For those of you that like to start the week procrastinating, here goes a cool flash game, called Gravity. You basically need to release an atom among some larger particles, and make sure that there will be no collision within the time span specified by the time bar.
After you get a grasp of how it works it becomes pretty fun. You might even learn a thing or two on how particles behave under the different gravity forces (at least I hope the game makers researched a bit before releasing it…).
Any person in the world, sparing those who have been blessed with seclusion from information, would have come across the words LHC or Higgs Effect or Doomsday proclamations today. Invariably, this day marks a milestone in human achievement. The results from this experiment involving the largest particle accelerator man has built so far will make some staggering contributions to particle physics and eventually to the whole of science and engineering.
The Large Hadron Collider, a circular tunnel with circumference of 27 km, located about 100m below the ground at the border of France and Switzerland. The purpose of the device is to collide protons (its a particle accelerator after all) at nearly the speed of light which would make it possible to study the state of particles in the minute time brackets similar to the ones after the Big Bang. This basic opportunity is what makes this whole experiment so unprecedented. There are many theoretical models as to the origin of the universe and this is one time when they can be put to test to see which one predicts the outcome the best.
The project has required co-operation on a global scale with about 8,000 scientists from 85 countries. Piloted by CERN (where Tim Bernes Lee worked on the concept of hyperlinks that eventually led to the Internet) and at a cost of about $10 billion, the project has a few skeptics who see it as merely a means to prove a theory. The main purpose of the project is to confirm the presence of Higgs boson, the particle that is causes other elementary particles to acquire mass.
The project is as much about particle physics as it is about the bleeding edge technology that has gone into making it possible. The whole experiment is hinged on the analysis of minute sub-second activities between sub-atomic particles and hence deploys the very best in digital photography, networks and processing. Considering that scientists began work on this a few decades back, its amazing to the extent they have been able to predict the developments in various technologies and how best to use them.
Coming back to particle physics, the atom is composed of Protons and Neutrons which in turn are made up of elementary particles called quarks. There are two kinds of quarks – up quarks and down quarks. There are several other sub-atomic particles as well but the LHC is basically about confirming the presence of Higgs Boson, a sub-atomic particle that causes other particles to gain mass (the Higgs Effect) and which in theory is incorporated in the Standard Model.
This experiment also has its publicity owing to the Doomsday scenarios ( which are very very unlikely). There is one in 50 million chance that this experiment could result in creation of black holes that may suck in the whole experiment or cities or even earth. But this is really all in the realm of remotest of remote chances. The hope is that this experiment will provide gargantuan amount of information about a time when the universe began.
Nonetheless, like the sequencing of the Human Genome, this is one massive project that we are lucky to be part of in our lifetimes. As we read, the particles are making the rounds in the tunnels of the LHC that would hopefully provide a revolutionary view of the creation of the Universe. Do take the time to go through the videos on YouTube, there is a lot of information to be had from them. This is one time when I have really known the advantage of having online videos so readily accessible. Its provides the best figures of knowledge density ( Information gathered per unit time spent ).
Today I came across this website called Last Minute Auction, and the concept is interesting. Basically they collect and present all the eBay auctions they will expire in under 1 hour, and that cost under $1.
You can also browse only specific categories.
Obviously not all the items will represent a good bargain, since there is a lot of items with higher reserve prices, and stuff that is not even worth $1…. That being said, if you spend some time looking around I am sure you will find good deals, and it sure beats browsing on eBay if you are looking for that price range.
I play the Saxophone, so I am often downloading MIDI files of songs, both to see how they are played, and to have a background track to play with.
Even if you are not a musician I am sure that you downloaded a MIDI file once or twice. You can find all sorts of things in that format!
Anyway one problem that I often faced was the fact that you can’t burn MIDI files directly into an audio CD (you need first to convert them into MP3). I downloaded a couple of conversion programs for Windows, but they all came with a 30-days license only.
Then last week I came across a website that does the trick. It converts MIDI to MP3 or WAV, online and for free. You can even specify the bit rate, the sound system, the volume and so on. Worth a bookmark if you play with MIDI files.
Everyone seems to be talking about Google’s open source browser today huh? Instead of rambling on that as well, I will just give you some links so you can check what the fuzz is all about.
Here is a link to the comic book that Google used to introduce the project (yeah I find it weird as well, but hey its Google).
Here is a link to the official Google Blog, where they commented on the launch:
All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
Here is a link to the TechCrunch article, which claims that Chrome is a direct punch at Microsoft:
Make no mistake. The cute comic book and the touchy-feely talk about user experience is little more than a coat of paint on top of a monumental hatred of Microsoft.
Chrome, the Webkit-based Google browser that launches tomorrow at Google.com/chrome, will give them a real foothold on the desktop and way more control over how web applications perform. While it seems that Chrome is aimed at IE and Firefox, the target is really Windows.
And here is a link to post defending that unless the browser manages to take some market share, it won’t matter:
This has the blogosphere all excited. Everyone is writing about the features of the new browser, and its strategic significance. The product sounds great, but I can only get but so excited.
Why?
Because as a developer, Chrome seems to me to be little more than pissing in the wind.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer controls around 75% of the browser market, and that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that Internet Explorer version 6 has 25% of the market.
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