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This machine was the unquestioned king of computers when it first appeared. With its circuits cooled by extensive chilled water plumbing,
Wikipedia tells us that the CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. It is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, outperforming its fastest predecessor, IBM 7030 Stretch, by about three times. It remained the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600.
"Do you have any idea what kind of a responsibility you're taking up?"
"The instant I put on this costume."
I can't believe Jackie's doing this. I mean, yes, I wanted him to become a hero. But this soon? RIGHT after a freaking war? So much danger, so young. And I've barely showed him anything. Yet he wants it. He wants to be a hero. But I can't just lets him go out and be done with it. He needs help. We needed to talk. We gathered in the Nest's computer room. Nice part of this new home of mine. Completed, and with the one of the best supercomputers in the country. Only one other surpasses it...
"Jackie, look. This may seem fun, but it isn't. There's alot of pain that goes with this life, and the rewards aren't that big, not to mention the limitless challenges that you'll be outright bombarded with."
"I don't care how hard it is. I'm doing it. I want to help people, one way or another."
"Well, that's not happening for a bit. You're still inexperienced with your abilities and--"
"I know how to use my powers. I told you I've been practicing here while you guys were gone."
"You'll need more than just your powers, Jackie. You need smarts, you need willpower. Being a hero is more than just putting on a colorful suit and clocking the nearest jaywalker. And there's no second chances when things go bad."
"I understand Tim. Whatever you teach me, I'll listen. I promise."
" Do you?"
"Yes! Yes I do!"
I glanced at Steph for a second who was right next to me by the chair I was sitting on. She just grinned. I knew she was all in for this. Her and Jackie...it's like a little brother and big sister, minus the constant bitching and yelling at eachother to get out of their rooms. Both would support eachother to the cold, bitter end of it all. She was all for Jackie suiting up and playing hero. Bought into to easy. I'm not going to, though. I'm not risking Jackie getting hurt.
"So, this is what you want. Why.?"
"I've told you before. I always wanted two things. To get rid of my powers, or use them for something better. I can't get rid of them, so I'll use them for good."
"Good, huh?"
"Yeah. I'm not bad, really. I don't wanna be Stasis again. I'm not a bad guy. I've actually made my new name myself!"
"Oh god...Well, lets hear it."
"How does 'Pulse' sound?"
"Eh, not the greatest, but it'll do. So, 'Pulse', your days of a villain are behind you?"
"Yes. I don't wanna hurt people anymore. I want to help people. "
"Alright then...."
I got up out of my chair, walked up to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and looked him right in the eye. I need to say this just right. This needs drama, dammit!
"Jackson Ludwing...Pulse. Do you swear to uphold the principles of our order and that for which we stand?"
"Uhh...yeah?..."
"And never to share in our secrets nor divulge in th--"
"Oh. My god, Tim. You are not referencing video games right now. I mean, really? This is serious."
"C'mon, Steph, I'm just having some fun! sheesh..."
"Tim, what's a 'divulge'?"
"Forget it, Jackie. Look, you say you want to be a hero? So be it. I'll show you how to be a hero. I'll make you one of the greatest heroes to ever live!"
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, in the 3rd District of Vienna located. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the country Strasser belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the system is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The plant, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, the old Vienna's city walls replacing, with the Rossauerstrasse Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under allocation of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian art arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes became parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before their victory recording heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built plant and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-foot radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the castle theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District ), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the system is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 2.058 inhabitants had.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the system. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenalstraße the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
Arthur Kaan (1867 - 1940), Imperial and Royal Uhlan propped on sabre, about 1914/15 (reproduction), k. u. k. Ulan auf Säbel gestützt (Nachbildung)
Kaan studied sculpture at the Vienne Academy of Fine Arts. 1896 he became member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. At the beginning of World War I he was conscripted into the Infantry Regiment No 4 "Hoch- und Deutschmeister. He asked to be admitted into the k. u. k. Kriegspressequartier (KPQ), where he served from July 3. 1917. The Uhlan sculpture on display here as a reproduction was made by him as a reference piece for admission into the KPQ.
Kaan studierte Bildhauerei an der Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künst und wurde 1896 Mitglied des Wiener Künstlerhauses. Zu Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges wurde er zum Infanterieregiment Nr. 4 "Hoch- und Deutschmeister" eingezogen. Er bat um Aufnahme in das k. u. k. Kriegspressequartier (KPQ), dem er schließlich ab 3. Juli 1917 angehörte. Die hier reproduzierte Ulanenfigur fertigte er jedoch bereits zuvor als Referenzstück für die Aufnahme ins KPQ an.
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, located
in the 3rd district of Vienna. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the Country Road Belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the complex is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The complex, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, replacing the old Vienna's city walls, with the Rossauer Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, to which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under assignment of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian Factories Arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna, became the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before its victory facing heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built operation and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-meter high radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the Castle Theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the complex is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 had 2.058 inhabitants.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than a half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the complex. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenal street the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
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...
