What have we learned about nutrition in the past five years? Cassini Probe: What New We Have Learned About Saturn What's New WikiLeaks Told.

Image copyright TASS Image caption Vladimir Putin and Anatoly Sobchak in 1997

At the beginning of the week, the film "The Sobchak Case" by Vera Krichevskaya and Ksenia Sobchak, dedicated to the fate of Anatoly Sobchak, the first mayor of St. Petersburg and the former boss of Vladimir Putin, was released. The Russian President became one of the main characters in the film and gave him a detailed interview.

The Russian service of the BBC says that new things about Putin's personality became known from the documentary.

Sobchak helped Putin leave the KGB

Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of his work with Anatoly Sobchak, was a career KGB officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In an interview for the film, the president said that he even warned the future boss about this when he invited him to the post of adviser to the chairman of the Leningrad Council of People's Deputies. Putin himself then served as assistant to the rector of the Leningrad State University for international affairs.

"I answered him - you know, I would gladly go to work for you. But I am afraid that this is impossible ... Probably, I cannot tell you about this, but I probably will not seriously violate our rules, I can to tell you that I am not just an assistant to the rector. I am a career, active KGB officer, "Putin described the conversation. According to him, Sobchak "answered for the first and last time": "Well, fig with him."

Putin combined work with Sobchak and in the state security agencies, but decided to resign during the 1991 coup. According to the president, the power structures supported the coup and he could not "rush back and forth" and "be both there and there at the same time." Putin himself had already talked about this several times earlier, but in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak, he said that her father had helped him and promised to call Vladimir Kryuchkov, the chairman of the KGB.

"I was so surprised a little, I think, well what. Kryuchkov will send him away. He really called Kryuchkov and the report was signed literally within two or three days."

Sobchak's rival in the mayoral elections called Putin to his team

A significant part of the film "The Sobchak Case" is devoted to the elections of the governor of St. Petersburg in 1996, in which his deputy Vladimir Yakovlev was nominated against Sobchak.

“Anatoly Aleksandrovich [Yakovlev] invited him to work, made him his deputy, trusted him. Well, how could he not betray him? Of course, he did not. There is no other name for it,” Putin said in an interview for the film.

Yakovlev's candidacy was proposed in an analytical note addressed to Boris Yeltsin, one of its compilers was political scientist Aleksey Trubetskoy (Koshmarov) - he himself speaks about this in the film. Other heroes claim that the document was handed over to Yeltsin by the then head of the Presidential Security Service, Alexander Korzhakov, and the ex-director of the FSB, Mikhail Barsukov.

Yakovlev himself said in an interview that he had discussed his nomination with Putin: “We talked to Vladimir Vladimirovich. He did not say“ don't go ”or“ go. ”It was just a normal conversation. Putin remembers this conversation differently. "He offered me to run with him. I refused, of course. I told him that it was impossible for me," said President Ksenia Sobchak.

Yakovlev's career did not end with work in St. Petersburg. In 2003, already during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, he became deputy prime minister, after the resignation of the Kasyanov government, he worked for six months as the presidential envoy, and then headed the Ministry of Regional Development. In the government, Yakovlev, who, according to Putin, "betrayed Sobchak", worked until 2007.

By helping Sobchak, Putin risked permanently losing his job in the Kremlin

Having lost the gubernatorial elections, Sobchak remained in the spotlight already as a defendant in a criminal case of abuse in the St. Petersburg administration. In the "Sobchak case", as he was called in the press, he first passed as a witness, and then became accused of abuses in the post of mayor.

Anatoly Chubais, who was an adviser to Sobchak, and after his defeat, went to work with Putin in Moscow, says in the film that members of the presidential administration tried to help the former boss. Only Boris Nemtsov, who worked in the government, was able to postpone the arrest of Sobchak, who was in a pre-infarction state, and made a personal request to Boris Yeltsin. At the same time, "the risks of Sobchak's landing were the highest," Chubais said.

