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No-one knows how the police officers find their way back to the exact stadium in which they were born. Yet every year, thousands make this epic journey - battling their way up one-way streets, and through congested city centres - to the very same sporting venue in which they began their lives. They end their journeys exhausted, barely able to complete the final act for which this epic journey was made. It was here that they were born; it is here that they will spawn the next generation of law-enforcers; and it is here that they will end their lives - in the terraces of their ancestral arena, after one of the greatest migrations of the natural world.

These maps show the corporate networks of the top six banks in the USA. Each dot represents a company, and each line shows where a company controls another company. A "corporate network", therefore, is a network of control, with a single corporation at the top of the tree, ultimately controlling all the companies beneath it.

We have grouped together companies that are in the same country, in the shape of that country. This gives you an idea of the size of the corporate network, and how it is structured. By comparing different corporate networks, you can see where and how different companies operate.

If you want to understand how complex multinational companies are, consider this.

In Hong Kong, there's a company called Goldman Sachs Structured Products (Asia) Limited. It's controlled by another company called Goldman Sachs (Asia) Finance, registered in Mauritius.

That's controlled by a company in Hong Kong, which is controlled by a company in New York, which is controlled by a company in Delaware, and that company is controlled by another company in Delaware called GS Holdings (Delaware) L.L.C. II.

...Which itself is a subsidiary of the only Goldman you're likely to have heard of, The Goldman Sachs Group in New York City.

That's only one of hundreds of such chains. All told, Goldman Sachs consists of more than 4000 separate corporate entities all over the world, some of which are around ten layers of control below the New York HQ.

Of those companies approximately a third are registered in nations that might be described as tax havens.Indeed, in the world of Goldman Sachs, the Cayman Islands are bigger than South America, and Mauritius is bigger than Africa.

Nearly 1.5 miles beneath Earth's surface, scientists have found pockets of water that have been isolated from the outside world for 1 billion to 2.6 billion years.

What is very, very old water like?

What jumps out at you first is the saltiness. Because of the reactions between the water and the rock, it is extremely salty. It is more viscous than tap water. It has the consistency of a very light maple syrup. It doesn't have color when it comes out, but as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen it turns an orangy color because the minerals in it begin to form -- especially the iron.

So you've tasted it?

I have to admit I have tasted it from time to time. It tastes terrible. It is much saltier than seawater. You would definitely not want to drink this stuff.

We are interested in the saltiest waters because they are the oldest, and tasting is the quick-and-dirty way to find which are the most salty. I don't let the students do it, though.

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