Digital ants are here, tending SCADA

 Errin Fulp, a professor of computer science at Wake Forest University, is training an army of "digital ants" to turn loose into the Grid to seek out computer viruses trying to wreak havoc on the system. This according to a recent article in NewsWise, which notes: that "As the nation's electrical power grid becomes more interconnected through the Internet the chances of cyber attacks increase as well..

Dr. Fulp's digital ants "could have wide-ranging applications",  Newwise writes, "on protecting anything connected to SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) networks, computer systems that control everything from water and sewer management systems to mass transit systems to manufacturing systems."   Image courtesy SCforum.info

Static and Dynamic Casimir Effect

Ok folks...I'm turning off the lights....time to go home...why? Because I have this pain behind my left eyeball and I think my head is going to explode....

You know, I have tried my hand at understanding quantum mechanics, in a shaved chimp kinda way, but the closer I get to getting a handle on it, the rules change.... relatively speaking...

What put me over the edge this time? The Casimir effect, which wrapped up in a tidy bundle describes an effect whereby mirrors can and do produce their own light due to the interaction with virtual bits. Honest!

I was reading this article in IO9, that describes placing two mirrors close together (micro-meters and the wiki article calls for a vacuum) so that the virtual particles that "pop" into existence (you see now why my head hurts? virtual....existence? But if you are interested there is a nice article here on virtual particles. ) will force the two plates together. Now that is a rather badly explained Casimir-Polder force, much less than more. It's what happens when you accelerate this structure to relativistic speeds.

The first weird thing happens when you place your mirrors closer than the wave length of the virtual particle. First off, let me explain, in part, these virtual particles. Most importantly they came in pairs. A virtual particle and an anti-virtual particle. ( I know, ouch....) and when they come into existence they annihilate each other instantly. But as the plates are pushed harder and the speed becomes a goodly fraction of C it then becomes possible for the virtual particles to be separated by a plate so they can not annihilate and therefor become real and should said virtual particle be virtual photons.....? There, I give you light from ummm virtual light courtesy of the Dynamic Casimir Effect.

Really, I have done a poor job at describing a fascinating effect at the quantum level. Read the IO9 and the Wiki articles to get totally twisted.

(Good bye, good night, don't let the door hit you...I need to find my asprin)

Check out Kaydara

I just finished watching Kaydara. This is a fan made movie based in the Matrix universe but not strictly speaking a "Matrix" movie.

The film was conceived by Raphaël Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard and is almost an hour long. The visuals are stunning as is the sound track (if a bit Blade Runner sounding at times or even Terminator) .

The film is likely to be confusing to people that have not seen the Matrix because it leans heavily in the tech that was prevalent in all three of the Matrix movies right down to agents and a good stand in for Neo.

You can watch the movie on line here

Student Finds Universe's 'Missing Mass'

22-year-old Australian Aerospace Engineering/Science student has discovered the so-called "missing mass" of the universe. Matter that astrophysicists say was present in the early history of the universe but can't be located now.

Undergraduate Amelia Fraser-McKelvie's, breakthrough indicates that the mystery material is located in vast structures called "filaments of galaxies".

Scientists have for decades considered these structures as possible repositories of the missing matter, but the technologies to detect it have only been available for a few years.

Complete Science Digest story here

The Moon May Have As Much Water as Earth?!

Scientists have announced that sub-surface Moon rock may contain as much water as we have on Earth. Levels in fact 100 times higher than previous estimates.

Now before you start envisioning well drilled to huge aquifers you should know that these new figures are based on samples brought back from the Moon by Apollo 17. The deep core-sample contained glass beads with trapped water in them.

High levels of water on the Moon is a bit of a mixed blessing. The down side is the theory of the Earth being created by a Mars sized impactor pealing the Moon off the proto-Earth. The problem is that the impact would have left virtually no water behind. Present theory has water brought from deep within the Moon by volcanic activity.

for the complete article and links to other articles check the IO9 blog here