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Reality of Double-Slit Experiment

More than two hundred years passed after Thomas Young performed the famous double-slit experiment as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light and still it's revelation puzzles our sanity ever since. In short, if we shoot a beam of light at a panel with two small slits (less than a millimeter apart), the photons - elementary particles that light is made of, have to figure out how to get through the slits to radiate out the other side. If they are truly particles, like in macro world, they would project a solid image of two piles on the background wall behind the slits. If they travel similar to the waves, like water does in macro world, the image would resemble a wave-like interference pattern: alternating locations, equidistantly spaced, where particles leave a mark on the wall. Thanks to the outcome of the experiment, we know that light is capable to do both. It always travel in wave like fashion, even if we shoot photons in a row towards slits, one after another. Qua

Norse Valkyrie vs Slavic Vila

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when religiosity we are all familiar today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities and numerous super powered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10.000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in the history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls but only Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels. According to the theor

Corfu Between Tales and Reality

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land or portion of the sea or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with fresh water nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures inherited the island and named it to the Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owns the appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him, both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affect

Eta Team - Will Crawford

Three weeks earlier Will stormed through the dense crowd of the large entrance of the MIT CSAIL. It was the lunch break time and students were emerging from every direction. He came directly from the Logan Airport without stopping by his small apartment. Organizing a fast return trip from Key West was no easy effort. Or cheap one. But he had no choice. The message he received yesterday was a potential disaster. His little sandbox in his office he was working on for the past five years apparently is not a sandbox anymore. Will's extended weekend this year was supposed to be his first getaway from Boston ever since his MIT career launched more than a decade ago. It's not that he loved fishing rods that much. It was more about reconnecting with his family and old friends for one full vacation and it looked like this April would be the charm. He literally slept in his office ever since the major breakthrough in his research of self-programming AIs. Computer Science & Artifici

Star Wars: The High Republic

I've always wondered what genre exactly "Star Wars" belongs to? I guess it is safe to say that the entire franchise is one giant space fantasy or space opera if you will, genuinely influenced by human history and religiosity wrapped into a futuristic world of (science) fiction. I sincerely admire George Lucas when he began the story fifty years ago, especially how he imagined a spiritual background without the need for the existence of religion we are all familiar with and without presence of actual deities. The main premise simply described as the Force gives to those sensitive to this spiritual energy extraordinary abilities, such as telekinesis, access to the minds of the living beings, potentiality of healing and what is especially interesting to me, the power of seeing things before they happen. Even though the visions and predicting the future seem to be the most fantastic feature of the Force, it is perhaps the only fiction understandable by the real science. T

Eta Team - Prologue

Somewhere in Atlantic ocean Dave checked his watch again. Almost two in the morning. His small transatlantic speedboat was gently stirring calm water of a moonless night for nearly four hours since he corrected the course last time. He was approaching the coordinates and soon this epic journey around the world will come to an end. It took him almost ten days of preparations and travel, but in the end the job was simple. Collect and deliver. Pretty much what he does all the time only this time with a weird exception about the delivery part. But he knew better not to ask questions. After all, this job, like the most of the other assignments came from the dark web and those deliveries nowadays are stranger and stranger by the month. To say the least. He didn't care. His crypto wallet will be significantly ticker by the dawn and his business will finally take the next step. After tonight he will proudly be the owner of two new and fancy transatlantic speed drones. Business will go ro

Von Neumann Probe

It's hard to create a list of all the scientists in the history of mathematics and physics who better applied theoretical knowledge into the hardware that ultimately worked and moved the world to the next step of existence. But if we try to do it, John von Neumann would be among the top five in the list of scientific GOATs. Probably the best of all of his contributions is in the history of computer science - along with Arthur Burks and Herman Goldstine, he published a paper* in 1946 that practically described the architecture of a modern computers as we are familiar with today. However, what he will be most remembered for is not a machine in existence today but one that is still just a theoretical and basically only an idea. Not yet anyways. In short, design of a von Neumann probe or a self-replicating spacecraft is not that far-fetched from all what we know today and if humanity sees its survival on Earth difficult in the future (to say the least) and tries to became interste

Three Caves

Part of Serbia lands below Danube river is pretty mountainous, with complex geology especially in eastern parts where Carpathian and Balkan mountains collided and over eons formed Serbian Carpathians with total of 14 independent mountain ranges in existence today. These rocks date back to the Proterozoic Eon (2.5 billion - 541 million years ago) with limestones and dolomites mainly formed from late Jurassic to early Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago. There are dozens of large caves within these mountains and many with tourist paths built to visit and admire their beauty and history. Two of them we visited last week and they both gave us extraordinary experience and impressions. However, the first cave in this blog story belongs to the one formed in the foothill of an ancient volcano of the nowadays mountain of Bukulja in western Serbia, although the recent paper posted a theory that the mountain is much younger (15 million year ago) and instead formed in tectonic processes.

Historical Fiction of the World War Two

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War" that lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in armistice based on unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22 years old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with other 30,000 surrendered soldiers. He spent next four years in Nazi military camp leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son. I am sure it was not easy for him to cope the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for a

Science Fiction at its Best

When it comes to the space exploration within hard science fiction, the one where science is embedded in the narrative to the point that it is impossible to tell a story without it, only rare novels stand out among all the others in the ocean of short stories and novels published online and within traditional ways. Sure it's not really possible to be familiar with entire vast universe of sci-fi literature of today compared to the past times especially before internet when was easier not to miss noticeable book on the public shelf.   However, even today, the true classics in the genre are easily recognizable, perhaps in all those moments during or after reading when we wonder not if the plot is possible or scientifically plausible but when we fail to distinguish the fiction part from the real science. To achieve this, authors can't rely on their writing narrative only but also to their ability to successfully entangle science and fiction and not only for those who understands th

Build Better Apps With These Tips for UX Design

We all want to build apps that people want to use. Beyond actually having a great idea for an app, UX design is an important part of pulling this off. While the services of a digital strategy agency can be invaluable for helping you zero in on the points you need to cover for UX design, there are some tips that you should know before you get started. People should not feel like they need a map to find their way around your app. If they have been to a screen once, they should be able to get there again with no problem. Make the navigation features of the app obvious and make the destination of different actions clear. Users will appreciate the ability to find different pages without feeling like they are starting from the beginning every time they open the app. Information Presentation How much have you thought about how you present information in your app? Is text the right way to go? Maybe you should use graphs and charts. Maybe it should be photos or videos. Take a close look at the

How Infrastructure as Code Is the Future of IT

For a long time, IT infrastructure has been a problem for enterprises. It requires significant investment and expertise to set up. This has traditionally made it difficult for operations to manage their IT resources at the optimal levels. They would either waste money by going over their needs or they would create problems for their teams by not investing enough in resources. This all started to change when cloud computing became widely available. With cloud computing services, you had an affordable option that made it possible to buy resources that are targeted toward your needs. Not only that, but the resources were much more flexible and they could easily scale with your operation. While it did relieve a major issue for some enterprises, cloud computing does still have its complications. You still need to manage, monitor and configure resources. This can be time-consuming and complicated for teams that need to work on things like DevSecOps . Fortunately, solutions like Infrastruc