Tuesday, March 22
Monday, March 21
My Daily Journey
There are 12 major religions in the world today which are:
- Christianity
- Islam
- Hinduism
- Buddhism
- Judaism
- Sikhism
- Taoism
- Confucianism
- Shinto
- Jainism
- Baha'i
- Zoroastrianism
Egypt's Pyramids of Giza
An ultra-powerful scan of Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza could help identify two mysterious spaces that potentially house the legendary tomb of the pharaoh. The watershed study was published last month in arXiv by University of Cornell archaeologists.
“We plan to field a telescope system that has upwards of 100 times the sensitivity of the equipment that has recently been used at the Great Pyramid,” wrote the researchers of the proposed scan, which is titled “The Exploring the Great Pyramid Mission.” They use advanced cosmic ray technology to map the internal structure of the Great Pyramid, which is Egypt’s largest pyramid and the last surviving wonder from antiquity.
The team’s research is based on a study by Scan Pyramid group, which conducted a series of scans between 2015 and 2017 that analyzed muons — cosmic particles that regularly fall on Earth — to detect any voids, Live Science reported. Muons react differently to air and stone and are therefore ideal for mapping air pockets in stone structures such as pyramids.
The scientists found two spaces, the larger of which measures 98 feet long and 20 feet high and sits above the grand gallery. Meanwhile, the smaller void is located near the citadel’s north face.
And while neither void’s function is clear, scientists speculate that the large one could lead to the secret burial chamber of the pharaoh Khufu (reign circa 2551 B.C. to 2528 B.C.), for whom the Great Pyramid was originally constructed in the 26th century B.C.
In order to peer inside the void, researchers plan to scan the area with supercharged cosmic ray muons, which are 100 times more powerful than the ones used in the prior scan.
Utilizing them will allow researchers to “image muons from nearly all angles and will, for the first time, produce a true tomographic image [three-dimensional internal images created by analyzing waves of energy] of such a large structure,” per the study. READ MORE...
Grilling Burgers
Two things you can never go wrong with: burgers hot off the grill and plenty of icy cold drinks. And with the warmer months approaching, there’s no time like the present for a grill and chill.
Regardless of how you like your burger toppings—piled high with crispy bacon, stacked with thick slices of tomato and chilled pieces of lettuce, loaded up with pickles, fried onions, avocado and cheese—one thing’s for sure, there’s nothing like a grilled burger. Unless of course your burger isn’t grilled enough, or grilled too well. Then you’re going to have some seriously unhappy and hungry guests on your hands.
Even rare burger fans still want a little sear on their meat. After all, no one likes a totally raw burger, which is why we’re breaking down exactly how long to cook burgers on the grill with this helpful guide.
Planning a DIY burger buffet? Get a variety of buns at the market to serve with your grilled burgers. Pick up some classic potato rolls along with brioche buns, ciabatta and onion rolls, Kaiser rolls, a good loaf of sliced bread and English muffins that can be lightly toasted on the grill, while the burgers are cooking. Let your guests make their own burger just the way they like it and dinner is done!
Best Burger Condiments
Now that you have your burger toppings and buns out of the way, all that’s left is condiments, like tangy ketchup, creamy mustard or chopped dill pickles as a relish. You can customize anyone’s burger to their liking just by setting out a few sauces and condiments. READ MORE...
How Fast are we Moving?
No matter what perspective you choose to look at it from, planet Earth is always in motion. Our planet rotates on its axis continuously, spinning and completing a full 360° rotation approximately once a day. As we spin, we also revolve around the Sun, completing a nearly 1 billion kilometer journey every single year. Moreover, the entire Solar System — Sun, planets, moons, and all — moves through the Milky Way galaxy, orbiting around the galactic center on timescales far greater than humanity has existed for. And finally, the Milky Way galaxy moves within the Local Group, which itself moves through intergalactic space.
Depending on what we’re measuring our motion relative to, we can quantify just how quickly planet Earth moves through the Universe. Even though our motion is barely detectable through the experiments we can perform here on Earth, a look out at the Universe enables us to understand precisely how we’re in motion on each and every scale. Here’s how we know what our cosmic motion is, from each individual component to the entire cumulative effects of everything combined.
