Water: the structure and properties of liquid water - everything you want/should/know about water (yes, that H2O stuff).
wissen - 29.2.2004 - 24.2.2006
Babylonian Explanation for the Nebra Sky Disk?
The Nebra Sky Disk is an astronomical clock:
A Babylonian cuneiform script from the seventh century BC and the detective work of a Hamburg astronomer have solved the mystery of the Nebra Sky Disk: Rahlf Hansen deciphered a leap month rule that can be read from the 3600-year-old bronze disk.
With the rule, the lunar year and the solar year are resynchronized - the lunar year is slightly shorter than the solar year and therefore runs out of sync over time, with the rule on the disk the owners knew when they had to reset the lunar calendar by inserting a leap month.
It's quite amazing to consider that the disk is from the Bronze Age. And Babylonia and Saxony are not really close to each other (although the records are almost a thousand years younger, making the achievements of the disk's manufacturers even more interesting).
Bluetooth Security - Bluetooth Security - what's possible, what's being done, what's behind it.
Spirit reaches Homeplate
Spirit hat Homeplate erreicht - a rather strange rock formation on Mars. The area really does look quite strange.
Benford's Law - why so many numbers in statistical series start with 1.
LEGO Technic Difference Engine - Babbage would be jealous
Scientists find new species in 'Garden of Eden' - hopefully it will remain a Garden of Eden. Areas like this should be immediately placed under nature protection, otherwise it will be exploited by "exotic enthusiasts" sooner or later.
Slight Exaggerations in the Netzzeitung
The title Smallest Earth-like planet discovered is a bit strange. Okay, if you define "Earth-like" as "orbits a sun and is not a gas planet or ice lump," it might fit. But what does such a definition bring then? 5.5 times as large as Earth, the distance to the sun 3 times as far, the sun weaker than Earth's, and the temperature at minus 220 degrees - sorry, that's really not particularly Earth-like ...
Researchers tend to exaggerate
In any case, if the quote in the article about the Research Center for Computer Security at the University of Passau is correctly reproduced:
For this, the Passau scientists have developed test methods that are supposed to detect security vulnerabilities. "The system works very precisely and does not produce false alarms," said Professor Gregor Snelting. "Our analysis method is more complex than standard testing methods, but we guarantee that no security hole will escape us."
Yes, of course. Guaranteed to find all security holes. Logical. Halting problem with programs? Doesn't matter. Software still runs on classic processors, and thus has a completely unsecured layer? Doesn't matter. Of course, we find all security holes.
Nonsense. Such ridiculous claims only disqualify the person who makes them - let's hope that it was just a journalist who heard what he wanted to hear. Or that it was just a dumb assistant who was asked ...
Hwang is said to have faked all results
It will always come out eventually - but they all complained in Germany that the strict guidelines were bad for research, that others - for example Korea - were much further ahead and not hindered by silly regulations, and that we would all endanger the research location Germany.
And it was only about who lies better.
Running Giants Down Under?
They found strange footprints from 20,000 years ago in Australia:
Among the footprints, there is a small sensation: it is the track of a man who was unusually large for the Ice Age. According to the scientists' estimates, he measured 1.94 meters and moved at a speed of around 30 kilometers per hour.
When one considers that the "indigenous population" was rather small in stature upon the arrival of the English ships, one wonders whether the running giant was a biological error, or whether perhaps more was going on in Australia than we have known so far.
Mars rover "Beagle 2" found - they found Beagle!
Immortal Letter Exchange - and pigs can fly. Somehow.
A Year on Mars
About the Super Performance of the Mars Rover:
The dramatic landing, during which the 180-kilogram vehicle crashed into the Martian rubble wrapped in airbags, is celebrating its anniversary these days, as a Martian year, i.e. 687 Earth days, has passed since then. To everyone's surprise, the Mars rovers are still functioning.
Really great what these little boxes are doing there. Let's hope for another Martian year. And please, a few more from the model series on a few other planets and moons, if you please?
Creationist Plague
Oh, great, now the creationists are already in Thuringia. Well, no wonder, if you belong to a party that also demands a reference to God in the European Constitution...
And no, "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory that could be discussed as an alternative to the theory of evolution - ID is complete nonsense, religiously motivated hostility towards science. Barely disguised creationism, nothing more. Therefore, the demand for a scientific discussion of this alleged "theory" is simply nonsense.
Supply for Astronomy Enthusiasts
This time it's a Japanese space probe that will hopefully provide many interesting images and data with its landing on an asteroid. Cool. And far more interesting than silly repair tours of the space shuttles ...
Beware the Monster Chick!
That dinosaurs were feathered - they were only tarred during the asteroid impact (ok, sorry, bad joke) - has been under discussion for a long time, especially since there are appropriate findings. But this was new to me:
“The way these creatures are depicted can no longer be considered scientifically accurate,” he said. “All the evidence is that they looked more like birds than reptiles. Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks.”
