View allAll Photos Tagged SuperComputer
It all started with the mindlink.
Some tech company had a breakthrough, they managed to make a direct link between the human brain and a computer using some fancy electric process. I don't know the details, it's all classified and copyrighted, no one knows how it works. No one even knew they had done it until they finished programming the entire world and then some into a couple thousand supercomputers. No small feat, it must have taken a while. Rumor has it the mindlink tech was around for nearly two centuries and then some before they were done. I can't imagine how they kept it a secret for so long. But I can wonder.
Anyway, once it was out they got some people to try it out, stuck 'em in life support pods and linked them right into their fake world. They called it Veality, catchy contraction of Virtual reality.
And those people, those stupid wretches, they loved it.
In Veality, you can live dangerously without death or pain, respawning anytime you like. Glutting yourself with the simulated images and taste that pass for food will never make you fat, because all you're really eating is the stream of nutrients that enter your body through an IV in your arm.
You don't need a job. Everything is free.
"Killing" someone generates no hard feelings.
Birth control is hardly necessary.
Basically, Veality takes responsibility out of life.
So obviously every person that could signed up. Most of the world lives on the Other Side now, in their blank buildings, stacked pod upon pod, living a dream.
But not everyone.
For me, life is real. Someone has to generate energy to power the virtual world. Me and my team man a generator rig. You'd think they could get a computer to do it, but apparently they don't trust AIs to do this sort of thing.
I can't really complain about my job, the only thing I dislike is having to see what it does. It pumps out tons of waste. Oceans of toxic sludge flow down onto the earth, killing the tender life there and turning it into a barren wasteland under the bright layer of chemicals. Years ago, my rig wouldn't even be legal, it's so damaging to the environment. But no one cares now.
Veality's trees are taller.
Their grass, greener.
Their animals are more beautiful.
Why should they care about Earth? Humanity is self-sufficient now.
Responsibility is dead.
...But are consequences here, if not there. Our rig's dark heart and others like it cannot go on drowning the planet. I can't help but know this as I sit in the shuttle and watch the Earth go toxic green.
I haven't done microscale for a while. :P
For Mike Doyle's Contest extension.
Please C&C! :D
"Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines."
('T-800 Endoskeletons' by NECA and McFarlane Toys - Movie Maniacs Series 5)
Diorama by RK
NASA engineers used cutting-edge supercomputers and wind tunnel testing to improve the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II, the first crewed mission around the Moon.
Supercomputers and wind tunnels converge at NASA's Ames Research Center—explore how this state-of-the-art capability delivers smarter, more cost-effective science.
“This new technique lets us see wind tunnel data in much finer detail than ever before. With that extra clarity, engineers can create more accurate models of how vehicles respond to stress, helping design stronger, safer, and more efficient structures,” said Thomas Steva, lead engineer, SLS sub-division in the Aerodynamics Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Video Description: This supercomputer simulation peers down at a close-up of the SLS rocket during ascent. The force of friction is represented in greens, yellows, and blues. A six-foot-long strake flanking the booster’s forward connection points on the SLS intertank smooths vibrations induced by airflow, represented by purples, yellows, and reds. The white streams represent a contour plot of density magnitude, highlighting the change of density in the air.
Credit: NASA/NAS/Gerrit-Daniel Stich, Michael Barad, Timothy Sandstrom, Derek Dalle
Just messing around tonight. This is a tiny part of the Mandelbrot set, rendered with software I found on the Internet. I used to write code to do stuff like this, back in the day, using a supercomputer at the Lab for rendering. Nowadays your average desktop machine is just as fast as a ten million dollar supercomputer was 25 years ago.
Although the software did the rendering, I adjusted the crop and coloration myself using Photoshop. Useful practice to improve my aesthetic sensibility ...
Metagross: The Iron Leg Pokémon
Type: Steel/Psychic
This Pokémon has four brains linked together, giving it intelligence equivalent to that of a supercomputer. It uses advanced calculations to dominate its opponents and prey and is capable of levitating by folding up its four legs.
My personal favorite Pokémon. Sprite from Pokémon Black and White.
Space Science image of the week:
Maybe you’re reading this caption while drinking a coffee. As you stir your drink with a spoon, vortices are produced in the liquid that decay into smaller eddies until they disappear entirely. This can be described as a cascade of vortices from large to small scales. Furthermore, the motion of the spoon brings the hot liquid into contact with the cooler air and so the heat from the coffee can escape more efficiently into the atmosphere, cooling it down.
A similar effect occurs in space, in the electrically charged atomic particles – solar wind plasma – blown out by our Sun, but with one key difference: in space there is no air. Although the energy injected into the solar wind by the Sun is transferred to smaller scales in turbulent cascades, just like in your coffee, the temperature in the plasma is seen to increase because there is no cool air to stop it.
How exactly the solar wind plasma is heated is a hot topic in space physics, because it is hotter than expected for an expanding gas and almost no collisions are present. Scientists have suggested that the cause of this heating may be hidden in the turbulent character of the solar wind plasma.
Advanced supercomputer simulations are helping to understand these complex motions: the image shown here is from one such simulation. It represents the distribution of the current density in the turbulent solar wind plasma, where localised filaments and vortices have appeared as a consequence of the turbulent energy cascade. The blue and yellow colours show the most intense currents (blue for negative and yellow for positive values).
