Everyone longs for a “paradise” free from disease, war, and oppression, although this paradise may not exist, but with the development of science, technology and society, we are getting closer. to heaven in the eyes of the ancients. We will also be curious about the future of human society. There are countless works trying to construct an impossibly beautiful perspective for exploring such issues, most of which of course have pessimistic results. In 1798, the British demographer and economist – Malthus showed in his thesis “Principle of Population” that the population increased exponentially but food production increased linearly. If things continued like this, it would reach a point where the population could no longer grow. The hidden content of this theory is that population growth does not necessarily bring prosperity, but can cause socioeconomic stagnation, hence the so-called “Malthusian trap”. After the end of World War II, the world gradually returned to prosperity, the United States ushered in a period of population explosion with a series of babies after the war, and with it, pessimistic views began to emerge. . Some people think that “overpopulation” can lead to a crisis, which in the short term will deplete resources for survival. This mentality of the majority of the population was immediately drawn to Malthus’ ideals. However, the success of the Green Revolution made Malthus’s model no longer valid, as food production spiked. However, the fear surrounding population explosion and its consequences still lingers here and there. Accordingly, a series of experiments demonstrating the effects of population explosion emerged. But a series of animal experiments seem to have yielded surprising results. Human estimates of resources for survival may still be too optimistic, but the real crisis coming from the population itself will seem obvious. The most prominent of which is the experiment of John B. Calhoun, an American expert specializing in the study of ethology and human behavior. John B. Calhoun and the Norwegian Rats. Calhoun was particularly interested in studying birds during his early years, and one of his studies was published in the journals of the Tennessee Bird Society at the age of 15. After that, Calhoun studied from bachelor’s degree to doctorate, and his research direction also gradually turned to animal behavior. Since his doctoral thesis was to study the 24-hour rhythm of the Norwegian rat, Calhoun’s work after graduation was also closely related to this rat. In 1947, Calhoun, then working at Johns Hopkins University, asked a neighbor to buy a piece of land less than 1,000 square meters to use as a laboratory. Then he decided to build an “artificial rat paradise” so that his rodents could live carefree. In the end, Calhoun named the place “Rat City”. With this amount of land, the area of ​​​​the mouse city is not small, it is estimated that it can accommodate 5,000 rats, Calhoun also provides adequate food and water for his mouse subjects, while minimizing the maximum. the impact of disease and predators. Rats are only allowed to operate within the “city”. However, the development of the mouse city was not as smooth as imagined, even a bit bizarre. Calhoun initially included five pregnant female mice, but the reproductive rates of mice in this range were not as high as he had imagined. The number of rats in the study area never exceeded 200, and it stabilized at about 150, much smaller than the number of rats this “artificial paradise” could accommodate. Live rats cluster together in groups, and feed only at specific spots. This may have been the first experiment that brought Calhoun’s attention to population density. Five years after the failure of the rat city project, Calhoun joined the US National Department of Mental Health (NIMH) and was in a better position to design experiments on mice. At that time, Calhoun had a small team working with him, they improved the experimental environment on the mice as well as specially designed the breeding area so that the “artificial paradise” could work better. . The farming area is now only about 4.5 m long, 3 m wide, divided into 4 areas separated by electric fences, each area is equipped with unlimited food and water sources, there is also a multi-storey “apartment” that rats can enter in a spiral. The 4 areas separated by the grid are actually not completely isolated from each other, they are connected in pairs by 3 small bridges. Specifically, these four regions can be considered as four quadrants in the Cartesian coordinate system, where only a direct bridge exists that causes the path to move between the beginning – area 1 and the end – area 4 creating into a U shape. Calhoun designed a special feeding system, where solid food is kept behind nets and the collection process is not easy. In the first litter, but the residents here are reasonably arranged with a total of 32 mice, the number of males and females is equal and they are all adult rats that have reached reproductive age. According to the plan, the mice in the habitat would breed quickly, and the number would exceed the 40 limit for a short time, but Calhoun wouldn’t stop the experiment immediately. He would let the rats spawn to 80 and watch them. At first, the female rats were evenly distributed in the four regions, but when the fights between the males ended, the stronger males took over more females. Due to the design of four areas and three connecting bridges, a large number of low-status male rats will be concentrated in areas two and three, while the first and fourth areas become “swarms” of mice Males have higher status. At the bridge, the rats built their own barriers that prevented individuals from walking freely. Weak mice went to cages 2 and 3 to feed and could not return, only a small number of male rats remained in cages 1 and 4. At this point, the strange thing happened, the low-status male rat living in areas 1 and 4 – despite living among the females – had no desire to mate with the opposite sex. Instead they approached higher-status male rats, but the high-status males didn’t deny it either. The number of mice in the barn for 2-3 days is dense due to the continuous appearance of new litters of mice that “go and do not return”. At the same time, the rats’ eating behavior changed as they became accustomed to Calhoun’s feeding device. They refuse to eat alone, and only engage in net scavenging activities when and only in the presence of their own. The pressure from the population, from feeding (despite the abundance of food) creates a pattern that Calhoun calls a “behavioural sink”, roughly translated as “behavior alienation”; Rats begin to develop harmful behaviors. Under the influence of behavioral alienation, female rats have increased social interaction and decreased ability to care for offspring – and because young rats rely heavily on their mothers, herd numbers are at risk of decline. Whenever female mice move their nests, they often leave behind a large number of young mice. And yet, at the time of estrus, because female rats live in closed cages, they cannot escape from the males, and the brutal mating behavior in the cage affects the young even more. At one point, the mortality rate in the rat cage reached 96%. In dominant males, behavioral corruption causes them to become hysterical, frequently attacking their cagemates and even their young. In the vulnerable group of mice, Calhoun found traits that could separate mice into three distinct groups: The first type is called “pansexual”, they do not participate in competitions for social status, but will try to mate with any rat possible regardless of gender. or age. Not many individuals refuse this behavior. The latter, which Calhoun calls a “somnambulist”, is slow-moving, barely interacts with other rats, does not participate in social activities, and very few other individuals interact with them. ., but they are extremely fond of taking care of their appearance and are never violent. The third category, the group that most surprised Calhoun was named the “probes”. These are hyperactive individuals, constantly looking for opportunities to mate with rats of both sexes. Even if they were attacked by higher-status male rats, they would still frantically pursue females in heat. Once they reached the slums and found the young left behind, the fugitives found another source of nourishment. Continue: The end of the gruesome experiment, and the premise of the next one.

