What if.....??

A couple of days back I decided to just kick back a bit, switch off the brains and let the TV do some of the thinking for me. On the Discovery channel was a special about alien life. There are loads of such documentaries that try to give both sides of the story.

The believers will tell of their experiences -- seeing this, hearing that, getting abducted and poked around a bit.

Then there'll be the cynics and people who profess to be men and women of science. And these guys just can't wait to pooh-pooh all this claims as wild hallucinations of nutjobs.

"Forget your leader, take me to Krispy Kreme!"

I'm sitting there listening to each side's accounts...

"They had almond shaped, dark eyes..."
"The guy probably had too much to drink!"

"The saucer flew at such incredible speeds"
"Um.. it was a weather balloon, yeah, or an unmanned vehicle..."

"Thousands of reports came in, all claiming to see the same phenomenon!"
"Its not unusual to have cases of mass hysteria..."

"Those beings are evil, and they are systematically abducting humans for experiments"
"Ah, people will say anything just to go on TV!"

Must not have been too bright, since he got caught!

And so the argument continues. Some of these are supposed to be famous scientists.
So who would you believe, some small town person who may have had too much moonshine or sun or both?

Or a distinguished professor who has chewed through a million dry facts and figures?

I've always wondered what would happen to these very public debates, if one day, the real truth really came about? What would the many vocal skeptics say if really, some green-grey skinned visitor came down one day ... took a look, decided we weren't worth their time and left.... right in plain sight of a hundred TV cameras?

I for one would love to see that day.
And for the record, I do believe there is sentient life out there! Its inconceivable for me that of the bazillions stars in this infinite universe, we are unique.

Remember, just barely a couple of centuries ago, the brightest scientific minds of that time though the earth was flat... um, no, round but in the center of the universe, not that... but the sun rotated around the earth... strike that... the moon is made of cheese....

Flat Earth - circa. 1225 AD

Well, perhaps not that last one. But you've seen scientific and religious dogma being proven wrong with every leap of new discovery and knowledge. Makes you wonder what other 'facts' that we hold as irrefutably true today would turn out to be yet another of our misunderstanding of nature?

I leave you with these famous words, spoken eloquently by many of the world's brightest minds. Its not about aliens or anything funky... but you'll be surprised how people felt about things which we take for granted today.....

• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

• "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

• "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

• "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

• "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

• "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

• "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

• "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist in his project to drill for oil in 1859.

• "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

• "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

• "Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

• "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

• "No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris." -- Orville Wright.

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- T.Watson, chairman of the board, IBM, 1943

• "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechnics, 1949

• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olsoon, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1972

A fun blog: Vision of the World

The fun thing about blogging is that you also tend to surf about visiting other blogs. Whether if its about food, or a mother's pride, or politics, or technology, I find myself enriched with the musings and sharings of the blogging community.

Occasionally, you'd stumble upon some fun blogs, like this one called VOTW by Bertrend Leseigneur (at least that's what I made out from his email add). The blogger calls it a blog on technology news for the 'non-geeks' -- fun huh?

Well it is... simple posts that lets pictures tell most of the story. Nothing too heavy if you want to just chill out and brows a bit. Here are a couple of recent toons which I had a good chuckle. Thanks Bertrend....

Android vs iPhone


The new Geek




Sarah Palin's Facebook???

BOOM - an early LHC success story

This my friends, is a simulated picture of the first ever successful proton stream collision at the LHC. It happened yesterday, on day 1 of LHC's operations. The success of getting the world's largest (and most expensive) scientific equipment up and running so quickly surprised even the most optimistic physicists working on it!

Oh yeah, and no accidental black hole resulted from it. DUH! We wouldn't be reading this if that happened, right?

Read more about this first experiment here (also contains a really cool video on how the LHC works, narrated in an equally cool accent!).

BTW, not everybody agrees with the LHC plan as well -- although I think the writer meant it as a satire. Read about that here.

What is everything in the Universe made of?

Stuff.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it. But if you were like Democritos, the Greek philosopher of 300 BC, you'd want to know what exactly is this 'stuff' then?