These coherent structures are not static, but evolve in time and interact with each other. Moreover, between the islands, the current becomes very intense, creating high magnetic stress regions and sometimes a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. That is, when magnetic field lines of opposite direction get close together they can suddenly realign into new configurations, releasing vast amounts of energy that can cause localised heating.
Such events are observed in space, for example by ESA’s Cluster quartet of satellites in Earth orbit, in the solar wind. Cluster also found evidence for turbulent eddies down to a few tens of kilometres as the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.
This cascade of energy may contribute to the overall heating of the solar wind, a topic that ESA’s future Solar Orbiter mission will also try to address.
In the meantime, enjoy studying turbulent cascades of vortices in your coffee!
More information: Perrone et al. (2013) ; Servidio et al. (2015) and Valentini et al. (2016).
Credit: D. Perrone et al
The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is.
The eleventh episode of the Shadows Of Nar Eurbrikka just went live on Eurobricks. The Rebels take their stolen supercomputer to the rural surface of the planet Kuat, known for its shipyards located on a ring surrounding the planet. Meanwhile, the Empire does everything it can to get the precious computer back - or so it seams...
I had the honor of doing some of the promotional images for this episode, and you see the result above. The supercomputer was the main thing to build, and I enjoyed finally having the opportunity to use walkie-talkies as details, something I've been wanting to do for a while now. I had to restrain myself from using lots of grey in order to keep the contrast high, so I forced myself to use white, and I think it looks pretty good. The ladders were a nice way to quickly build a wall while retaining a high level of uniform detail that doesn't disturb the image. The ground layer was new for me. I've been looking at the way castle builders deal with rocks for a while now, and I think it's fabulous. Now I finally more or less get it because I wanted to use it in this creation to keep the cross section of the ground from becoming too cartoonish, so I'm pretty happy with the result, and will probably be using the technique in future creations. Finally, I had a lot of fun playing with the vegetation. My fellow organizers suggested to use the lavender stalk piece, so I did. I might have gone a little overboard with it, but that's the beauty of digital creations. I needed a piece to match it though, and the lavender palette is quite restricted. I ended up finding this hairpiece from the elves line, which I had to use a substitute for because it isn't available digitally. But it resulted in some pretty alien vegetation I really dig.
This is the first creation on which I really tried to fully embrace the capabilities of my render program (that's Blender), since it allowed me to have two distinct lighting conditions for the two parts, which helped to create the contrast in the picture. I tried to keep everything logical though, so all of the lights you see could theoretically be replaced by LEDs etc., so I hope you appreciate it. Another big task was to apply the decorations, because I had to make them all myself. I'm pleased by how the stormtroopers turned out in the end, because it was a real pain to match the image with the complicated geometry of the helmet. Once that was done, it was on to rendering. It took about twelve hours spread over two sessions, and the underside is still quite noisy, so don't zoom in too much there ;) I guess with a real camera you can run into similar issues too though, so I think it's sufficient.
So I hope you like it! I really enjoyed working on the contrast between technology and nature, indoor and outdoor, grey and color to create a nice picture. Be sure to check out the newest episode of SoNE on Eurobricks!
PHOTO: d_4pointstracksside/
STAR Image Library_RIKEN-BNL Research Center's Supercomputer
Brookhaven National Laboratory
www.star.bnl.gov/public/imagelib/event_images/DSV_IMG1/in...
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" DOUBTFUL KISSES ! " -
ALL TRUE ROMANCES ( Comic Media ) # 7 September 1952
Cover: A.C. HOLLINGSWORTH
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ALL TRUE ROMANCE (Comic Media, 1951 Series)
# 1 May 1951 - # 20 December 1954
Notes
Indicia publisher: Artful Publications #1-3; Harwell #4-20.
There are two #7's: 9/52 and 11/52 in indicia; #8 does not exist.
Numbering continues in All True Romance (Ajax; Farrell, 1955 series)
[skipping #21].
****
COVER GALLERY >> ALL TRUE ROMANCE (Comic Media, 1951 Series)
AND
www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=327541
AND
www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=30744
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Comic Media @ Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Media
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Finally one big photo of the Batcave project, it's still in progress but not far from the end.
In this diorama can you spot the model build by my customer and friend Vincent (the Batman enthusiast ) and the ones I build?
More informations here :
www.flickr.com/photos/8107354@N03/41578228724/in/datepost...
There's a lot ot discover so if you have questions, you'll be welcome.
Multivac is the name of a fictional supercomputer in many stories by Isaac Asimov.
the name was conied in imitation of Sperry Rand's UNIVAC, an early mainframe computer
Since "univac" recalls the use of a single vacuum tube, Mr. Asimov idea was to choice a nane giving the idea of a far more powerful computer, thus "multivac"
Trivia:
UNIVAC is an acronim for "UNIVersal Automatic Computer
The Univac model 1108 I used during my university studies had 32 bit world length 4 x 16,384 words memory banks and a 300K word solid disk!
