Man is a gentle creature. Capable of disappearing from the face of the Earth from any misfortune. And very soon. What needs to happen for our planet to become completely uninhabitable? So that there is no one left on it at all - not a single living creature. American physicists, Dr Rafael Alves Batista and Dr David Sloan from Oxford University, tried to find the answer to this fundamental question of existence.

Before thinking about the eternal, scientists have identified the most tenacious creature on Earth. And with impeccable logic they assumed: it would be the last to die. Next, physicists figured out what kind of cataclysms could create conditions under which the record holder for survival would still not be able to bear the surging hardships. And it turned out: there are no such cataclysms, nothing can make our planet sterile.

The most enduring creature on Earth was discovered a long time ago - back in 1773. The first to see and describe it was the German pastor and part-time zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goetze. He dubbed it a water bear. Later the creature received the name Tardigrada or, scientifically speaking, Tardigrada. However, his supernatural abilities became known only recently - as a result of scientific experiments.

The tardigrade, also known as the water bear, is considered the most resilient creature on Earth. And maybe throughout the entire Universe

Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates close to arthropods. The size of adult individuals is approximately one and a half millimeters. The body is translucent and consists of four segments. Legs – 8. A tenth of all tardigrades live in sea water. Most are found in mosses, lichens, trees, rocks, and walls. They can be found in the mountains at an altitude of 6 thousand meters and on the seabed at depths of more than 4 thousand meters, in hot springs and in ice. They feed on algae, mosses, lichens, and worms. They look like bears in appearance. This is why they got their name - water bear.

It is believed that tardigrades appeared on Earth approximately 530 million years ago.

Science now knows that tardigrades do not die even in liquid helium. Some test subjects endured 8 hours at a temperature of minus 271 degrees Celsius. And they stayed in liquid oxygen – at minus 193 degrees – for 20 months without harm. And vice versa, the tardigrades were boiled - nothing was done to them.

Water bears tolerate a radiation dose of 570 thousand roentgens. For humans, 500 roentgens are lethal.

In 2007, Swedish scientists sent tardigrades into orbit as part of the European Space Agency's FOTON-M3 mission. They put them into outer space. After 10 days they returned to Earth. Almost everyone survived.

It turns out that water bears can easily survive a nuclear war, global warming of any magnitude, and the most severe ice age, even with cosmic cold. And even the disappearance of the atmosphere will not chill them to death.

However, it is still possible to lime tardigrades. According to Sloan and Batista, sooner or later they will come to an end if, as a result of some cataclysm, all the water on Earth suddenly evaporates. And this, as scientists believe, can happen in three cases: if a supernova explodes nearby, if an asteroid the size of the one that the heroes of the film “The Fifth Element” confronted crashes into our planet, and if the Earth is hit by a gamma-ray flare.

Sloan and Batista calculated that it takes about 10 to the 26th joules of energy to evaporate water. Supernova explosions produce an average of 10 to 44 joules. Enough for the complete end of the world, but only if the outbreak is close. After all, the energy of such a cataclysm is dissipated in space. For example, if the distance from the explosion to the Earth is more than 5 light days, then it will be of no use. In the sense that the explosion will not destroy the tardigrades.


A supernova explosion will not bring the end of the world to Earth

And there are no stars at such a distance from us at all. The closest ones are about 4 light years away. And they are not going to explode.

Scientists from Oxford have counted 17 asteroids, a collision with which could put an end to water bears. But the probability that at least one of them will happen was vanishingly small. It takes 10 to the 17th power of years for a 100-kilometer asteroid to crash into our planet. The lifetime of the Universe is not enough to wait.


There is no such cosmic body that would kill water bears

The sources of gamma-ray bursts are collapsing, rapidly rotating massive stars. As they transform into neutron stars, quarks or black holes, they emit a narrow beam of unprecedented power. And at the same time, in a few seconds they release as much energy as our Sun would release in 10 billion years of glow.

Sloan and Batista calculated: a gamma-ray burst that occurs closer than 42 light years from Earth will be absolutely unbearable - it will evaporate the oceans and kill tardigrades. But there are no sources of such destructive radiation in this radius.


