Tenth of 911 on our pale blue dot

If you are not sure why ten is ever special than any of its neighboring numbers 9 and 11, there is this movie telling the power of ten.



Looking at the voyager image taken from the edge of solar system, Carl Sagan once reflected:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Video from the Cosmos by: Carl Sagan:




Peace!

Interesting world of Topology

Just noted:

New States of Matter Suggested by New Topological Structures

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26144/?ref=rss
Paper @ http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2698
And an interesting video by a student:

The First Contact: How will it go?

If one works out the numbers, probability of life being elsewhere in the universe is not small. Neither should the probability that they are smarter than us. This week Hawking's statement about the ET got some waves.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8642558.stm)

Is this how we are gonna handle it?
:)

Upgrading 37,376 chips of a Super Computer: Jaguar

Jaguar has been named the top supercomputer. 

Well, Jaguar [ AMD six-core chips 2.6 gigahertz] (http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/) has 255,584 processing cores. Think of replacing all the chips on it after watching the video.
:)

 



http://gcn.com/articles/2009/11/17/top500.aspx

Amazing Video of James Mays in a U2 spy plane to space

James Mays of  Top Gear (U.K.) takes an emotional ride to the edge of space in a U2 spyplane.
Just amazing!!!

Learning: A unique Human culture

Why is it important to learn?

Because we are equipped with the brain...
Watch the video:



Read more on "Why Science is important?" ...

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/26/science-gcse-teaching-videos
• http://whyscience.co.uk/the-film/index.php

Aug. was over, and no sun-spot for full month!

Yes, the month of August was spot-less.
Does this explain the crisis on the Wall-Street?

No one really knows whether there is any relationship of sun-spot with the speeding of voyagers or the global warming. But, this new news about the Sun-spot was interesting:
"Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century"


Please read more....
http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm

Periodicity in Chaos

I would like to assume that there will be chaotic behavior in nearly every evolving system. I would also like to speculate that the Chaos is actually the search for the stable point of the whole dynamics of the process. Sometimes, there are apparently more than one stable fixed points and thus the system will keep jumping between them. The agents of stabilization will tend to set in to the stable fixed point while the dynamic behavior will try to make it move to next fixed point. During the violent competition between the competing processes, we observe that everything is pretty random. Hence may not look pretty nice.
After the system settles and revolves around the fixed point, the pattern looks pretty nice. As we can see it in the following picture (from Wikipedia):
(I know it makes no sense// I don't mind: why there would be any tendency of recurrence in the system?)

Twittering from Mars!!!

Hello!
"The weather of mars is ...."

Soon we will be receiving live twittering from Mars on such details.
For the first time in history the Phoenix is twittering the Mars mission updates.
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

The pictures of northern part of Mars, just received can be located at:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

Take a bow!
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/main.php

Stephen Hawking on some Big Questions about our universe

Professor Stephen Hawking asks some Big Questions about our universe -- How did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? -- and discusses how we might go about answering them.

Stephen Hawking is perhaps the world's most famous living physicist. A specialist in cosmology and quantum gravity and a devotee of black holes, his work has probed the origins of the cosmos, the nature of time and the universe's ultimate fate -- earning him accolades including induction into the Order of the British Empire. To the public, he's best known as an author of bestsellers such as The Universe in a Nutshell and A Brief History of Time, which have brought an appreciation of theoretical physics to millions.

Though the motor neuron disorder ALS has confined Hawking to a wheelchair, it hasn't stopped him from lecturing widely, making appearances on television shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Simpsons -- and planning a trip into orbit with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. (He recently experienced weightlessness aboard Zero Gravity Corporation's "Vomit Comet.") A true academic celebrity, he uses his public appearances to raise awareness about potential global disasters -- such as global warming -- and to speak out for the future of humanity: "Getting a portion of the human race permanently off the planet is imperative for our future as a species," he says.

Hawking serves as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where he continues to contribute to both high-level physics and the popular understanding of our universe.

