THE FUTURE!

Alright, I'll post something new soon, but if anyone wants proof that the future is here and its completely incomprehensible, read this headline.

More links

Yeah, I'm doing it again.
I decided to search for Space Odyssey references on the NASA Technical Report Server to see what came up. Then I decided to widen the search to other movies.
Here's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Here's Star Wars
Here's Alien
Here's Extra Terrestrial ('ET' got no results)
Here's Star Trek
Here's War of the Worlds (actually I search 'War Worlds', since the NTRS gave me everything with 'of' and 'the' in the title)
'Flash Gordon', 'Battlestar Galactica', and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' gave up nothing; and 'Buck Rogers' told me there is a guy called Roger Buck. De la Terre à la Lune seems to have caused a conniption. If the ISS falls from the sky, don't blame me.
It seems that the two most influential Sci-Fi things at NASA are Space Odyssey and Star Trek, which is probably because they concentrate on the techie stuff more than the others. Kubrick's obsession with accuracy means that Space Odyssey is the only movie that people have considered as literal inspiration, while the Trek references are mostly to guest appearances by the Cast, or the shuttle prototype being called Enterprise, which probably means the folks at NASA like Bill Shatner a whole lot. Star Wars gets little mention, considering it was once a Reagan administration policy. Papers on actual aliens only appear at the end of the searches for Alien and Extra Terrestrial which is a tad odd. This one paper called 'the Interstellar Conspiracy, keeps popping up, and with a title like that, who can resist?

And here's a photo of a planet orbiting another star (actually the researchers aren't sure if its a planet or a planet-like object, whatever that means).

Let me know if any of the links don't work.

I can't believe its come to this

So I'm going to defer to the last refuge of the blogger, the page of links.

First up, up a follow up on everybody's favourite car, the Citroen DS. This may well be the greatest car chase captured on film. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVhx9iZNSmk (Edit: Thanks to Travis for telling me this link was broken. Its fixed now. Edit: Now it is)

Secondly, with all the Hadrons flying about, some of you have heard me talking about a thing called Heim Theory. Its an alternative unified theory that hasn't gotten any peer review, but seems pretty promising, not least because it may allow some form of hyperdrive (Also it supposedly predicts all the fundamental paticles... HYPERDRIVE!). Check out the wiki page here, but also have a look at the reference down the bottom to the AIAA paper on the hyperdrive application (then explain it to me).

Talking of space, the harderst part of space travel is the first hundred miles up. Jonathon Goff over at Selenian Boondocks has just finished an incredibly well written series of articles on getting up there. You can read it here.

And back to cars again. Here's a nice set of photos taken behind the scenes of the Mercedes Benz museum. I'd have the white 300SL, and the blue curvy transporter with the Silver Arrows racer on the back.

Oh, and here's climb dance.

Alright, that's enough for now. Let me know if any of the links don't work and I'll try and think of something other than cars and spaceships to write about next time.

LHC's Eve

So tomorrrow the Large Hadron Collider is going to have a particle stream inject for the first time; and to all the theoretical physicists waiting for confirmation out there, I just want you to know: Your all wrong, probably.

My Favourite Things #2

There's really only one reason I want to watch The Day of the Jackal, and it isn't Edward Fox. In 1955 18 years of development culminated in Citroen's successor to the Traction Avant, the DS. The DS is simply unlike anything car ever made. Here's a picture:

The Prettiest of all things

I saw my first DS in a driveway in the Blue Mountains. The humidity had rusted the body- which was yellow anyway- and the tires had perished. The thing is, if the engine still worked and the suspension was all right, it would've driven without the tires. This was the first car in the world to have height adjustable hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension, which meant it didn't so much drive as glide. As is patently obvious, it was oddly yet iconically proportioned. The curves are simple yet striking, and the taper towards the back gives it an epic look to match the wallowing ride quality. The nose effortlessly combines the shape of a sixties Italian coupe (in 1955) with the separate fenders of the 30s, framed by double streamlined headlamps tailing into fender skirts.

This was one of the first cars with something approaching sequential shift. The clutch was hydraulically controlled, meaning you only had to ease up on the throttle to change gear using the column shift mounted next to the single spoke steering wheel. It was one of the first production cars to use electronic fuel injection, and the first to have front disc brakes. So your new BMW M3 has a carbon fibre roof to keep the centre of mass down? Well the DS had a fibreglass roof to do the same thing. In 1955. Until 1976.

The DS stayed in production for 21 years, undergoing very few changes, mostly a tiny bit of restyling, a few new gearboxes, and a gradual increase in engine power, since the DS was initially chronically underpowered. One thing it did gain was turning head lamps that allowed the driver to see around corners.

