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Scientific Copenhagen

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit new city abroad and little afraid of what you would stumble to when it come to simple things? Like how to use metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma of should you exchange the money to the local currency or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way? Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014 Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family to the trip to Copenhagen for both, business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism and any off work activity for that matter. So I took a little research this time and Ericsson's " Networked Society City Index " helped a lot. Within t

Schrödinger's Cat and Intelligent Movies

In short it goes like this: "There's a cat in a box... That has, like, a 50/50 chance of living because there's a vial of poison that's also in the box. Regular physics would say that it's one or the other. That the cat is either alive or dead, but quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that they collapse into one single event." This quote is me paraphrasing James Ward Byrkit, writer and director of the movie "Coherence" I've just watched. Although Erwin Schrödinger back in 1935, when he first wrote his famous thought experiment, invented pretty complex radioactive trap for the poor cat inside the box, I think that "vial of poison" and James' full description in the script is one of the best interpretation of the quantum paradox there is. The quantum weirdness is one of the most intriguing areas in science, that is still buzzing our minds for about a century now. I wrote ab

Are We Holograms?

Most of famous movies and novels that are dealing with remarkable and bold scientific ideas in existence, like plotting the script behind the most intriguing property in the latest string theory called "Holographic principle", lack one main attraction I am always looking in science fiction. The plausibility of the story. To get to the wider audience, science behind is somehow always pushed below the main layer and the result is either too philosophical, ridiculous or unnecessary too complex (like planting humans for energy in 'Matrix' by AIs) or simple love story, like in case of "The Thirteenth Floor" or other simple and proven Good-vs-Bad chases in virtual realities, like those portrayed in Caprica. The Thirteenth Floor* But, if I had to choose one of those Hollywood fictions, maybe you would be surprised if I preferred "The Thirteenth Floor" over all the others I had chance to watch or read. For one simple reason. Like with holographic p

Celestia, Campfire and Astronomy

I remember every little detail from that weekend trip. From the very first moment when we stepped into the bus that took us to the mountain base, throughout the rest of the first day when we climbed down into small cave with narrow hallways toward the small chamber at it's end. I vividly remember glorious, endless and hard-to-find second cave we stepped in the very next day, followed by overwhelming feeling and little fear when we passed through cave chambers, cutting the darkness with handy tools and small flashlights. I will always hate myself, for not having a camera to capture surrounding scenery when we traveled by train later that afternoon, who looked like it came right out of 19th century with wooden benches rolling the railways slower than Usain Bolt. All those rock formations and abandoned train stations were slowly losing their battles with nature and were looking exactly like a background from Sergio Leone's spaghetti western movies. Viktor at Rundetårn observ

Children of Stardust

In the last post of the Beth's Q&A we tried to understand four basic forces and their corresponding particle carriers or bosons. With almost certain discovery of the Higgs boson physicist completed the search for this last mystery of the standard model and we now know how larger particles get their mass and how interact with each other. Now is the time to bring this story up one level and write about chemical elements representing basic 'lego' blocks of almost everything in the universe we currently comprehend. Hmm, everything but mysterious dark matter that we still don't have a clue what it's made of. Every now and again in media (mostly internet) we can read about how we all are made out of stars and other violent events in the universe dating back in time even so far in the past to the Big Bang itself. Following some of this articles Beth posted another idea for the thread and I am paraphrasing her thoughts: "I keep reading we are made from the

The God Particle

Starting with this post I would like to introduce something new to the blog. Something different and yet written in a similar fashion compared to my previous stories. This would be a new thread dedicated to science only with my own narration, style and write up. When I started with the blog year ago all I wanted is to have a place where I could be able to write my public thoughts, something that could give random reader a good description of me and my view to the world and beyond. That goes to both random readers, either one living in present day or the one reading this from some different point in future time. But now with this post I am trying to expand the blog a little bit further. I am still doing it off work and in my spare time but nevertheless it is always fun and inspirational for me. CMS Particle Detector The idea for the new thread I got after my post about human relations, genographic projects and conversation with my dear Facebook friend Beth Perry Steger. Genealo

Déjà vu

In writers world, titles are extremely important. If they are strong enough, the stories are practically writing themself. So to speak. According to MarketingProfs  research, more than 2 million articles, posts and stories are published online everyday and lots of people reads no further from the title. Opening lines capable of forcing you to perform the actual click are nowadays rarity and I am not talking about those behind daily politics and current worldwide affairs. It's about all those titles that don't expire with next election or season. I am talking about all those powerful enough to coin new words. The one on today's menu is exceptional. Simply, "Déjà vu" has it all, potential of diving into mysterious and unexplored world of human brain. It always comes with great glimpse into fabulous quantum mechanics we are still pioneering to understand, tons of speculations of various kind, including spiritual experiences, subconsciousness network of living bein