Democritos figured that if you kept halving something, you'd eventually reach a point where that thing simply cannot halved anymore. He called this an 'atom'.

Today, we know this as a fact. Atoms really are what Democritos imagined it would be -- to a point. For someone who existed over two thousand years ago, I'd say he was waaaaay ahead of time then!

Since then, we have gone a few steps further and discovered that within atoms, there exists Protons, Neutrons and Electrons (halo, still remember your fizik or not?) -- collectively called sub-atomic particles.

These Protons and Neutrons are in turn made up of even tiner particles called Quarks.

Subatomic particles are so small, there is no way we are able to observe them through conventional means. And by 'conventional', that means even the most powerful scanning-tunneling electron miscropes that are able to look at individual atoms!

To describe the behaviour of subatomic particles, scientists resorted to building complex mathematical models that predict their (the particles, not the scientists!) lifespans and characteristics.

But if you really wanted to 'see' them, you'd need a super massive tool called a partical accelerator. You'd have probably read it in the news by now, regarding the CERN particle accelerator called the LHC, Large Hedron Colider?

The LHC (pix by:Fabrice Coffrini / AFP-Getty Images)

The WHAT?

• Its a tube, the shape and size of a gigantic doughnut 26 kilometers in circumference
  
• The system is buried deep underground so it is shielded from solar radiation (which messes up the readings).
  
• Around the tube, there are 9,000 super-conducting magnets that run at a super-cool temperature of minus 270c.
• The machine consumes 120 mega watts of power.
• There are between 7,000 to 10,000 scientists working on this machine.
• It is located at the border of France and Switzerland -- what a lovely place to be!!
  

So what does it do?

• It speeds up one stream of hidrogen atoms within this tube to nearly the speed of light in one direction.
• It speeds up another stream to the same speed on a different path, but on the opposite direction.
• Then it smashes these 2 streams together -- BOOM

In there to record the action, are massive detectors that are described as equal to a 150 megapixel camera (our high end consumer models shot 10 mega pixles) and at 600,000,000 frames per second! Say CHEESE!

These scientists then spend the next months and years theorising further on what they saw, or what they thought they saw... and whether any of the particles' collisions were caused by driving under influence.

The cost of this thing?

Estimates vary, but its been tagged at between 6 to 10 billion dollars.
Its being funded by Europeans, and in part, the Americans.
No Petronas money was being misused for this purpose (sorry, Malaysian-only inside joke here)

What do they hope to get out of this thing anyway?

The scientists hope to answer, prove or disprove 5 theories:
1) What happened milliseconds after the Big Bang?
2) Do Strings (as in String Theory) exist, and are there really 11 dimensions in the universe?
3) Is it universe or multiverse?
4) Find this 'dark matter', that's supposed to make up 96% of the universe.
5) Find this illusive thing called the 'Higgs Boson'... and hopefully find more than that even

No, really, what I mean is, what's in it for us?
Actually there was an initial fear that the machine may somehow create a micro blackhole. If that happens, some fear that it would wipe out our entire planet -- get sucked into something the size of a green pea or something.

The LHC went life today.... and chances are, if you're reading this, it means no blackhole was created. And if it did.... well, it wouldn't matter much anyway. Nothing matters much when you are sharing the space of a green pea with 6 billion other people and a planet! But that has a 1 in 50 million chance of happening!

But beyond satisfying the curiosity of several physicists, there is little of what will come out of this that will benefit the layman any time soon.

Who knows, the findings may open doors to new and more insightful views of our universe?
I guess I would... to a point. But beyond that, I'd focus my energies on the other kind of doughnut -- the delicious ones from Big Apple!

Interested to know more? Check out this excellent article from Wired magazine.

Are your kids safe in your car?

I have been meaning to write about hypermiling since my last post about fuel saving devices. And wanted to do so today. But what I saw this morning made me change my mind and switch to this topic instead.

There seems to be a lot of ignorant or utterly stupid Malaysian drivers around. No, I'm not referring to the those who hog lanes or tailgate or any other kinds of inconsiderate drivers ... for them, I'll probably reserve a whole future post!!

