Today we will talk about one fashionable Italian phenomenon, namely the habit of going out for an aperitif. It is believed that "aperitifs" are the most stylish, sociable and monetary stratum of society.
It's also a secret way to have a very cheap dinner ...
But let's talk about everything in order: first, let's figure out what an aperitif is in general, and then - what it is specifically in Italy. Let's start? 🙂
WOW! THAT IS AN APERITIVE!
First, I suggest looking at the pictures. If you have already read the article about, then now - do not fall off your chair - you will understand when they actually eat in Italy. 🙂 I could download and upload such photos from Italian Google, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
An aperitif, in short, is the custom of consuming something low in alcohol that stimulates the secretion of gastric juice before a meal. To make the aperitif more "festive", many bars in Italy ask you to pay for the drink, and the snacks are offered free of charge. Historically, the word "aperitif" is inextricably linked with the concept of "happy hour", or "happy hour", and here's why. This English expression refers to the period of time when bars and other establishments offer discounts on alcoholic beverages and light snacks. This sales promotion practice originated in Anglo-Saxon countries to attract customers to pubs after they left work: they were offered drinks at discounted prices for one or two hours in the afternoon, usually from five to seven in the evening.
But "happy hours" came under heavy press criticism, as they generally encouraged British youth to drink more. Bottom line: in May 2005, the British Beer and Pub Association ( British Beer and Pub Association), which brings together 32,000 drinking establishments throughout the UK, announced that all of its members are abandoning such promotions. In Italy, happy hours can start at five in the evening and sometimes last up to 20-21 hours. In nightclubs, discounts on food and drinks are practiced in the first few hours.
HOW THE APERITIVE APPEARED IN ITALY
The tradition of "skipping a glass before meals" dates back to the late 1800s due to the fashion of spending leisure time in cafes, which was primarily popular with the idle public in cities such as Turin, Genoa, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples and Milan. The Italian aperitif was born in Turin thanks to Antonio Benedetto Carpano, who invented vermouth in 1786 (this is a white wine infused with more than thirty herbs and spices). Since then, vermouth began to be consumed throughout Europe, and they know it primarily thanks to two Italian brands: Cinzano and Martini. They are consumed both undiluted and as a base for cocktails such as Negroni or Manhattan.
Interestingly, the vermouth called Gancia became the official aperitif of the royal house (remember, until 1946, the Savoy dynasty ruled in Italy). This drink was also used for the official propaganda of the unification of the country - this is how the aperitif "Garibaldi" from the Gancia brand appeared.
In general, the very first inventors of the aperitif were the ancient Romans - they liked to wet their throats with a drink called mulsum from wine and honey.
APERITIVE TODAY
And yet, in Italy, going out with friends for an aperitif is, first of all, a fashionable habit. This is a reason to appear in public, chat with friends, demonstrate a new handbag or shoes, meet a boyfriend / girlfriend, 
just kill time after work, school or endless fitness shopping beautician. Then, being already tipsy, you can go to another restaurant - for dinner, and from there move to a nightclub. Or you can say goodbye to the company and go home. The aperitif is attended both with children in strollers and married couples. But still, more often it is entertainment for unencumbered families who have money and free time.
In the late nineties, fashionable bars appeared in every, even the smallest town in Italy, where they came for an aperitif - they were distinguished by a chic setting, a rich set of snacks, in some even face control was introduced. It was the peak of aperitif fashion, which became a habit for the rich. Today they are watching an aperitif 
already from a different angle: if you eat well the sandwiches that come with the cocktail, you can skip dinner. A glass of booze costs four to eight Euros. An appetizer can be brought directly to your table, or the dishes are displayed on the counter at the entrance to the bar and visitors take whatever they like - in this case, the aperitif can be enjoyed both standing and sitting at the table. The most popular aperitifs in Italy today are a cocktail called Spritz, beer, wine - white or red, regular or sparkling.
You can often see how different establishments work on the same street opposite each other, each receiving its own audience. In one there are young people with beer and sandwiches, in the other 50-year-olds, savoring ten-year-old wine. It happens that after going through, the aperitifs arrange a scuffle, then they call the police - these are the costs of alcohol consumption. Another argument of those who do not like an aperitif sounds like this: "You eat free chips with nuts before dinner, then normal food does not fit." And nutritionists say: a small amount of alcohol drunk before meals really stimulates the production of gastric juices and increases appetite. If you go too much with wine, then the number of calories that you have to digest with food will double.
