Lich

In fantasy fiction, a lich (/ˈlɪtʃ/;cognate to Dutch lijk, German Leiche, Norse lík and Swedish lik all meaning "corpse") is a type of undead creature. Often such a creature is the result of a transformation, as a powerful magician or king striving for eternal life uses spells or rituals to bind his intellect to his phylactery and thereby achieve a form of immortality. Liches are depicted as being clearly cadaverous, bodies desiccated or completely skeletal. Liches are often depicted as holding power over hordes of lesser undead creatures, using them as soldiers and servants.

Unlike zombies, which are often depicted as mindless, part of a hivemind or under the control of another, a lich retains revenant-like independent thought and is usually at least as intelligent as it was prior to its transformation. In some works of fiction, liches can be distinguished from other undead by their phylactery, an item of the lich's choosing into which they imbue their soul, giving them immortality until the phylactery is destroyed.

PSR B1257+12

PSR B1257+12, previously designated PSR 1257+12, alternatively designated PSR J1300+1240, also named Lich, is a pulsar located 2300 light years from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo.

The pulsar has a planetary system with three known extrasolar planets (designated PSR B1257+12 A, B and C; later named Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor, respectively). They were both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered; A and B in 1992 and C in 1994. A is the lowest mass planet yet discovered by any observational technique, with somewhat less than twice the mass of Earth's moon.

Nomenclature

The convention that arose for designating pulsars was that of using the letters PSR (Pulsating Source of Radio) followed by the pulsar's right ascension and degrees of declination. The modern convention prefixes the older numbers with a B meaning the coordinates are for the 1950.0 epoch. All new pulsars have a J indicating 2000.0 coordinates and also have declination including minutes. Pulsars that were discovered before 1993 tend to retain their B names rather than use their J names, but all pulsars have a J name that provides more precise coordinates of its location in the sky.

Lich, Hesse

Lich is a town in the district of Gießen, in Hesse, Germany. It is situated 12 km southeast of Gießen.

Geography

The town is located alongside the river Wetter halfway between Taunus and Vogelsberg; the northern and eastern parts of the town belong to the natural area of the Vogelsberg Mountains , the southern and western to the Wetterau.

Constituent communities

Besides the main town, which bears the same name as the whole municipality, the following surrounding communities belong to Lich since the 1970s Hessen government act:

History

The region is known to be settled for more than 100 000 years. Tools found on several places in and around Lich could be dated to the Neanderthal period, others to the Aurignacian culture, Linear Pottery culture, the Bronze Age, the Hallstatt culture and the La Tène culture.

When building the Upper Germanic Limes during the regency of the Roman Emperor Domitian the Romans founded also the Castra Arnsburg, located near the nowadays Arnsburg Abbey. It is the most northern known Castra along the Limes.