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Science

Fundamental Surfaces

2007-10-10

After Peter Grünberg (together with Albert Fert from France) has yesterday been honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which is widely applied in hard disks today, today Gerhard Ertl – on his birthday! – follows with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his fundamental research in surface chemistry, which yielded new insights in various areas such as catalytic converters, rust and ozone destruction. Congratulations!

:clap:

German research may be not that bad in general as it seems sometimes – it shouldn’t rest on these laurel’s, though, since there are other areas of research where it’s looking less “nobel”…

Predicting Lotto Numbers??

2007-10-08

This article only deals with one specific method of pretended lotto prognoses. » Click here for all my articles about lotto

Lotto playing form - photo from lotto-bw.de/presse Via Bloggerei.de and (update:) what was, at that time, on Ramschmarkt.de, I came across something called “Global Scaling”, a, let’s call it view of the world where everything is said to be connected by a standing wave and that apparently claims that all things big and small can somehow be described with logarithmic scales – or something like that, maybe I didn’t interpret all those pieces of information floating around on the web correctly. The main homepage seems to be globalscaling.de (also abbreviated as GS in the following text), the “Institute for Space Energy Research”.

  • When physicists and other scientists research in “free space energy” or things like that, I don’t mind at first, things have to be investigated;
  • When a “cosmic background noise” and logarithmic scales are kinda seen as new “silver bullet” for anything (logarithms not being uncommon in math and physics, anyway), some skepticism is necessary, I think;
  • When “lotto prognosis” is mentioned as one of the fields of application, the whole thing, in my consideration, crashes down to the lowest end on any respectability scale;
  • When they charge money for that, my spontaneous opinion sees that going maybe a little too far towards rip-off or deceit.

Yes, I’ve contemplated whether I should spend much attention to such a dubious “system”, but…

1. …well, let’s have a closer look.

math book (I apologize for this being quite lengthy, but a certain detailedness is necessary. So maybe get yourself a cup of coffee – or go :arrow: directly to the conclusion…))

Quote from globalscaling.de, my translation:

“How exact is the Lotto prognosis?

The lottery is about the selection of a random sequence of natural (whole) numbers. Because of that, under best preconditions, a lotto prognosis can never be more accurate than ±1.”

This combination of these two sentences, I think, will make the hair of anyone who has ever seen a formula from probability calculus from nearby stand on end. Only with a little heaps of good will – and without knowing the formulae of “Global Scaling” – one could assume that this sentence’s wording is just accidentally a little off, or shortened, simplified too much…

The sentence (in my translation)

“We point out that we give no guarantee for the precision of our lotto prognosis.”

is necessary, of course – if the prognoses were perfect, they already were multiple lotto millionaires and had no need to make the effort to sell their “lotto prognosis”. Anyway, following on that page are a bunch of big numbers, which, the way I read it, boil down to the fact that the more tips you play that do not repeat, the higher your chances to win. Preferably (for GS) with numbers bought from GS, of course…

2. But how good are their prognoses?

Continue Reading »

50 Years since Спутник

2007-10-03

Sputnik-1 Almost exactly 50 years ago, on 4 October 1957, Sputnik 1, the first satellite, has been launched – rather surprisingly –, heralding the era of space flight.

This aluminium ball’s construction, 58 cm in diameter, wasn’t too complex and done in just four weeks, and the scientific instruments on board were limited to temperature sensors that could also detect a drop in pressure as it would happen if a micro meteor penetrates the casing, whose readings were sent to earth with the famous beeps from the radio transmitters. The political benefit – “Hello Yanks, our strong sockets can reach the orbit (and you too, if necessary)!” – was a little bigger, of course.

If you want to read all this in detail, you can do so e.g. at NASA.

Evolutionary Regression

2007-09-19

That’s exactly what must be happening with creationists – because the obvious refusal to use the mind, the brain, and instead utter such bullshit (pardon, had to be said) as can be seen e.g. on GodTube.com (the apparently fast growing YouTube copy for Christians christian fundamentalists) cannot be an advantage for mankind.

Example: Evolution woud say that all inanimate things become life, including mousetraps becoming mice (near the end of this clip about woodpeckers).

:dunce:

As Ernest Hemingway said:

“All thinking men are atheists.”

Max from „Wissen belastet“, where I found this, mentions (in German) some more questionable examples and contents of GodTube.com, e.g. a little girl who “may” memorize a Psalm, of course with many comments on GodTube appreciating this.

A quote from Phil Plait from BadAstronomy.com:

“When you see that spark, that glow, that moment when a child understands what they are seeing [through a telescope], or even just the potential in their faces as they chew over the nature of reality, of the Universe… the joy that fills your heart is impossible to describe. It’s wondrous.
Creationism and fundamentalist dogma destroy that potential. It’s wrong, and it’s evil.
It’s brainwashing.”

95 million years to Chicxulub

2007-09-05

Warning: A long scientific sentence without humor! (Yes, I need that from time to time.)

Astronomers have now found with calculations of asteroid orbits, chemical examinations of asteroids that crashed on Earth and temporal distribution of impacts also on Moon, Mars and Venus that probably the collision of an asteroid with a diameter of 170 km, called Baptistina, with a 60 km large one 160 (+30/-20) million years ago created 300 large fragments over 10 km (and many smaller ones) including the one that impacted near Chicxulub (Mexiko) 65 million years ago, which most likely was mainly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Quite interesting how things like that can be determined after so long periods of time… More info on Spiegel Online (German), original article from Nature.

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