SYRINGE RECIPE
And yet, sometimes it is very pleasant to take a glass of low-alcohol drink on your chest. For example, after finishing writing an article for the site and looking at the setting sun. 🙂
I'll tell you how my favorite cocktail is prepared, which is now drunk not only in Italy, but also in Salzburg, Vienna, Munich - the fashion has already spread there. The recipe was given by the bartender of the city when I was there for an internship and comprehensively studied the Friuli Venezia Giulia region.
So, we take white wine, better the Italian "TOKAI", and dilute it with lightly carbonated water in a proportion of 50x50. Pour in a little vermouth "APEROL" (it is orange and will give the drink a cheerful, carefree shade). We put an orange slice on the side of the glass. Ice can be added. Ready!
I hope you will like it. As one friend of mine says: "You don't get drunk with this drink, an air cushion appears between me and the ground ..."
The planet was once considered flat, and it seemed like a completely obvious fact. Today we also look at the "shape" of the Universe as a whole.
WMAP probe looks into space
In the case of the Universe, "plane" implies the seemingly obvious fact that light and radiation propagate in it in a strictly rectilinear manner. Of course, the presence of matter and energy makes its own adjustments, creating distortions in the space-time continuum. Still, in a flat Universe, strictly parallel beams of light never intersect, in full accordance with the planimetric axiom.
If the universe is curved along a positive curve (like a huge sphere), the parallel lines in it should eventually come together. In the opposite case - if the Universe resembles a giant "saddle" - the parallel lines will gradually diverge.
The question of the plane of the Universe was studied, in particular, by the space test WMAP, about the main achievements of which we wrote in the article "Mission: in progress". Having collected with its help data on the distribution of matter and dark energy in the young Universe, scientists analyzed them and came to an almost unanimous conclusion that it is still flat. Note - almost unanimous. For example, this view of things was recently challenged by a group of Oxford physicists led by Joseph Silk, who showed that the WMAP results could well have been misinterpreted.
When astronomers and physicists say that the universe is flat, they do not mean that the universe is flat, like a sheet. We are talking about the property of three-dimensional flatness - Euclidean (non-curved) geometry in three dimensions. In astronomy, the Euclidean world is a convenient comparative model of the surrounding space. Matter in such a world is distributed uniformly, that is, a unit of volume contains the same amount of matter, and isotropic, that is, the distribution of matter is the same in all directions. In addition, matter does not evolve there (for example, radio sources do not light up and supernovae do not flash), and space is described by the simplest geometry. It is a very convenient world to describe, but not to live in, since there is no evolution there.
It is clear that such a model does not correspond to observational facts. The matter around us is distributed non-uniformly and anisotropically (somewhere there are stars and galaxies, but somewhere they are not), clusters of matter evolve (change over time), and space, as we know from the experimentally confirmed theory of relativity, is curved.
What is curvature in 3D space? In the Euclidean world, the sum of the angles of any triangle is 180 degrees - in all directions and in any volume. In non-Euclidean geometry - in curved space - the sum of the angles of a triangle will depend on the curvature. Two classic examples are a triangle on a sphere, where the curvature is positive, and a triangle on a saddle surface, where the curvature is negative. In the first case, the sum of the angles of the triangle is more than 180 degrees, and in the second case, it is less. When we usually talk about a sphere or a saddle, we think of curved two-dimensional surfaces that surround three-dimensional bodies. When we talk about the Universe, we must understand that we are moving on to ideas about a three-dimensional curved space - for example, we are no longer talking about a two-dimensional spherical surface, but about a three-dimensional hypersphere.
So why is the Universe flat in a three-dimensional sense, if space is curved not only by clusters of galaxies, our Galaxy and the Sun, but even by the Earth? In cosmology, the Universe is viewed as a whole object. And as a whole object, it has certain properties. For example, starting from some very large linear scales (here 60 megaparsecs [~ 180 million light years] and 150 Mpc can be considered), matter in the Universe is distributed uniformly and isotropically. On a smaller scale, clusters and superclusters of galaxies and voids between them are observed, that is, the homogeneity is broken.
How can the flatness of the universe as a whole be measured if information about the distribution of matter in clusters is limited by the sensitivity of our telescopes? It is necessary to observe other objects in a different range. The best that nature has given us is the cosmic microwave background, or, which, having separated from matter 380 thousand years after the Big Bang, contains information about the distribution of this matter literally from the first moments of the existence of the Universe.
