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Big data; awesome images; indie filmmaking.
Click HERE [youtu.be/5tE5XJzZ-Rw] to see the complete movie!
NASA dreams big science. In this awesome new short, NASA presents the Earth, the planets, the Sun, and the endless universe beyond. Come for the cool, stay for the music, take away a sense of wonder to share. It's six minutes from Earth to forever, and you can see it here!
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10958
Only possible through the eyes of some of the world most powerful supercomputers and a team of extraordinary artists, this image shows the currents and channels of the world’s oceans.
Credit: NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio/Greg Shirah/Horace Mitchell/GSFC
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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy debuted on British radio exactly 40 years ago today! Over that time, Douglas Adam's classic scifi comedy has been adapted to books, comics, video games, the stage, television and cinema. Here is my LEGO tribute. So long, and thanks for all the bricks!
Pictured here is Deep Thought, a supercomputer created by a race of pan-dimensional beings to calculate the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. Shame they never actually bothered to articulate the question before setting it this 7 million year problem!
I've been building my ass off lately for another entry at the Laboratory category in the Space Jam contest, so far for nought. This was one of them, I'll post the others soon. I was aiming for something really minimal, something modernist; a lab that's not a lab, ethereal. Maybe it's a supercomputer lab (why would a supercomputer lab be in space???) I got nothing.
Our Milky Way's central black hole has a leak. This supermassive black hole looks like it still has the vestiges of a blowtorch-like jet dating back several thousand years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope hasn't photographed the phantom jet but has helped find circumstantial evidence that it is still pushing feebly into a huge hydrogen cloud and then splattering, like the narrow stream from a hose aimed into a pile of sand.
This is further evidence that the black hole, with a mass of 4.1 million Suns, is not a sleeping monster but periodically hiccups as stars and gas clouds fall into it. Black holes draw some material into a swirling, orbiting accretion disk where some of the infalling material is swept up into outflowing jets that are collimated by the black hole's powerful magnetic fields. The narrow "searchlight beams" are accompanied by a flood of deadly ionizing radiation.
"The central black hole is dynamically variable and is currently powered down," said Gerald Cecil of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cecil pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, multiwavelength observations from a variety of telescopes that suggest the black hole burps out mini-jets every time it swallows something hefty, like a gas cloud. His multinational team's research has just been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
In 2013 evidence for a stubby southern jet near the black hole came from X-rays detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio waves detected by the Jansky Very Large Array telescope in Socorro, New Mexico. This jet too appears to be plowing into gas near the black hole.
Cecil was curious if there was a northern counter-jet as well. He first looked at archival spectra of such molecules as methyl alcohol and carbon monosulfide from the ALMA Observatory in Chile (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array), which uses millimeter wavelengths to peer through the veils of dust between us and the galactic core. ALMA reveals an expanding, narrow linear feature in molecular gas that can be traced back at least 15 light-years to the black hole.
By connecting the dots, Cecil next found in Hubble infrared-wavelength images a glowing, inflating bubble of hot gas that aligns to the jet at a distance of at least 35 light-years from the black hole. His team suggests that the black hole jet has plowed into it, inflating the bubble. These two residual effects of the fading jet are the only visual evidence of it impacting molecular gas.
As it blows through the gas the jet hits material and bends along multiple streams. "The streams percolate out of the Milky Way's dense gas disk," said co-author Alex Wagner of Tsukuba University in Japan. "The jet diverges from a pencil beam into tendrils, like that of an octopus." This outflow creates a series of expanding bubbles that extend out to at least 500 light-years. This larger "soap bubble" structure has been mapped at various wavelengths by other telescopes.
Wagner and Cecil next ran supercomputer models of jet outflows in a simulated Milky Way disk, which reproduced the observations. "Like in archeology, you dig and dig to find older and older artifacts until you come upon remnants of a grand civilization," said Cecil. Wagner's conclusion: "Our central black hole clearly surged in luminosity at least 1 millionfold in the last million years. That sufficed for a jet to punch into the Galactic halo."
Previous observations by Hubble and other telescopes found evidence that the Milky Way's black hole had an outburst about 2-4 million years ago. That was energetic enough to create an immense pair of bubbles towering above our galaxy that glow in gamma-rays. They were first discovered by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010 and are surrounded by X-ray bubbles that were discovered in 2003 by the ROSAT satellite and mapped fully in 2020 by the eROSITA satellite.
Hubble ultraviolet-light spectra have been used to measure the expansion velocity and composition of the ballooning lobes. Hubble spectra later found that the burst was so powerful that it lit up a gaseous structure, called the Magellanic stream, at about 200,000 light-years from the galactic center. Gas is glowing from that event even today.
To get a better idea of what's going on, Cecil looked at Hubble and radio images of another galaxy with a black hole outflow. Located 47 million light-years away, the active spiral galaxy NGC 1068 has a string of bubble features aligned along an outflow from the very active black hole at its center. Cecil found that the scales of the radio and X-ray structures emerging from both NGC 1068 and our Milky Way are very similar. "A bow shock bubble at the top of the NGC 1068 outflow coincides with the scale of the Fermi bubble start in the Milky Way. NGC 1068 may be showing us what the Milky Way was doing during its major power surge several million years ago."
The residual jet feature is close enough to the Milky Way's black hole that it would become much more prominent only a few decades after the black hole powers up again. Cecil notes that "the black hole need only increase its luminosity by a hundredfold over that time to refill the jet channel with emitting particles. It would be cool to see how far the jet gets in that outburst. To reach into the Fermi gamma-ray bubbles would require that the jet sustain for hundreds of thousands of years because those bubbles are each 50,000 light years across!"
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/hubble-mini-jet-found-n...
Oct. 29, 2012 – A day before landfall, Sandy intensified into a Category 2 superstorm nearly 1,000 miles wide.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Center for Climate Simulation
Video and images courtesy of NASA/GSFC/William Putman
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A NASA computer model simulates the astonishing track and forceful winds of Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast late in 2012’s Atlantic hurricane season, causing 159 deaths and $70 billion in damages. Days before landfall, forecasts of its trajectory were still being made. Some computer models showed that a trough in the jet stream would kick the monster storm away from land and out to sea. Among the earliest to predict its true course was NASA’s GEOS-5 global atmosphere model. The model works by dividing Earth’s atmosphere into a virtual grid of stacked boxes. A supercomputer then solves mathematical equations inside each box to create a weather forecast predicting Sandy’s structure, path and other traits. The NASA model not only produced an accurate track of Sandy, but also captured fine-scale details of the storm’s changing intensity and winds. Watch the video to see it for yourself.
For more information, please visit:
gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/atmosphericassim/tracking_hur...
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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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 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 lurchers are used as an all terrain mobile gun. With their long spindly legs they can ford shallow rivers, and not being wheeled they can handle areas that lack roads.
Rotating platform for the Batcave project. More informations here :
www.flickr.com/photos/8107354@N03/41578228724/in/datepost...
Note the chromed parts my customers used on my model, it's a very cool idea. Plus you can see a part of the whole model with lighting.
BTW I'm testing a new logo, so comments are welcome :)
The We're Here! gang is considering robots today, because on May 11, 1997, Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeated Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.
Ewer, for a triple word score!
All ship traffic was stopped due to the annual test closing of the storm surge barriers in the New Waterway. So for a few hours the gateway to Rotterdam was closed for all ships.
The Maeslantkering is a storm surge barrier on the Nieuwe Waterweg, in South Holland, Netherlands. Controlled by a supercomputer, it automatically closes when Rotterdam is threatened by floods. Part of the Delta Works, it is one of largest moving structures on Earth, rivalling the Green Bank Telescope in the United States and the Bagger 288 excavator in Germany.
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.
My mighty steed, Norco XFR
N.B. more to come . . . We trust this will hold you over until we (God and me) get back on the Cray, supercomputer desktop.
N.B. (below) back on the supercomputer . . .
Sunday I cycled 5km (3 miles) around the Royal Roads University (RRU) grounds.
I haven't cycled here since March 28, 2010, and then it wasn't much more than a cursory look while passing by the 14km Marker on the Galloping Goose Trail (GGT). At that time, there was an open gate by which one could enter into the RRU grounds unimpeded.
Cycling Royal Roads University Grounds VIDEO 10-MINUTES
Visiting the Cemetery this evening a sliver of sun shone through the clouds and lit up this fine strong dominating tree that towers the external back wall of the graveyard, like a super trooper.
It caught my eye and provoked some thoughts of life after death, hence this capture, posting to Flickr to archive the moment and enjoy time and again.
Resurrection
Resurrection is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus, an example of resurrection, is the central focus of Christianity.
As a religious concept, it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The resurrection of the dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions.
Some believe the soul is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected.
Christian theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body into Heaven, or a material resurrection with a restored human body. While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.
There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.
Etymology
Resurrection, from the Latin noun resurrectio -onis, from the verb rego, "to make straight, rule" + preposition sub, "under", altered to subrigo and contracted to surgo, surrexi, surrectum + preposition re-, "again", thus literally "a straightening from under again".
Religion
Ancient religions in the Near East
See also: Dying-and-rising god
The concept of resurrection is found in the writings of some ancient non-Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. A few extant Egyptian and Canaanite writings allude to dying and rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Sir James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough relates to these dying and rising gods, but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources. Taking a more positive position, Tryggve Mettinger argues in his recent book that the category of rise and return to life is significant for the following deities: Ugaritic Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Osiris and Dumuzi.
Ancient Greek religion
In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.
Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul. The philosophical idea of an immortal soul was a later invention, which, although influential, never had a breakthrough in the Greek world. As may be witnessed even into the Christian era, not least by the complaints of various philosophers over popular beliefs, traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.
This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification of this first king of Rome, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."
The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21). There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption.
The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:
"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this."
Christianity
Resurrection of Jesus
In Christianity, resurrection most critically concerns the Resurrection of Jesus, but also includes the resurrection of Judgment Day known as the Resurrection of the Dead by those Christians who subscribe to the Nicene Creed (which is the majority or Mainstream Christianity), as well as the resurrection miracles done by Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament. Some churches distinguish between raising the dead (a resumption of mortal life) and a resurrection (the beginning of an immortal life).