Chicks? More like chickens, right? Unless the chicks in the writer's hometown are overly impressed by feathers.
ID is utter nonsense
Intelligent Design is not science:
It stems from laziness and arrogance: "I'm a smart guy, and I can't understand how all this could have evolved. Therefore, it couldn't have evolved through evolution."
A very good (because honestly annoyed) article in Die Zeit about the nonsense of creationists who always want to force their brain farts into schools. A topic that should have been filed away since Darwin - and unfortunately is still stirred up by religious nutjobs.
It would be about time for the big churches to take a clear stance on the issue and declare the nutjobs for what they are - but they can't bring themselves to do that. After all, you can make a lot of money with simple answers to complex problems. And who cares about reality ...
And they still run
Our little friends on Mars are still on their way. Spirit has now climbed a mountain and is enjoying the view of the landscape.
Alongside Cassini-Huygens, the Mars story with the Mars Explorer and the two sympathetic remote-controlled rovers is one of the most exciting space projects for me. Much more exciting than sending outdated Space Shuttles on boring routine missions with extended repair work ...
I would like a few more of the Mars kind.
SHA-1 is going down the drain
In any case, if the 2^63 attack against SHA-1 that was just announced hits. Now, the first reference implementations will probably be targeted. 2^63 is quite crackable with today's computing power, there are already some initial experiences. And thus, it is probably only a matter of time before, similar to MD5, hash collisions for real documents can be produced. It's quite strange to see how the field has changed in terms of the computing power that can be brought to bear.
Yep. Makes sense.
Not Intelligent Design, but rather the Google-Bombing of the expression naturally.
Mathematical Ignorance
It's almost modern to talk about how bad you were at math (I wasn't, I was very good at math - and yes, I really enjoyed math), but when you read James Gosling asking questions about sine/cosine and the meaning of the period definition with 2*Pi, you really scratch your head. Slava Prestov at least sees in this the explanation why most programmers ask really stupid questions about the simplest mathematical problems, when even the big shots in the industry don't understand basic trigonometry ...
Store passwords as hashes - safe?
Not quite new (it was new last summer, but I somehow missed it, the underlying paper is even two years old), but still interesting: Project RainbowCrack is a project aimed at creating tools for faster cracking of hashes. Hashes can normally only be resolved through brute force - supported by algorithmic weaknesses (as recently found in MD5 and SHA1). However, there is an approach to create the more complex calculations that arise during the brute-force process (i.e. essentially algorithmic sub-steps) in advance - for example, if you only intend to crack passwords with a maximum number of characters.
Of course, this does not come for free: you trade computing time for storage space. Tables for cracking up to 14-digit Windows passwords occupy a casual 64 GiB of memory. The practical relevance of the approach and the tools may become obvious from this quote:
Some ready to work lanmanager and md5 tables are demonstrated in Rainbow Table section. One interesting stuff among them is the lm #6 table, with which we can break any windows password up to 14 characters in a few minutes.
There is also a web interface to a distributed computing cluster for Project RainbowCrack, through which you can send MD5 hashes to an MD5 cracker, which then - if it is a string with a maximum of 8 characters - spits out the plain text. And this thing is constantly building more Rainbow Tables, making cracking faster and faster.
Just as a warning for those who think that a simple MD5 hash (or ultimately almost any hash) on the password would be sufficient. Unix systems typically use salted hashes - the password is extended by a plain text and then the hash is formed together with it. This extends the password in principle, even if the extension is of course not secret - for the computing time or the table size it doesn't matter, the passwords are simply longer and thus harder to crack. But it is also only a matter of space until they are not secure.
Better are passphrases instead of passwords - just simply normally long sentences. On the one hand, you can often remember these better (many people cannot remember a phone number, but can quote lines from poems) and on the other hand, they are simply longer (and especially flexibly long), so that Rainbow Tables as an attack method are out of the question. The algorithmic weaknesses of MD5 and SHA1 remain, of course.
Effects of Genetically Modified Rapeseed and Co.
At Isotopp I found a pointer to information about the British evaluation project on genetically modified seeds. Shocking, what effects this has, for example, on related wild plants and what this will mean for us in the long run. But of course, it's all sooo safe and sooo important for us - it's really just about the revenue for the genetic engineering companies, not about what consumers really want.
But of course, every critic of genetically modified seeds is dismissed as a crank by the economy and its henchmen (such as Clement and other politicians).
Pluto out or a new one in?
Astronomers have found a clump of mud outside Pluto's orbit that is at least as large, and likely even significantly larger than Pluto - Planet or Not, Pluto Now Has Far-Out Rival:
Astronomers announced yesterday that they had found a lump of rock and ice that was larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will probably rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto still merits the designation.