The UNIVAC at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a large console with a series of switches that could be set to address each of the machine's 1,000 words of memory. Once set, the contents of that memory location would be displayed on the console's oscilloscope. An electric typewriter could be used to direct the machine and was useful for debugging. The largest data system was a set of ten tape units, designed to read and write backwards and forwards. These served as an expanded main memory, allowing larger data volumes and even larger programs than would fit in the small amount of main memory.
Communications rack. Blue Waters Supercomputer. National Petascale Computing Facility. University of Illinois at Urbana Champain (UIUC), IL.
The heart of the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is the “Discover” supercomputer. In 2009, NCCS added more than 8,000 computer processors to Discover, for a total of nearly 15,000 processors. Credit: NASA/Pat Izzo To learn more about NCCS go to: www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ( www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Curated higher resolutions with digital enhancement without attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
This is a free download under CC Attribution ( CC BY 4.0) Please credit NASA and rawpixel.com.
“We power the world’s largest surveillance network. Only possible in China.”
“We can predict crime before it happens.”
— Bing Xu, co-founder of SenseTime at the Goldman Sachs Private Innovative Company Conference (PICC) in Las Vegas. SenseTime raised $2B in 2018.
"Shenzhen smart city is the first one. We can predict crime before it happens. If certain people go places they should not”
“We power the world’s largest surveillance network. Recently signed satellite companies (for 510M sq. km. of image data). Trained on 2.5 billion faces and 410M unique IDs. Only possible in China. Best face recognition algorithm in world.”
“Embedded in 400M smart phones, 240K surveillance cameras, 260K IOT devices and 189 satellites.”
I took a short video of his AI superpower claims
Here is my general worry: by violating privacy in a way we might not explore in the West, they gather the largest training data sets, and develop the best deep neural nets. Consider new areas, like medical imaging. I have to wonder if they would blow past the friction we face with HIPAA and general privacy concerns.
Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was the fastest machine in the world from 1964-1969. $10 million for 10M operations per second.
The dual screen reminds me of the 2-eyed robots in Star Wars.
Space Engineers really makes me wish I had a legit supercomputer.
FYI you can travel to that planet in the sky but it takes a long time.
#19. The Millennium Simulation, announced 2005.06.02 by the Virgo consortium, used the largest supercomputer in Europe, at the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, for over a month to model the history of the Universe in a cube over 2 billion light years on a side, holding 20 million galaxies.
static.flickr.com/13/18135102_07a58fd89d_o.jpg
This image is a closeup of the results at redshift z = 0, showing a 15 MPC/h thick slice, showing the visible light distribution, which closely follows the mass distribution. The view is four times wider than in #18, so that the width of the image is 1628 MLy. The length of the central large and dense galaxy cluster is about 60 MLy.
1024 X 768 pixels jpg 0.970950 MB
The distance measure Mpc/h has been used for decades to adjust to the fact that the Hubble constant = H has not been exactly determined. Mpc is megaparsecs.
A parsec is 3.26 light years. The Millennium Simulation used the value 0.73 for the Hubble constant H.
To get the distance in Mpc, we multiply their value by 100/H = 100/0.73 = 1.37 .
The huge, densely packed galaxy cluster, holding thousands of galaxies, for the greenish central region, has a length of about 60 MLy. In contrast, the nearest large neighbor to our Milky Way galaxy is Andromeda galaxy at 2.2 MLy distance.
The distribution of mass in the Universe is very fractile -- it looks just as complex and very much the same at a very wide range of distance scales.
So, even though I do not know how wide this image would be in terms of angular measures (degrees, minutes, seconds), it is probably justified to compare it to the Capodimonte Deep Field subtle background visible light images.
Many features are the same: complex 3D fractile network, with bright boundaries around both brighter (more dense) and dimmer (more empty) regions, and both brighter and thicker and thinner and dimmer lines, marked by myriad tiny dense features. I don't believe that the MS image includes gravitational lensing, which must be a complex factor in the CDF images.
Click on All Sizes to view Original.
www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/millennium_sim.asp The Virgo consortium
www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/
www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/galseq_D_063.jpg
arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504097
Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
pil.phys.uniroma1.it/debate3.html
On the fractile structure of the universe
Sylos Labini, Montuori & Pietronero
The console of the Lab’s IBM 7030 (STRETCH), which was delivered to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in March 1961. The 7030 was IBM's response to the LARC (Livermore Advanced Research Computer) built by Remington Rand. It provided the largest memory for any machine then in use at the Laboratory. It used 72 bit words of which the last 8 bits were for Error Correction and Control.
One Sheet (27" X 41")
Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, William Schallert. Directed by Herbert L. Strock
Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, and William Schallert. Directed by Herbert L. Strock.