Resurrection of Jesus
Christians regard the resurrection of Jesus as the central doctrine in Christianity. Others take the Incarnation of Jesus to be more central; however, it is the miracles – and particularly his Resurrection – which provide validation of his incarnation. According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Resurrection
Miracles of Jesus § Resurrection of the dead
During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his death, Jesus commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead. In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death. These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of those previously dead came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many.
Similar resurrections are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter allegedly raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul the Apostle revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies.[citation needed] St Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of Picts .
Most Christians understand these miraculous resurrections to be of a different nature than the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead. The raising of Lazarus and others from the dead could also be called "resuscitations" or "reanimations", since the life given to them is presumably temporary in nature—there is no suggestion in the Bible or hagiographic traditions that these people became truly immortal. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead will abolish death once and for all (see Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:26, 2 Timothy 1:10, Revelation 21:4).
Resurrection of the Dead
Christianity started as a religious movement within 1st-century Judaism (late Second Temple Judaism), and it retains what the New Testament itself claims was the Pharisaic belief in the afterlife and Resurrection of the Dead. Whereas this belief was only one of many beliefs held about the World to Come in Second Temple Judaism, and was notably rejected by both the Sadducees and, according to Josephus, the Pharisees, this belief became dominant within Early Christianity and already in the Gospels of Luke and John included an insistence on the resurrection of the flesh. This was later rejected by gnostic teachings, which instead continued the Pauline insistence that flesh and bones had no place in heaven.
Most modern Christian churches continue to uphold the belief that there will be a final Resurrection of the Dead and World to Come, perhaps as prophesied by the Apostle Paul when he said: "...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." (Acts 17:31 KJV) and "...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts 24:15 KJV).
Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, and Jesus's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up.
Difference From Platonic philosophy
In Platonic philosophy and other Greek philosophical thought, at death the soul was said to leave the inferior body behind. The idea that Jesus was resurrected spiritually rather than physically even gained popularity among some Christian teachers, whom the author of 1 John declared to be antichrists. Similar beliefs appeared in the early church as Gnosticism. However, in Luke 24:39, the resurrected Jesus expressly states "behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."
Islam
Belief in the "Day of Resurrection", Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة) is also crucial for Muslims. They believe the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Qur'an and the hadith, and also in the commentaries of scholars. The Qur'an emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.
Judaism and Samaritanism
There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead:
* The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24)
* Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16)
* A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21)
During the period of the Second Temple, there developed a diversity of beliefs concerning the resurrection. The concept of resurrection of the physical body is found in 2 Maccabees, according to which it will happen through recreation of the flesh.[17] Resurrection of the dead also appears in detail in the extra-canonical books of Enoch,[18] in Apocalypse of Baruch, and 2 Esdras. According to the British scholar in ancient Judaism Philip R. Davies, there is “little or no clear reference … either to immortality or to resurrection from the dead” in the Dead Sea scrolls texts.
Both Josephus and the New Testament record that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Testament claims that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but does not specify whether this included the flesh or not. According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people will be reincarnated and “pass into other bodies,” while “the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment.” Paul, who also was a Pharisee, said that at the resurrection what is "sown as a natural body is raised a spiritual body." Jubilees seems to refer to the resurrection of the soul only, or to a more general idea of an immortal soul.
According to Herbert C. Brichto, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".
According to Brichto, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers, the common Grave of humans. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141:7, Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others. According to Brichto, other Biblical names for Sheol were: Abaddon (ruin), found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor (the pit), found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat (corruption), found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.
Zen Buddhism
There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in Chan or Zen tradition. One is the legend of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.
The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (J., Fuke) and is recounted in the Record of Linji (J., Rinzai). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style so it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".
"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master [Linji] made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.
The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."
Technological resurrection
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation.
However, the idea of cryonics also includes preservation of people long after death because of the possibility that brain encoding memory structure and personality may still persist or be inferable in the future. Whether sufficient brain information still exists for cryonics to successfully preserve may be intrinsically unprovable by present knowledge. Therefore, most proponents of cryonics see it as an intervention with prospects for success that vary widely depending on circumstances.
Russian Cosmist Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov advocated resurrection of the dead using scientific methods. Fedorov tried to plan specific actions for scientific research of the possibility of restoring life and making it infinite. His first project is connected with collecting and synthesizing decayed remains of dead based on "knowledge and control over all atoms and molecules of the world".
The second method described by Fedorov is genetic-hereditary. The revival could be done successively in the ancestral line: sons and daughters restore their fathers and mothers, they in turn restore their parents and so on. This means restoring the ancestors using the hereditary information that they passed on to their children. Using this genetic method it is only possible to create a genetic twin of the dead person. It is necessary to give back the revived person his old mind, his personality. Fedorov speculates about the idea of "radial images" that may contain the personalities of the people and survive after death. Nevertheless, Fedorov noted that even if a soul is destroyed after death, Man will learn to restore it whole by mastering the forces of decay and fragmentation.
In his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, American physicist Frank J. Tipler, an expert on the general theory of relativity, presented his Omega Point Theory which outlines how a resurrection of the dead could take place at the end of the cosmos. He posits that humans will evolve into robots which will turn the entire cosmos into a supercomputer which will, shortly before the big crunch, perform the resurrection within its cyberspace, reconstructing formerly dead humans (from information captured by the supercomputer from the past light cone of the cosmos) as avatars within its metaverse.
David Deutsch, British physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum computing, agrees with Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the idea of resurrecting deceased people with the help of quantum computer but he is critical of Tipler's theological views.
Italian physicist and computer scientist Giulio Prisco presents the idea of "quantum archaeology", "reconstructing the life, thoughts, memories, and feelings of any person in the past, up to any desired level of detail, and thus resurrecting the original person via 'copying to the future'".
In his book Mind Children, roboticist Hans Moravec proposed that a future supercomputer might be able to resurrect long-dead minds from the information that still survived. For example, this information can be in the form of memories, filmstrips, medical records, and DNA.
Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation.
In their science fiction novel The Light of Other Days, Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter imagine a future civilization resurrecting the dead of past ages by reaching into the past, through micro wormholes and with nanorobots, to download full snapshots of brain states and memories.
Both the Church of Perpetual Life and the Terasem Movement consider themselves transreligions and advocate for the use of technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan.
Zombies
A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) can be either a fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard. These latter are the original zombies, occurring in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo.
Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Zombie fiction is now a sizable subgenre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story.
Disappearances (as distinct from resurrection)
As knowledge of different religions has grown, so have claims of bodily disappearance of some religious and mythological figures. In ancient Greek religion, this was a way the gods made some physically immortal, including such figures as Cleitus, Ganymede, Menelaus, and Tithonus. After his death, Cycnus was changed into a swan and vanished. In his chapter on Romulus from Parallel Lives, Plutarch criticises the continuous belief in such disappearances, referring to the allegedly miraculous disappearance of the historical figures Romulus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, and Croesus. In ancient times, Greek and Roman pagan similarities were explained by the early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, as the work of demons, with the intention of leading Christians astray.
In somewhat recent years it has been learned that Gesar, the Savior of Tibet, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground. The body of the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers were left in place of his dead body.
Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern lists many religious figures whose bodies disappear, or have more than one sepulchre. B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.[46] It has been thought that teachings regarding the purity and incorruptibility of the hero's human body are linked to this phenomenon. Perhaps, this is also to deter the practice of disturbing and collecting the hero's remains. They are safely protected if they have disappeared.
The first such case mentioned in the Bible is that of Enoch (son of Jared, great-grandfather of Noah, and father of Methuselah). Enoch is said to have lived a life where he "walked with God", after which "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:1–18).
In Deuteronomy (34:6) Moses is secretly buried. Elijah vanishes in a whirlwind 2 Kings (2:11). After hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish. Mark (9:2–8), Matthew (17:1–8) and Luke (9:28–33). The last time he is seen, Luke (24:51) alone tells of Jesus leaving his disciples by ascending into the sky.
St Machar's Cathedral (or, more formally, the Cathedral Church of St Machar) is a Church of Scotland church in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is located to the north of the city centre, in the former burgh of Old Aberdeen. Technically, St Machar's is no longer a cathedral but rather a high kirk, as it has not been the seat of a bishopsince 1690.
St Machar is said to have been a companion of St Columba on his journey to Iona. A fourteenth-century legend tells how God (or St Columba) told Machar to establish a church where a river bends into the shape of a bishop's crosier before flowing into the sea.
The River Don bends in this way just below where the Cathedral now stands. According to legend, St Machar founded a site of worship in Old Aberdeen in about 580. Machar's church was superseded by a Norman cathedral in 1131, shortly after David I transferred the See from Mortlach to Aberdeen.
Almost nothing of that original cathedral survives; a lozenge-decorated base for a capital supporting one of the architraves can be seen in the Charter Room in the present church.
After the execution of William Wallace in 1305, his body was cut up and sent to different corners of the country to warn other dissenters. His left quarter ended up in Aberdeen and is buried in the walls of the cathedral.
At the end of the thirteenth century Bishop Henry Cheyne decided to extend the church, but the work was interrupted by the Scottish Wars of Independence. Cheyne's progress included piers for an extended choir at the transept crossing. These pillars, with decorated capitals of red sandstone, are still visible at the east end of the present church.
Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.
Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.
Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.
The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.
The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.
The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.
The Cathedral is a fine example of a fortified kirk, with twin towers built in the fashion of fourteenth-century tower houses. Their walls have the strength to hold spiral staircases to the upper floors and battlements. The spires which presently crown the
Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.
Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.
Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.
The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.
The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.
The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.
Bishops Gavin Dunbar and Alexander Galloway built the western towers and installed the heraldic ceiling, featuring 48 coats of arms in three rows of sixteen. Among those shown are:
* Pope Leo X's coat of arms in the centre, followed in order of importance by those of the Scottish archbishops and bishops.
* the Prior of St Andrews, representing other Church orders.
* King's College, the westernmost shield.
* Henry VIII of England, James V of Scotland and multiple instances for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain, Aragon, Navarre and Sicily at the time the ceiling was created.
* St Margaret of Scotland, possibly as a stand-in for Margaret Tudor, James V's mother, whose own arms would have been the marshalled arms of England and Scotland.
