Some scientists think they’ve figured out what memories are. Maybe.
Dietmar Plenz and Tara Thiagarajan at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland observed that groups of brain cells of two awake macaque monkeys appear to have their own version of quantum entanglement, or “spooky action at a distance” that could explain memories.
And if you didn’t know anything about quantum entanglement:
Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information.
That’s the short answer from Stanford University. Here’s the short answer as of now on Wikipedia (with no references to your mom, at the moment):
Quantum entanglement, also called the quantum non-local connection, is a property of a quantum mechanical state of a system of two or more objects in which the quantum states of the constituting objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart—even if the individual objects are spatially separated in a spacelike manner. The property of entanglement was understood in the early days of quantum theory, although not by that name. Quantum entanglement is at the heart of the EPR paradox developed by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen in 1935. This interconnection leads to non-classical correlations between observable physical properties of remote systems, often referred to as nonlocal correlations.
You thought it’d be simple?
Above: Mayan calendar. Below: Egyptian technology. Consider:
You can’t make up this level of crazy. Found via Jameth, click for full size.
Click the image for full size lunacy.
This is more for the networking geeks out there, rather than your average iPhone user. Brough Turner, a veteran telecom guru and several-time CTO has got a theory. The short version is that AT&T has enough capacity to handle the massive amounts of traffic that the iPhone users consume, contrary to a lot of the news reports out there. The real problem is that AT&T has screwed up the configuration of their wireless network, he says.
The bottleneck link is the over-the-air link, i.e. the connection from radio access network or UTRAN to the Mobile Statation (MS) in the above diagram, therefore the critical buffers are those at the UTRAN. In practice the UTRAN includes both the basestations (called Node-Bs) and the Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) which coordinate handovers between basestations (among other things). Because of hand-overs, the amount of data buffered at the Node-B is relatively small. It’s the buffers at the RNC that must be large enough to deal with the delay variations in the radio network and yet small enough to induce packet loss when the network gets congested.
I have no idea if he’s right, but it makes sense. Good read, if you know networking.
From my friend Andy K. on twitter:
Bear with me: Captain Kirk had an older brother, George Sam Kirk. In the new movie, Kirk has no older brother. He’s the first born.(1)
Simple: The altered timeline resulted in a scenario by which the Kirks named their firstborn James Tiberius Kirk instead of George Sam Kirk.(2)
As such, I submit to you the film’s James T. Kirk is in fact GEORGE SAM KIRK. The true Jim Kirk will NEVER BE BORN.(3)
William Shatner played George Kirk, James’s brother, in his only on-screen appearance. It’s therefore totally reasonable to assume that older Spock Prime would have mistook the younger once-George for unborn James. Sure will be a mindfuck for now-James when and if Spock Prime ever tells him the truth.
Will angry nerds burn a J.J. Abrams effigy in front of the Paramount backlot now?
Click here to Digg this and spread the gospel of the False Kirk According To Andy.
UPDATE: Apparently that little kid that young “James” drives by in the stolen car in the beginning of the film–according to the original script–was supposed to be George Kirk. According to IMDB, there is no George Kirk in Star Trek beyond the very dead one that fathered False James. Director’s cuts don’t count in my book.
First “photos” ever of extrasolar planets. This is made if extra awesome. I wonder what the intelligent design people will have to say about this. Or when Gort arrives, on December 12th.
So far, so good. A fantastically accessible walkthrough and overview of quantum physics.
The concept of additional spatial dimensions is as far from intuitive as any idea can be. Indeed, although Harvard physicist Randall does a very nice job of explaining—often deftly through the use of creative analogies—how our universe may have many unseen dimensions, readers’ heads are likely to be swimming by the end of the book. Randall works hard to make her astoundingly complex material understandable, providing a great deal of background for recent advances in string and supersymmetry theory. As coauthor of the two most important scientific papers on this topic, she’s ideally suited to popularize the idea. What is absolutely clear is that physicists simply do not yet know if there are extra dimensions a fraction of a millimeter in size, dimensions of infinite size or only the dimensions we see. What’s also clear is that the large hadron collider, the world’s most powerful tool for studying subatomic particles, is likely to provide information permitting scientists to differentiate among these ideas soon after it begins operation in Switzerland in 2007. Randall brings much of the excitement of her field to life as she describes her quest to understand the structure of the universe.
The Mars Rover has died, and the mission has been terminated. NASA denied reports of a giant robot’s involvement and sounds of “transforming metal” playing any role.
There is no spoon.
“MIKE HALL has taught himself to stretch time. He uses his powers to make him a better squash player. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s a feeling of stillness, like I’m not trapped in sequential time any more…”
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If you’re distracted by lolcats at work all day, new evidence from evolutionary biology suggests it’s not your fault. A study from Yale explains that human visual attention evolved to track images of animals — and lolcat images awaken our buried evolutionary impulses.
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Oh my God… watch this, thanks again Bernie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBGlm0Sye8Y
Incredibly cool discovery from NASA. Go right now, just to see the pictures if nothing else! From /.:
“NASA astronomers held a press conference announcing that a new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira that’s leaving an enormous trail of “seeds” for new solar systems. Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that’s 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old. The website has images and a replay of the teleconference.”
Physicist developed new theory on traveling back in time; blogs about it from next year.
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The theoretical physics of establishing and crossing through a traversible wormhole are seriously messed up. And thats just from the standpoint of establishing a wormhole from point A to point B, let alone using it to move backwards or forward in time. Don’t even get me started on the idea of a cylindrical universe, either.
