" 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.
The back-story: On February 1990 the space probe Voyager 1, having completed its mission by visiting Jupiter and Saturn, was commanded to turn towards the Sun on order to photograph the planets of the solar system from afar. This resulted to the above picture of our planet, known as the Pale Blue Dot, which is taken from a mind-boggling distance of 6.054 billion kilometers from Earth, earning the distinction of our remotest picture so far. The text underneath is written by the late Carl Sagan, who both had the idea of taking the photo and named it.
I post it here on the eve of the annus mirabilis [/sarcasm] 2009 as it helps put things in perspective, giving us a tiny glimpse of who we really are. I hope I'll be proved wrong, but I'm afraid this little gem will turn out to be more useful this year than it ever was... Plus, I find the phrase "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam" incredibly poetic.
And with these thoughts I have to leave you, in order to get ready for the New Year, whatever it turns out to be.
Have a happy new year, reader, and may the FSM touch you with His noodly appendage!
December 31, 2008
A sobering thought for the new year
November 30, 2008
An ode to rationalism
All of nature in its place
By hand of the designer
Comes our Charlie spins the world
From here to Asia Minor
In between the Platypus
And perfect Aphrodite
Charlie come with opposing thumb
To question the Almighty
Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder
See the dancing President
The congressman and teacher
Jumpin' to the music of
The wealthy Midwest preacher
Charlie come with a brand new dance
Get on the floor and follow
Find yourself a partner and
We'll swing into tomorrow
Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder
Armed with truth we're stepping out
Come join the worldwide party
Charge your glass and face the world
We'll drink a toast to Charlie
Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder.
November 20, 2008
Beermathics or "An infinite number of mathematicians...
...walk into a bar.
The first one orders a beer.
The second orders half a beer.
The third, a quarter of a beer.
The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers."
Now, allow me to be the brilliant mind who will do the math for his moronic readers unfunny/killjoy guy who will explain the joke here:
Let's label the mathematicians with 'n', with n going from 1 (the first guy) to ∞ (the "last" one):
We should also label the amount of beer that each one drinks as beern Then we'll have this:
...
From this we can derive the general formula that gives us beern, i.e. the amount of beer that the n-th mathematician will drink:
So, all the clever barman had to do was to add all the terms in the series which, predictably gives out...
It just goes to show that brilliant minds nerds can have humour inside jokes that no-one cares about, too.
[via Talk Like a Physicist, who found it here, who in turn found it here, and so on ad nauseum infinitum]
(later addition: The title is -[sarcasm]obviously[/sarcasm]- a quasi-reference to this)
November 11, 2008
Farewell, little robot
Phoenix, the NASA Mars lander that confirmed the presence of ice on the Martian soil, succumbed to red planet's winter. There's little hope that it will be revived in spring (Martian spring, that is) because of the extremely low temperatures that it will encounter (all the way down to -180oC), which will probably ruin its life-sustaining electronics.
Rest in peace, for you served us well.
[via]
September 28, 2008
September 11, 2008
LHC || The next day (literally)
Inspired -in my usual thieving adaptive way- by Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy fame), I celebrated the non-end of the world with the following:
Of course I had to see it every time I'd be in front of my PC, so it ended up as a wallpaper, here [left click, Save As...] kindly provided to the Dear ReaderTM to use.
September 9, 2008
LHC & The End of the World
Tomorrow at 9:30 Central European Time (10:30 local), as you may know, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will "turn on", i.e. its main proton beam will circulate for the first time through its entire length, achieving energies far higher than any other accelerator has reached before.
This, as well as the ultimate goal of the entire experiment (finding the elusive Higgs boson -a.k.a. "The FSM particle"- something perceived as an act of hubris by many) has led to speculation about whether the world is about to end in a freaky high energy physics accident.
I, for one, believe that all this was prophesied a long, long time ago (1979!) by the great & late Douglas Adams:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
There is a third theory which suggests that both of the first two theories were concocted by a wily editor of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in order to increase the universal level of uncertainty and paranoia and so boost the sales of the Guide.This last theory is of course the most convincing as The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the only book in the whole of the known universe to have the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover."
And then, of course, there's this:
How can it not go awfully wrong???
*OK, in fact the first collisions, where anything could **theoretically** go wrong are not scheduled till October 21st or so, but I will not let this mere technicality stand in the way of fear-mongering. OMG PANIC PANIC EVERYONE!!!1!
August 24, 2008
June 17, 2008
Über-cool
Ομολογουμένως, ενώ είμαι σαφής υπέρμαχος της εξελικτικής θεωρίας (και ποιος δεν είναι, θα με ρωτήσετε, ε...?) δεν είχα ποτέ ξεκαθαρίσει στο μυαλό μου το πως ξεκίνησε η ζωή, το πως τα απλά οργανικά μόρια μετατράπηκαν σε δομές οι οποίες είχαν την ικανότητα να τρέφονται, να αναπαράγονται, να προσαρμόζονται ανταγωνιστικά στο περιβάλλον τους και να μεταβιβάζουν πληροφορίες από γενιά σε γενιά.
Αυτό το βιντεάκι [via Pharyngula] εξηγεί σε απλούς -σχετικά- όρους την ιδέα της αβιογένεσης, και πως αυτή δένει με την εξέλιξη.
Plus, its music makes me oh-so-joyous (pun intended)!
February 29, 2008
The maaaad scientist!
Εδώ θα βρείτε έναν ήχο που -λογικά- θα μπορείτε να ακούσετε αν είστε κάτω των 25, αλλά όχι αν ανήκετε σε μεγαλύτερες ηλικίες! Αυτό οφείλεται στην ελάττωση της ευαισθησίας του αυτιού με την πάροδο του χρόνου (πρεσβυακοϊα) (η οποία με τη σειρά της οφείλεται σε...? Κάποιος που ξέρει? Κυρία βιολόγε μας?).
Κάντε τη δοκιμή! Εγώ το δοκίμασα με την αδερφή μου (ετών 11) & τη σεπτή Μητέρα® (ετών 40-δεν-επιτρέπεται-να-πω-δημόσια-πόσο). Σε επίπεδα οπού εγώ το άκουγα, χωρίς όμως να με ενοχλεί, η αδερφή μου κόντευε να τρελαθεί και η Μητέρα® δεν άκουγε τίποτα (ναι, ΟΚ, παραδέχομαι πως εντυπωσιάστηκα)!
Ακόλουθες δοκιμές με χρήση ειδικού software (λέμε τώρα) κατέληξαν πως το "κατώφλι" ακοής της αδερφής μου βρίσκεται στα 19-19.5 kHz (στους εγγείς υπερήχους), το δικό μου στα 16 kHz και της Μητέρας® γύρω στα 13 kHz.
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