I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

KevRossi · 11-09-2019 2:35pm

FAA Closure of US Airspace on 9/11

The flights that remain over US airspace at the very end are said to be a mix of fighter jets, UPS/FedEx-types (out west) that hadn't found a place to land yet, and a couple trans-oceanic stragglers.

From the Smithsonian:

"This animation was created by NASA using FAA air traffic control data from September 11, 2001. It shows the rapid grounding of air traffic across the US, and redirection of incoming international traffic, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Time is at lower left, number of planes in the air lower right.

At 9:06am, FAA issued a ground stop to all traffic not yet departed that would encounter NY airspace ["tier one"- NY, DC, Boston, Cleveland] . A series of rapid decisions followed, including redirecting inbound traffic away from NY and warning airplanes in the air of potential cockpit intrusion.

At 9:45am, FAA Command Center decided to close all US airspace for the first time in history. Within a few hours, all commercial air traffic was grounded. This animation is displayed in the National Air and Space Museum's "America by Air" exhibition."

https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1171758977341906944

Capt'n Midnight · 11-09-2019 7:13pm

KevRossi wrote: »

Within a few hours, all commercial air traffic was grounded.

Not all flights remained grounded though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/01/opinion/the-great-escape.html

In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 -- making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before.

mzungu · 12-09-2019 8:58pm

The oldest webcam stream online today is The San Francisco FogCam, and has been operational since 1994.

KevRossi · 13-09-2019 9:47am

The Irish Defence Forces currently have 9 helicopters and 16 airplanes, some of these are in use with the Gardai. 7 of the planes are capable of firing weapons.

Norway, which is only slightly larger than us in population has 72 F-16's, which are being replaced by 52 F-35's.
Slovakia is the country nearest in population size to us in the EU, is replacing it's current fleet of MiGs with 14 F-16s.

All part of their Cold War legacy and a reflection as to our own peaceful history (relative to other European countries).

Mollyb60 · 13-09-2019 1:33pm

Found whilst looking for something else completely but I love this little fact about Alex Higgins that I'd never heard before:

"Written by Mike Sammes and Al Swain, "One-Four-Seven" is credited to Alex "Hurricane" Higgins; it was released by Cambar Productions for Solid Records Ltd. In spite of Higgins being at the height of both his powers and his popularity, it failed to chart, which is probably not too surprising considering how badly he sings; "Snooker Loopy," it ain't!

The title "One-Four-Seven" is derived from the maximum break; the highest break possible is actually 155 but this is contingent on the opponent playing a foul stroke and leaving a free ball, so is exceedingly rare. The song describes making a 147. In spite of his flair for the game, Alex Higgins never made a 147 in professional competition; the first Higgins to do this was the unrelated John Higgins, in January 2000."

Badly Drunk Boy · 13-09-2019 1:36pm

Mollyb60 wrote: »

Found whilst looking for something else completely but I love this little fact about Alex Higgins that I'd never heard before:

"Written by Mike Sammes and Al Swain, "One-Four-Seven" is credited to Alex "Hurricane" Higgins; it was released by Cambar Productions for Solid Records Ltd. In spite of Higgins being at the height of both his powers and his popularity, it failed to chart, which is probably not too surprising considering how badly he sings; "Snooker Loopy," it ain't!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSyXK0iVXN0

quickbeam · 13-09-2019 1:55pm

Mollyb60 wrote: »

Found whilst looking for something else completely but I love this little fact about Alex Higgins that I'd never heard before:

I think I can guess what you were Googling when you found that :P

Capt'n Midnight · 13-09-2019 6:30pm

Paddy Cow · 13-09-2019 6:43pm

KevRossi wrote: »

The Irish Defence Forces currently have 9 helicopters and 16 airplanes, some of these are in use with the Gardai. 7 of the planes are capable of firing weapons.

Norway, which is only slightly larger than us in population has 72 F-16's, which are being replaced by 52 F-35's.
Slovakia is the country nearest in population size to us in the EU, is replacing it's current fleet of MiGs with 14 F-16s.

All part of their Cold War legacy and a reflection as to our own peaceful history (relative to other European countries).

Norway has oil though, we have..........turf

mookishboy · 13-09-2019 7:42pm

Paddy Cow wrote: »

Norway has oil though, we have..........turf

Had Turf

Capt'n Midnight · 13-09-2019 9:47pm

When French postmen* wear clothes their left testicles are warmer than the right ones.

Science marches on.

* small sample size

ohnonotgmail · 16-09-2019 4:18pm

We are closer in time to a T-Rex than a T-Rex was to a Stegosaurus.

sbsquarepants · 16-09-2019 4:48pm

On a similar theme - the song "come on Eileen" by Dexies Midnight Runners was number one closer to the end of WW2 than today.

