The Panthéon (Latin: pantheon, from Greek πάνθειον (ἱερόν) '(temple) to all the gods' is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the Abbey of St Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. He did recover, and entrusted Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny with the fulfillment of his vow. In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 meters wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the triple dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome, frescoed by Antoine Gros with The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve. The outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron cramps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than of carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the period. Concealed flying buttresses pass the massive weight of the triple construction outwards to the portico columns. The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to economic problems work proceeded slowly. In 1780, Soufflot died and was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. The re-modelled Abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791. Jean Guillaume Moitte created a pediment sculptural group The Fatherland crowning the heroic and civic virtues that was replaced upon the Bourbon Restoration with one by David d'Angers. Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France. The cross of the dome, which was retained in compromise, is again visible during the current major restoration project. FOUCAULT PENDULUM: In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the earth by constructing a 67-metre (220 ft) Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original sphere from the pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the 1990s (starting in 1995) during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The original pendulum was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon. It has been listed since 1920 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. From 1906 to 1922 the Panthéon was the site of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Léviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. The art installation was in the Panthéon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris's Autumn Festival. BURIAL PLACE: By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honour it received from them. As such, interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes". Similar high honours exist in Les Invalides for historical military leaders such as Napoléon, Turenne and Vauban. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, its architect. In 1907 Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Mme Sophie Berthelot. Marie Curie was interred in 1995. Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, heroines of the French resistance, were interred in 2015. The widely repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthéon

*Copyright © 2010 Lélia Valduga, all rights reserved.

Catedral Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mexico, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Its construction began in 1570 and was considered finished only in 1813, including earthquakes and floods.

One curiosity is that we see in the center of the cathedral and its dome an immense pendulum attached to the center. This pendulum is measured on a chart attached to the floor which is the slope of the dome, since the structure is very heavy slowly sinking in the muddy ground of the bed of ancient Lake Texcoco on which the city was built.

In the school of Mad Physicist Airplane Design, I present my FW-190a3. Thank you to so many for so many ideas.

I'll try to get some better pictures this afternoon, but this should suffice for now.

Brickshelf gallery here.

Enjoy.

The #FlickrFriday #ABitOfOrder challenge

"Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter."

- Sir Arthur Eddington; Physicist, Astronomer, Philosopher 1882-1944

____________________________________________

We live in a highly ordered world. That unremarkable statement may seem to reflect our obsession with neatness, organisation and timeliness. However let's look at what physics has to say about what it believes order actually is.

Physics, among other things, introduces the term entropy to express how ordered a system is. Mathematically speaking, it is the number of possible configurations of its component parts which allow the system to exist at all, divided by the total number of possible ways those parts may be configured. Low entropy therefore describes a high degree of order. Physicists frequently explain abstract ideas like this by reference to simple situations so let's do so.

Consider going to the seaside, packing damp sand into a bucket, smartly inverting it onto the beach, and removing the bucket in the time honoured fashion. We have made a sandcastle, a simple structure (or system) which can only exist if the grains of sand are configured in a limited number of ways. There are many more ways in which those grains may be arranged, the vast majority of them being unremarkable piles of sand, each pile looking much like all the others. A small number of configurations capable of creating a system divided by a much larger possible number of configurations results in a fraction with a small number on top and a much larger number beneath. That would be a small number, representing low entropy which means a high degree of order.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics provides that the entropy of an isolated system, left alone, cannot decrease. Put another way, a system cannot become more organised (or ordered) than it was when we started observing it. Although The Second Law allows the possibility that a system would remain the same throughout time, in practice entropy always increases, accounting for the fact that things decay, wear out, or fall apart. Increasing entropy represents reducing order. Spontaneous repair does not happen without some kind of intervention, an example of which could be an injury which heals. Healing requires an input of resources which we may regard as energy.

Returning to our sandcastle, as the day progresses, its sand dries, reducing adhesion. Grains start to fall or are blown away causing the structure to lose shape. Its entropy increases, shown by it becoming an unremarkable pile of sand, increasingly indistinguishable from any other sand pile. Its entropy continues to increase, ultimately matching that of the even higher entropy beach.

Now let's extrapolate from sandcastles to The Universe. Nobody can accuse me of lack of ambition! Recall that, from The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Entropy increases as time passes. Consider an abandoned car rusting away into dust; a fallen tree being converted to soil through consumption by fungi; a building falling into disrepair; a small space rock entering our atmosphere and burning up, delighting observers as it presents itself as a shooting star while scattering its atoms among our atmosphere; two asteroids colliding, smashing each other into bits; a comet leaving a trail of dust illuminated by The Sun; and a star exploding in a supernova event, spreading its matter over huge distances. All exemplify increasing entropy. Back on Earth, many of us earn our crusts repairing what we (or more accurately, The Second Law of Thermodynamics) break or wear out. Tradesmen (and DIY stores) earn their livings courtesy of The Second Law and as they can never reverse it, they will always be in business!

This all leads us to the concept of The Arrow of Time created by the physicist Sir Arthur Eddington. When The Arrow points to the future, Eddington, applying The Second Law, expects greater randomness or disorder; in other words, higher entropy than now. Recall our sandcastle which we may now regard as a metaphor for the prediction that in about 10 trillion years time the galaxies we may assume will live for all time will be gone. All that will be left will be atomic and subatomic particles (including particles which had once combined to form the extremely low entropy us), randomly moving around in unimaginably vast nothingness, so vast that the probability of those particles ever again interacting to create anything at all is, functionally speaking, zero. That's the bleakest of predictions of our destiny but 10 trillion years is a long time, maybe even long enough for my football team to win something meaningful. Or perhaps not, but anyway, there's no need to cancel your Flickr Pro subs just yet.

Conversely, when The Arrow points to the past we see a more ordered world and universe. We might even imagine our sandcastle rebuilding itself from the pile of sand it had become. Go back far enough and we encounter God creating Heaven and Earth, or, according to your belief, the Big Bang when scientists tell us The Universe was simple and highly ordered.

A photo of a disintegrating watch overlaid on Genesis 1 as recorded in an old Bible therefore seems to me to be an apt metaphor for The Arrow of Time. It was created by duplicating and resizing twice a single photo of a watch with liquefying applied through Photoshop and various bits deleted and cloned to represent disintegration as time passes. Mould marks on the page and creases are faintly visible despite the increased saturation I applied to add colour to the image. They demonstrate increasing entropy in themselves.

