Seriously cool news from Bill Gates during a visit to CERN.

I will definitely watch these lectures once they are available.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Halloo, Halloo! I’m Dr. Poo! And I’m here to tell you that school has begun! What school, say you? Why, Dr. Poo’s Seminar of the Disection of Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe and other readings! M. Lau has agreed with me that many of his entries go way over your head (not some of you, mind you), so we will take a simpler and more reasonable approach to each subject. Not to worry! A more comprehensive look at each subject will only improve your understanding. We will begin soon with an entry on basic but fascinating properties of mathematics. Our text for this course will be The Road to Reality, and I may assign other readings, but if I can find at least samples of the books through Google Book Search, I most certainly will post the links. At the time, there is no book scan for the textbook of this course. Provided I don’t get in trouble, I will provide you with all the graphics and equations you need to see. I look forward to seeing you in class! (Remember that Dr. Poo likes apples: they are good for his colon.)

-The Mellifluous Dr. Poo

Last week, my colleague Sophie solved the puzzle of the Rubik’s Cube in an ingenious fashion; this led us to a secret hatch in the back room of a Parisian McDonald’s.  As we descend into the darkness beneath the fast food restaurant, one can only wonder what we will find below …

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MOONGLOW

Myspace
Location: Slovenia
Label: Points 1 & 4 Audio

I doubt many of you have dabbled into astronomy, space travel and sonic architecture.
But, we’ve all looked up at the stars, closed our eyes and dreamed and put on headphones and listened deeply.
With the right music you can do all 3 at ones.
Well, personally I think this is the right music

The track we chose for the initial way point can be found on his myspace page.
First Stop: Aurora
Lush pads and arpeggio movement. You can almost hear the stars in the background doing the chorus. Sure stars can’t sing or can they and we just simply can’t hear them.

Second Stop: K240
With Marching drums K240 moves the listener as is if he’s landed and needs to move about the planet to investigate. But, there is a change. A discovery of sorts and the pace
quickens. subtle enough to know ….things are moving and so are our feet.

Oh you knew it was only a matter of time, that I too would bask.
So, I’ve know this producer/skater/online comedian for a few years
and I wasn’t sure if I should take anything he said online seriously.
But, Music speaks nothing but the truth.
So, I listened.

I enjoyed.

So, Point Audio will bring you the sounds of the modern Slovenia and space respectively.

From the  almost mythical character, Moonglow 359+

Oh yeah for those that are having a hard time finding Slovenia
Yeah and people keep wanting to go to Costa Rica………..

psst.
Live a little and learn about the rest of the world.

vite, prend ton écharpe et éteint la lumière, on va rater le train volant

Ever heard of neutrinos? Not neutrons, but neutrinos. They’re part of the Standard model of particle physics theory. There isn’t just a single kind of them – they come in a pack of 3 (as all of the fermions):
- Electron neutrino
- Muon neutrino
- Tau neutrino

They are so called Leptons, which have no electrical charge, but (a bit of) mass.

Whenever a neutrino (which really doesn’t happen that often) collides with a charged particle (e.g. proton or electron) in a medium, where the speed of light is slower than in vacuum (e.g. in water), it is absorbed and partially re-emitted as so called Cherenkov radiation. This kind of radiation is also generated within nuclear reactors and is visible as blue light (opposed to the green glow known from movies).

Via Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) : The NEW justification for multiverses (from Thibault Damour) seems to be `Leibniz’s “Principle of Plenitude”:

all logically possible “things” (be they objects, beings or, even, worlds) have a tendency to (and therefore must, if one does not want contingency – be it God’s whim – to reign) exist.

I wonder if that applies to the Dyson sphere.

(It is also worth thinking about why the ‘t Hooft-Polyakov monopole does not exist.)