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

Stephen Hawking

From Ted.com
The code was update on 20th April 2008.

The presentation can be viewed here:

The mathematical theory of surprise!

The mathematical theory of surprise!

The surprise function is directly proportional to the log of the Probability.
Lower the probability is higher is the surprise.

There are some prior probability of things being happened. Or, chances of occurring certain things in certain ways. At least we have developed some kind of mental picture of forth coming events.

But there are always certain(non zero) probabilities of happening un-expected events. We are surprised when we encounter such events.

(contd...)
Links of interests:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/wp-trackback.php?p=91
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uosc-scs112805.php

'tsunami' on Sun

Scientists have observed 'tsunami' on Sun.

Astronomers have captured the "first" movie of a solar “tsunami” in the Sun’s atmosphere .

It was glimpsed by Nasa’s STEREO spacecraft . STEREO mission consist of two spacecrafts revolving around the Sun to reveal it's 3D image.

Tsunami on the Sun is a wave of pressure that sweeps across the Sun. It is induced by a huge explosion near or on the surface of the Sun, such as a coronal mass ejection or flare, which causes a pressure to propagate outwards in a circular pattern.

Read more on:
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7326097.stm
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/08040235.htm

This picture is From the picture of the day: 2006 December 13 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061213.html

Mar22, 2064 AD

Mar22, 2064 AD

In 2025 we got excited by the innovation achieved by human kinds. We were able to develop nano-robots: nanobots. These tiny robots could be inserted into body and they could travel into our vascular system to reach the neurons. Initially it was designed to heal some neurological diseases, but later it was found that they could also be used to make the neural connections in the brain. Thus medical subjects could plan to get new connections and could heal some broken neural connections. This led to exciting development in the field of neuro-science by 2031. By 2033, another milestone was achieved : the instructions could be sent to the nanobots by broadcasting the wireless signal and they used same mechanism of hemoglobin for their energy supply. They could absorb the oxygens from blood and use it as fuel (The details are still kept under top secret).

Suddenly something bad happened, they started to extract the Irons from the hemoglobin and used it to reproduce similar structures. Robot Reproduction!. They needed more oxygens and irons. By 2050, the entire planet was under their control. There were nanobots present in every brain. And they controlled every brain on the planet. Age of Slavery was back. There was no need to make new robots. Humans were robots, by definition....


Inspired by:
iRobot
i am Legend
"robot": A keyword search in answers.com
and
Machines 'to match man by 2029' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm)

(to be continued ...)

Darwin day: Feb 12th.

Darwin Day is the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809.

He is honored for his dedication and innovative skills to trace the theory of Natural selection as the mechanism of organic evolution. He not only proposed it, he presented it with supporting evidence. The most established and highly debated logical explanation for the diversity of life.
I feel deep respect for his power of observation.

On the Origin of Species was published on November 24, 1859.

When I had chance to visit the VC of (then) RONAST, I could see two pictures of scientist on his office wall. I had asked why (only) these two people?
At that time VC was Prof. Daya Nanda Bajracharya, and he was happy that I asked that. One of them was Charles Darwin and the other was Albert Einstein.

2009 will mark an important year for Darwin Day celebrations. The year will be the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and will also mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

There are rivals to this theory too: Let me put one pic:

iAdvisor : A fiction.

