People suck. They piss me off. Get on my nerves. Vex me.They do stupid stuff then act like it’s my fault. Freaking person who won’t be named. Complaining I was sending short txts. But only was cause I couldnt really be bothered with her bullshit and was busy. Txt her “Short is better than nothing or would you rather i didn’t txt back at all?” Got told that was mean. Pretty much told her i was sending short txts cause I couldn’t be fucked and wanted to txt back so she would complain that i wasn’t txtn back. Got a “k”. Woohpsee may have offeneded her but Ireealy couldn’t care. She’s immature. Needs to grow up. And stop makind it seem like I’m a bitch. Well more than I am. Hah.

Last night (beka’s birthday dinner) was really good. Not everyone turned up, and she didn’t get many presents, not even from family, but I’m hoping she still had a good night. She loved my bracelet I got her YAY and i got her gummybears and stayed the night too. I got to see a different side to Chloe last night. And beka told me a few things that made me go Whhaaa?

I just got an email from twitter. o.O oooh. Oh I have two actual followers naowww.

I had some vodka. And my fingers are tyring to typee uber fast and this is taking so muuch effort. Oh fuck now my heads starting to spin really fast with thoughts. There was a point to this blog. Though it may just turn into an incoherent ramble/rant.

Ex texted me. something like “I hope I haven’t done anything to hurt or upset you. If I have I need to know so I can fix my mistakes. I think about you often. look forward to hearing from you soon xo” I laaughed. I don’t even know what to say. What can I say? It’s everything about him which makes me want to get him out of my life. It’s my issues really not him. I’m going to write a wellworded email when I am more sober methinks.

I got another twitter follower. Yay me!

Oh bugger blast and drat. It’s InstantBartender which is just full of ads and crap. Ahwell the number looks good. Total of 3 folowers.

Apparently you can’t be a flight attendant if you’re under 160cm tall. I think that’s me out. I can cross that career off any future decisions. That’s just so stupid though. Like you have to be 6ft to be a security guard for somewhere I once read, but what’s height got to do with a plane? no idea.. I’d just wear heels tbh

I am clever. Because I opened a savings account and have $10 in it. I is clever because I’m using vodka to solve all my problems! Oh well done. I’m now happily warm and fuzzzy and not feeling like throwing myself through a window and off a cliff. Great huh. No worries noww.

Stupid physics theory box finally came. Nichrome wire on a card says Do Not Remove From Card. Doesn’t say how you’r meant to use it on the card or in the booklet so I thought fuck you I’m removing it. Found on the TCS website later updated instructions on what to do. My bad. Wasn’t meee.

I’m going to go find something amusing to find or someone to call and annoy at 12.05am. HAHA. Hope it’s not you huh?

Loves A Kinda Drunk Gem. (Thankgod for spell check fixed most my errors I hope)

Well, this is my last day of high-school and I though I’d post something here. It’s nice to move on, but, on the other hand, I’m gonna miss everyone…you’ve all been great:)

Besides that, I wanted to tell you the Coffee Jim has been updated. Bill, I want to thank you again for the great feedback on Coffee Jim. You’ve helped alot:)

I’ve updated the gameplay a bit and fixed a bug that was annoying me. Hope you like it. The new controls are:

Q + mouse wheel – increase/decrease friction of your drawing (NEW)
E + mouse wheel – increase/decrease the bounciness of your drawing (NEW)
The values are shown in the top-left corner of the screen in-game

A/D – apply torque towards the left/right
S – stop
N – start the level
Space – clear all your drawings
V – reset the level

You can download it here (12.93 MB). Also, the original post has been updated, so enjoy:) News on “Eterna”, my procedural 3D modeling tool, will be in soon (+ a release:) ) Any criticism is welcome.

