https://blog.plover.com/tech/its-an-age-of-marvels.html The Universe of Discourse Mark Dominus (Tao Sun, 12 May 2024 Min Xiu ) mjd@pobox.com It's an age of marvels [TOP] As I walk around Philadelphia I often converse with Benjamin Franklin, to see what he thinks about how About me things have changed since 1790. Sometimes he's astounded, other times less so. The things that RSS Atom astound Franklin aren't always what you might think at first. Electric streetlamps are a superb 12 recent entries invention, and while I think Franklin would be very pleased to see them, I don't think he would be It's an age of surprised. Better street lighting was something marvels everyone wanted in Franklin's time, and this was Hawat! Hawat! something very much on Franklin's mind. It was Hawat! A million certainly clear that electricity could be turned deaths are not into light. Franklin could have and might have enough for Hawat! thought up the basic mechanism of an incandescent Rod R. bulb himself, although he wouldn't have been able Blagojevich will to make one. you please go now? The Internet? Well, again yes, but no. The Well, I guess I complicated engineering details are complicated believe engineering, but again the basic idea is easily everything now! within the reach of the 18th century and is not all R.I.P. Oddbins that astounding. They hadn't figured out Oersted's Talking Dog > law yet, which was crucial, but they certainly knew Stochastic Parrot that you could do something at one end of a long Try it and see wire and it would have an effect at the other end, Stuff that is and and had an idea that that might be a way to send isn't backwards messages from one place to another. Wikipedia says in Australia that as early as 1753 people were thinking that an 3-coloring the electric signal could deflect a ping-pong ball at vertices of an the receiving end. It might have worked! If you icosahedron look into the history of transatlantic telegraph Stuff that is cables you will learn that the earliest methods backwards in were almost as clunky. Australia Werewolf Wikipedia itself is more impressive. The universal ammunition encyclopedia has long been a dream, and now we have Optimal boxes one. It's not always reliable, but you know what? with and without Not all of anything is reliable. lids An obvious winner, something sure to blow Archive: Franklin's mind is "yeah, we've sent people to the Moon to see what it was like, they left scientific 2024: JFMAM instruments there and then they came back with 2023: JFMAMJ rocks and stuff." But that's no everyday thing, it JASOND blew everyone's mind when it happened and it still 2022: JFMAMJ does. Some things I tell Franklin make him goggle JASOND and say "We did what?" and I shrug modestly and say 2021: JFMAMJ yeah, it's pretty impressive, isn't it. The Moon JASOND thing makes me goggle right back. The Onion nailed 2020: JFMAMJ it. JASOND 2019: JFMAMJ The really interesting stuff is the everyday stuff JASOND that makes Franklin goggle. CAT scans, for example. 2018: JFMAMJ Ordinary endoscopy will interest and perhaps JASOND impress Franklin, but it won't boggle his mind. 2017: JFMAMJ ("Yeah, the doctor sticks a tube up your butt with JASOND an electric light so they can see if your bowel is 2016: JFMAMJ healthy." Franklin nods right along.) X-rays are JASOND more impressive. (I wrote a while back about how 2015: JFMAMJ long it took dentists to start adopting X-ray JASOND technology: about two weeks.) But CAT scans are 2014: JFMAMJ mind-boggling. Oh yeah, we send invisible rays at JASOND you from all directions, and measure how much each 2013: JFMAMJ one was attenuated from passing through your body, JASOND and then infer from that exactly what must be 2012: JFMAMJ inside and how it is all arranged. We do what? And JASOND that's without getting into any of the details of 2011: JFMAMJ whether this is done by positron emission or JASOND nuclear magnetic resonance (whatever those are, I 2010: JFMAMJ have no idea) or something else equally JASOND incomprehensible. Apparently there really is 2009: JFMAMJ something to this quantum physics nonsense. JASOND 2008: JFMAMJ So far though the most Franklin-astounding thing JASOND I've found has been GPS. The explanation starts 2007: JFMAMJ with "well, first we put 32 artificial satellites JASOND in orbit around the Earth...", which is already 2006: JFMAMJ astounding, and can derail the conversation all by JASOND itself. But it just goes on from there getting more 2005: OND and more astounding: "...and each one has a clock on board, accurate to ----------------- within 40 nanoseconds..." Subtopics: "...and can communicate the exact time wirelessly to Mathematics 239 the entire half of the Earth that it can see..." Programming 99 Language 92 "... and because the GPS device also has a perfect Miscellaneous 68 clock, it can compute how far it is from the Book 50 satellite by comparing the two times and Tech 49 multiplying by the speed of light..." Etymology 34 Haskell 33 "... and because the satellite also tells the GPS Oops 30 device exactly where it is, the device can Unix 27 determine that it lies on the surface of a sphere Cosmic Call 25 with the satellite at the center, so with messages Math SE 24 from three or four satellites the device can Physics 21 compute its exact location, up to the error in the Law 21 clocks and other measurements..." Perl 17 Biology 15 "...and it fits in my pocket." [mjd-univer] And that's not even getting into the hair-raising Higher-Order Perl complications introduced by general relativity. Blosxom "It's a bit fiddly because time isn't passing at the same rate for the device as it is for the Comments disabled satellites, but we were able to work it out." What. The. Fuck. Of course not all marvels are good ones. I sometimes explain to Franklin that we have gotten so good at fishing -- too good -- that we are in real danger of fishing out the oceans. A marvel, nevertheless. A past what-the-fuck was that we know exactly how many cells there are (959) in a particular little worm, C. elegans, and how each of those cells arises from the division of previous cells, as the worm grows from a fertilized egg, and we know what each cell does and how they are connected, and we know that 302 of those cells are nerve cells, and how the nerve cells are connected together. (There are 6,720 connections.) The big science news on Friday was that for the first time we have done this for an insect brain. It was the drosophila larva, and it has 3016 neurons and 548,000 synapses. Today I was reading somewhere about how most meteorites are asteroidal, but some are from the Moon and a few are from Mars. I wondered "how do we know that they are from Mars?" but then I couldn't understand the explanation. Someday maybe. And by the way, there are only 277 known Martian meteorites. So today's what-the-fuck is: "Yeah, we looked at all the rocks we could find all over the Earth and we noticed a couple hundred we found lying around various places looked funny and we figured out they must have come from Mars. And when. And how long they were on Mars before that." Obviously, It's amazing that we know enough about Mars to be able to say that these rocks are like the ones on Mars. ("Yeah, we sent some devices there to look around and send back messages about what it was like.") But to me, the deeper and more amazing thing is, from looking at billions of rocks, we have learned so much about what rocks are like that we can pick out, from these billions, a couple of hundred that came to the Earth not merely from elsewhere but specifically from Mars. What. The. Fuck. Addendum 20240513 I left out one of the most important examples! Even more stunning than GPS. When I'm going into the supermarket, I always warn Franklin "Okay, brace yourself. This is really going to blow your mind." [Other articles in category /tech] permanent link