Today, finally, I got something working of my brain Child. "iAdvisor!"
This is really a fantastic idea.
I can not write to explain my happiness. "iAdvisor" understands it. When I went back to my room to find my wife sleeping, without getting full consciousness, she understood it: without a word being spoken. She said "Wow! u got it?". I had got no chance to say anything to her. See, still amazed by these patterns of feelings which, upto today, only the humans could understand the other. Actually, it was her inspiration, which induced me to design and think of such algorithm and a device.
Well, "iAdvisor" is something like your wife, your partner, your deep friend, from which you have nothing to hide, nothing to keep secret. Let it observe everything. The more you get it involved, the best results you would get. It is something between "I" and "You": something deep between the first person and the third person. The best part is it never intervenes the situation, just transmits you the suggestions. It, not only takes the situation, but can also extrapolate and produce the possible results and suggest you, advise you. The longer you stay with my device, better results you will be getting. Yep, your freedom to decide is still preserved. Just a friend to remind you and be with you, just in case.
"iAdvisor" is a device which can recognize your basic moods. It can take the situation, analyze it and give you the structure of possible outcomes. If I had been taking tea in the morning, and I think of coffee, it can say "Nice change, This coffee is best/suitable for you!" and take my word, it will suggest you the correct flavor. You will really enjoy it. I mean, given that it has the record of all your drinking habits, you had been taking, it can create a nice implication lattice of all the possible flavors. And with all the associated factors, it can suggest a suitable outcome. It means it really knows you. Mind the word: suggest, not only the presentation of the possible results. Isn't that amazing?
That is only example, think of its possibilities, with the super cluster computing, it can find the best dinner for you tonight. Suggest nice lines to read, can aid nice references for you (still under development). It is not just a reminder machine, it is something like your wife reminding you to get something form the market, a friend who suggests a best way to get the things done (I have managed not to involve it to do some mechanical works, up to now; it poses some serious problems).

This Saturday (23rd Dec. 2055), I will be organizing a nice public demo of my "iAdvisor". You are heartly welcomed @5:15GMT: the third Dome, Fifth Ave. aueweg Stripe, The Moonland.
For my blog Readers on Earth, Please make sure that you do not miss my live telecast on the same day @5:15GMT.


(I know this is too much: would you mind leaving a comment, Please!)

You may like this:
My Bus Diaries

Revision II : Laws of Physics

I had written something here: http://ajabgajab.blogspot.com/2007/10/laws-of-nature.html.
What we say as "rule" was discovered by humankind in due course of time. Due to its capacity to observe.
We speak of "fundamental rules" but what do we really mean by that?
It is based upon our inference, which ultimately is based upon the observation. For a blind people darkness is law! for a deaf, symbol works. So, it depends upon our capacity to observe and make inference. Are we capable to formulate laws that govern the universe?
Yes!/ No!
Yes:
We are capable to formulate some "rules" on the basis of our understanding capabilities. The sources of knowledge are being pushed. And our understanding improves so does the power of inference.
Take an example, in Hindu Philosophy, The rain was caused by Indra Dev. But do we still think that way?
We were happy with five elements: Earth, Fire, Sky, water , air
We now have more. Does this make life easier?
No:
However, what we said law was actually our rules of inference. Rules so that we can understand the situation and make ourselves more comfortable.
There are no "rules" if you can see the world! Rules are just like your pieces of specs you need to see it clearly.

The only thing that survives is the Order.
Well, let's think about it!
Oh god! what am I writing? (<<-- JOKE!)
(Needs more refinements, may be your comments would help!)

Why do we need to clone anymore?

Death is certain. We should die at some point. Some people prefer cloning method as a way to view the procrastination of death. Life will be quite boring without death. :D
I could not stop writing today because of the following exciting news going around:

New Stem Cell Method Could Ease Ethical Concerns
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/science/21stem.html?ref=science

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=0kG&um=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&resnum=1&ct=title&q=stem+cells&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=d&as_mind=19&as_minm=11&as_maxd=20&as_maxm=11&scoring=n

Scientists Guide Human Skin Cells To Embryonic State
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2007)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071120092709.htm

Stem Cell !!!
It is the biggest news of today!
What do I think?
Well
Who cares!
... ...
JK!
I think it is one of the milestone work in Science.

Read more >> Options >>

Laws of Nature?