Famed multiverse physicist, Lee Smolin, in a recent essay, says he isn’t sure whether he even believes in his own multiverse hypothesis anymore, but he does give it credit for having some predictive power and experimental support:

An alternative approach, which does lead to at least a few falsifiable predictions, is cosmological natural selection, which I introduced in 1992. This is based on a cosmological scenario that is constructed to be analogous to population biology. Universes are born from “bounces” deep inside dark holes, which replace their singularities, where time had been hypothesized to end, with new expanding universes. This leads to a prediction that a typical universe is one where the parameters are tuned to maximize the production of dark holes. There is in fact evidence that this is true of the laws that govern our universe. Most importantly, in this theory our universe is supposed to be typical of the ensemble, which leads to several genuinely testable predictions, all of which have held up since they were first published, such as the prediction that the upper mass limit of stable neutron stars is about 1.6 solar masses.

The timeless “block universe” is also something he regards with skepticism:

Many cosmologists today believe that we live in a timeless multiverse — a universe where ours is just one of an ensemble of universes, and where time does not exist • The timeless multiverse, however, presents a lot of problems. Our laws of physics theory are no longer determinable from experiment and it is unclear what the connection is between fundamental and effective laws • Furthermore, theories that do not posit time to be a fundamental property fail to reproduce the space—time that we are familiar with • Many of these puzzles can be avoided if we adopt a different set of principles that postulates that there is only one universe and that time is a fundamental property of nature. This scenario also opens the way to the possibility that the laws of physics theory evolve in time.

Smolin’s complete essay is full of similarly challenging reflections, and can be read here.

I stumbled across Symmetry Breaking, the joint Fermilab/SLAC publication. This article absolutely fascinated me!

“We hope that with a variety of technical refinements–such as slowing down the antiprotons as they enter the trap, cooling the positrons more before they interact with the antiprotons, and revising the mixing technique–we can make antihydrogen which is cold enough [to] stay in our shallow trap.”

The day when antihydrogen atoms by the hundreds or thousands are not only created but kept around long enough to study is growing closer.

There’s a lot of technical background to this article, so I’m not entirely sure where would be the best place to start in terms of de-jargon-ing it. Leave comments with your questions and I’ll try my best to clarify (though I’m still a beginner in this field). I’m hoping some posts for the SCI 101 page develop out of this! Most importantly: No question is too trivial.

Está rolando um tópico na comunidade Física e Matemática do Orkut que são nada mais nada menos do que as soluções do Moyses Nussenzveig.

Acho o livro fantástico e justamente por isso, toda vez que resolverem um exercício que [na minha opinião] acho fascinante, farei questão de copiar aqui para o meu blog.

Nomais, recomendo fortemente que os usuários leiam o artigo que publiquei anteriormente falando sobre o Greasemonkey e o Tex the World.

—x—x—

Um garoto quer atirar um pedregulho de massa igual a 50g num passarinho pousado num galho 5m a sua frente e 2m acima de seu braço. Para isso, utiliza um estilingue em cada elástico se estica 1cm para uma força aplicada de 1N. O garoto aponta numa direção a 30° da horizontal. De que distância deve puxar os elásticos para acertar no passarinho?

Resolução:

Seja m a massa da pedra, L a distância entre o menino e a árvore, H a altura do galho, θ o ângulo de mira e k o coeficiente de elasticidade de um único elástico do estilingue, dado por k = F/x = 1/0,01 = 100 N/m.

Como a força elástica é conservativa, temos pela lei de conservação da energia mecânica que:

onde é a velocidade com que a pedra sai do estilingue, é a elongação do mesmo e = 2k (associação de molas em paralelo). Rearranjando a equação anterior, temos:

[1]

A trajetória do lançamento oblíquo de uma partícula é descrita pela função:

[2]

Igualando [1] e [2], teremos:

Em particular para atingirmos o passarinho devemos ter x = L e y = H . Logo:

Por fim, substituindo os valores iniciais:

P.S.: Eu não sou o responsável pela resolução, sou um mero reprodutor de conhecimento. Quem resolveu essa questão foi o Pierre Nazé um participante da comunidade. A questão (de número 5) pode ser encontrada na página 123 do Volume I (Mecânica).

