Wall-E

We watched the movie “Wall-E” yesterday.

Oh, such a great movie. Perfectly drawn, very interesting plot, extremely great-hearted, clear, funny, deep and insightful. We instantly fell in love with Wall-e. I definitely recommend taking the time and buying that movie theatre ticket.

Meanwhile, here’s something interesting I have found: here, here, here, here, here.

Found online

I post here a couple of extracts from the world of (1) astronomy and astrophysics, (2) biology and archaeology, (3) technology, (4) politics and the world that I have found on the internet.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Discovery of the Candidacy for the Furthest Galaxy: The Hubble telescope has come across a galaxy, presumably 13 billion light-years away, making it a strong candidate for the furthest and hence youngest galaxy ever observed. It has been given the name (or the code, rather) A1689-zD1. The galaxy would have formed only 700 million years after the Big Bang; if this is the case, then this galaxy must be one of the first few that helped end the dark ages of the Universe. The discovery was made by means of the natural magnification, provided by the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. [full article here]. Update: 13 billion light years away is actually so very huge. If you think about it, it amounts to about metres away; that’s 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres. And we worry that our work is too far away from our home!
2. Dark-matter powered first stars: When a star emits radiation, it does it through thermonuclear fusion reactions that occur deep inside it and its nucleus. There is a suggestion that the early stars — that existed about 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang — were predominantly fueled not by fusion, but rather by annihilation. As the Universe was still relatively small at that time, matter and antimatter existed in high proximity (as opposed to, for example, what it is today), this suggestion has a significant base. [full article here].
3. Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered: Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University and his colleagues “said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.” The object was named OGLE-2006-BLG-109. “… a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun. The star is about half the mass of the Sun.” “… warm rocky planets — suitable for life — could exist undetected in the inner parts of the system.” The planets were discovered by means of the microlensing. ” … on March 28, 2006, a star 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius began to pass in front of one 21,000 light-years more distant, causing it to flash. That was picked up by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or Ogle.” The collected data provided the knowledge of “not just the masses of the interloper star and its two planets, but also rough approximations of their orbits”. [full article here; for those who have access to Science articles, here are their results].
4. Beautiful Nebula (photo): (Traffic Alert!!!) view photo.
5. Crab Nebula (photo): (Traffic Alert!!!) view photo.

Biology and Archaeology

1. Modern Birds Existed Before Dinosaur Die-Off: “Modern birds originated a hundred million years ago—long before the demise of dinosaurs, according to new research.” Until recently, fossil records were interpreted as if modern birds originated about 60 million years ago; however, the genetic analyses (based on the concept of molecular clock) suggest that these originated some 40 million year earlier (that being 100 million years ago). Dinosaurs disappeared some 65 million years ago. [full article here].
2. 20 Facts About the Human Genome: Here. Perhaps you will find something you don’t know (I did).
3. Who Eats Who: What a great shot!
4. Finding an Underwater Lake (video): Excellent extract from “The Deep” programme. (Traffic Alert!!!) Watch video.

Technology

1. Air-Fueled Car: “A French engineer has claimed he will be ready to start selling a car with no carbon emissions within a year.” (Traffic Alert!!!) Watch video.
2. Zero Emission Car: Here is a short explanation of the suggestion of collecting the carbon dioxide, emitted by a car, in order to later reuse it. Good idea, but, as someone mentioned it in the comments, the overall energy produced from this ‘recycling’ is probably not going to be much. But then again, we need to see the actual calculations.
3. These are in tight connection with point 3 of the list of 2008’s saver technologies.
4. Information age: How exactly has information and communication technology evolved over time? A very nice photographic timeline (here).

Politics and the World

1. The (supposed) 1980 Soviet particle beam weapon construction site (photo): If Soviet Union indeed ever had a project of developing the particle beam weapon around 1980, the construction site is believed to be captured in this American satellite image.
2. Chicago to Raise the Environmental Awareness by Turning Lights Off: On March 29 from 20:00 to 21:00, as part of the Earth Hour 2008, Chicago will turn the lights off. I wonder what is the estimated cost of saved energy over this hour — must be a very-very large number. If anyone among the readers is from Chicago, I would like to see a few photographs of the city during the hour — that must be magnificent! [reference]
3. View from Mountain Everest: Have you ever stood on “the top of the world”? Are you planning on doing so any time soon? Well, me neither. But at least we can can a sense of what it is like, by taking a look at this splendid panoramic photograph: (Traffic Alert!!!) here.

In the News

UK push for space station modules
A proposal for the UK to join the International Space Station (ISS) project has been put forward by a group of scientists and engineers.
A group of scientists and engineers put forward a proposal for UK to joint the ISS (Internation Space Station) project in that Britain will build and launch two HEMs (Habitation Extension Modules), directed towards improving the living conditions therein. [from BBC NEWS].

