Let’s see how realistic a depiction this deep-space exploration motion picture is …. Clearly we have been given better images to fantasize about ‘ice fishing trip to Europa’ though !
First look at “Europa Report” !!
Reply
Making of the world’s smallest movie !
Wish you were here …
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here
- Pink Floyd
A memory
A southern trail, in early winter wasn’t enough, The calmness of shore wasn’t enough, Absence of people around me wasn’t enough Never before but words were not enough I will remain here, waiting…
Pleasure of senses did not remain there for long, Friends were missed at first, but sharing was at the heart of it Something changed, a connection made But soon memories will fade away Beautiful motherly wishes traveled with me And then, wistfulness came along I will remain here, waiting…
In a troubled time, strangers provided many words But never became part of my journey Many surprises along the way Yet, the lies and the social norms will always remain here, with me Nothing has been enough… I, still, be waiting…
Stars are only companions, for now I know them, indifferent spectators. Earnestness will never be found there, only mystery has been filling the void. I will be waiting … for you !
Time to revisit “Reflections on a mote of dust ” !
It never gets old to revisit the work of Carl Sagan ! It was an awesome animation (Above) to start ! His words are still impact-full to ears. They compel us to fine tune our attitude and send out a very simple message to alter our ego maniacal ways of approaching the conflicts around the world. Idea of ‘Living peacefully’ has become a necessary evil for us ! The idea was seen by Carl Sagan as an amicable friend to march forward with ! Sigh ….. Oh humanity !
I thank my friend for the book he sent me yesterday ! It’s an awesome read for sure !
Nos vemos amigos !!!
A young republic !
“ A Republic, if you can keep it.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
Happy Republic Day to all my fellow countrymen/women !
Dr.Tyson on the dance floor ….. do I need to say more ?
Another Sad Day ! ….. for end of the world enthusiasts !!
So one less in the list of Earth threatening asteroids …… We still yet to call Bruce willis and his oil drilling crew to save us !
I am still worried about the number of people working on the problem of ‘Potential Asteroid Impact’. I wonder what ISRO has to say about this in their annual report which might be due shortly !!
Source : Here !
If you want to build a ship ….
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” ——- Aviator Antoine de saint-exupéry (1900-1944)
An advice to students …..
I always tell students to consider the set of problems they think are personally interesting, look around to find the set of problems the rest of the world thinks are interesting, and work at the intersection. It’s one of the biggest challenges in being a successful scientist — find the right problem to work on.
– Dr. Sean Carroll
Another Feynman anecdote …… !
R. Feynman on Papp perpetual motion engine
” One time [in 1966] some students came over to my house with one of those magazines about automobiles-Roadrunner, or something like that. In it there was an article about a marvelous new engine which works on a new principle for getting power, and it’s really quite remarkable. You don’t have to buy fuel for the car; the fuel is injected into the cylinders when the engine is manufactured and lasts about six months. Then you have to bring it back to have it recharged. The engine is air-cooled and can make a car run 60 miles per hour on the freeway.
There was a picture of the engine and its inventor, Mr. Joseph Papp, who had come to the United States from Hungary. He’s standing next to the engine, making measurements on it with a panel full of dials. Various people had looked at the engine and made various remarks about it in the article. Mr. Papp was going to demonstrate his engine in Los Angeles, and the students wanted me to go along with them to see it.
I told them nothing has enough power to go for six months like that, unless it’s a nuclear reactor, which it surely is not. ‘Fakes are always coming out,’ I said, ‘and the guy’s probably trying to get investors to invest in his engine.’
Then I told them some stories about perpetual motion machines, such as the one in a London museum which was in a glass case.It had no wires connected to it, yet it turned around and around. ‘You have to ask yourself, ‘Where is the power supply?’ I said. In that case, it was some air coming up through a little tube installed in one of the wooden legs holding up the glass case.
The students talked me into going along with them to see the demonstration. It was held in a refrigerator company’s parking lot, an L-shaped area. The engine was down at one end of the lot, while the people, about 30 or so, were at the bend of the L, some distance away.
Mr. Papp talked about how the motor worked, using vague and complicated phrases about radiation, atoms, different levels of energy, quanta, and this and that, all of which made no sense whatsoever, and would never work.
But the rest of what he said was important, for every fraud has to have the right characteristics: Mr. Papp explained that he had tried to sell his engine to the big automobile companies, but they wouldn’t buy it because they were afraid it would put all the big oil companies out of business.
So there was obviously a conspiracy working against Mr. Papp’s marvelous new engine. Then there was a reference to the magazine articles, and an announcement that in a few days the engine was going to be sent to the Stanford Research Laboratory for validation. This proved, of course, that the engine was real. There was also an invitation to prospective investors to get in on this great opportunity to make large amounts of money, because it was very powerful. And there was a certain danger!
There were quite a few wires running from the engine down to where Mr. Papp and the spectators were standing, into a set of instruments used for measurement; these included a variac, a variable transformer with a dial which could put out different voltages. The instruments were, in turn, connected by a cord to an electrical outlet in the side of the building. So it was pretty obvious where the power supply was.
The engine started to go around, and there was a bit of disappointment: the propeller of the fan went around quietly without the noise of an ordinary engine with powerful explosions in the cylinders, and everything- it looked very much like an electric motor.
Mr. Papp pulled the plug from the wall, and the fan propeller continued to turn. ‘You see, this cord has nothing to do with the engine; it’s only supplying power to the instruments,’ he said. Well, that was easy. He’s got a storage battery inside the engine. ‘Do you mind if I hold the plug?’ I asked? ‘Not at all,’ replied Mr. Papp, and he handed it to me.