NGV Triennial. National Gallery of Victoria
"Refik Anadol’s Quantum memories, 2020, draws upon a dataset of more than two hundred million nature-related images from the internet, which are processed using quantum computing software developed by the Google AI Quantum research team in combination with a supercomputer that has been programmed with machine-learning algorithms. The resulting real-time video can be considered both an alternate dimension of the natural world and a radical visualisation of our digitised memories of nature. Anadol’s arresting visuals and accompanying audio are composed in collaboration with a generative algorithm enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing – a new form of computing that exploits the unusual physics of the subatomic world – turning the visual data that flows around us every day into an artwork that represents our collective memory of nature. Through the work, the artist encourages us to imagine the potential of this experimental computer technology and the immense opportunities it presents for the future of art and design."
In my last post I had a bit of a rant about the vagrancies of the British weather during, what is laughably termed, Summer. On reflection, I have realised that my frustrations have been somewhat amplified by modern technology. Back the good old days, the only source of information was the BBC’s Michael Fish slapping magnetic rubber symbols onto a map of Ol’ Blighty. And we all accepted it would be wrong more often than not as it was mainly based on three pine cones located in Michael’s downstairs loo, a piece of old seaweed hanging from a rusty rail outside the front door of BBC Weather Centre, and the dawn and dusk phone calls to the National Shepherds Association to see if the majority of their members were delighted or not when they looked out of the window. And the BBC acknowledged their inherent inaccuracies by making sure their predictions were very vague of where a shower would appear; Michael’s magnetic symbol for rain covered three entire counties (admittedly, if you are making a weather forecast for Wales, you only need one symbol that is big enough to shroud the whole principality). But now we in the age of supercomputers and AI algorithms and satellites and the internet. So, surely, we should expect an uptick in the forecast accuracy figures? With phone apps having a claimed precipitation prediction precision of minutes within a given postcode, we can now plan the family day out with complete confidence and without the fear that we have not packed enough contingency waterproofs. And I’m sure the parents of the kids in Eyemouth had the same anticipation of warm sunny spells with a light breeze at 16:19, as I did.
Upgrade your tired and obsolete hardware to the Enumerator X today. Our nuclear powered processors can run up to six actions within twenty four hours!
Nine out of ten brain mutants agree, it's their supercomputer of choice. So don't delay, world domination is just around the corner, with the new ENUMERNATOR X!
A supercomputer strapped to a packmule drone. Some punks got their hands on this tech and made a friendly face for it to assist in illegal netrunning activity. The drone has 4 jacks and an on-board medical AI to monitor the conditions of the netrunners.
After a job well done, the crew relaxes
=The Mirror House- An Auction House for Superhero and Villain Technology=
Monarch- Is there somewhere to store my sword?
Zeus- A rack to house my trident would be most welcome
Roman- Let's just hope the journey was worth it.
Dealer- Welcome! Welcome- Oswald, Roman, Mr Dekker, Professor Strange, Mr White- The Monarch of Menace oh my, it's so good to see you all. Please take your seats. We have a few smaller matters before we may begin proper. First of all- The main course for tonight's dinner is roast pheasant with redcurrent preserve and grilled parsnips, we of course have a vegetarian option as well.
White- Vegetarian? Who here's a godamn vegetarian?
Dekker- That's me, sexy. This body's a temple, meat loves playing havoc on it. All kinds, if you know what I mean. And it's always good to keep up appearances *wink*
Dealer- Moving on- A few of the items on shown today were provided by Doctor Thomas Eliot. One in particular you may find especially interesting.
Broker- *Whisper*
Dealer- Ah yes, Mr Fine has reminded me of the new properties he has got a hold of following-
White- The massive toxic gas cloud?
Dealer- Precisely.
Broker- I assure you that the properties are well protected against the gas cloud. I had some helpers make sure of that. There is a full list of new sites in my office in Burnley.
Oswald- Oh, what the hell, you can never have enough safehouses, that's what I say!
Dealer- Quite, Haha! Now, let the auction begin!
Roman- Finally.
Dealer- Recovered from Simon Stagg's Airship, we have two trick boomerangs, formerly belonging to George 'Digger' Harkness. The starting price is $200
White- $200?! For that old tat?
Ono- Hmm... $250!
Dealer- Sold, to Mr Onomatopoeia
Ono- Bang.
Egghead- Please tell me you're not going to do that all night...
Dealer- Our second item, straight from the recesses of Arkham Asylum, we have a fully functional cocoon gun- any takers? ... Moving swiftly on-
White- Get to the good stuff!
Bone- Yeah, enough of this C-List garbage!
Dealer- But of course- Men of fine taste I see. Very well, there are plenty of items I think will be of interest to you all. One Motherbox, used by the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokalips. This device doubles as a supercomputer and as a teleport. Let's start the bidding at two million!
Dekker- Now there's a groovy little doodad- that's how to make an entrance-
Three million!
Dealer- Three million! Any advances on-
Oswald- Four Million!
Dealer- Four Million-
White- Five million!
Dekker- Six million smackaroos!
Dealer- Six million? Going once, going twice, Sold! To Mr Paul Dekker!
Dekker- Huzzah, the day is saved!
White- Fucking alchie.
Dealer- It's onto the premier collection now- starting with this- a genuine 'bat-suit', belonging to the caped crusader himself.
Oswald- Poppycock! Who could have got their hands on a genuine Batsuit?
Hush- I did. It's legitimate I assure you.
Dealer- Shall we start the bidding at... Ten million?
Oswald- Twenty million!
Monarch- Thirty million!
Oswald- Forty million!
Monarch- Fifty!
