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And it allows me to be here and do this
Oct. 7th, 2009 05:58 pmI skiped yesterday in the award a day show of Nobel Prize and it was pretty cool - so it's here now. The Nobel Committee awarded the Physics award to people who co-created our digital civilisation. It was split in two:
Half will go to Charles Kao, who did pioneer work in the field of fiber optics, which are now used for the high quality transmission of information. Now it's time thank him for the fast internet and your download capabilities.
The other half will go to two researchers Willard Boyle and George Smith who invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) that is used in digital cameras to capture the world. I (over)use it all the time. Think how this changed our civilisation - pictures that are already digital and that anyone can take and store in gigantic quantities and then share with the world. Thanks to them you are tortured by the hundreds of people's kid and vacation photos. But on the plus side - many ordinary people can pursue their artistic needs with minimal costs, events can be captured by anyone with a phone and the space telescope uses it too.
Combined this two inventions gave us the web culture of today. Once again - can't believe they haven't got it earlier.
Now some use of said tech - space porn thanks to Spitzer Telescope. The largest known planetary ring in the solar system have been discovered while searching for or a belt of debris stemming from one of Saturn's outer moons. This new ring seems to be associated with Phoebe - the far-flung Saturn moon. It's almost invisible in visible light as it's very thin - the pictures are in the infrared. It stretches from 6 to about 12.5 million kilometers from Saturn. Just look yourself (press blue rectangle with white right arrow to see more pictures)
And now after the break today's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It's once again the obvious one. It goes to people who made vital steps in understanding how ribosomes work biophysicist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, biochemist Thomas Steitz and molecular biologist Ada Yonath. They are awarded for their work in using x-ray crystallography to get a precise, atomic-scale map of the ribosome. The ribosome is the protein complex that makes all the proteins in the cell. It uses mRNA template to translate the information from gene code into aminoacid sequence of the protein. It's one of the most basic protein complexes that is present, and essential to, in every living organism. Truly deserved.
Half will go to Charles Kao, who did pioneer work in the field of fiber optics, which are now used for the high quality transmission of information. Now it's time thank him for the fast internet and your download capabilities.
The other half will go to two researchers Willard Boyle and George Smith who invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) that is used in digital cameras to capture the world. I (over)use it all the time. Think how this changed our civilisation - pictures that are already digital and that anyone can take and store in gigantic quantities and then share with the world. Thanks to them you are tortured by the hundreds of people's kid and vacation photos. But on the plus side - many ordinary people can pursue their artistic needs with minimal costs, events can be captured by anyone with a phone and the space telescope uses it too.
Combined this two inventions gave us the web culture of today. Once again - can't believe they haven't got it earlier.
Now some use of said tech - space porn thanks to Spitzer Telescope. The largest known planetary ring in the solar system have been discovered while searching for or a belt of debris stemming from one of Saturn's outer moons. This new ring seems to be associated with Phoebe - the far-flung Saturn moon. It's almost invisible in visible light as it's very thin - the pictures are in the infrared. It stretches from 6 to about 12.5 million kilometers from Saturn. Just look yourself (press blue rectangle with white right arrow to see more pictures)
And now after the break today's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It's once again the obvious one. It goes to people who made vital steps in understanding how ribosomes work biophysicist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, biochemist Thomas Steitz and molecular biologist Ada Yonath. They are awarded for their work in using x-ray crystallography to get a precise, atomic-scale map of the ribosome. The ribosome is the protein complex that makes all the proteins in the cell. It uses mRNA template to translate the information from gene code into aminoacid sequence of the protein. It's one of the most basic protein complexes that is present, and essential to, in every living organism. Truly deserved.
