tingilinde

breadth

Greg pointed to a piece celebrating the remarkable life of Josef Eisinger. 

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If you were to ask how his experience has intersected with history, for example, he might tell you about escaping the Nazis’ reign of terror in his native Austria by fleeing to Britain by himself as a teenager, or about the years he spent being shuffled between internment camps in Canada before he’d even graduated from high school.

If you were to ask about his professional accomplishments, he might tell you about his journey from physicist to molecular biologist to historian, or about being awarded two Guggenheim fellowships, or about how his research into lead poisoning sparked the creation of new federal policy.

And if you asked him what has brought him joy, he might volunteer information about his kids and grandkids, his lifelong love of painting, or how playing music gave him his ticket out of the internment camps and helped him meet his wife.

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induction

The Industrial Revolution was built on a few breakthroughs,  One is certainly Faraday's law of induction.  His notebook marked the 29th of August in 1831.

 

 

on feynman

Greg recommends a repeat of an excellent video on Feynman.

highly recommended!

hiroshima was 79 years ago

The first of two... hopefully no more.  An exchange of a few hundred 100kT class nukes could trigger an extinction event.

 

an old shape for outposts in space

Greg points to some interesting work with the isotensoid

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The startup is led by Aaron Kemmer, formerly of Made in Space, and Maxim de Jong, an engineer who has studiously avoided the limelight despite being the co-creator of expandable habitats like the one currently attached to the International Space Station.

They believe that the breakout moment for this type of in-space structure is due to arrive any year now. By positioning themselves as a successor to — and fundamental improvement on — the decades-old designs being pursued by others, they can capture what may eventually be a multi-billion-dollar market.

Max Space’s expandable habitats promise to be larger, stronger, and more versatile than anything like them ever launched, not to mention cheaper and lighter by far than a solid, machined structure. And despite their balloon-like looks, they are, like their predecessors, quite resilient to the many and various perils of space.

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this appeared the day after einstein's death

                    perhaps Herb Block's most famous cartoon

 

on making implosion work at los alamos

the development of eclipse prediction

A nice piece in Quanta

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To understand this cycle in modern terms, imagine the geometry of celestial bodies at the moment of a solar eclipse, when the moon lies directly between the sun and Earth and all three bodies form a neat line. For this to happen, the moon must be a new moon. It must also be at a point where its own tilted orbit around the Earth is plunging through the plane in which the Earth marches through its own orbit around the sun.

Now imagine advancing the clock forward to find a time when these same conditions recur. We have to reconcile several overlapping but unequal lunar cycles. Cycle one: It takes about 29.5306 days to go from one new moon to the next. Cycle two: It takes the moon about 27.2122 days to go from one pass through the plane of Earth’s orbit to the same pass on the next go-round. Cycle three: Because the moon’s elliptical orbit draws it nearer and farther away from Earth, the moon also oscillates its apparent size and speed in the skies over Earth, a cycle that takes about 27.5546 days.

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the women of bletchley

The names and roles of 77 alumnae of Newnham College - the women-only college of Cambridge University - who worked at Bletchley Park have just been declassified and are posted on the Roll of Honour at Bletchley Park. Enter Newnham in the 'Enter Keywords...' field.  Most held their secrets to the grave.

And more depth from Newnham College

a tip of the hat to Frank

 

 

gödel's journey and the a-bomb

Some history on the great mathematican

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In the summer of 1939, after reading an article in the scientific journal Die Naturwissenschaften by Siegfried Flügge — later a leading member of Uranverein, the ominous ‘Uranium Club’ that was behind the German effort to build a nuclear bomb — Thirring had learnt enough to feel that the US government should be warned. Like Szilard, and at about the same time, he came up with the idea to use Einstein to alert Roosevelt. But how could Thirring contact Einstein? The Gestapo, the Nazi secret police force, would intercept every phone call or letter from Vienna to Princeton, where Einstein lived.

This is when Thirring heard that Gödel happened to be on a brief visit to Vienna, to see his mother and take his wife Adele back with him to Princeton. Why not use Gödel as a secret messenger to reach Einstein? Thirring entrusted Gödel confidentially with the task of warning Einstein about Hitler’s bomb.

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a tip of the hat to Sukie