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2013-03-30 14:41:12 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

Video of yesterdays hangout now available Q+ hangout: Ivette Fuentes

2013-02-19 10:28:49 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 21 +1s)

Nicolaus Copernicus, who's 540th birthday we celebrate today, was born in the city of Toruń in north-western Poland.

He spent most of his life (1512–16 and 1522–43) and wrote his epochal work, De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium in the very, very small town of Frombork (German: Frauenburg) at the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea, now close to the border to Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast).

I made the pictures below 12 years ago from the walls around the cathedral where Copernicus worked as a canon.

2012-12-27 10:06:22 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 21 +1s)

Today, 441 years ago, on December 27, 1571, Johannes Kepler - best known for his 3 laws of planetary motion - was born in a small town near Stuttgart.
He spent most of his adult life in Austria, in Graz (1594–1600) and Linz (1612–1627). In between he lived in Prague, were he shortly worked for and learned from the excellent astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe.  
  
Based on the life and work of Johannes Kepler Philip Glass composed an opera, that premiered in 2009 in Linz.

2012-11-29 07:59:02 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 11 +1s)

Today 209 years ago, on 29 November 1803 the mathematician and physicist Christian Andreas Doppler was born in Salzburg, Austria. He was the first to propose what is now called the Doppler effect, the change in frequency of a wave, when the observer and the source are moving relative to each other.

Since 1988 the so called Christian Doppler Gesellschaft (CDG) is active in Austria with 550 employees in 62 labratories, doing applied research in co-operation with 140 Austrian and international companies.

2012-11-28 18:47:55 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Today the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library)http://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/ went online with a beta version. It gives access to 5.6 million digital objects and is a partner of the Europeana internet portal http://www.europeana.eu/portal/, which had its its beta launch 4 years ago.

2012-11-16 10:24:59 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

The square □ is used as mathematical symbol for an operator, named after the French mathematician, physicist, philosopher, music theorist and co-editor of the Encyclopédie Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Today, Nov 17, is his 295th birthday anniversary.

2012-11-09 06:58:41 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

Hermann Weyl, Group Theory ... and beyond?

Today, Nov 9, is the 127th birthday anniversary of the German mathematician and theoretical physicist Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl. Among many other things he significantly contributed to the theory of compact groups, in terms of matrix representations. Ever since his influentual book Gruppentheorie und Quantenmechanik from 1928, group representation theory is closely connected, even a guideline for new developments in quantum theory.

But this is probably not the last word. As e.g. Benjamin F. Dribus wrote in his essay On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics submitted to this years FQXI essay contest: Group representation theory lies at the heart of modern physics as the mathematical expression of symmetry, and remains perhaps the most likely vehicle for initial, verifiable progress beyond the standard model; however, analogousc... more »

2012-11-08 10:34:47 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

New central railway station in Vienna (Austria) - under construction.

2012-11-05 09:48:24 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

Today, 121 years ago, on 5 Nov 1891, Marie Curie enrolled in the Sorbonne, two days before her 24th birthday.

After receiving the Nobel prize for Physics in 1903, on 5 Nov 1906 she delivered her first lecture at the Sorbonne - becoming the first female professor in the Sorbonne's history.

2012-10-06 08:44:35 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

A nice autumn day in the south-east of Austria (near Bad Tatzmannsdorf).

2012-10-05 07:59:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Encyclopedias are compendiums holding a summary of information divided into articles. They have existed for around 2,000 years; a famous early example being the Naturalis Historia, by Pliny the Elder from AD 77.

The word encyclopaedia itself (from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία = general education) was coined around 1500 and found its breakthrough with the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (English: Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts), published in France between 1751 and 1772. It contained 18,000 pages of text with 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations.

More than 6000 articles were written by Denis Diderot who was along with Jean Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert its co-founder and chief editor.

Today, October 5, is the 299th birthday of Denis Diderot.

