Cool Science

[Bo D]

One step closer to the Borg?

........................................


Creating Indestructible Self-healing Circuits

Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.

The team, made up of members of the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory in Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has demonstrated this self-healing capability in tiny power amplifiers. The amplifiers are so small, in fact, that 76 of the chips—including everything they need to self-heal—could fit on a single penny. In perhaps the most dramatic of their experiments, the team destroyed various parts of their chips by zapping them multiple times with a high-power laser, and then observed as the chips automatically developed a work-around in less than a second.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/03/creating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits?et_cid=3137099&et_rid=41373174&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.scientificcomputing.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fcreating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits

[Bo D]

I wish they could get this thing worked out before my next colonoscopy! 

High-resolution endoscope is as thin as a human hair

Engineers at Stanford have demonstrated a high-resolution endoscope that is as thin as a human hair with a resolution four times better than previous devices of similar design. The so-called micro-endoscope is a significant step forward in high-resolution, minimally invasive bio-imaging with potential applications in research and clinical practice.  Micro-endoscopy could enable new methods in diverse fields ranging from study of the brain to early cancer detection.

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/03/high-resolution-endoscope-thin-human-hair?et_cid=3138115&et_rid=54725525&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rdmag.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fhigh-resolution-endoscope-thin-human-hair

[libby]

One step closer to the Borg?

........................................


Creating Indestructible Self-healing Circuits

Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.

The team, made up of members of the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory in Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has demonstrated this self-healing capability in tiny power amplifiers. The amplifiers are so small, in fact, that 76 of the chips—including everything they need to self-heal—could fit on a single penny. In perhaps the most dramatic of their experiments, the team destroyed various parts of their chips by zapping them multiple times with a high-power laser, and then observed as the chips automatically developed a work-around in less than a second.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/03/creating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits?et_cid=3137099&et_rid=41373174&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.scientificcomputing.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fcreating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits

That is truly scary to me. But I don't want to write something right off the top of my head. Have to think about it a while.

[Bo D]

That is truly scary to me. But I don't want to write something right off the top of my head. Have to think about it a while.

I know. This could probably have been posted in the Scary Science thread.

[libby]

I know. This could probably have been posted in the Scary Science thread.

No, it's fine here. My problem is that I probably read way too much science fiction back in the day, and when it starts happening in real life 

[Anne]

One step closer to the Borg?

........................................


Creating Indestructible Self-healing Circuits

Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.

The team, made up of members of the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory in Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has demonstrated this self-healing capability in tiny power amplifiers. The amplifiers are so small, in fact, that 76 of the chips—including everything they need to self-heal—could fit on a single penny. In perhaps the most dramatic of their experiments, the team destroyed various parts of their chips by zapping them multiple times with a high-power laser, and then observed as the chips automatically developed a work-around in less than a second.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/03/creating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits?et_cid=3137099&et_rid=41373174&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.scientificcomputing.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fcreating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits

Interesting. Lots of possibilities there.

[Bo D]

More proof of the veracity of that the old saying "The more you know, the more you realize you don't know."

I consider myself a fairly intelligent fella. This makes me realize that maybe I'm not. Does anybody here understand this?

.................................

Research by scientists at the University of York has revealed new insights into the life and death of black holes.

Their findings dispel the so-called firewall paradox which shocked the physics community when it was announced in 2012 since its predictions about large black holes contradicted Einstein's crowning achievement — the theory of general relativity. Those results suggested that anyone falling into a black hole would be burned up as they crossed its edge — the so-called event horizon.

Now Professor Sam Braunstein and Dr Stefano Pirandola have extinguished the fire. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, they invoke quantum information theory, a modern branch of quantum mechanics that treats light and atoms as carriers of information. The key insight from quantum mechanics is the existence of `spooky' quantum entanglement across a black hole's event horizon.

Professor Braunstein says: "Quantum mechanics shows that entanglement can exist across the event horizon, between particles inside and outside the black hole. But should this entanglement ever vanish, a barrier of energetic particles would be created: an energetic curtain (or firewall) would descend around the horizon of the black hole.

"We are the first to show the necessity of entanglement across all black hole event horizons and to consider what happens as black holes age. The greater the entanglement, the later the curtain descends. But if the entanglement is maximal, the firewall never occurs. Indeed, entanglement has long been believed to exist for some types of black holes, taking on exactly this maximum value. Our work confirms and generalizes this claim."

Stephen Hawking was the first to consider information flow in black holes, arguing that aging black holes must hoard information about everything they swallow. Professor Braunstein adds: "When quantum mechanics, and in particular entanglement, are included in the story, Hawking's prediction holds for the longest time possible. Our results not only back up Einstein's theory of gravity, but also point to quantum information theory as a powerful tool for disentangling the deep mysteries of the Universe."


http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/03/curtains-down-black-hole-firewall-paradox-making-gravity-safe-einstein-again?et_cid=3139184&et_rid=41373174&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.scientificcomputing.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fcurtains-down-black-hole-firewall-paradox-making-gravity-safe-einstein-again

[libby]

More proof of the veracity of that the old saying "The more you know, the more you realize you don't know."

I consider myself a fairly intelligent fella. This makes me realize that maybe I'm not. Does anybody here understand this?

.................................

Research by scientists at the University of York has revealed new insights into the life and death of black holes.

Their findings dispel the so-called firewall paradox which shocked the physics community when it was announced in 2012 since its predictions about large black holes contradicted Einstein's crowning achievement — the theory of general relativity. Those results suggested that anyone falling into a black hole would be burned up as they crossed its edge — the so-called event horizon.

