Google's plan to take over the world

 

Google Invests Billions on Satellites to Expand Internet Access

The company's plan to buy 180 small, high-capacity satellites complements its other ventures to expand Internet access to remote and underserved áreas.

 

Google plans to invest more than $1 billion in a new fleet of satellites that will expand Internet access to unconnected regions of the world.

 

Source: Scientific American Magazine. By Elizabeth Palermo.

 

The company's decision to purchase 180 small, high-capacity satellites is just the first step in a project that could cost the search giant over $3 billion, reported The Wall Street Journal. The project's price tag will depend on whether the company decides to embark on a second phase of the project, which would double the number of satellites needed, Google insiders told the WSJ.

 

...more information at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Big Bang blunder bursts the multiverse bubble

The BICEP2 instrument (foreground) at the South Pole has detected signs of ripples from the Universe’s first moments.

 

Source: Nature

 

Premature hype over gravitational waves highlights gaping holes in models for the origins and evolution of the Universe, argues Paul Steinhardt.

 

In the light of multiverse theories and the contested BICEP2 results, that cosmic inflation is not as testable as it might seem.

 

 

 

 

When a team of cosmologists announced at a press conference in March that they had detected gravitational waves generated in the first instants after the Big Bang, the origins of the Universe were once again major news. The reported discovery created a worldwide sensation in the scientific community, the media and the public at large.

 

 

...more information at: http://www.nature.com/news/telescope-captures-view-of-gravitational-waves-1.14876

When the spanish navy was a scientific research value global (I): Jorge Juan & Antonio de Ulloa, "the gentlemans of the fixed point"

A portrait of Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Guiralt 

Jorge Juan-Santalices's portrait.

Source: The Maritime Voyage of Jorge Juan to the Viceroyalty of Peru (1735-1746). By Enrique Martínez-García (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas) & María Teresa Martínez-García (Kansas University).

 

"One of the most famous scientific expeditions of the Enlightenment was carried out by a colorful group of French and Spanish scientists—including the new Spanish Navy lieutenants D. Jorge Juan y Santacilia (Novelda 1713-Madrid 1773) and D. Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Giralt (Seville 1716-Isla de León 1795)—at the Royal Audience of Quito in the Viceroyalty of Peru between 1736 and 1744. There, the expedition conducted geodesic and astronomical observations to calculate a meridian arc associated with a degree in the Equator and to determine the shape of the Earth. The Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, immersed in the debate between Cartesians (according to whom the earth was a spheroid elongated along the axis of rotation (as a "melon")) and Newtonians (for whom it was a spheroid flattened at the poles (as a "watermelon")), decided to resolve this dispute by comparing an arc measured near the Equator (in the Viceroyalty of Peru, present-day Ecuador) with another measured near the North Pole (in Lapland). The expedition to the Equator, which is the one that concerns us in this note, was led by Louis Godin (1704-1760), while Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) headed the expedition to Lapland"...

 

Although such data had consequences for navigation and cartography, the motivation was not simply utilitarian. Also it was part of an intellectual revolution in which advances in mathematics were developed in parallel to philosophical disputes: some theories and postulates of the living and the dead stood to be elevated or disproved.

 

 

...more information at:

http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/15737/1/Gentlemen_of_the_Fixed_Point_Cover_Introduction.pdf
 

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/02/11/inenglish/1360594669_501867.html

 

http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/economists/martinez-garcia_travesia.PDF

 

 



Research team claims to have accurately 'teleported' quantum information ten feet

This image is an electron microscope picture of one of the two devices, with a fictitious teleportation beam added. The image is about 40 micrometer wide in reality.

 

Source: Phys.org

 

A team of researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands is reporting in a paper they have had published in the journal Science, that they have successfully used entanglement as a means of communication, over a distance of ten feet (three meters). Furthermore, they note, they did so with 100 percent reliability and without altering the spin state of the quantum bits (qubits) involved.

Teleportation, is of course, a means of moving an object from one place to another without it having to travel between them. Thus far examples of it have only been seen in science fiction movies. The idea of moving information in similar fashion, however, has met with some, albeit limited success. The idea is to use the concept of entanglement of particles as a means of conveyance.

 

 

...more information at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-team-accurately-teleported-quantum-ten.html

About the Cabinet

Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Cabinets of Wonder and Wonder-chambers) were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Modern Europe (XVIth – XVIIIth Century), still to be defined.

"The Cabinet of curiosities was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Cabinet of curiosities conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction". Francesco Fiorani, reviewing Bredecamp 1995 in Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (Spring 1998:268-270) p 268.

Therefore, this site is attempting to be as a Cabinet of curiosities, either because it's primarily made up of links to things that are interesting, or because it inspires "wonder" in a similar manner to the original Cabinet of curiosities.
Cabinet of curiosities blog was started in first half of 2014. It lives, breathes and eats press releases from research institutions and news of scientific journals around the globe. Most of what you read here are articles from scientific journals.
The culmination of this site allow viewers to encounter work from across all scientific disciplines, ranging from theoretical and applied science to actual technologies.

The other half of the equation is that it's a blog written and maintained by readers like you. So if you have an interest in science & technology, drop us a line and we may be able to hook you up to join others in an ongoing, vibrant dialog about what makes and researches the world.

See you soon, friends.