Gamma-ray bursts, which still sparkle in other galaxies, are not scary for tardigrades

The result of the reasoning of American scientists, published in Scientific Reports: the world will not end, at least not soon. Tardigrades may well survive until the time when the Sun expands, turning into a red giant. According to various estimates, this will happen no earlier than in a billion years, or even 5 billion years will have to wait. But this is not the end of the water bears. The swelling Sun will, of course, engulf Mercury and Venus. And the Earth may survive, moving into a more distant orbit. And will save water with tardigrades. In the Universe there seem to be examples of such an amazing salvation of planets whose star turned into a red giant. And it - salvation - gives tardigrades about 5 more billion years of existence.


According to one hypothesis, tardigrades were brought to Earth from space

BY THE WAY

Seek and you will find

Research by Oxford University scientists should provide encouragement to those searching for extraterrestrial life. Because they testify: even the most seemingly unfavorable conditions on any planet do not mean that there is no life there. Maybe there is - in the form of sleeping water bears. It is known that in an unfavorable environment these creatures fall into a special type of anabiosis - the so-called anhydrobiosis. They dry themselves by drawing their limbs in and becoming covered with a waxy shell that prevents evaporation.

The scientific literature describes a case where researchers soaked moss that had been dried 120 years ago in water. And after a while, the awakened tardigrades crawled out of it.

Who knows, maybe it’s worth soaking the Martian soil. And wait until someone crawls out of it - like a tardigrade. Or, on the contrary, it is worth melting the local ice - water bears can sleep frozen for a very long time. And then come to life.

There is a creature on Earth that will survive any apocalypse

This is what an earthling looks like who can endure any hardships and hardships.

Man is a gentle creature. Capable of disappearing from the face of the Earth from any misfortune. And very soon. What needs to happen for our planet to become completely uninhabitable? So that there is no one left on it at all - not a single living creature. American physicists - Dr Rafael Alves Batista and Dr David Sloan from Oxford University - tried to find the answer to this fundamental question of existence.

Before thinking about the eternal, scientists have identified the most tenacious creature on Earth. And with impeccable logic they assumed: it would be the last to die. Next, physicists figured out what kind of cataclysms could create conditions under which the record holder for survival would still not be able to bear the surging hardships. And it turned out: there are no such cataclysms, nothing can make our planet sterile.

The most enduring creature on Earth was discovered a long time ago - back in 1773. The first to see and describe it was the German pastor and part-time zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goetze. He dubbed it a water bear. Later the creature received the name Tardigrada or, scientifically speaking, Tardigrada. However, his supernatural abilities became known only recently - as a result of scientific experiments.

The tardigrade, also known as the water bear, is considered the most resilient creature on Earth. And maybe throughout the entire Universe.

Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates close to arthropods. The size of adult individuals is approximately one and a half millimeters. The body is translucent and consists of four segments. Legs - 8. A tenth of all tardigrades live in sea water. Most are found in mosses, lichens, trees, rocks, and walls. They can be found in the mountains at an altitude of 6 thousand meters and on the seabed at depths of more than 4 thousand meters, in hot springs and in ice. They feed on algae, mosses, lichens, and worms. Externally they look like bears. This is why they got their name - water bear.

It is believed that tardigrades appeared on Earth approximately 530 million years ago.

Science now knows that tardigrades do not die even in liquid helium. Some experimental subjects endured 8 hours at a temperature of minus 271 degrees Celsius. And they stayed in liquid oxygen - at minus 193 degrees - for 20 months without harm to themselves. And vice versa, the tardigrades were boiled - nothing was done to them.

Water bears tolerate a radiation dose of 570 thousand roentgens. For humans, 500 roentgens are lethal.

In 2007, Swedish scientists sent tardigrades into orbit as part of the European Space Agency's FOTON-M3 mission. They put them into outer space. After 10 days they returned to Earth. Almost everyone survived.

It turns out that water bears can easily survive a nuclear war, global warming of any magnitude, and the most severe ice age, even with cosmic cold. And even the disappearance of the atmosphere will not chill them to death.

However, it is still possible to lime tardigrades. According to Sloan and Batista, sooner or later they will come to an end, if, as a result of some cataclysm, all the water on Earth suddenly evaporates. And this, as scientists believe, can happen in three cases: if a supernova explodes nearby, if an asteroid the size of the one that the heroes of the film “The Fifth Element” confronted crashes into our planet, and if the Earth is hit by a gamma-ray flare.