The curvature of the universe is associated with a critical density equal to 3H 2 / 8πG (where H is the Hubble constant, G is the gravitational constant), which determines its shape. The value of the parameter is very small - about 9.3 × 10 -27 kg / m 3, or 5.5 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. This parameter distinguishes the simplest cosmological models based on the Friedmann equations, which describe: if the density is higher than the critical one, then the space has a positive curvature and the expansion of the Universe in the future will be replaced by contraction; if it is lower than the critical one, then the space has negative curvature and the expansion will be eternal; if the critical density is equal, the expansion will also be eternal with the transition in the distant future to the Euclidean world.
The cosmological parameters describing the density of the Universe (and the main ones are the density of dark energy, the density of dark matter and the density of baryonic [visible] matter) are expressed as a ratio to the critical density. According to the measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the relative density of dark energy is Ω Λ = 0.6879 ± 0.0087, and the relative density of all matter (that is, the sum of the density of dark and visible matter) is Ω m = 0.3121 ± 0.0087.
If we add up all the energy components of the Universe (the density of dark energy, all matter, as well as less significant in our era, the density of radiation and neutrinos and others), then we get the density of all energy, which is expressed in terms of the ratio to the critical density of the Universe and denote Ω 0. If this relative density is 1, then the curvature of the Universe is 0. The deviation of Ω 0 from unity describes the energy density of the Universe Ω K associated with the curvature. By measuring the level of inhomogeneities (fluctuations) in the distribution of the relic background radiation, all density parameters, their total value and, as a consequence, the curvature parameter of the Universe are determined.
Based on the results of observations, taking into account only the CMB data (temperature, polarization and lensing), it was determined that the curvature parameter is very close to zero within small errors: Ω K = -0.004 ± 0.015, - and taking into account the data on the distribution of galaxy clusters and measurements expansion rate according to data on type Ia supernovae parameter Ω K = 0.0008 ± 0.0040. That is, the universe is flat with high precision.
Why is it important? The flatness of the Universe is one of the main indicators of the era of the very fast, described by the inflationary model. For example, at the moment of birth, the Universe could have a very large curvature, while now, according to the CMB data, it is known that it is flat. Inflationary expansion makes it flat in all observable space (meaning, of course, large scales on which the curvature of space by stars and galaxies is not significant) in the same way as an increase in the radius of a circle straightens the latter, and with an infinite radius the circle looks like a straight line.
Ecology of life. Science and discovery: Humans have been debating why the universe exists for thousands of years. In almost every ancient culture, people came up with their own ...
Some physicists believe they can explain how our universe was formed. If they turn out to be right, then our space could arise from nothing.
People have been arguing about why the universe exists for thousands of years. In almost every ancient culture, people came up with their own theory of the creation of the world - most of them included a divine plan - and philosophers have written many volumes about this. But science can tell about the creation of the Universe not so much.
Recently, however, some physicists and cosmologists have begun to discuss this matter. They note that now we know quite well the history of the Universe and the laws of physics that explain how it works. Scientists believe that this information will allow us to understand how and why the cosmos exists.
In their opinion, the Universe, from the Big Bang to our multi-star cosmos, which exists today, arose out of nothing. This had to happen, scientists say, because "nothing" is actually internally unstable.
This idea may seem odd or downright fabulous. But physicists claim that it originates from two of the most powerful and successful theories: quantum physics and general relativity.
So how could everything arise out of nothing?
Particles from empty space
First, we need to turn to the field of quantum physics. This is the area of physics that studies very small particles: atoms and even smaller objects. Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory, and it has become the foundation for the emergence of most modern electronic gadgets.
Quantum physics tells us that empty space does not exist at all. Even the most ideal vacuum is filled with a swaying cloud of particles and antiparticles that emerge from nothing and then turn into nothing. These so-called "virtual particles" exist for a short time and therefore we cannot see them. However, we know that they are because of the effects they cause.
To space and time from the absence of space and time
Let's now move our gaze from the smallest objects, such as atoms, to very large things, such as galaxies. Our best theory for explaining such big things is general relativity, the main achievement of Albert Einstein. This theory explains how space, time and gravity are interconnected.
General relativity is very different from quantum physics, and until now, no one has been able to put them into a single puzzle. However, some theorists have succeeded, using carefully chosen similarities, to bring these two theories closer to each other in specific problems. For example, this approach was used by Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge when he described black holes.
