science – Page 232 – Skeptical Science

Traveling Salesman Problem solved – by a non-human lifeform

June 17, 2018October 26, 2010 by Dave

The Traveling Salesman Problem goes like this … if a chap has a set of cities he needs to make calls in, then how does he calculate the optional route such that he only calls into each city once? The solution is known of course because it has been one of the most intensively studied … Read more

Crowdsourcing – some further examples

September 18, 2015October 24, 2010 by Dave

Yesterday I blogged about Galaxy Zoo. Thats the project that needs your help to process and categorize images of Galaxies captured by robot telescopes. As I explained, the motivation is that the very best pattern recognition engine known to humanity sits between your ears. However, what is also quite fascinating is that this is just … Read more

Galaxy Quest

March 17, 2018October 23, 2010 by Dave

Have you ever wished you could make a valuable scientific contribution? Well, did you know that you can do so by sitting at home? Let me tell you a bit about Galaxy Zoo. Look up and you find billions upon billions of galaxy’s. Astronomers have utilized robot telescopes to capture images of many of these … Read more

Paris Japonica: The most complex DNA even seen

December 22, 2023October 12, 2010 by Dave

Our human DNA has about 3 billion base pairs … so what would an organism with say … 150 billion base pairs look like? In fact it would look exactly like this …

Giant Crystal Caves – Stunning Image

June 4, 2023October 9, 2010 by Dave

OK, lets first put this in context. A quick casual glance might simply solicit a “Nice, but I’ve seen rock crystals like that before” response. Well think again, because you have seen nothing like this … ever. Look carefully, those tiny little orange blobs are people … Ah yes, now you get it … the … Read more

How to fix a particle accelerator.

October 6, 2018October 7, 2010 by Dave

Around the house you only need two items for carrying out necessary repairs. These are, a can of WD-40, and a roll of duct tape. Confused? OK, its like this …

If it moves, and it shouldn’t, you deploy the duct tape
It it doesn’t move, and it should, you deploy the WD-40

So that’s all you really need :-)

Ah, but does this model scale up? What if you are not at home, but instead are at work at say … Fermilab, and just happen to encounter an issue with the Tevatron particle accelerator, what then? Remember now, this is a complex multi-billion dollar machine that is about four miles in circumference and involves about a thousand superconducting magnets, which accelerate protons and antiprotons to super-sized energies. Also, these are not common magnets, they are cooled with liquid helium so that they consume only one-third of the power they would normally require. If you hit an issue, do you shut down for a week, and call in a team of specialists at considerable cost to pull it apart for repair, or do you instead get out your roll of duct tape and patch it up so that you can carry on with no outage?

And the answer is …