Dithyramb

The impact NASA has had on different fields

William Shatner gives a fascinating small presentation of the impact NASA has had on different fields and on how that improves life here on earth.

G*Power

Testing out a free statistical program G*Power.

A program for testing out statistical power.

Stairway to heaven...

NASA hopes to catch an elevator into space

Uncovering a Hidden Archimedes Text with a Particle Accelarator

CNN : Eureka! Unlocking Archimedes' ancient text

Archimedes

 

Major Breakthrough in Classical Studies

Source: The Times

Excerpt:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

...
The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery.

I'm speechless!

Alan Sokal

I've just found Alan Sokals homepage! It contains everything to do with the "social text hoax" and a lot of other material on the post-modernist attack on science.

Atlas-Sculpture Reveals Ancient Astronomy Knowledge

Bernt Rostad sent me a tip about this story from the New York Times:

"At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society here, Dr. Schaefer, a professor of physics at Louisiana State University, reported that the text of Hipparchus' catalog was still lost, but that he had found possibly the next best thing, a pictorial representation of the catalog's contents."

No manuscript was found, but the next best thing. On an ancient statute of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders.

"Dr. Schaefer said Hipparchus made small celestial globes showing the positions of stars in his catalog, and the original Greek sculptor probably consulted one of these globes in chiseling the Farnese Atlas."

All in all this seems to give credence to the belief that Hipparchus was more advanced than was previously thought.

Simply brilliant research! Truly inspired.