Also, check out the OEIS mentioned - a very cool site.
2023/09/29
2023/09/28
The Plot of All Objects in the Universe
The Plot of All Objects in the Universe
You just have to admire a chart that casually purports to show every single thing in the Universe in one simple 2D plot. The chart in question is from a piece in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Physics with the understated title of "All objects and some questions".
Todays Thought
There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall, biographer (28 Sep 1868-1956)
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 – 13 April 1956),[1][2][3][Note 1] who wrote under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.
In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"[4] as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs.[5] This quotation – which is sometimes misattributed to Voltaire himself – is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech.[6][7]
2023/09/27
Scientists Make Best-Yet Map of Solar System’s Interstellar Boundaries
Scientists Make Best-Yet Map of Solar System’s Interstellar Boundaries
Researchers have gained a new view of the journey ahead for the twin Voyager spacecraft and other probes bound on one-way trips into interstellar space
We live in a bubble—literally.
It’s called the heliosphere, and it’s made of tenuous plasma billowing from the sun. This ionized gas flows outward along magnetic field lines emerging from our star, spooling out in radial spirals tied to the sun’s rotation. To venture beyond where this wind wanes against the greater flows of plasma coursing through our galaxy is, in a very real sense, to leave our solar system behind.
How Isaac Newton Discovered the Binomial Power Series
How Isaac Newton Discovered the Binomial Power Series
Rethinking questions and chasing patterns led Newton to find the connection between curves and infinite sums.
Todays Thought
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
-Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (27 Sep 1821-1881)
2023/09/26
Explainer: Why are space agencies racing to the moon's south pole?
Explainer: Why are space agencies racing to the moon's south pole?
BENGALURU/WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - India's space agency is attempting to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole, a mission that could advance India's space ambitions and expand knowledge of lunar water ice, potentially one of the moon's most valuable resources.
Here's what's known about the presence of frozen water on the moon - and why space agencies and private companies see it as a key to a moon colony, lunar mining and potential missions to Mars.
Clair Cameron Patterson
Clair Cameron Patterson (June 2, 1922 – December 5, 1995)[1] was an American geochemist. Born in Mitchellville, Iowa, Patterson graduated from Grinnell College. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and spent his entire professional career at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
In collaboration with George Tilton, Patterson developed the uranium–lead dating method into lead–lead dating. By using lead isotopic data from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, he calculated an age for the Earth of 4.55 billion years, which was a figure far more accurate than those that existed at the time, and one that has remained largely unchallenged since 1956.
Patterson first encountered lead contamination in the late 1940s as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. His work on this subject led to a total re-evaluation of the growth in industrial lead concentrations in the atmosphere and the human body, and his subsequent activism was seminal in the banning of tetraethyllead in gasoline and lead solder in food cans.
The Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)
The Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)
In 1903, the Romanovs, Russia’s last and longest-reigning royal family, held a lavish costume ball. It was to be their final blowout, and perhaps also the “last great royal ball” in Europe, writes the Vintage News. The party took place at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, 14 years before Czar Nicholas II’s abdication, on the 290th anniversary of Romanov rule. The Czar invited 390 guests and the ball ranged over two days of festivities, with elaborate 17th-century boyar costumes, including “38 original royal items of the 17th century from the armory in Moscow.”
“The first day featured feasting and dancing,” notes Russia Beyond, “and a masked ball was held on the second. Everything was captured in a photo album that continues to inspire artists to this day.” The entire Romanov family gathered for a photograph on the staircase of the Hermitage theater, the last time they would all be photographed together.
Bretton Woods and the Birth of the World Bank
Bretton Woods and the Birth of the World Bank
On July 1, 1944, as the battles of the Second World War raged in Europe and the Pacific, delegates from forty-four nations met at the secluded Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to participate in what became known as the Bretton Woods Conference. Their purpose was to agree on a system of economic order and international cooperation that would help countries recover from the devastation of the war and foster long-term global growth. At its conclusion, the conference attendees produced the Articles of Agreement for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Todays Thought
The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow. For Thine is the Kingdom
-T.S. Eliot, poet (26 Sep 1888-1965)
The next stanza explains that all along, the thing which has kept them from changing their own situation was “the Shadow.” This for is undefined, but it comes “Between the idea / And the reality.” It blocks any intentions for change the men might have. There is no way for their motions to coalesce into actions.
The line “For Thine is the Kingdom” is separated from the rest of the text. This is part of the Lord’s Prayer but is missing the ending, “and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” Eliot includes this fragment of the prayer to show the good intentions of the men but their inability to do anything to completion.