Sloan and Batista calculated that it takes about 10 to the 26th joules of energy to evaporate water. Supernova explosions produce an average of 10 to 44 joules. Enough for the complete end of the world, but only if the outbreak is close. After all, the energy of such a cataclysm is dissipated in space. For example, if the distance from the explosion to the Earth is more than 5 light days, then it will be of no use. In the sense that the explosion will not destroy the tardigrades.

A supernova explosion will not bring the end of the world to Earth.

And there are no stars at such a distance from us at all. The closest ones are about 4 light years away. And they are not going to explode.

Scientists from Oxford have counted 17 asteroids, a collision with which could put an end to water bears. But the probability that at least one of them will happen was vanishingly small. It takes 10 to the 17th power of years for a 100-kilometer asteroid to crash into our planet. The lifetime of the Universe is not enough to wait.

There is no cosmic body that would kill water bears.

The sources of gamma-ray bursts are collapsing, rapidly rotating massive stars. As they transform into neutron stars, quarks or black holes, they emit a narrow beam of unprecedented power. And at the same time, in a few seconds they release as much energy as our Sun would release in 10 billion years of glow.

Sloan and Batista calculated: a gamma-ray burst that occurs closer than 42 light years from Earth will be absolutely unbearable - it will evaporate the oceans and kill tardigrades. But there are no sources of such destructive radiation in this radius.

Gamma-ray bursts, which still sparkle in other galaxies, are not scary for tardigrades.

The result of the reasoning of American scientists, published in the publication Scientific Reports: there will be no end of the world - at least not soon. Tardigrades may well survive until the time when the Sun expands, turning into a red giant. According to various estimates, this will happen no earlier than in a billion years, or even 5 billion years will have to wait. But this is not the end of the water bears. The swelling Sun will, of course, engulf Mercury and Venus. And the Earth may survive, moving into a more distant orbit. And will save water with tardigrades. In the Universe, there seem to be examples of such an amazing salvation of planets whose star turned into a red giant. And it - salvation - gives tardigrades about 5 more billion years of existence.

According to one hypothesis, tardigrades were brought to Earth from space.

BY THE WAY

Seek and you will find

Research by Oxford University scientists should provide encouragement to those searching for extraterrestrial life. Because they testify: even the most seemingly unfavorable conditions on any planet do not mean that there is no life there. Maybe there is - in the form of sleeping water bears. It is known that in an unfavorable environment, these creatures fall into a special type of anabiosis - the so-called anhydrobiosis. They dry themselves by drawing their limbs in and becoming covered with a waxy shell that prevents evaporation.

The scientific literature describes a case where researchers soaked moss that had been dried 120 years ago in water. And after a while, the awakened tardigrades crawled out of it.

Who knows, maybe it’s worth soaking the Martian soil. And wait until someone crawls out of it - like a tardigrade. Or vice versa, it is worth melting the local ice - water bears are able to sleep frozen for a very long time. And then come to life.

Scientists: The world will never end. There is a creature on Earth that will survive any apocalypse

As we are assured, the end of the world will take place on December 21, 2012 - it is on this day that the Mayan calendar ends. They say that destructive cataclysms will lead to the disappearance of man on Earth. In any case, some people believe so. Despite the best efforts of scientists, officials and religious leaders to debunk these rumors, fears of an alleged impending apocalypse persist.

The excitement around the end of the world is especially evident in Russia and Ukraine. People are frantically buying candles and stocking up on other essential goods, the prices of which have skyrocketed. The industrial city of Novokuznetsk surprised with massive purchases of salt.

SURVIVAL KIT

A comic idea to sell survival kits for the end of the world in Tomsk, Siberia, turned into a profitable business.

“People have been talking a lot about the end of the world lately, so we decided to make a joke about it,” says Aleftina Popova, an employee at wedding agency Marina Mendelsohn, which offers survival kits. “We came up with this kit to show people how to laugh over such things."

Popova says that online orders for the kits are coming from all over Russia. “It was definitely a success,” she says.

