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Enigma machine sampled and put to music
This made me chuckle. Randall Monroe is a NASA roboticist who produces the incredibly funny xdcd online comic strip, which specializes in super-nerdy math humor. He also recently created the t-shirt pictured above: The first panel is on the front, and the second panel is on the back. As he describes it on his web site:
Science: We finally figured out that you could separate fact from superstition by a completely radical method: observation. You can try things, measure them, and see how they work! Bitches.
The graph on the back of the shirt is data from the COBE mission, which looked at the background microwave glow of the universe and found that it fit perfectly with the idea that the universe used to be really hot everywhere. This strongly reinforced the Big Bang theory and was one of the most dramatic examples of an experiment agreeing with a theory in history — the data points fit perfectly, with error bars too small to draw on the graph. It’s one of the most triumphant scientific results in history.
(Thanks to Kevin Cornwall for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
Teleportation, the last battle, and the Creator talks: How the world ends inside an online game
My latest Wired magazine column: Troll taming at Whitehouse.gov
Apparently NASA is filled with Joss Whedon fans
Incredibly weird, inch-wide single-celled creatures discovered rolling across the sea floor
In praise of the 3-hour game: My latest Wired News video-game column
» visit the Collision Detection archives
March 25, 2009 » 05:10 PM
I had to ask! I was investigating getting DirecTV for my new office when I saw this pop-up window …
March 22, 2009 » 08:54 PM
““From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and which the brain loves to hear.”” - Basics - In One Ear and Out the Other - NYTimes.com
March 20, 2009 » 04:48 PM
“No wonder young people find mainstream journalism uninviting; it would almost be more frightening if they embraced what passes for news today.” - The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers (Page 2)
March 19, 2009 » 01:12 PM
Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle
March 18, 2009 » 08:44 PM
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” — Edward Abbey” - Via Thor Muller’s twitter stream.
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