2023/09/25
Todays Thought
No battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
-William Faulkner, novelist (25 Sep 1897-1962)
2023/09/23
2023/09/22
The Central Processing Unit (CPU): Crash Course Computer Science #7
Today we’re going to build the ticking heart of every computer - the Central Processing Unit or CPU. The CPU’s job is to execute the programs we know and love - you know like GTA V, Slack... and Power Point. To make our CPU we’ll bring in our ALU and RAM we made in the previous two episodes and then with the help of Carrie Anne’s wonderful dictation (slowly) step through some clock cycles. WARNING: this is probably the most complicated episode in this series, we watched this a few times over ourselves, but don't worry at about .03Hz we think you can keep up.
2023/09/21
How The Most Useless Branch of Math Could Save Your Life
There is an entire branch of math simply devoted to knots – and it has changed the world. We’ll rope you in.
Todays Thought
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
-Stephen King, novelist (b. 21 Sep 1947)
2023/09/20
Electrons DO NOT Spin
Quantum mechanics has a lot of weird stuff - but there’s thing that everyone agrees that no one understands. I’m talking about quantum spin. Let’s find out how chasing this elusive little behavior of the electron led us to some of the deepest insights into the nature of the quantum world.
Todays Thought
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
-Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer (20 Sep 1878-1968)
2023/09/19
Todays Thought
This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.
-Oksana Zabuzhko, writer (b. 19 Sep 1960)
2023/09/18
Phoenix takes big step toward Scottsdale-style canals, but residents wonder
Phoenix takes big step toward Scottsdale-style canals, but residents wonder
Picture a canal. Scottsdale has the waterfront, Venice romantic gondolas. Amsterdam is synonymous with canals. In Bruges, they made a movie that featured them. Even San Antonio has a must-see entertainment district on its canal.
Now, decades after Phoenix's canals were built, the city wants in on the act. Mayor Kate Gallego touts how the city has 180 miles of canals compared to Amsterdam's 60.
Phoenix officials have spent years trying to bring their vision of a "Grand Canalscape" to reality, and earlier this month they took a major step toward bringing it to fruition.
Todays Thought
You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
-Ken Kesey, novelist (17 Sep 1935-2001)
2023/09/15
Why is ATSC 3.0 Taking So Long?
Why is ATSC 3.0 Taking So Long?
Commentary: The NextGen TV broadcast standard is facing several threats, including some of its own making.
2023/09/13
A Short Guide to Hard Problems
A Short Guide to Hard Problems
What’s easy for a computer to do, and what’s almost impossible? Those questions form the core of computational complexity. We present a map of the landscape.
2023/09/09
Frisco 11-year-old sets off on secret mission to help the homeless
Frisco 11-year-old sets off on secret mission to help the homeless
11-year-old Treyson Pierce started a fundraiser in May, but kept it hidden from his mom.
2023/09/05
Grover's algorithm
n quantum computing, Grover's algorithm, also known as the quantum search algorithm, refers to a quantum algorithm for unstructured search that finds with high probability the unique input to a black box function that produces a particular output value, using just evaluations of the function, where is the size of the function's domain. It was devised by Lov Grover in 1996.[1]
The analogous problem in classical computation cannot be solved in fewer than evaluations (because, on average, one has to check half of the domain to get a 50% chance of finding the right input). Charles H. Bennett, Ethan Bernstein, Gilles Brassard, and Umesh Vazirani proved that any quantum solution to the problem needs to evaluate the function times, so Grover's algorithm is asymptotically optimal.[2] Since classical algorithms for NP-complete problems require exponentially many steps, and Grover's algorithm provides at most a quadratic speedup over the classical solution for unstructured search, this suggests that Grover's algorithm by itself will not provide polynomial-time solutions for NP-complete problems (as the square root of an exponential function is an exponential, not polynomial, function).[3]
Unlike other quantum algorithms, which may provide exponential speedup over their classical counterparts, Grover's algorithm provides only a quadratic speedup. However, even quadratic speedup is considerable when is large, and Grover's algorithm can be applied to speed up broad classes of algorithms.[3] Grover's algorithm could brute-force a 128-bit symmetric cryptographic key in roughly 264 iterations, or a 256-bit key in roughly 2128 iterations. It may not be the case that Grover's algorithm poses a significantly increased risk to encryption over existing classical algorithms, however.[4]
The Selectric Typewriter
The IBM ® Selectric typewriter was a radical innovation that completely disrupted the business typewriter market. It transformed the speed, accuracy and flexibility with which people could generate the written word, and helped pave the way for the use of typewriter keyboards as the primary method for humans to interact with computers...
Todays Thought
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
-Mary Renault, novelist (4 Sep 1905-1983)
Todays Thought
When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.
-Sarah Kendzior, journalist and author (b. 1 Sep 1978)
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Arizona's huge new dark sky observatory: See the construction progress Renderings & Floorplan The 22,000 square-foot IDSDC will ac...
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The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers is a c. 1672–75 oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age...
