John Walker (@Fourmilab) / Twitter

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: 2D Print Your Own Custom Sundial scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/2d-print-you #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

No 3D printer? No problem! Here are sundials you can print on a regular printer and then, with scissors, a few other tools, glue, and patience, assemble into a collection of sundials, including some...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

12h

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Overseas Telephony before the Undersea Cables scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/overseas-tel #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Overseas Telephony before the Undersea Cables

Prior to the laying of the first transatlantic telephone cable in 1956, all overseas calls were made via high frequency radio links, which remained in service until cable and satellite links provided...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

13h

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Spacex Hispasat Amazonas Nexus Launch scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/spacex-hispa #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Spacex Hispasat Amazonas Nexus Launch

SpaceX plans to launch the Hispasat Amazonas Nexus communication satellite on 2023-02-05 at 22:32 UTC. This will be the sixth flight of Falcon 9 booster B1073 with a turn-around time of 56 days since...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

13h

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Weekly Space Report: Expendable Starship Option, Raptor Engine Swaps, Rotating Detonation Engine, a Competitor to Kerbal Space Program scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/weekly-space #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Weekly Space Report: Expendable Starship Option, Raptor Engine Swaps, Rotating Detonation Engine, a...

Juno New Origins (formerly Simple Rockets 2) is not available for Linux and is said to have less realistic modeling of structures, aerodynamics, and thermal effects than Kerbal Space Program (KSP),...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 4

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Stephen Wolfram: My 50 Year Quest to Understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics

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Stephen Wolfram: My 50 Year Quest to Understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Stephen Wolfram has posted a long article “A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics”, chronicling his efforts, from age 12 to the present, to truly understand the...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 4

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Bendix MG-1 Central Air Data Computer—Opening and First Look scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bendix-mg-1- #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Bendix MG-1 Central Air Data Computer—Opening and First Look

The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) was introduced in 1955 and used in fighter aircraft of the era. It took raw air pressure (static and pitot) and temperature and performed the complex...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 3

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Taiwan Semiconductor Fourth Quarter 2022 Financial Analysis scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/taiwan-semic #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Taiwan Semiconductor Fourth Quarter 2022 Financial Analysis

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has released their 2022 fourth quarter (2022Q4) results, and aside from the contrast with Intel, they are revealing of trends both on the cutting and...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 3

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: Dropping Ice into Molten Sodium scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/dropping-ice #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Dropping Ice into Molten Sodium

This is not as dangerous as it looks, since the melting point of sodium is just 98° C.

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 2

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Tasmanian Bottles—Australia's Clean Air Archive scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/tasmanian-bo #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Tasmanian Bottles—Australia's Clean Air Archive

Here is more about the Cape Grim Air Archive in Tasmania.

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 1

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Boston Dynamics Stretch at Work Unloading Containers at DHL scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/boston-dynam #SCANALYST

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Boston Dynamics Stretch at Work Unloading Containers at DHL

Here is more about the Boston Dynamics Stretch warehouse robot. DHL Supply Chain has ordered US$ 15 million of these robots.

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 1

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Soviet Soyuz ИНК Navigation Display scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/soviet-soyuz #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Soviet Soyuz ИНК Navigation Display

Cosmonauts on board the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft needed to know their position over the Earth to plan contacts with ground stations which were mostly located in the Soviet landmass. In addition, in...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Feb 1

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: How Illumina Came to Dominate Genome Sequencing (and Intellectual Property Litigation) ht tps://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/how-illumina-came-to-dominate-genome-sequencing-and-intellectual-property-litigation/2686 # SCANALYST

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 31

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Final Boeing 747 Delivery scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/final-boeing #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Final Boeing 747 Delivery

1pm PST farewell to B747 production: https://twitter.com/BoeingAirplanes/status/1620180154159857664 The last delivered is a freighter for Atlas Air:

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 31

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Longest Matches in Sports History scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/longest-matc ry/2684 #SCANALYST

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 30

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Detecting Exoplanet Biospheres by Reflection Spectroscopy scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/detecting-ex #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Detecting Exoplanet Biospheres by Reflection Spectroscopy

Now that we know many stars in the universe are accompanied by planets (“exoplanets”), and that many of these planets orbit in the region around their stars where liquid water can exist (the “habit...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 30

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: “Forever Pen”—How Long Does It Really Write? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/forever-pen- #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

“Forever Pen”—How Long Does It Really Write?

Metal-tipped writing instruments appear to be a current fad, marketed under names such as “Forever Pen”, “Inkless Pen”, “Everlasting Pencil”, or “Infinity Magic Pencil”. This is nothing but a stick...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 30

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Is the Universe Mirror Symmetric on the Cosmological Scale? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/is-the-unive #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Is the Universe Mirror Symmetric on the Cosmological Scale?

In 1956, the experimental discovery that the weak interaction of particle physics violated the conservation of parity (that all the laws of physics are invariant when observed in a mirror) stunned...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 29

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Apollo Guidance Computer, Part 29—Coupling Data Unit scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/apollo-guida #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Apollo Guidance Computer, Part 29—Coupling Data Unit

The long story of restoring of a genuine (ground test) Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) to working condition has been chronicled in a series of Curious Marc videos featured on ancestors of this site....