Cita-cita yang kukandung, murni, mulia
Hendak mengangkat bangsaku, Indonesia
Giat, gembira, bagai perwira
Kurban dan perjuangan tak kuelakkan
Syuradikara, nyalakanlah bara
Pencipta Pahlawan, mulia, megah
Syuradikara, suar batinku
Suluhi langkahku, Syuradikara
…………………………….(Hymne Syuradikara )
Sepenggal syair lagu hyme Syuradikara di atas spontan kunyanyikan pagi ini, seakan mengalunkan sebuah doa, harapan, dan semangat selayaknya sang pahlawan utama.
Pahlawan utamakah aku? Sejenak kuberpikir tentang makna lirik lagu ini…”Pencipta pahlawan, mulia, megah”, lalu berkaca pada pengalaman yang sudah kulalui sejak tamat dari lembaga pendidikan kebanggaanku itu 3 tahun lalu. Ada kontradiksi antara idealisme Pahlawan Utama yang terekam dalam DNA-lirik lagu/hymne dan kenyataan citra pahlawan utama di dalam diriku. Siapa itu Pahlawan? Mengapa Pahlawan Utama? Pertanyaan ini membawaku kembali ke hakikat Syuradikara . Ini butuh permenungan sepanjang hayat, kukira.
Mengenai Syuradikara , pemahamanku terbatas pada menjaga relasi yang baik dengan teman-teman seangkatan yang pernah bersama berjuang di SMA, para guru, pendidik dan pengajar, dan alumni, tentunya. Pagi ini, ada sebuah percakapan menarik, istilah kerennya dalam dunia maya “chatting”, dengan salah seorang teman seangkatanku dan seorang lain yang belum kupastikan apakah dia alumni Syuradikara atau tidak, tetapi dia tahu tentangSyuradikara . Dari teman lamaku, yang juga menjadi partner selama menjadi anggota pengurus OSIS, ada kehangatan, tanpa basa-basi, membicarakan pagi dan berita pagi: Pilpres, OPM, Timur Tengah, serta pesan pagi yang hangat darinya: talk less, do more. Nampaknya, dia terburu-buru ke kampus, untuk menjalani aktivitasnya dengan penuh semangat dan kerja keras, dan segera saja menyudahi chatting singkat kami.
Teman chattingku yang lain di pagi yang sama ini juga tidak kalah serunya. Dia memberiku PR tentang arti Teory Relativitas Einstein . Apa hubungannya? “Nothing is absolute,” jawabku. Namun, jawaban singkat itu malah membuatnya bingung. Kami lalu sepakat untuk mencari tahu artinya di lain kesempatan. Pagi-pagi sudah membahas fisika, cuape deh…! Tidak apa-apa karena kutahu dia mendoakan hariku ini baik dan sukses. Atas dasar kepercayaan, ada saling tukar nomor handphone. Inilah yang kusuka dari fasilitas chatting ala facebook, selalu ada kejutan untuk menjalin pertemanan, tanpa kenal perbedaan usia. Dan mungkin, inilah salah satu manfaat tidak langsung Teory Relativitas Einstein , yang memberi dasar bangunan kuat bagi fisika modern, yang membuka babak baru perkembangan sains abad 20 dan mekanika kuantum (agaknya ini dipaksakan untuk saling dihubung-hubungkan, ya!). Chatting kami diakhiri dengan permohonan pamit darinya untuk melanjutkan kerja hari ini, saatnya bagi kami untuk bekerja keras hari ini.
Oke, kembali ke almamater. Bagiku,Syuradikara mengenalkanku pada fisika, dan saya jatuh hati, lalu terobsesi. Melalui guru-guru fisika SMA-ku, dasar-dasar disiplin ilmu ini saya terima. Syuradikara sudah berhasil membuatku berani menetapkan dan memantapkan pilihan untuk belajar (fisika) di perguruan tinggi. Memang benar, modal nekat saja tidak cukup untuk bisa bertahan hidup. Kerja keras, seperti yang diajarkan diSyuradikara , berlaku umum di semua kamus kesuksesan bertahan hidup setiap orang. Itu sudah menjadi nyata bagiku, bagi teman lamaku, dan bagi teman baruku di facebook .
Pagi ini, saya menyanyikan lagi hymne itu, sekaligus mencari arti di balik setiap kata dan barisnya, merenungkannya dalam setiap pengalaman hidupku. Karena Syuradikara , selalu ada alasan untuk bersatu dan menjadi lebih dekat. Renungan pagi yang bergizi.