2012-09-05 07:44:12 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Slow down!

11 years ago on in this day a unique performance of Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) by John Cage started in the medivial St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany. It is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.

Today is the 100th birthay anniversary of the influential American composer,
music theorist, writer, and artist John Cage.

2012-09-07 08:07:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Submission period for the 2012 FQXi essay contest with the topic "Which of Our Basic Physical assumptions are Wrong?" ended last Friday, May 31st.
More than 250 essays are available now online, significantly more than in the last years (though more quantity does not necessary mean more quality).

There are several thought provoking contributions. Let me mention 3 of them:
► George F. R. Ellis is questioning the generic causation flow from bottom up, from micro to macro scales.
► Sabine Hossenfelder is looking for a way to overcome the dichotomy between classical and quantum.
► A very nice article is provided by Robert W. Spekkens, who is challenging the distinction between kinematics and dynamics. This essay is not on the FQXi-server yet, but available in arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0023.

Which is your favourite essay?

2012-07-27 10:30:09 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

The archaeological site of Delphi is located on multiple terraces along the slope of Mount Parnassus in lower central Greece. In Greek mythology it was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo.
The pictures below (which I have made 12 years ago) are especially for  +Susanne Ramharter as unfortunately her visit to Delphi was on a very rainy day.

2012-07-21 09:58:58 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

One of the biggest challenges for the Energy Turnaround for Sustainability is to improve the efficiency to store electric energy. Only with significant progress in that in a long term electricity may replace all liquid fuel.
The energy density of gasoline is approximately 13 kWh/kg. The energy density of current lithium-ion batteries is just ~10-15% of this, but for so-called lithium-air batteries it is supposed to be quite close at 12 kWh/kg  - excluding the oxygen mass. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery).

In a paper recently published in Science researchers at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland reported significant improvements in the recharging capacities of lithium-air batteries.

2012-07-18 08:53:48 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Shift happens
Today, July 18, is the 90th birthday anniversary of the American historian and philosopher of science Thomas Samuel Kuhn. 
And it is 50 years since his deeply influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published.

2012-07-16 10:04:54 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Open Access Testimonials by a sample of 41 reseachers from Austria

2012-07-15 08:01:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Summer & beach: In his early career the American mathematician Stephen Smale once said that his best work (while proving the Poincaré conjecture for all dimensions greater than or equal to 5) had been done "on the beaches of Rio". This led to the withholding of his grant money from the NSF.

Today is the 82nd birthday of Stephen Smale.
Besides the proof mentioned above and the proof of a sphere eversion (Smale's paradox) he is best known for making significant advances in the theory of dynamical systems. See his fabulous textbook about this written together with Morris Hirsch and later enhanced together with Robert L. Devaney.

2012-07-14 14:49:31 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

More and more lectures at university level are available online, and for free in the internet, from universities, individual persons or from organization like +Udacity, +Coursera or +Khan Academy.
Nearly all are in English, but the German Mathematician +Jörn Loviscach, has also uploaded nearly 2000 videos from his lectures in German language to Youtube.

2012-07-14 10:54:19 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

Today is the 94th birthday of the Swedish film director, writer and producer Ingmar Bergman. He died 5 years ago.
His film Wild Strawberries is about the 78 years old stubborn, and egotistical Professor Isak Borg. During a trip from Stockholm to Lund he is forced by nightmares, daydreams and confronted by his loneliness and aloofness to reevaluate his life.
Warning: The dream scene below turns out to be a bit shocking.

2012-07-13 14:48:54 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Today is the 92nd birth anniversary of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg, one of my most favourite authors.
He wrote more than 30 brilliant books on the history of ideas and philosophy with focus on the late middle ages and early modern age, especially highlighting the role and fundamental influence of metaphors in philosophical thinking.
 
