Gamma rays

gamma rays.

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this is an experiment- my other post about gamma rays has had an enormous amount of hits.

If you want to know about gamma rays go find my other post on them =]

watch this

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_deutsch_on_our_place_in_the_cosmos.html

Genius on an unmeasurable level

 

What does it mean though?

OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb is a planet with a mass around 5 times the size of earth’s, and orbits a Red Dwarf star in around 10 years. I was reading around some conspiracy theory website, as one does on a Monday afternoon, and came across a group where people were saying that all the talk surrounding 2012 and the aligning of the centre of the milky way with the sun moon and Earth is irrelevant for two reasons. The reasons given were as follows(quote):

1)  We won’t be on earth by then-we’ll be on OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

2) Even if we are still living on Earth it won’t matter because the Moon is moving away from us so we’ll all be dead by then.

My rebuttal:

1)No we won’t-firstly because this newly discovered planet is around 21,000 light years away….so if we could travel the speed of light we’d need to sustain ourselves for 20,000 years in order to survive long enough to get there. 2012 is just under 3 years away, so we have that long to prepare ourselves for that..secondly the temperature of the planet is thought to be around -220C.

To top it off nicely: there is a chance that what is thought to be its Red Dwarf star could be a black hole.

2) It is true that the moon is getting further away from the earth, but only a few centimeters per year, and so won’t have any noticeable effect in a long time, and definitely not before 2012.

Spammers used and abused

The security tests which serve to filter out the spam bots on websites could serve as the next step in the progression of artificial intelligence according to one e-zine.

The most common of these tests is the CAPTCHA test-where users are asked to enter characters as they appear in a box on their screen. programmers of spam bots have been able to overcome these tests of recent though and the designers of CAPTCHAs have upped the ante. The letters are blurred, the colours clash aggressively on the eye and the font size is often unreadable. I am confident that anyone who has registered for a facebook account, started a betfair problem or run a wordpress blog will share in a sense of frustration on seeing the box containing a jumble of letters often overlapping. It usually takes about three goes to enter the letters correctly, and leaves the user thinking that perhaps their human brain isn’t perceptive enough to pass this test designed to fool a basic computer programme. But as it seems now it is not the computer user who is becoming more dim-witted, but the spam bots that are becoming more intelligent (in an artificial way of course). On the New Scientist website there is a story about hackers developing their spam bots to new levels to clear the hurdles set by the companies designing the security tests. The site also made the link between this sort of menial task and the development of artificial intelligence as mentioned before. I understand that for a computer to solve this sort of problem independently is artificial intelligence on some sort of level- but I don’t think that spammers will ultimately be essential in the development of AI. Maybe the person who came up with this link had a particular hatred for spam, and wanted to shed a positive light on the evil spammers (which they would hate) “ha, you may be able to spam my website-but you’re solving AI problems for free”.

Making full use of the problem solving abilities of the spammers is high on the agenda of a few powerful internet moguls- researchers from Google will be presenting a new type of security test at the  International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) in Madrid this week. The test involves rotating images the correct way up to prove you aren’t a spam robot- no doubt they won’t be pictures of tress or cars, but more likely obscure cloud formations and star consolations-the upwards direction of each image being ambiguous and taking a fair bit of real intelligence to establish. With this sort of high-tech security test penis-enlarging emails are a thing of the past. I’ll have to google to find my supplies then.

Day 2…

End of day two at my placement at Delta FM and I thought I’d stop to collect my thoughts.

I’ve done a few phone interviews in the studio now, and have arranged some interviews over the phone for the next few days. I’ve been writing cues and stories for the website, as well as editing audio from vox’s and interviews for bulletins and editing full length versions for the website. 

It’s a great buzz having something I’ve written read out on the bulletins or being put up on the website, and the working Journalist at the station is a great help in giving me feedback on everything I write.

I’m well tired though and the part of my brain that makes words come out is dead.

Laser fusion

The human race is fast depleting the earth’s resources and fuel is becoming scarce (we’re told). But of course scarcity is profit. No one will pay a large amount of money for something in abundance, and by the same credit people will happily pay more money for items in high demand which are of limited supply. So the powers that be and the owners of the oil rigs will be against laser fusion I’m certain.

Laser fusion could potentially put an end to all energy problems and provide a sustainable source of clean energy.

Laser fusion is where a small amount of hydrogen is exposed to extreme conditions and the hydrogen atoms fuse together, giving off large amounts of energy.

Scientists are gearing up to start experiments in laser fusion in early 2010 at the National Ignition Facility in California. The first experiment to be carried out is to have a huge laser fired into a gold can the size of a rubber on the end of a pencil, which will contain the hydrogen. The laser being fired at the Hydrogen will reach 500 terrawatts in a fraction of a second, and be directed onto the Hydrogen through two holes on either side of the can. The reaction caused when the Hydrogen reaches  over a million degrees in a billionth of a second is the same as the process occurring inside our sun and other stars. The amount of energy produced by the laster is more than the energy produced by the whole of the USA at any one time. So unless the results are fruit-full, it seems an awful waste of energy..