Now Professor Sam Braunstein and Dr Stefano Pirandola have extinguished the fire. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, they invoke quantum information theory, a modern branch of quantum mechanics that treats light and atoms as carriers of information. The key insight from quantum mechanics is the existence of `spooky' quantum entanglement across a black hole's event horizon.

Professor Braunstein says: "Quantum mechanics shows that entanglement can exist across the event horizon, between particles inside and outside the black hole. But should this entanglement ever vanish, a barrier of energetic particles would be created: an energetic curtain (or firewall) would descend around the horizon of the black hole.

"We are the first to show the necessity of entanglement across all black hole event horizons and to consider what happens as black holes age. The greater the entanglement, the later the curtain descends. But if the entanglement is maximal, the firewall never occurs. Indeed, entanglement has long been believed to exist for some types of black holes, taking on exactly this maximum value. Our work confirms and generalizes this claim."

Stephen Hawking was the first to consider information flow in black holes, arguing that aging black holes must hoard information about everything they swallow. Professor Braunstein adds: "When quantum mechanics, and in particular entanglement, are included in the story, Hawking's prediction holds for the longest time possible. Our results not only back up Einstein's theory of gravity, but also point to quantum information theory as a powerful tool for disentangling the deep mysteries of the Universe."


http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/03/curtains-down-black-hole-firewall-paradox-making-gravity-safe-einstein-again?et_cid=3139184&et_rid=41373174&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.scientificcomputing.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2fcurtains-down-black-hole-firewall-paradox-making-gravity-safe-einstein-again

You are a very intelligent fella. What you posted above is straight out of Star Trek. As we know, if you go through a black hole, you come out on the other side in a different dimension and/or time. 

As for how much if any of the above I understand, I am not a scientist, but have been interested in quantum theory since I read about it years ago in one of Deepak Chopra's books about the power of the human mind. So to read that some physicists now "invoke quantum information theory"  to describe their new theory of black holes way out there in outer space is  because quantum mechanics theories also apply in the subatomic world.

Beyond that, I'm smart enough to say that now I'll defer to the experts, one in particular:

"When it comes to a frontier science like cosmology, where the scope of inquiry stretches out to the distant galaxies and down to the subatomic jitterbug from which they emerged, conservatism is not decidedly a virtue nor imagination a vice. The universe is cleverer than we are, and to investigate it we need to be creative as well as critical. It may seem crazy to imagine that most of the matter in our universe is composed of exotic subatomic particles of varieties never yet observed, or that there are billions of universes each subject to a different set of laws, or that the mind may be said to bring the universe into existence. But quite possibly such hypotheses are, as Niels Bohr often used to say in exploring the atom, "not crazy enough."

-- Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report

Ferris is a best-selling author and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley

[Bo D]

You are a very intelligent fella. What you posted above is straight out of Star Trek. As we know, if you go through a black hole, you come out on the other side in a different dimension and/or time. 

As for how much if any of the above I understand, I am not a scientist, but have been interested in quantum theory since I read about it years ago in one of Deepak Chopra's books about the power of the human mind. So to read that some physicists now "invoke quantum information theory"  to describe their new theory of black holes way out there in outer space is  because quantum mechanics theories also apply in the subatomic world.

Beyond that, I'm smart enough to say that now I'll defer to the experts, one in particular:

"When it comes to a frontier science like cosmology, where the scope of inquiry stretches out to the distant galaxies and down to the subatomic jitterbug from which they emerged, conservatism is not decidedly a virtue nor imagination a vice. The universe is cleverer than we are, and to investigate it we need to be creative as well as critical. It may seem crazy to imagine that most of the matter in our universe is composed of exotic subatomic particles of varieties never yet observed, or that there are billions of universes each subject to a different set of laws, or that the mind may be said to bring the universe into existence. But quite possibly such hypotheses are, as Niels Bohr often used to say in exploring the atom, "not crazy enough."

-- Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report

Ferris is a best-selling author and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley

Believe it or not, that helps!

Thanks! 

[libby]

Believe it or not, that helps!

Thanks! 

Thank you! Ever since you posted that I have been going back and reading it over and over, and looking things up in some texts I have. It has helped me get back on track after spending way too much time caught up in somebody else's problems. 

[Bo D]

A real Blast From The Past!

Want to hear Alexander Graham Bell's voice from 1885?

http://bio16p.lbl.gov/volta-release-2013.html

[Bo D]

Best way to keep your beer cold - aside from drinking it really fast?

Keep the outside of the bottle dry!

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/04/keeping-beverages-cool-summer-it%E2%80%99s-not-just-heat-it%E2%80%99s-humidity?et_cid=3219548&et_rid=54725525&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rdmag.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f04%2fkeeping-beverages-cool-summer-it%25E2%2580%2599s-not-just-heat-it%25E2%2580%2599s-humidity

[Locutus]

A real Blast From The Past!

Want to hear Alexander Graham Bell's voice from 1885?

http://bio16p.lbl.gov/volta-release-2013.html

That is so very cool.  For those who are too lazy to actually click on the link and listen, here is the recording right here.   Click and listen to this man's voice from the year 1885.  The text is displayed on the video so you can see what he's saying if you can't make it out in the recording.   You can skip to near the end if you want to hear where he mentions his name and states where and when the recording was made.  It's not often you get to hear someone's voice from the 1800s but now you can. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/rqYxkiMyqhY

[Locutus]

"The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking"

--- Alexander Graham Bell

Skype, FaceTime, etc., do just that today. 

[Locutus]

"Coal and oil are......strictly limited in quantity. We can take coal out of a mine but we can never put it back." "What shall we do when we have no more coal or oil?" "[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect." "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house."

--- Alexander Graham Bell

Pretty amazing isn't it?