In the fall of 1997, Sobchak, after being interrogated by the prosecutor's office, was hospitalized. “He did not grimace in a hospital bed and did not imitate anything. He was ill, he had to be treated,” Putin says in the film. According to him, he considered it his duty to help the former boss: “And that's why. If I had doubts that he was guilty of something, I would not lift a finger. But I didn’t just know. I was sure , I knew 100% that he was innocent. "

As a result, Putin, who was then working as the deputy head of the presidential administration, called his boss Valentin Yumashev, the head of the Kremlin administration and Boris Yeltsin's son-in-law. According to Yumashev himself, Putin told him that he was "going to save" Sobchak.

"Putin told me: I cannot tell Boris Nikolayevich this, I understand that he will not let me go and will not support me. Therefore, I inform you. If suddenly some failure happens, I would like you to tell Boris Nikolayevich that I could not do otherwise, I had to do it, "Yumashev recalls. Chubais, commenting on these events, said that Putin and Yumashev "risked their heads."

"I did not plan any mind-blowing career, on the one hand, but on the other, there was the fate of Anatoly Alexandrovich, to whom I considered myself obliged. I thought, of course, that this could hurt me, but I had I wasn't there, "Putin says in the film.

Yumashev said in an interview that he had warned Putin about his resignation in case of failure. "I said: Vladimir Vladimirovich, this is your right, but you understand that if everything suddenly fails, you will not be able to work anywhere else, and I will have to fire you."

Narusova for the first time spoke in detail about Putin's plan to save Sobchak

Sobchak's wife, Senator of the Federation Council Lyudmila Narusova, in an interview with the BBC, said that it was Vladimir Putin who "instructed her how to do everything, how to organize, how to order an ambulance plane" in order to transport her husband to France for treatment. However, it was in the film "The Sobchak Case" that she first described in detail what this plan consisted of.

According to Narusova, in early November, when Anatoly Sobchak was in a St. Petersburg hospital, she, on the phone, which was tapped by the special services, invited guests to allegedly celebrate the 16th birthday of Ksenia Sobchak. She took her husband out of the hospital for the holidays on receipt.

“The most important thing was to warn the French side to be met by an ambulance at the Bourget airport. Of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich helped me a lot, who gave clear instructions. And when I told him that I understood everything, he was embarrassed and said: Lyudmila Borisovna, repeat ", - says Narusova in an interview.

According to Sobchak's wife, she was able to negotiate with the French side through the Air France agency, but it was difficult to go there during surveillance. "Therefore, the plan was this - I go to the Trussardi store, take different dresses from the hangers, go to the fitting room. Then I go out into the courtyard, which is combined with Air France, I go there, ask a certain employee. She gave me the phone, I called, came back in Trussardi, bought some dress, then left the store with a beautiful brand package and got into the car, "Narusova recalls.

According to her, the next day an article appeared in the press stating that "while Sobchak is in intensive care, his lady goes to expensive boutiques and buys clothes." So Narusova realized that the plan had worked.

The GIF clearly shows how the resolution of Pluto images changed from 1930 to 2015

New Horizons may be considered one of the most ambitious NASA missions of recent times. The interplanetary station was launched in January 2006, and a year later it ended up near Jupiter. A gravitational maneuver around the giant planet allowed the device to accelerate, and as a result, in almost 8 years, New Horizons flew to Pluto, covering a distance 32 times greater than from the Earth to the Sun. The distance is really colossal, and information from the transmitting devices of the device arrives very slowly: about 1 kilobyte per second. According to the expectations of NASA specialists, all spectrographic, photographic, isometric data on Pluto and its satellites, which have accumulated on two onboard flash drives, will be transmitted for more than a year (about 470 days).

