2021
December
23
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 23, 2021
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

The future of the universe depends on proving Albert Einstein wrong – or at least our understanding of it does, it seems. 

Last week, the scientific journal Physical Review X released the most stringent test yet of Einstein’s theory of general relativity (think E=mc2). It involved seeing how the gravity of two pulsars – superdense star remnants more massive than the sun but only about 15 miles wide – warped space-time around them, slowing time and bending light. (Spoiler: Everything did exactly what Einstein predicted it would.)

Why, you may ask, are scientists still testing general relativity 106 years after Einstein posited it, especially considering it has passed every single test? The problem is, Einstein’s theory explains how matter behaves on the largest gravitational scales – around black holes and pulsars, for example. But it is completely incompatible with the science that explains how matter behaves on the smallest, quantum scales. You can’t have two contradictory laws to the universe, can you?

That is where we currently are, so in the quest to find a “law of everything,” scientists are training their fire on Einstein. “Finding any deviation from general relativity would constitute a major discovery that would open a window on new physics beyond our current theoretical understanding of the universe,” one of the study’s authors said in a statement. “And it may help us toward eventually discovering a unified theory of the fundamental forces of nature.”  

The lesson from the latest study: Don’t expect Einstein to give up the fight easily.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Brittainy Newman/AP
New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams speaks during a news conference at the Queensbridge houses in Long Island City in Queens, on Dec. 15, 2021. The former police officer and state senator takes office on Jan. 1.

Like many cities, New York is facing serious challenges, from rising crime to stressed businesses and schools. Its new mayor’s answer: build a broad coalition that’s more pragmatic than ideological.

Negotiations on a nuclear deal have done little to mask the sense that the U.S. and Iran are on a collision course. After posturing and threats, diplomacy could benefit from some restoration of trust. 

Finding Resilience

Ann Hermes/Staff
Ciere Boatright, then vice president of real estate and inclusion at Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, stands in front of developments in the Pullman neighborhood on July 30, 2021. With input from community residents, CNI has been pushing to attract investment, jobs, and retail stores to the area.

Amid a year defined by difficulties, our senior economics writer visited a Chicago neighborhood that has been a proving ground for resilience amid economic ups and downs. What he found may hold larger lessons.

Menelik Puryear/Courtesy of Yla Eason
Olmec Toys founder Yla Eason teaches marketing at Rutgers Business School. "If you want to make money and do good, you start with people first," she says.

In 1985, a tiny toy company had a big idea to meet a pressing need: create a Black action figure. The company didn’t survive, but today Sun-Man is seeing a resurgence, bringing his history with him.

Essay

Linda Bleck

To be empowered to give is the best gift of all, and that generous impulse to share happiness often attracts unexpected allies.

In Pictures

Ann Hermes/Staff
Spectators watch at twilight as over 500 tethered balloons light up simultaneously at the Balloon Glow during the 49th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta on Oct. 3 in New Mexico.

When Monitor photographers returned to the field in 2021, they found a society eager to come back together – and a newfound joy of their own.

A year of resilience: Monitor photographers at work in 2021


The Monitor's View

REUTERS
People ice skate around the Christmas tree at the Natural History Museum in London in December 2021.

Some people have finished their Christmas shopping early, worried that the special gift they’d been eyeing might be in short supply. Yet others are rediscovering another type of gift that is never held up on an unloaded cargo ship or stuck in a clogged supply chain. 

It is an act of kindness. Reminders of this deeper spirit of Christmas are not hard to find.

Most of them are quite public. Nova Scotia, for example, has sent a giant Christmas tree to Boston each year in gratitude for that city’s act of kindness more than a century ago in aiding the province’s capital, Halifax, after a gigantic explosion. 

A similar gift of a tree graces London’s Trafalgar Square each Christmas. It is a thank you from Norway for Britain’s support in the fight against fascism during World War II. This year’s White House Christmas display includes a room decorated as “The Gift of Service,” publicly honoring the contributions of the military, front-line workers, and first responders. 

For many people, the pandemic has meant altering their Christmas celebrations. But it has not stopped a search for acts of kindness. 

The city of Kane, Pennsylvania, for example, organized a Christmas Kindness Challenge, a variation on an advent calendar in which people perform one good deed each day in the run-up to Christmas. One day might include thanking a health worker or military veteran; another donating unused items, or calling an old friend. On one of the days participants were asked to “Be kind online and offer positive comments on social media.”

“There’s something to be said about putting ourselves second and others first,” says Beth Anne Langrell, CEO of For All Seasons Inc., a mental health center that serves Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

“The way that we are most filled is when we identify something that matters to us because it’s something in which we can invest and make a difference,” she told the Salisbury (Maryland) Daily Times. The result, she points out, is “a human life being helped.”

The giving of physical gifts can be an act of kindness too, of course. If thoughtfully chosen, they reflect the meaning of Christmas, the dawning of a love and truth beyond material treasure that binds individuals, whether as family members, friends, or strangers. 

The founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, saw the message of Christmas as the antidote to human hatred. “The basis of Christmas is love loving its enemies, returning good for evil, love that ‘suffereth long, and is kind,’ ” she wrote. 

The best Christmas gifts are not hard to find. They are also never in short supply.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature
Photo illustration by Vladimir Serov/Getty Images

The promise of Christmas is a promise for all of humanity, and for all time.


A message of love

Sichuan Daily/news aktuell/AP
Giant pandas at the Daxiangling Releasing Base in China's Sichuan province frolic in the snow, in an image released Dec. 23, 2021. The base provides rewilding training and large adaptation areas for the pandas.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Watch for an email tomorrow carrying an animated feature built to bring joy on Christmas Eve. We’ll also include a preview about a series of holiday audio specials that we’ll be sharing all next week. Your next regular Daily will appear on Monday, Jan. 3.

More issues

2021
December
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Thursday
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