… if he could have understood what was being pictured. Here is a rendering of our Sun using not visible light, or X-rays, or IR photons. This picture was constructed using neutrinos. This is a ‘neutrinograph’ of the Sun. Neutrinos, like photons, are produced in the nuclear reactions that drive the Sun; unlike photons, neutrinos interact with matter only very weakly (typically taking light-years thickness of lead to be stopped rather than a thin piece of paper). These Solar neutrinos were captured by one of the few neutrino detectors to have some directional capability, enabling a picture to be accumulated from individual neutrino detections.
Archive for December, 2006
Daguerre would have been amazed…
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006Black armband time
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006Many of you will already have seen the news that Jo Barbera has died. What’s odd for me is that as a confirmed Tex Avery fan, and as someone who never really had a passion for the Hanna-Barbera cartoons in general, I find myself more moved than I’d have expected by his passing.
Why trust M$?
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006There’s much discussion about whether the Novell-Microsoft deal is a good thing or a bad thing, and besides the obvious leverage it gives Monkeyboy Ballmer to spout FUD about patents in Linux, there are other aspects to the deal too. One of these is the interoperability agreement whereby Novell will help to put converters for Microsoft’s OpenXML format into the SUSe Linux versions of OpenOffice. On the face of it this is both fair and useful. After all, it’s desirable to be able to read Word2007 documents in OpenOffice. Isn’t it?
A few data usage links today
Friday, December 8th, 2006The US Government is planning on keeping airline passenger data for up to 40 years and mining it for various kinds of undefined assessments over that time. Given that the UK hands over 34 data items on you when you fly to the States, do you still want to go shopping at Macey’s for Christmas?
On a lighter note: the Gower Report to the Treasury on “intellectual property” recommends that we get a proper ‘fair use’ policy in this country (meaning that it’ll no longer be technically illegal to rip copies of your own CDs for example). Furthermore, the report found that there was no need to alter the current UK stance on software patents (i.e., that there aren’t any), despite (or perhaps because of) the situation in America.
Look back in time
Friday, December 8th, 2006Stunning (if not very detailed) pictures of the NASA Viking Mars probes (launched 1976/1977) taken from orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are now available. The Beeb has a brief description too.
For people as old as me who remember the Viking landings and good ol’ Carl Sagan waxing lyrical about it, seeing those probes pop up in the news again, revisited by another generation of technology, brings a nostalgic glow to my breast.
Mind you, they’re probably up on bricks by now, their parts on the Martian equivalent of eBay.
8% really don’t want a National ID Register
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006A Telegraph survey has found that 8% of nearly 2000 people interviewed would rather pay a fine than have their data added to the National Identity Register. Count me in! I genuinely don’t believe that a) the database would be properly secure, and b) that the Government wouldn’t try to ‘add value’ by selling it off.
Frankly, I’m not interested. Not one bit. So fine me and the other 4.8 million people who aren’t interested. I dare you.
Proper job
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006Now that’s a proper survey. Auntie Beeb is reporting a Danish study of 420,000 mobile ‘phone users going back to 1982 that finds no sign of an increased tumour risk in the brain, eyes, or salivary glands, or of developing leukaemia. No more of this “we asked 7 people if they thought they felt warm” stuff; the sheer numbers involved make these results about as concrete as a medical study can get.
So you can all carry on using your mobiles safe in the knowledge that you’re not cooking your heads. I guess I’ll get around to buying one sometime, but still not until I actually find I have a need for it.
Back for the future
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006As someone who tries (and fails) to minimize my back strain whilst earning my daily wage at a desk and PC all day, I keep a wary eye out for information about posture, screen height, and so on. Now we all know that we should be sitting upright when typing, yes? Well, there’s some new evidence to suggest that it’s not the best position. The research suggests that lying back (halfway between prone and upright) is better than upright or slouching forwards.