Its size is larger than expected

New Horizons snapshot with Pluto and its satellite Charon
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI

Due to its atmosphere (albeit quite thin), scientists were unable to establish the exact size of Pluto. Adequate data were obtained only with a sufficient approach to the planet. New Horizons indicated its exact diameter - 2370 km (for comparison: this is less than the distance from Moscow to Omsk). But it turned out to be clearly larger than previously thought. The discovery immediately stirred up supporters of the idea that Pluto should be recognized again as a full-fledged (and not dwarf, as it is now) planet.

Supporters of Pluto's recognition as a dwarf planet, in turn, argued that it is only one of many similar objects in the Kuiper belt (an area similar to the asteroid belt where the material left after the formation of the solar system has accumulated) and not even the largest of them - Eris for that the moment was considered larger. Therefore, it is inappropriate to call it a planet in the full sense of the word, such as, for example, Mercury. But the emerging fact that Pluto is larger than Eris is unlikely to undermine the argumentation and provide an opportunity to appeal the status. Moreover, new dwarf planets are now and then in the Kuiper belt, and some may turn out to be larger than Pluto and Eris. In addition, Eris is still larger in mass than Pluto, since it is much denser.

The true color of its surface

Pluto and Charon, colored with color filters
Photo: NASA / APL / SWRI

Few realized that the photos of Pluto that went viral on social media did not reflect the realistic colors of the planet's landscapes. The colors in the images were specially enhanced with filters to show the difference in surface structure. This helped scientists understand the chemical composition of the ice, as well as estimate the age of geological objects. All of this could further show scientists how space weather affected surface dynamics.

What color is Pluto's surface actually? Back in 2002, when the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of the distant planet, researchers suggested that it was reddish brown. After detectors installed on New Horizons gave more detailed color images, these guesses were confirmed. Possible explanations also emerged: the reddish-brown color was most likely the result of a chemical process between methane molecules in Pluto's atmosphere and certain ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun and distant galaxies. The same phenomenon is observed on Saturn's moon Titan and Neptune's moon Triton.

Strange lack of craters

Pluto relief
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI

Taking a closer look at the first images of the surface, researchers were especially surprised by the absence of craters on Pluto. It is known that most of the planets in the solar system are completely pitted with dents formed as a result of asteroid bombardments. Planets without craters (or with a minimal number of them) - Earth, Venus and Mars - are geologically active, so the resulting craters are covered with more and more layers of rock. Thus, scientists have suggested that the surface of Pluto cannot be older than 100 million years, which is a relatively short period by geological standards (the planet itself formed 4.5 billion years ago).

Possible geological activity

Ice mountains on Pluto's surface
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI

Geological activity must be fed by something. But what could be fueling Pluto? On many planets (including the Earth) there is a slow process of decay of radioactive materials, which provide heat to the interior. But Pluto is too small to contain enough of these materials. Usually small planets with active geology, such as, for example, Jupiter's moon Europa, heat up from the inside due to the phenomenon of tidal acceleration. The planet contracts and unclenches like a tennis ball, now approaching, then moving away from larger objects, because of this, its bowels are heated. But this is unlikely to happen with Pluto, since there are no large planets nearby that can affect it.

Alternative hypotheses suggest that Pluto may have an underground ocean that cools, releasing heat very, very slowly. Also, maybe the surface of the ice found on the planet is a kind of blanket that slows down the rate at which internal heat is lost.

All these questions are of particular interest, since the answers to them can be applied to many other planets.

The nature of the heart on Pluto

One of the funniest images playing around with a heart-shaped spot on Pluto
Photo: dorkly.com

New Horizons cameras made it possible to see a huge heart-shaped spot on Pluto. This romantic detail contributed to the viral spread of the snapshot across the networks. It was found that the heart spot was formed as a result of a powerful collision many millions of years ago. The giant depression is likely filled with frozen gases - nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide.

Also, the researchers were very surprised by the vast mountain ranges of ice. The height of some peaks reaches 3 km, and this is another indication of possible geological activity.