His presence in the English language has unfortunately been limited so far, with only 6 if his books being translated. Here is an early one from 1960:

2012-07-09 09:54:19 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

There are many modes of thinking about the world around us and our place in it. I like to consider all the angles from which we might gain perspective on our amazing universe and the nature of existence. (John Archibald Wheeler)

Today is the 101st birthday anniversary of the influential American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler, who died in 2008.

2012-07-05 11:55:43 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing ." From unpublished notes for the Preface to Opticks quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton by Richard S. Westfall.

Today, 325 years ago on 5 July 1687 the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton, after being presented to the Royal Society in 1686 as manuscript, were first published (in Latin).

2012-07-01 09:49:17 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

"In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena." (Leibniz)
This defintion of perfection led to his famous, but mistakable and by Voltaire in his Candide also famously satirized claim that "the actual world is the best of all possible worlds."
Today, July 1, is the 366th birth anniversary of the a German giant
polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He developed the infinitesimal calculus independently of Isaac Newton and contributed to various fields including logic, physics, biology, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, ethics and history.

2012-07-01 09:37:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
...
Today, July 1, is the 270th birth anniversary of the German scientist and awesome writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Read his Sudelbücher (eng.: The Waste Books, New York Review Books Classics) !!!

2012-06-28 11:46:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today, June 28, is the 100th birth anniversary of the German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker.
He is known for the Bethe-Weizsäcker cycle for energy generation in stars
and as member of the research team that tried unsuccessfully to build an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany. Later he became a peace activist.

He was also a polymath and wrote more than 30 books, bringing together physics and philosophy. Only a few of them are translated to English, e.g. The Unity of Nature (1971) & The Structure of Physics (1985).
Since the early 70th he worked on the foundation of (quantum) physics, based on so called Urs (from the German noun "Ur" for something archetypal) - what now would be called qubits.

2012-06-25 13:49:15 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

2012-06-25 08:06:03 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

http://bit.ly/MQpshs

2012-06-23 12:39:17 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

There's Still No Pardon for Mathematician Alan Turing. But You Can Watch the Turing Film "Breaking the Code" Online. Stars Derek Jacobi. (1996): http://is.gd/vdWHrS

2012-06-22 15:23:21 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

There exist already some concrete plans to bring quantum-entanglement/-encryption to satellites (Zeilinger, Jennewein, Ekert/Ling, ...). Below is a paper, that gives an overall review of possible (short and long term) tests of fundamental physics with the help of satellites.

2012-06-21 13:25:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Today, 72 years ago, on June 21, 1940 (shortly before the French surrender), when German soldiers showed up in the Vosgian village of Housseras, the French soldier Vincent Doblin burned his papers and killed himself in a farmer's barn.
In fact this soldier was the mathematician Wolfgang Döblin, son of the famous Jewish-German novelist Alfred Döblin ("Berlin Alexanderplatz") who was forced to flee Nazi Germany with his family in 1933.

In his short career Wolfgang Döblin made several fundamental contributions to probability theory and especially the theory of Markov chains. A major result was not known until 2000, when a sealed envelope was opened, that he had sent to the French Academy of Sciences from the front line.

2012-06-19 20:32:02 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Podcast moves from ancient to modern philosophy. All Free: http://is.gd/pol4Iq

2012-06-18 09:30:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Today, June 18, is the 83rd birthday of the German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
He bridged continental and Anglo-American traditions of thought and all his career he figured prominently as a public intellectual, commenting on controversial issues of the day, like in his recent book The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, an analysis of the failures of European politics and a vote for an enhanced democratic Europe.

2012-06-16 11:09:36 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today, June 16, is Bloomsday and you can listen online to two dramatisations of James Joyce's Ulysses.  

In English on BBC Radio Four: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_radio_fourfm
(about: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jl7l9/features/about . All 7 parts will be made available as free downloads for two weeks from time of broadcast).