I'm referring to the loving and obliging parents who are either too clueless or thoughtless about child-safety in cars. These are the people who allow their kids to stand or climb around in the front passenger seat or sit in the driver's lap, while the car moves along at full speed.


Haven't they heard of this thing called inertia?

• The kid is standing on the passenger seat one minute, the car hits another car, and in the next split-second, the kid smashes through the windscreen to who-knows-what beyond that.

Haven't they heard of these things called airbags?

Don't be misled by movies or TV shows
which always seem to show airbags as gentle, pillowy,
rubber balloons that perfectly protects the driver
and doesn't even mess up your hairdo!

• In an accident, an airbag deploys at the speed of 320kmh ... and 'deploy' means the tough nylon bag smacks into your face and chest faster than you can blink!

• The airbag has to deploy with sufficient force to prevent the body from hitting against the steering or dashboard.... i.e. has to hit you hard and fast enough so you will not travel more than a few inches forward
  

• Old airbags have only one setting -- they fully deploy when triggered -- regardless of whether you're at 25kmh or 60kmh

• New airbags have a 2-stage mode -- they fully deployment at high speed crashes; partially at lower speeds

• Airbags are built for adults.... they are extremely harmful or even deadly for children below 12

• If a child seat / bassinet is placed with the child facing the airbag -- if deployed, the airbag will likely kill the child

• If the same seat is placed facing backwards (away) from the airbag -- the bag is strong enough to smash through the seat, killing the child by inflicting massive head injuries; or it could push the seat backwards and crush the child against the seat

• Airbags are a form of SRS (supplementary restraint system) and WILL ONLY WORK properly when used together with seat belts. If you think the airbag alone will safe your skin, YOU'RE WRONG

• If you must have your child sit in front, look up the manual on how to disable the passenger-side airbag

Haven't they heard of rear passenger seat belts -- tie those little squirts up in the back!

• Allowing the children to roam about freely at the back is also rarely a good a really bad idea

• Don't wait until the law is enforced.... Singapore has enforced it, Australia has enforced it.... do you think just because Malaysia has deferred the enforcement by 6 months, the laws of physics will also not apply for 6 months?

• Use a booster seat to make sure the child is brought up to sufficient height for the seat belt to work properly

The technologies in modern cars are lightyears better than those of 25 years ago. You now have the ABS, EBD, Airbags, pre-tensioner seat belts, vastly better tyres, slip and skid control, impact crumple zones, more rigid passenger area.... the list goes on.

But wonderful as these safety innovations are, they come to nothing, if we do not heed safetly practices and put our own children in harm's way.

Sorry if I've been preachy .... have a good drive, and may you and your family arrive safely!


Read more about airbag safety here and here.

To infinity and back... you'll have to wait a bit more for 'beyond'

Lets just say you have USD 200k to blow on a holiday.
And lets say you can afford only a day for that holiday.
Where would you go and still be the envy (or derision) of the rich and famous/notorious?

Sir Richard Branson has the ready answer for you -- A trip to the outer-reaches of Earth on Virgin Galactic (VG)!

You'd have read them in the news by now, about the unveiling of the 'mother ship' called WhiteKnightTwo that will carry your space ship to a height of 18,000 meters (60,000 feet!). There, it will release the actual spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, where the spacecraft will then fire up her hybrid rocket engines, and continue the journey -- all the way up to 110km in the thermosphere.

110k is the distance from Port Klang to Seremban -- only this time you'd be travelling vertically, from ground zero, straight up! Oh yeah, you, your 2 pilots and your 5 other travelling companions be zipping at over 3 times the speed of sound (4200km/h)! Now that's adventure with STYLE!

Source: Wikipedia: WhiteKnightTwo, carrying SpaceShipTwo between her twin hulls

And how will your ride look like? The pictures above and below look like something straight out of Japanese sci-fi anime. But hey, this is for real! Both these planes were designed by the uber-genius of an aerospace designer, Burt Rutan, and built by his company, Scaled Composites.