* the arms of Aberdeen and of the families Gordon, Lindsay, Hay and Keith.
The ceiling is set off by a frieze which starts at the north-west corner of the nave and lists the bishops of the see from Nechtan in 1131 to William Gordon at the Reformation in 1560. This is followed by the Scottish monarchs from Máel Coluim II to Mary, Queen of Scots.
Notable figures buried in the cathedral cemetery include the author J.J. Bell, Robert Brough, Gavin Dunbar, Robert Laws, a missionary to Malawi and William Ogilvie of Pittensear—the ‘rebel professor’.
There has been considerable investment in recent years in restoration work and the improvement of the display of historic artefacts at the Cathedral.
The battlements of the western towers, incomplete for several centuries, have been renewed to their original height and design, greatly improving the appearance of the exterior. Meanwhile, within the building, a number of important stone monuments have been displayed to advantage.
These include a possibly 7th-8th century cross-slab from Seaton (the only surviving evidence from Aberdeen of Christianity at such an early date); a rare 12th century sanctuary cross-head; and several well-preserved late medieval effigies of Cathedral clergy, valuable for their detailed representation of contemporary dress.
A notable modern addition to the Cathedral's artistic treasures is a carved wooden triptych commemorating John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen (d. 1395), author of The Brus.
Cray 2 Supercomputer for the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View California.
Credit: NASA
Image Number: AC87-0093-3
Date: November 30, 1986
KITT or K.I.T.T. is the short name of two fictional characters from the adventure franchise Knight Rider. While having the same acronym, the KITTs are two different entities: one known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which appeared in the original TV series Knight Rider.
During filming, KITT was voiced by a script assistant, with voice actors recording KITT's dialog later. David Hasselhoff and original series voice actor William Daniels first met each other six months after the series began filming. KITT's evil twin is KARR, whose name is an acronym of Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR was voiced first by Peter Cullen and later by Paul Frees in seasons one and three, respectively, of the NBC original TV series Knight Rider.
In the original Knight Rider series, the character of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was physically embodied as a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The "brain" of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, which is the centre of a "self-aware" cybernetic logic module. This allows KITT to think, learn, communicate and interact with humans. He is also capable of independent thought and action. He has an ego that is easy to bruise and displays a very sensitive, but kind and dryly humorous personality.
Combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations, scientists have found a vast wave of hot gas in the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster. Spanning some 200,000 light-years, the wave is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The researchers say the wave formed billions of years ago, after a small galaxy cluster grazed Perseus and caused its vast supply of gas to slosh around an enormous volume of space.
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures bound by gravity in the universe today. Some 11 million light-years across and located about 240 million light-years away, the Perseus galaxy cluster is named for its host constellation. Like all galaxy clusters, most of its observable matter takes the form of a pervasive gas averaging tens of millio ns of degrees, so hot it only glows in X-rays.
Chandra observations have revealed a variety of structures in this gas, from vast bubbles blown by the supermassive black hole in the cluster's central galaxy, NGC 1275, to an enigmatic concave feature known as the "bay."
To investigate the bay, researchers combined a total of 10.4 days of high-resolution Chandra data with 5.8 days of wide-field observations at energies between 700 and 7,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light has energies between about two and three electron volts. The scientists then filtered the Chandra data to highlight the edges of structures and reveal subtle details. Next, they compared the edge-enhanced Perseus image to computer simulations of merging galaxy clusters run on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center.
One simulation seemed to explain the formation of the bay. In it, gas in a large cluster similar to Perseus has settled into two components, a "cold" centr al region with temperatures around 54 million degrees Fahrenheit (30 million Celsius) and a surrounding zone where the gas is three times hotter. Then a small galaxy cluster containing about a thousand times the mass of the Milky Way skirts the larger cluster, missing its center by around 650,000 light-years.
The flyby creates a gravitational disturbance that churns up the gas like cream stirred into coffee, creating an expanding spiral of cold gas. After about 2.5 billion years, when the gas has risen nearly 500,000 light-years from the center, vast waves form and roll at its periphery for hundreds of millions of years before dissipating.
These waves are giant versions of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, which show up wherever there's a velocity difference across the interface of two fluids, such as wind blowing over water. They can be found in the ocean, in cloud formations on Earth and other planets, in plasma near Earth, and even on the sun.
Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/scientists-find-giant-w...
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Music Credits: “The Undiscovered” from Killer Tracks
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Playing around with what Skynet might look like because Terminator Salvation was a bit uninspiring in that department. I want to improve the scene where Skynet informes Marcus of his true identity. More to come.
Influenced by the CERN supercollider (real supercomputers are boring, rows and rows of cabinets, but that thing looks wicked). The design is being reworked.
Brave-ish pilot Qurodo Xaggins enters the dangerous Mordor Nebula in his Sandstone < type fighter, Great Eagle.
He must shoot the One Lantern into the star forming at the center of the nebula so that the malevolent supercomputer within, Saurtron, will at last be destroyed.
Within the nebula, Saurtron's formidable army of Cyborcs and the chilling Nazgûliens await Qurodo...
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All because someone mentioned hobbit starfighters in the 14x14x6 SSC thread, which just so happens to be what this is for. (And honestly, a hobbit was all I could fit in that tiny cockpit. XD)
Enjoy. :)
Size comparison with modern Nimitz class supercarrier for scale. (Nimitz should be very close on length and beam, but height and finer detail at this size are tricky. As is hull shaping on such an uneven design, especially at this small size. But the point was to show what we refer to as "perfect grade, which is 1 stud = 10 meters, hence this 184.4 stud long ship would be 1,844 meters long at this scale.)
Name: S.S. Bessemer
Registration Number: KCC-1894 (Kolter Construction Contract Number 1,894)
Affiliation: Kolter Mining, Refining, and Fuel.
Class Name: Bessemer class
Type: Deep Space Mining Operations Flagship
Commissioned: Circa late 2500’s, post recent major conflict
Specifications:
Length: 1,844 meters (184.4 studs, 58.1 inches, 4.83 feet, 147.5 cm model)
Width: 503 meters (50.3 studs, 15.8 inches, 40.2 cm model)
Height: 484 meters, 398 meters without dorsal comms array, (48.4 studs, 15.2 inches, 38.7 cm model)
Crew: 2,950 standard complement + capacity for crew families, as well as smaller guest quarters for up to 2,000 additional personnel to be moved to/from mining operations.
Armament: 1 super-heavy coaxial particle beam cannon, (primarily for asteroid mining, but also more than capable of defensive action,) 4 dual-mounted heavy particle cannon turrets, 8 dual-mounted medium particle cannon turrets, 2 coaxial fore medium particle cannons, 80 quad-mounted 80mm anti-fighter flak railgun turrets.
Defensive systems:
Hull: Super-heavy steel alloy hull with carbon nanotube/buckypaper composite layers as spall lining.
Armor plating: steel, titanium alloy, tungsten, ceramic, and carbon nanotube composite armor layers against asteroids/other space debris, kinetic weapons, kinetic spalling, particle, laser, and plasma fire. Thick composite armor provides excellent survivability, but with very high mass. Some battleships are less armored than this ship.
Bulkheads: Extensive titanium bulkhead support network.
Structural integrity field: High power system designed for significant cargo mass placing stress on the frame, or to withstand asteroid impacts to the hull.
Shielding: Internally housed high power adaptive particle field repulsing shielding system capable of surviving significant punishment. Some older battleships have less robust shielding.
Powerplant: 1 primary matter-antimatter reactor with extensive fuel reserves, 2 secondary fusion reactors with extensive fuel reserves. Multiple massive power capacitors. Extensive heatinks.
Propulsion: 1 massive primary fusion engine for sub-lightspeed travel, 1 internal FTL core capable of moderate FTL speed, long range travel, and 32 large reaction control thrusters for slow but dependable below light speed maneuvering.
Computer systems: Single supercomputer core with onboard Virtual Intelligence system.
Comms and Sensors: Local and FTL comms arrays. Radar, LIDAR, infrared, multi-spectral, and additional other local area sensors systems, along with extensive FTL sensors.
Additional Systems: High power artificial singularity for both artificial gravity generation and inertial dampening, allowing for 1G gravity even when hauling an entire cargo hold full of heavy-metal. 6 massive blast furnaces for refining metal ore, an enormous central cargo hold system, 4 fuel refining tanks, 4 massive fuel storage tanks, and an internal rail system for moving ore and personnel.
Embarked Craft: 2 Thunderbird class super-heavy cargo/personnel shuttles, 2 Hurricane class heavy cargo/personnel shuttles, 20 heavy mining drones, 24 medium mining drones, 2 gunships of variable class, 2 heavy fighter/bombers of variable class, potential for multiple additional light shuttles and fighters.
Background: After seeing both the devastation to outlying areas of space caused by the recent Great War, and the corruption within the Federal Defense Navy (working title) Admiralty, Captain David Courtland retired honorably from military service and went to helm his family’s generations old mining company, Kolter Mining, Refining, and Fuel; one of the largest mining companies in United Earth Federation space. (Working title.)
He wanted to take the company, already a reputable and successful business, in a new direction. That direction was the disputed, war-torn, no-man’s-waste-land of space known as The Divide, (working title) situated between the major powers of the galaxy. Life in The Divide was desperate, with little hope for the many people stranded in the ruins, poverty, and crime infested land. None of the major powers could intervene without starting another territorial war, and as such, pirates, gangs, and unscrupulous mega-corporations ruled supreme.
Courtland wanted to make a difference to this sorrowful place, and with trillions of credits and a Fortunes 1,000 company at his control, he had the means to at least begin; although even he lacked the ability to single-handedly remedy the myriad of woes The Divide faced.
David’s plan was simple, to move significant mining operations to The Divide, thus:
1: Creating new, safe, well-paying, good jobs for both an area and an industry that seldom offered such things.
2: Allowing for the placement of company security forces to deter pirate activity around major settlements.
3: Providing tax-free revenue to fund new schools, hospitals, food, water, shetler, and other charitable activities in The Divide.
But to do it, he required a new kind of mining vessel, as well as additional security forces. Thus he contacted Nelson Heavy Industries, who in turn partnered with AxonTech Interstellar Systems for some components, to place an order for a line of custom massive deep space mining operation flagships with enhanced combat capabilities and capable of operating in the remotest reaches of space for months or even years at a time. And so the Bessemer class was born.
