In school, we have been learning a bit about World War 2. This was very exciting to hear as I find it all quite interesting. Since I was in elementary school, I have been reading fiction novels based on the war and different characters’ life throughout it.
My great-grandfather, Zach, was born in a part of Poland which is now Yasenivtsi, Ukraine. The war started when Zach was 10 years old and his brother, Michal was 17. In May 1944, Michal was taken to Auschwitz. He was 22 at the time. Their father, Jan was taken to Mauthausen, a subcamp in Austria, to work as a shoemaker. On July 15, 1944, Zach, who was 15 at the time, his 12-year-old sister, Stanisława and his 42-year-old mother, Anna were taken to Siberia as prisoners by the Russians. The Russian soldiers asked him and his family where their brother and father were, and when they told them they were at a camp, the Russians said they were lying and accused them of helping the Germans.
They were told to pack their things before they were taken on a train to Siberia. Zach smuggled an axe onto the train by stuffing it into a bag of wheat grains. Nobody knew he had the axe. When the train stopped, he opened the train door to grab wood to make a fire. He made a fire on the train to keep everyone warm. Whenever the train was in motion, they left the windows open to let the smoke exit the cart. When the train stopped again, they had to close the windows so that the guards wouldn’t see the smoke coming out of the train and catch them. It would get smoky inside and it was hard to breathe.
People would also hop out of the train when it stopped to get water from the hoses that were used to rinse down the train at the stations. They used anything that could hold water; people used shoes, cups, buckets, or anything they had that could hold water. They spent 6 weeks on the train before they were in Siberia. There were roughly 28 wagons and up to 40 people per wagon. Zach estimates that there were roughly 800 people on the entire train.
After six weeks on the train, every family got their own 8ft by 8 ft room to temporarily stay in. After a day and a half, a car came and started moving people to a new location. Zach and his family were moved and put into barracks. There were about 1.5 kilometres of just barracks at the location. Each family got a 4-by-5-meter room with no bed or anything else once there. After a day and a half, they started getting potato and cabbage soup every other day. The outhouse was 50 meters away, and it was negative 30 to 40 degrees Celsius. They were there for about a week and then taken to the dugouts.
They all called the dugouts “ziemanka” with roughly translates to “dirt house”. The dugouts had about a foot sticking out above the ground, and the rest was underground.
This is a rough sketch of what the floor plan for the dugouts looked like. As you can see on the bottom right of the page, they were built to try and keep the prisoners warm in the cold weather.
Zach, Stanisława and Anna stay in Siberia for the next 11 years.
Photos
This photo was taken one year before Zach left Siberia. Anna Kokiet, Nadia Kokiet, My great grandmother, Zach’s wife, Zach Kokiet, Halina Kokiet, my grandmother and Olga Kokiet, my grand aunt.
Both photos are the same.
This is a photo of people working the machines in Siberia.
In Siberia, with bikes.
This photo was taken in Siberia. My grandma is the little girl closest to the camera. She is being held by my great-grandpa, her dad.
In January 1945, Michal was liberated from Auschwitz by the Russians. While he was there, he met his future wife (who, coincidentally, has the same name as his sister), Stanisława. She was a cook at the camp and would help him stay alive by giving him extra food. After the war, Michal and his wife started a family together.
Once liberated, he assumed that his family was all dead because he didn’t know they were in Siberia.
In 1947, 2 years later, Jan was liberated from Liebenau, Austria by the Red Cross and taken to Canada as a refugee.
Jan when he arrived in Canada.
After about a decade and a half, Michal reunited with his family in Poland.
This is a photo of Michal, Anna and Zach together after the work camps
Zachery Kokiet.
Michal, Zach, Anna and Stanisława (The sister).
Zach and Nadia Kokiet’s Wedding.
Anna and Jan in Canada.
Anna and Jan.
Later in life, this is Michał on the left and Stanislawa, his wife is standing behind Zack.
Family Photos. I don’t know most of who is in these 2 photos.
In this photo: Olga, my grand aunt, Michal Kokiet, Stanisława Kokiet, Michal’s wife, Stanisława Koszil, the sister, Halina, my grandma, Zachery Kokiet, Nadia Kokiet, my great-grandma, plus 3 others that I don’t know.
Family Tree:
Nadia Kokiet, my great-grandmother and the man himself, Zachery Kokiet, my great-grandfather.
On May 10th, 2023, I met up with my great-grandfather and grandmother to go out for dinner so I could ask questions and hear more about what he went through.
During our conversation, my younger sister asked him if talking about this all was sad or difficult to talk about. He said no, that he was angry, not sad.
I am beyond grateful to have this opportunity that not many people have.