Why is it so easy to forget these three words? Why is it so easy to let the idiocy of routine, business, and disappointment get in the way of this most simple directive?

Joseph Campbell got it. I want to get it, and most days I think I do. But it’s so easy to get distracted. Every day, every moment, is a precious miracle that will never be repeated. Don’t squander it! Follow your bliss. Embrace it and don’t ever let it get away.

OK, I feel better now.

Here’s something amazing.

Hold a ten pound rock in one hand, a five pound rock in the other. Drop them from the same height at the same time. They fall at the same rate and hit the ground at the same moment.

This is a routine, everyday event, something our science teachers treat as some sort of self-evident truth. It’s what Galileo showed us, right? What’s the big deal?

But this routine, everyday event is filled with wonder.

Consider: if you kick a five pound rock and a ten pound rock with the same force, you expect the five pound rock to move a lot more than the ten pound rock.

(You also expect a sore toe.)

But if you drop those same two rocks (not on your toe!), they fall at the same rate. It’s almost as if the Earth “knows” that it has to pull harder on the heavier rock.

Why this should be so is not at all obvious.

Here’s the explanation. There are two different kinds of mass. They are called “inertial mass” and “gravitational mass.” Inertial mass is what you feel when you kick a rock with your toe. The rock doesn’t want to move. You have to apply force to overcome its inertia. Gravitational mass is what you measure when you put the two rocks on a balance. Gravity pulls harder on the heavier rock, causing it to pull down its side of the balance.

Here’s the wonder. Gravitational mass and inertial mass are always (for every case we’ve ever measured) exactly the same. As a result, all objects fall at the same rate.

But why should inertial mass and gravitational mass be the same? There’s no particular reason they should be, as far as we can see. And yet they are. Asking this question led Albert Einstein to his greatest theory, perhaps the greatest theory ever devised by a single human mind: the General Theory of Relativity.

And yet the wonder of this theory is available to us all, through dropping two rocks and thinking about what you see.

And that, that wonder that catches your breath and makes your stomach jump like you’ve swallowed an otter, is called following your bliss.

“I believe I can see the future
Because I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
Then again, that might have been a dream

I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound
I just do what I’ve been told” – Every Day Is Exactly The Same, Nine Inch Nails.

Here at The Answer’s 42, reflection is the order of the day. My parents have gone on holiday, leaving me alone with what I’ve realised is no-one to talk to, and also nothing much to do. I’ve finished all of the computer games I have – they no longer entertain me. I’ve watched every film in the house, and again, no entertainment value there. All I have left that has some entertainment value is the internet, dreams of the future, and the fact that iTunes’ Genius feature is just that and can put together a killer track list for me to listen to without having to make much effort. Bitter Sweet Symphony followed by A Design for Life, Learn to Fly and Dancing in the Moonlight? Brilliant. Okay, maybe my musical tastes are a little random, but whatever.

One consequence of relativity is that you can’t affect the past, however much you want to. It’s simply outside of your lightcone, and you’d have to be able to move faster than light in order to interact with it again. Since the warp drive is somewhat out of reach (plus I don’t think the slingshot effect works outside of Star Trek IV…) what’s been has been, and is further receding from me day by day. The somewhat pensive moment I’ve reached is due to to the mundanity of life working in an office. I’m not knocking the DVLA whatsoever, really. The people are nice, and the job’s easy enough once you work out the rules of how to tell the various different uses for the D1 licence application form (it can be surprisingly complex) and how to categorise them. One part of it is opening envelopes and writing various code names such as “DUP”, “FAP” and so on, and the other part is keying them onto the system.