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 29

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: How Searching for Extraterrestrial Messages in the Microwave Band Is Done scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/how-searchin #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

How Searching for Extraterrestrial Messages in the Microwave Band Is Done

While the search for narrowband beacons from extraterrestrial civilisations is now more than six decades old (Project Ozma began in 1960) and ongoing, other approaches are now being explored. It is...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 29

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Weekly Space Report: Starship/Super Heavy Wet Dress Rehearsal, Preparations for 33 Engine Static Fire, ISS/Soyuz Crew Return Plans, NASA/DARPA Nuclear Thermal Rocket Development scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/weekly-space #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Weekly Space Report: Starship/Super Heavy Wet Dress Rehearsal, Preparations for 33 Engine Static...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 28

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: SpaceX Starlink Group 4-6, ION SCV009 Launch scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/spacex-starl #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

SpaceX Starlink Group 4-6, ION SCV009 Launch

SpaceX plans to launch 49 Starlink satellites into Shell 2, with an eventual 570 km circular service orbit at 70° inclination, on 2023-01-31 at 16:15 UTC. The launch will also carry the D-Orbit ION...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 28

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Meta AI Announces “Make-A-Video3D”—Text or Image to Dynamic 3D Video scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/meta-ai-anno #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Meta AI Announces “Make-A-Video3D”—Text or Image to Dynamic 3D Video

In a paper posted to arXiV on 2023-01-26, “Text-To-4D Dynamic Scene Generation” (full text [PDF]), Meta AI researchers describe a system, MAV3D (“Make-A-Video3D”) which creates animated three-dimen...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 28

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Google Announces MusicLM—Generating Music from Text Prompts scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/google-annou #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Google Announces MusicLM—Generating Music from Text Prompts

Ever since having been astonished by the output from generative image synthesis systems such as DALL-E 2 and text generation from large language models like ChatGPT, I’m sure I’m not the only one to...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 28

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: Why These “Saturn from Its Moons” Pictures Are Fantasy scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/why-these-sa #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Why These “Saturn from Its Moons” Pictures Are Fantasy

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 27

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: Silting of Dammed Reservoirs, Prevention and Removal scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/silting-of-d #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Silting of Dammed Reservoirs, Prevention and Removal

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 27

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Intel Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Financial Report scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/intel-fourth #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Intel Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Financial Report

Intel held their fourth quarter 2022 and fiscal year 2022 earnings call yesterday, 2023-01-26, with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger summarising the results, market conditions, strategy, and expectations for...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 27

With the latest round of changes to Twitter, when I select the “Following” tab, I only see tweets from people I follow, with none the garbage they used to mix into the feed. What a concept! Who could have imagined such a thing was possible?

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 27

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: The Clever (and Cheap) Design of Electromechanical Timer Switches scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-clever-a #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

The Clever (and Cheap) Design of Electromechanical Timer Switches

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 26

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: Railway Post Offices—Catching and Delivering Mail Bags on the Fly scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/railway-post #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Railway Post Offices—Catching and Delivering Mail Bags on the Fly

From the mid-19th to mid-20th century, the post offices of the United Kingdom, United States, and some other countries operated railway post offices to speed sorting and delivery of mail. Clerks in...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 26

SCANALYZER: CONTINUITY: The Strange Voyage of Apollo 12's S-IVB Stage scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-strange- #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

The Strange Voyage of Apollo 12's S-IVB Stage

When Apollo 12 was launched in November 1969, the mission plan was to dispose of the expended S-IVB third stage of its Saturn V launcher by slingshotting around the Moon to throw it into an orbit...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 26

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: “Flame Eater” Engine—How Does It Work? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/flame-eater- #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

“Flame Eater” Engine—How Does It Work?

Here is more about flame-eater engines, also called “vacuum”, “flame licker” “flame dancer”, or just “flame” engines. Unlike an internal combustion engine or conventional steam engine, the piston is...

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John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 26

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: Tesla Gigafactory Nevada Expansion Announcement scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/tesla-gigafa #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Tesla Gigafactory Nevada Expansion Announcement

On 2023-01-24 Tesla announced, “Continuing Our Investment in Nevada”: To date, the team at Gigafactory Nevada has successfully produced: 7.3 billion battery cells (37 GWh+ annually) 1.5 million...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 25

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: SpaceX Starlink Group 5-2 Launch scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/spacex-starl #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

SpaceX Starlink Group 5-2 Launch

SpaceX plans to launch 56 Starlink satellites into Generation 2 Group 5, with an eventual 530 km circular service orbit at 43° inclination, on 2023-01-26 at 09:22 UTC. The launch will be from Space...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 25

SCANALYZER: TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Making Gorgonzola Cheese in Italy scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/making-gorgo #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Making Gorgonzola Cheese in Italy

I had always thought the prominent blue veins in gorgonzola cheese were where spores of the mould Penicillium glaucum were injected to create the blue interior. In fact, the mould spores are mixed...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 25

SCANALYZER: CONTEXT: Oxford Union Debate: “This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far” scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/oxford-union #SCANALYST

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Oxford Union Debate: “This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far”

On 2022-11-19 the Oxford Union Society held a debate on the motion “This House believes woke culture has gone too far.” Video of the eight speeches for and against the proposition was finally...

John Walker

@Fourmilab

Jan 25

SCANALYZER: THE HAPPENING WORLD: NASA to Pay Boeing US$425 Million to Develop Transonic Truss Braced Wing Demonstrator scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/nasa-to-pay- #SCANALYST