Unusual atmosphere

The New Horizons spectrometer was able to capture nitrogen atoms that were part of Pluto's atmosphere. Moreover, they were at a distance exceeding seven radii of the dwarf planet - this is much further than the calculations show. No other elements could be found, from this it was concluded that Pluto has the cleanest nitrogen atmosphere of all the planets of the solar system.

The study of particles also led to the conclusion that their "escape" from the atmosphere is faster than expected. The outflow of part of the atmosphere was known earlier, the same process took place with the Earth billions of years ago. It is believed that getting rid of excess nitrogen contributed to the development of life on our planet.

Satellites

Photo of Charon, Pluto's largest moon
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI

During the New Horizons flyby, data and detailed images of Pluto's five moons were collected, including Charon, the largest of them. Before that, objects were only dim points of light.

Charon, considered a faceless ball of ice, turned out to be a whole world with rocks, depressions, deep crevices (one of them is deeper than the Grand Canyon). Although the satellite has craters, there are also fewer than expected, which means there is also a chance of geological activity. The satellite has a large mysterious dark spot, which the researchers considered a complete surprise. This is probably a crater formed a long time ago, and for a long time it could be filled with gases.

Snapshot of Nikta and Hydra
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI

Curious details have become known about Nikta and Hydra - two more of the five satellites. Nikta, resembling a fruit gum 42 by 36 km in size, has a mysterious red spot (supposedly a crater), and Hydra is shaped like a giant gray mitten 55 by 40 km. Photos of the other two satellites, Kerber and Styx, will be received only by mid-October.

Today we turn to what has changed in our ideas about the only (permanent) natural satellite of the Earth since the dawn of the cosmic era.

Four decades after man first landed on the moon, a whole bunch of things happened! Several programs and means of transportation have changed, international missions plow the vastness of space, and unmanned vehicles are studying the solar system. Over the past 20 years, NASA has not paid much attention to the moon, but with the help of the Lunar Orbital Probe (LRO) over the past ten years we have collected a lot of information about it.

Over the years of observation, we have found that the Moon is not such a cold dead world as it seemed to us when the Apollo astronauts left footprints on it from 1969 to 1972. The moon is not the same! Here are some great things we've learned.

Five years ago, studying footage from the LRO (Lunar Orbiting Probe) Narrow-Angle Camera, scientists discovered 14 cliffs across the entire surface, similar to the seventy that were in the Apollo images. These "blade-like ledges" have led scientists to believe that the moon is shrinking as it cools. Thousands of such scarps have been discovered over the past few years, and their location suggests that they form in response to Earth's tidal pull.

It turns out that the lunar surface is dotted with more than two hundred pits 900 meters (984 yards) in diameter. The first three were detected by the Japanese Kaguya apparatus, the rest were calculated using a computer algorithm from LRO images. How they formed is unclear, possibly from lava outcrops. Perhaps future researchers could use this to protect against radiation and micrometeorites.

Here's what we've learned over the decades about how the Moon came to be: A huge celestial body (about the size of Mars) crashed into our planet. Obviously, debris flew into space because of this. As a result of the collisions of these debris, the Moon was formed. Last year, scientists were able to tentatively mark the trail of the striking body, sometimes called Theia, inside the moon rocks. It turned out that the content of oxygen isotopes in samples collected at three Apollo bases is significantly different from that on Earth.

Craters dot the entire solar system, but what is remarkable is that the frequency of their appearance on the surface of planets is not the same, depending on where you are. Sometimes stones are burnt in the atmosphere. Sometimes this position of an object (say, the center or periphery of the solar system) affects how frequent meteor showers are. One of the objectives of the LRO is to predict the frequency of craters on the lunar surface.