Physicists have discovered that when quantum theory is applied to space on a small scale, space becomes unstable. Space and time, instead of remaining smooth and continuous, begin to seethe and foam, taking the form of bursting bubbles.
In other words, small bubbles of time and space can form spontaneously. “In the quantum world, time and space are unstable,” says astrophysicist Lawrence Maxwell Krauss of Arizona State University. "So you can shape virtual space-time the same way you shape virtual particles."
Moreover, if these bubbles can occur, you can be sure that they will occur. “In quantum physics, if something is not prohibited, it will definitely happen with a certain degree of probability,” says Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Bubble universe
So, not only particles and antiparticles can arise from nothing and turn into nothing: the bubbles of space-time can do the same. However, there is a large gap between the infinitesimal space-time bubble and the huge Universe, consisting of more than 100 billion galaxies. Indeed, why doesn't the bubble that just appeared disappear in the blink of an eye?
And it turns out there is a way to make the bubble survive. This requires another trick, which is called cosmic inflation.
Most modern physicists believe that the universe began with a Big Bang. At first, all matter and energy in space was compressed into an incredibly small point, which then began to expand rapidly. Scientists learned that our Universe is expanding in the XX century. They saw that all the galaxies are flying apart, which means that at one time they were located close to each other.
According to the inflationary model of the Universe, immediately after the Big Bang, the Universe expanded much faster than it does today. This outlandish theory emerged in the 1980s, thanks to Alan Guth of MIT, and was refined by Soviet physicist Andrei Linde, now at Stanford University.
The idea behind the inflationary model of the Universe is that immediately after the Big Bang, a small bubble of space expanded at a colossal rate. In an incredibly short time, from a point smaller in size than the nucleus of an atom, it reached the volume of a grain of sand. When the expansion eventually slowed down, the force that caused it was transformed into matter and energy that pervades the universe today.
Despite its seeming strangeness, the inflationary model of the universe fits well with the facts. In particular, it explains why the CMB - the cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang - is evenly distributed in the sky. If the Universe was not expanding so fast, then, most likely, the radiation would be more chaotically distributed than we see today.
The Universe Is Flat, And Why This Fact Matters
Inflation also helps cosmologists determine the geometry of our universe. It turned out that knowledge of geometry is necessary to understand how the cosmos could arise from nothing.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity says that the spacetime we live in can take three different forms. It can be as flat as the surface of a table. It can be curved, like the area of a sphere, and therefore, if you started moving from a certain point, then you will definitely return to it. Finally, it can be turned outward like a saddle. So what form of spacetime are we living in?
This can be explained as follows. You may remember from school math lessons that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. This is only true when the triangle is in flat space. If you draw a triangle on the surface of a balloon, the sum of the three angles is greater than 180 degrees. If you draw a triangle on a saddle-like surface, the sum of the three angles is less than 180 degrees.
In order to understand that our universe is flat, we need to measure the angles of the giant triangle. And this is where the inflationary model of the universe comes into play. It determines the average sizes of hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background. These spots were measured in 2003, and astronomers were able to use them as analogs of the triangle. As a result, we know that the largest scales available to our observations in our Universe are flat.
Thus, it turned out that a flat universe is a necessity. This is because only a flat universe could have formed out of nothing.
Everything that exists in the Universe - from stars and galaxies to the light they cause - had to come from something. We already know that particles arise at the quantum level, and so we might expect that there are some little things in the universe. But it takes a huge amount of energy to form all these stars and planets.
But where did the universe get all this energy from? It sounds, of course, strange, but the energy did not have to come from somewhere. The fact is that every object in our Universe has gravity and attracts other objects to itself. And this balances the energy needed to create the first matter.
It looks a bit like an old scale. You can put an object as heavy as you like on one pan of the balance, and the balance will be in balance if there is an object of the same mass at the other end. In the case of the Universe, matter is located at one end, and gravity "balances" it.
Physicists have calculated that in a flat universe, the energy of matter is exactly equal to the energy of gravity that this matter creates. But this only works for a flat universe. If the universe were curved, there would be no balance.
Universe or multiverse?