Our universe is like a giant sheet that we call space-time. It can be bent, dented and even punctured. Wormholes are essentially portals that take you from one region of space to another almost instantly. You could travel large distances through space faster than the speed of light. There are also different kinds of wormholes.
Einstein-Rosen bridges are black holes that are also a sort of portal to another parallel universe that looks like ours but upside down and time moving backwards. The things that go into a black hole come out of the opposite of a black hole; A white hole. The only issue with these is that you can not cross them. The pressure would still be that of a black hole meaning, that it would crush you. Also, it would take an infinite amount of time to cross from one to the other; this means that we cannot use Einstein-Rosen bridges successfully.
We could also try and create a wormhole. If we were to make a wormhole, it would instantly collapse in on itself. To help keep it open, we need to use something call exotic matter. Exotic matter is matter with negative mass. Imagine that instead of exotic matter curving space-time downwards to create a dip, it’s creating a hill that nothing can reach the top of. we could use it to push on the sides of the wormhole to keep it from collapsing. The best part about this is that it most likely already exists and we can make it.
But are they real? Or are they just Math and Physics?
Short answer: they aren’t real.
“It’s widely theorized that, under the right conditions, these shortcuts could be used as a sort of subway system through the galaxy. As exciting as that prospect is, the truth is nobody has ever actually found an existing wormhole, and as of this writing, they are purely theoretical.”
Artwork depicting a quantum experiment that observes traversable wormhole behavior. Credit: inqnet/A. Mueller (Caltech)
Although General Relativity says that they are possible, that doesn’t mean they exist. We currently have no evidence or proof of a wormhole. The closest we came to seeing a wormhole was on a quantum computer at the California Institute of Technology, also known as Caltech. “Scientists have, for the first time, developed a quantum experiment that allows them to study the dynamics, or behaviour, of a special kind of theoretical wormhole. The experiment has not created an actual wormhole (a rupture in space and time), rather it allows researchers to probe connections between theoretical wormholes and quantum physics, a prediction of so-called quantum gravity. Quantum gravity refers to a set of theories that seek to connect gravity with quantum physics, two fundamental and well-studied descriptions of nature that appear inherently incompatible with each other.”
“We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole yet is sufficiently small to implement on today’s quantum hardware,” says Maria Spiropulu
This all means that something in quantum physics behaves similarly to a wormhole. This is a link between wormholes and quantum physics.
But people use wormholes in movies!
In the popular movie, Interstellar, Cooper and the crew use a wormhole that was discovered near Saturn. They use the wormhole to go to a far-away galaxy in search of a new habitable planet. Unfortunately, even though Interstellar is known for its accuracy and position with the laws of physics, and even though they got well-known physicists to work on the movie, the wormhole in the movie Interstellar is just make-belief.
In the movie, they said that the wormhole was purposefully placed there by “something of someone”. It wasn’t naturally there.
So to answer the big question, can humans safely use wormholes?
Not yet… but hopefully at some point.
Sources:
Calvin, Whitney. “Physicists Observe Wormhole Dynamics Using a Quantum Computer.” California Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, 30 Nov. 2022, https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/physicists-observe-wormhole-dynamics-using-a-quantum-computer.
Devereux, Carolyn. “Curious Kids: What Is Exotic Matter, and Could We Use It to Make Wormholes?” Space.com, Space.com, 30 Oct. 2022, https://www.space.com/curious-kids-what-is-exotic-matter-and-could-we-use-it-to-make-wormholes.
Maya, Samhitha, and I were inspired to create a 3D Visualization project that aimed to represent the deaths caused by air pollution in different regions after learning about the statistics surrounding this issue. We wanted to showcase the severity of the problem and raise awareness about the devastating effects of air pollution on our health and the environment.
Our project is fueled by our belief that climate change and air pollution are two extremely pressing issues, and we hope that by shedding light on the severity of the problem, we can inspire people to take action and push for change.
The hypothesis, if we make the wing span bigger, then the plane will go further because it will generate more lift is rejected The data shows that “The Standard” went an average distance of 5 meters 98 centimetres, “The Arrow” went 6 meters 51 centimetres, and “The Bat” went 6 meters 8 centimetres. “The Arrow”, the plane with the shortest wing span went the furthest. It went 53 centimetres further than “The Standard” and 43 centimetres. “The Bat” went further than “The Standard” by 10 centimetres which is what we had predicted but what we didnt predict was how “The Arrow” went the furthest.
The results of this investigation are useful because it shows how important aerodynamics is.
The investigation can be improved by using a machine to get the exact same throw every time, getting better measurement by finding longer meter sticks to line up with the plane, finding a spot where there are no obsticals or wall and folding the planes perfectly.
Other questions that need to be answered are: Will using different types of paper (like construction of craft paper) effect he distance?
I am beyond grateful to have this opportunity that not many people have.