The kit costs 890 rubles ($29) and includes a rope, a bandage, a notepad, vodka, a can of sprat, a bar of soap, and several other items that are necessary to survive the apocalypse.

Russian officials were not happy with what was happening in connection with this date. A group of legislators from the Russian State Duma called on the heads of federal television channels not to disseminate “pseudo-scientific information about the end of the world.”

The Vatican's chief astronomer also tried to reduce concerns about December 21, saying that apocalyptic scenarios based on the predictions of the Mayan calendar "are not even worth discussing."

GPS WORKS, MEANS THE EARTH'S ROTATION AXIS HAS NOT CHANGED

Various theories have flooded the Internet, for example, that the planet Nibiru is hiding behind the sun and is ready to attack the Earth, or an approaching comet, meteorite, asteroid, which upon collision will wipe out life from the face of the earth, or a possible change in the magnetic poles of the Earth...

Astrophysicist David Morrison, who directs the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a senior fellow in astrobiology at NASA Ames Research Center, noted in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the end of the world is pure fantasy.

“There will be no planetary alignment in December 2012,” says Morrison. - There is an approximate alignment of the Earth and the Sun and the center of our galaxy at the end of December, but this happens every year. In any case, the alignment of the planets will have no effect on the Earth. There are also no incoming asteroids or comets."

Morrison also claims that the magnetic poles will not change this year. Magnetic polarity changes “every million years or so,” and this is certainly not expected right now, nor are there any changes in the rotation of the Earth’s axis. In this case, it would be immediately visible, our GPS system would fail.

The American space agency NASA, for its part, decided to take an unusual step by publishing a newsletter entitled “Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End.”

Meanwhile, modern Mayan priests held a water blessing ceremony at Noc Ac Cenote, a natural body of water located on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, on December 15 as part of a cultural festival to celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar.

Some of the heads of government tried to give the event a humorous twist. In a video posted online earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the impending apocalypse this way: “Whether the end of the world is due to flesh-eating zombies, hellish monsters or the complete victory of K-pop, I want to assure you : I will always fight for you until the very end."

A GOLD MINE FOR THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Meanwhile, attempts to make money on the doomsday mania are in full swing.

A number of companies, from Chevrolet car manufacturers to American beer Shock, have released Armageddon-themed commercials in an attempt to boost sales.

In Serbia, hotels on Mount Rtanj are now swarming with tourists who believe they will be saved when the rest of the world turns to rubble on December 21.

According to popular beliefs, the mountain hides a pyramidal structure left behind by aliens more than a thousand years ago, which will protect it from destruction.

“We've seen complete madness here for the last 10 days,” says Obrad Blecic, manager of a local hotel. “People call us to book a room, but we are no longer available. We are usually only 20 percent full. Two or three families from Austria contacted us, as well as local clients from major cities in Serbia, including Belgrade. People keep calling us, and when we tell them we don't have room, they ask if they can stay in the parking lot or in the restaurant."

At least two other mountain villages, one in France and the other in Turkey, have also been promoted as doomsday havens. They are experiencing an unprecedented tourism boom, thanks to which locals are offering accommodation and food at inflated prices.

A number of enterprising doomsday enthusiasts prefer to take matters into their own hands.

A Chinese farmer, for example, has built seven fiberglass and steel spheres that he hopes will allow their occupants to survive the end of the world.

In the US, developer Larry Hall has converted a former missile silo in Kansas into several luxury survival apartments. At least three blocks have already been sold, each for $2 million.

WHAT DO THE MAYAS SAY?

In the context of universal turmoil due to the end of the world, few thought to listen to what the Mayan national community had to say on this issue. And they say that the end of the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 does not foreshadow any disaster - it is simply the beginning of a new calendar.

The Mayans have three different calendar systems—one a 260-day ritual year, the other a 365-day year—and together they both repeat every 52 years in a large cycle, says leading Mayan scholar and anthropologist Jeffrey Braswell of the University of California, San Francisco. Diego.

“They counted the days since they were built, almost like your car would count days or miles,” Braswell says. “And just as the old-fashioned odometer had wheels that turned, so did the wheels in the Mayan calendar. What's happening now is that we're at the point where the car's odometer could reset everything back to zero."