In German on SWR2: http://swr2.radio.de/ (thanks +Nico Schulte-Ebbert for the hint. About: http://www.swr.de/swr2/hoerspiel-feature/ulysses/-/id=9563008/1aiibwj/index.html - also available on 4 MP3-CDs: http://www.randomhouse.de/Hoerbuch-MP3/Ulysses/James-Joyce/e413113.rhd ).

2012-06-14 07:46:48 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Today, June 14, is the 109th birth anniversary of the American mathematician and logician Alonzo Church.  

In 1935-1936 he showed with the help of his lambda calculus, that there is no general algorithm to decide whether a given statement is provable from the axioms of first-order logic (see "Entscheidungsproblem").

Independently and parallel Alan Turing had worked on the same problem and 1937 published a paper showing the same result with his concept of Turing machines. Church and Turing later proved that the lambda calculus and the Turing machine are equivalent in capabilities.

Turing's 100th birthday is in 9 days.

2012-06-13 08:20:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Today, June 13, is the 46th birthday of the Russian mathematician Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman.
In 2002 he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture and consequently the famous Poincaré conjecture. He published the proof only electronicly in three papers on the arXiv and in no peer reviewed journal. Later he declined to accept any award or price for it (e.g. the Fields Medal or the Clay Millennium Prize of $1,000,000) and is supposed to have abandoned mathematics entirely since.
Masha Gessens book about him gives interesting insights into the Soviet system of advanced mathematics and physics training programs in schools and after-school for talented young people.

2012-06-13 07:20:24 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

From a long view of the history of mankind — seen from, say, ten thousand years from now — there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. Richard Feynman, in The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
Today, June 13, is the 181st birth anniversary of the Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell. Alongside electromagnetism, he also made advances in the kinetic theory of gases and constructed one of the first colour photographs.

2012-06-11 15:45:54 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Today, June 11, is the 56th birthday of the Canadian Mathematician Simon Plouffe. He is together with Neil J. A. Sloane co-author of the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences http://oeis.org/. Plouffe's Inverter is a web site about mathematical constants: 

2012-06-07 17:41:31 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Art meets Science.
From this Saturday, June 9 until September 16, the 13th documenta, an exhibition of modern and contemporary art, takes place in Kassel, Germany. A main topic are different ways of observations and inspections of the world.
The physicist Anton Zeilinger (as only representative of Austria) will show there five quantum experiments. See "participants" at the link below (direct link doesn't work).

2012-06-06 07:54:46 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today is the birth anniversary of the German mathematician, astronomer and instrument maker Regiomontanus, born on 6th of June 1436 as Johannes Müller in the Bavarian town of Königsberg (latin Monte Regio). He was a younger contemporary of Georg von Peuerbach, working with him on a translation and improvements of the Almagest of Ptolemaios and on trigonometry.
Below is an instrument with paper wheels, which can be manipulated to show the motion and calculate the phases of the moon, from the Kalendarium of Regiomontanus.

2012-06-05 17:31:57 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 2 +1s)

New Book: A Computable Universe. Understanding Computation & Exploring Nature As Computation by +Hector Zenil (editor). World Scientific Publishing Company.

Two texts out of it are also available online:
► Foreword by Roger Penrose http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5823
► Introducing the Computable Universe by Hector Zenil http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0376

It furthermore contains 36 articles from G.J.Chaitin, S.Wolfram, D.Deutsch, S.Lloyd and K.Zuse among others.

I am personally quite reserved againts the paradigm of a computable universe. It is in some respect just an old concept in new clothes: The medieval astronomer John of Sacrobosco coined the term machina mundi for the universe. In the enlightment the idea of a clockwork universe became popular and in the 20th century computers outpaced clocks as most advanced machines. Information Theory as a specialbranch... more »

2012-06-05 07:34:55 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 7 +1s)

The ultimate Mobile Frameworks Comparison Chart

Single and most complete online interactive chart comparing almost every possible mobile framework that you know about and quite a few you've probably never heard of (http://bit.ly/GOmobile). It covers:

⚫ rendering engine support (Webkit, Trident, Java ME, etc.)
⚫ deployment method (webapp, native, hybrid)
⚫ development languages (JS, Java, PHP, Lua, AS, etc.)
⚫ supported hardware APIs (accelerometer, camera, etc.)
⚫ user interface (own UI elements)
⚫ licensing terms

I've seen it a while ago - but it got a loooot more impressive since then. Its part of a Master thesis project by Markus Falk from Dresden, Germany - great job!