Caroline Nowlan, atmospheric physicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, speaks during a briefing on NASA’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument, Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. NASA’s TEMPO instrument, the first Earth Venture Instrument mission, will measure air pollution across North America from Mexico City to the Canadian oil sands and from the Atlantic to the Pacific hourly and at a high spatial resolution. A partnership between NASA and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, TEMPO will launch on a commercial satellite to geostationary orbit as early as April. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Benny's sister Penny is a theoretical nuclear physicist who dreams of putting her theory of superpower mini-figure genes to the test. Enter Billy Blacktron: Penny's "willing" test subject for the experiment, which will expose increasing amounts of x-ray radiation to poor (I mean brave) Billy... they would be using gamma radiation, but fellow scientist Dr. Banner beat her to that test. Better hurry, Penny, I think your "voluntary" test subject is waking up...

Halloween 2003 will live forever in the annals of solar history. In the space of two weeks centred around the spooky celebration, solar physicists witnessed the most sustained bout of solar activity since satellites took to the skies.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was monitoring it all. The ultraviolet telescope captured the climax of activity on 4 November 2003, showing a blistering solar flare bursting from active region 10486 at 19:29 GMT. Solar flares are the near-instantaneous release of energy caused by a loop of magnetism snapping into a more stable configuration.

In this process, the energy of up to a thousand billion Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs can be released in just a few minutes. That release is seen here. The horizontal white streak is where the camera has been blinded by the brightness of the flare.

Things began when a giant sunspot, fully ten times the diameter of Earth, hove into view around the western limb of the Sun in late October. It was followed by another, equally large, spot and together they moved across the face of the Sun generating flares on an almost daily basis. This image shows the second spot’s parting volley.

Solar flares are classed according to the energy they release at X-ray wavelengths. There are three major categories: C, M and X, further divided into 10 subclasses. M1 flares are ten times more powerful than C1, and X1 flares are ten times more powerful than M1 flares, or 100 times more powerful than C1.

This 2003 flare was so powerful that it broke right through the top of the X-class range, which is usually given as X10. Analysis showed that it clocked in at X28, making it 28 times more powerful than an X1.

A billion tonnes or so of the solar atmosphere was propelled into space at a speed of 2300 km/s – a staggering 8.2 million km/h.

Credit: ESA/NASA

www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/12/the-confidence-game-mari...

Listen carefully true believers to this twisted tale of terrible tides...

Doctor Otto Octavius was a brilliant and respected nuclear physicist, atomic research consultant, inventor, and lecturer. His research led him to create a set of bio-mechanical arms that would aid him in his atomic physics research. A lab accident left the apparatus fused to his body and allowed him to control the arms with merely a thought. The new synaptic pathways that were being created as a result of the fusion altered his mental state and Octavius became the villainous Doctor Octopus!

A founding member of the Sinister Six, Doc Ock attempted to dispose the Amazing Spider-Man at every opportunity, even learning the hero's true identity: Peter Parker. Though SUPERIOR to Spider-Man in many ways, Otto always felt jealous of the family life that Peter led with his beloved Aunt May and relationship with Mary Jane. Otto eventually vowed that he would gain the same sort of strength of puny Parker through family by raising a child... his daughter Octavia.

With a genius level intellect, Octavius was prepared for every challenge parenthood could bring! Why even a pedestrian task such as going to the grocery store is no challenge for the foul father and his dastardly descendant!

Watch out Spider-Man! There's a new diabolical duo in New York, and this time, they're bringing coupons!

Build for Mr. Xenomurphy's Superhero Contest on Mocpages:

www.mocpages.com/group.php/22749

Dr. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Russian: Андре́й Дми́триевич Са́харов) (May 21, 1921 – December 14, 1989) was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union.

Life and career

Sakharov was born in Moscow in 1921. His father was Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, a private school physics teacher and an amateur pianist. Dmitri's grandfather Ivan had been a prominent lawyer in Tsarist Russia who had displayed respect for social awareness and humanist principles (including advocating the abolition of capital punishment) that would later influence his grandson. Sakharov's mother was Ekaterina Alekseyevna Sakharova (née Sofiano and of Greek ancestry). His parents and his paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna, largely shaped Sakharov's personality. Although his paternal great-grandfather had been a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, and his pious mother did have him baptised, his father was an atheist and religion did not play an important role in his life, though he did believe that a non-scientific "guiding principle" governed the universe and human life.

Sakharov entered Moscow State University in 1938. Following evacuation in 1941 during the Great Patriotic War, he graduated in Aşgabat, in today's Turkmenistan. He was then assigned laboratory work in Ulyanovsk. During this period, in 1943, he married Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he raised two daughters and a son before she died in 1969. He returned to Moscow in 1945 to study at the Theoretical Department of FIAN (the Physical Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences). He received his Ph.D. in 1947.

On World War II's end, Sakharov researched cosmic rays. In mid-1948 he participated in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov. The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949. After moving to Sarov in 1950, Sakharov played a key role in the next stage, the development of the hydrogen bomb. The first Soviet fusion device was tested on August 12, 1953, using what was called the Sloika design. In 1953, he received his D.Sc. degree, was elected a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the first of his three Hero of Socialist Labor titles. Sakharov continued to work at Sarov, playing a key role in the development of the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb using a design known as "Sakharov's Third Idea" in Russia and the Teller-Ulam design in the United States. It was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of the same design which Sakharov worked on was the 50MT Tsar Bomba of October 1961, which was the most powerful device ever exploded.

He also proposed an idea for a controlled nuclear fusion reactor, the tokamak, which is still the basis for the majority of work in the area. Sakharov, in association with Igor Tamm, proposed confining extremely hot ionized plasma by torus shaped magnetic fields for controlling thermonuclear fusion that led to the development of the tokamak device.

Sakharov proposed the idea of induced gravity as an alternative theory of quantum gravity.

Turn to activism

From the late-1950s Sakharov had become concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. Politically active during the 1960s, Sakharov was against nuclear proliferation. Pushing for the end of atmospheric tests, he played a role in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in Moscow. In 1965 he returned to fundamental science and began working on cosmology but continued to oppose political discrimination.

The major turn in Sakharov’s political evolution started in 1967, when anti-ballistic missile defense became a key issue in US–Soviet relations. In a secret detailed letter to the Soviet leadership of July 21, 1967, Sakharov explains the need to "take the Americans at their word" and accept their proposal "for a bilateral rejection by the USA and the Soviet Union of the development of antiballistic missile defense", because otherwise an arms race in this new technology would increase the likelihood of nuclear war. He also asked permission to publish his manuscript (which accompanied the letter) in a newspaper to explain the dangers posed by this kind of defense. The government ignored his letter and refused to let him initiate a public discussion of ABM in the Soviet press.