The Bessemer class is unlike any mining vessel ever produced before it. Certainly significantly larger mining ships existed, but these were typically little more than unarmed, slow moving things with small engines; closer to a semi-mobile starbase than a combination frontier battleship/mining vessel. But Courtland required something unique. Something that could move faster, survive more punishment, and something that had teeth; not a fragile, barely moving thing that would only sit in safe areas of space. Courtland needed a mighty sheepdog in a world of sheep and wolves.
Bessemer class vessels are 1,844 meters long, and possess more armor, firepower, and shielding than many pre Great War battleship designs. Almost any pirate or local gang would be terrified of the sight of over a mile of steel and particle cannons; clad in Kolter white, green, and yellow.
But the Bessemer, and others of her class, are not merely warships masquerading as civilian craft. They are heavy mining machines that live up to their name; a steel producing process that revolutionized the industry of Earth some seven hundred years earlier. The Bessemer and her sister ships are capable of blasting metal-rich asteroids to bits with their coaxial mining particle beam cannon, and then having swarms of automated mining drones devour any valuable deposits within before unloading the materials into the Bessemer’s ore hold for the internal rail system to run any raw ore through her six corvette sized forges, and then having the refined metal shunted to her cavernous lower hold, while any waste material from the refining process is vented directly into space.
Ships of this class are outfitted with a sizable hangar, advanced sensor suite, extensive internal cargo bays, and large cargo pod clamps that allow it to act in the capacity of miner, defensive ship, operations command center, and even freighter and personnel carrier should usual shipping to outlying mining sites be disrupted.
But capable as they are, these are not the spartan mining vessels with unlivable working conditions that some shady companies have been known to operate. These space-faring cities of steel feature robust safety systems, spacious and comfortable crew quarters, multiple restaurants, multiple mess-halls, multiple shops for clothing, food, electronics, and other items, an arcade, multiple gyms with weights, various weight and cardio machines, martial arts areas, gymnastics equipment, along with a walking track, a small bowling alley, an olympic sized swimming pool, a multi-sport stadium, a greenhouse, hydroponics bays, a small stage/concert area, several computer labs, a library, a small movie theater, crew lounges and break areas, a salon/spa, a bar/club, chapels, classroom/daycare areas, office areas, as well as repair stations, enough dry and frozen storage to keep everyone fed for extended missions, advanced workshops, astrotography, laboratories, guest bunk-rooms, and a starbase grade medical center.
Not everyone is happy about Kolter Mining’s efforts, however. While Courtland founded the Kolter Foundation to aid those in need, he also lobbied for what came to be known as the Kolter Bill to be passed. Mining employees out in the colonies loved the added protections this afforded them. But the executives of Kolter’s rival mining companies operating out of Earth’s colony worlds quickly found themselves facing laws that favored the profits of Kolter and their already developed safety systems and excellent treatment of employees. What’s more, the Federal Defense Navy Admiralty have been continually frustrated that rather than helping to line their pockets as part of the military industrial complex, Courtland has been working tirelessly to reveal their corruption and hidden support of crime in outlying areas of space.
What’s more, there are even rumors that Courtland is now working with, and possibly even helping to fund, a mercenary vigilante unit out in The Divide known as the Phoenix Command Group, founded by Jonathan Scarlett, another former Federal Defense Navy Captain who ran afoul of the Admiralty.
The wealthy and corrupt among the Admiralty, military industrial complex, crime syndicates, and corrupt businesses running shady operations out in The Divide are deeply troubled by these rumors. But those who are now citizens of no nation, and who have known nothing but hopelessness and need for years, have a slight spark of hope rising like a Phoenix.
IRL info: This digital SHIP was made in Bricklink’s Studio software from September 11th to September 30th, 2021. I did not originally plan to participate in SHIPtember, but I couldn’t resist. It is 184 studs (58.1 inches) long, 50 studs wide, and 48 studs high. It is comprised of 23,470 pieces, which I believe makes it my highest piece-count SHIP to date, and means that the model itself has a mass of 973.502 ounces, or 60.843 pounds, or 27.597 kilograms, which most likely makes it my heaviest SHIP as well as my most piece intensive. (I really need to learn to build a little more hollow.) Note that it uses all real pieces/colors that are available for sale on Bricklink. (Albeit at a price that makes attempting to build it in physical bricks highly impractical.) It is 100% connected, and should be at least somewhat stable in real life. I would want to reinforce the fore-end with more Technic, and switch out the longest Lego Technic axle holding the engine for an aftermarket stainless steel version. I cannot guarantee that various sections built out from the main SNOT and Technic frame would be totally stable without slight redesign of a few bits. It would also require a hefty display stand of some kind.
The current pictures are WIP to show the completed status of the build itself. Better renders done by importing the Studio build into Mecabricks, replacing any pieces that fail to load or change position, and then exporting to Blender for higher quality rendering, and finally hopefully doing some cool backgrounds with GIMP, will hopefully follow before whatever October picture deadline is decided on. Please do not use these early pictures in the poster if time remains, as I hope to provide better ones. Thank you for reading this lengthy description. Have a cookie.
If this ship had a theme song, this magnificent piece by Clamavi De Profundis would be it: youtu.be/Xm96Cqu4Ils
Hurricane Sandy’s near-surface winds are visible in this computer simulation that runs from Oct. 26 to Oct. 31, 2012.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Center for Climate SimulationVideo and images courtesy of NASA/GSFC/William Putman
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A NASA computer model simulates the astonishing track and forceful winds of Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast late in 2012’s Atlantic hurricane season, causing 159 deaths and $70 billion in damages. Days before landfall, forecasts of its trajectory were still being made. Some computer models showed that a trough in the jet stream would kick the monster storm away from land and out to sea. Among the earliest to predict its true course was NASA’s GEOS-5 global atmosphere model. The model works by dividing Earth’s atmosphere into a virtual grid of stacked boxes. A supercomputer then solves mathematical equations inside each box to create a weather forecast predicting Sandy’s structure, path and other traits. The NASA model not only produced an accurate track of Sandy, but also captured fine-scale details of the storm’s changing intensity and winds. Watch the video to see it for yourself.
For more information, please visit:http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/atmosphericassim/tracking_hurricanes/
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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For the people who didn't succed to get them previously this year, I decide to put the instructions for the Space trek mini models for sale. See here.
I haven't had a lot of time to work on stuff coz there was a huge pile of work waiting for me back from vacation in Guam. The price we pay I guess. Anyway just a quick one. This is just an underground pedestrian intersection that I thought looked like the core of come supercomputer out of a movie like THX1138 or 2001. Ortoned this sucker to the limit just because I could. Ahh, that felt better.
Explored July 30th
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.
Visiting St Machars Cathedral today 12/5/2018, I noticed this beautiful Blossom Tree dominating the centre of the grave yard in amongst graves dating back hundreds of years , made me think life still goes on, no matter who has passed away, rank, position, fame , recognition, money etc does not matter, when its our time to fall asleep , the world will still turn and life will go on, forever.
Resurrection
Resurrection is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus, an example of resurrection, is the central focus of Christianity.
As a religious concept, it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The resurrection of the dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions.
Some believe the soul is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected.
Christian theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body into Heaven, or a material resurrection with a restored human body. While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.
There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.
Etymology
Resurrection, from the Latin noun resurrectio -onis, from the verb rego, "to make straight, rule" + preposition sub, "under", altered to subrigo and contracted to surgo, surrexi, surrectum + preposition re-, "again", thus literally "a straightening from under again".
Religion
Ancient religions in the Near East
See also: Dying-and-rising god
The concept of resurrection is found in the writings of some ancient non-Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. A few extant Egyptian and Canaanite writings allude to dying and rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Sir James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough relates to these dying and rising gods, but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources. Taking a more positive position, Tryggve Mettinger argues in his recent book that the category of rise and return to life is significant for the following deities: Ugaritic Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Osiris and Dumuzi.
Ancient Greek religion
In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.
Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul. The philosophical idea of an immortal soul was a later invention, which, although influential, never had a breakthrough in the Greek world. As may be witnessed even into the Christian era, not least by the complaints of various philosophers over popular beliefs, traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.
This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification of this first king of Rome, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."
The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21). There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption.
The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:
"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this."
Christianity
Resurrection of Jesus
In Christianity, resurrection most critically concerns the Resurrection of Jesus, but also includes the resurrection of Judgment Day known as the Resurrection of the Dead by those Christians who subscribe to the Nicene Creed (which is the majority or Mainstream Christianity), as well as the resurrection miracles done by Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament. Some churches distinguish between raising the dead (a resumption of mortal life) and a resurrection (the beginning of an immortal life).
Resurrection of Jesus
Christians regard the resurrection of Jesus as the central doctrine in Christianity. Others take the Incarnation of Jesus to be more central; however, it is the miracles – and particularly his Resurrection – which provide validation of his incarnation. According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Resurrection
Miracles of Jesus § Resurrection of the dead
During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his death, Jesus commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead. In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death. These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of those previously dead came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many.
Similar resurrections are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter allegedly raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul the Apostle revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies.[citation needed] St Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of Picts .
Most Christians understand these miraculous resurrections to be of a different nature than the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead. The raising of Lazarus and others from the dead could also be called "resuscitations" or "reanimations", since the life given to them is presumably temporary in nature—there is no suggestion in the Bible or hagiographic traditions that these people became truly immortal. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead will abolish death once and for all (see Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:26, 2 Timothy 1:10, Revelation 21:4).
Resurrection of the Dead
Christianity started as a religious movement within 1st-century Judaism (late Second Temple Judaism), and it retains what the New Testament itself claims was the Pharisaic belief in the afterlife and Resurrection of the Dead. Whereas this belief was only one of many beliefs held about the World to Come in Second Temple Judaism, and was notably rejected by both the Sadducees and, according to Josephus, the Pharisees, this belief became dominant within Early Christianity and already in the Gospels of Luke and John included an insistence on the resurrection of the flesh. This was later rejected by gnostic teachings, which instead continued the Pauline insistence that flesh and bones had no place in heaven.