#html5   #javascript   #framework   #webapp   #development   #mobile  

2012-06-04 08:42:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today, June 4, is the 121st birth anniversary of the Austrian mathematician Leopold Vietoris. He made several contributions to algebraic topology and as mathematician is probably best remembered for the Mayer-Vietoris sequence, an algebraic method to compute homology and cohomology groups.
He lived most of his life in Innsbruck and was a keen alpinist. He gained additional fame by becoming 110 years and 10 months old, the oldest verified Austrian man ever.

2012-05-30 16:20:47 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

The middle ages were not at all such dark. Today is the birth anniversary of the astronomer, mathematician and instrument maker Georg von Peuerbach. He was born on May 30, 1423 in Peuerbach in Upper Austria. In his Theoricæ novæ planetarum he worked up Ptolemy's Almagest, enhancing it with the aid of sines from Arabic mathematics. He calculated tables of sines for every minute of arc for a radius of 600,000 units. Furthermore he invented and improved several astronomic instruments.

2012-05-23 08:41:32 (3 comments, 6 reshares, 6 +1s)

Today, May 23, is the 125th birth anniversary of the Norwegian mathematician Thoralf Skolem, known mainly for his work on mathematical logic, set theory and lattice theory. He is probably best remembered in connection with the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem.

2012-05-21 18:58:24 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

It is often regreted, that not more experimental data are available to contrast and challenge String Theory versus Loop Quantum Gravity - making adherence to one of them look like a matter of faith (see the video sequence below).

My personal hunch is, that at the end a completely new approach and mathematics will be necessary. Therefore not only more experimental data, but also more fundamental reasoning and mathematical ideas will be necessary.

2012-05-19 06:27:46 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Today, May 19, is the 94th birth anniverary of the Dutch-born American physicist and science historian Abraham Pais.

He made contributions to elementary particle theory, but he is most famous for his books about the history of 20th century physics, especially his excellent scientific biographies about Einstein, Bohr and Oppenheimer (the last book was finished by Robert P. Crease and published posthumously).

2012-05-19 06:26:07 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today, May 19, is the 250th birth anniverary of the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Fichte developed a radically revised version of Kant's transcendental philosophy, which he called Wissenschaftslehre, grounding his entire system upon the bare concept of subjectivity, or, as Fichte expressed it, the “pure I.”
Together with afterwards Schelling and Hegel he was the most important representant of the philosophical movement known as German idealism.

2012-05-18 13:15:49 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Today, May 18, is the 140th birth anniversary of the British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic and anti-war activist Bertrand Russell.

If you want to immerse deeply into the historic struggle about the logical foundations of mathematics, you might read the seminal three-volumes of Principia Mathematica, written by Russell together with Alfred North Whitehead. Good luck!
But for a short, stirring summary from Cantor and Frege to Wittgenstein, Gödel and Turing, with Russell in the center, you can also read a comics - the Logicomix. It's fun!

2012-05-16 15:33:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Today 8 weeks ago the first entries were made into +Science on Google+: A Public Database Nearly 5000 people follow this page by now, over 5000 plussed it and over 600 filled their profile or page info into the database. This shows the big interest in science topics on Google+.
But the impetus slows down: In the first week alltogether ~250 entries were made, the next week ~150. In the last 4 weeks the average was ~23 new entries per week.
Take a look at it, if you are not in yet!