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Sphere (1998 Film)
''Sphere'' is a 1998 American science fiction psychological thriller film directed and produced by Barry Levinson, adapted by Kurt Wimmer, and starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson. It is based on Michael Crichton's novel of the same name. The film was released in the United States on February 13, 1998 to negative reviews and was a box office failure. Plot A spacecraft presumed to be of alien origin is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, estimated to have been there for nearly 300 years. A team of experts, including marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin, mathematician Dr. Harry Adams, astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding, psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman, and U.S. Navy Captain Harold Barnes, is assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state-of-the-art underwater living environment located near the spacecraft. Examining the spacecraft, they are perplexed to learn it is not alien at all, but rather American in origin. However, its technology far surpasse ...
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Barry Levinson
Barry Lee Levinson (born April 6, 1942) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for '' Rain Man'' (1988). His other best-known works are ''Diner'' (1982), '' The Natural'' (1984), '' Good Morning, Vietnam'' (1987), '' Bugsy'' (1991), and '' Wag the Dog'' (1997). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries '' Dopesick'' and directed the first two episodes. Early life Levinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business. He is of Russian-Jewish descent. After growing up in Forest Park, Baltimore and graduating from Forest Park Senior High School in 1960, Levinson studied broadcast journalism at Baltimore Junior College and American University in Washington, D.C. He later moved to Los Angeles to work as an actor and writer and performed comedy routines. Levinson at one time shared an apartment with wou ...
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Science Fiction Film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestrial lifeforms, List of fictional spacecraft, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, Mutants in fiction, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on politics, political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema, when Georges Méliès' ''A Trip to the Moon'' (1902) employed Special effect, trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature-length in the genre) was the film ''Metropolis (1927 film), Metropolis'' (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick's landmark ''2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 20 ...
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Queen Latifah
Dana Elaine Owens (born March 18, 1970), known professionally by her stage name Queen Latifah, is an American rapper, singer, and actress. She has received various accolades, including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two NAACP Image Awards, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2006, she became the first hip hop artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At age 19, Latifah released her debut album '' All Hail the Queen'' (1989), featuring the hit single "Ladies First". Her second album '' Nature of a Sista''' (1991), was produced by Tommy Boy Records. Her third album, '' Black Reign'' (1993), became the first album by a solo female rapper to receive a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spawned the single " U.N.I.T.Y.", which was influential in raising awareness of violence against women and the objectification of Black female sexualit ...
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Decompression (diving)
The decompression of a diver is the reduction in ambient pressure experienced during ascent from depth. It is also the process of elimination of dissolved inert gases from the diver's body which accumulate during ascent, largely during pauses in the ascent known as decompression stops, and after surfacing, until the gas concentrations reach equilibrium. Divers breathing gas at ambient pressure need to ascend at a rate determined by their exposure to pressure and the breathing gas in use. A diver who only breathes gas at atmospheric pressure when free-diving or snorkelling will not usually need to decompress. Divers using an atmospheric diving suit do not need to decompress as they are never exposed to high ambient pressure. When a diver descends in the water, the hydrostatic pressure, and therefore the ambient pressure, rises. Because breathing gas is supplied at ambient pressure, some of this gas dissolves into the diver's blood and is transferred by the blood to ot ...
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Giant Squid
The giant squid (''Architeuthis dux'') is a species of deep-ocean dwelling squid A squid (: squid) is a mollusc with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight cephalopod limb, arms, and two tentacles in the orders Myopsida, Oegopsida, and Bathyteuthida (though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also ... in the family (biology), family Architeuthidae. It can grow to a tremendous size, offering an example of deep-sea gigantism, abyssal gigantism: recent estimates put the maximum body size at around for females, with males slightly shorter, from the cephalopod fin, posterior fins to the tip of its long cephalopod limb, arms. This makes it longer than the colossal squid at an estimated , but substantially lighter, as it is less robust and its arms make up much of the length. The Mantle (mollusc), mantle of the giant squid is about long (longer for females, shorter for males), and the feeding tentacles of the giant squid, concealed in life, are . Clai ...
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Jellyfish
Jellyfish, also known as sea jellies or simply jellies, are the #Life cycle, medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, which is a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals, although a few are anchored to the seabed by stalks rather than being motile. They are made of an umbrella-shaped main body made of mesoglea, known as the ''bell'', and a collection of trailing tentacles on the underside. Via pulsating contractions, the bell can provide propulsion for animal locomotion, locomotion through open water. The tentacles are armed with cnidocyte, stinging cells and may be used to capture prey or to defend against predators. Jellyfish have a complex biological life cycle, life cycle, and the medusa is normally the sexual phase, which produces planula larvae. These then disperse widely and enter a sedentary #Life cycle, polyp phase which may include asexual budding before reaching sexual maturity. Jellyfish ...
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Typhoon
A typhoon is a tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere and which produces sustained hurricane-force winds of at least . This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, accounting for almost one third of the world's tropical cyclones. For organizational purposes, the northern Pacific Ocean is divided into three regions: the eastern (North America to 140°W), central (140°W to 180°), and western (180° to 100°E). The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) for tropical cyclone forecasts is in Japan, with other tropical cyclone warning centres for the northwest Pacific in Hawaii (the Joint Typhoon Warning Center), the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Although the RSMC names each system, the main name list itself is coordinated among 18 countries that have territories threatened by typhoons each year. Within most of the northwestern Pacific, there are no official typhoon seasons as tropical cyclones form througho ...
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Black Hole
A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. The boundary (topology), boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with thermal radiation, the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the Orders of magnitude (temperature), order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly. Objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for ...
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Psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretation of how individuals relate to each other and to their environments. Psychologists usually acquire a bachelor's degree in psychology, followed by a master's degree or doctorate in psychology. Unlike psychiatrist, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse-practitioners, psychologists usually cannot prescribe medication, but depending on the jurisdiction, some psychologists with additional training can be licensed to prescribe medications; qualification requirements may be different from a bachelor's degree and master's degree. Psychologists receive extensive training in psychological testing, communication techniques, scoring, interpretation, and reporting, while psychiatrists are not usually trained in psychological testing. Psychologists are a ...
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Astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the heavenly bodies, rather than their positions or motions in space—''what'' they are, rather than ''where'' they are", which is studied in celestial mechanics. Among the subjects studied are the Sun ( solar physics), other stars, galaxies, extrasolar planets, the interstellar medium, and the cosmic microwave background. Emissions from these objects are examined across all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the properties examined include luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical composition. Because astrophysics is a very broad subject, ''astrophysicists'' apply concepts and methods from many disciplines of physics, including classical mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum ...
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Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematical model, models, and mathematics#Calculus and analysis, change. History One of the earliest known mathematicians was Thales of Miletus (); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales's theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos () established the Pythagorean school, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman math ...
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Marine Biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many scientific classification, phyla, family (biology), families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment (biophysical), environment rather than on taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. A large proportion of all life, life on Earth lives in the ocean. The exact size of this "large proportion" is unknown, since many ocean species are still to be discovered. The ocean is a complex three-dimensional world, covering approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The habitats studied in marine biology include everything from the tiny layers of surface water in which organisms and abiotic items may be trapped in surface tension between the ocean and atmosphere, to the depths of the oceanic trenches, sometimes 10,000 meters or more beneath the surface of the ocean. Specific habi ...
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