30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Barcodes in Nature
I have used the barcode as a
symbol of precise analysis, in all its beauty. Mixed light is sorted into its
rainbow of component colours and everybody sees beauty. That is a first
analysis. Closer detail reveals fine lines and a new elegance, the elegance
of detection, of the bringing of order and understanding. Fraunhofer
barcodes speak to us of the exact elemental nature of distant stars. A
precisely measured pattern of stripes is a coded message from across the
parsecs. There is grace in th...22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Decibel Scale is Logarithmic, Like the Richter Scale
In fact, a physics colleague, Mark Srednicki of U.C. Santa Barbara, brought to my attention a much greater gaffe in one episode, in which sound waves are used as a weapon against an orbiting ship. As if that weren't bad enough, the sound waves are said to reach “18 to the 12th power decibels.” What makes this particularly grate on the ear of a physicist is that the decibel scale is a logarithmic scale, like the Richter scale. This means that the number of decibels already represents a pow...Krauss describing a particularly egregious science-blunder in an episode of Star Trek.