DAY TRIP ITINERARY (行程)

After a warm reception from your tour manager at your dedicated pick-up point in London, settle in your comfortable coach as we set off on our journey towards Stonehenge. The world’s most famous prehistoric monument has inspired people to study and interpret it for centuries, yet many questions remain to be answered —about who built it, when, and why.

After visiting Stonehenge, we drive to Windsor Castle, which is home to royalty and 1,000 years of royal history. The stunning 13-acre site is the largest and oldest occupied, working castle in the world. There are many famous, must-see moments within these spectacular rooms in the castle, like the grand Waterloo Chamber and the magnificent Crimson Drawing Room.

In the early evening, we make our way towards London and proceed towards your respective drop off points and bid farewell to all friends you have made on the tour.

ESSENTIALS TO CARRY WITH YOU

We recommend you wear comfortable clothing and carry essentials such as a jacket or   jumper, dry snacks, water, tissues, chargers, power bank, etc., in your handbag as access to the luggage hold is only possible until a comfort stop or arrival at your destination. Hot foods are not allowed to be carried or consumed inside the coach.

PICK-UP POINTS

Click here to go through the general information and Terms & Conditions before booking and travelling.

The first person to receive a brain-monitoring device from neurotechnology company Neuralink can control a computer cursor(光标) with his mind, Elon Musk, the firm’s founder, revealed this week. But researchers say that this is not a major feat — and they are concerned about the secrecy around the device’s safety and performance.

Musk announced on 29 January that Neuralink had implanted a brain–computer interface (BCI) into a human for the first time. Neuralink, which is headquartered in Fremont, California, is the third company to start long-term trials in humans.

The Neuralink chip contains 64 flexible polymer threads, providing 1,024 sites for recording brain activity according to the company’s study brochure. That is considerably more than Blackrock Neurotech’s BCIs, the only other single-neuron recording system to have been implanted long-term in humans. So the Neuralink device can improve brain–machine communication.

The company has also produced a surgical robot for inserting its device. But it has not confirmed whether that system was used for the first human implant. Details about the first recipient are also scarce, although Neuralink’s volunteer recruitment brochure says that people with quadriplegia(四肢瘫痪者) stemming from certain conditions “may qualify”.

This week, Musk said on Spaces — an audio component of his social-media platform X — that the volunteer “seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of” and “is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking”.

To researchers working on implanted neurotechnologies, this achievement is underwhelming. Controlling a computer mouse with one’s thoughts could enable people living with paralysis to regain some independence and functionality. But it is a far cry from Musk’s ambitions for the Neuralink device. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” Musk wrote last month on X. “That is the goal.”

However, even more important at this stage, researchers say, is safety — of both the device and the surgery. Sheth says he and other researchers are in the dark about the system’s first application in the clinic.

Researchers have discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the dawn of the universe, and found that it is “eating” its host galaxy to death.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to detect the black hole, which dates from 400 million years after the big bang. The results, which lead author Professor Roberto Maiolino says are “a giant leap forward”, are reported in the journal Nature.

This surprisingly massive black hole even exists so early in the universe challenges our assumptions about how black holes form and grow. The size of this newly-discovered black hole suggests that they might form in other ways: they might be ‘born big’ or they can eat matter at a rate that’s five times higher than had been thought possible. Like all black holes, this young black hole devours material from its host galaxy to fuel its growth.

According to standard models, supermassive black holes form from the remains of dead stars, which collapse and may form a black hole about a hundred times the mass of the Sun. If it grew in an expected way, this newly-detected black hole would take about a billion years to grow to its observed size. However, the universe was not yet a billion years old when this black hole was detected.

The young host galaxy, called GN-z11, is a compact galaxy, about one hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but the black hole is likely harming its development. When black holes consume too much gas, it pushes the gas away like an ultra-fast wind. This “wind” could stop the process of star formation, slowly killing the galaxy, but it will also kill the black hole itself, as it would cut off the black hole’s source of “food”.

Maiolino says that the gigantic leap forward provided by JWST makes this the most exciting time in his career. “It’s a new era: the giant leap is like upgrading from Galileo’s telescope to a modern telescope overnight,” he said. “The universe has been quite generous in what it’s showing us, and this is just the beginning.”