And that is what my life is at the moment – processing applications for driving licences. I don’t have to think, I don’t have to use my brain – I just have to type and open envelopes (although I have learned a new and more effective method of doing the latter, which I intend to use from now on) and that’s it. No thought, no creativity, just administration. I think that the various other jobs on offer in Swansea are of a similar office-based nature, or the dreaded call-centre where you deal with the true stupidity of the public at large. Dylan Thomas called Swansea “the graveyard of ambition”, with some arguing that the place makes you so happy you forget you want to leave, but I would interpret it as the fact that it’s very, very hard to leave if you really want to. I’ve tried – I have an MSc offer from Sussex, but unless I suddenly (and legally) get my hands on £10000, I’m not going anywhere.

The only way to lay my hands on enough money is dronehood. It is quite like being a drone – you’re part of a massive entity, which has a complex internal structure, and you have a rigid role within the system. No creativity or imaginitive thinking is required – you just need to be a competent processor, mechanically finding the necessary parts of the form, highlighting them for the others that will enter them into the computer or finding them and enterting them yourself, and then you move on to the next form. People’s lives flash past you, all sorts of mundane details but never any hint of who these people are. They’re just numbers and words, and your only involvement with them is processing their details and nothing more. That’s it – you’re just an information processor, a part of the state’s infrastructure, nothing more.

“You could settle for less, an ordinary life, but you feel you were meant for something better – something special.” are Captain Pike’s words to Kirk in the new Star Trek film, and indeed that’s how I feel. Maybe it makes me appear arrogant, but I went to NASA, went through five years of a physics theory degree and came out the other end with a good result (not the First I hoped for, but still, a 2:1 is respectable) and at the end of it – is where I presently am. While others may want to work their way up, I want to do something that has meaning, and hopefully will affect the world around me for the better. And that’s why I’m still dreaming about the future, and what keeps me going. All the money I’m going to save away, all of the hours watching names and addresses flash by my eyes, are to better my life eventually. Money means escape from mundanity, and is a catapault into bigger and better things.

The Plan is also undergoing modification. I’m going to have to turn down the Sussex offer eventually, for now, and it’s going to rip my guts out when it does it, turning down the opportunity to do more physics theory. But from that shitpile there is hope – I’ve found another interesting idea – an MSc in Distributed Scientific Computing at Edinburgh. This is a course that seems to be based on using the new “cloud” technology that is being so hyped right now for science, and it appears that it has a broad range of destinations, from doing a PhD in sciences (I’m sure the skills picked up from here  wouldn’t go to waste in a theoretical cosmology PhD) to writing scientific software, two things I’d like to do. Indeed, I might have to look into this further.

If you’d shown me what I am now a few years ago, I might have been pleased I came out of the degree intact, although something tells me I would have been disappointed by my fate as back then I believed the PhD offers would come flying thick and fast, and there was more than a little arrogance in me around two years ago. Fate, of course, loves to show you when you’re talking out of your arse, and so I feel there’s a bit of a dark sense of humour out there having a good laugh at my expense – rather than researching theoretical physics theory, I’m entering people’s details into a computer, a job that does not require a physics theory degree. I don’t think it’s a cruel laugh, really – just one that felt it was necessary to show me that perhaps life won’t always hand you everything you want on a platter. At least, not at first.

I have ambition, I’m intelligent and I’m determined. Those things, I think, will help me come out on top in the long run. So for the physics theory part of my life, it most definitely isn’t “The End”, rather “To be continued”…

I was high above sea level in Colorado this weekend.  As soon as I got off the plane at Denver International Airport, my breathing increased, and noticed that I was getting less oxygen in my lungs with each breath.  As altitude increases, the air becomes thinner which means less oxygen in the atmosphere.   The pressure in the atmosphere decreases as you gain elevation.  Breathing the air in Denver is the equivalent to breathing air with only 15 % oxygen at sea level, instead of 21%.  The air pressure is reduced at high altitude, and the volume of air you breathe into your lungs contains less oxygen molecules in each breath.