BBC NEWS also provide some short information on the proposed HEMs, which I thought I’d paste here, too:

• HEM is a 3.8m x 5.7m cylinder; Modules add 100 cu m to ISS
• HEM-C is a communal area for eating, meeting and socialising
• HEM-D sleeps 6 astronauts with enhanced radiation protection
• Launch on Soyuz-Fregat vehicle with 3 tonnes of supplies
• Room for one ISS Payload Rack for UK experiments
• Launch/build cost: £530 million; other costs about £70m

More details here (pdf file, 380 KB).

It is interesting that UK pulls out their support from particle physics, but will most probably sponsor this project. This all seems as if they rate the importance of scientific discoveries. Of course, ISS is crucial and there is much that humanity can gain from it; but ILC is very important, too, and we should not forget this.

Low energy light bulbs should be handled carefully
Be cautious when disposing your low energy light bulbs (such as the CFT ones) — some may contain a small amount of mercury. In fact, environmental agency in UK called for posting more information about this, since too little people new about the harm these excellent devices may bring when disposed. [from here]

This reminds me of an incident with a CFT light bulb some two years ago. I was twisting a CFT light bulb in, when it suddenly broke in half — I guess it was that kind of light bulbs that break for no particular reason. Knowing its low but measurable toxicity, I got a little scared. Luckily enough, it was a hot-hot summer day with no clouds whatsoever, so I decided to walk out into the yard and stand under the sun for 25 minutes. The idea was that if that light bulb did do something bad to me, then those 25 minutes under open sun would have done two or three hundred times as much, so the effect of a piteous light bulb would be negligible. That’s how I solve problems regarding health ;) I bet my fiancee is ready to kill me herself for my health-related beliefs.

UofT Department of Physics has a department store!? O_O
I have just found out that University of Toronto Department of Physics has a departmental store, where all various kinds of objects of UofT physics logos is sold. Boy, I am going down there tomorrow first thing!

7 Technologies that will Save the Earth in 2008

EcoGeek published their list of 7 technologies (here), which they predict will save the Earth in 2008. Even though the definition of “saving Earth” escapes me, I nevertheless found the article interesting.

1. Cellulosic Ethanol: the idea is the same as that with corn fuel, only the cause seems to be much more sensible.
2. LEDs: efficient, brighter, better than the incandescent light bulbs (which will be mostly illegal by 2014 in US and, presumably, Canada — more here).
3. Electrical Cars: hybrids already appear on markets with an exponentially increasing frequency, but I doubt that we will have an opportunity to see lots of purely electrical cars driving around as early as 2008. I think 2010 would be more reasonable a year, really. More here.
4. CDs are gone: DVDs perform painfully much better than CDs, not to mention things like MP3s. However, again, 2008 will be filled with CDs, no doubt; it’s just that their number will be decreased substantially. 2010 should be more reasonable, I think. May be 2009. May be.
5. Ebook Readers: electronic thingybobbles that let you read whatever on a screen.
6. Solar Energy: solar panels will become much cheaper than it is today; perhaps even as cheap as coal energy. This is a good point, because I have just recently started thinking about decorating the roof of my house with a few of them. I shall wait, then!
7. Smaller Cars: we have already made a huge journey from the large, mammoth-like cars of the 1950s and 60s to realise that smaller cars will do it much better, especially in the tangled jungles of many-floor business buildings of today.

Update: here is a list, originally published by BBC, of technologies that will most likely be a hit on markets of 2008.

“Technologies on the rise in 2008″

BBC posted their latest web news article, entitled “Technologies on the rise in 2008″. In it, they make an attempt at predicting what technologies could possibly be big during the next 12 months. Their list is

1. The web to go:
   Technology that is able to take rich web content and make it available offline to you (such as doing much of the work for setting up auctions).
2. Ultra mobile PC:
   A technology able to fill in the niche between a fully fledged laptop and a PDA.
3. IPTV:
   Television, streaming through Internet.
4. Wimax:
   Wireless technology that provides high speed broadband over large distances.
5. Mobile VoIP:
   Telephone calling over the Internet that is cheaper.

A thing that amazes me is that all of them are somehow related to Internet, with three of them directly! Who would have thought 30 years ago? Wow!

Update: here is a list of technologies, originally published by EcoGeek that will “save the Earth in 2008″; that is, environmentally healthy technologies.

Physics World’s Best of Two Thousand and Seven

The well renown magazine Physics World (~) published an article in their online news section a week ago, entitled “The Best of 2007″ [note: in order to be a little different, I spelled out "2007" ;)]

In it (which can be found here), they list the most interesting articles that appeared in the Physics World magazine in 2007. The intro is a very good summary of the year, so I thought I’d copy it here too:

It was the year that the first “commercial” quantum computer was unveiled, and 2007 also saw a flurry of research into the supersolid state of matter. Astronomers improved our understanding of the cosmos by zeroing in on the origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and providing the best-ever map of dark matter in the Universe. While the Nobel Prize in Physics – awarded for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance — demonstrated how investing in fundamental research could lead to rapid improvements in technology, the year ended on a sour note with some physicists in the US and UK facing significant cuts in their research funding.

The financial cut is indeed a very sad instance of this past year (more here).

To the list, I would also, however, add the ruling out of PVLAS axion, which, I think, was also quite important.