notebook/daybook
Physicists have invented a new type of analog quantum computer that can tackle hard physics problems that the most powerful digital supercomputers cannot solve.
Via John Coulthart – the ten commandments of Jan Svankmajer:
Imagination is subversive, because it puts the possible against the real. That’s why you should always use your wildest imagination. Imagination is the biggest gift humanity has received. Imagination makes people human, not work.
“Our technique provides a non-contact and long-distance pulling approach, which may be useful for various scientific experiments,” said Wang. “The rarefied gas environment we used to demonstrate the technique is similar to what is found on Mars. Therefore, it might have the potential for one day manipulating vehicles or aircraft on Mars.”
Space exploration is an increasingly energy-hungry endeavor. Orbiters and fly-by missions can perform their tasks using solar power, at least as far out as Jupiter. And ion drives can take spacecraft to more distant regions. But to really understand distant worlds like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or even the more distant Pluto, we’ll need to eventually land a rover and/or lander on them just as we have on Mars.
Those missions require more power to operate, and that usually means MMRTGs (multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generators.) But they’re bulky, heavy, and expensive, three undesirable traits for spacecraft. Each one costs over $100 million. Is there a better solution?
Stephen Polly thinks there is.
Polly is a research scientist at the NanoPower Research Laboratories at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work focuses on something most of us have likely never heard of: the development, growth, characterization, and integration of III-V materials by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE).
Metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy!
An international team of archaeologists have analyzed hundreds of ancient human remains found in Europe’s wetlands, revealing these “bog bodies” were part of a tradition that spanned millennia. People were buried in bogs from the prehistoric period until early modern times. The team also found that, when a cause of death could be determined, most met a violent end.
New research has been published on the organic analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite that crash landed onto a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in 2021. The research, led by Dr. Queenie Chan, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, found organic compounds from space that hold the secrets to the origin of life.
Gallery: Yasuhiro Ogawa
From Simon Reynolds, a lovely little gallery of old avant garde record covers. Pretty sure I used to own an Acoustic Research record. (Also.)
This desk by Robert van Embricqs is fascinating.
Molga soon started collecting her tears and designing a series of spoons, glass containers and other objects that made the operation easier. She then experimented with growing algae inside the tiny tears containers. The result is How to Make an Ocean, an installation that allows the audience to look at the collection of tears and life present in them. Participants, with help of the AI Moirologist Bot, are also invited to contribute to the growth of my mini-oceans by adding their own tears to the collection.
Scientists have advanced in discovering how to use ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves to peer back to the beginning of everything we know. The researchers say they can better understand the state of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang by learning how these ripples in the fabric of the universe flow through planets and the gas between the galaxies.
Jenny Calivas’s Self-Portraits While Buried:
In Frost Flowers on the Windows, expatriate Swedish actor, theater producer, and writer Albert Alberg (1838–1924) leads us on a fin-de-siècle walkabout across Chicago. His goal is to document a “New, Truly Great Discovery”: the extraordinary power of windowpane frost to take “ice photographs”, images capable of expressing the “vital qualities” of life forms close to the glass.
Mike Dempsey’s design work for the ENO and London Chamber Orchestra in the 1990s.
The return of Tech Singularity bullshit – this time, tied to the efficacy of machine translation.
Ten books that men love, apparently. Haven’t read any of them. Not even LONGITUDE, which I meant to but didn’t, so this is a note to self to see if I do have a copy in the house.
Wielding the fundamentals of set design, Layla May Arthur assembles elaborate architectural spaces and visual narratives from paper. The Netherlands-based artist focuses on the interplay between light and shadow in intricate, three-dimensional dioramas that emphasize storytelling in window displays, brand identities, and gallery presentations. In pieces ranging from delicate, individual sculptures of staircases to large-scale, immersive installations, she instills a sense that the viewer is a part of the interactions of figures within each scene.
Norwegian archaeologists believe they have found the world’s oldest runestone inscribed almost 2,000 years ago, making it several centuries older than previous discoveries, they announced on Tuesday.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });The square brown sandstone rock, measuring about 30 by 30 centimeters (12 by 12 inches), was found during the excavation of an ancient burial ground in late 2021, at Tyrifjorden northwest of Oslo, ahead of construction on a railway line.
Carbon dating of bones and wood found in a grave beside the rune suggest that it was inscribed sometime between year one and 250 AD, Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History said.
Headline: The Oldest Art In The World Wasn’t Made By Humans:
One of the most hotly debated questions in the history of Neanderthal research has been whether they created art. In the past few years, the consensus has become that they did, sometimes. But, like their relations at either end of the hominoid evolutionary tree, chimpanzees and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals’ behavior varied culturally from group to group and over time.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });Their art was perhaps more abstract than the stereotypical figure and animal cave paintings Homo Sapiens made, after the Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago. But archaeologists are beginning to appreciate how creative Neanderthal art was in its own right.
Clusters of galaxies do not appear in an instant. Instead they gradually form through the accumulation of many galaxies. But when galaxies fall in they don’t just stop moving. Instead, they keep moving around. These are called backsplash galaxies, and astronomers are using them to help understand the formation history of their home clusters.
A fallen 88-ton Buddha statue on a South Korean mountain will be set back in place by 2025, in an effort that some officials in the country are calling unprecedented.
The statue is located on the Namsan peak in Gyeongju and is believed to be around 1,300 years old. Known as a Maaebul, the statue was discovered in 2007 by a research group in the area.
An earthquake in 1430 may have caused the Maaebul’s tumble, meaning that it could have spent centuries in its current position. But that all will soon change, the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism said this week when it announced the project.
people did you not watch MONSTROUS
The Black on Gray paintings bear witness to the tireless effort with which Rothko kept pushing the boundaries of his practice; which may also explain why one evening in late 1969 he opened his studio to select members of the New York art world to view his latest paintings, the first and only time he presented a series as such.
Gallery: Zachary Friedberg.
Roald Dahl’s writing routine. Terribly cosy.
In the dystopian play “The Ventriloquists’ School” by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a ‘free man’ falls into a deserted street and, panicked, takes refuge in a non-place populated by slaves and masters where puppets and manoeuvres live under the control of the feared Sacred Director. Whether it’s a representation of a personal journey, the conscious renunciation of one’s will or a way to vent on some of the more uncomfortable aspects of the self, is up to the audience to interpret.
Sean Bonner on decentralising social media. A good read, possibly useful for others, and Sean tells me it no longer costs hundreds and thousands for the gas fees to mint NFTs, putting it more in the zone of a micro-transaction that recalls Jaron Lanier’s early insistence that emails should cost money to send. But this does also connect to a tendency I’ve seen among indieweb bloggers: working really hard to make sure they can reply to stuff on the internet. I’m not convinced that the value proposition to focus on is ensuring that your instant opinion gets shoved in someone else’s face.
“Home is not where you are born, it’s where all your attempts to escape come to an end.”