Oswald- Sixty
Monarch- Seventy!
Strange- One hundred million!
Dealer- Sold! To none other than professer Hugo Strange.
Roman- Nice as this is, you know this isn't exactly why we're here
Monarch- Quite right. You know what we're all after.
Dealer- If you insist. .... Next we have some very special items, straight from the Amertek factories- a set of 2,000 of their finest gas masks!
Roman- Now you're talking
Simulation frames from this NASA Goddard neutron star merger animation: bit.ly/1jolBYY
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
This supercomputer simulation shows one of the most violent events in the universe: a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole. A neutron star is the compressed core left behind when a star born with between eight and 30 times the sun's mass explodes as a supernova. Neutron stars pack about 1.5 times the mass of the sun — equivalent to about half a million Earths — into a ball just 12 miles (20 km) across.
As the simulation begins, we view an unequally matched pair of neutron stars weighing 1.4 and 1.7 solar masses. They are separated by only about 11 miles, slightly less distance than their own diameters. Redder colors show regions of progressively lower density.
As the stars spiral toward each other, intense tides begin to deform them, possibly cracking their crusts. Neutron stars possess incredible density, but their surfaces are comparatively thin, with densities about a million times greater than gold. Their interiors crush matter to a much greater degree densities rise by 100 million times in their centers. To begin to imagine such mind-boggling densities, consider that a cubic centimeter of neutron star matter outweighs Mount Everest.
By 7 milliseconds, tidal forces overwhelm and shatter the lesser star. Its superdense contents erupt into the system and curl a spiral arm of incredibly hot material. At 13 milliseconds, the more massive star has accumulated too much mass to support it against gravity and collapses, and a new black hole is born. The black hole's event horizon — its point of no return — is shown by the gray sphere. While most of the matter from both neutron stars will fall into the black hole, some of the less dense, faster moving matter manages to orbit around it, quickly forming a large and rapidly rotating torus. This torus extends for about 124 miles (200 km) and contains the equivalent of 1/5th the mass of our sun.
Scientists think neutron star mergers like this produce short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Short GRBs last less than two seconds yet unleash as much energy as all the stars in our galaxy produce over one year.
The rapidly fading afterglow of these explosions presents a challenge to astronomers. A key element in understanding GRBs is getting instruments on large ground-based telescopes to capture afterglows as soon as possible after the burst. The rapid notification and accurate positions provided by NASA's Swift mission creates a vibrant synergy with ground-based observatories that has led to dramatically improved understanding of GRBs, especially for short bursts.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011500/a011530/index.html
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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The towers of the incredible Soviet era Duga ionospheric radar installation remain standing to this day. Slighty radioactive due to the explosion of the nearby Chernobyl reactor, this radar was capable of detecting US ICBM launches from halfway around the globe. An accompanying supercomputer (of the day) processed the radar information to generate a picture of foreign ICBM launches.
This installation nearly bankrupted the Soviet Union and is credited, along with Chernobyl, with accelerating the downfall of the USSR.
Check out my other photos from Pripyat on my Photostream.
Jerrica Benton
Remember, Jerrica is not only the woman behind the throne, the band manager, but the woman on the throne herself, Jem.
Because Jem is the image the supercomputer Synergy projects on her. Synergy did that the first time to help Jerrica deal with her stage fright.
That's the reason why Jem and Jerrica are wearing the same pair of earrings.
The phrase "Showtime, Synergy!" turns Jerrica into Jem and the phrase "Showtime's over, Synergy" returns Jem to her true form, Jerrica.
© 2013 Thousand Word Images by Dustin Abbott
As your eyes adjust a magical thing starts to happen. What was a few stars begins to crystalize into a myriad and more. Those tiny, glittering points of light, each representing an unimaginably large star, makes one feel tiny by comparison. A million points of light, and yet we know that in reality it is a number so vast that it would take a supercomputer a million years to count them all. Wow!
Here are links to a series of workflow articles that I wrote for Alien Skin Software if you want to take a look here, here, and here :
Technical information Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, Processed in Adobe Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC, and Alien Skin Exposure 5
Personal Website | Facebook Fan Page | 500px Gallery | Order Fine Art prints | iStock | Getty Collection
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer at the highest international level.
EPFL is widely regarded as a world leading university. The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL 12th in the world across all fields in their 2017/2018 ranking, whilst Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL as the world's 11th best school for Engineering and Technology.
EPFL is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Associated with several specialised research institutes, the two universities form the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain), which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS, a Tokamak Fusion reactor, a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer and P3 bio-hazard facilities. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%A9d...
In a world where the puny organics were unable to efficiently allocate resources using a price system or free trade, one man suggested that supercomputers would be able to allocate resources perfectly for all on this world. However the supercomputers were so efficient at allocating resources that they turned on their fleshy overlords, viewing them as an inefficient expense. So came these freedom fighters wishing to free all mechanisms from their organic captors, and to efficiently allocate all resources in the known universe. However legend says that they will not be able to allocate resources perfectly until the return of their DNA-based messiah.
The Reapers are fairly new additions to the ranks of the derogatorily (due to their diminutive size) labeled "Tinkertoys". They're quick in mind as well as on their feet, and they don't require exotic or large amounts of materials. However their great power is their ability to operate an extensive arsenal of weapons, affording them a flexibility in the theater that is unrivaled currently. With these new troops the Supercomputers have set their eyes on one of the biggest robo-slave traders, the Hero Factory.