Most modern Christian churches continue to uphold the belief that there will be a final Resurrection of the Dead and World to Come, perhaps as prophesied by the Apostle Paul when he said: "...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." (Acts 17:31 KJV) and "...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts 24:15 KJV).
Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, and Jesus's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up.
Difference From Platonic philosophy
In Platonic philosophy and other Greek philosophical thought, at death the soul was said to leave the inferior body behind. The idea that Jesus was resurrected spiritually rather than physically even gained popularity among some Christian teachers, whom the author of 1 John declared to be antichrists. Similar beliefs appeared in the early church as Gnosticism. However, in Luke 24:39, the resurrected Jesus expressly states "behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."
Islam
Belief in the "Day of Resurrection", Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة) is also crucial for Muslims. They believe the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Qur'an and the hadith, and also in the commentaries of scholars. The Qur'an emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.
Judaism and Samaritanism
There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead:
* The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24)
* Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16)
* A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21)
During the period of the Second Temple, there developed a diversity of beliefs concerning the resurrection. The concept of resurrection of the physical body is found in 2 Maccabees, according to which it will happen through recreation of the flesh.[17] Resurrection of the dead also appears in detail in the extra-canonical books of Enoch,[18] in Apocalypse of Baruch, and 2 Esdras. According to the British scholar in ancient Judaism Philip R. Davies, there is “little or no clear reference … either to immortality or to resurrection from the dead” in the Dead Sea scrolls texts.
Both Josephus and the New Testament record that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Testament claims that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but does not specify whether this included the flesh or not. According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people will be reincarnated and “pass into other bodies,” while “the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment.” Paul, who also was a Pharisee, said that at the resurrection what is "sown as a natural body is raised a spiritual body." Jubilees seems to refer to the resurrection of the soul only, or to a more general idea of an immortal soul.
According to Herbert C. Brichto, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".
According to Brichto, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers, the common Grave of humans. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141:7, Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others. According to Brichto, other Biblical names for Sheol were: Abaddon (ruin), found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor (the pit), found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat (corruption), found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.
Zen Buddhism
There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in Chan or Zen tradition. One is the legend of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.
The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (J., Fuke) and is recounted in the Record of Linji (J., Rinzai). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style so it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".
"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master [Linji] made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.
The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."
Technological resurrection
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation.
However, the idea of cryonics also includes preservation of people long after death because of the possibility that brain encoding memory structure and personality may still persist or be inferable in the future. Whether sufficient brain information still exists for cryonics to successfully preserve may be intrinsically unprovable by present knowledge. Therefore, most proponents of cryonics see it as an intervention with prospects for success that vary widely depending on circumstances.
Russian Cosmist Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov advocated resurrection of the dead using scientific methods. Fedorov tried to plan specific actions for scientific research of the possibility of restoring life and making it infinite. His first project is connected with collecting and synthesizing decayed remains of dead based on "knowledge and control over all atoms and molecules of the world".
The second method described by Fedorov is genetic-hereditary. The revival could be done successively in the ancestral line: sons and daughters restore their fathers and mothers, they in turn restore their parents and so on. This means restoring the ancestors using the hereditary information that they passed on to their children. Using this genetic method it is only possible to create a genetic twin of the dead person. It is necessary to give back the revived person his old mind, his personality. Fedorov speculates about the idea of "radial images" that may contain the personalities of the people and survive after death. Nevertheless, Fedorov noted that even if a soul is destroyed after death, Man will learn to restore it whole by mastering the forces of decay and fragmentation.
In his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, American physicist Frank J. Tipler, an expert on the general theory of relativity, presented his Omega Point Theory which outlines how a resurrection of the dead could take place at the end of the cosmos. He posits that humans will evolve into robots which will turn the entire cosmos into a supercomputer which will, shortly before the big crunch, perform the resurrection within its cyberspace, reconstructing formerly dead humans (from information captured by the supercomputer from the past light cone of the cosmos) as avatars within its metaverse.
David Deutsch, British physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum computing, agrees with Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the idea of resurrecting deceased people with the help of quantum computer but he is critical of Tipler's theological views.
Italian physicist and computer scientist Giulio Prisco presents the idea of "quantum archaeology", "reconstructing the life, thoughts, memories, and feelings of any person in the past, up to any desired level of detail, and thus resurrecting the original person via 'copying to the future'".
In his book Mind Children, roboticist Hans Moravec proposed that a future supercomputer might be able to resurrect long-dead minds from the information that still survived. For example, this information can be in the form of memories, filmstrips, medical records, and DNA.
Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation.
In their science fiction novel The Light of Other Days, Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter imagine a future civilization resurrecting the dead of past ages by reaching into the past, through micro wormholes and with nanorobots, to download full snapshots of brain states and memories.
Both the Church of Perpetual Life and the Terasem Movement consider themselves transreligions and advocate for the use of technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan.
Zombies
A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) can be either a fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard. These latter are the original zombies, occurring in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo.
Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Zombie fiction is now a sizable subgenre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story.
Disappearances (as distinct from resurrection)
As knowledge of different religions has grown, so have claims of bodily disappearance of some religious and mythological figures. In ancient Greek religion, this was a way the gods made some physically immortal, including such figures as Cleitus, Ganymede, Menelaus, and Tithonus. After his death, Cycnus was changed into a swan and vanished. In his chapter on Romulus from Parallel Lives, Plutarch criticises the continuous belief in such disappearances, referring to the allegedly miraculous disappearance of the historical figures Romulus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, and Croesus. In ancient times, Greek and Roman pagan similarities were explained by the early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, as the work of demons, with the intention of leading Christians astray.
In somewhat recent years it has been learned that Gesar, the Savior of Tibet, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground. The body of the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers were left in place of his dead body.
Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern lists many religious figures whose bodies disappear, or have more than one sepulchre. B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.[46] It has been thought that teachings regarding the purity and incorruptibility of the hero's human body are linked to this phenomenon. Perhaps, this is also to deter the practice of disturbing and collecting the hero's remains. They are safely protected if they have disappeared.
The first such case mentioned in the Bible is that of Enoch (son of Jared, great-grandfather of Noah, and father of Methuselah). Enoch is said to have lived a life where he "walked with God", after which "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:1–18).
In Deuteronomy (34:6) Moses is secretly buried. Elijah vanishes in a whirlwind 2 Kings (2:11). After hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish. Mark (9:2–8), Matthew (17:1–8) and Luke (9:28–33). The last time he is seen, Luke (24:51) alone tells of Jesus leaving his disciples by ascending into the sky.
St Machar's Cathedral (or, more formally, the Cathedral Church of St Machar) is a Church of Scotland church in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is located to the north of the city centre, in the former burgh of Old Aberdeen. Technically, St Machar's is no longer a cathedral but rather a high kirk, as it has not been the seat of a bishopsince 1690.
St Machar is said to have been a companion of St Columba on his journey to Iona. A fourteenth-century legend tells how God (or St Columba) told Machar to establish a church where a river bends into the shape of a bishop's crosier before flowing into the sea.
The River Don bends in this way just below where the Cathedral now stands. According to legend, St Machar founded a site of worship in Old Aberdeen in about 580. Machar's church was superseded by a Norman cathedral in 1131, shortly after David I transferred the See from Mortlach to Aberdeen.
Almost nothing of that original cathedral survives; a lozenge-decorated base for a capital supporting one of the architraves can be seen in the Charter Room in the present church.
After the execution of William Wallace in 1305, his body was cut up and sent to different corners of the country to warn other dissenters. His left quarter ended up in Aberdeen and is buried in the walls of the cathedral.
At the end of the thirteenth century Bishop Henry Cheyne decided to extend the church, but the work was interrupted by the Scottish Wars of Independence. Cheyne's progress included piers for an extended choir at the transept crossing. These pillars, with decorated capitals of red sandstone, are still visible at the east end of the present church.
Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.
Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.
Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.
The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.
The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.
The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.
The Cathedral is a fine example of a fortified kirk, with twin towers built in the fashion of fourteenth-century tower houses. Their walls have the strength to hold spiral staircases to the upper floors and battlements. The spires which presently crown the
Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.
Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.
Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.
The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.
The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.
The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.
Bishops Gavin Dunbar and Alexander Galloway built the western towers and installed the heraldic ceiling, featuring 48 coats of arms in three rows of sixteen. Among those shown are:
* Pope Leo X's coat of arms in the centre, followed in order of importance by those of the Scottish archbishops and bishops.
* the Prior of St Andrews, representing other Church orders.
* King's College, the westernmost shield.
* Henry VIII of England, James V of Scotland and multiple instances for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain, Aragon, Navarre and Sicily at the time the ceiling was created.
* St Margaret of Scotland, possibly as a stand-in for Margaret Tudor, James V's mother, whose own arms would have been the marshalled arms of England and Scotland.
* the arms of Aberdeen and of the families Gordon, Lindsay, Hay and Keith.
The ceiling is set off by a frieze which starts at the north-west corner of the nave and lists the bishops of the see from Nechtan in 1131 to William Gordon at the Reformation in 1560. This is followed by the Scottish monarchs from Máel Coluim II to Mary, Queen of Scots.
Notable figures buried in the cathedral cemetery include the author J.J. Bell, Robert Brough, Gavin Dunbar, Robert Laws, a missionary to Malawi and William Ogilvie of Pittensear—the ‘rebel professor’.
There has been considerable investment in recent years in restoration work and the improvement of the display of historic artefacts at the Cathedral.
The battlements of the western towers, incomplete for several centuries, have been renewed to their original height and design, greatly improving the appearance of the exterior. Meanwhile, within the building, a number of important stone monuments have been displayed to advantage.
These include a possibly 7th-8th century cross-slab from Seaton (the only surviving evidence from Aberdeen of Christianity at such an early date); a rare 12th century sanctuary cross-head; and several well-preserved late medieval effigies of Cathedral clergy, valuable for their detailed representation of contemporary dress.
A notable modern addition to the Cathedral's artistic treasures is a carved wooden triptych commemorating John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen (d. 1395), author of The Brus.
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.