The starry sky illuminated the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan as it passed through the Luzon Strait. Photo: US Navy

Specifically, at noon, sailors will take a hexagonal glass – a positioning tool that has existed for centuries – to measure the angle of the Sun at its highest point in the day. The data will be fed into a computer program called the Astronomical Latitude and Longitude Estimation System, or STELLA. They also observed the angular distances between the horizon and the Moon, the planets and the stars to calculate latitude and longitude.

On the jetty, a crew consisting of the captain, subordinate officers and the pilot used the above data to control the ship night and day.

The return of astronomical navigation

The Nikkei Asia Financial Times reported that astronomical navigation, or space travel navigation, disappeared from the US Naval Academy curriculum in 2006 because it was deemed obsolete. But in 2015, the school reintroduced this technique as well as sent students to a planetarium to teach how to measure and apply mathematics.

An officer on board the guided missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay uses a positioning device to measure the ship’s position in the Pacific. Photo: US Navy

The return to this method of positioning was prompted by the realization that if the US armed forces increasingly relied on digital communications, a blow to the Global Positioning System. (GPS) – on which this communications system relies on – could make it difficult for the army considered to be the most powerful in the world. That concern is growing in the face of China’s increased electronic and cyber-warfare capabilities.

Peter Singer, strategist at consulting firm New America and author of “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of Next World War” (roughly translated: Ghost Fleet: Novel of the Next World War) commented: “Battle The opening battle of the next great war will take place in silence ”.

According to him, this battle will not be the same as the battle of Pearl Harbor that dragged the United States into the war with Japan in 1941, nor the horrifying battle that opened to the Iraq War in 2003. “It may even have been and is already happening.” Because, in cyberspace, enemy moves still happen weeks, months or years before the outbreak of war.

If digital communications were to be removed, the US Navy would return to the natural world, relying on eyes and ears to survive. Therefore, a return of the hexagonal glass is imperative. But the strategist Singer believes that there are still two other options than this 18th-century utensil.

One is to build a more flexible communications network and improve network security to help the military combat any GPS-related challenges. Second is the development of highly intelligent systems that do not require GPS.

“For example, there is research showing that rockets can fly by navigating against a magnetic field,” says Singer. He equates this with the ability of birds to migrate as they travel thousands of kilometers to reach almost exactly one destination every year.

Answering Nikkei Asia, he explained: “It is not because they remember the way. That’s how they perceive the Earth’s magnetic field. The same goes for insects. So there has been high-tech research on developing digital versions of the way birds and insects navigate.

“Learn” from birds

The Department of Defense Senior Research Projects Administration (DARPA) is pursuing the so-called Adaptive Navigation System. This GPS-equivalent method of positioning, navigation, and time will work even in poorly wave places such as inside buildings, in canyons, in dense woods, underwater and underground. .

In February, a group of scientists including Professor Richard Holland at Bangor University and professor Dmitry Kishkinev at Keele University published a report indicating that birds can possess a “global GPS system. “.

Scientists believe that birds possess a global “GPS system”. Photo: Reuters

“The amazingly precise navigation of these little birds – as they travel alone over stormy seas, across vast deserts, and through extreme weather and temperature extremes – has been one of the the enduring mysteries of biology, ”wrote British scientists for the World Economic Forum.

“An evidence-gathering agency has shown that the Earth’s magnetic field is one of the most likely theories for this mystery. It is thought that the different parameters of the Earth’s magnetic field could form a network of maps that birds will fly with, ”they said.

“If birds know that magnetic field strength increases as they go north, they will be able to detect their position on the North-South axis wherever they go,” the report said. said the report. This means that the birds are essentially navigating using a system similar to Cartesian coordinates – the basis of modern GPS navigation.

Nikkei Asia asked Holland if anything from bird navigation could be used in the military. “In theory, the Earth’s magnetic field could be used as a positioning system,” he said. However, he warned: “It is not clear whether this system can be used on a global scale as GPS could, since there are several locations on Earth that share the same characteristics. magnetism”.

However, this could be the answer the US military is looking for in its mission to protect against electronic warfare by China or other countries.

Billy Fabian, an expert at data and analysis firm Govini and a senior colleague at the Center for New American Security, says it’s important to prepare for the scenario where communications are disrupted. when considering the nature of a potential war with China.

“A future conflict between the US and China will be different from past conflicts in two respects,” he said. One, every sector will be highly competitive, and that’s different from what we’re used to. Second, we will be under enormous time pressure. Most of the places that you can imagine we will fight in the future are in the backyard of China, but one ocean away from the American continent.

The US military is also practicing the concept called “mission command”. Accordingly, the commanders at the front lines are empowered to plan, coordinate and execute decisions without having to ask for instructions from their superiors. In this way, small units can continue to operate even when communication is interrupted.