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Wolfram|Alpha search is a new specialized search engine that focuses on focuses on algorithmic answers for scientific knowledge.  It easily beats Google or any of the other general search tools in its specialized area.

Even so, it's harder than it looks.  Here's one example:

what is the age of the universe

Result: 13.7 billion years

how old is the universe

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input

Looks like it still has a slight bias towards more precise terms like age vs old. It does seem to handle both "how big is …" and "what is the size of …".

On the other hand, this is quite impressive:

planck time * age of the universe

Result: 3.2 x 10⁶⁰ planck times

But the following doesn't "work" quite as nicely:

planck length * size of the universe

Input interpretation: (planck length) X (diameter of observable universe)
Result: 1.6 x 10^-40 planck times

Instead I have to search "planck length universe size" and then scroll down to "Ratios" section to see the answer I was looking for: 5.4 x 10⁶¹ planck lengths.  Still, not bad.

On a recent trip to New Mexico, we stopped by the VLA (Very Large Array). I added a few pics to my gallery.

In the story "Parrots Join Humans On The Dance Floor", NPR reports on researchers that have confirmed parrots most likely have musical rhythm, which would be the first animals to demonstrate an "appreciation" for music.

Here's what I found more interesting… Researchers wanted to find out if other animal species might have musical rhythm, but couldn't afford to buy a lot of animals to conduct experiments.  So they turned to YouTube, and searched using terms like "animal" and "dancing".   From 5,000 videos of all types of animals, they conclude that 33 parrot species and one elephant species demonstrated clear musical rhythm.

I wonder what other kind of research problems will be solved with YouTube?

So what gives parrots and elephants rhythm, while dogs & cats couldn't care less? The researchers notcied that both parrots and elephants are vocal mimics.  Perhaps musical ability is a side-effect of vocal mimicry.  Perhaps humanity's musical ability arose from vocal mimicry in human primate ancestors.

ThinkGeek is offering an Interactive Portal Shirt for April Fool's day. Only funny if (like me) you've played the computer game Portal.

The ever more realistic graphics in game consoles and PC's are based on approximations.  Over the years, graphics card makers have improved the approximations, but there are still lot's of short-cuts.

Ray tracing, on the other hand, is the way to accurately render computer graphics.  The process "traces" simulated rays of light as the bounce around a scene.  Unfortunately, ray tracing uses so much CPU that it's only used for still-frames, or else as the final phase of movie making.  An individual image (or frame in a film) takes from several seconds up to several minutes to render.

Caustic Graphics recently announced they plan to ship specialized hardware in mid 2010 that can ray trace scenes 200 times faster then the best current solutions.  If they actually deliver on their promises, and it's not too expensive, this could lead to real-time ray traced graphics on game consoles and PCs equipped with their hardware.

Go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and enter your name with needs in quotes, like "jeff needs".  Here's what Google says I need:

• to dance
• fish food
• a band
• to improve his wrestling skills
• new puppets
• somewhere new to live
• serious help
• to explain to Ed that given the situation, more time will be wasted filling out timesheets every 15 minutes than work done.

Crazy!

Russian and US satellites collide (bbc.co.uk)

US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in the first such reported mishap.

A satellite owned by the US company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed nearly 780km 485 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, Nasa said.

The risk to the International Space Station and a shuttle launch planned for later this month is said to be low.

The impact produced a massive cloud of debris, and the magnitude of the crash is not expected to be clear for weeks.

The reportedly non-operational Russian satellite, weighing 950kg 2,094lb, had been launched in 1993, while the Iridium satellite weighed 560 kg and was launched in 1997.

When two such objects collide with such force, the ensuing debris can destroy other satellites, says the BBC's Andy Gallacher in Florida.

But Nasa said the risk to the ISS and its three astronauts was low as the station orbits the earth some 435km below the course of the collision.

It is hoped that most of the wreckage from the collision will burn up in the earth's atmosphere, our correspondent says.

Hundreds of pieces of wreckage are now being tracked, reports say, adding to the tens of thousands of objects that are routinely tracked through space.

Some 6,000 satellites have been sent into orbit since 1957.

[Edited to add:] There is an animation of the satellite crash available for Google Earth.

Or maybe the title should be "Self stacking tires"?

At first glance, this looks like a picture of stained glass.

But when you look more closely, it's a picture of terraced rice fields in Yunnan, China.

This picture was a finalist in the Wikimedia Picture of they Year 2007 contest. Jialiang Gao is the photographer, and the picture is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license (some rights reserved).

From 15 Minute Lunch:

Last weekend I put an exhaust fan in the ceiling for my wife's grandfather. After a bunch of hours spent in The Hottest Attic In The Universe, he had a ceiling fan that ducted to the side of his house.

While my brother-in-law and I were fitting the fan in between the joists, we found a 1977 JC Penney catalog under the insulation.  It's not often blog fodder just falls in my lap, but holy hell this was two solid inches of it, right there for the taking.

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