NASA "Future Flight Central," the world's first full-scale virtual airport control tower, opened December 13, 1999 at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. Constructed at a cost of $10 million, the two story facility was jointly funded by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The facility is designed to test ways to solve potential air and ground traffic problems at commercial airports under realistic airport conditions and configurations. The facility provides an opportunity for airlines and airports to mitigate passenger delays by fine tuning airport hub operations, gate management, ramp movement procedures, and various other airport improvements. Twelve rear projection screens provide a seamless 360 degree high- resolution view of the airport or other screens being depicted. The imaging system, powered by supercomputers, provides a realistic view of weather conditions, environmental and seasonal effects and the movement of up to 200 active aircraft and ground vehicles.
Credit: NASA
Image Number: AC99-0095-7
Date: December 13, 1999
When the Mercury Transfer Module of the BepiColombo mission fires its electric propulsion thrusters an ion beam is extracted. This is created through the ionization of xenon propellant, generating the charged particles that can be accelerated further using an electric field.
Together with gravity assist flybys at Earth, Venus and Mercury, the thrust from the ion beam provides the means to travel to the innermost planet.
After escaping the pull of Earth’s gravity with the Ariane 5 launcher, the spacecraft is on an orbit around the Sun. The transfer module then has to use its thrusters to brake against the mighty pull of the Sun’s gravity. It also has to tune the shape of its orbit in order to make a series of nine gravity assist flybys at the planets before finally delivering the mission’s two science spacecraft into Mercury orbit.
This image is an excerpt from a supercomputer simulation that models the flow of plasma around the spacecraft just after the high energy ion beam is switched on. An outline of the composite spacecraft with its extended solar arrays is included for reference.
The simulation tracks the particles in the beam as well as those that diffuse around the spacecraft, which are created by the interaction of the high energy beam ions with the neutral xenon atoms that also flow out of the thruster. It shows the density of the plasma flowing around the spacecraft and its evolution: red represents high density, blue is low density (see animation for detailed scale).
Although the animation is several seconds long it has been slowed down, representing a mere eight milliseconds of real time – the time necessary for the plasma to reach a steady state.
The simulation was performed to demonstrate that the plasma produced by the thruster is not damaging to the spacecraft: its materials, including solar arrays or instruments, for example, or to the electric propulsion system itself. The simulations also confirmed there are no spurious or dangerous charging events.
Inflight measurements will verify the simulation results and help improve ways in which the generated plasma, spacecraft and space environment interactions can be better modelled.
BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and JAXA. After their seven-year interplanetary journey, the two science orbiters – the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter – will start their main mission to provide the most in-depth study of mysterious Mercury to date.
The spacecraft begin transferring to Europe’s spaceport in Kourou this week, where an intensive period of preparations will ready the mission for launch later this year.
The simulations were performed by Félicien Filleul as part of ESA’s Young Graduate Trainee programme.
Credits: ESA/Félicien Filleul
Catalog #: 08_00813
Title: Space Shuttle Program
Date: 1981-2010
Additional Information: shows a mockup of a computer
Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive
(WIP pic, more picures and better renders to come)
Name: P.C.S. York
Affiliation: Phoenix Command Group, (vigilante frontier mercenary group dedicated to protecting the innocent, preventing crime, and exposing corruption. Formerly Kolter Mining security division. Formally United Earth Federation (working title) Federal Defense Navy (working title)
Class Name: Monarch class
Type: Fast Battleship
Commissioned: Circa mid 2500’s, pre recent major conflict
Specifications:
Length: 1,221 meters (122.1 studs, 38.5 inches, 97.7 cm model)
Width: 429 meters (42.9 studs, 12.5 inches, 34.3 cm model)
Height: 305 meters (30.5 studs, 9.7 inches, 24.4 cm model)
Crew: 2,700 standard complement + up to 2,000 Star Quest marine detachment and embarked craft pilots and flight crew
Armament: 6 triple-mounted heavy railgun turrets, 8 triple-mounted rapid fire medium particle cannon turrets, 24 dual-mounted medium railgun turrets, 174 quad-mounted 80mm anti-fighter flak railgun turrets
Defensive systems:
Hull: Heavy advanced steel alloy hull with carbon nanotube/buckypaper composite layers as spall lining.
Armor plating: titanium alloy, tungsten, carbon nanotube composite armor layers against kinetic, kinetic spalling, particle, laser, and plasma fire. Composite hull provides excellent survivability at low mass due to the advanced composite design.
Bulkheads: Extensive titanium bulkhead support network.
Structural integrity field: High power system designed for extreme acceleration.
Shielding: Internally housed advanced, high power, rapid regeneration adaptive particle field repulsing shielding system capable of surviving extreme punishment.
Powerplant: 2 primary matter-antimatter reactors with extensive fuel reserves, 2 secondary, and 1 tertiary fusion reactors with extensive fuel reserves. Multiple massive power capacitors. Extensive heatinks.
Propulsion: 3 primary 8 secondary, and 8 tertiary fusion engines for sub-lightspeed travel, 1 internal FTL core capable of high speed, long range travel, 192 reaction control thrusters, and 48 reaction control wheels for below light speed maneuvering.
Computer systems: Multiple supercomputer cores with onboard Virtual Intelligence system, along with extensive redundant backup and antiviral systems.
Comms and Sensors: Local and FTL comms arrays. Radar, LIDAR, infrared, multi-spectral, and additional other local area sensors systems, along with extensive FTL sensors.
High power artificial singularity for both artificial gravity generation and inertial dampening, allowing for 1G gravity under all but the most extreme conditions.
Background: Faced with an aging and inadequate fighting fleet, Earth humanity constructed the Monarch class in the ramp-up to the most recent Great War. These vessels served as advanced, fast battleships well suited to carrier escort duties, rapid border response, or direct ship-to-ship combat against enemy battleships and cruisers.
After the war, the York was purchased by eccentric multi trillionaire David Courtland, and the vessel found new purpose in defending civilians in war-torn areas from pirates.
IRL info. This digital SHIP was made in Bricklink’s Studio software from August 1st to August 11th, 2021. I did not originally plan to attempt to include it in SHIPtember, but it met the requirements for early month. Note that it uses all real piece colors that are available for sale on Bricklink. It is 100% connected, and should be reasonably stable in real life. Although it would require a display stand of some kind. The current pictures are WIP placeholders to show completed status of the build itself. Better renders will hopefully follow before whatever October picture deadline is decided on. Please do not use these early pictures in the poster if time remains, as I hope to provide better ones. Thank you for reading.)
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 lurchers are used as an all terrain mobile gun. With their long spindly legs they can ford shallow rivers, and not being wheeled they can handle areas that lack roads.
I read an article the other day (the link is below) and was amazed to find that the Apple Store on 5th Ave and 59th St in New York City is the 28th most photographed site in the world and the 5th most in NYC. It's photographed even more so than the Statue of Liberty according to a Cornell University Study. This article fascinates me. With the advent of Web 2.0/3.0, the internet is becoming accesible to virtually everyone. Flickr is a prime example of the social networking phenomenon that has taken hold of the internet. Researchers are now able to access 'public data' in ways they never dreamed of and come up with some incredible results. These researchers at Cornell University fed 35 Million Flickr Images into a supercomputer to determine the worlds most photographed sites. The article claims that some of the most sought out sites for photographers are the Eiffel Tower, Trafalgar Square, Tate Modern, Big Ben, Notre Dame, London Eye, Empire State Building. New York was the most photographed place, with the Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center at the top. The article also includes some interesting data visualizations. I really suggest you check it out if your a flickr user.
www.fastcompany.com/1596248/apple-store-cube-is-one-of-th...
I chose this shot of the Raptor for this rant because it does not glorify the technological marvel that it is. It shows the culmination of the 20 year+ path it took to get to this picture. Here it shows a Raptor taxing out for a sortie over the Nellis ranges amongst its operational stablemates. The F-22 has come a LONG way to deliver the goods and now, once its capability is just being understood Secretary Gates and the Obama Administration TERMINATED THE PROJECT in favor of the F-35. Here is my response to a fraternity brother who wrote me in response to today's cuts. He stated he is happy that the money is going more towards the troops on the ground and not these flying overpriced techno-dream machines. To his credit he served heroically 18 months in iraq during the worst of the Shiite uprising. Please take the time to read it and tell me your thoughts on today's events.
______________________________
You are right right, our ground troops need a much higher focus going forward. But Gates has not given them that at the expense of the F-22. No he actually cut our battalions from a goal of 48 to 45 and shelved the badly needed Future Combat System that would give the ground guys "netcentric" 21st century technology. OH but he did increase Pentagon bureaucracy by a HUGE margin.
Why is the F-22 needed.
1.) Although 183 airframes seems like a lot, it is NOT. If we were to go to war tomorrow it would only leave a SUSTAINED force of about 30-40 jets that would be combat ready at any given time. The rest believe it or not are stuck in training, upgrades, depot, systems testing or tactics development. Each raptor carries 8 missiles, 6 of which (beyond visual range AIM-120Cs) would be used if everything goes RIGHT. If it does not the other 2 (AIM-9M) plus the 480rds of 20mm are for self defense. In other words after 6 shots the raptor runs. Further they usually volley 2 AIM-120Cs per target. That leaves a real world potential kill probability of 3 airframes per sortie against a serious threat. Raptors fight in divisions of 4 at a time so that is 12 enemy aircraft destroyed before they have to re-arm. This is NOT ENEOUGH CAPABILITY AGAINST THREATS SUCH AS CHINA OR EVEN LOWER TIER FOES WITH CRUISE MISSILES. Enemies will now know that all they have to do is saturate the Raptor to break through to our high value assets (AWACS, JSTARS, TANKERS, NETWORK RELAY AIRCRAFT, CARRIERS, GARRISONS ETC.) it simply is not enough capability for first day of war scenarios.
2.) The Raptor can do things the F-35 cannot. The F-35 can only carry 4 AIM-120s with no close in heaters like the AIM-9X (Infra Red homing and highly maneuverable). That means the F-35 can only kill 2 targets at beyond visual range with high probability of kill. Further only the USAF version of the F-35 will carry and internal gun for self defense close in.
3.) The Raptor can supercruise (obtain sustained supersonic speed without gas guzzling afterburner) the F-35 cannot. The F-35 is a heavy single engine aircraft that is not even as maneuverable as an F-16 in certain areas of the flight envelope. It has no thrust vectoring for super maneuverability and is not as stealthy nor stealthy in all aspects like the F-22. Simply it is not even close to a replacement for air superiority. They are apples and oranges.