Driving into the snow capped mountains I was breathless over more than the scenery.  With each breath I got less oxygen into my lungs, and the amount of oxygen in my blood declined.  In Breckenridge, I was 10 000 feet above sea level, and after an attempted run (which was really a walk) up 400 more feet I was breathless and exhausted.  At 10,000 feet, the air has 43 % less oxygen than at sea level. The heart rate and breathing rate increases as the body tries to send more oxygen to its tissues.  Given less oxygen was available to my hard working muscles, my exercise performance decreased at high altitude:  I could not run a mile in Colorado as fast as in Chicago. 

After my breathless hike, I had that sluggish, exhausted feeling and I had to take a nap in the middle of the day.  My first night in Breckenridge, I had trouble sleeping because the low oxygen directly affected the sleep center of my brain, but I acclimatized (more or less) the second night (either that or I was really tired).

Most people can adjust or acclimatize to the high altitude within a few days, and completely in a month.  Staying at my ski-patrol friend’s house over the weekend, he made me drink lots of water to remain properly hydrated, and suggested I limit my activity by going on the shorter hikes.  I also suffered dry skin symptoms, and of course my hand cream was confiscated at the airport in Chicago.  Colorado has the ultimate skin drying factors:  arid air sucks moisture from the stratum corneum, and high winds accelerate the process. 

In Boulder, Colorado, I noticed that you can breathe easy at the Tonic Oxygen Bar.  That’s right, you can buy oxygen to make your body feel better.   You can get 10 minute oxygen sessions for $8.00.  I also bought a new bottle of hand cream for my dry skin issue. 

I breathed easy upon my return to Chicago, but despite the lack of oxygen I had a fantastic time in Colorado!