It wasn’t very long before he asked me to give me back the plug. ‘I’d like to hold it a little longer,’ I said, figuring that if I stalled around enough, the damn thing would stop.
Pretty soon Mr. Papp was frantic, so I (Richard Feynman) gave him back the plug and he plugged it back into the wall. A few moments later there was a big explosion:
A cone of silvery uniform stuff shot out and turned to smoke. The ruined engine fell over on its side. The man standing next to me said, ‘I’ve been hit!’ I looked at him, the whole side of his arm was torn open, you could see all the muscle fibers, tendons-everything. I helped him over to a chair to sit down. The youngest student in the group knew what to do. ‘Make a tourniquet out of a tie for that man!’ he told me. He gave orders to everybody, and began to give artificial respiration to another man who was lying on the ground. It was really quite wonderful to see this young student take over with all those grown men around. By the time the paramedics came, we realized that there were three men injured, the one lying on the ground most seriously: he had a hole in his chest (so the artificial respiration wasn’t effective) and he ultimately died. The other two men survived.
We were all shaking.
I turned to the young man who had been so capable in coping with the unexpected tragedy.
‘I don’t usually drink.’ I said, ‘but let’s go over to a bar and have a drink to calm our nerves.’
We went into a bar and ordered a drink, I was surprised to discover that the young man who had been the most mature of all of us was underage-he couldn’t get a drink. We started to talk about the engine. One man, an investor who had brought an engineer with him to see the demonstration, said, ‘My engineer advised me to stand mainly behind the corner of the building and just peer out during the demonstration, because these new engines are sometimes dangerous. Somebody else pointed out that Mr. Papp had previously done some work with rockets, and the explosion looked like fuel when it goes off.
My idea was that had Mr. Papp sent his engine to the Stanford Research Institute as announced, the game would be up in a few days. Therefore an explosion just big enough to destroy the engine would keep the game going a little longer; it would show the tremendous power of the engine, and, most importantly, it would provide a reason for investors to put more money into the project, now the engine had to be rebuilt. We all agreed that the explosion was much larger than Mr. Papf probably intended.
After such an explosion with the resulting fatality and injuries, there was, of course, a lawsuit. Mr. Papp sued me for ruining his engine, charging that my stalling around with the cord caused him to lose control of it. Caltech has a legal department to protect its errant professors, so they talked to me. I told them I thought he didn’t have much of a case: he would have to prove how the engine worked, and he’d have to demonstrate that in fact, taking the cord off caused the explosion.
The case was settled out of court, and Mr. Papp was paid something. I guess there’s a certain amount of wisdom in not going to court, even when you’re right, but I cost Caltech a certain amount of money by going to that demonstration.
I still think I correctly diagnosed what was happening with a reasonable probability.
And, of course, nothing has been heard of Mr. Papp’s new engine since.
(Richard Feynman, PHD) “
Originally published in LASER, Journal of the Southern Californian Skeptics
Quote of the day – Richard Feynman
” Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there. ” — Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Final journey : Endeavour ….. Weekend distraction
Endeavour’s 26th Mission. I could not resist watching this again and again. We need catalysts like this to create an awareness about scientific adventures which needs to be undertaken irrespective of the popular opinion in general electorate. The opinion is still being created, it will take a while but when it becomes part of your culture and your day to day being, it becomes who you are – an identity to reckon with. Space exploration is not an amateur enthusiasts’ indulgence, its a way forward for our kind, Human-kind !!!
adios mi gente !!
Naturalism : a debate worth having ….
“Over four centuries of scientific progress have convinced most professional philosophers and scientists of the validity of naturalism: the view that there is only one realm of existence, the natural world, whose behavior can be studied through reason and empirical investigation. The basic operating principles of the natural world appear to be impersonal and inviolable; microscopic constituents of inanimate matter obeying the laws of physics fit together in complex structures to form intelligent, emotive, conscious human beings.”, describes Dr.Carroll while introducing an interdisciplinary workshop on Philosophy of Naturalism (It indeed touches many aspects of being an atheist).
‘Moving Naturalism Forward‘ workshop will take place at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from 25th till 29th in October this year. You just have to visit the participants’ page to get your calender marked way in advance for this debate.
Dr.Hilary Bok, Dr.Richard Dawkins, Dr.Steven Weinberg and Dr. Lisa Randall - Just to name a few among them. This is going to be a fiery debate on these (mentioned below) very topics described by Dr.Carroll in an introductory excerpt as ‘meaningful constructs around human life’.
Some specific questions included are —-
- Free will. If people are collections of atoms obeying the laws of physics, is it sensible to say that they make choices?
- Morality. What is the origin of right and wrong? Are there objective standards?
- Meaning. Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human existence?
- Purpose. Do teleological concepts play a useful role in our description of natural phenomena?
- Epistemology. Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?
- Emergence. Does reductionism provide the best path to understanding complex systems, or do different levels of description have autonomous existence?
- Consciousness. How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of inanimate matter?
- Evolution. Can the ideas of natural selection be usefully extended to areas outside of biology, or can evolution be subsumed within a more general theory of complex systems?
- Determinism. To what extent is the future determined given quantum uncertainty and chaos theory, and does it matter?
These are not just head scratchers folks, these are the quintessential factors which are grappling our own understanding of the universe in many ways. Did they start making you think again ? Well, I am just thinking how to plan my trip to Stockbridge, MA on October 25th. If you cant make it there, we have a good place to ponder on their thoughts and see these stalwarts battling it out with each other. Looks like a worth every penny isn’t it ?
You know what you want see …..
Absolutely stunning time lapse — Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
Photographer: Alex Cherney