It all started with the assumption that we are weaker. Actually we are. In many cases, we loose the moments. Not everything is under our control. But what keeps us alive is the fact that we do not give up! It is natural. If it is natural, and supposedly conducted by someone more powerful than us. We call him the super human or, may be , god (?)
So, we started searching for him. Oh my god! he is so so powerful that despite our so much effort, he can remain hidden.
We looked for him everywhere. Where have we not looked for him?
It remains to be the most searched substance in this universe. He can not, thus be made up of matter like we are made up of. Hmm ... , that makes sense. He governs all the "laws" which no one can defy. Even not Mother earth, sun moon, and galaxies. But we are little naughty. We want to read his mind. We want to know why he created us and why is he playing with so many stuffs around us. We also want to question him whether he wanted some intelligent beings like us who can ultimately ask questions to him.
With all these questions in mind, We started studying Nature. We started exploring it. And (unfortunately?) we called it Physics!
Now we are half concious from a dark and deep state of knowledge and have started asking whether or not our starting point was wrong!
May be the laws of Physics are not the ultimate laws nature! We derived all the laws on the basis of our observations and our inferences. So, the laws of Physics are actually laws of inference.
And the laws can be different!
Laws of Nature is something different!
In this respect we the physicists are most agnostic people on earth. We are honest. We are the one who can speak truth (truth?). We are proud to be Physicists.
God Bless us!
(smile)

Highly inspired by the talk of Prof. Caticha (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0710.1071)
and
Prof. Knuth's Online Cortex: http://www.huginn.com/knuth/blog/2007/10/11/information-physics/

On The Proposed Carbon Trading System: Roger Pink

I’d like to thank Nabin for providing me another opportunity to write in his blog.

The other day it was announced that Al Gore, along with the United Nations Climate Control Panel, won the Nobel Peace Prize for their combined efforts to raise international awareness of climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. I commend this choice for the award because the sooner we acknowledge that the problem exists, and that it is not in fact a natural phenomenon, then the sooner we can start taking measures to address the problem

So that raises the question of what measures should be taken to address global warming. A popular choice is a carbon trading system, which I believe, though good intentioned, will ultimately produce little beneficial results while lulling the public into a false belief that the problem of global warming is being addressed. To explain what I mean, let’s first consider some numbers.

Roughly 28 billion tonnes (metric) of Carbon Dioxide were released into the atmosphere by man-made processes. Within two years the worldwide CO2 emmissions are expected to reach 30 billion tonnes, with China, the U.S., and Europe combined responsible for over 50% of those emissions. Natural processes emit and absorb roughly ten times (200 billion tonnes) that amount of carbon during the carbon cycle which includes respiration, decomposition, absorption and emission from oceans, etc. Often critics of man-made global warming will argue that since man-made emissions are less than 10% than emissions due to natural processes, and that the current warming trend couldn’t thus be caused by man. This argument fails to realize however that natural emissions were in equilibrium with natural absorption in the carbon cycle before man-made contributions began, which means that the 28 billion tonnes is not in addition to that which is released by nature but in fact a perturbation to the natural equilibrium position.

In that light, a 10% perturbation to equilibrium is in fact a massive effect on the natural equilibrium. Nature of course will try to adjust as can be seen by the slight increase in the pH of the oceans as more CO2 is absorbed as well as a “greening effect” where fauna actually become denser per square mile. Unfortunately man is fighting that equilibrium response by systematic deforestation (Brazil, Ukraine, Canada, US, etc). Also, the warming temperatures are slowly extending the temperate regions, significantly increasing the land in which plant life can grow, but at the same time releasing CO2 that has been locked up in frozen tundra and glaciers for thousands of. Additionally, as highly reflective ice recedes leaving more absorptive (blacker) ground in its wake, more power from the Sun is converted to into infrared radiation which can be captured by the CO2. To put it simply and bluntly, the very speed at which temperature levels are rising, coupled with human deforestation is severely limiting the Earths natural equilibrium response. This can be seen by 20% CO2 content increase in the atmosphere over the last 50 years (315 ppm to 380 ppm).

