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Of course, the really scary thing is the amount of ancient artifacts still in *use*... the control computers for the cyclotron itself apparently just got upgraded to VMS about four years ago...

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

The idea is that you take these radioactive atoms and fling them at other radioactive atoms, to simulate collisions with the sort of energy you'd see in a supernova. This lets them study reaction chains and rates and stuff. Very cool.

-Erf C.

The idea is that you take these radioactive atoms and fling them at other radioactive atoms, to simulate collisions with the sort of energy you'd see in a supernova. This lets them study reaction chains and rates and stuff. Very cool.

-Erf C.

3CS will utilize a PowerPC 750 flight processor.

The PowerPC 750 is also known as the G3, BTW. PowerPCs in space? Not the first time we've heard about such a plan. Of course, SkyCorp is using Apple-built G4 systems, while 3CS is probably just using the G3 with some off-the-shelf embedded controller-style board.

Does anybody know about the vulnerability of PowerPC chips to radiation, or how "rad-hardening" works in chips like the modified 386s the military uses? Cosmic rays tend to be very high energy, so shielding is probably not practical.

From what I understand, there are two types of radiation-induced errors. Hard errors involve damage to the chip, and are very bad. Soft errors are a matter of erroneously flipped bits, and are only somewhat bad. Soft errors could be compensated for through good software design, error correction, etc., but I would think the only real defense against hard errors would be to make the wires on the chip so damn big that a few defects here and there wouldn't matter.

I happen to work at a particle accelerator with an isotope seperator and accelerator, so you'd think I'd know this stuff, but I've never really thought about this particular application before. Oh well, if nobody answers me, I can always try a SRIM simulation at work tommorow (don't have a Windows box at home to run it on), to see how much shielding you'd need to stop cosmic rays, and how many defects they'd cause in silicon. If anybody wants easy karma points, download the SRIM software, run a simulation on a thick silicon layer with some high-energy alpha particles (helium nuclei at, say 1GeV), turn on damage calculations, and report the results back here, please. I'm sure somebody will mod you up.

Fractint. I used it back in college during my Computer Graphics classes, and eventually my teacher just gave everyone else a copy so they would all see what a fractal was, and which fractals were the most popular.

You can get it at the Fractint WWW pages.

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Another good one that even lets you compile your own fractal algorithms into it. For Mac only though. Fractal Designer

Say what you want, but nobody needs a cell phone,

Say what I want? OK, you're an arrogant prick for thinking you know other people's needs better than they do. That feels much better, thank you.

Your car breaks down on a remote road. Nobody is driving by. It's cold. You need a cell phone to call for help. A lot of people get phones to keep in their cars for emergency situations.

You could just as easily say nobody needs a phone, either. In some sense, all you really need is food and shelter, but that doesn't make all of modern civilization bad. I'd say you're a serious luddite, and are suffering from BYRS (Bourgeois Yuppie Resentment Syndrome).

I happen to have a cell phone instead of a regular phone, because it's about the same cost as a land line, and is more convenient. Radiation risks? Ha! I'm a physics student. I laugh at your 0.5 watts of non-ionizing radiation. If I have anything to worry about, it's working at the local particle accelerator for 4 months next summer. :-)

Engineers at TRIUMF, Canada's national particle research facility, have been using in-house data acquisition cards to do the job. Their FastBus cards are an interesting experiment in home electronics, and they hope to put them into production for any use where large amounts of data need to be processed quickly.

(Slightly off-topic, but...)

My father back in the 50's, on the other hand, got stuck with this new game called "Adventure". Plugh. (One of his roomates at MIT helped write it.)

Given the plugh reference, I would point out that Crowther and Woods wrote Adventure in the early Seventies. (Reference 1: T he Craft of Adventure, chapter 2 [P DF]) (Reference 2: A History of 'Adventure'). So, it's a little improbable that the Adventure of plugh fame was available in the 50's =)

(You can play it on-line at any of several locations these days, including here and here.)

Is this a cheap way to expand your RAM, upload via smell to your own brain?

Better leave the room when you empty your recycle bin. And you don't want to leave those core dumps lying around, they can really stink.

Now I'm really going to avoid cDc. BO get's hardcore nasty.

Smelling search-voyeur is a bit like walking through a dorm... "What on earth was that smell?"

It might save some time when you're trying to pick up on IRC... "You don't smell like a blonde 18/F/Paris"

The banner ads? Hmmm, smells like KFC. Now I'm hungry.

Personally, I love the fresh-leather aroma of a "Your Apache install worked!" page.

But I'll really be looking forward to the olfactory upgrade to Fractint - THAT would be beauty.

Fractint (currently on v. 20.0) and Emacs (currently on v. 20.5) have historically been in competition for the largest real version numbers. In response to apsmith's assertion that large version numbers imply obsolescence, Emacs is an obvious counterexample. Fractint is a little more dubious, but it remains very powerful.

As far as I know, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will collide two 5 TeV streams into each other. That's a lot of energy. Even older particle accelerators like the one in the facility I work at, TRIUMF, can do 75% of the speed of light. BTW, TRIUMF is now home to the most intense radioactive beams facility in the world! Book your experiments now for a low, low price of only three million dollars. Space is limited.