Coma across this today, and at first thought it was a spoof, some clever marketing ploy. An animation created by moving individual atoms around? Who is crazy enough to try that?
On the IBM website there is more info to be found. Those dots are really atoms.
Reading the Physics Today the other day in our tiny room, or should I say browsing it in the bathroom, I came across an amazing image of a nanotechnology circuit board (or at least some switches made with carbon tubes) against the backdrop of a human hair at the same scale. This is definitely the stuff that used to be science fiction when I was a kid!
Which seems to be a sentiment shared by Dan Pirarro
Maybe the iPod invisible, as once previewed on SNL, is not too far off (aaarrgh, cannot find video!)
Unfortunately the on-line version of Physics Today has the image behind a password. The image posted comes from the BBC, and they only had this tiny version... and that post is three years old, so image how small the circuits must be now!
Couldn't resist re-blogging this. In the category "all things wobbly". Too bad it has nothing to do with Mr. Biafra. (via Boing Boing)
Through the del.icio.us feed of a friend I came across this article: "I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer". It would be great if they manage to create micro organisms that can eat pollution and even curb climate change. That is the best case scenario, but I have read too much science fiction (as a boy, not recently, really!) to not immediately think of what can go wrong. Giant mutant bacteria ruling the world! Anyway, an intriguing development, let's see it there will really be an announcement tomorrow or if this turns out to be another cold fusion.
The Quick Study in this months issue of Physics Today is called "The Case for extra dimensions". I find it intriguing to read that "But perhaps the most compelling reasons to believe in extra dimensions are ...." Interesting how the frustration of scientist to find a solution for cetrain problems they have with their standard model and the weakness of gravitational forces makes them sort of religious, hanging on to strings of hope. A little later in the article the author does state that "Even if scientist believe extra dimensions might exist in Nature, we don't have blind faith". Let's hope for them their faith is not shattered along with the colliding particles in the new and really huge "Large Hadron Collider" (at CERN, nice Quicktime VR's are linked at BoingBoing). Lets also hope that the theoretical possibility of the creation of a black hole that will suck up the earth does not materialize (or should I say "immaterialize"?)
The theoretical existence of such hidden dimensions were a source of inspiration for my Multi Dimensional Eye Virus Series. Maybe my next project should be about branes. As the quick study explains: "You can think of branes as extended objects that do not necessarily extend in all the dimensions of the higher-dimensional space". In computer graphics terms: an Illustrator file imported in a 3D animation package.
But wait, didn't I have another animation to finish? True enough, and I did just finish the composite of scene 1 an 2 (anyone working in digital media knows that here isn't such a thing as a final version, one can always keep improving, but at some point one just has to say "it is done"). I actually spent most my time this week creating animation DVD's for the international center at SIGGRAPH 2007. Anyway, I will be working full time at Mechanism again the next two weeks, and hope to play with Blender and Python while commuting.
I'm reading a curious little book called "the Computed and the Brain", written by John van Neumann (the godfather of he modern computer ?). It was written right before his death in 1957. Half a century ago the modern computer was just moving from vacuum tube to transistors, but it's funny to read that the basic principles didn't change much and that he anticipated many of the developments that came later.
As a mathematician he has a kind of peculiar way of looking at the brain. He states that the location of memory "organs" has not been pinpointed. He does not take a Cartesion view (like "I remember, therefore I was") but deduces the existence of memory in the brain from the fact that no modern calcuating machine can function without it. Very amusing how he almost seems to take the computer as a measure for the brain in stead of the other way around.
In last weeks issue of The New Yorker (Feb. 12 2007) I read an interesting and at one point scary article about philosophy and neuriscience: 'Two Heads" by Larissa MacFarquhar. It is a portrait of Paul and Patricia Churchland, both philosophers at the University of California, San Diego. Their view on the influence of neural processes on philosophy used to be really controversial in a field focussed on language.
Where it gets scary is when they start talking about abnormalities in the brains of people on death row. Even though they acknowledge that the cause for the deviations might be the very fact that the brain's owner is on death row, they seem to be open to preventive incarceration of people with a brain condition that predisposes them to commit violent acts. That's even worse than than what happens in a Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, where a convicted felon is conditioned to get physically sick when he as much as thinks about violence. In that case free will is taken away from someone who has actually committed crimes. Locking people up for having a specific brain condition is denying them free will in the first place. Do weird brains not often have the potential for greatness as well?
There was a time when peoples skulls were measured to determine if one was apt to being a crook. A practice long abandoned I though.
Reading the last paragraph of the article I started to doubt if the writer fully understood the philosophical subject matter. On the issue of a human can experience what it is like to be a bat, the writer concludes ".. a philosopher might after all come to know what it is like to be a bat, although, since bat's can't speak, perhaps he would be able only to sense its batness without being able to derscribe it." thus equating thought once again to language, the very thing the Churchlands seem to have been rebelling against!
PBS is promoting the electric car. They have now aired two of their three possible new science programs, and both had items on it. W|I|R|E|D science reported on Tesla, the electric car company of PayPal founder Elon Musk. The Science Investigators were driving at high speed with the all electric race car X1
With all electric vehicles the problem is that you have to recharge the batteries. So why not create an electric car in which the driver can recharge the car by pushing around a set of pedals. A Human-Electro Hybrid! HEH!
Agreed, the power generated by pedaling away will not be enough to keep the car running. But it can extend the battery life. One can keep on pedaling when stuck in a traffic jam. It will be great exercise, so next to helping the environment, the HEH-car will also help fight obesity!
And you know what? It exists! Well, sort of. But what kind of a name is TWIKE?
To start this one of, here a silly link my sister sent me:
Wobblology
Check out Anat Tales, the blog of the culprit who got me in to the time sink called blogging.
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