🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

While its very unlikely (but very possible) my dream in life would be to witness a supernova.

Last time one was bright enough to see with the naked eye was about 400 years ago. So my chances are slim.

Interesting side note, a supernova is the fastest moving stellar event we can see with our naked eye that we know of. It starts and ends (usually resulting in a nebula) over the course of just weeks to months. Could you imagine seeing a bright light form in the sky out of nowhere, last for months, and then in the end have a beautiful new nebula in its place... my god that would be so cool!

#STEM #Science #Physics #Astronomy #Astrophysics

Interesting fact of the day: The two largest fish known to us are in fact quite different in their maximum observed size.

The whale shark is generally considered the largest and their maximum size in tones is a little over 20 tons.

By comparison the basking shark is the second biggest but its max size only comes in at a little over 5 tones.

That would mean, by weight, the largest fish in the world is at its maximum 4x bigger thant he second biggest.

Interestingly, however, there isnt nearly as much disparity in their maximum length. The Whale Shark maxes out around 18 meters while the Basking Shark is around 14 meters.

#Ocean #Biology #Science #Stem #Shark #Sharks #Fish

Interesting fact of the day: Both dogs and wolves start to display object permanence at about the same time in their development (5b object permanence at ~11 weeks).

By comparison humans start to show stage 5b object permanence around 12 to 18 month.

#Psychology #Stem #Science

Interesting fact of the day: Not counting point sources of light, any source of light that doesnt appear as a single point will have the same brightness no matter what distance you happen to be from it.

In fact the opposite is true in a sense. Once you get close enough to an object that you can no longer see the whole object within your field of view, then it will get **less** bright as you get closer.

Amazingly this even applies to the sun. IF you were at the surface of the sun, just a few feet away (Such that 1 meter square of the surface of the sun was within your field of vision) it would only appear to be 93 lumens bright. That would be equivalent to only a 6 watt incandescent light bulb! Compare that to the brightness of the sun from earth which is a whopping 127,000 lumens.

#Space #Science #STEM #Astronomy #Physics

My antenna on my roof as viewed from the ground.

#Science #Ham #HamRadio #amateurradio #radio #rf #EE #Electronics

Interesting fact of the day... single cellular organisms have "Molecular Motors" in them.. basically the quantum mechanical equivalent of a mechanical motor... They are surprisingly similar in appearance and are just super cool!

#Quantum #QuantumMechanics #Biology #Science #STEM

Venus and jupiter are both very easy to see and in a beautiful alignment this evening.

#Astronomy #science #astrophotography #photography #sunset

I feel like the most important thing to know about any creature you meet is how many assholes they happen to have.

#science #funny @funny

This is why #science / #stem is amazing. I kinda feel bad for all the anti-science simpletons out there who go around seeing such a dull world.

Interesting fact of the day: A fruit fly's sperm is many times longer than its body. In fact of all the animals it has the longest sperm relative to its body size.

#biology #science #STEM @Science

Back in 2011 when both Google and Stanford University flew me out to do a few talks on Semantic Data and Machine Learning topics. My how time flys.

#Google #STEM #Stanford #MachineLearning #Semantic #Science

Actual picture of me neglecting every ex-girlfriend I ever had.

#Science #Funny #humour #humor @funny @Science #joke #jokes

7 years ago and this still pisses me off...

Fuck feminism, yay equal rights, this is not equality

#feminism #EqualRights #STEM #Science #Space

If you are outdoors in a cold polar region during the day what will keep you warmer?

Details: The color is on the outside, the inside you can assume is a neutral gray for simplicity.

#physics #science #STEM #outdoors #survival

A wonderful site showing a few different types of radio signal **refraction**. Important to note what you are seeing here is totally different from the effects you get from HF radio frequencies and occurs with VHF and UHF as well. Its why generally line-of-sight frequencies like UHF can sometimes go some ways over the horizon.

https://www.dxinfocentre.com/propagation/tr-modes.htm

#Radio #RF #Ham #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #EE #Electronics #Science #STEM @Science

This is a picture of the first moments of a nuclear explosion taken in 1952. The blast radius at this moment is less than 20 meters wide.

There are so many extraordinary things about this photo. First off the fact that they had a camera in the 1950's capable of such insanely high speed frame rates (they created a movie from this) that it was capable of 1,000,000 frames per second. In many ways that is more impressive than the nuclear bomb itself.

Second the fact that you can see, in real time, a nuclear explosion as it happens. Those spikes at the bottom are called the "rope trick effect" which is caused by the support cables inside or holding up the bomb. The light radiation is so intense it vaporizes anything nearby causing things to explode just from the intensity of the light itself (before radiation has any effect at all). So those spikes are literally just the support cables exploding in the extraordinarily bright light from the bomb.

#Science #STEM #Physics #History @Science

Interesting fact of the day: The same effect that cuased light in a prism to split up into different colors is what ultimately caused the first transatlantic telegraphic wire in 1858 to fail.

Morse code is transmitted as on-off signals, effectively square waves. Square waves are in fact made up of many different frequencies. Like in a prism different frequencies move at different speeds through a wire. Therefore as the on-off pulses traveled through the transatlantic telegraph wire the signal spread out like it does in a prism and ultimately the pulses would overlap and be indistinguishable.

The effect was so extreme that it took a message of only 98 words (the first message sent) over 67 minutes to send one way and a whopping 16 hours to confirm the message.

Whitehouse, a doctor with little mathematical understanding, thought he could solve the problem by increasing voltage, which we now know was a futile effort. He increased the voltage to the point he managed to short out the cable entirely and made it useless. However Lord Kelvin had already warned of the problem as was ignored and he came up with the law of squares to describe the problem which later was refined to give us the telegraphers equation. The telegraphers equation is still used today to model feedlines in radio transmitters and receivers.

#Science #STEM #Physics #History @Science #QOTOJournal

Anyone out there other than me old enough to have run a 10base2 network in their home? My first computers 2 computers when I was in high school I connected together with a 10base2 with 50 ohm terminators and all that. My mom wasnt happy as I literally knocked a hole in her wall without asking her.

This was back when the internet was still fairly new so you would get on with 1200 baud modems to a BBS that would give you a piggyback onto the internet which you might be lucky to get access to for 30 - 60 minutes a day.

10base2 network card attached for prosperity.

#History #Computers #CS #Engineering #ComputerEngineering #ComputerScience #Science @Science

Ya know those tiny network routers you have on your desk that you use to connect all your computers together and connect to the internet... Well this is what it looked like in the early days when the internet didnt exist as a word yet (It was still called ARPANet). Like most computer devices from the 70's it would take up a nice chunk of the room.

#History #Computers #CS #Engineering #ComputerEngineering #ComputerScience #Science @Science

A map of every node on the internet (ARPANet) in 1974, which was exactly 3 years after the network first went live.

#History #Computers #CS #Engineering #ComputerEngineering #ComputerScience #Science @Science