In May 1968 he completed an essay, Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, where the anti-ballistic missile defense is featured as a major threat of world nuclear war. After this essay was circulated in samizdat and then published outside the Soviet Union, Sakharov was banned from all military-related research and Sakharov returned to FIAN to study fundamental theoretical physics. In 1970 he, along with Valery Chalidze and Andrei Tverdokhlebov, was one of the founders of the Moscow Human Rights Committee and came under increasing pressure from the regime. He married a fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner, in 1972.

In 1973 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1974 was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1975, although he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to collect it. His wife read his speech at the acceptance ceremony.

Sakharov's ideas on social development led him to put forward the principle of human rights as a new basis of all politics. In his works he declared that "the principle 'what is not prohibited is allowed' should be understood literally", denying the importance and validity of all moral or cultural norms not codified in the laws. He was arrested on January 22, 1980, following his public protests against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and was sent to internal exile in the city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, a closed city that was inaccessible to foreign observers.

Between 1980 to 1986, Sakharov was kept under tight Soviet police surveillance. In his memoirs he mentions that their apartment in Gorky was repeatedly subjected to searches and heists. He remained isolated but unrepentant until December 1986 when he was allowed to return to Moscow as Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the policies of perestroika and glasnost.

In 1988 Sakharov was given the International Humanist Award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

He helped to initiate the first independent legal political organizations and became prominent in the Soviet Union's growing political opposition. In March 1989, Sakharov was elected to the new parliament, the All-Union Congress of People's Deputies and co-led the democratic opposition.

Soon after 9:00 pm on December 14, 1989, Sakharov went to his study to take a nap before preparing an important speech he was to deliver the next day in the Congress. His wife went to wake him at 11:00 pm as he had requested but she found Sakharov dead on the floor. A sudden heart attack had taken his life at the age of 68. He was interred in the Vostryakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Influence

The Sakharov Prize, established in 1988 and awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, was named in his honor.

An Andrei Sakharov prize is also to be awarded by the American Physical Society every second year from 2006, "to recognize outstanding leadership and/or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights".

Andrei Sakharov Archives

The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993, are now housed at Harvard University. The documents from that archive were published by the Yale University Press in 2005. These documents are available online in English and in Russian. Most of documents of the archive are letters from the head of the KGB to the Central Committee about activity of dissidents and recommendations about the interpretation in newspapers. The letters cover the period from 1968 to 1991 (Brezhnev stagnation). The documents characterize not only the Sacharov's activity, but that of other dissidents, as well as that of highest-position communists, and the KGB. No Russian equivalent of the KGB archive is available.

Trivia

Sakharov and the "Sakharov Drive" were mentioned in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two. The drive is not described in detail and the principles on which it is based (presumably imagined by Sakharov) are not given.

Sakharov is mentioned briefly in Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake.

One of the Enterprise-D shuttlecraft in Star Trek: The Next Generation is named for him.

During the 1980s, the block of 16th Street NW between L and M streets in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. was renamed "Andrei Sakharov Place" as a form of protest against his 1980 arrest and detention.

Text: From Wikipedia

One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, 1985 by Jeff Koons.

It was fascinating reading about how Jeff worked with Nobel prize winning Physicists in order to create this iconic artwork (it was also therfore even more surprising to hear that it needs constant adjustment......).

I don't normally go to the special Exhibitions at the Ashmolean, not least as they're quite expensive for what can be quite small exhibitions, but the exception that proves the rule I went to see the recent Jeff Koons exhibition on it's last day.

I was particularly keen to see (and photograph) his reflective Ballerinas. Photos of those will follow but first I'll upload some shots of the other exhibits.

You can see more contemporary art in my Art set : www.flickr.com/photos/darrellg/albums/72157623184641329

From Wikipedia : "Jeffrey Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for working with popular culture subjects and his reproductions of banal objects, such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania.

His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist, including $91.1 million with fees in May 2019. On November 12, 2013, Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City for US$58.4 million, above its high US$55 million estimate, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. The price topped Koons' previous record of US$33.7 million and the record for the most expensive living artist, held by Gerhard Richter, whose 1968 painting, Domplatz, Mailand, sold for US$37.1 million at Sotheby's on May 14, 2013. Balloon Dog (Orange) was one of the first of the Balloon dogs to be fabricated, and had been acquired by Greenwich collector Peter Brant in the late 1990s. His Rabbit in stainless steel fetched the highest price ever for a piece by a living artist in May 2019, selling for $91 million.

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques."

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Photographer, Tommaso Torda is a theoretical physicist and documentary photographer exploring how humans connect with their surroundings. With his camera in hand and a cinematic approach, he reveals curiosity, wonder and humor through his photography. Learn more about his photo, The Donkey, in our newest edition of 16 Questions about 1 Photo.

Visit the Flickr blog today!

photo credit: Tommaso Torda

Listen carefully true believers to this twisted tale of terrible tides...

Doctor Otto Octavius was a brilliant and respected nuclear physicist, atomic research consultant, inventor, and lecturer. His research led him to create a set of bio-mechanical arms that would aid him in his atomic physics research. A lab accident left the apparatus fused to his body and allowed him to control the arms with merely a thought. The new synaptic pathways that were being created as a result of the fusion altered his mental state and Octavius became the villainous Doctor Octopus!

A founding member of the Sinister Six, Doc Ock attempted to dispose the Amazing Spider-Man at every opportunity, even learning the hero's true identity: Peter Parker. Though SUPERIOR to Spider-Man in many ways, Otto always felt jealous of the family life that Peter led with his beloved Aunt May and relationship with Mary Jane. Otto eventually vowed that he would gain the same sort of strength of puny Parker through family by raising a child... his daughter Octavia.

With a genius level intellect, Octavius was prepared for every challenge parenthood could bring! Why even a pedestrian task such as going to the grocery store is no challenge for the foul father and his dastardly descendant!

Watch out Spider-Man! There's a new diabolical duo in New York, and this time, they're bringing coupons!

Build for Mr. Xenomurphy's Superhero Contest on Mocpages:

www.mocpages.com/group.php/22749

Part of "res noscenda note notiz sketch skizze material sammlung collection entwurf überlegung gedanke brainstorming musterbogen schnittmuster zwischenbilanz bestandsaufnahme rückschau vorschau" - Empty Padded ~ LeerGefüllt - Time at Work - Left handed drawings and writings on the empty left pages of my prompter`s book: Soufflierbuch "Die Physiker The physicists" (Friedrich Dürrenmatt) Seite 39

DMC-GH3 - P1050334 - 2015-06-06 panasonic lumix

#thema #themenkreis #aesthetizismus #work #arbeit #handwerk #theater #theatre #probe #rehearsal #performance #improvisation #fermate #entwurf #face #gesicht #portrait #porträt #spiegelaffe #abstrakt #körper #body #schriftbild #schaubild #schnittmuster #maske #mask #narrenturm #blue #blau #brille #glasses #affe #mandrill #pavian #spiegel #mirror

On Dec. 9, astronomers and physicists will commemorate two years of landmark X-ray science by NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission.

