September 2014

Astrophysics / Physics / Relativity / etc.

What Space Projects Excite Me: Multi-Messenger Astronomy

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The remnants of a supernova found in 1987

A few weeks ago, awesome blogger and space advocate Zain Husain asked me to contribute to a roundup post he wrote. He contacted a bunch of people (most of them much more prestigious than me) and asked them one question: What NASA or space project are you most excited about and why? You can (and should) read everybody’s response to Zain’s question on his blog, here. However, I wanted to expand on part of my answer and tell you why I’m excited about multi-messenger astronomy. Supernova Supernova It all starts with the title image above. That’s an image of

Computer Related / Electronics / logic / etc.

Non-Digital Computers

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Non-Digital Computers This is the last installment of my many-part series on computers. Last time we used the notion of a Turing machine to define what a computer is. We discovered something surprising: that not all computers need to be digital, or even electronic! A computer can be mechanical,  made of dominoes, or even just a rules system in a card game. To give you of a flavor of how inclusive the definition of a computer really is, I’ll now give you a whirlwind tour of some notable examples of non-digital computers. The Antikythera Mechanism In April of 1900,