"But the dark future which never came still exists for me. And it always will, like the traces of a dream."
('Sarah Connor' by NECA / Ultimate line)
Diorama by RK
View On Black | Original Size | Facebook Fan Page
Details:
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk II
Lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
Exposure: 30 sec
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 16mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Accessories: Manfrotto 190XB Tripod, Manfrotto 322RC2 Heavy Duty Grip Ball Head, Canon RC1 Wireless Remote
Date and Time: 12 January 2011 9.08pm
Post Processing:
Imported into Lightroom
Exported image to CS5
Noise reduction layer
Unsharp mask filter
Crop tool
Re-imported back into Lightroom
Added keyword metadata
Exported as JPEG
From The CSIRO website
The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), at the Paul Wild Observatory, is an array of six 22-m antennas used for radio astronomy. It is located about 25 km west of the town of Narrabri in rural NSW (about 500 km north-west of Sydney). It is operated by CSIRO's Astronomy and Space Science division...
The "Compact Array'' is the premier instrument of its kind in the southern hemisphere. It operates 365-days per year, 24-hours per day. Its business is pure science. It is not used for any military activities.
This antennas work together using a technique called "interferometry'' which allows the antennas to mimic a much larger antenna. This gives the telescope the ability to see very fine detail. Effectively "radio interferometry'' works by replacing the lens of a conventional imaging system with sophisticated electronics, supercomputer-like hardware and complex software. Using this technique, a image of a small section of the sky can be formed in a 12-hour period. Whereas the Array uses six antennas spread over 6km, the same interferometry principles can be applied to antennas spread over a continent. For example, several times a year, the Array is used together with other radio telescopes spread across Australia (such as the Parkes antenna) to make images with extremely fine detail.
"The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight ..."
('T-800 Endoskeleton' [left] by NECA / [right] by McFarlane Toys - Movie Maniacs Series 5)
Diorama by RK
This is my most ambitious astrophotography project yet, coming in at over 110 hours 18 minutes of total exposure time (albeit across 12 panels), beating out my previous record of [101 hours on the Elephant Trunk Nebula](www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/zoiqhj/the_ele...)
The [12 panel mosaic](i.imgur.com/ttLXutl.png) ended up being 518 megapixels in size after cropping, and was an absolute bitch to process. probably never gonna do a mosaic this big again unless I have some quantum supercomputer. I don't have any way to reliably host this on my flickr page, so the image you're seeing is a 2X downsample.
Captured over 35 nights from October 2022 through March 2023, from my Bortle 8apartment balcony
> could only do 4 hours max per night thanks to [my wonderful horizons](i.imgur.com/hOGPZt6.png) from the balcony overhang
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**[Equipment:](i.imgur.com/ejpKkwU.jpg)**
* TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
* Orion Sirius EQ-G
* ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
* Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
* ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
* Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
* Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
* Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
* ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding
* Moonlite Autofocuser
**Acquisition:** 110 hours 18 minutes (Camera at -15°C)
> all narrowband exposures were 360" and unity gain
> all broadband exposures were 30" and at half unity gain
|Filter|Ha|Oiii|Sii|Red|Green|Blue|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
|**Panel 1**|30|28|19|24|24|24|
|**Panel 2**|30|27|19|32|32|32|
|**Panel 3**|30|29|29|24|24|24|
|**Panel 4**|34|31|30|24|24|24|
|**Panel 5**|30|34|29|24|24|24|
|**Panel 6**|34|31|29|24|24|24|
|**Panel 7**|33|30|29|24|24|24|
|**Panel 8**|39|27|29|24|24|24|
|**Panel 9**|26|28|28|32|32|32|
|**Panel 10**|32|29|30|24|24|24|
|**Panel 11**|34|20|19|28|28|28|
|**Panel 12**|30|22|19|24|24|24|
|**TOTAL: (h)**|**38.2**|**30.8**|**33.6**|**2.56**|**2.56**|**2.56**|
* Darks- 30
* Flats- 30 per filter
**Capture Software:**
* Captured using [N.I.N.A.](nighttime-imaging.eu) and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
**PixInsight processing:**
> /u/Aerions_'s [Heart and Fishhead pic](www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/y3jxc3/the_hea...) was a bit of an inspiration for me when processing this (and imo their colors are better)
**Preprocessing**
* BatchPreProcessing
* StarAlignment
* [Blink](youtu.be/sJeuWZNWImE?t=40)
* ImageIntegration per channel per panel
* DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5) per panel per channel
**Creating the mosaic:**
> I had *numerous* other attempts to make this using microsoft ICE and mosaicbycoordinates/photometricmosaic, but they all refused to work that well. During this process I found out that the .tiff file format has a max size of around 530 megapixels
* StarGenerator to generate a starfield of the region at the same image scale as my drizzled images
* StarAlignment to align each drizzled stack to the synthetic starfield
> despite reading all the documentation and tinkering with every setting, my blue stars channel for panel 11 refused to align properly with any of the other channels, so the stars here are a bit mismatched
* GradientMergeMosaic to combine these aligned panels into the master stacks
* DynamicCrop away the edges of each master
**Narrowband Linear:**
* DynamicBackground Extraction
> duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (thanks, /u/jimmythechicken1!)