When two scientists at a top-secret government installation devoted to space research are killed -- in their own test chamber, seemingly by an experiment gone awry -- Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is sent out from Washington to investigate. Sheppard mixes easily enough with the somewhat eccentric team of scientists, though he always seems in danger of being distracted by the presence of Joanne Merritt (Constance Dowling), who serves as the aide to the project director Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) but is, in reality, another security agent. Sheppard is as puzzled as anyone else by the seemingly inexplicable series of events overtaking the installation -- properly operating equipment suddenly undergoing lethal malfunctions, and the radar tracking aircraft that aren't there -- until he puts it together with the operations of NOVAC (Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex. But the mystery deepens when he discovers that NOVAC was shut down during one of the "accidents" -- and even the computer's operators can't account fully for the whereabouts of GOG and MAGOG, the two robots under the computer's control.
"...and then without warning, the machine became a frankenstein of steel," says the sensationalist poster text. This is the third story in Ivan Tors' OSI trilogy. His first "Office of Scientific Investigation" story was Magnetic Monster in early 1953. The second was Riders to the Stars in early '54. With Gog the loose trilogy is complete. Unlike the Star Wars trilogy in which the stories build upon each other, each of the three OSI stories are separate tales which have nothing to do with each other. The common thread is the idea of there being a sort of Science FBI agency whose job it is, is to check out the scientifically strange. In that regard, Tors' OSI is a bit like a foreshadowing of the X-Files TV series, but without any of the New Age paranormal focus.
In keeping with the previous two stories, Gog is more of a detective murder mystery movie. Tors was a huge fan of "hard" science, not fanciful fiction fluff, so Gog, like the other two movies, is chock full of reveling in sciencey stuff in an almost geeky way. This reverence for real science keeps things from getting out on shaky limb, as many sci-fi films to. The events are much more plausible, less fantastic.
Synopsis
At a secret underground research facility, far out in the desert, scientists working on preparations for a manned space mission, are getting murdered mysteriously. Two agents from the OSI are dispatched to solve the mystery and keep the super secret space station program on track. The scientists are killed in various ways, mostly through equipment malfunctions. The facility director and the agents suspect sabotage. Small transmitter/receiver boxes are found within equipment in different parts of the facility. They suggest that someone on the outside is transmitting in the "malfunctions" in order to kill off the program's scientists. Occasional alarms indicate some flying high intruder, but nothing is clearly found. One of the base's two robots, named Gog, kills another technician while it's mate, Magog, tries to set up an overload within the base's atomic pile. The OSI agents stop Magog with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, interceptor jets scramble and find the highflying spy jet and destroy it with missiles. Once the trouble is past, the Director announces that they will be launching their prototype space station the next day, despite the sabotage attempts to stop it. The End.
The time spent reveling in techno-geekery has a certain Popular Science charm to it. There's an evident gee-whiz air about space and defense sciences which is fun to see. People were fascinated with things rockety and atomic. For various fun bits, see the Notes section.
Gog oozes Cold War from every frame. First is the base's underground location to make them safe from A-bombs. Next is the mysterious killer trying to stop the space station program. The high-flying mystery plane is "not one of ours." (that leaves: Them, and we all knew who they were.) The space station is to be powered by a solar mirror. Even that benign mirror has sinister possibilities. While demonstrating the mirror, the scientists use it to burn a model of a city. "This could happen...if we're not the first to reach space," says the Director. Space is the next "high ground" to be contested. At the end of the movie, when discussing the launch (despite the sabotage attempt) of the prototype space station, the Director says, "Through it's eye, we'll be able to see everything that goes on upon this tired old earth." The Defense Secretary says, "Nothing will take us by surprise again." An obvious reference to Pearl Harbor.
B-films often re-used props and sets from prior films in order to save on their budgets. Gog, even though shot in Eastman Color, was no exception. Two old prop friends show up in Gog. One is our venerable old friend, the space suits from Destination Moon ('50). Look for the centrifuge scene. The research assistants are dressed in them, and as an added bonus, they wear the all-acrylic fish bowl helmets used in Abbot and Costello Go to Mars ('53). Our second old friend is scene in the radar / security room, (the one with the annoying tuning fork device). Check out the monitor wall. It's been gussied up a bit, but it is the spaceship control panel wall from Catwomen of the Moon and Project Moon Base -- complete with the empty 16mm film reels on the right side. It's fun to see old friends.
B-films often include stock footage of military units, tanks, jets, battleships, etc. to fill things out. Gog is no different, and even commits the common continuity error of showing one type of plane taking off, but a different kind in the air.
What amounts to a small treat amid the usual stock footage of jets, some shots of a rather obscure bit of USAF hardware -- the F-94C Starfire with its straight wings and huge wing tanks. In 1954, the Starfire was one of America's coolest combat jets, yet we hear little about it. The swept-wing F-86 Sabers (which we see taxiing and taking off) were the agile fighter which gained fame over Korea. They're common stock footage stars. The F-94, with its onboard radar (in the nose cone) was deemed too advanced to risk falling into enemy hands. So, it didn't see much action , and therefore little fame. The heavier, yet powerful F-94C (one of the first US jets to have an afterburner) was 1954 America's hottest Interceptor -- designed to stop high flying Soviet bombers. It's blatant cameo appearance in Gog, intercepting the high-flying mystery plane, was a fun little bit of patriotic showing off.