IXPE is the joint NASA-Italian Space Agency mission to study polarized X-ray light. Polarization is a characteristic of light that can help reveal information about where that light came from, such as the geometry and inner workings of the ultra-powerful energy sources from which it emanates.

This new image of supernova remnant SN 1006 combines data from IXPE and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red, green, and blue elements reflect low, medium, and high energy X-rays, respectively, as detected by Chandra. The IXPE data, which measure the polarization of the X-ray light, is show in purple in the upper left corner, with the addition of lines representing the outward movement of the remnant’s magnetic field.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO (Chandra); NASA/MSFC/Nanjing Univ./P. Zhou et al. (IXPE); IR: NASA/JPL/CalTech/Spitzer; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Schmidt

#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #astronomy #chandra #NASAChandra #NASA #blackhole #pulsar #IXPE

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Read more about NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)

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The Trabi next to my other 1:22 scale cars: a Mercury Lead Sled and a Ferrari Testarossa (both replicas of Ralph's models, with his permission). In reality you would rarely see them on the same photo. But the proportions seem about right.

Here's a happy guy ... This is Rasul, a solar physicist from the University of Alberta at Calgary, enjoying the fading tail end of a truly magnificent Auroral display above the northern Yukon , around 3:30 AM on the morning of March 1. A member of a really extraordinary team I had the privilege of guiding up to the Arctic Circle this past week. It was a week of sleepless, wonderful, and very determined Aurora hunting, all part of a 90 minute documentary film on the Aurora being produced for NHK, the Japanese national public TV network, which will have it's debut showing across Japan on April 9. This pic itself could've been better, but it was taken after 4 hrs. of nonstop photography with the temperature at around minus 35, and the last of my Canon's batteries expired halfway thru the planned exposure.

Ørstedsparken is a public park in central Copenhagen, Denmark. One in a series of parks which were laid out on the grounds of the old fortification ring after it was decommissioned in the 1870s, the park still retains elements from the old fortifications in its topography—a section of the moat now serve as an elongated lake and former bastions appear in the landscape as small hills. The park is named for the brothers Ørsted, the politician and jurist Anders Sandøe Ørsted, and the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, who both are commemorated with monuments in the park. (Wikipedia)

Photos in collaboration with PKCFowler (we can't remember who shot which one!).

The Panthéon (Latin: pantheon, from Greek πάνθειον (ἱερόν) '(temple) to all the gods' is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the Abbey of St Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. He did recover, and entrusted Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny with the fulfillment of his vow. In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 meters wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the triple dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome, frescoed by Antoine Gros with The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve. The outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron cramps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than of carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the period. Concealed flying buttresses pass the massive weight of the triple construction outwards to the portico columns. The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to economic problems work proceeded slowly. In 1780, Soufflot died and was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. The re-modelled Abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791. Jean Guillaume Moitte created a pediment sculptural group The Fatherland crowning the heroic and civic virtues that was replaced upon the Bourbon Restoration with one by David d'Angers. Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France. The cross of the dome, which was retained in compromise, is again visible during the current major restoration project. FOUCAULT PENDULUM: In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the earth by constructing a 67-metre (220 ft) Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original sphere from the pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the 1990s (starting in 1995) during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The original pendulum was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon. It has been listed since 1920 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. From 1906 to 1922 the Panthéon was the site of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Léviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. The art installation was in the Panthéon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris's Autumn Festival. BURIAL PLACE: By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honour it received from them. As such, interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes". Similar high honours exist in Les Invalides for historical military leaders such as Napoléon, Turenne and Vauban. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, its architect. In 1907 Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Mme Sophie Berthelot. Marie Curie was interred in 1995. Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, heroines of the French resistance, were interred in 2015. The widely repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthéon

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A Life in the Lab: Four decades of working with Jerry Lutty

I met Jerry in the fall of 1974 when I joined Bernie Hochheimer’s lab at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) as a photographer in an NEI-funded study to examine dyes for possible use in clinical ocular angiography. Bernie, who was a brilliant physicist in optical systems, and subsequently worked on the repair of the Hubble Telescope mirror, co-developed ICG angiography in the early 70’s with Bob Flower who I would later go on to work with. Prior to joining Bernie’s lab, I had been a cinematographers assistant at APL, working on a documentary film about the life of Dr. R.E. Gibson. He was, at that time, Director Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and and Professor of biomedical engineering of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. One day after filming wrapped, he invited me to join him for lunch in his office at APL. Dr. Gibson suggested that I would be better served if I pursued a career in science, even though I had no formal training in that field. He asked me to meet with Bernie to discuss working in his research lab at APL and Wilmer. Needless to say, when Dr. Gibson spoke, I listened.

I met with Bernie shortly thereafter, and was offered the position which I promptly accepted. Bernie was such a good man and someone who made a tremendous contribution to the field of ophthalmology. In addition to ICG angiography, he helped develop, (in collaboration with Dr. Arnall Patz), laser photocoagulation as a method for treating diabetic retinopathy. I reported to work the following week and was introduced to Jerry who was, at that time, conducting the toxicological aspect of the dye study. I later found out that Jerry also had a connection to Dr. Gibson who steered me to Bernie’s lab. His father-in-law, Dr. Alfred J. Zmuda (A.J.), was a specialist at APL in geomagnetism, ionospheric physics and space physics, and an expert on the Aurora Borealis. I had to admire Bernie for hiring two guys who looked like they could have been at a political protest or an Earth Day celebration on the National Mall the day before. We both had hair well below our shoulders and Jerry had a big beard which he wore for the remainder of the subsequent 40+ years we worked together. We hit it off immediately and would take walks around APL’s campus at lunch time discussing art, music, politics and photography. I looked up to Jerry as I found him to be a kind and gentle soul, with a passion for knowledge and a temperament for teaching.

Following the completion of the dye study in the 70’s, Jerry and I worked in different labs on the same floor of the Woods Research Building at Wilmer. Jerry became involved in ocular angiogenesis research under Dr. Arnall Patz (who was director of the Wilmer Eye Institute at the time) and I worked with Bob Flower to further develop ICG angiography for clinical use. Later, in the early 80’s, Jerry and I collaborated on studies of Retinopathy of Prematurity under Patz and Flower. Dr. Patz had received the Lasker Award in 1956 for his research showing that giving high levels of oxygen to premature infants was causing an epidemic of blindness in those babies. We felt that a key to understanding the vasculopathy of ROP was a better understanding of normal retinal vascular development. Jerry and I worked closely on the project for the next several years and developed a new technique for visualization of the retinal vasculature. In the 80’s, the number of NIH biomedical research grants to be funded was slashed by 23%. Even though we kept the project going for the following several years, primarily through the generosity of donors to Wilmer, I eventually was forced to return to APL for several years until the biomedical research funding situation improved. While Jerry was fortunate to remain at Wilmer, we did manage to collaborate part-time on several projects during that period.