-Heather

Saat membaca komentar teman-teman di Facebook , dan mengomentari beberapa notes milik teman, saya mencoba membayangkan apa jadinya kalau semua posting-an di “wall” yang disediakan oleh facebook dapat dilihat oleh generasi manusia yang akan hidup jutaan tahun sejak sekarang. Atau bagaimana jika semua komentar dan notes di facebook dapat bertahan sepanjang usia planet biru ini (dengan asumsi bahwa Bumi berumur panjang), dan seluruh pikiran dan komunikasi manusia berpotensi tersimpan dalam jangka waktu miliaran tahun sejak aku menulis note ini? Mungkinkah bayanganku ini dapat terjadi? Atau saya sekedar menghayal tidak karuan dan seolah-olah melupakan pernyataan umum yang sudah dikenal ramai:”tak ada yang abadi”. Bagiku, ini menjadi begitu penting dan mendesak karena informasi dan kenangan masa lalu turut mempengaruhi perjalanan masa depan. Sebagai contoh, saya merasa perlu mengkoreksi dua sifat buruk yang ada di dalam diri lantaran diingatkan kembali lewat catatan buku harian yang ditulis saat berusia 13 tahun, meskipun bentuk tulisan catatan itu tidak seutuh seperti sedia kala. Contoh lain, sejarah manusia. Tulisan dan pemikiran para filsuf Yunani 20 abad lalu masih dibutuhkan oleh para sarjana masa kini untuk menarik benang merah tentang sejarah peradaban manusia. Mungkin setiap orang selalu ingin punya sesuatu kenangan akan film atau jenis lagu bergenre tertentu, lalu suatu saat nanti diputar kembali, sekedar menyegarkan ingatan. Para praktisi di bidang kriminal tentu tidak ingin segala catatan kasus kriminal hilang begitu saja tanpa bekas, bukan? Bagaimana manusia memenuhi tuntutan semacam ini? Sejatinya, tidak ada yang abadi, bukan?
Akan tetapi, manusia selalu berupaya mengatasi keterbatasannya, termasuk dalam hal penyimpanan data, rekaman kejadian atau kenangan atau buah pikirannya, dalam jangka waktu lama. Bahkan, sejak ditemukannya komputer pada abad 20, usaha ke arah itu dengan sendirinya mulai berjalan. Hanya saja kapasitas penyimpanan yang tersedia masih terbatas. Data yang disimpan dalam DVD, misalnya, lama-lama terdegradasi karena pengaruh terpapar cahaya matahari atau temperatur lingkungan yang cukup tinggi. Kemudian orang terus mengembangkan teknologi penyimpanan data berjangka waktu cukup lama, yang juga berarti lebih stabil. Ada sebuah teknologi baru yang sedang dikembangkan oleh para ilmuwan berbasis CNT (carbon nanotube) yang menjamin penyimpanan bit-bit data secara permanen dalam hard drive komputer atau DVD. Jika benar demikian, maka bayanganku itu bukanlah mimpi yang tidak pernah terwujud, melainkan sesuatu yang akan menjadi kenyataan. Bagaimana mereka (para ilwuwan, red.) dapat mengembangkan teknologi semacam ini? “Apakah itu mungkin,” tanyaku kembali pesimis.
Ya, begitulah yang diungkapkan oleh Berardelli terkait penemuan teknologi yang menyanggupkan kristal-kristal besi mikroskopis (tak terlihat mata telanjang karena terlalu kecil) dapat bergerak di dalam carbon nanotubes (mirip pipa/tabung silinder, hanya saja ukurannya super kecil, sepersejuta kali lebih kecil dari pipa air ledeng), yang secara fisis paling stabil, seolah-olah kelakuannya mirip bit-bit data saat menanggapi arus listrik dan mirip bahasa biner komputer: “1″ atau “0″ sehingga dapat menyimpan data komputer secara permanen.
Ada dua hal yang bertentangan yang muncul di kepala saat membaca artikel ini. Pertama, keinginan untuk mendokumentasikan seluruh data dan menyimpannya secara permanen dalam jangka waktu tak terbatas, entah sampai kapan, dan hampir abadi, tak lekang dimakan waktu. Seluruh pemikiran sepanjang sejarah peradaban manusia dalam ruang dan waktu dapat awet, layaknya mumi, tersimpan rapi dan abadi. Siapa yang tidak ingin kalau buah pemikirannya, yang sempat ditulis dan disimpan di komputer misalnya, dapat dibaca kembali oleh manusia lain yang hidup seratus abad setelah dia menulisnya? Penulis sendiri sangat ingin itu terjadi. Akan tetapi, hal kedua menjadi suatu pertimbangan lain yang membatasi keinginan pertama tersebut: tidak ada yang abadi, mirip syair lagu Peterpan. Keabadian seolah-olah menjadi hal mutlak yang sulit digapai manusia, kecuali Sang Abadi itu sendiri. Teknologi inipun tidak luput dari kemutlakan tersebut, seperti yang diungkapkan oleh Mark Spearing, “Nothing is permanent, though,… Such a device could fail for any number of reasons…some of which may be currently unknown.”. Teknologi tetaplah suatu hasil dari kefanaan manusia, tidak abadi. Tidak seluruh aspek teknologi tersebut sungguh-sungguh diketahui dan menjadi abadi dengan sendirinya, melainkan dapat mendekati suatu rentang waktu yang cukup lama. Lagipula, teknologi ini masih dikembangkan dan butuh penyempurnaan di sana-sini. Mungkin, tak mungkin? Mungkin saja!
Saya berpikir sejenak dan mulai optimis karena manusia selalu berpikir, tidak peduli apa dan bagaimana cara menampung dan menyimpan buah pemikirannya. Gagasannya dituangkan lewat tulisan, misalnya, atau tindakan nyata, atau diam, atau bentuk-bentuk lain. Saya memilih selalu dapat menulis apa yang ada di kepala, meskipun kadang-kadang susah dipahami dan berbelit-belit (itu kata temanku). Lagipula, saya masih dapat melihat komentar teman-temanku sejak seminggu lalu; bukti tingginya kapasitas penyimpanan data situs pertemanan ini (baca: facebook), sambil mendengar lagu “you’ve got a friend” versi James Taylor tahun 1971, atau data praktikum fisika dasar senior sepuluh tahun lalu, yang disimpan dalam DVD seharga Rp 5000, untuk disalin ulang (bentuk halus dari menyontek). Itu saja sudah cukup menolong.
Berita selengkapnya dapat dibaca di sciencenow.sciencemag.org