The very name of the movie, Gog, is charged with meaning to American audiences of the mid 50s, though virtually lost on viewers of the 21st century. The names of the two robots, Gog and Magog, come from the Bible. More specifically, from the prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 38) and the Book of Revelation (chapter 20). While just who they are (nations? kings?) has been debated for centuries, their role as tools of Satan in the battle of Armageddon is clear. Mainstream American patriotic Christendom had settled on the idea that the Soviet Union was the prophesied "nations from the north" who would join Satan to oppose God. This gives the title of the movie a special Cold War significance. It also puts an interesting spin on the Dr. Zeitman character for having named the two robots in the first place. Since they were tools of the mega-computer NOVAC, what was he saying about NOVAC?
It is interesting that the base's radar could not detect the mystery plane (which was beaming in the 'kill' instructions to NOVAC) because it was made of "fiberglass" which rendered it invisible to radar. Now, fiberglass itself isn't sturdy enough for high-speed jets, and it would take until the 1990s before composite materials advanced to make the dream of a stealth aircraft a reality. Nonetheless, the dream (or nightmare) of stealth aircraft was on-screen in 1954 in Gog.
The super computer, NOVAC, controlled everything on the base. Even though the machines were not really killing scientists on their own, but following human orders from the mystery plane, there was the on-screen depiction of machines having a murderous mind of their own. (all pre-Steven King) In the techno starry-eyed 50s, it was fairly uncommon for the technology itself to be turning on its masters. This idea would gain traction later in the 50s, and especially in the 60s, but in '54, it was unusual.
A cautionary subtext to Gog is the danger of trusting in a supercomputer to manage defenses and a whole base. NOVAC doesn't go bad on its own, as the computer will in The Invisible Boy, Hal in 2001 or Colossus in The Forbin Project. In this movie, it was the nefarious "others" who hacked into NOVAC to make it do the killing, but this just demonstrates the danger. People were getting a little nervous about letting machines take over too much responsibility. We were starting to distrust our creations.
Until Gog, robots were fairly humanoid.
They had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Audiences had seen the mechanical Maria in Metropolis ('27), the fedora-wearing metal men in Gene Autrey's Phantom Empire serial ('35). The water-heater-like Republic robot appeared in several rocketman serials. There was the gleaming giant Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and the cute left over fedora-dudes in Captain Video ('51). The metal giant in Devil Girl from Mars ('54) was also humaniod, in a chunky way. Gog and Magog were a departure from the stereotype. They were noticeably in-human, which was part of the mood.
Bottom line? Gog seems a bit bland, as far as sci-fi tends to go, but it has a lot in it for fans of 50s sci-fi.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
14/02/2022. Edinburgh , United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits The University of Edinburgh to see the UK’s National Supercomputer, met by Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
Reconstructions of the path and damage caused by the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in Feb. 15, 2013, provide information about the origin, trajectory and power of the airburst. These details, published in a pair of papers in Nature, may help to refine theoretical models about the likely frequency of such events and potential damage that could be caused.
This 3D simulation of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion by Mark Boslough was rendered by Brad Carvey using the CTH code on Sandia National Laboratories' Red Sky supercomputer. Andrea Carvey composited the wireframe tail.
#18. The Millennium Simulation, announced 2005.06.02 by the Virgo consortium, used the largest supercomputer in Europe, at the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, for over a month to model the history of the Universe in a cube over 2 billion light years on a side, holding 20 million galaxies.
static.flickr.com/12/18135101_1ef7723b85_o.jpg
This image is a closeup of the results at redshift z = 0, showing a 15 MPC/h thick slice, showing the mass distribution, not the visible light.
2048 X 1536 pixels jpg 2.07411 MB
You can magnify this image 8X to see pixels of 1 mm size on a 17" monitor.
The distance measure Mpc/h has been used for decades to adjust to the fact that the Hubble constant = H has not been exactly determined. Mpc is megaparsecs.
A parsec is 3.26 light years. The Millennium Simulation used the value 0.73 for the Hubble constant H.
To get the distance in Mpc, we multiply their value by 100/H = 100/0.73 = 1.37 , which for the scale bar of 31.25 Mpc/h becomes 42.8 Mpc = 139.6 MLy.
This image has a width, directly measured on my monitor, of 91.1 Mpc/h =
124.8 Mpc = 406.9 MLy.
The huge, densely packed galaxy cluster, holding thousands of galaxies, for the greenish central region, has a length of about 2/13.6 = 14.7 % of the image width = 60 MLy. In contrast, the nearest large neighbor to our Milky Way galaxy is Andromeda galaxy at 2.2 MLy distance.
