The company Virgin Galactic is working to be a space tourism company and has already people signed up to go into space. A few days ago it reached a milestone of sorts when it sent its plane on a 10-minute ride to an altitude to 21km. As a comparison, the International Space Station is at an orbital height of about 420km and the Hubble Space Telescope is at 559km, so it has a long way to go. [Read more…]
When people create videos using their cell phones, they usually do it in portrait mode. Not being someone who whips out a camera and records things, I am not sure why the portrait mode is the one that people prefer. Is it something to do with the ease of holding the phone? But whatever the reason, the net result is curiously dissatisfying to watch, apart from the black bands that appear on each side when you play it back on YouTube or a video player. [Read more…]
While the US and British governments undoubtedly have the resources to obtain the best computers and cryptographers that money can buy, they cannot (at far as I know) break really good encryption systems. This is why they have achieved much of their success the old-fashioned way and resorted to cheating, such as getting computer and chip makers and communication companies to collaborate with them to install back doors. News reports based on leaked documents by (who else?) Edward Snowden show that the NSA may have bribed RSA, one of the most important companies in the security industry, to get them to provide a loophole that the NSA could exploit. [Read more…]
I have not seen anything like this or even heard about it but it appears that weather conditions can be such that a thick carpet of ice can inexorably march from lakes onto land. It looks like a creeping monster, pushing aside even buildings in its path. It is called an ‘ice shove’ and scientists are familiar with the phenomenon and say it happens on occasion in places like Alaska. [Read more…]
Neuroskeptic looks at the new phenomenon of vigilante science where people are taking it upon themselves to closely examine science research papers for plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication. [Read more…]
In my earlier posts on scientism (see here and here), I said that I never used the word myself since I was not quite sure what it meant and tended to agree with Sean Carroll that the word was being tossed around with too many different meanings that made it not helpful in discourse. One commenter said that the word had a long and illustrious history and that the Oxford English Dictionary had a clear definition. So I went and looked it up. [Read more…]
RadioLab had a good program this week on altruism and how nice behavior could emerge out of natural selection. The first part dealt with the tragic story of George Price, the eccentric but brilliant scientist who developed an equation that showed why someone might sacrifice their life for another. But he personally could not deal with the conclusion that all altruism was not a freely chosen act. [Read more…]
The clip below discusses why it is so disorienting to go into one of those rooms that are just like normal rooms, except that they are tilted. Even being aware of the source of the effect does not prevent people from feeling a strong sense of discomfort, even nausea. [Read more…]
Walt Mossberg has written the personal technology column at the Wall Street Journal for 22 years. In his final column, he lists the top 12 new items that he feels changed the industry. It is interesting to see that it was not that long ago that the things that are all around us and seem to have been around forever were invented, and how quickly those that were similarly ubiquitous before but did not last (Netscape, Palm Pilot) disappeared from our memories.
I used to drive a station wagon and one of its best features, especially useful in winter, was the rear window windshield wipers. They were so useful that I wondered why they were standard equipment only on wagons and hatchbacks and came to the conclusion that this must be because those rear windows were pretty much flat, while the curved and the sloping rear windshields of other cars made it technologically difficult. I am not sure if that is the real reason since it seems like engineers could have overcome that. [Read more…]