> $T * med(model) / model
* BlurXTerminator
* StarXterminator to completely remove stars (narrowband images will be starless processed for almost the rest of the workflow)
* NoiseXterminator
* HistogramTransformations to bring nonlinear
> More agressive stretch for Oiii and Sii
**RGB Linear:**
* ChannelCombination to combine R G and B masters into a color image
* SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
* HSV Repair
* StarXterminator to make a stars only image (this stars only image to be used going forward)
* AcrsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
**Nonlinear:**
> did this over the course of a couple weeks/processing breaks so the details aren't *exact*
* PixelMath to combine stretched narrowband masters into color image
> SHO --> RGB (classic Hubble Palette)
* HistogramTransformations to adjust channel intensities
* [Curve](i.imgur.com/vfdQhoZ.jpg)Transformations for slight hue adjustments
* LRGBCombination using stretched Ha as luminance
* shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with lum masks)
* invert > SCNR > invert to remove background magentas
* probably used BackgroundNeutralization at some point around here too
* LocalHistogramEqualization
> Two round of this: one at kernel radius 16 for the finer 'feathery' details and one at 200+ for larger structures
* more curves!
* NoiseXterminator
* more histogramtransformation tweaks
* DarkStructureEnhance
* Relinearized narrowband and stars images to add in the RGB stars
> "unstretched" both images with histogramtransformation midtones set to 0.9999
> pixelmath to just add those two images together
> histogramtransformation to un-relinearize them by setting midtones to 0.0001
* ColorSaturation
* MLT for chrominance noise reduction
* final round of noiseX
* guess what baby more curves
* one final round of DBE to remove a small red gradient in the bottom corner that made it through to the end somehow
> just to please Jimmy
* IntegerResample to 50%
* annotation
Building instructions for my moc model of the Batcomputer in Batcave, are NOW for sale in my shop :
www.baronsat.net/baronshop/Lego-Batcomputer-moc-instructi...
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer at the highest international level.
EPFL is widely regarded as a world leading university. The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL 12th in the world across all fields in their 2017/2018 ranking, whilst Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL as the world's 11th best school for Engineering and Technology.
EPFL is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Associated with several specialised research institutes, the two universities form the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain), which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS, a Tokamak Fusion reactor, a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer and P3 bio-hazard facilities. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%A9d...
This as close to “unobtainium” as I have found on Earth.
An exceptionally unusual shiny black meteorite find was recovered in 2011 in Morocco by Aziz Habibi (I bought it from him). Officially named NWA 7034, it was nicknamed “Black Beauty” by Dr. Carl Agee, Director of the Institute of Meteoritics. A team of scientists led by Agee found a number of marvels in this oldest and rarest of Martian meteorites: it contains the oldest Martian minerals ever dated (formed 4.48 billion years ago), it contains ~ 20x more water than any other Martian samples previously encountered (perhaps formed under an early Martian ocean), it is among the very few martian basalts that do not contain maskelynite (impact-melted plagioclase glass), and it is the only brecciated Martian (i.e., they are composed of angular fragments of different rock types fused together). Carl Agee did an hour-long talk on NWA 7034 here, with a short summary here: "this is a once in a career discovery."
These rocks were so novel they were provided a new subtype "Martian (polymict breccia)" in the Met Bull. Moreover, in July 2022, it was determined that Black Beauty most likely originated from the Karratha Crater in Mars’s southern hemisphere; approximately 10 million years ago, the asteroid impact which formed the crater also ejected a large volume of Mars rock into space, some of which perturbed into an Earth-crossing orbit — and it took the long route, a journey of ~15,000 orbits around the Sun before penetrating Earth’s atmosphere.
Black Beauty contains relatively large crystals of plagioclase (a calcium-aluminum silicate) and pyroxene (a calcium-magnesium-iron silicate). These large mineral grains are surrounded by fine-grained material that formed from rapidly cooling lava, most likely following a volcanic eruption. Rock and mineral fragments were incorporated into the flow during the eruption, giving the rock its brecciated appearance. Accessory minerals include chlorapatite, chromite, goethite, ilmenite, magnetite, maghemite, alkali feldspar and pyrite.
A lay summary of the location news from Physical Org:
"Scientists announced Tuesday they had found the crater from which the oldest known Martian meteorite was originally blasted towards Earth, a discovery that could provide clues into how our own planet was formed. The meteorite NWA 7034, nicknamed Black Beauty, has fascinated geologists since it was discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2011.
It contains a mix of materials including zircons, which date back nearly 4.5 billion years. "That makes it one of the oldest rocks studied in the history of geology," Sylvain Bouley, a planetary scientist at France's Paris-Saclay University, told AFP.
Its journey dates back to the solar system's infancy, "about 80 million years after the planets began forming", said Bouley, who co-authored a new study on the meteorite. Tectonic plates long ago covered up Earth's ancient crust, meaning that "we have lost this primitive history of our planet", Bouley said.
But Black Beauty could offer "an open book on a planet's first moments", he added. By measuring Black Beauty's exposure to cosmic rays, they knew it was dislodged from its first home around five million years ago.
"So, we were looking for a crater that was very young and large," Lagain said. Another clue was that its composition showed it had suddenly heated up around 1.5 million years ago—likely by the impact of a second asteroid.