The distribution of mass in the Universe is very fractile -- it looks just as complex and very much the same at a very wide range of distance scales.
So, even though I do not know how wide this image would be in terms of angular measures (degrees, minutes, seconds), it is probably justified to compare it to the Capodimonte Deep Field subtle background visible light images.
Many features are the same: complex 3D fractile network, with bright boundaries around both brighter (more dense) and dimmer (more empty) regions, and both brighter and thicker and thinner and dimmer lines, marked by myriad tiny dense features. I don't believe that the MS image includes gravitational lensing, which must be a complex factor in the CDF images.
Click on All Sizes to view Large and Original.
www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/millennium_sim.asp The Virgo consortium
www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/
www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/seqF_063a.jpg
arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504097
Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
pil.phys.uniroma1.it/debate3.html
On the fractile structure of the universe
Sylos Labini, Montuori & Pietronero
www.space.com/scienceastronomy/first_star_011115.html popular article by Robert Roy Britt 2001.11.15 on www.space.com re Tom Abel simulation of the first start in our Universe www.tomabel.com/
www.solstation.com/x-objects/first.htm excellent general introduction to many recent simulations of the first stars -- many links
www.astro.psu.edu/users/tabel/GB/gb.html many awesome images and movies of simulations of the first structures and stars in our Universe by Tom Abel, Greg Bryan, and Mike Norman in 2001
www.astro.psu.edu/users/tabel/GB/gb.html frame by frame tour of the simulation with commentary
www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/GALAXIES/CADIS/irsee2003/PROCEEDINGS/A...
the first stars, a slideshow review by Tom Abel
Compare #21 Closeup of many tiny bright sources on background mesh in HUDF.
BlueGene/L—fifth on the June 2009 TOP500 list of world's fastest supercomputers with a sustained world-record speed of 478.2 teraFLOPS — is a revolutionary, low-cost machine delivering extraordinary computing power for the nation's Stockpile Stewardship Program. Located in the Terascale Simulation Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, BlueGene/L is used by scientists at Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories. The 596-teraFLOPS machine handles many challenging scientific simulations, including ab initio molecular dynamics; three-dimensional (3D) dislocation dynamics; and turbulence, shock, and instability phenomena in hydrodynamics. It is also a computational science research machine for evaluating advanced computer architectures. [More information]
Rivers of cables for Dawn, one of the newest supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It placed ninth in the June 2009 Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. [More information]
This is "Raptor", the new high performance computing cluster that we just finished building at the HPC2 at Mississippi State University. It has 2048 AMD Opteron 2218 compute cores and has a total of 4 terabytes of memory. It has a peak performance of over 10 trillion calculations per second (10 TFLOPS).
Welcome to everyone who got here through Marc Hamilton's Weblog.
Update: 11/15/2006: The 28th Top500 Supercomputer Sites list was released yesterday, and this system was listed as the 115th fastest computer in the world. It is also the largest 100% Sun-based system in the United States at this time. Sun has released a rather nice press release about our system as well.
This was taken with the camera mounted on a Trek-Tech Trekpod held over my head and using the timer to release the shutter.
In 1988, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory installed the first totally new supercomputer operating system in 20 years on the Livermore Computer Center’s (LCC) Cray X/MP/48. The new Network Livermore Timesharing System (NLTSS) replaced the old Livermore Timesharing System. Nearly five years in design and four years in implementation, NLTSS was a state-of-the-art distributed processing system, providing more efficient use both of the center’s powerful multiprocessor supercomputers and the researcher’s own enhanced workstation.
Olivetti Philos 44
it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti
Retrocomputing (a portmanteau of retro and computing) is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons. However some do make use of it.[1] Retrocomputing often gets its start when a computer user realizes that expensive fantasy systems like IBM Mainframes, DEC Superminis, SGI workstations and Cray Supercomputers have become affordable on the used computer market, usually in a relatively short time after the computers' era of use.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocomputing
Con il termine retrocomputing si indica una attività di "archeologia informatica" che consiste nel reperire, specialmente a costi minimi, computer di vecchie generazioni, che hanno rappresentato fasi importanti dell'evoluzione tecnologica, ripararli se sono danneggiati, metterli nuovamente in funzione e preservarli.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Argonne's Blue Gene/P supercomputer, tinted green in this photo to illustrate its environmentally friendly low energy consumption, is one of the world's fastest computers for open scientific research.
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.
Edited Event Horizon Telescope image of a black hole in the the galaxy M87. What you see here isn't the actual black hole but material tat has been heated to super-hot temperatures and glows as a result of being so close to the black hole and rubbing against other particles. Larger image to follow. Color/processing variant.
Image source: eventhorizontelescope.org/
First original caption: Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. This long-sought image provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Second original caption: Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole
An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87 [1], a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun [2].
The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution [3]. The EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein’s general relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory [4].
