KAI LEGO ESCHER!!

DEDICATED TO TMT


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λογο της νεας προοπτικης και λιγος ESCHER...

ΕΙΝΑΙ ΟΤΙ ΠΡΕΠΕΙ,

ΜΕΤΑ ΑΠΟ ΑΥΤΕΣ ΤΙΣ ΕΚΛΟΓΕΣ,

ΛΙΓΟΣ ΣΧΕΔΙΑΣΜΟΣ ΚΑΤΑ ESCHER...

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ΚΟΣΜΟΣ ΣΥΜΠΑΝ ΚΑΙ Η ΓΗ ΜΑΣ

ΚΑΙ ΕΝΑ ΑΚΟΜΑ ΜΕ ΑΛΛΗ ΑΙΣΘΗΤΙΚΗ ΣΤΟ ΙΔΙΟ ΘΕΜΑ

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ΜΙΑ ΑΜΙΔΡΗ ΓΑΛΑΖΙΑ ΚΟΥΚΙΔΑ !

ΕΝΑ ΦΟΒΕΡΟ ΒΙΝΤΕΟ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΘΕΣΗ ΜΑΣ ΣΤΟ ΣΥΜΠΑΝ!!

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Talks Burt Rutan: Entrepreneurs are the future of space flight

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Διαισθητική μεγαλοφυία

Οι χαοτικές δίνες που χαρακτηρίζουν τα αριστουργήματα του Βαν Γκογκ ακολουθούν με ακρίβεια τις μαθηματικές περιγραφές των αναταράξεων σε ρευστά υλικά, όπως οι στροβιλισμοί του νερού σε ένα ταραγμένο ρυάκι ή οι πραγματικοί ανεμοστρόβιλοι, διαπιστώνουν έκπληκτοι οι φυσικοί.
Το παράξενο μάλιστα είναι ότι η στατιστική υπογραφή της δυναμικής των ρευστών ανιχνεύεται μόνο στους πίνακες που ζωγράφισε η διαταραγμένη μεγαλοφυία όταν ήταν πνευματικά ασταθής, και όχι στην «ήρεμη» περίοδο της ζωής του, όταν ακολουθούσε φαρμακευτική αγωγή για τις κρίσεις του.
Πρόκειται για ένα ακόμα παράδειγμα καλλιτέχνη που εντελώς διαισθητικά είχε αντιληφθεί τη δυναμική των φυσικών φαινομένων, επισημαίνει άρθρο στο Nature.com. Μαθηματικά μοτίβα φράκταλ, για παράδειγμα, είχαν στο παρελθόν εντοπιστεί στα έργα του Αμερικανού ζωγράφου Τζάκσον Πόλοκ.
Ψυχωτική διαίσθηση«'Ταραγμένο' είναι το βασικό επίθετο που χρησιμοποιείται για να περιγράψει το έργο του Βαν Γκογκ» σχολιάζει ο φυσικός Χοσέ Λουί Αραγκόν, επικεφαλής των ερευνητών στο Εθνικό Αυτόνομο Πανεπιστήμιο του Μεξικού. «Προσπαθήσαμε αυτό να το ποσοτικοποιήσουμε» εξηγεί.
Η ανάλυση των πινάκων στον υπολογστή αποκάλυψε ένα μοτίβο φωτεινών και σκοτεινών περιοχών που ακολουθούν τις εξισώσεις του Αντρεϊ Κολμογκόροφ, του Σοβιετικού επιστήμονα που τη δεκαετία του 1940 κατάφερε να περιγράψει έστω και εν μέρει τη δυναμική του στροβιλισμού των ρευστών.Οι ταραγμένοι ουρανοί στην Έναστρη Νύχτα (1889) και στο Δρόμος με Κυπαρρίσι και Αστρο (1890), μεταξύ άλλων, παρουσιάζουν τη λεγόμενη «κλιμάκωση Κολμογκόροφ», εξισώσεις που δίνουν την πιθανότητα δύο οποιοδήποτε σημεία του ρευστου να έχουν μια δεδομένη διαφορά ταχύτητας.Οι πίνακες αυτοί ζωγραφίστηκαν λίγο πριν ο Βαν Γκογκ αυτοκτονήσει σε ηλικία 37 ετών.
Την περίοδο εκείνη, ο ζωγράφος υπέφερε από ψυχωτικά επεισόδια, παραισθήσεις και επεισόδια απώλειας της συνείδησης, πιθανώς συμπτώματα επιληψίας.Αντίθετα, μετά τον αυτοακρωτηριασμό του αφτιού του, ο Βαν Γκογκ φαίνεται ότι είχε χάσει τη μαθηματική του ακρίβεια, όπως δείχνουν για παράδειγμα τα αυτοπορτραίτα του 1888. Την περίοδο εκείνη ο καλλιτέχνης βρισκόταν σε κατάσταση «απόλυτης ηρεμίας» λόγω του βρωμιούχου καλίου που του χορηγήθηκε.
«Πιστεύουμε ότι ο Βαν Γκογκ είχε μια μοναδική ικανότητα να απεικονίζει αναταράξεις σε περιόδους παρατεταμένης ψυχωτικής αναστάτωσης» σχολιάζει ο Αραγκόν.Οι ερευνητές εξέτασαν έργα και άλλων ζωγράφων αναζητώντας τη στατιστική υπογραφή του Κολμογκόροφ, όμως η διαισθητική ικανότητα του Βαν Γκογκ φαίνεται ότι ήταν μοναδική. Η διάσημη Κραυγή του Έντβαντ Μουνχ, για παράδειγμα, είναι γεμάτη από παρόμοιες δίνες, οι οποίες δεν ακολουθούν όμως τις μαθηματικές εξισώσεις.
Η μελέτη δημοσιεύεται στο διαδικτυακό αρχείο arXiv.org.