Now it's about whether Pluto loses its planet status, or the new one also becomes a planet.
The Catholic Church and Evolution
Not yet seen in other media, so here's a link to the New York Times: Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution - New York Times:
The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
Well. The Catholic Church wants to go against Darwin and his teachings again? Instead of blunt creationism, now the embellished Intelligent Design? What is not compatible is reality and the Catholic Church ...
Mexico's Settlement Older Than Previously Thought
Human footprints dating back 40,000 years have been found in Mexico:
Researchers in Mexico have discovered human footprints. The imprints are older than they should be according to the theory of the settlement of the Americas.
However, it is only a rumor that next to the footprints on the wall a graffiti with the words Kilroy was here was found.
New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings
Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings - Saurons Auge guckt aus dem Weltraum auf uns. Und nur aus einer Entfernung von 25 Lichtjahren - das ist praktisch um die Ecke von hier. >The ring is composed of dust particles in orbit around Fomalhaut, a bright star located just 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Austalis – or the Southern Fish. A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope - which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron from the blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy - confirms that Fomalhaut’s ring is curiously offset with respect to the star. Interessanter als das eigentliche Aussehen (wobei das wieder mal ein Beweis für die Notwendigkeit des Weiterbetriebs des Hubble Teleskops für mich ist) ist natürlich der vermutete Grund für das Aussehen: der Stern könnte ein Solarsystem ähnlich dem unseren haben. Also mehrere Planten in unterschiedlichen Entfernungen - möglicherweise sogar relativ kleine Planeten.
Women are still underrepresented in the US IT industry - blogged for Jutta.
Oldest traces of civilization found in Saxony - take that, Egypt! (but of all places, Saxony?)
Cunning ants build traps together and operate them jointly to catch larger insects. Nature never ceases to amaze.
Golden Hamster Stories
Goldhamster turns 75 years old:
On April 12, 1930, a golden hamster burrow was excavated near the city of Aleppo (Syria), containing one female and 11 young animals. Of the young, three males and one female could be raised and bred at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All golden hamsters in human care worldwide descend from this brother-sister mating that took place 75 years ago. In the wild, the golden hamster was considered lost or extinct.
So this is a joke, right? All pet golden hamsters are the result of inbreeding? Everything stems from these two animals at the beginning? And they haven't mutated into furry broccoli yet? Wow.
The SimCam: Film and Digital Camera Simulator is a camera simulation for photography beginners: you can play around with aperture and shutter speed and take virtual photos and then see how the result looks. Relationships such as depth of field, camera shake, correct exposure, film speed, etc. become directly tangible, even without a camera. Fun idea.
Basics of Wave Propagation and Antenna Construction - some information about the propagation of longwave, mediumwave, shortwave, and VHF. Reflection on atmospheric layers and wave behavior.
NZZ Folio: DIN A4. About the origin of the DIN paper formats.
Rabies (Rabies, Lyssa)
Medicine-Worldwide: Rabies (Rabies, Lyssa) describes rabies and its course in humans. And of course, there is a rabies page on Wikipedia.
Howstuffworks "How Van de Graaff Generators Work" erklärt wie statische Elektrizität funktioniert und wie man mit einem Van de Graaff Generator welche produzieren kann. Cool. Britzel
MathWorld News: The Mathematics of Tsunamis - interessante (wie ich finde) Erläuterung der Wellenentwicklung von Tsunamis. Gefunden im zeitwissen:log.
heise online - Neue Zürcher Zeitung digitalisiert alle Jahrgänge seit 1780 - irgendwie cool. Noch cooler wenn die Ergebnisse frei zugänglich gemacht würden, ich könnte mir vorstellen das es für Historiker ein faszinierender Informationspool sein könnte.
Dive Into Accessibility - Oldy but Goldy - immer noch eine der besten EinfĂĽhrungen in Accessibility im Web
S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System - Präsentationen in dynamischem HTML realisieren
Suchmaschinen-Eintrag & Optimierung - Alles rund um Suchmaschinen
Aktuelle Gesetze - Gesetzestexte online
Tie-a-Tie.net | Learn How to Tie a Tie - Anleitungen zum Binden von Krawatten. Mit druckbaren Versionen zum in-den-Schrank-hängen.
Naturkunde mit dem Mikroskop als Hobby - Rund um Mikroskopie und Mikrofotografie
Deutsche Buchstabiertafel - Deutsche Buchstabiertafel
IHMC CmapTools - Concept Mapping Software Toolkit - Werkzeuge fĂĽr Concept Maps
Die japanischen Schriftzeichen - Informationen ĂĽber die Japanischen Schriftsysteme
Die Welt der Sprache - Die Sprachen der Welt - Informationen ĂĽber verschiedenste Sprachen und ihre Herkunft
Exotische Schriften lernen - leicht gemacht - Schriften und Sprachen Informationen