The carbon trading system proposes creating a market where carbon credits (papers permitting X amount of emissions) are exchanged towards a global goal of reducing carbon emissions by half in the next 50 years or so. Of course they draw pretty graphs that show global temperature increase tapering off at different slopes depending upon the rate of the reduction of carbon emissions over the next 50 years. These graphs are a joke because they basically assume little or no change in the natural carbon emissions and absorptions after a dramatic climate shift. The reality is that such a trading system will not reduce atmospheric carbon levels (which is causing the warming), but in fact slow the rate at which they are increasing. In other words, if the entire world cooperates and agrees to a carbon trading system, and there is no corruption or fraud, then in 2050 the carbon dioxide content of air will be 450ppm instead of 500ppm as compared to the 380ppm of today. Not exactly a solution is it?

But maybe 450ppm isn’t so bad right? I mean, here we are at 380ppm and Earth isn’t so bad. If only it were that simple. CO2 levels haven’t exceeded 300ppm in the last 500,000 years. We are talking about being roughly 25% beyond the peak right now. That means more heat than ever in the past half million years is being captured by the Earths surface atmosphere. So where is it all going? The excess heat is being absorbed by the oceans. You see, water has a heat capacity that is 4 times larger than land, and since most of the Earth’s surface is water (70%), it tends to soak up all this extra heat, slowly increasing in temperature. If you think of CO2 levels as a force and the velocity as increasing global temperatures and natural absorption processes as a form of friction resisting this increase in temperatures, then the heat capacity of the oceans is like a big heavy mass that takes a lot of force to move. So although the Earth doesn’t seem to be changing much in temperature, a massive inertia is building that will be hard to reverse. With such an inertia, a small reduction in the increase in CO2 levels will be meaningless. Drastic action must be taken in order to slow temperature increases in any meaningful way.

What needs to happen, and what no one wants to hear, is that we need an immediate elimination of greenhouse emissions along with the elimination of deforestation. Only then will the climbing global temperatures start to taper off like they do in those nice graphs the carbon trading system people like to show. Is that practical? Perhaps if we had a way to generate energy cheaply that didn’t emit CO2, but seeing as we have nothing like that at this time, I suggest you all get used to the warming weather, its here to stay. The carbon trading system is only a placebo, we’ll feel good for a while, but it won’t actually be doing anything.

**************************************************
Roger Pink is {my friend :) } a Ph.D. student at the Department of Physics, University at Albany, State University of New York.
He is associated with the cr4 and has been regular blogger there since early 2005: http://cr4.globalspec.com/blog/browse/6/Roger-s-Equations
His previous entry is here

[Wikipedia] October 12: Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the claim that "certain features of the universe
and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not
an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form
of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God,
modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer.
Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery
Institute, believe the designer to be God. Intelligent design's
advocates claim it is a scientific theory, and seek to fundamentally
redefine science to accept supernatural explanations. The unequivocal
consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is
not science. "Intelligent design" originated in response to a 1987
United States Supreme Court ruling involving separation of church and
state. The intelligent design movement culminated in the 2005 case
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in which U.S. District Judge
John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science, that
it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious,
antecedents", and concluded that the school district's promotion of it
therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution.

Read the rest of this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:

1492:
Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean, believing he
had reached East Asia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus)

1915:
A German firing squad executed British nurse Edith Cavell for
helping Allied soldiers to escape occupied Belgium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell)

1928:
An iron lung medical ventilator, designed by Philip Drinker and
colleagues at Children's Hospital, Boston, was used for the first time
in the treatment of polio victims.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iron_lung)

1984:
The Provisional Irish Republican Army failed in its attempt to
assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her
cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing)

2002:
A series of bombs exploded in Bali, Indonesia, killing 202 people
and injuring a further 209.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_bombings)

_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:

jaded: Worn out, wearied, or lacking enthusiasm; exhausted.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jaded)

_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:

Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything
inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity
dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole.
-- Edith Stein
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edith_Stein)