My Frame of Reference

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Ask questions to Physics Nobel Laureate in YouTube

Have you ever wanted to ask a Nobel Laureate a question?
Now, here's your chance! Ask a Nobel Laureate is offering you a unique opportunity to communicate with some of the world´s most brilliant minds.
The current participating Nobel Laureate is Albert Fert, Nobel Prize in Physics 2007 "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance", which forms the basis of the memory storage system found in your computer.

Albert Fert will answer a selection of your uploaded video questions.
Upload your video question no later than March, 19, 2010.
Vote for your favourite questions, and a selection of the most popular questions will be answered by Albert Fert. Video responses will be posted in early April.

From wikipedia:
Albert Fert (born 7 March 1938 in Carcassonne, Aude) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. He is currently professor at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay and scientific director of a joint laboratory ('Unité mixte de recherche') between the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Scientific Research Centre) and Thales Group. Also, he is an Adjunct professor of physics at Michigan State University. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.

Head on to:
Ask a Nobel Laureate with Albert Fert
http://www.youtube.com/user/thenobelprize

NobelPrize.org page:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2007/
Ask questions!!!

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
-Albert Einstein

Monday, March 1, 2010

Hubble in IMAX 3D

AVATAR was my first and second(!) IMAX 3D movie.
IMAX is bringing another fantastic movie... it is about the hubble space telescope

Some Screenshots:

More...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=hubble-3d-imax-movie-2010-01-29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO4ZWJlROwE
http://www.imax.com/hubble/

Monday, February 22, 2010

Journey: From and Back to Home

I was completely absorbed by the following video... Journey from Home to eternity and back to home.
After you go out of the solar system, you are in void. tranquility prevails and you are alone in there... navigating away from your home. The journey is not so easy as it was fantasized.

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/index.php

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Adaptive Evolution and Darwinian Selection in Robots

Natural selection: is it the law or consequence due to the constraints provided in the situation?
It is "the law" if you think nature as an agent at work and that requires some law to work on. On the other hand it is the consequence if you view it with the concept of "natural process". The difference is subtle: do you conceive it as a work done by an agent or a continuous process?
Whatever it is, one thing is sure that Darwinian theory of natural selection is true for agents in the play ground. Be it living beings, or robots.
The understanding of nature and appreciation to it becomes rather huge once you have the capacity to build and mimic "natural behavior".
Scientists have been working on adaptive and evolutionary robots with capabilities to learn and hence are able to realize the Darwinian selection rule in such robotic agents as the consequence of such learning and adaptive behavior.
See some video...

Evolution of Adaptive Behaviour in Robots by Means of Darwinian Selection

Monday, February 1, 2010

Saturn's Ring through Mobile camera @ Observatory

Braving the Cold of First of February is not an easy thing to do. But if students make their mind, they will do it.
:)
Despite scattered snow in the beginning and in the end, we were lucky to see Mars and Saturn (and Moon of course!) Mars was visible for only few minutes after we started. Mars was playing hide and seek with us. We gave up on it as it was setting and clouds would never be clear on that side.
Stunningly my mobile could take the picture of Saturn with its ring distinctly visible. My bigger camera could not get anything better because of auto focus feature...