4.) The F-15 is old, if we retain 173 "GOLDEN EAGLES" with the new Electronically Scanned Array Radars (APG-63V3) along with other upgrades it will only be ON PAR with the Suckhoi Su-27 derivatives that are being exported by Russia RIGHT NOW. The upgraded F-15s will rely on the F-22 using its supercomputer listening and targeting technology to forward targets to it to shoot beyond visual range. If you don’t have enough F-22s to maintain battlefield persistence then these upgraded Eagles will have a greater possibility of be destroyed.
5.) THE BIG ONE: WHY DO WE NEED THE F-35 IF WE HAVE ENOUGH RAPTORS????????
WE DONT. It is a handout to industry. If we had enough F-22s we could kick down the door of the enemy in the first hours of war, destroying all their aircraft in the air and on the ground as well as the enemy's air defense networks (yes the F-22 is a FANTASTIC bomber too when paired against modern integrated air defense systems). Instead of buying the F-35 we could buy new block F-16s and F/A-18E/Fs at HALF the cost of an F-35. Once air superiority is obtained, you don’t need stealth, you need reliable proven platforms to SUPPORT THE WARFIGHTER ON THE GROUND.
6.) The F-22 is a "known" weapon system. In other words it is PROVEN to be highly effective, flying today, in production and beating all the goals set out in its genesis. The F-35 has only flown 200 hours in a pre-production prototype configuration, yet the DoD and Lockheed have ALREADY put it into full production!!!! Its insane and unprecedented. The F-22 took 8 years of FLIGHT testing in this stage to be validated and reach initial operational capability. DoD has bypassed TESTING because we need it now and partner export countries need it yesterday. In reality the aircraft will be YEARS over schedule and we are throwing HUGE money away building an invalidated aircraft yet alone a vetted integrated weapons system. Remember the grounding of the F-15s last year leaving the US with its pants down do to cracks in the forward "longeron" structural booms? Well these types of flaws can now be tested for over years of evaluation. This is especially scary for the F-35 because they literally lightened up its structure dramatically so it could meet the weight qualification needed for the vertical takeoff version intended for the marines. The F-15 was originally OVER built in true McDonald Douglas fashion and after 30 years it experienced airframe ending cracks. The F-35 is under built from the get-go and UNTESTED and will need to last 30 years!!!! Good luck.
7.) The F-35 is a one size fits all airframe. The F-22 is a thoroughbred built to KILL ANYTHING. The F-35 is a compromise in every since of the word. I mean do you really think the Marines are going to keep such a fragile aircraft flying in dusty desert environment while keeping up the radar absorbent materials? Have you ever seen a deployed USMC AV-8B harrier? They DO NOT win the housekeeping seal of approval! NO WAY. PIPEDREAM. Its an overcomplicated solution for marines especially that will result in low availability rates and high costs.
8.) The F-35 is made to be exported to tens of allied nations like the F-16 was. We will order over 2500, the partner nations another 1000 or more. We don’t need this weapon system, but our industry does. So DoD, instead of buying enough raptors to gain full air supremacy while SAVING money buy purchasing rugged and cost effective F-16s, AV-8Bs, F/A-18E/Fs decides to purchase a high risk, over complicated one size fits all airframe in order to make Lockheed a little bit more wealthy and ensuring our weapons exports for the next couple of decades. In effect saying, SCREW THE WAR FIGHTER WHILE SLEEPING WITH THE BIGGEST OF ALL DEFENSE CONTRACTORS. Its stupid, expensive and a bad choice for America.
9.) As far as costs go, you site a flyaway cost of over 150million, you are right. But what you don’t mention is that the first HUNDREDS of F-35s will cost the US almost as much money for much less capability! Yes that’s right the F-35 will cost well over 125million for first decade of lots! Only after hundreds and hundreds have been built will cost come down to almost twice that of a well equipped F-16!!!!! This is NOT a cost effective piece of machinery. No, very much the opposite! It is a poster child for the DoD’s “capability creep” that is PARALYZING good weapon systems by making them too expensive to field in appropriate numbers.
10.) Does it really make sense to have a stealth techno marvel giving air support to grunts months after the aerial opposition has been dismantled? NO! Why pay the huge premium of an all stealth force when the Raptor, B-2, UCAVs, and cruise missiles can do the job more cost effectively? We need to go back to the classic Hi-lo mix of airframes. The high end to kick down the door, the low end to make sure the forward air controllers always have something with weapons ready to deliver above troops in contact’s heads.
In essence this is not an argument about redistributing funds from the air to the ground but what to BUY for the air! The answer is F-22s AND reliable, tried and trusted platforms that are cheap to build and operate. Instead, we have a one size fits all force for very NOT ONE SIZE FITS ALL threat profiles which we face around the world. Its dangerous, near sighted, distracting, expensive, biased toward corporate America and not the war fighter and its just plane WRONG.
Remember you don’t need an F-22 until you really need an F-22!
My thoughts.
Ty
***NOTE: READ THROUH THIS BLOG, AN AMZING SERIES OF EVENTS THAT HAVE PRETTY MUCH COME TO PASS EXACTLY AS STATED.
Military supercomputer Skynet's most popular endoskeletal cyborg, Series 800 Terminator life size bust - only $1,399.99.
Supanova Expo, Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney, Australia (Saturday 18 June 2016)
In pursuit of Gotham’s new gunslinger, Bruce finds himself sprinting across the cities crumbling and neglected rooftops, trying to get the deadly gunman in his sights. To his relief he spies the man jumping from a nearby ledge making a landing atop a second rooftop, this one, a dismal sight of chipped slates, loosely tied together, resting tediously on a number of rotting, wooden slats. As the man slides from the top to the bottom, several of them fall with him, making their devastating mark in the already ravaged building. Bruce glides smoothly with the assistance of a newly modified cloak, landing only a few yards from where he had thought to have seen the gunman. But now the man seems to have vanished. He looks about him trying to place his enemy’s whereabouts amongst the shadows. Before resorting to the use of his heat scanner, he notices an intense red dot appear behind him and recognising this as the gunman’s eyepiece he makes a single swift movement, narrowly dodging his opponent’s bullet
???: Well that’s a first
Batman: give it up Lawton. Shows over
Emerging from the shadows, Lawton let’s down a shower of lead upon Bruce, merely piercing his gauntlet armour
Floyd Lawton: And that’s certainly not new. (he mutters under his breath) predictable son of a bitch
He fires one more bullet, only just brushing the side of Bruce’s cowl. The bullet flies though the air until being thrust back towards Bruce after making contact with a previously placed bright red deflector pad. It lands in Bruce’s back, making an unbearably painful impact as it does.
Despite this, Bruce hurls a batarang towards Floyd sending a long and heavy rope to wrap about his body leaving him momentarily unable to move. Bruce gets to his feet and after handcuffing Lawton, uses a clunky steel device to make contact with Harvey bullock, sending him the buildings coordinates
He turns to Floyd, lifting him by the neck and decides to do his own interrogation prior to that of the GCPD
Batman: you weren’t after the mayor were you Floyd? You had this whole thing set up and you’ve clearly had some practice
As he speaks, he carefully removes the bullet from his back with a pair of tweezers, placing it gently within one of his pouches, making sure to eliminate all traces of his blood from the scene
Floyd: I’m not the only one with practice
He says this with a sense of scorn as he looks down over his nose at Bruce
Batman: shut up and talk. Who sent you. They were clearly after me and well let’s just say my enemies come in the hundreds so I’m not guessing any time soon
Floyd: now why the hell would I tell you that
Batman: because you want to live
Floyd: you aren’t going to kill me. It’s your weakness. I heard about the priest
Batman: it’s not a weakness. Much harder than you’d think
He decides to leave Floyd to the cops once he notices the red and blue flicker of sirens parked beneath the building
He climbs down through the building, which he soon discovers to be a Michelin star restaurant, dragging Floyd at his side
He meets Renee Montoya and Harvey bullock at the foot of the building, letting them hurl Floyd into the back seat of their car
Renee: so why’d you call us?
Harvey: yeah...she’s got a point. Ain’t you and jimbo a team or summin
Batman: I called who I needed to. Make sure this man’s well secured. He’s dangerous left to his own devices
Harvey: Oh sure yeah...
He shouts back over his shoulder to another cop
Harvey: Hobbs, keep an eye on that sorry f*ck will ya.....Hobbs?...hobbs?
Renee: Oh shit...
The two other cops run towards the car to find a tied up and gagged driver, a missing car door and an empty back seat
Harvey looks over his shoulder as Renee unties Hobbs
Harvey: bats? Hey bats?
Renee: I take it he’s a step ahead
Harvey: guess that just means early pub trip for us ey?
Officer Hobbs: (spitting blood before him and wiping his mouth with his sleeve) sounds good to me Harv
Renee: see you at the station then
Harvey: your loss honey
———————————————————
The newly named batcave
So called thanks to the never ending swarm of bats found below the manor.
Bruce made this discovery not long after the death of Blackfire when making a fracture in the basements almost unbreakable walls, leading him to a large cavern beneath the grounds
Bruce removes Lawton’s bullet from his pouch and takes a seat in front of a large and bulky supercomputer. Now assisted by newly found internet technology, it does not take the computer long to find the bullets supplier.
Alfred: have you found anything sir?
Bruce: yes...the manufacturer seems to have close ties to Carmine falcone. No surprise there. First he sends Lenny and victor to have me killed, now Lawton. I don’t think he’ll be giving up any time soon. If I can find one of those three I might be able to gather some dirt on falcone. But for now, the man has too much influence and power in this city to be fairly prosecuted.
Alfred: I’m tempted to talk you out of this sir but by now I realise I haven’t much say on these matters. Shall I prepare the bat-bike sir?
Bruce: Yes Alfred. Thanks. I’ll head to O’briens. A bar on the west side of Gotham. Lenny tends to be a regular customer.