Never heard of him? He was the guy who designed the first ever plane -- the Rutan Voyager -- to successfully fly around the globe non-stop, without refuelling. This is also the same guy who designed the first ever, privately-built spacecraft -- SpaceShipOne -- to make 2 successful trips to sub-orbital space within 2 weeks. He won the US 10m-dollar Ansary X-price for his efforts.

Source Wikipedia: SpaceShipTwo, something straight out of reality!

So how, interested? Sorry friends, you'll have to get in line. VG claims the first 100 seats have already been snapped up -- and paid for in full -- for flights that will be happening in the next 2 years. A further 170 clients have paid a deposit for future flights. Eventually, the price would come down to a much 'cheaper' US 20k per pax.

That's peanuts compared to the US 20 million Dennis Tito reportedly paid to be the first tourist in space. Tito is not alone in this elite club. Since then, four other space tourists have also paid hefty sums to experience life as an astronaut.

To be fair, this comparison is like comparing a ferry ride to holidaying on the QE2. The VG flight will last 2.5 hours, let you experience momentary weighlessness, before making a slow decent back to earth. In contrast, the 'real' space flight will see you zipping at 25,000 kmh, spend a few days in the international space station, and make countless orbits around earth!

Still. Going to space is going to space. And whether it costs 20k or 20 mil, not many will have that kind of bragging rights to say they were up there with the gods!

Ain't it Cuil? (pronounced 'cool')

Big news on the technology front today... firstly, is the unveiling of the commercial space carrier, White Knight two, and then this -- cuil.com -- touted by some to be the eventual 'Google slayer'.

Cuil.com is built by ex-Google staff, and they claim that they have built a better search engine than their ex-employer's.

But a search engine is a search engine is a search engine, right?

Most search engines will tell you 'no'. Like in the case of Google, it has secret rules and complex formulae to allow them to rank a page largely by popularity, in order to return the best results for any given search. Yahoo and others have tried to replicate the 'intelligence' in the search but failed.

With cuil.com, they hope to leapfrog Google with something even more advanced to give better results by topic relevance and not mere popularity. The key difference is that it tries to understand and merge 3 things together...

• The context of your search statement or question

• The context of the contents in the 121billion web pages Cuil claims to index. (That is almost 4 times to what observers estimate what Google is indexing today)

• The context of the pictures in those web pages they index

The result is supposed to be more intelligent search results that are accompanied by relevant pictures.

These guys just launched this service, and will have some fine tuning of the algorithms to do. And so far, the results have been quite amusing. There are spot-on hits, and quite a number of misses as well!

For fun, I did a number of searches and here are some of the results:

Search #1 - a famous, iconic brand, such as IBM.

• Subjects closely related to the company are neatly organized into sections with helpful descriptions on the subjects giving user a preview of what to expect

• Explore by Category box conveniently provides further related topics organized in neat sub-categories

• The images that accompany the results look quite 'normal' initially until you start looking at them closely, and you realize that some of the items (See the 'previous' button?) don't quite belong there
  

Search #2 - Topic of the day, e.g. White Knight Two (dunno what's that? Read my next post coming soon!)

• First result got the correct subject, but the picture showed a white orchid (probably of a similar name). Another shows the knight chess piece!
  

• Subsequent ones had the correct picture but the subject was totally different

• Get this, there's even a picture promoting Japanese AV (porno) title (see bottom right)! Just how that is related to a space ship is beyond me!! In fact, The Register had also reported something similar, in that the search for a French academician resulted with gay photos!!
  

Search #3 - Local blogging personalities - Paul Tan (motoring blogger)

• Successfully showed his blog as the first search result! Not bad.
  

• Seems to share the same penchant as Google to display results from Wikipedia (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!!)

• Interestingly, the Explore by Category box decided to list down things related to Malaysia instead. Quite a nifty feature and pleasant surprise

Search #4 - Local blogging personalities - Kenny Sia (er, famous blogger?)

• Lists other bloggers or articles talking about him, but interestingly, does not show Kenny's actual blog! Poor Kenny!
  

Go ahead, try it yourself and have some fun. Do tell me if you get any interesting results!! :) ==> Cuil.com