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On my way home, after landing in my city and approaching my home for the first time in almost three years, the time seemed long enough, and the physical distance gradually turned into a spectrum of emotions, culminating in a serene, practically celestial moment on that foggy winter morning. These two other rickshaws reminded me that I am exactly like them, an interstellar passenger just traveling miles after miles for eons, centuries, or beyond. Rangpur City, Bangladesh
Ashish Das
Elle King at the Interstellar Rodeo in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ©Eric Kozakiewicz/Interstellar Rodeo
a 367-foot (112 m), 33-story hotel in Los Angeles, California, constructed between 1974 and 1976.[6] It was designed by architect John C. Portman Jr.. The top floor has a revolving restaurant and bar. It was originally owned by investors that included a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Corporation and John Portman & Associates. The building is managed by Aimbridge Hospitality (IHR), and is valued at $200 million.
The hotel and its architect John Portman have been the subject of several documentaries and academic analyses.[7][8]
Fredric Jameson discusses the hotel in his 1984 essay, "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," and in his 1991 book by the same name.[9][10] He writes that
the Bonaventura aspires to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city (and I would want to add that to this new total space corresponds a new collective practice, a new mode in which individuals move and congregate, something like the practice of a new and historically original kind of hyper-crowd).[11]
In his book Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1989), Edward Soja describes the hotel as
a concentrated representation of the restructured spatiality of the late capitalist city: fragmented and fragmenting, homogeneous and homogenizing, divertingly packaged yet curiously incomprehensible, seemingly open in presenting itself to view but constantly pressing to enclose, to compartmentalize, to circumscribe, to incarcerate. Everything imaginable appears to be available in this micro-urb but real places are difficult to find, its spaces confuse an effective cognitive mapping, its pastiche of superficial reflections bewilder co-ordination and encourage submission instead. Entry by land is forbidding to those who carelessly walk but entrance is nevertheless encouraged at many different levels. Once inside, however, it becomes daunting to get out again without bureaucratic assistance. In so many ways, its architecture recapitulates and reflects the sprawling manufactured spaces of Los Angeles.[12]
The hotel is a 33-story building, with no floors numbered "7" or "13"; the top floor is therefore numbered "35". The four elevator banks (each containing three cars for a total of 12) are named by colors and symbols: Red Circle (the only one that goes to "35"; the other three only go to "32"), Yellow Diamond, Green Square, and Blue Triangle. The color-coded system of directions was a later addition, as visitors found the space confusing and hard to navigate.[13]
Several bronze plaques commemorate elevator scenes from three major films:
In the Line of Fire,[14][15] September 1993, "Green Square" elevator
True Lies,[15] September 1993, "Red Circle" and "Yellow Diamond" elevators
Forget Paris,[15] November 1994, "Yellow Diamond" elevator
It has been featured in many movies and television series over the years, including Interstellar,[16] Strange Days, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (as part of the city of New Chicago), Wonder Woman,[17] Blue Thunder, It's a Living,[18] Starsky & Hutch, L.A. Law, The A-Team, Breathless, Matlock, This Is Spinal Tap, Nick of Time,[19] Rain Man,[19][20] Ruthless People,[19] Logan's Run,[19] My Fellow Americans,[19] Midnight Madness, Moonlighting (TV series), Showtime, Hard to Kill, The Lincoln Lawyer, Chuck, Heaven Can Wait, Xanadu, The New Dragnet, Time After Time, Moby Dick,[21] Zoolander,[22] Lethal Weapon 2,[19] The Fantastic Journey[23][24] and was destroyed (via special effects) in Escape from LA, Epicenter and San Andreas. The front of the hotel was also featured in the British children’s television series Tots Tv ‘American Adventure’ special where Tilly, Tom and Tiny went to explore a different country and were observing tall buildings and went onto the roof of the hotel to observe the view of Los Angeles.[25] You can see it under construction in the 1975 film The Wilderness Family (released a year before the hotel opened). In cartoon form, the building can be seen in the first shot of Jem in the episode "The Beginning", and in the anime Steins;Gate. In November 1979, the ABC soap opera General Hospital videotaped some on location scenes there dealing with Luke Spencer, played by Anthony Geary who was hired to assassinate Senator Mitch Williams. In 1999, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy used the building as the administration building of the space colony Terra Venture, with Red Ranger Leo falling from the building after a battle with main villain Trakeena.
In 2002, the hotel was the location for a Fear Factor stunt which involved crossing a bridge of plexiglass discs on cables suspended on the lobby's fifth floor.[26] The television series It's a Living was set in a restaurant atop the Bonaventure. The hotel is also showcased in episodes of CSI and its exterior can be seen in Americathon, Mission: Impossible III, Almighty Thor, Hancock, and at the beginning of the Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" music video. The building made appearances in the 1991 Kylie Minogue music video Step Back in Time, the 1985 Survivor music video "The Search Is Over", the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the 2012 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II (in the "Aftermath" multiplayer map) and in the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V with the name "Arcadius Business Center" (having three towers instead of four towers and featuring glass elevator animations).
The hotel was also used as a setting for R&B singer Usher's music video for the 2002 hit single, "U Don't Have to Call". A pivotal scene in the season four (2005) episode "Another Mister Sloane" of the espionage drama Alias took place in the Bonaventure Hotel as well, while it was also featured in season one (2017), episode five of another espionage drama, Counterpart. In 2021, Rihanna's "Savage x Fenty Show Vol. 3" was filmed entirely on location at the hotel.[27][28] The hotel also hosted the first task for the final leg of The Amazing Race 33, which aired in 2022.[26]
After the 2017 detecton of 1I/'Oumuamua, comet 2I/Borisov has become the second recognized interstellar interloper. Like 'Oumuamua, Borisov's measured hyperbolic trajectory and speed as it falls toward the Sun confirm that its origin is from beyond our Solar System. But while detailed observations indicate 'Oumuamua is a rocky body with differences from known Solar System objects, Borisov is definitely a far wandering comet. Taken on October 12, 2019 this Hubble Space Telescope image of Borisov reveals a familiar looking comet-like activity and concentration of dust around around its nucleus. Not resolved in the image, some estimates suggest the nucleus could be between 2 and 16 kilometers in diameter. At the time of the Hubble image, comet 2I/Borisov was about 418 million kilometers away. Borisov is still inbound though and will make its closest approach to the Sun on December 7 at a distance of about 300 million kilometers (2 Astronomical units). via NASA ift.tt/2o0KwC4
They say the flap of a butterfly's wings can set off a tornado on the other side of the world. But what happens when a butterfly flaps its wings in the depths of space? This cosmic butterfly is a nebula known as AFGL 4104, or Roberts 22. Caused by a star that is nearing the end of its life and has shrugged off its outer layers, the nebula emerges as a cosmic chrysalis to produce this striking sight. Studies of the lobes of Roberts 22 have shown an amazingly complex structure, with countless intersecting loops and filaments. A butterfly's life span is counted in weeks; although on a much longer timescale, this stage of life for Roberts 22 is also transient. It is currently a preplanetary nebula, a short-lived phase that begins once a dying star has pushed much of the material in its outer layers into space, and ends once this stellar remnant becomes hot enough to ionise the surrounding gas clouds and make them glow. About 400 years ago, the star at the centre of Roberts 22 shed its outer shells, which raced outwards to form this butterfly. The central star will soon be hot enough to ionise the surrounding gas, and it will evolve into a fully fledged planetary nebula. Information about the nature, age, and structure of Roberts 22 was presented in a paper using Hubble data back in 1999, published in The Astronomical Journal.