It turned out that the Moon is not such a deadly dry place, there is some water ice there. It is not enough - even less than in the desert - but it is there. The main question is whether it will be enough to provide a lunar colony. Earlier this year, the LRO discovered that hydrogen, a trait of water, is more prevalent in the study region, which was the southern hemisphere, on the slopes facing the pole. The maps he compiled will be key in the selection of sites for future human settlements.

On tests in Daytona, United Autosports crew number 23, which included Alonso along with Lando Norris and Phil Hanson, regularly took positions at the rear of the prototype classification.

According to the preliminary qualification results, the crew became 12th and the best among those who compete in the Ligier. But there are only three of them - the Alonso crew, the second car from United Autosports and another one announced by AFS / PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. The main competitors of Ligier in the LMP2 class - customers of the ORECA designer - were several tenths faster in the course of tests and qualifications.

When it comes to Daytona's DPi prototypes - Nissan, Mazda, Acura or Cadillac - they were out of reach for Alonso's crew in sheer speed.

2. So the Ligier is a complete failure?

It is still impossible to speak so categorically. For United Autosports, a lot of these tests were new, and the Ligier JS P217 is a new prototype that made its debut just last year. United Autosports played in Daytona for a long time - the previous time was already in 2011. Therefore, it is not surprising that on tests the team was engaged in tests. The fact that the prototype is far from the ideal configuration is evidenced by the fact that already in the second test session the team tested a new aerodynamic package.

The team needed to understand not only the operation of the equipment, but also the Continental tires - in the past, United Autosports played mainly at Dunlop.

And one more thing - perhaps the Ligier still seems a little slower than everyone else due to the fact that the tracks with long straight lines and low downforce levels usually did not fit the JS P217.

3. What does Alonso himself think about this?

Alonso reacted with restraint to the modest results, although he himself noted that the car lacks speed. He announced this after preliminary qualification.

For three days of tests, Fernando drove 64 laps and after the races admitted to reporters that this was not enough for him.

4.What will Alonso face in the race?

The 24 Hours of Daytona marathon will be the first endurance race of his career for the Spaniard. Perhaps the main and key technique that he will have to master is working in traffic and endless overtaking roundabouts. The importance of traffic was already discussed when Alonso was preparing for the Indy 500, but traffic in endurance races and traffic on the super-speed oval IndyCar are two completely different things. You will have to learn again.

A certain difficulty for Fernando will be aerobatics at dusk and at night. In Daytona, of course, there are no completely dark areas, as in Le Mans, but the lighting there is still not the same as in the Formula 1 night races.

Another factor will be the ability to work in a team - Alonso did not have to share the team with other riders before. He used to rely only on himself, and now he has to adapt to an important aspect of endurance racing - trust in his crewmates. Tests alone are clearly not enough for this.

5. Do you have a chance to win?

Based on the test results, it is too early to draw such conclusions. Alonso said that if there was an opportunity to win, he would definitely grab it. In endurance racing, such an opportunity may appear even at the very last minute, but in the case of United Autosports, especially given the modest experience of the crew, there is not much chance.

But for Alonso, winning at Daytona is not the goal. The main task for him is to understand as best as possible in this category of races, complete the daily marathon and prepare for Le Mans. Fernando noted that if "Daytona" is successful, then his next goal will be "24 hours" on the Sarte ring. And there the tasks will definitely be the highest.

WikiLeaks first published documents related to the activities of the Russian authorities. The organization claims that the St. Petersburg-based company, founded in 1992, cooperates with the Russian special services, transferring collected data from Russian subscribers to them. The company rejected this information. The publication may reveal new details about the surveillance system for Russians, experts say. And the American press admits that the publication could have been coordinated with the FSB.

"Unique tracking agent"

The Italian edition Repubblica, in cooperation with which WikiLeaks published materials, writes that the time allocated to them before publication was not enough to sort out all the "extremely technical documents."

The published data set is the first part of future publications under the general title "Russian Spy Files", writes WikiLeaks. The organization claims that the Russian company Peter Service is working with Russian intelligence agencies to help them track Russian subscribers and Internet users. By supplying software to telecommunications companies, Peter Service installs systems on their networks that collect data on user activity, writes WikiLeaks.