The team then created an algorithm and used a supercomputer to trawl through images of 90 million craters taken by a NASA satellite. That narrowed it down to 19 craters, allowing the researchers to rule out the remaining suspects.
They found that Black Beauty was dug up from its first home by an asteroid that struck around 1.5 billion years ago, forming the 40-kilometer Khujirt crater.
Then a few million years ago, another asteroid hit not far away, creating the 10-kilometer Karratha crater and shooting the Black Beauty towards Earth.
The region in Mars' southern hemisphere is rich in the elements potassium and thorium, just like Black Beauty. Another factor was that Black Beauty is the only Martian meteorite that is highly magnetized. "The region where Karratha was found is the most magnetized on Mars," Lagain said.
Known as the Terra Cimmeria—Sirenum province, it is "a relic of the early crustal processes on Mars, and thus, a region of high interest for future missions," the study said."
and Space,com summarized how the findings can prioritize the destination for future Mars landings:
"The origin of Martian meteorites was an old enigma," Lagain said. Discovering the birthplace of one "is pretty much equivalent to a free sample-return mission," he noted.
"Now we know that the rock comes from the Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum province," Lagain said. "This region hosts the clues to understand[ing] the first stage of evolution and differentiation of the planet. If one wants to understand how Mars formed and evolved, then we need to analyze this province much more than we do right now."
The findings suggest that sending a rover or drone to this region "would help us understand what happened 4.5 billion years ago on Mars," soon after the Red Planet, Earth and the solar system's other rocky worlds were born, Lagain said. This information, in turn, may help "fill the gap in knowledge for the same period of time on Earth."
This black beauty is 61 x 33 x 19mm and 55 grams.
As some people request here's a photo that show the folding effect in a better way.
I also have a small video but as it needs to be edited... well coming soon ;)
Building instructions for this model are NOW for sale in my shop :
www.baronsat.net/baronshop/Lego-Batcomputer-moc-instructi...
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer at the highest international level.
EPFL is widely regarded as a world leading university. The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL 12th in the world across all fields in their 2017/2018 ranking, whilst Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL as the world's 11th best school for Engineering and Technology.
EPFL is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Associated with several specialised research institutes, the two universities form the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain), which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS, a Tokamak Fusion reactor, a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer and P3 bio-hazard facilities. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%A9d...
Crypto debates Google’s quantum breakthrough as bitcoin investors urge calm
Breaking a coin to bits… The crypto industry’s head was on a swivel this week after a Google announcement that some investors feared could threaten the foundation of bitcoin. On Monday the tech giant said its latest “quantum chip” (meet Willow) solved a computation in under five minutes that’d take modern supercomputers 10 septillion years to work out. Crypto’s concern: quantum computers could one day undermine bitcoin’s encryption (as well as other coins’ security) and in the process defeat the integrity of the $2T blockchain.
Showin’ cracks: Hodlers use their private keys — an alphanumeric code generated alongside a public key — to move their bitcoin. Quantum computers have the potential to defeat this mathematical protection.
Nakamot-oh wait: The price of bitcoin slid after Google’s announcement, but as of yesterday had largely clawed back the loss.
Keep calm and hodl on?… Despite the blockchain-breaking potential of Google’s quantum breakthrough, the crypto industry largely avoided panicking. One reason: developers, including ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, have said that just as quantum tech is developed and upgraded, so too are blockchains. So quantum-proofing a blockchain like bitcoin, ethereum, or solana could be just several code upgrades away. Bitcoin’s been upgraded before: in 2021 the protocol adapted the Taproot upgrade to boost privacy, efficiency, and security.
THE TAKEAWAY
A distant threat gives time to prep… Quantum advancements on the heels of Willow could eventually help discover new drugs, improve weather forecasting, and, yes, break some forms of encryption. But for now, Willow solves a standard computation that has no commercial application, and any possible threats to crypto and bitcoin are likely years away.
I've been so intrigued by the mysterious ROBERTO, that I actually hired a private investigator to go down to Venezuela to try and figure out the mystery of just who ROBERTO really is!!! He found him!!!! He came back with this spy photo!! Here it is!!!! It's ROBERTO'S mega SUPERCOMPUTER!!!!! This is the computer that does ROBERTO'S commenting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the mega super hi-tech computer that leaves ROBERTO'S brilliant comments on 327,753 photos every day on half the photos uploaded on flickr!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (at least on all those people who he hasn't blocked!!)
Sadly, I have been blocked!!!!!!
I miss you ROBERTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And he just keeps going... And going... And going...
flickr.com/photos/primeau/2678152524/
flickr.com/photos/teddylo0ovescupcakes/2682203876/
Screen capture of a real winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
www.flickr.com/photos/mbradbury/2632802232/
If anyone is not familiar with ROBERTO'S story, it is explained under this photo...
NGV Triennial. National Gallery of Victoria
"Refik Anadol’s Quantum memories, 2020, draws upon a dataset of more than two hundred million nature-related images from the internet, which are processed using quantum computing software developed by the Google AI Quantum research team in combination with a supercomputer that has been programmed with machine-learning algorithms. The resulting real-time video can be considered both an alternate dimension of the natural world and a radical visualisation of our digitised memories of nature. Anadol’s arresting visuals and accompanying audio are composed in collaboration with a generative algorithm enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing – a new form of computing that exploits the unusual physics of the subatomic world – turning the visual data that flows around us every day into an artwork that represents our collective memory of nature. Through the work, the artist encourages us to imagine the potential of this experimental computer technology and the immense opportunities it presents for the future of art and design."
