Friday, May 30, 2008
How to make a paper airplane.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Random thought of today...
Sometimes there's discussion of dark matter and nobody knows what it is...
I'll take a guess. What if dark matter is photons? Yeah, probably seems silly to some people. But why not. If photons can be re-directed by gravity, then that would imply that they do have mass. (Albeit close to infintesimal.) If they didn't have mass, they would go straight past a gravitational object. (Of course someone would argue that space is being bent, but lets say for counter arguement that mass/inertia is how strongly something is attached to space too.) So if you were to figure out how much every single photon in transit and including those currently not being detected would add up to in mass value... I'm curious as to how that compares to value estimates for dark matter.
I'll take a guess. What if dark matter is photons? Yeah, probably seems silly to some people. But why not. If photons can be re-directed by gravity, then that would imply that they do have mass. (Albeit close to infintesimal.) If they didn't have mass, they would go straight past a gravitational object. (Of course someone would argue that space is being bent, but lets say for counter arguement that mass/inertia is how strongly something is attached to space too.) So if you were to figure out how much every single photon in transit and including those currently not being detected would add up to in mass value... I'm curious as to how that compares to value estimates for dark matter.
Labels: dark matter, physics, pondering, rambling
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Strange Fermilab code letter...
There's some crazy code from chickenscratch that SlashDot is currently talking about. Looks a bit interesting, but I can't quite figure it out. Somebody did get two lines of text out of the top and bottom portions, but the middle and encrypted parts of the text still boggle the mind...
Supposedly the image is a fax to Symmetry magazine of a page that Fermilab got sent in the mail. Mail is posted from Chicago... But you know what would make it even more funny, is if the postage date would coincide closely with the O'Hare UFO sighting. Now that would be funny.
Imagine if SETI could never get a signal, but "noise" in some various instrument reading particle counts in an accelerator was actually part of some transmission mechanism we don't yet know about. That would be funny, but I don't know if any aliens would be as blunt as to drop off mail through regular postage at an airport to get a message across. (Provided aliens even bother coming by this planet - if they can reach it.) As for the encryption? Crop glyphs aren't exactly in plain english either, but rather puzzle-like. Aliens coming by to drop off a hastily scribbled note to give a stronger clue would make for a funny work of fiction or such. But why not just email the thing?
Supposedly the image is a fax to Symmetry magazine of a page that Fermilab got sent in the mail. Mail is posted from Chicago... But you know what would make it even more funny, is if the postage date would coincide closely with the O'Hare UFO sighting. Now that would be funny.
Imagine if SETI could never get a signal, but "noise" in some various instrument reading particle counts in an accelerator was actually part of some transmission mechanism we don't yet know about. That would be funny, but I don't know if any aliens would be as blunt as to drop off mail through regular postage at an airport to get a message across. (Provided aliens even bother coming by this planet - if they can reach it.) As for the encryption? Crop glyphs aren't exactly in plain english either, but rather puzzle-like. Aliens coming by to drop off a hastily scribbled note to give a stronger clue would make for a funny work of fiction or such. But why not just email the thing?
Labels: code, fermilab, message, random, strange
Friday, May 09, 2008
Music that was lost in HDD crash...
A good while back, one computer at the house got eaten by malware hitting the boot sector. It wouldn't boot anymore. I thought I got all the important non-.exe files off of it, but no. Can't find the music that was on it. Waaaah! (But at least the computer wasn't all dead, it's still useful after conversion to Ubuntu.)
I don't know how I came by it, but I swear at one point that I had a really cool version of "Possum" by Phish. It wasn't the typical concert set with all the background and crowd sounds. Nope, instead it was recorded in the small studio of some radio station. And it had great sound quality and you could really get into the aucoustic guitar bluegrassy sound. The thing is, I swear that it was in the music or audio section of Archive.org. There was some long-play interview, and then they'd just jump into jamming and playing a song. But now in trying to find that great gem of a track, it doesn't seem to be there anymore and it's driving me nuts!
Also there was a jazzy rendition of "Super Mario Brothers" that was pretty good too, but I'm not sure if that's actually Phish or not. I found something similar, but the sound wasn't as improvised as I remember the other track...
But somehow I did find the parody soundtrack of Hanson's MmmBop done in the style of James Brown. That one's hilarious! But if only I knew where the other unusual Phish tracks went...
I don't know how I came by it, but I swear at one point that I had a really cool version of "Possum" by Phish. It wasn't the typical concert set with all the background and crowd sounds. Nope, instead it was recorded in the small studio of some radio station. And it had great sound quality and you could really get into the aucoustic guitar bluegrassy sound. The thing is, I swear that it was in the music or audio section of Archive.org. There was some long-play interview, and then they'd just jump into jamming and playing a song. But now in trying to find that great gem of a track, it doesn't seem to be there anymore and it's driving me nuts!
Also there was a jazzy rendition of "Super Mario Brothers" that was pretty good too, but I'm not sure if that's actually Phish or not. I found something similar, but the sound wasn't as improvised as I remember the other track...
But somehow I did find the parody soundtrack of Hanson's MmmBop done in the style of James Brown. That one's hilarious! But if only I knew where the other unusual Phish tracks went...
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Longest "Slow down Cowboy!"
Being a perpetual AC on teh Slashdoot, I seem to get that message a lot. *shrug* Anyhow, the longest delay so far has been 1 hour 31 minutes. (I may have gotten longer before, but I usually just give it a day or even give up.)
Anyone know what the longest delay for the "Slow down Cowboy!" message is? Just how long does one really need to wait between posts?
Edit (05/02/2008): Trying again along same topic after doing some other stuff. 1 hour 41 minutes. What's up with that?
Anyone know what the longest delay for the "Slow down Cowboy!" message is? Just how long does one really need to wait between posts?
Edit (05/02/2008): Trying again along same topic after doing some other stuff. 1 hour 41 minutes. What's up with that?
Labels: post delay, slashdot, Slow down Cowboy, waiting