In the early 90’s Jerry received an NIH grant to study sickle cell retinopathy, and an RPB grant to study diabetic retinopathy. I returned to Wilmer again on a full time basis. I was incredibly lucky to have worked with both Jerry and Dr. Morton Goldberg on the sickle cell project. Dr. Goldberg was Wilmer’s Director at the time and an expert on sickle cell retinopathy. We were very productive during that period and gained valuable insights into vaso-occlusive processes in both diabetic and sickle cell retinopathy. We identified growth factors in sickle cell retina and showed that arteriovenous crossings were a preferred site of seafan formation. Seafan was the term coined for the neovascularization that formed at the interface between perfused and nonperfused peripheral retina which resembled the marine invertebrate Gorgonia flabellum.

In diabetic retina, we showed increased levels of the cell adhesion molecule ICAM-1 in retinal vessels. This protein could contribute to the retinal microangiopathy observed in diabetics by enhancing leukocyte adhesion to endothelium and consequently the incidence of capillary obstruction. Our study and subsequent work demonstrated ICAM-1 and its binding partners are operative in diabetic retinopathy and may serve as potential targets for therapeutic interventions. The publication of that work, in The American Journal of Pathology, has been one one of our most cited papers.

In addition to our work in diabetic and sickle cell retinopathy, Jerry also received NIH funding to continue our work on Retinopathy of Prematurity during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. We demonstrated the anti-VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) therapy was effective in reducing neovacularization in animal models of ROP, but that therapeutic doses should be carefully considered clinically so that retinal revascularization wasn’t inhibited.

The 2000’s brought continued success and renewed interest in normal fetal development of retinal and choroidal vasculatures. The discovery that the fetal choriocapillaris formed by a process of hemovasculogenesis, a process in which vasculogenesis and hematopoiesis occur simultaneously, was intriguing. Our work in fetal choroid led us to begin studying the choroidal vasculature in disease states, particularly, in Age-Related Macular Degeneration (ARMD). We showed that choriocapillaris dropout occurs in eyes of ARMD prior to clinical manifestations of disease. Additionally, we found that mast cells in choroid may contribute to the dry form of ARMD. These studies are still ongoing by Dr.’s Malia Edwards and Imran Bhutto at Wilmer.

I officially retired from Wilmer in 2018, however, I continued working with Jerry on a part-time basis to finish up some papers for publication. I had known and worked with him for over 45 years. He had been a mentor, a collaborator and one of my dearest friends during that time. He was a remarkable human being and I consider myself extremely lucky to have been a part of his lab and his life. He mentored countless high school students, undergrads, medical students and postdocs during his career. His teaching style, patience and desire to inspire future generations in science was an attribute to his impeccable character. I was deeply saddened by his passing as many in his circle were. We lost a a giant in science, a kind human being, dear friend and a devoted family man!

Posted by Ross Marquand (Aaron) - RT @mental_floss: Physicists Believe They've Discovered a Fifth Fundamental Force of the Universe — t.co/dIjE58eFG9 t.co/xUsgfHK1I3 #RossMarquand #Aaron #TWD #TheWalkingDead August 22, 2016 at 09:43PM

Source: walkingdead.affiliatebrowser.com/rt-mental_floss-physicis...

Neil deGrasse Tyson

painting by unknown artist

atom by matthew kaplan

Marie Skłodowska Curie (/ˈkjʊəri/; French: [kyʁi]; Polish: [kʲiˈri]; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska]; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie, who used both surnames, never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered‍—‌polonium, which she isolated in 1898‍—‌after her native country.

Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at a sanatorium in Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I. (Wikipedia)

Architect: Campbell Douglas, 1875.

Now somewhat modified and subdivided (with some pretty odd windows), Netherhall House was the home of the renowned physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin; it stands near the Ayrshire coast in the seaside town of Largs.

After Lord Kelvin's death in December 1907, his coffin set off from the house on the long journey to Westminster Abbey. The Scotsman of 23 December 1907 described the event.

'In the afternoon an invitation was given to the inhabitants to accompany the hearse from the house to the station. The invitation was widely accepted, and a large number of mourners assembled at Netherhall prior to the hour of departure...At seven o'clock the cortege started on its way to the station, about a mile distant. All the shopkeepers in Largs closed their premises during its passage, and the withdrawal of the shop lights added to the melancholy solemnity of the scene as the long line of mourners, headed by the hearse, passed slowly along the hushed streets ... Large crowds witnessed the passing of the cortege, but only those taking part in it were admitted to the station. The coffin was placed in a special Midland and Glasgow and South-Western Railway van, and the train took its departure at 8.30 pm for Kilmarnock. Here the van was attached to the express for St Pancras, which left Glasgow at 8.30 pm and was due to arrive at 7.30 yesterday morning. The coffin was accompanied by a few relatives, and by representatives of Messrs Wylie & Lochhead, Glasgow.'

From St Pancras Station in London the coffin was transferred to a hearse, and transported to Westminster Abbey, where it was placed in St Faith's Chapel 'almost wholly enveloped in its floral mantle' until the funeral followed by the burial just behind the choir screen in front of Isaac Newton's monument.

A stop off at Lorentzsluizen on the Afsluitdijk in Holland.

The Lorentz locks are named after the physicist Hendrik Lorentz . His precision calculations were the location of the Afsluitdijk in Friesland near Zurich instead of Piaam , in order to limit the danger of the storm.

In the 1924 work plan for the Afsluitdijk the definitive place for the Lorentz locks was established, between the two bends in the Afsluitdijk, on the back of the Kornwerderzand. In total, two groups of sluices were constructed and two lock locks . From a hydrological point of view there was a slight preference for three groups of sluices at the Frisian coast, and two at Den Oever , but in the event of an invasion from the east, the defense wanted to keep the largest capacity in their own hands for as long as possible, and that is why the ratio is the other way around. become. Shipping traffic on the Frisian coast was quite intensive and two locks were built. The depth of the ships was a maximum of three meters and with a depth of four meters, even the largest ships could be shoveled even at very low water levels. The crossings of car traffic on the Afsluitdijk and shipping traffic made movable bridges necessary. In view of defense interests these were turning bridges , because high collection or bascule bridges would have been a clear target for the enemy artillery .

