Here comes Christmas. And again there is a crisis. But different. Back then, our houses were hardly heated, salaries were paid occasionally, food was not bought, but obtained. Some had already left, but all close friends were alive. I won’t say that “we were young,” but the continuation of this cliché corresponds to the reality of that time - we “were full of hope.” In many ways, these hopes were justified - all that remains is to get used to the fact that not everyone is.

Lev Klein We publish an article by our permanent author, the famous Russian archaeologist, historian Lev Samuilovich Klein , dedicated to the ongoing scientific dispute about what role the Varangians played in the development of the Russian state. One of my books, written almost half a century ago, is published for the first time now. This rarely happens with scientific books, in archeology - especially. After all, in it sources double for every 30 years. But not outdated!

We present to your attention a selection of scientific and near -scientific New Year's news In every house - faster than the speed of light Scientists calculated that due to the time difference in different parts of the Earth, Santa Claus has 31 hours to visit at least 100 million families. Thus, he must look at 896 houses every second! To do this, he needs to move at a speed of 1655 kilometers per second, which is 5000 times higher than the sound speed.

Comments by Yegor Zadereev on the Time magazine rating It should be noted that most of the results included in the ranking of the main scientific events of the year are the work of American scientists. I’ll try to comment on this top ten from the point of view of a “boring scientist”. Number one. The Large Hadron Collider. I wouldn’t rush here: the collider, roughly speaking, “flew” at launch - let’s wait until next year, and then we’ll put it in the ratings.

Sociologist Denis Volkov talks about the results of the latest Levada Center study on the question of what the reading preferences of Russians are. Judging by the results of a survey conducted by our center in September 2008, almost half of Russians (46%) today do not read books, about two-fifths (37%) do not read newspapers, and more than half (56%) never read magazines.

We publish an article by a researcher at the Physical Institute. P.N. Lebedeva RAS, one of the organizers of the interdisciplinary site Scientific.ru Evgeny Onishchenko, who continues his journey through the country of state lots in the field of science and education. This time the author’s attention was attracted by the “country of Forsythia”.

Mountains, plains and bucks The Baksan neutrinum observatory of the Institute of Nuclear Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a unique research object located in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), in the mountains of the North Caucasus, about 30 km from the Elbrus Mountain, to which the epithet “The highest point of Europe” is never forgotten.

Alexander Grosberg , Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Faculty of Physics and the Center for Research in the Liquid State of Matter at New York University, on the eve of T.M. Birshtein’s anniversary , wrote the following about her: Science is, by nature, a joyful business. It’s hard to compare with anything the feeling you experience every time you understand something new that you didn’t understand before.

We continue to present to readers of the TRV leading Russian scientific and popular publications and those who make them. The general director of the magazine “Knowledge-Power” (www.znanie-sila.ru) Igor Kharichev answers the questions. - What is the path of a journalist and scientist to scientific popularization, according to your observations, is the most typical? How did you come to scientific popularization? - I think that a universal answer to this question does not exist.

“Planetary nebula” is a term, which is essentially erroneous, but that has taken root, meaning a cloud of gas and dust around a burned star. Some of them have the shape of rings, so they once decided that these are born planetary systems. It turned out the other way around - dying stars.

Since in the last issue we took apart the appearance of men, today it’s the turn to analyze the weaker sex. It has long been believed that human females do not have any obvious external signs of ovulation, unlike, for example, female chimpanzees and baboons. This circumstance was even logically explained: they say, constant external sexual readiness can maintain monogamy, guarantee the guardianship of children by the father, and so on.

The famous popular science magazine “In the World of Science” received the “Cover of the Year” award in the nomination “Entertainment and Cognitive Edition”. You can argue about whether entertaining and cognitive publications should be combined together, but, be that as it may, it is nice that the popular science magazine was able to get ahead of many more entertaining levels.

On the eve of the New Year, the team of the authors of the Trinity Option together participated in the corresponding holidays. Namely - as far as possible, he answered any of the three, simple in appearance of questions: 1. What was remembered in 2008? 2. What are you waiting for from 2009? 3. Do you have a new year related to some funny story? And this is what happened as a result.

We continue to present to readers of the TRV leading Russian scientific and popular publications and those who make them. The questions are answered by the general director of the magazine “Knowledge-Power” (www.znanie-sila.ru) Igor Kharichev. - What is the path of a journalist and scientist to scientific popularization, according to your observations, is the most typical? How did you come to scientific popularization? - I think that a universal answer to this question does not exist.

In addition to publishing a list of 10 best news of the year, 10 best photographs of the year, 10 of the most important breakthroughs in medicine, the 10 best statements of politicians, etc. In addition to publishing the 10 most important scientific discoveries of 2008, This top list included the following events. 1. Launch of a large adrone collider On September 10, 2008, the first launch of the world's largest accelerator of elementary particles took place.