Simulation frames from this NASA Goddard neutron star merger animation: bit.ly/1jolBYY
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
This supercomputer simulation shows one of the most violent events in the universe: a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole. A neutron star is the compressed core left behind when a star born with between eight and 30 times the sun's mass explodes as a supernova. Neutron stars pack about 1.5 times the mass of the sun — equivalent to about half a million Earths — into a ball just 12 miles (20 km) across.
As the simulation begins, we view an unequally matched pair of neutron stars weighing 1.4 and 1.7 solar masses. They are separated by only about 11 miles, slightly less distance than their own diameters. Redder colors show regions of progressively lower density.
As the stars spiral toward each other, intense tides begin to deform them, possibly cracking their crusts. Neutron stars possess incredible density, but their surfaces are comparatively thin, with densities about a million times greater than gold. Their interiors crush matter to a much greater degree densities rise by 100 million times in their centers. To begin to imagine such mind-boggling densities, consider that a cubic centimeter of neutron star matter outweighs Mount Everest.
By 7 milliseconds, tidal forces overwhelm and shatter the lesser star. Its superdense contents erupt into the system and curl a spiral arm of incredibly hot material. At 13 milliseconds, the more massive star has accumulated too much mass to support it against gravity and collapses, and a new black hole is born. The black hole's event horizon — its point of no return — is shown by the gray sphere. While most of the matter from both neutron stars will fall into the black hole, some of the less dense, faster moving matter manages to orbit around it, quickly forming a large and rapidly rotating torus. This torus extends for about 124 miles (200 km) and contains the equivalent of 1/5th the mass of our sun.
Scientists think neutron star mergers like this produce short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Short GRBs last less than two seconds yet unleash as much energy as all the stars in our galaxy produce over one year.
The rapidly fading afterglow of these explosions presents a challenge to astronomers. A key element in understanding GRBs is getting instruments on large ground-based telescopes to capture afterglows as soon as possible after the burst. The rapid notification and accurate positions provided by NASA's Swift mission creates a vibrant synergy with ground-based observatories that has led to dramatically improved understanding of GRBs, especially for short bursts.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011500/a011530/index.html
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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A better view of the Batmobile turntable for the Batcave with minifig for scale.
See more here :
In a world where the puny organics were unable to efficiently allocate resources using a price system or free trade, one man suggested that supercomputers would be able to allocate resources perfectly for all on this world. However the supercomputers were so efficient at allocating resources that they turned on their fleshy overlords, viewing them as an inefficient expense. So came these freedom fighters wishing to free all mechanisms from their organic captors, and to efficiently allocate all resources in the known universe. However legend says that they will not be able to allocate resources perfectly until the return of their DNA-based messiah.
The Reapers are fairly new additions to the ranks of the derogatorily (due to their diminutive size) labeled "Tinkertoys". They're quick in mind as well as on their feet, and they don't require exotic or large amounts of materials. However their great power is their ability to operate an extensive arsenal of weapons, affording them a flexibility in the theater that is unrivaled currently. With these new troops the Supercomputers have set their eyes on one of the biggest robo-slave traders, the Hero Factory.
"Everybody dies. You know I believe it, so don't fuck with me !"
('Sarah Connor' by NECA / Ultimate line)
Diorama by RK
Control room - an emormously long tunnel-like building - at the base of the abandoned Duga radar installation, Pripyat Ukraine (near Chernobyl). Housed the Soviet supercomputers of the day, to analyze radar signals of US ICBM launches using a massive radar tower.
Check out my other photos from Pripyat on my Photostream.
A supercomputer strapped to a packmule drone. Some punks got their hands on this tech and made a friendly face for it to assist in illegal netrunning activity. The drone has 4 jacks and an on-board medical AI to monitor the conditions of the netrunners.
What happens when you run a complex computation or two? Your rig heats up, same as with humans. To ensure these young punks don't cook when surfing the web, they chill out in an ice bath, doubling as a cooler for their celebratory beverages.
A supercomputer strapped to a packmule drone. Some punks got their hands on this tech and made a friendly face for it to assist in illegal netrunning activity. The drone has 4 jacks and an on-board medical AI to monitor the conditions of the netrunners.
In a world where the puny organics were unable to efficiently allocate resources using a price system or free trade, one man suggested that supercomputers would be able to allocate resources perfectly for all on this world. However the supercomputers were so efficient at allocating resources that they turned on their fleshy overlords, viewing them as an inefficient expense. So came these freedom fighters wishing to free all mechanisms from their organic captors, and to efficiently allocate all resources in the known universe. However legend says that they will not be able to allocate resources perfectly until the return of their DNA-based messiah.
The Reapers are fairly new additions to the ranks of the derogatorily (due to their diminutive size) labeled "Tinkertoys". They're quick in mind as well as on their feet, and they don't require exotic or large amounts of materials. However their great power is their ability to operate an extensive arsenal of weapons, affording them a flexibility in the theater that is unrivaled currently. With these new troops the Supercomputers have set their eyes on one of the biggest robo-slave traders, the Hero Factory.