"We have taken the first picture of a black hole," said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. "This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers."
Black holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. The presence of these objects affects their environment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and super-heating any surrounding material.
"If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before, explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands. "This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87’s black hole."
Multiple calibration and imaging methods have revealed a ring-like structure with a dark central region — the black hole’s shadow — that persisted over multiple independent EHT observations.
"Once we were sure we had imaged the shadow, we could compare our observations to extensive computer models that include the physics of warped space, superheated matter and strong magnetic fields. Many of the features of the observed image match our theoretical understanding surprisingly well," remarks Paul T.P. Ho, EHT Board member and Director of the East Asian Observatory [5]. "This makes us confident about the interpretation of our observations, including our estimation of the black hole’s mass."
Creating the EHT was a formidable challenge which required upgrading and connecting a worldwide network of eight pre-existing telescopes deployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites. These locations included volcanoes in Hawai`i and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica.
The EHT observations use a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds — enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris [6].
The telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope [7]. Petabytes of raw data from the telescopes were combined by highly specialised supercomputers hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory.
The construction of the EHT and the observations announced today represent the culmination of decades of observational, technical, and theoretical work. This example of global teamwork required close collaboration by researchers from around the world. Thirteen partner institutions worked together to create the EHT, using both pre-existing infrastructure and support from a variety of agencies. Key funding was provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the EU's European Research Council (ERC), and funding agencies in East Asia.
"We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago," concluded Doeleman. "Breakthroughs in technology, connections between the world's best radio observatories, and innovative algorithms all came together to open an entirely new window on black holes and the event horizon."
Notes
[1] The shadow of a black hole is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across.
[2] Supermassive black holes are relatively tiny astronomical objects — which has made them impossible to directly observe until now. As a black hole’s size is proportional to its mass, the more massive a black hole, the larger the shadow. Thanks to its enormous mass and relative proximity, M87’s black hole was predicted to be one of the largest viewable from Earth — making it a perfect target for the EHT.
[3] Although the telescopes are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data — roughly 350 terabytes per day — which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.
[4] 100 years ago, two expeditions set out for the island of Príncipe off the coast of Africa and Sobra in Brazil to observe the 1919 solar eclipse, with the goal of testing general relativity by seeing if starlight would be bent around the limb of the sun, as predicted by Einstein. In an echo of those observations, the EHT has sent team members to some of the world's highest and isolated radio facilities to once again test our understanding of gravity.
[5] The East Asian Observatory (EAO) partner on the EHT project represents the participation of many regions in Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Indonesia.
[6] Future EHT observations will see substantially increased sensitivity with the participation of the IRAM NOEMA Observatory, the Greenland Telescope and the Kitt Peak Telescope.
[7] ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with the National Research Council (Canada), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. APEX is operated by ESO, the 30-meter telescope is operated by IRAM (the IRAM Partner Organizations are MPG (Germany), CNRS (France) and IGN (Spain)), the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the EAO, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano is operated by INAOE and UMass, the Submillimeter Array is operated by SAO and ASIAA and the Submillimeter Telescope is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). The South Pole Telescope is operated by the University of Chicago with specialized EHT instrumentation provided by the University of Arizona.
More Information
This research was presented in a series of six papers published today in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a Focus Issue:
Paper I: The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
Paper II: Array and Instrumentation
Paper III: Data processing and Calibration
Paper IV: Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole
Paper V: Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
Paper VI: The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole
Press release images in higher resolution (4000x2330 pixels) can be found here in PNG (16-bit), and JPG (8-bit) format. The highest-quality image (7416x4320 pixels, TIF, 16-bit, 180 Mb) can be obtained from repositories of our partners, NSF and ESO. A summary of latest press and media resources can be found on this page.
The EHT collaboration involves more than 200 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. The international collaboration is working to capture the most detailed black hole images ever by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Supported by considerable international investment, the EHT links existing telescopes using novel systems — creating a fundamentally new instrument with the highest angular resolving power that has yet been achieved.
The individual telescopes involved are; ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter Telescope, the IRAM NOEMA Observatory, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), the Submillimeter Array (SMA), the Submillimeter Telescope (SMT), the South Pole Telescope (SPT), the Kitt Peak Telescope, and the Greenland Telescope (GLT).
The EHT collaboration consists of 13 stakeholder institutes; the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago, the East Asian Observatory, Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt, Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Large Millimeter Telescope, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, MIT Haystack Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Radboud University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Contact Information
Sheperd S. Doeleman
EHT Collaboration Director
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: sdoeleman@cfa.harvard.edu
Phone: +1-617-496-7762
Peter D. Edmonds
Public Information Officer
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: pedmonds@cfa.harvard.edu
Phone: +1-617-571-7279
EHT Outreach Working Group
E-mail: ehtelescope@gmail.com
In June 1954, the first of two IBM 701s arrived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The IBM 701 had a 4,096-word memory, each word being 36-bits; equivalent to almost 12 decimal digits. The parallel feature meant the machine did most of its internal operations including arithmetical on whole words and much faster than the Lab’s UNIVAC. According to computation pioneer George Michael, however, the machine “freely made mistakes, but never reported them.” Input for the 701 was prepared on a keypunch and entered through a card reader.