In addition, a very important text was found at an excavation site in Palenque, Mexico, carved by King Pacal, who died in 683. According to the text, the next major cycle will occur on October 11, 4772, the scientist says:

The king says that eight days after the next cycle is completed, he will return and reign once more. So it's clear that he doesn't believe in the end of the world.

The Mayan community condemns the financial exploitation of their cultural heritage and plans to mark the day with a private ceremony at a Mayan archaeological site, far from the huge crowds expected to flock to Mexico and Central America for end-of-the-world concerts and fireworks.

This article is based on materials from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists Claire Bigg and Eugene Tomiuch.

Man is a gentle creature. Capable of disappearing from the face of the Earth from any misfortune. And very soon. What needs to happen for our planet to become completely uninhabitable? So that there is no one left on it at all - not a single living creature. American physicists - Dr Rafael Alves Batista and Dr David Sloan from Oxford University - tried to find the answer to this fundamental question of existence.

Before thinking about the eternal, scientists have identified the most tenacious creature on Earth. And with impeccable logic they assumed: it would be the last to die. Next, physicists figured out what kind of cataclysms could create conditions under which the record holder for survival would still not be able to bear the surging hardships. And it turned out: there are no such cataclysms, nothing can make our planet sterile.

The most enduring creature on Earth was discovered a long time ago - back in 1773. The first to see and describe it was the German pastor and part-time zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goetze. He dubbed it a water bear. Later the creature received the name Tardigrada or, scientifically speaking, Tardigrada. However, his supernatural abilities became known only recently - as a result of scientific experiments.

Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates close to arthropods. The size of adult individuals is approximately one and a half millimeters. The body is translucent and consists of four segments. Legs - 8. A tenth of all tardigrades live in sea water. Most are found in mosses, lichens, trees, rocks, and walls. They can be found in the mountains at an altitude of 6 thousand meters and on the seabed at depths of more than 4 thousand meters, in hot springs and in ice. They feed on algae, mosses, lichens, and worms. Externally they look like bears. This is why they got their name - water bear.

It is believed that tardigrades appeared on Earth approximately 530 million years ago.

Science now knows that tardigrades do not die even in liquid helium. Some test subjects endured 8 hours at a temperature of minus 271 degrees Celsius. And they stayed in liquid oxygen - at minus 193 degrees - for 20 months without harm to themselves. And vice versa, the tardigrades were boiled - nothing was done to them.

Water bears tolerate a radiation dose of 570 thousand roentgens. For humans, 500 roentgens are lethal.

In 2007, Swedish scientists sent tardigrades into orbit as part of the European Space Agency's FOTON-M3 mission. They put them into outer space. After 10 days they returned to Earth. Almost everyone survived.

It turns out that water bears can easily survive a nuclear war, global warming of any magnitude, and the most severe ice age, even with cosmic cold. And even the disappearance of the atmosphere will not chill them to death.

However, it is still possible to lime tardigrades. According to Sloan and Batista, sooner or later they will come to an end if, as a result of some cataclysm, all the water on Earth suddenly evaporates. And this, as scientists believe, can happen in three cases: if a supernova explodes nearby, if an asteroid the size of the one that the heroes of the film “The Fifth Element” confronted crashes into our planet, and if the Earth is hit by a gamma-ray flare.

Sloan and Batista calculated that it takes about 10 to the 26th joules of energy to evaporate water. Supernova explosions produce an average of 10 to 44 joules. Enough for the complete end of the world, but only if the outbreak is close. After all, the energy of such a cataclysm is dissipated in space. For example, if the distance from the explosion to the Earth is more than 5 light days, then it will be of no use. In the sense that the explosion will not destroy the tardigrades.

And there are no stars at such a distance from us at all. The closest ones are about 4 light years away. And they are not going to explode.

Scientists from Oxford have counted 17 asteroids, a collision with which could put an end to water bears. But the probability that at least one of them will happen was vanishingly small. It takes 10 to the 17th power of years for a 100-kilometer asteroid to crash into our planet. The lifetime of the Universe is not enough to wait.

The sources of gamma-ray bursts are collapsing, rapidly rotating massive stars. As they transform into neutron stars, quarks or black holes, they emit a narrow beam of unprecedented power. And at the same time, in a few seconds they release as much energy as our Sun would release in 10 billion years of glow.

