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Carbonite: discovered (or something like it)

When I was in 7-8 grade I saw (as anyone else) the StarWars episodes. After this experience, I still had lots of unanswered questions. For example, what is carbonite - the black material they used to pack Han Solo in Episode 5? Hmmm... I had that question Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 15, 2006 7:48 AM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

Poincare's conjecture proof completed?

A few years ago, I was surprised to see an announcement in Mathworld stating (again) that the Poincare conjecture has been proved. "This time for real" they said. Being skeptical, I waited for more independent confirmation of this result... which never Read More...
Posted Monday, June 05, 2006 3:22 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

Wikipedia is getting pretty good lately

Maybe I am biased, but I am pleasantly surprised by Wikipedia recently. There is a lot of material coming, at least on the subjects that interest me (I don't know, reading about coffee, tea, scientology, estimation theory, neural networks, anything). Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 11:57 PM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments
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First artificial black hole created?

As an unexpected side effect of an experiment, Horatiu Nastase (of Brown University of Providence, Rhode Island), found something which looks like a black hole: When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:31 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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More news on holographic storage

Forget the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle. Think H-ROM. At CES, InPhase gave more hints on this technology in collaboration with Hitachi Maxell Ltd: InPhase will be the first company to deliver a holographic product for professional archive applications in Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 05, 2006 3:55 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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Bloom filters and everything else

If, by some strange and unexplained phenomenon, all blogs on blogs.msdn.com will dissapear, except one, then my preference would be for http://blogs.msdn.com/devdev/ Very interesting stuff. I am already waiting for the next post... :-) Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 13, 2005 10:42 AM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Short gamma-ray burst mystery is solved

Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are probably the most violent events that happen today in universe. In a few seconds or less, a gamma-ray burst releases an enormous quantity of energy (10 44 - 10 46 J), which is comparable to burning up the entire mass-energy Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 05, 2005 12:21 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Thoughts on chirality

In a recent post that I've missed until now, Eric Lippert describes a simple mental experiment: why a mirror reverses left and right, but not top and bottom. This weird property (called chirality ) has a fascinating history, and deep implications everywhere: Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 04, 2005 12:51 AM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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Hanford Site: now open for public tours

I am not sure how I became fascinated about nuclear engineering in the last months. But, anyway, in the Washington state we have a unique nuclear reservation - the Hanford area, where the first nuclear reactors were put in operation more than fifty years Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 02, 2005 12:38 AM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Nuclear fusion to be probed in France?

ITER is one the largest physics experiments ever attempted. In short, it should be the first research fusion reactor that actually will succeed to produce power. ITER attempts to operate in the 500 MW (thermal) range, which is around the output of a small Read More...
Posted Monday, June 27, 2005 2:16 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Innovative database technology coming from... High Energy physics

How would you design a database if you have to store gigabytes of new data every second ? A particle accellerator generates a huge amount of data, that needs to be stored in real-time on very large storage systems. Usually, the offline analysis phase Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 17, 2005 3:36 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

How does a four-dimensional world look like?

Eric Lippert is running an eye-catcher series on High Dimensional spaces (see here part one and two ). Which got me thinking. The classical laws of Optics work can be easily generqalized to N spatial dimensions. You could easily imagine things like refraction Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 15, 2005 11:54 PM by AdiOltean | 8 Comments
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Humor: Tom Lehrer in The elements

It's a classic... http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html You might already know it, especially if you love (or hate) chemistry. If not, enjoy! Read More...
Posted Friday, May 06, 2005 6:25 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Remembering Chernobyl

It was exactly 19 years ago. Soviet Union was trying, at least in theory, to reach the perfect communist society. Since May 1 (Labor day in USSR) was close, the staff at Chernobyl nuclear plant was rushing to complete one more final test that would serve Read More...
Posted Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:23 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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Puzzle: do you know chemistry?

Here is a very nice puzzle - But unfortunately you have to ressurect a little chemistry knowledge to fully appreciate it... You have two identical test tubes. Both tubes look identical - they both contain colourless, odoreless, aqueous solutions. But Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:36 PM by AdiOltean | 10 Comments
 
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