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What is entropy? How is it related to the second law?

Entropy is simply a way to measure quantitatively what the second law of thermodynamics describes: the dispersal of energy in a process in our material world. Entropy is not a complicated concept qualitatively.

Most certainly, entropy is not disorder nor a measure of chaos — even though it is thus erroneously defined in dictionaries or pre-2006 sources.

Because entropy is an index of the second law's predictions about energy, the short word entropy is often used interchangeably for the cumbersome phrase, "the second law of thermodynamics". A concise summary of entropy's nature is: Entropy change measures the dispersal of energy: how much energy is spread out in a particular process, or how widely spread out it becomes (at a specific temperature).
You see now how hot pans cooling and chemical reactions belong to the ‘how much' catergory where energy is being transferred.
Coffee in cream and gas expansion and perfume in air are ‘how widely' processes where the initial energy of the molecules stay the same but the volume occupied by the molecules increases.
Energy's dispersal can be easily seen by anyone in thousands of common occurrences like the few we have talked about because the second law isn't some exotic or abstract mathematical theory.
The second law is really just a summary of ordinary human experience. The details of how energy disperses in such everyday practical events can be elegantly correlated with the probable behavior of atoms and molecules.


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fantastic

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KISSING FETUSES

January 16th

According to Daily Mail, a twin leans over and kisses the cheek of her sister in a rare picture captured by a modern medical imaging technique known as 3D Ultrasound. The technique was developed at Duke University, one of world's leading centers in the area of modern medical imaging, in 1987. Traditional ultrasound imaging produces 2D images at a given depth, while 3D sonography produces images at different depths. Streaming 3D images into live video is called 4D ultrasound.

A real image (perceptible by humans) is formed by reflection of visible light off an object. However, modern medical imaging uses reflections and resonances of other sources such as X-rays (CT-scan), RF pulses (MRI), wideband infrared lights (OCT), acoustic waves (Ultrasound), and radioactive isotopes (PET) along with complex mathematical formulae to post process the measured reflections.