Sloan and Batista calculated: a gamma-ray burst that occurs closer than 42 light years from Earth will be absolutely unbearable - it will evaporate the oceans and kill tardigrades. But there are no sources of such destructive radiation in this radius.

The result of the reasoning of American scientists published in the publication: there will be no end of the world - at least not soon. Tardigrades may well survive until the time when the Sun expands, turning into a red giant. According to various estimates, this will happen no earlier than in a billion years, or even 5 billion years will have to wait. But this is not the end of the water bears. The swelling Sun will, of course, swallow Mercury and Venus. And the Earth may survive, moving into a more distant orbit. And will save water with tardigrades. In the Universe there seem to be examples of such an amazing salvation of planets whose star turned into a red giant. And it - salvation - gives tardigrades about 5 more billion years of existence.

BY THE WAY

Seek and you will find

Research by Oxford University scientists should provide encouragement to those searching for extraterrestrial life. Because they testify: even the most seemingly unfavorable conditions on any planet do not mean that there is no life there. Maybe there is - in the form of sleeping water bears. It is known that in an unfavorable environment these creatures fall into a special type of anabiosis - the so-called anhydrobiosis. They dry themselves by drawing their limbs in and becoming covered with a waxy shell that prevents evaporation.

The scientific literature describes a case where researchers soaked moss that had been dried 120 years ago in water. And after a while, the awakened tardigrades crawled out of it.

Who knows, maybe it’s worth soaking the Martian soil. And wait until someone crawls out of it - like a tardigrade. Or vice versa, it is worth melting the local ice - water bears are able to sleep frozen for a very long time. And then come to life.

Scientists: The world will never end. There is a creature on Earth that will survive any apocalypse

In Guatemala, in a town called La Corona, archaeologists discovered one of the most extensive inscriptions in the Mayan language, which is about 1,300 years old. It contains the second known mention, after the Tortuguero inscription, of the so-called date of the end of times, which, according to the Gregorian calendar, corresponds to the beginning of the third ten days of December 2012.

With the approaching date of the “end of the world” according to the Mayan calendar, the history of this people is of increasing interest in the world. The civilization of this people appeared in the first centuries of our era, and disappeared with the advent of the Spaniards in the 16th century. However, the Mayan people themselves still live in the territories of Mesoamerica, and their number is estimated at more than 6 million people. For Mayan-speaking citizens in Mexico and Guatemala, there are radio and cable television programs.

The Mayans were a common early civilization, a society organized into city-states. The peak of their heyday occurred in the 6th–9th centuries - the Mayans had magnificent architecture - they built cities, palaces, pyramids with temples from stone, erected steles in front of the buildings, on which they recorded historical dates, and celebrated changes of rulers. The most striking feature of the Mayan culture was their writing, and they are the only American civilization that had a phonetic writing system.

Research on the Maya began at the end of the 19th century. Basically, archaeological excavations of cities were carried out, and based on the excavations, scientists tried to draw conclusions about the Mayan culture and way of life by analogy with what is known about Egypt, Greece, and Rome. However, a completely different perception of the world does not allow us to approach Mayan writings from the same point of view as European historical documents. Compared to European civilizations, the Mayans describe the world completely differently. They approach the same phenomena with other images, other concepts, other systems of gods.

The “end of the world” according to the Mayan calendar, which is supposed to happen on December 23 of this year, which some people who sincerely believe in prophecies are awaiting with trepidation, does not at all mean the end of the life of our civilization. In fact, unlike European ones, Mayan astronomers identified not 12, but 13 zodiacal constellations. Each of them corresponded to 13 gods, and the worship of each of them began according to the movement of the Sun. The completion of one of these large cycles will occur on December 23, 2012, and, according to Mayan beliefs, then the circle of reign of all deities will end, that is, a new era will begin.

The document on the basis of which hysteria about the end of the world was raised was found in the state of Tabasco, the town of Elz Tortuguero. However, the modern Mayans living there do not believe in the end of the world. At present, Indians are very poor people, concerned about economic issues. The myth of the end of the world is interesting to them from the point of view of attracting thrill-seeking tourists.