Oct. 30, 2012 – Post-landfall effects ranged from record storm surge in New Jersey to blizzards in North Carolina.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Center for Climate Simulation
Video and images courtesy of NASA/GSFC/William Putman
--
A NASA computer model simulates the astonishing track and forceful winds of Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast late in 2012’s Atlantic hurricane season, causing 159 deaths and $70 billion in damages. Days before landfall, forecasts of its trajectory were still being made. Some computer models showed that a trough in the jet stream would kick the monster storm away from land and out to sea. Among the earliest to predict its true course was NASA’s GEOS-5 global atmosphere model. The model works by dividing Earth’s atmosphere into a virtual grid of stacked boxes. A supercomputer then solves mathematical equations inside each box to create a weather forecast predicting Sandy’s structure, path and other traits. The NASA model not only produced an accurate track of Sandy, but also captured fine-scale details of the storm’s changing intensity and winds. Watch the video to see it for yourself.
For more information, please visit:
gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/atmosphericassim/tracking_hur...
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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Tim returned to the Batcave just as the first horns of early morning traffic began to sound. Light crept over the horizon from afar, barely visible inside the ever dark cave. He sat down in one of the Batcomputer’s chairs before retrieving the photograph of Stephanie and her mother from his pocket. Propping it up on the desk housing the keyboard to the enormous supercomputer, he stared at it intently. The events that had taken place the previous Halloween involving the two were still fresh in his mind, and haunted him even more than his first encounter with Jason Todd. Maybe it was because Stephanie had seen him without his mask, or because he had witnessed her parents deaths alongside her without being able to stop. Either way, Tim thought deeply as he gazed at the picture. Stephanie looked the same as when he had first seen her at a Christmas party some time earlier. It was his first Christmas in Gotham, and without his father or mother around he spent it completely alone in his apartment. All it took was that night for Tim to fall completely head over heels for Stephanie Brown, the one person in his school that could match his wits and intelligence. Having not seen her since she had discovered his secret was causing him more heartache than the fear that she may possibly divulge his identity as Robin.
“Stephanie Brown?” Tim stood up suddenly, nearly knocking over his chair as he realized Bruce was standing behind him in full Batman attire, “The girl from the Cluemaster case a few months back?”
“Yeah…” Tim said as he handed the photograph to his mentor, “I found the picture at the Szukala Movie Studio, turned out that was the one Film Freak was held up in. He and his accomplices are in police custody, and I freed the guy we had dressed as Riddler. Turned out he didn’t really drill into his victim’s heads. It was a scare tactic. He wanted our attention.”
“He certainly got yours.” Bruce said as he handed Tim back the picture and signaled for him to walk with him. The young Robin followed as Bruce continued, “I’m proud of you, Tim. I don’t say it as often as I should but I am proud of the work you’ve been doing. You remind me of…well…” Tim cut him off before he could say, ‘me’,
“Actually I was going to ask…” There was something about the moment, something about the way Bruce had been more assuring than usual to him that nearly made him say a possibility that had crept into his mind several times especially over the past night.
“Yes?” Getting cold feet, Tim continued with,
“Never mind. How goes the hunt for the Crimson Knight?” At this point, the two reached one of several exits to Wayne Manor, causing them to stop as Bruce answered,
“Just missed him again. I’m getting closer though, and if my suspicions are correct I may need your assistance now that you’ve finished the Weston case.” Excited, Tim asked,
“‘The Adventures of Batman and Robin’ are on again?”
“It would seem so. I’ll call you in if I need your help, just keep available,” Bruce stepped into the elevator to take him to the surface as he said, “In the meantime, take the day off. Enjoy yourself. Your father stopped calling, so you might want to check up on him and take him out for a day in Gotham. You deserve it after all the hard work you’ve put in lately.”
“And what are you going to do?” Tim asked as the doors shut between them and Bruce began to ascend.
“Strictly business.” As Bruce disappeared, Alfred appeared behind Tim to say,
“You didn’t ask him yet?” Looking back up at where the elevator had disappeared before looking back down at the Batcave as a whole, he responded half-heartedly,
“How can I? The scenery's got me feeling sentimental.”
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.
With "wings folded".
Building instructions for this model are NOW for sale in my shop :
www.baronsat.net/baronshop/Lego-Batcomputer-moc-instructi...
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 lurchers are used as an all terrain mobile gun. With their long spindly legs they can ford shallow rivers, and not being wheeled they can handle areas that lack roads.
Researchers are sifting through an avalanche of data produced by one of the largest cosmological simulations ever performed, led by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory.
The simulation, run on the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, modeled the evolution of the universe from just 50 million years after the Big Bang to the present day—from its earliest infancy to its current adulthood. Over the course of 13.8 billion years, the matter in the universe clumped together to form galaxies, stars and planets; but we’re not sure precisely how. Read more »
ABOVE: This series shows the evolution of the universe as simulated by a run called the Q Continuum, performed on the Titan supercomputer and led by Argonne physicist Katrin Heitmann. These images give an impression of the detail in the matter distribution in the simulation. At first the matter is very uniform, but over time gravity acts on the dark matter, which begins to clump more and more, and in the clumps, galaxies form. Image by Heitmann et. al.
Staff at both the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) helped adapt the code for its run on Titan.
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 lurchers are used as an all terrain mobile gun. With their long spindly legs they can ford shallow rivers, and not being wheeled they can handle areas that lack roads.
5 PJL
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Having parked his motorcycle in the alleyway beside the apartment where Roy was, according to the device the Middleman had given him, Jason began climbing a nearby fire escape. A small bar took up the space below where Jason inferred Roy’s apartment was, and he heard several drunken men conversing below him as he made his way to the roof,
“You know who what I’d be called if I was one of those super villain guys? Film Freak…I mean I love movies and…”
“No, man, that name’s already taken. I think the Bat took him on one time, I don’t know…”
“Are you kidding me? It’s so hard to think of a good name for something like that, I mean everything good’s taken.”
“How ‘bout something in Latin?” The men continued to talk as Jason reached the top of the fire escape before leaping to the rooftop across from Roy’s apartment. Feeling a buzzing in his pocket, he retrieved a small Bluetooth device also given to him by the Middleman. Meticulously placing in it in a small but accessible groove on his mask, near his ear, he pressed it to hear Scarlet’s voice coming in from the other end,
“J, you there?” She asked as Jason knelt on the edge of the rooftop, staring into the window into the room Roy supposedly occupied.
“I’m here Scar, any progress on the Outlaws Den?”
“A bit. I managed to set up the supercomputer Middleman gave us, it’s not Bat computer but it’ll certainly help. Also, Outlaws Den?” Jason let out a short chuckle as he answered,
“Thought of it on the drive over, you like it?” Thinking for a moment, Scarlet replied,
“Eh, sure, for now at least…Anyway, do you have a visual on Roy?” Concentrating on the window, Jason was able to make out several figures moving around, each acting strange in their own way whilst one seemed to be overlooking the lot of them.
“I don’t see Roy…I think someone may have taken over his apartment.”
“Or he’s rooming with some other people.” Scarlet retorted quickly.
“No…why would Roy’s levels have spiked like that? Those were almost cardiac arrest levels.” Checking the device again, Jason now saw that Roy was settling back down to a solid green color slowly. Looking into the apartment he saw the figure lying on the couch look out the window quickly before picking up what seemed to be a needle whilst staring at a new figure that had entered the room: Roy. Thinking fast, Jason pulled up his hood and stood to his full height. Taking several steps backwards, he broke into a sprint before diving with all of his might through the window and onto the table in the center of the room. The figure on the couch screamed as Roy and the overseer stumbled backwards in a euphoric shock. Standing up amongst the broken glass, Jason turned to Roy, saying,
“I’m here to save you Roy. I think the people here are poisoning you, come with me-” Turning to the figure on the couch he noticed that they had fallen limp with the needle in their hand, snots and blood dripping from her nose.
“Ohhh…now look what you’ve done.” The overseer said as he began to search through various needles he kept in a small case on a specialized belt he wore. Stepping off of the table to stand next to Roy, Jason asked,
“Roy…what’s going on?” The overseer jammed a needle into the figure’s chest, causing them to suddenly sit up and scream before running around the room madly. Sighing, Roy explained,
“I used to come here…after I left Star City and you know who…ok maybe a bit before too but bottom line I’m clean…I just needed to pick up a few things before I left.” Looking down at Roy’s good hand Jason saw that he carried a small paper bag wrapped up tightly that made loud noises when moved. Looking in Roy’s eyes, Jason could tell that he was lying, but instead of calling him out on it, he decided to make Roy a proposition:
“You used to live here, then, right?” Roy nodded to this as Jason continued, “If you’re out of a place to stay for the moment…I mean, if you want to leave this…palace,” Jason looked back over at the screaming figure that had nearly OD’d in front of them, “Come stay with me and Scar for a while, we could really use you, and I promise we’re a bit more laissez faire than the guys that trained us. What do you say?” Jason put out his hand before quickly retracting it as he remembered there was no arm to shake back. Thinking for a moment, and looking around at the drugged-filled apartment, Roy shrugged and said,
“What the hell…a couple of days couldn’t hurt.” Both Jason and Roy turned to the overseer at this point before Roy began walking to the door and opening it, leaving Jason to say,
“Hey…sorry ‘bout the window.” As Jason walked out the open door, Roy called back,
“Bye Reverend Green, thanks for everything, oh, and hope you get that part in that movie or whatever!” Before slamming the door behind them just as the figure that had nearly OD’d screamed once more.
Prior to the first true chicken, there were non-chickens. The DNA changes came about in cells housed in the egg. So the egg came first. In July 2010, British scientists, using a supercomputer, claimed to have come up with the final and definitive answer.
After weeks of tests , particles colided at last ..... all supercomputers overflow.
A voice that seemed to come from everywhere, said "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" ....... and all began again
Després de setmanes de proves, les particles vàren col.lisionar per fí ......... tots els supercomputadors es van aturar sobrecàrregats.
Una veu que semblaba venir de tot arreu digué "QUE LA LLUM ES FACI" ......... i tot va tornar a escomençar.
Despues de semanas de pruebas ,las particulas colisionaron por fin ....... todos los supercomputadores se detuvieron sobrecargados.
Una voz que parecía venir de todas partes dijo "QUE LA LUZ SE HAGA" .......... y todo volvió a empezar.
Dedicada al meu gran amic Claudio amb qui compartim pasió per Isaac Asimov