The lock complex had to be ready for use before the Zuiderzee was closed. During the work on the dike, the currents would become so strong due to the shrinking closing holes that safe shipping traffic could not be involved. The construction site for the Lorentz locks was completed in May 1928. The soil conditions at the site were less favorable than at the Stevin locks and wooden piles were driven under the concrete foundation slabs . The foundation was started in June 1928 and on July 15, 1931, the shelters could be used, although the official opening was only made on October 7, 1931. The sluice gates followed in May 1932.

Higgs boson

the particle that all matter share

what the water and threes have

what the whales and the bees have

what the dictators and the saints have

shared by the core of our sun or the dirt on mars

yet we consume and destroy all our fellow travels through time

till the higgs boson unwinds

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

The "God particle" is the nickname of a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. In layman’s terms, different subatomic particles are responsible for giving matter different properties. One of the most mysterious and important properties is mass. Some particles, like protons and neutrons, have mass. Others, like photons, do not. The Higgs boson, or “God particle,” is believed to be the particle which gives mass to matter. The “God particle” nickname grew out of the long, drawn-out struggles of physicists to find this elusive piece of the cosmic puzzle. What follows is a very brief, very simplified explanation of how the Higgs boson fits into modern physics, and how science is attempting to study it.

The “standard model” of particle physics is a system that attempts to describe the forces, components, and reactions of the basic particles that make up matter. It not only deals with atoms and their components, but the pieces that compose some subatomic particles. This model does have some major gaps, including gravity, and some experimental contradictions. The standard model is still a very good method of understanding particle physics, and it continues to improve. The model predicts that there are certain elementary particles even smaller than protons and neutrons. As of the date of this writing, the only particle predicted by the model which has not been experimentally verified is the “Higgs boson,” jokingly referred to as the “God particle.”

Each of the subatomic particles contributes to the forces that cause all matter interactions. One of the most important, but least understood, aspects of matter is mass. Science is not entirely sure why some particles seem mass-less, like photons, and others are “massive.” The standard model predicts that there is an elementary particle, the Higgs boson, which would produce the effect of mass. Confirmation of the Higgs boson would be a major milestone in our understanding of physics.

The “God particle” nickname actually arose when the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon Lederman was published. Since then, it’s taken on a life of its own, in part because of the monumental questions about matter that the God particle might be able to answer. The man who first proposed the Higgs boson’s existence, Peter Higgs, isn’t all that amused by the nickname “God particle,” as he’s an avowed atheist. All the same, there isn’t really any religious intention behind the nickname.

related news:

news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/scientists-unveil-proof-god-...

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) was a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before immigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison in New York City. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant. His work in the formative years of electric power development was involved in a corporate alternating current/direct current "War of Currents" as well as various patent battles.

Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs, and made early (1893) pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. He tried to put these ideas to practical use in his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission, which was his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project. In his lab he also conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.

Tesla was renowned for his achievements and showmanship, eventually earning him a reputation in popular culture as an archetypal "mad scientist". His patents earned him a considerable amount of money, much of which was used to finance his own projects with varying degrees of success. He lived most of his life in a series of New York hotels, through his retirement. He died on 7 January 1943. His work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but in 1960 the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. Tesla has experienced a resurgence in interest in popular culture since the 1990s. [Source: Wikipedia]

I knew visiting Mad physicist would bring out the aircraft-geek in me, and surely it did. It's not often I meet people with that much knowledge on the subject. I could ask just about anything and Ralph would have detailed information from the top of his head, usually accompanied by a little anecdote, or he would fetch one of his books on the subject.

All in all a very worthwhile visit, rounded off with some pretty good thai food. Thanks for having me Ralph!

The Panthéon (Latin: pantheon, from Greek πάνθειον (ἱερόν) '(temple) to all the gods' is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the Abbey of St Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. He did recover, and entrusted Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny with the fulfillment of his vow. In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 meters wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the triple dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome, frescoed by Antoine Gros with The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve. The outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron cramps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than of carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the period. Concealed flying buttresses pass the massive weight of the triple construction outwards to the portico columns. The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to economic problems work proceeded slowly. In 1780, Soufflot died and was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. The re-modelled Abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791. Jean Guillaume Moitte created a pediment sculptural group The Fatherland crowning the heroic and civic virtues that was replaced upon the Bourbon Restoration with one by David d'Angers. Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France. The cross of the dome, which was retained in compromise, is again visible during the current major restoration project. FOUCAULT PENDULUM: In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the earth by constructing a 67-metre (220 ft) Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original sphere from the pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the 1990s (starting in 1995) during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The original pendulum was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon. It has been listed since 1920 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. From 1906 to 1922 the Panthéon was the site of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Léviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. The art installation was in the Panthéon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris's Autumn Festival. BURIAL PLACE: By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honour it received from them. As such, interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes". Similar high honours exist in Les Invalides for historical military leaders such as Napoléon, Turenne and Vauban. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, its architect. In 1907 Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Mme Sophie Berthelot. Marie Curie was interred in 1995. Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, heroines of the French resistance, were interred in 2015. The widely repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthéon

Man in Black ~ Université Pierre & Marie Curie ~ Paris ~ MjYj

MjYj© All rights reserved

youtu.be/g_1Pa6vE14c

Exploring the architectural delightful crypt of the www.flickr.com/photos/upload/# with PKC Fowler - we cooperated with the camera and cannot remember who took which shot.

The Panthéon (Latin: pantheon, from Greek πάνθειον (ἱερόν) '(temple) to all the gods' is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the Abbey of St Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. He did recover, and entrusted Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny with the fulfillment of his vow. In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 meters wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the triple dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome, frescoed by Antoine Gros with The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve. The outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron cramps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than of carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the period. Concealed flying buttresses pass the massive weight of the triple construction outwards to the portico columns. The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to economic problems work proceeded slowly. In 1780, Soufflot died and was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. The re-modelled Abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791. Jean Guillaume Moitte created a pediment sculptural group The Fatherland crowning the heroic and civic virtues that was replaced upon the Bourbon Restoration with one by David d'Angers. Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France. The cross of the dome, which was retained in compromise, is again visible during the current major restoration project. FOUCAULT PENDULUM: In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the earth by constructing a 67-metre (220 ft) Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original sphere from the pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the 1990s (starting in 1995) during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The original pendulum was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon. It has been listed since 1920 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. From 1906 to 1922 the Panthéon was the site of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Léviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. The art installation was in the Panthéon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris's Autumn Festival. BURIAL PLACE: By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honour it received from them. As such, interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes". Similar high honours exist in Les Invalides for historical military leaders such as Napoléon, Turenne and Vauban. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, its architect. In 1907 Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Mme Sophie Berthelot. Marie Curie was interred in 1995. Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, heroines of the French resistance, were interred in 2015. The widely repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthéon

On November 28, 2022, I photographed Konstantin Batygin at Caltech—first at the Athenaeum, then in his office at South Mudd. He arrived in a black shirt, torn jeans, and a biker jacket. Some physicists dress like rock stars; Konstantin is one. He’s also the lead singer and guitarist for the band The Seventh Season. It was clear from the moment he stepped into the room that his identity as a scientist and musician weren’t separate things but different manifestations of the same creative force.