This view of the Earth comes to us courtesy of NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which had to perform flybys of Earth and Venus in order to lose enough energy to reach its ultimate destination: Mercury. The round, rotating Earth and its features are undeniable, as this rotation explains why Earth bulges at the center, is compressed at the poles, and has different equatorial and polar diameters.(Credit: NASA/MESSENGER)
This question, although it might seem simple, has a different answer dependent on where, precisely, you are on the planet’s surface. Planet Earth is a rigid body, meaning that the land masses remain relatively constant with respect to one another over time. As the Earth rotates about its axis, practically every point on the surface completes a full rotation in just under 24 hours: 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds, to be precise. READ MORE...
Sunday, March 20
Now Just Wait a Damn Minute
What do I care about them Ukrainians anyway... if the Ruskies want that country, I say let them have it... what good is going to do them now anyway... since it is all bombed out?
But... nothing would have happened to them in the first place is this here president Biden had not of pussy-footed around like he did. I'm surprised that we let him get away with that crap in the first place... don't the sonnofabitch work for usins?
And what the hell do I care about nuclear war for anyway? I ain't gonna live much longer noways... so what's a few months either way mean? It's them kids who get screwed the most... hell, they ain't even begun to live their lives and now these assholes up north want to take that away from them too.
In my day, if someone had of acted like that, we'd of kicked the shit out of them and left 'em for the dogs to piss on. I just don't know what this ole world is coming to. We don't know how good we got it until it gone... and hell, with these pussies around today, if that happened, we'd never get her back.
From the Back Porch
The Valley is cool this morning but will reach up into the 60s... and into the 70s as the week unfolds...
It is nice to know that Spring is arriving in the Valley... it is nice to see the green grass, the blooming of flowers, and eventually the blooming of trees...
HOWEVER, with this blooming of spring comes the inevitable mowing of grass... and, with that comes the fact that we will be paying over $4/gallon of gasoline for our mowers. I usually fill up 3 gas cans at one time or 7 gallons. I was paying $14 for each fill-up and this summer I will be paying close to $30 for each fill-up.
- Some say it is Trump's fault...
- Some say it is the war in Ukraine...
- Some say it is due to COVID-19...
- Some say it is because of Putin...
- Some say it is the gas companies...
Limits of Artificial Intelligence
Humans are usually pretty good at recognizing when they get things wrong, but artificial intelligence systems are not. According to a new study, AI generally suffers from inherent limitations due to a century-old mathematical paradox.
Like some people, AI systems often have a degree of confidence that far exceeds their actual abilities. And like an overconfident person, many AI systems don't know when they're making mistakes. Sometimes it's even more difficult for an AI system to realize when it's making a mistake than to produce a correct result.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oslo say that instability is the Achilles' heel of modern AI and that a mathematical paradox shows AI's limitations. Neural networks, the state of the art tool in AI, roughly mimic the links between neurons in the brain. The researchers show that there are problems where stable and accurate neural networks exist, yet no algorithm can produce such a network. Only in specific cases can algorithms compute stable and accurate neural networks.
The researchers propose a classification theory describing when neural networks can be trained to provide a trustworthy AI system under certain specific conditions. Their results are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Deep learning, the leading AI technology for pattern recognition, has been the subject of numerous breathless headlines. Examples include diagnosing disease more accurately than physicians or preventing road accidents through autonomous driving. However, many deep learning systems are untrustworthy and easy to fool.
"Many AI systems are unstable, and it's becoming a major liability, especially as they are increasingly used in high-risk areas such as disease diagnosis or autonomous vehicles," said co-author Professor Anders Hansen from Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. "If AI systems are used in areas where they can do real harm if they go wrong, trust in those systems has got to be the top priority." READ MORE...
Interior of Protons Entangled
If a photon carries too little energy, it does not fit inside a proton (left). A photon with sufficiently high energy is so small that it flies into the interior of a proton, where it 'sees' part of the proton (right). Maximum entanglement then becomes visible between the 'seen' and 'unseen' areas. Credit: IFJ PAN
Fragments of the interior of a proton have been shown by scientists from Mexico and Poland to exhibit maximum quantum entanglement. The discovery, already confronted with experimental data, allows us to suppose that in some respects the physics of the inside of a proton may have much in common not only with well-known thermodynamic phenomena, but even with the physics of... black holes.
Various fragments of the inside of a proton must be maximally entangled with each other, otherwise theoretical predictions would not agree with the data collected in experiments, it was shown in European Physical Journal C.
The Mexican-Polish theorists analyzed the situation in which electrons are fired at protons. When an incoming electron carrying a negative electric charge approaches a positively charged proton, it interacts with it electromagnetically and deflects its path.