Busbar Power Distribution Systems by EAE Elektrik, part of the infrastructure for the new Dutch petascale national supercomputer, "Cartesius", provided and built by Bull.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope visualization of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Original caption: Want to take a trip to the center of the Milky Way? Check out a new immersive, ultra-high-definition visualization. This 360-movie offers an unparalleled opportunity to look around the center of the galaxy, from the vantage point of the central supermassive black hole, in any direction the user chooses.
By combining NASA Ames supercomputer simulations with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, this visualization provides a new perspective of what is happening in and around the center of the Milky Way. It shows the effects of dozens of massive stellar giants with fierce winds blowing off their surfaces in the region a few light years away from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short).
These winds provide a buffet of material for the supermassive black hole to potentially feed upon. As in a previous visualization, the viewer can observe dense clumps of material streaming toward Sgr A*. These clumps formed when winds from the massive stars near Sgr A* collide. Along with watching the motion of these clumps, viewers can watch as relatively low-density gas falls toward Sgr A*. In this new visualization, the blue and cyan colors represent X-ray emission from hot gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees; red shows moderately dense regions of cooler gas, with temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees; and yellow shows of the cooler gas with the highest densities.
A collection of X-ray-emitting gas is seen to move slowly when it is far away from Sgr A*, and then pick up speed and whip around the viewer as it comes inwards. Sometimes clumps of gas will collide with gas ejected by other stars, resulting in a flash of X-rays when the gas is heated up, and then it quickly cools down. Farther away from the viewer, the movie also shows collisions of fast stellar winds producing X-rays. These collisions are thought to provide the dominant source of hot gas that is seen by Chandra.
When an outburst occurs from gas very near the black hole, the ejected gas collides with material flowing away from the massive stars in winds, pushing this material backwards and causing it to glow in X-rays. When the outburst dies down the winds return to normal and the X-rays fade.
The 360-degree video of the Galactic Center is ideally viewed through virtual reality (VR) goggles, such as Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard. The video can also be viewed on smartphones using the YouTube app. Moving the phone around reveals a different portion of the movie, mimicking the effect in the VR goggles. Finally, most browsers on a computer also allow 360-degree videos to be shown on YouTube. To look around, either click and drag the video, or click the direction pad in the corner.
Dr. Christopher Russell of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Pontifical Catholic University) presented the new visualization at the 17th meeting of the High-Energy Astrophysics (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society held in Monterey, Calif. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (2nd Gen) (1970-81) Engine 301 cu in (4900cc) Pontiac V8
Registration Number KNIGHT
PONTIAC ALBUM
www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623690516561...
KITT is an artificially intelligent electronic computer module in the body of a highly advanced, very mobile, robotic automobile. The original KITT is known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which appeared in the original TV series Knight Rider as a 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. A second KITT is known as the Knight Industries Three Thousand, which appeared first in the two-hour 2008 pilot film for a new Knight Rider TV series and then the new series itself, and appeared as a 2008–2009 Ford Shelby GT500KR. 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. the first KITT, voiced by William Daniels, was said to have been designed by the late Wilton Knight, a brilliant but eccentric billionaire, who established the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) and its parent Knight Industries. KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The brain of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, 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. KITT's Voice (Anharmonic) Synthesizer (for speech) and Etymotic Equalizer (audio input) allow his logic module to speak and communicate. With it, KITT can also simulate other sounds. KITT's primary spoken language was English; however, by accessing his language module, he can speak fluently in Spanish, French and much more
The second generation debut for the 1970 model year was delayed due to tooling and engineering problems and the cars were finally released in February 1970. Replacing the Coke bottle styling was a more swoopy body style, a style that ran with regular updates until 1981.,
The models became increasingly strangled by ever tightening emission regulations but until the 1979 models, the performance of 400-equipped Firebirds could still be brought up to near pre-1970 levels by disabling emissions equipment- removing the catalytic converter and blocking off the exhaust gas recirculation system- and opening up the block off plate to make the hood scoop functional. Static compression ratios dropped in the early 70s which crippled horsepower and torque output. In 1980, due to ever-increasing emissions restrictions, Pontiac dropped all of its large displacement engines
1980 therefore saw the biggest engine changes for the Trans Am. The 301, offered in 1979 as a credit option, was now the standard engine. Options included a turbocharged 301 or the Chevrolet 305 small block
Diolch am 92,881,566 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mae pob un yn cael ei werthfawrogi'n fawr.
Thanks for 92,881,566 amazing views, every one is greatly appreciated.
