Feynman’s thoughts

In honour of his centennial, the Top 10 Feynman quotations.

Time for lutetium

Neglected atom has top properties for atomic clocks.

Will the tea bag survive?

Scientists have used a powerful X-ray laser to heat water from room temperature to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than a tenth of a picosecond.

NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars

3,000 rpm

Flipping panic

Earth’s magnetic field is NOT about to reverse

Si wafer shipment

Reaching their highest recorded quarterly level ever, worldwide silicon wafer area shipments were 3,084 million square inches during the first quarter of 2018.

Weak proton charge

A team at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has measured the weak charge of the proton by scattering a beam of spin-polarized electrons from stationary protons in a liquid hydrogen target. The value is 0.0719 ± 0.0045.

In good company

On the 15th of June, Professor Stephen Hawking’s ashes will be interred in Westminster Abbey along side Darwin and Newton. A ballot was held to enable one thousand members of the general public to attend the service. Applications were accepted from anyone born before 31/12/2038. Will the time travellers have a special seat? The Professor’s last paper is now available on line. Utterly unremarkable is one assessment - I doubt if he’s bothered.

73 or 67?

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has produced the richest star catalogue to date, with measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. Analysis of the data from the pulse rates of Cepheid stars, has suggested that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. The new data puts the Hubble constant at 73, which translates into galaxies moving away from us 73km per second faster for each additional megaparsec of distance between us and them. Estimates based on the cosmic microwave background have a value of 67.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all its forms does and will increasingly impact society worldwide. The global robot population is predicted to outnumber humans by 2048. However my recent miserable attempts to navigate a ‘smart’ automated repayment system from a railway company made me paraphrase the words of Gandhi. What do I think of Artificial Intelligence? I think that it would be a good idea. Fortunately, the same day a real, friendly human being managed to rescue me from the voice recognition, Kafkaesque, income tax assessment telephonic black hole that I had descended into.

As King Canute knew, you cannot obstruct irresistible forces and the Luddites are not good role models, but should not AI be augmented intelligence, the antidote to natural stupidity?

Special or general ravens?