His blackboard was a chaotic, beautiful mess—equations scrawled in every direction, the remnants of deep gravitational musings. As he spoke about his work on Planet Nine, the elusive theoretical planet lurking at the edges of our solar system, he casually plucked at the strings of his bass guitar. The interplay was effortless, as if physics and music shared a common rhythm only he could hear.

Batygin's mind moves in unexpected ways, unafraid of the speculative and the audacious. Alongside his collaborator Mike Brown, he has built a compelling case for the existence of Planet Nine—an unseen world whose presence is inferred by the gravitational tugs it exerts on the Kuiper Belt’s most distant objects. Unlike previous claims of hidden planets, this one rests on the sturdy foundations of orbital mechanics and statistical evidence, making it one of the most tantalizing mysteries in planetary science.

As we talked, he mentioned that, from time to time, a museum will come and pack up his blackboard—preserving its contents as if it were an artifact from a lost civilization. When that happens, he simply starts fresh, chalk in hand, equations unfolding once again in their swirling, elegant logic. It is a reminder that science, like music, is an evolving composition—an unfinished symphony of discovery.

The legendary VW Beetle done in LEGO Classic Town style. Interior view of storage space for spare tire and Police stuff.

Based on a design by 'Mad physicist' (Ralph S). Thanks for the inspiration!

BrickArms U-Clips used for side mirrors and exhaust pipes.

BrickArms gun used for Police Officer.

I am a photographer.

I am a physicist.

I am chronically ill.

Can you see all sides of me?

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Busts In The Pincian Gardens, Rome

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered to be the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying concepts of infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems, including: the area of a circle; the surface area and volume of a sphere; area of an ellipse; the area under a parabola; the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution; the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution; and the area of a spiral.

His other mathematical achievements include deriving an accurate approximation of pi; defining and investigating the spiral that now bears his name; and creating a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, founding hydrostatics and statics, including an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion.

Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse, where he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder, which Archimedes had requested be placed on his tomb to represent his mathematical discoveries.

Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus in Byzantine Constantinople, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the 6th century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance, while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results [Wikipedia]

Thanks to close-up images of the Sun obtained during Solar Orbiter’s perihelion passage of October 2022, solar physicists have seen how fleeting magnetic fields at the solar surface build up into the solar atmosphere.

The outer solar atmosphere is known as the solar corona. It is termed ‘quiet’ when there is little appreciable solar activity such as flares or coronal mass ejections. How the quiet corona reaches a temperature of a million °C when the surface is just at ~6000 °C is a long-running mystery.

Although the action of magnetic fields has long been suspected, the nature of the magnetic processes responsible has never been fully understood. These new images of the quiet Sun show how loops of million-degree gas – which form the building blocks of the solar corona – are associated with fleeting 100-km-sized magnetic field patches on the solar surface.

The speckled image comes from the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), and reveals the magnetic polarity of the solar surface. The red and blue shaded regions represent patches of north and south magnetic polarities. A clear correlation can be seen between the small patches of magnetic fields and the coronal loops.

The coronal loops are apparently linked to scattered concentrations of the small-scale magnetic field concentrations on the surface, often with mixed-polarity configuration. This complex arrangement and the temporal evolution of these small magnetic field patches play a role in the building of the million-degree corona.

These observations capture surface magnetic structures and coronal features at almost the same high spatial resolution of ~200 km, allowing the data from the two instruments to be closely compared. With these unique data, solar physicists now have a window to investigate the role of the small-scale magnetic fields in the building of solar corona.

Like the perihelion pass that gave these results, Solar Orbiter is currently preparing for another close pass of the Sun on 7 October 2023. On that day, the spacecraft will get as close as 43 million km to the Sun – i.e., closer to the Sun than the innermost planet Mercury. This allows Solar Orbiter to view the Sun in precise detail, revealing the previously unseen small-scale processes that appear to drive so much of the Sun’s hot atmosphere. This allows Solar Orbiter to view the Sun in precise detail, revealing the previously unseen small-scale processes that appear to drive so much of the Sun’s hot atmosphere.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This new result is reported in the paper 'Fleeting small-scale surface magnetic fields build the quiet-Sun corona' by L. P. Chitta et al, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters 5 October 2023.

Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI team

This is a lino block print of Marie Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) shows the famous Polish-born, naturalized-French physicist and chemist at work in her lab. The contents of her lab glassware appropriately glow-in-the-dark!

Marie Curie was the first woman to wind a Nobel prize, the only woman to ever win TWO Nobel prizes, and the only person ever to win in two different science: physics and chemistry! She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, she studied secretly at the Floating University there before moving to Paris where she earned higher scientific degrees, met her PhD supervisor and future husband Pierre.

She was one of the pioneers who helped explain radioactivity, a term she coined. She was the one who first developped a means of isolating radioacitve isotopes and discovered not one, but two new elements: polonium (named for her native country) and radium. She also pioneered radioactive medicine, proposing the treatment of tumors with radioactivity. She founded medical research centres, the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw which are still active today. She created the first field radiology centres during World War I. She died in 1934 from aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation, including arrying test tubes of radium in her pockets during research and her World War I service in her mobile X-ray units.

Her pioneering work explaining radioactivity earned her the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. At first, the Committee intended to honour only Pierre and Becquerel, but Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, an advocate of women in science alerted Pierre to the situation. After Pierre's complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination. The 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to her "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."

Her life and legacy are truly extraordinary!

Both of the elements she discovered are radioactive, meaning that they spontaneously give off radiation. All of the isotopes of polonium emit alpha particles, but Polonium-210 will emit a blue glow which is caused by excitation of surrounding air. Radium emits alpha, beta and gamma particles - that is 2 protons and 2 neutrons, electrons as well as x-rays. Thus, I've shown her sample surrounded by the symbols of these particles: the straight and wiggly lined arrows, and made the sample with glow-in-the-dark ink. While the materials she discovered and worked with would have glowed due to radioactivity, never fear... these prints glow due to phosphorescence - a different process which is not dangerous. The ink will absorb UV light (for instance, from sunlight) and re-emit it in the dark.