Shot 23.04.2022 at the Bicester Spring Scramble, Bicester, Oxfordshire 158-353
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Sierra, a 261.3 TeraFLOP/s Dell system, is dedicated to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s unclassified Grand Challenge and Laboratory Directed Research and Development programs. Research areas include: bioscience; materials science; energy; astrophysics; and environment.
JURY DISTINCTION FOR CATEGORY 1. OBJECT OF STUDY
Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Diego Rossinelli, Jatta Berberat and Gilles Fourestey
This supercomputing simulation shows how cerebrospinal fluid streams around the optic nerve (the latter passes through the centre of the “donut” but has been removed for clarity). The flow is visualised by streamlines coloured logarithmically according to their speed. The cerebrospinal fluid flows from the brain to the optic nerve, supplying it with nutrients and removing toxic metabolites. The subarachnoid space in which it flows features complex structures at different scales, creating patterns with numerous bifurcations and junctions. An impaired flow plays a central role in eye pathologies such as papilledema and certain types of glaucoma.
The geometry of the structure was captured with synchrotron-radiation microtomography of a human optic nerve at the Paul Scherrer Institute; it consists of more than two terabytes of data. The flow field was computed with very accurate Fourier-based schemes on the Helvetios supercomputer at EPFL.
Comment of the jury │ The image, striking for its fascinating and somehow alien aesthetic, shows the power of digital modelling in opening up new perspectives on nature and biology. It unveils the inner world of the vision system and its complex organic reality. The viewer contemplates what is currently occurring in their own body, possibly getting lost in the labyrinth-like intricacies of unknown current lines.
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Cette simulation faite par superordinateur révèle comment le liquide céphalo-rachidien s’écoule autour du nerf optique (ce dernier qui passe par le centre de l’anneau a été retiré pour plus de clarté). L’écoulement est visualisé par des lignes de courant colorées de manière logarithmique en fonction de leur vitesse. Le liquide céphalo-rachidien circule du cerveau vers le nerf optique, lui apportant des nutriments et éliminant les métabolites toxiques. L’espace sous-arachnoïdien dans lequel il circule présente des structures complexes à différentes échelles qui créent des flux ayant de nombreuses bifurcations et jonctions. Une altération de l’écoulement du liquide céphalo-rachidien joue un rôle central dans des pathologies oculaires telles que l’œdème papillaire et certains types de glaucome.
La géométrie de la structure a été acquise par une microtomographie par rayonnement synchrotron d’un nerf optique humain à l’Institut Paul Scherrer et totalise plus de deux téraoctets de données. Les flux de l’écoulement ont été calculés sur le superordinateur Helvetios de l’EPFL à l’aide de schémas de Fourier très précis.
Commentaire du jury │ L’image frappe par son esthétique singulière tout en démontrant le potentiel de la modélisation numérique pour ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives sur la nature et la biologie. Elle nous révèle le monde intérieur du système visuel et sa réalité organique complexe. Nous contemplons ainsi ce qui se passe présentement dans notre propre corps, nous perdant un peu dans les inextricables méandres façonnés par des flux énigmatiques.
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Diese von einem Supercomputer erstellte Simulation veranschaulicht, wie die Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit um den Sehnerv herumfliesst (der Sehnerv verläuft durch die Mitte des Donuts, wurde aber für eine bessere Übersichtlichkeit entfernt). Das Fliessen wird durch Strömungslinien visualisiert, die je nach Geschwindigkeit logarithmisch eingefärbt sind. Die Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit zirkuliert vom Gehirn zum Sehnerv, versorgt ihn mit Nährstoffen und entfernt giftige Stoffwechselprodukte. Der Subarachnoidalraum, in dem die Flüssigkeit zirkuliert, weist auf verschiedenen Ebenen komplexe Strukturen auf, wodurch Flüsse mit Verzweigungen und Mündungen entstehen. Beeinträchtigungen dieser Zirkulation der Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit spielen eine zentrale Rolle bei Augenerkrankungen wie dem Papillenödem und bestimmten Glaukomen.
Die Geometrie der Struktur wurde aus mehr als zwei Terabyte Daten errechnet, die bei einer am Paul Scherrer Institut durchgeführten Synchrotron-Mikrotomographie bei einem menschlichen Sehnerv gewonnen wurden. Die Flüsse wurden auf dem Supercomputer Helvetios der EPFL mit äusserst präzisen Fourier-Transformationen berechnet.
Kommentar der Jury │ Das Bild besticht durch eine aussergewöhnliche Ästhetik und veranschaulicht gleichzeitig das Potenzial der digitalen Modellierung, die neue Blickwinkel auf Natur und Biologie eröffnet. Es enthüllt die Innenwelt des visuellen Systems und dessen komplexe physische Realität. Wir betrachten, was in unserem eigenen Körper vor sich geht, und verlieren uns ein wenig in den unentwirrbar mäandrierenden, geheimnisvollen Strömen.