’s encryption.

Beyond code-breaking, quantum computing promises revolutions in other fields. In drug discovery, quantum computers could simulate molecular interactions at an atomic level, allowing scientists to design new medicines and materials in silico before ever stepping foot in a lab. This could dramatically accelerate the development of treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. In climate science, quantum computers could model complex climate systems with unprecedented accuracy, helping us better understand and mitigate the effects of global warming. In finance, they could optimize portfolios and model risk in ways that are currently impossible. In materials science, they could help us discover new superconductors, more efficient solar cells, and stronger, lighter materials.

The Immense Challenges

Despite the incredible promise, building a practical quantum computer is extraordinarily difficult. Qubits are incredibly fragile. The slightest disturbance—a stray vibration, a fluctuation in temperature, a passing cosmic ray—can cause them to lose their quantum state in a process called decoherence. To prevent this, quantum computers must be cooled to temperatures just fractions of a degree above absolute zero, colder than the vacuum of space.

Error correction is another major hurdle. Because qubits are so fragile, errors are inevitable. Quantum error correction requires using many physical qubits to create a single, reliable “logical” qubit. Some estimates suggest that a useful quantum computer might need millions of physical qubits, while current state-of-the-art machines have only a few hundred. We are still in the early days, comparable to the era of room-sized vacuum tube computers in the 1940s.

The Future

The quantum revolution will not happen overnight. It will likely unfold over decades. We are currently in the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) era, where machines are powerful enough to demonstrate quantum advantage for specific tasks but not yet robust enough for widespread practical use. But progress is accelerating. Companies like Google, IBM, and startups around the world are making steady advances in qubit count, coherence time, and error correction.

The arrival of practical quantum computing will not replace classical computers. You won’t have a quantum laptop on your desk. Instead, quantum computers will be specialized tools, accessed via the cloud, for solving the hardest problems that classical machines cannot touch. They will usher in a new age of discovery, transforming medicine, materials, energy, and our very understanding of the universe. The quantum revolution is coming, and it will change everything.