Note: Seen this on twitter the other day, may or may not be true!

Fourier · 16-09-2019 4:53pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

When French postmen* wear clothes their left testicles are warmer than the right ones.

Science marches on.

* small sample size

If you read the literature quoted in that there's actually a small community of scrotal researchers who disagree with each other. Funny to think of people going "That Jansen's new paper claims the left ball is 0.2C hotter, I'll fúcking show him"

Ipso · 16-09-2019 4:54pm

Fourier wrote: »

If you read the literature quoted in that there's actually a small community of scrotal researchers who disagree with each other. Funny to think of people going "That Jansen's new paper claims the left ball is 0.2C hotter, I'll fúcking show him"

They made a balls of it.

RiderOnTheStorm · 16-09-2019 6:16pm

Raconteuse wrote: »

Recently learned that the red M&M in the ad is voiced by the guy who voices Fry in Futurama i]Billy West[/i, which is no surprise... but the goofy yellow M&M is voiced by the guy who played the psycho neo nazi in Oz and the sadist teacher in Whiplash i]J K Simmons[/i. A fact that I really enjoy.

....quote from another thread so Raconteuse gets credit.....

Capt'n Midnight · 16-09-2019 6:29pm

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

We are closer in time to a T-Rex than a T-Rex was to a Stegosaurus.

Carry · 17-09-2019 10:08pm

Wind patterns.

Actually it's nothing I know about or can explain, it's just something I want to share:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-29.38,36.52,553

This thing is always on in one tab while I'm working and need a thinking break, it's absolutely mesmerising and in a way calming to watch.
You can enlarge or minimize, or move the view and click on a point to see how strong the wind blows.

Currently there seems to be a hurricane moving towards Bermuda, the South of Greenland looks quite windy, too. Ireland is quiet, but we already know that...

VandC · 17-09-2019 11:08pm

I've seen this link before but had forgotten it, thanks for sharing it again.

I had heard before (and I'd imagine this is the very basic level and wouldn't explain typhoons, hurricanes etc) but wind is caused by air moving from an area of high pressure to low pressure.

Made so much sense when I heard it, but I'm sure I'll be corrected (happy that it happens as I can learn too and love this thread for doing it)

cj maxx · 18-09-2019 12:29am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Cheers, that made me laugh:)

Fourier · 18-09-2019 12:31am

In an amazing connection between two posts above I should say you can prove mathematically that there is always a cyclone somewhere on Earth due to the Hairy Ball theorem.

VW 1 · 18-09-2019 9:32am

Fourier wrote: »

In an amazing connection between two posts above I should say you can prove mathematically that there is always a cyclone somewhere on Earth due to the Hairy Ball theorem.

Please do expand, I'm intrigued

Working class heroes · 18-09-2019 9:39am

VW 1 wrote: »

Please do expand, I'm intrigued

It’s on your head, unless you’re bald.

mikhail · 18-09-2019 10:59am

VW 1 wrote: »

Please do expand, I'm intrigued

You can't comb a hairy ball flat without making a cowlick somewhere (unless there's a bald spot). Proven mathematically. It also pops up in electromagnetics, where one of the consequences is that you can't make an antenna that sends the same amount of power in every direction.

Capt'n Midnight · 18-09-2019 5:40pm

Fourier wrote: »

In an amazing connection between two posts above I should say you can prove mathematically that there is always a cyclone somewhere on Earth due to the Hairy Ball theorem.

Thanks to the Coriolis effect, and mid latitude and Hadley cells there's always movement in the air.

On the planet Neptune there's winds of up to 2,400Km/hour, but only in the upper atmosphere.

Big Nasty · 18-09-2019 5:41pm

Great drying weather though!

New Home · 18-09-2019 5:51pm

You'd need strong pegs, though.

RiderOnTheStorm · 18-09-2019 9:17pm

In 1968, the world population was 3,557,000,000. Today, the world population is 7,217,000,000 and grows by over 200,000 daily...... So if you are over 50, the world population has doubled in your lifetime.

Capt'n Midnight · 19-09-2019 1:00am

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

In 1968, the world population was 3,557,000,000. Today, the world population is 7,217,000,000 and grows by over 200,000 daily...... So if you are over 50, the world population has doubled in your lifetime.

7,713,468,100 +/- because 7.2 billion was a few years ago

Population has tripled since 1950 give or take.

projections are that it will level off at 11 Bn by 2100

Buford T. Justice XIX · 20-09-2019 1:52pm

A rare spotted Zebra was seen (or spotted) in the Masai Mara in the last few days.

https://www.wtap.com/content/news/Rare-spotted-zebra-photographed-in-Africa-560788231.html

Fourier · 20-09-2019 6:47pm

VW 1 wrote: »

Please do expand, I'm intrigued

As mentioned it's basically that you can't comb a hairy sphere flat without a cow lick.