I was once told that engineering is a balance of many variables, and the DS is surely one of the most balanced machines of all time. The body styling is iconic without being garish, and aerodynamic to boot, and the technology is truly innovative without being gadgety. Its been called one of the most influential cars of the 20th century, yet nothing has ever come close in terms of individuality, and the DS remains ahead of its time even today.

If I were going to buy one (and I seriously hope to), I'd be aiming for the DS23 with the fuel injection and 5-speed manual, although that's mostly for the power. An earlier engine had hemispherical heads, and being able to say you have a hemi in a car like this offers tempting bragging rights. Swivelling headlights under streamlined glass is a must, and I'd go for an unassuming colour like beige or grey, although deep blue is also tempting. Although the yellow one I first saw is still rusting away in the Mountains...

One final thing. DS is pronounced déesse, which is the French word for Goddess. Oh my, its even got a pun for a name.

You can see some very pretty pictures here. be sure to checkout the detail photos too.

R.I.P, Microwave

Someone took our microwave from the collection pile today. The thing was about twenty years old, and had started making explosion noises when we turned it on, so we had to get a knew one. It's a pitty, becasue that thing was the easiest machine in the world to drive. Instead of having a bunch of buttons that said things like "Potatoes", it had two dials; one for power and one for time-which also spun backwards to act as the timer. Behind the doof frame was a sticker that had recommended times on it, nut it was really up to you how much you cooked things. The dials were huge, and had a nice bit of tactile feedback in them, unlike the squares you push on the new machine. It had no clock, and instead of a chime it had an actual bell that I think was connected to the timer dial. Unfortunately- as well as the aformentioned explosions- the sheilding was going, and it horrible fake wood veneer that was peeling off.
I'm not just getting nostalgic here. This was a machine that did just what it was supposed to and nothing more. The controls were uncluttered and intuitive, and didn't try and second guess what people wanted to do with it (what if I don't want to cook potatoes?). I kinda think that if you combined a modern magnetron with some dials and a lack of clock-and made it white- you could build a better microwave.

A List!

So its finally come to this, a list on Alias Mr Hackenbacker. To make up for the notable lack of science in the last post, I decided I needed an extra helping pretty damn quick. And since this is blog is notionally an attempt at science communication, I decided to make a list of the people who have made that job easier, the n best nerds of all time.

Randall Monroe: I'm guessing most of you know Randall as the guy who writes XKCD. That little web comic has done more to put a human face on geekiness than anything else.

Douglas Adams: Most people know Douglas Adams as the creator of Hitchhikers. But he was also a rampant nerd and mac user. a self taught science commentator, Adams used his profound wit to turn scientific concepts on their head. I can't really do it justice here, you should get Salmon of Doubt and read Is There an Artificial God?. Its up the back, around page 126.

Julius Sumner Miller: YOUR IGNORANCE MAKES ME ANGRY! I don't actually know much about Julius Sumner Miller, since he was on the telly before I was born. I do know that he basically invented science communication in this country, even though he was American. I do know he used to frighten people by going a bit mental when they couldn't keep up, or were a bit slow on the uptake, but it was science as it should be, driven by curiosity and hurtling blindly towards insight and conclusion without fear of the consequences.

Richard Feynmann: SEX! That's right. The adventuring bongo playing strip clubbing quantum mechanics guy. Feynmann was not content to accept other peoples theories if he didn't think they were good enough, and if he didn't like them he damn well made his own. They were right too.

Doc Emmet Brown: Probably the closest to a role model for scientists ever committed to film. The guy never let up, and people liked him too.

Carl Sagan: You want to know who put those plaques on space probes for the aliens to find? It was this guy. Sagan wrote Contact, made Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and made being a scientist who thinks about aliens respectable. He campaigned against Nuclear Weapons, figured out a lot of that stuff you learnt about the planets in primary school. Science as hope, oh hell yeah.

Albert Einstein: All the stuff I wrote up there about the other guys applies to Uncle Albert.

TIME's Person of the Century

The Runners up: A few flaws here

Mythbusters: Scientific accuracy! No wait, explosions! Mythbusters is great, it promotes skepticism, and has a lot of fire and funny hats. But for whatever reason, it usually gets the scientific method wrong. Most often there's no control, and not enough control of the variables. Curiosity is great, but untested answers don't do it justice.

Brains: Brains from Thunderbirds is the Mr. Hackenbacker this blog is named after. He has a stutter, terrible glasses, and a pocket protector. But in the world of Thunderbirds he gets all the respect for building gigantic rescue machines and airships and such. The problem is, in real life, people aren't that obsessed with machines. He's a nerd who gets respect, but only in a world created by nerds.



The complete opposite: Some people who make things harder


Phil Plait: Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website and book are supposed to dispel bad science and mistakes you see in the movies. That'd be great, if Phil wasn't so damn snarky.


Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker is one of the best science books I've ever read. However, Dawkins recent tirades against religion make the scientific method sound like dogma, which is kind of the opposite of what he is trying to achieve.