astro picture for the day

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

"OpsyDaisy ‏@Upsydaizy28 2m

Jesus is coming soon..."@jideokuntola: Crisis every where.... #Gaza #Ukraine #Malaysia #Sambisa etc... It's a mess at the moment!!" "

 

- more real world evidence that people believe in god for messianic/end of the world sympathies!

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show," - Bertrand Russel

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

"We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. and Lo! it is our own!" - Sir Arthur Eddington

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Image credit: Terry Hancock ( http://www.downunderobservatory.com/)

"the question of the foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in what direction it will find its final solution or even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization." - Herman Weyl

astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh

Quote for the day,

"It can be of no practical use to know that pi(the ratio between the diagonal and circumference of a circle) is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know." - E.C. Titchmarsh

Mathematical scientists only need to know pi from 16 to 32 decimal places - at least, so far. Computer engineers like to test their latest computers by determining pi(and other mathematical things like factoring digits, e, and others) to ever greater decimal points.  The current record holder is around 11 trillion decimal points! Well, I guess scientists have a long ways to go before they can require as many decimal points as are now available to them!

astro picture for the day / quote for the day

Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA - Processing & Licence: Judy Schmidt

Quote for the day,

"Whatever may be one's opinion as to the simplicity of either the laws or the material structures of Nature, there can be no question that the possessors of such conviction have a real advantage in the race for physical discovery. Doubtless, there are many simple connections still to be discovered, and he who has a strong conviction of the existence of these simple connections is much more likely to find them than he who is not at all sure that they are there." - Percy Bridgeman

Nanotech news extra,

Direct Laser Writing of 3D Architectures of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes . I recall an arxiv article about making a nanomachine that can pick and place single atoms.  This was so many years ago; I wasn't even trying to keep track of new developments back then.  Still, assuming that arxiv article was correct and this laser writing of nanotubes works, we should be able to 3d print nanomanufacturing systems right now. I tried to contact one of the engineers of this article, but I haven't gotten any reply!  Oh well . . .

astro picture for the day

Credit: ESO

Quote for the day,

"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding." - Jacob Bronowski