For such a simple fact it's quite difficult to prove and there isn't really an explanation compressible into English. Understanding it visually (the images on Wikipedia are good for this) is better than a written explanation. Versions of it pop up all over the place, but the most interesting is probably where you can't make a wormhole/portal without it emitting radiation. Wormhole mouths end up roughly ball shape, the hairs are lines of radiation, so the cowlick is a beam of radiation coming off.

If you've ever watched Stargate, the team should really have their faces melted off. Not that that would make a good show.

21-09-2019 1:14am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

7,713,468,100 +/- because 7.2 billion was a few years ago

Population has tripled since 1950 give or take.

projections are that it will level off at 11 Bn by 2100

Is there a reason for it levelling off?

Noo · 21-09-2019 2:42am

368100 wrote: »

Is there a reason for it levelling off?

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/science/article/2016/07/13/four-reasons-global-population-will-level-soon

Paddy Cow · 21-09-2019 6:27pm

Buford T. Justice VI wrote: »

A rare spotted Zebra was seen (or spotted) in the Masai Mara in the last few days.

https://www.wtap.com/content/news/Rare-spotted-zebra-photographed-in-Africa-560788231.html

It looks like a horse Bambi

Say my name · 25-09-2019 8:46pm

The Philistines of the bible fame, were the people that 20th century British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans called the Minoans after the Greek legend about King Minos who is said to have ruled Crete.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/07/ancient-dna-reveal-philistine-origins/

King Minos is said to have been the son of Zeus and Europa. He was in competition with his brothers for the throne. So prayed to Poseidon the God of the Sea to send him a snow white bull as a sign of support. The bull arrived but only so that Minos would return the favour and sacrifice the bull back in Poseidon's honour. However Minos felt chuffed with his new bull and forgot the sacrifice and sacrificed one of his own plain oul bulls instead.
Poseidon wasn't having any of this and to punish Minos made his wife, Pasiphae fall in love with this new white bull.
Pasiphae could only think about this white bull. So she got the local handyman to build a bronze cow. She climbed inside the cow, made a moo sound and the bull jumped on the cow.
Nine months later she gave birth to the Minotaur, a beast with the body of a human and head of bull.

King Minos in the Greek sagas is credited with being the first ruler of a substantial navy.

Minoan frying pan with decorative spirals.

Fourier · 26-09-2019 11:55am

Google claims to have achieved Quantum Supremacy. From academics who've been reviewing the results so far it seems their claim is valid.

Achieving Quantum Supremacy means for the first time a quantum computer has performed a calculation in a short amount time that just isn't practical at all for a normal computer. Namely it did a calculation in around 190 seconds that would take a super computer 10,000 years to do.

The actual calculation they performed is useless in a certain sense. Producing 60 digit long lists of zeros and ones e.g.
0010101000110....
but with certain types of lists being generated more frequently.

Since there's been a bit of hype about quantum computers I should say that although they do some calculations way faster than a regular computer, most calculations progress at about the same speed. There's also an unfortunate tendency where the more useful a calculation is for real world applications the less likely it is a quantum computer will speed it up. There was news years ago about quantum computers being able to crack any security system in the world in seconds. However companies are moving to new encryption algorithms that even quantum computers can't crack.

However one thing they will make a big difference in is the discovery of new chemicals and protein folding. Both of which have enormous medical applications. This is basically because they can very quickly run through millions of different ways of arranging the atoms in a molecule to find the arrangement best suited for some biochemical problem. They're way faster than normal computers at this since they do in minutes a calculation that would take a thousand years normally.

They'll also speed up machine learning algorithms, although I should say they're only a good bit better than normal computers at this. As in something taking a year might only take two months. It's not a seconds vs thousands of years thing.

The next step is scaling, i.e. getting them to work with enough memory to handle real world problems. The main issue here is error correction. This is basically when a 0 accidentally flips to a 1 and how to spot and correct that.

Ipso · 26-09-2019 9:59pm

A lot of people have probably heard of this but this thread is a good a place as any, especially since it was 36 years ago today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Carry · 26-09-2019 10:52pm

Fourier wrote: »

(...) However one thing they will make a big difference in is the discovery of new chemicals and protein folding. Both of which have enormous medical applications. This is basically because they can very quickly run through millions of different ways of arranging the atoms in a molecule to find the arrangement best suited for some biochemical problem. They're way faster than normal computers at this since they do in minutes a calculation that would take a thousand years normally.

This is actually something I would like to know more about. Though then I would need to know more about biochemistry in the first place. It's an area I find highly interesting. But it's probably a too specialised area for our humble thread.