Now, "preparing" the universe looks pretty straightforward. Quantum physics tells us that "nothing" is unstable, and therefore the transition from "nothing" to "something" should be practically inevitable. Further, thanks to inflation, a massive, dense universe can form from a small space-time bubble. As Krauss wrote, "The laws of physics, as we understand them today, assume that our Universe was formed from nothing - there was no time, no space, no particles, nothing we knew about."
But why, then, the universe was formed only once? If one bubble has inflated to the size of our Universe, why can't other bubbles do it?
Linde offers a simple yet psychedelic answer. He believes that the universes have arisen and are arising continuously, and this process will continue forever.
When the inflation of the universe ends, Linde believes, it still continues to surround the space in which inflation exists. It causes the emergence of even more universes, and even more space is formed around them, in which inflation occurs. Once inflation has started and it will continue indefinitely. Linde called it eternal inflation. Our universe may be just a grain of sand on an endless sandy beach.
Other universes may be very different from ours. The neighboring universe may have five spatial dimensions, while ours has only three - length, width and height. The force of gravity in it can be 10 times stronger or 1000 times weaker. Or there may be no gravity at all. Matter can be composed of completely different particles.
Thus, a variety of Universes that do not fit in our consciousness can exist. Linde believes that eternal inflation is not just a "completely free lunch", but it is also the only lunch where all possible dishes are available. published by
Translation: Ekaterina Shutova
The world science is faced with a number of questions, the exact answers to which it, apparently, will never receive. The age of the universe is one of those. Until a year, day, month, minute, it will probably never be possible to calculate. Though...
At one time, it seemed that narrowing the estimated age to 12-15 billion years was a great achievement.
And now NASA is proud to announce: the age of the Universe is set with an error of “only” 0.2 billion years. And this age is equal to 13.7 billion years.
In addition, it was possible to find out that the first stars began to form much earlier than expected.
How was this established?
It turns out, with the help of one single apparatus, appearing under the name of MAP - Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Probe of microwave anisotropy).
It was recently renamed the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in honor of David Wilkinson, an astrophysicist of Princeton University who died in 2002.
The late Professor David Wilkinson, after whom the WMAP probe was named.
This probe, located at a distance of about 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, recorded the parameters of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) throughout the sky for a whole year.
Ten years ago, another similar apparatus, the Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE), first made a spherical CMB survey.
COBE has discovered microscopic temperature fluctuations in the microwave background that correspond to changes in the density of matter in the young universe.
MAP, equipped with much more sophisticated equipment, peered into the depths of space for a year, and received an image with a resolution of 35 times better than its predecessor.
The cosmic microwave background is the relic radiation left over after the Big Bang. These are, relatively speaking, photons left after a burst of light radiation that occurred as a result of an explosion, and cooled down over billions of years to a microwave state. In other words, it is the oldest light in the Universe.
Membrana already wrote that in the fall of 2002, the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer radio telescope, located at the South Pole, found that the cosmic background microwave radiation was polarized.
Star map showing temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
Polarization in space has been one of the key predictions of standard cosmological theory. According to her, the young universe was filled with photons, which constantly collided with protons and electrons.
As a result of the collisions, the light became polarized, and this imprint remained even after the charged particles formed the first neutral hydrogen atoms.
It was expected that this discovery will help explain exactly how the universe expanded in a fraction of a second and how the first stars were formed, as well as find out the ratio of "ordinary" and "dark" types of matter and dark energy.
The amount of dark matter and energy in the universe plays a key role in determining the shape of the cosmos - more precisely, its geometry.
Scientists proceed from the assumption that if the value of the density of matter and energy in the Universe is less than the critical value, then the cosmos is open and concave like a saddle.
If the value of the density of matter and energy coincides with the critical value, then the cosmos is flat, like a sheet of paper. If the true density is higher than what is considered critical in theory, then the cosmos should be closed and spherical. In this case, the light will always return to its original source.
Diagram showing the ratio of the forms of matter in the Universe.
The theory of expansion - a kind of consequence of the Big Bang theory - predicts that the density of matter and matter in the Universe is as close to critical as possible, which means that the Universe is flat.
The readings from the MAP probe confirmed this.
Another extremely interesting circumstance was also found out: it turns out that the first stars began to appear in the Universe very quickly - just 200 million years after the Big Bang itself.
In 2002, scientists conducted a computer simulation of the formation of the most ancient stars, in which metals and other "heavy" elements were completely absent. Those were formed as a result of explosions of old stars, the residual matter of which fell on the surface of other stars and in the process of thermonuclear fusion formed heavier compounds.
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