Is That A Faster Than Light Neutrino I See, Or Is Your Cable Just Loose?

After all the hoopla about Einstien being wrong about the speed-of-light thing, it's looking like it may have just been a loose cable that caused scientists to think that neutrinos might be going faster than photons.

Here's a link to the Reuters' article on this "breakthrough." CERN will be running tests on this in May. In the article it stated that the possible error "concerns the optical fiber connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken," said CERN. "If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos."

Such a shame...just when I was ready to book that trip back to the Renaissance to help Leonardo get that helicopter thing working..

Travel Photo of the Week

Trunk Bay, St. Johns USVI - Photo by Gigi Amr

Robert Davidovitz's "Woven Paint" Series

These beautiful "paintings" are created from "thread" made of extruded paint that is then woven into tapestries. They are the creation of Robert Davidovitz and here is a link to an interview with the artist and a slideshow of his work.

The History of the Universe: From Big Bang to Big Blah

Here's the progression from:

BIG BANG

To now-ish.............

To the distant future............

Tell me true; don't you feel better now you know how it's all going to turn out?

From Scientific American.

LEGO Prosthetic Arm

I love LEGOs. BEST. TOY. EVER. Here's a link to Max Shepard's (the arms' creator) website.

Fun Time

I love Jack White and The White Stripes. Obviously, I'm not the only one. Here are students from The Blast Lab at Imperial College, London, a place where scientists study how explosions affect the human skeleton, performing "Seven Nation Army" on the lab's equipment.

Hobbyist Excavates Basement With RC Model Construction Equipment

Yeah and I thought I knew what nutz was. This is guy takes it to a whole new level. Here's some video. Here's his YouTube website in case you might want to watch a 13 minute clip of this action.

Circuit Playground

I'm not usually hawking apps on my blog here, but this one just caught my eye. A few years back I decided to start building guitar amps. I've been playing for over 40 years and building an amp had been a teenage dream. So what if I waited until my 50's to make good on it? Now comes this great app for designing circuits.

As the iTunes app store description says, "Circuit Playground simplifies electronics reference & calculation so you can have more fun hacking, making, & building your projects!"

Here's a partial list of its functions:

Decipher resistor & capacitor codes with ease
Calculate power, resistance, current, and voltage with the Ohm's Law & Power Calc modules
Quickly convert between decimal, hexadecimal, binary or even ASCII characters
Calculate values for multiple resistors or capacitors in series & parallel configurations
Store, search, and view PDF datasheets

Now, if they only had tube information on it.

Only $2.99 at the App Store.

Travel Photo of the Week

Tanzania

House in Stone

Don't you just wonder who lives here?