Fourier wrote: »

They'll also speed up machine learning algorithms, although I should say they're only a good bit better than normal computers at this. As in something taking a year might only take two months. It's not a seconds vs thousands of years thing

That would be very helpful for my procrastinating way of tackling my tax returns... :rolleyes: :pac:

Fourier · 26-09-2019 11:25pm

Carry wrote: »

This is actually something I would like to know more about. Though then I would need to know more about biochemistry in the first place. It's an area I find highly interesting. But it's probably a too specialised area for our humble thread.

Give me a while to think about it, hopefully I can come up with something decent.

It'll be a handy way also to say why Quantum Computers are faster than regular computers which the media often gives an incorrect description of by saying they "check every combination at once" or something similar which isn't true. (Although that's not really their fault, but a lazy explanation given to them by physicists)

Realt Dearg Sec · 27-09-2019 1:48am

They are notoriously lazy.

Buford T. Justice XIX · 28-09-2019 8:18am

The Twitter thread below explains the distance between railroad tracks and their connections to the Roman Empire. It's been done here before, iirc, but worth reading for those joining lately.
https://twitter.com/BillHolohanSolr/status/1177631604186996737?s=19

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2019 11:18am

On the continent they mostly use imperial gauge while here 1600mm* has been standard since 1843.

Because the Romans didn't settle here#

*Its 5' 3" in old money.

#Maybe they did, for a while. People called Romanes, they go, the house.

Fourier · 02-10-2019 2:46pm

Carry wrote: »

This is actually something I would like to know more about. Though then I would need to know more about biochemistry in the first place. It's an area I find highly interesting. But it's probably a too specialised area for our humble thread.

Just to set things up (I'll do this in stages rather than one big post) I'll need entanglement.

Entanglement can be illustrated with a pair of "magic" coins. You take one and your friend takes one.

When you flip the coin you first pick which way up it is before you flip it. Your friend does likewise.

If you and your friend put the coins heads up first, then they'll always land the same way up. Either both land heads up or both land tails up.
If you pick different faces initially, they still always land the same way up.
However if you both put the coins tails up, then after the flip they'll always disagree, i.e. one will be tails up and the other heads up

The coins will do this no matter how far apart they are and no more what is in the way between them. So they're not sending each other a signal to make sure they line up. As always QM doesn't tell you how they agree so precisely all the time*, but it does tell you how to use these connections to speed up computing. Which I'll deal with in the next post, by getting the coins to compute something.

*And as I've said before, we'll probably never know how

In a real set up the coins are photons. Picking heads or tails at first is picking one of two polarizer optical filters. Landing heads or tails corresponds to the photons going through the polarizer or not.

jonski · 02-10-2019 4:31pm

Fourier wrote: »

Just to set things up (I'll do this in stages rather than one big post)

I'm looking forward to this , I have the ice packs in the freezer ready to strap onto my head .

mzungu · 02-10-2019 10:14pm

The average cumulus cloud (pictured below) weighs 500,000 kg (or 1.1 million pounds!). They have a water density of half a gram per cubic meter and a volume of one billion cubic meters. When you calculate the cloud's total water content, you end up with 500,000,000 grams of water, or about 1.1 million pounds.

mikhail · 03-10-2019 10:36am

mzungu wrote: »

The average cumulus cloud (pictured below) weighs 500,000 kg (or 1.1 million pounds!). They have a water density of half a gram per cubic meter and a volume of one billion cubic meters. When you calculate the cloud's total water content, you end up with 500,000,000 grams of water, or about 1.1 million pounds.

...

"What weighs 500 (metric) tons and floats?" sounds like a bad one-liner. Possibly about your mother's hot air balloon.

Though technically, the term here is masses, not weighs. You stick that cloud on a scale, and it doesn't exert 500 tons of force on it.

BaZmO* · 04-10-2019 9:12am

mikhail wrote: »

"What weighs 500 (metric) tons and floats?" sounds like a bad one-liner. Possibly about your mother's hot air balloon.

Though technically, the term here is masses, not weighs. You stick that cloud on a scale, and it doesn't exert 500 tons of force on it.

But it's the water that makes up the cloud that would have a weight?

mikhail · 04-10-2019 12:07pm

BaZmO* wrote: »

But it's the water that makes up the cloud that would have a weight?

Why is the cloud floating so?

Tacitus Kilgore · 04-10-2019 12:22pm

mikhail wrote: »

Why is the cloud floating so?

What do you think they are made of if they aren't made of water?

Skylinehead · 04-10-2019 1:22pm

mikhail wrote: »

Why is the cloud floating so?

Because water vapour is less dense than air. Water isn't, which is why we have rain.

I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

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