Related Internet Links:
Daily Mail
Medical Imaging

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

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Where Protons Will Play

On seeing the Alps for the first time, D. P. is reputed to have said, “They’re beautiful, but they’re dumb.” Near the foot of Mont Blanc, the greatest of the Alpine peaks, another sizable object is taking shape, also quite beautiful in its way, yet not at all dumb. In fact, its pristine geometries may be instrumental in revealing what have hitherto been some of nature’s deepest secrets.

It is called the Large Hadron Collider, or L.H.C. for short. Its shell is a more or less circular tunnel, some 17 miles in circumference and buried several stories underground, that straddles the Franco-Swiss border. Within this tunnel, a sort of racetrack for protons is being created. (Protons are, of course, usually found in the nucleus of an atom; they are members of the “hadron” family of subatomic particles.) The L.H.C. is scheduled to be up and running by the end of this year. When it is, flocks of protons will be made to zip around the tunnel in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. Then they will be forced to crash into each other, with (it is hoped) spectacular results for physics.

Physicists, you see, learn about the subatomic world by smashing things together and then looking at the debris. Imagine a midair collision between two watermelons; it would make quite a mess, but nothing very interesting would result. Suppose, though, you get two protons to collide head-on. If they are moving fast enough, the energy of their collision, converted into mass à la Einstein’s E=mc2, will produce a shower of new particles. (It would be as if colliding watermelons splattered into a shower of pineapples, blueberries, mangoes and more exotic fruits.) Some of these particles will already be familiar to physicists. Others, though never before observed, might well have been hypothesized by one of the speculative theories that physicists busy themselves devising, hence giving us reason to think that a theory in question is true. Still others might come as a complete surprise, eliciting an amazed cry of “Who ordered that?”

Although the Large Hadron Collider is a European project, a half-billion or so of the $8 billion price tag is being kicked in by the United States as an official “observer.” This might be seen as recompense for Congress’s decision to cut off funds for a supercollider in 1993, leaving only a partly excavated hole in the ground in Waxahachie, Tex. Among the community of 7,000 experimenters working at the L.H.C. — roughly half of the world’s particle physicists, coming from some 80 countries — the largest national contingent, numbering more than 700, will be American.

Physicists across the world are thrilled at the prospect of the Large Hadron Collider being turned on later this year, and not just because they look forward to skiing nearby in Chamonix. For the past generation, physics has been in something of a rut. There have been plenty of findings from smaller colliders, but the results have mostly been expected. To make further progress — to understand why the basic forces of nature have such wildly varying strengths, or why elementary particles have the seemingly arbitrary masses they do, or how all these forces and particles fit together in a single mathematical framework — data from higher realms of energy are needed. The L.H.C. should take physicists to those realms.

And what will they find there? At the very least, the violent proton collisions in the shadow of the Alps are expected to conjure into existence the all-important Higgs boson, a key to understanding not only the masses of the known elementary particles but also the early history of the universe. (Some pessimists fear that this is the only discovery the L.H.C. will result in. If so — pas mal.) Then there are more exotic possibilities: quantum black holes (sound dangerous, evaporate quickly); “dark matter” particles; Kaluza-Klein particles that flit off into higher dimensions; particles like the gluino, the squark, the slepton and the wino (pronounced WE-no) — which, though silly-sounding, could furnish badly needed evidence that there might be something to string theory. Beyond all that, there is the exciting chance that something utterly undreamed of will be found — a not-uncommon occurrence when physicists ascend to new levels of energy.

Energy and beauty are deeply linked in contemporary physics. At the highest energies, like those immediately after the Big Bang, perfect symmetry prevails, and all the forces of nature merge into one. As the universe cooled down, this symmetry was broken in various ways, so the world we see around us is, as the Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, “only an imperfect reflection of a deeper and more beautiful reality.” By reaching back toward the primordial energy, the L.H.C. promises to move us a little closer to that reality. This promise is bodied forth in the rounded, symmetrical forms of the collider itself — next to which the Alps, for all their grandeur, look just a bit slovenly.

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