Product deployment diagram on the operator's side

The organization calls Peter Service a "unique tracking agent" that can provide government agencies with recordings of telephone conversations and messages, device identifier numbers (IMEI, MAC addresses), IP addresses, information about cell towers and other data. Repubblica notes that the published documents cover the period from 2007 to 2015, but they do not mention specific intelligence agencies with which the company may work.

WikiLeaks reminds that, by law, operators must store user metadata for three years (the very fact of actions, but not the content of calls and messages). Starting from 2018, when the Yarovaya package comes into force, operators will have to store Internet traffic, records of calls and any user messages for six months, and also transfer this data to special services upon request.

"Total surveillance"

WikiLeaks claims Peter Service can handle up to 500 million connections per day. The search time for a record in the database is on average 10 seconds, and government agencies get access to the stored information using the 538 protocol adapter - its description is also among the published documents.

WikiLeaks writes that thanks to the Traffic Data Mart (TDM) tool, you can find out which sites a user visited, how much time he spent on a page and through what device he did it. The tool also maintains a list of sites by categories of interest to the state: banned sites and blogs, email, sites selling weapons and drugs, portals with terrorist or "aggressive" content. All this allows you to create a report on a specific device for a certain period of time, writes WikiLeaks.

Among the published documents by Peter Service is a 2013 presentation that came out months after Edward Snowden spoke about the NSA's massive surveillance program and its collaboration with private American corporations such as Google and Facebook.

Addressed to the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the "three branches of government", the presentation invites "interested parties to join an alliance to create equivalent data mining operations in Russia," WikiLeaks notes.

Peter Service has denied all accusations of surveillance and cooperation with the secret services. The company said that they work in strict accordance with the laws of the countries where they have clients. “Privacy is one of the tenets of our work. The company's employees do not have access to subscriber data, especially since the company has never passed information about the subscribers of our clients to the special services of any country, ”RIA Novosti quotes a message from the company's press service.

What's New WikiLeaks Told

The main value of the Wikileaks publication is that it provides an opportunity to start a conversation about the Russian surveillance system at the international level, says Andrei Soldatov, editor-in-chief of Agentura.ru, a researcher of the Russian special services. According to him, there are few new facts in the publication.

“There are several technical details regarding the data exchange protocol from wiretapping that were not widely known before. A few more things explain the psychology of engineers, ”Soldatov explained.

Peter Service has been known internationally since 2013 thanks to the work of the international project SpyFiles. Within the framework of it, several organizations compiled a register of companies that produce surveillance equipment, which then ends up in countries with authoritarian regimes, Soldatov said.

To surprise everyone, WikiLeaks has to publish a "leak of another level," he continues. “There are two sides to the Russian surveillance system: one piece of equipment is installed by providers and is produced by commercial companies - a lot is known about it. The second is installed in the premises of the special services, from where a cable is then inserted, which connects the two parts together. The leak is needed from the special services, ”Soldatov explains. At the same time, WikiLeaks was repeatedly accused of not publishing any information emanating from Russian government agencies, he recalls.

Relationship between WikiLeaks and the Kremlin

WikiLeaks has been repeatedly accused of sympathizing with the Russian government. So, before the US presidential elections in 2016, Foreign Policy wrote, citing sources, that WikiLeaks published compromising evidence on Hillary Clinton received from pro-Kremlin hackers, but refused to publish documents that were “inconvenient” for the Russian government. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, in an interview with Repubblica, explained this by the lack of Russian-speaking specialists.

In addition, WikiLeaks criticized the Panama Archives. "OCCRP can do a great job, but US government funding for an attack on Putin in the # Panamanian archives undermines their integrity," the organization wrote.

The US OCCRP can do good work, but for the US govt to directly fund the