The linocut is printed on Japanese kozo paper 9.25" by 12.5" (23.5 cm by 32 cm) in an edition of eight.

Karl Guthe Jansky (1905 - 1950) was an American physicist and radio engineer who in August 1931 first discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. He is considered one of the founding figures of radio astronomy. He was only 28 when he published a paper based on his analysis of electric disturbances coming from the Milky Way and the strongest from the direction of the center of the galaxy, in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array

Plains of San Agustin

50-miles west of Socorro, New Mexico

Dec 2016

Anti matter is a concept very exploited in science fiction. In the book (and film) Angels and Demons, the hero tries to save Vatican City from an anti matter bomb. Star Trek’s starship Enterprise uses matter-anti matter annihilation propulsion for faster-than-light travel. But anti matter is also something really existing. Its existence was postulated by Paul Dirac in 1928, when he studied the behaviour of an electron moving at a relativistic speed. The equation he reached during his studies has two possible solutions, in such a way it needed two particles: an electron with positive energy and another one with negative energy. Since classical physics (and common sense) always said that the energy of a particle must always be a positive number, the idea of an "anti-elecrton" seemed dangerously outsider. But when, in 1932, Carl Anderson discovered the positron (actually the anti-electron postulated by Dirac), phycisists started to follow that way of research and discovered that for each particle exists a corresponding anti-particle exactly matching the particle but with opposite charge.

One of the most frightful (see Angel and Demons and the recent discussion on the CERN activity apparently oriented to create a black hole that will destroy the world, that's obviously not true) and interesting feature is that when matter and anti matter come into contact, they annihilate, disappearing in a flash of energy. So in principle, none of us should exist. The reason why we're all here, alive, reading my words, is because during the Big Bang there should be an asymmetry in the matter and anti matter production, so the matter amount was bigger than the anti matter one. We really have not understood this asymmetry yet, but we are happy it happened. Definitely :)

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Creator/Photographer: Unidentified photographer

Medium: Medium unknown

Dimensions: 21.9 cm x 19.7 cm

Date: prior to 1937

Collection: Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology - As a supplement to the Dibner Library for the History of Science and Technology's collection of written works by scientists, engineers, natural philosophers, and inventors, the library also has a collection of thousands of portraits of these individuals. The portraits come in a variety of formats: drawings, woodcuts, engravings, paintings, and photographs, all collected by donor Bern Dibner. Presented here are a few photos from the collection, from the late 19th and early 20th century.

Repository: Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Accession number: SIL14-M001-13

She's come a long way from the poorly-copied Mad Physicist knock-off she used to be. Though I may have "borrowed" the flame dampeners from him this time... But the nose, the wings, the engines, the tails, the dorsal fuselage, the night music, it's all mine.

I just remembered this while watching my nightly Star Trek, but the back of the new nacelles isn't mine either, it's by... I can't be bothered to look up his name, but search for the best Lego B-25 there is; if you find it in tan, that's the one I stole it from.

Owl 5 specs:

Speed: 700 km/h (472 mp/h)

Turn radius: 231 meters (760 feet)

Armament: 4x20mm cannons facing forward, 2x20mm cannons slanted 70 degrees upwards

Service ceiling: 13000 meters (42,651 feet)

Some people say he was built by a mad physicist... and that all his body-parts have knobs. All we know is that he is called "The Stig"

A group of prominent Hungarian physicists and mathematicians who emigrated to the United States following the Great Purge of 1933:

(Left to right) (Top row) John von Neumann, Paul Erdős, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller;

(Bottom row) Leó Szilárd, Theodore von Kármán, Paul Halmos, George Polya and John G. Kemeny.

The group include refugees from the University of Göttingen, early associates of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and members of The Manhattan Project.

“There is a rumor in America that there are two intelligent races on Earth: Humans and Hungarians” — Isaac Asimov

[from Jørgen Veisdal's blog Privatdozent]

Dr. Steve Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose career has spanned groundbreaking research in quantum physics, energy policy, and now, a diverse range of scientific inquiries beyond his original training. As a professor at Stanford and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, he continues to push the boundaries of knowledge, engaging with topics from liver health to battery innovation.

I photographed Chu on September 9, 2024, at his home and his lab at Stanford. Our conversation covered the remarkable breadth of his current work, demonstrating his intellectual curiosity and ability to adapt across disciplines. He spoke about his role on the board of NVIDIA, helping CEO Jensen Huang explore AI applications for chip technology, and reflected on his time serving in the Obama administration. As Secretary of Energy, he played a key role in shaping clean energy initiatives and was often entrusted with complex challenges, including managing the technical response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In his office, amid scientific papers and books, he seamlessly transitioned from discussing quantum physics to casually sorting out carpool logistics with his graduate students, even offering to drive. This small moment encapsulated his balance of brilliance and approachability—equally at ease tackling fundamental physics questions and the practical details of daily life.

Thoughtful, endlessly curious, and deeply engaged, Chu remains a scientist dedicated not just to knowledge, but to its application for the betterment of society.

Möbius gibt vor, daß ihm der König Salomo erscheint und geht in eine psychiatrische Anstalt. Die Liebesgeschichte mit Schwester Monika beendet er indem er sie während des ersten Kußes ermordet - denn sie will nicht nur heiraten, sondern auch mit ihm aus dem Sanatorium - sie hat bereits die Entlassungspapiere. Das ist ihr Todesurteil. Letztendlich muß er aber so wie die zwei anderen Physiker erkennen, daß es keinen Rückzug aus der Welt gibt, kein Elfenbeintürmchen, keinen Narrenturm, keine Möglichkeit sich der Verantwortung zu entziehen, wieviel man auch verbannt oder mordet ..... Im Gegenteil, es wird am Ende nur noch viel schlimmer.

Part of "res noscenda note notiz sketch skizze material sammlung collection entwurf überlegung gedanke brainstorming musterbogen schnittmuster zwischenbilanz bestandsaufnahme rückschau vorschau" - Empty Padded ~ LeerGefüllt - Time at Work - Left handed drawings and writings on the empty left pages of my prompter`s book: Soufflierbuch "Die Physiker The physicists" (Friedrich Dürrenmatt) Seite 29

DMC-GH3 - P1050802 - 2015-07-03

#kimono #schnittmuster #musterbogen #portrait #porträt #frau #woman #female #red #rot #grey #gray #grau #schwarz #black #wood #holz #pattern #schaubild #stille #silence #totenstille #szene #scene #aktion #aktionismus #body #körper #ereignis #narrenturm #narrenhaus #gugelhupf #rosine #hampelmann