Category: Science


Fractals: The Colours Of Infinity

Arthur C. Clarke (and others) on the Mandelbrot Set:

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“Also, I am told… I have never tried the experiment myself… that when certain illegal chemicals are ingested, you experience visual hallucinations strikingly similar to some of the patterns of the Mandelbrot Set.”

Spotted in the credits: “Sound: Ray Brotman” 🙂

A palaeontologist would know…

Pacman

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The wisdom that the interface is the bottleneck.

http://blog.centopeia.com/2007/03/21/jeff-hans-multitouch-demo-ii/

Is Saturn really Satan?

Is that pretty ice ring just an illusion? Could it (in fact) be a burning ring of fire? Scientists say yes (er, sort of… although, not really actually).

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070327_saturn_hex.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061109_monster_storm.html

http://www.myastrologybook.com/Saturn-Kronos-Chronos-mythology-god.htm

Earth Hour

An experiment in energy will be taking place next Sarturday the 31st of March that I think you should consider becoming a part of, because if it’s going to yeild interesting results, it will need the co-operation of as many people as it can get –
http://earthhour.smh.com.au/

Lightning shots…
img_1145.JPGimg_1143.JPGimg_1124.JPGimg_1120.JPGimg_1106.JPG

 computers.bmp

you follow?

If not… you could get excited about: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1324

(EDIT: second link corrected, cheers sq2)

reason interface

Here’s a really useful formula for calculating where your cue marker is. After writing some music 2 days ago, and leaving the play button on, I wondered just how far to the right my cue marker was… so:

speed = 145 bpm
145 bpm / 4 beats/bar = 36.25 bars/min
1 bar = 58 pixels (at current zoom level)
58 px/bar * 36.25 bars/min= 2102.5 px/min
screen resolution = 72 dpi
2102.5 px/min / 72 dpi = 29.2 inch/min
inch to cm convertion = 2.54 cm/inch
29.2 inch/min * 2.54 cm/inch = 74.17 cm/min

time = 2 days = 2880 min

distance = speed * time = 74.17 * 2880 = 213,609.6 cm = 2.13 km

My cue point is 2.13 km off to the right… hope no one runs into it.

So here’s a handy formula for when you need to work this out

distance in km = bpm / (beats/bar) * (pixels/bar) / dpi * (cm/inch) * time / (cm/km)

If someone feels like it, I would like to know the formula for the following situation: If a Vinyl record is infinitely large, and you are playing it backwards from the end of the record on a turntable with a infinitely long telescopic arm, how far from the centre is the needle at time x. That would be a very useful formula too!

Andre Michelle

andremichelle2.gifClever. Wasn’t surprised to see this guy is a regular at flash conferences, and other similar presentations of high geek value.

Sure, some of these things maybe reinventing the wheel, but the fact that they are done in flash (and some done in older versions of flash) is pretty astounding. Keep in mind that these will run in a webpage better than most java or other applets.andremichelle3.gif

Probably more interesting to flash or web developers, but his mode7 experiment, for example, allowed me to figure out what mode7 is. Not that I can ever remember trying to figure out before, but…

andremichelle1.gifSynthesizing in flash? Eqing in flash? The sound byte gets closer to the visual byte. I have been dreaming of this… let alone the bitmap transitions…
There are heaps of little things on this lab, and they’re all cool to some degree.

lab.andre-michelle.com

Cat on LSD

Speaking of acid…

Can on LSD

Cocaine found on all Irish bank notes

Low levels of cocaine have been found on all the Irish bank notes tested in a recent survey.

b615669j-full_tcm18-75008.gif

As part of a major study into illicit drug use within Ireland, Brett Paull and colleagues at Dublin City University have taken advantage of recent developments in liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to detect contamination on Irish euro notes. Traces of cocaine were found on every one of the 45 used notes analysed, and traces of heroin were found on three notes.

Source: Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) [Read full article]

A Pentagonal-bipyramidal heptacosiicosachoron or an Othenneahedral enenecontahexachoron, I can’t decide… hmm. No, I’ll have todays special, the diprismatohexacosihecatonicosachoron. No, no, no, umm… definitely an Icosahedral hexacosihecatonicosachoron will hit the spot.
Icosahedral hexacosihecatonicosachoron exploded net
http://members.aol.com/Polycell/nets.html

“FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.”

link

While this is ‘I read it on the internet so it must be true’ territory, I can easily believe it.

Just ran across this interesting little patent for a new and novel way to administer drugs

But only for the Girls….

http://www.patentlens.net/imageServer/showimage.html?patent=US%204551148

Dark Matter Map
http://www.physorg.com/multimedia/pix331/

http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/08/cz_af_1008health_print.html

The study was designed to compare persons of comparable circumstances, age and health. Its findings, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards.

simply stunning photo of a snowflake magnified, like a squillions times (featured photo on Wikipedia)

(and some other nice shots: image image)

(gratuitous link to my own webblog)

An awesome short film showing the inner mechanisms of a white blood cell.
The Inner Life of a Cell

Now encoded as a .mov!