Blog

Totonika Nova, the cutest hamster ever

Submitted on 2010/Feb/28

Totonika Nova is my new love. :) 

She is really smart... and she loves to run in the wheel

Sh loves fresh food.. apple and broccoli are her favorites  :) 

and she is adorable.

A day in New York in miniature

Submitted on 2010/Feb/26

very cool video in miniature of a day in New York City

2.3 gigapixel image of the Burj Khalifa

Submitted on 2010/Feb/16

Amazing gigaphoto of the Burj

 

Amazing timelapses

Submitted on 2010/Jan/25

I tried to do a timelapse the other day but it is not very good. I will have soon an intervalometer to be able to do better timelapses

not as good as these ones... :)

Shape of the universe, and doubts about singularities

Submitted on 2010/Jan/19

I don't know too much about physics or cosmology. I know some things but only because I like to read about them for intellectual enjoyment. Many times the question of how large is the universe or how is the shape of the universe comes to my mind. In 1998 I did a music album title "Finito y sin limites" which means "Finite and without limits", a phrase Einstein said answering how he thought the Universe was. And yes.. maybe now we are discovering that we don't need the cosmological constant to understand the shape of the universe, but Einstein could be right in that: Finite and without limits. The same as the surface of our planet.. it can be considered finite because it can be measured but doesn't have limits for one that cannot escape from it, because when you start walking in one direction you end in the same position after a while.

I can't understand infinity and I can only think the Universe as the one with positive curvature that closes itself. There are three possible shapes for the curvature of the space of the Universe.

1. Negative curvature

2. Positive curvature

3. Flat

A positive curvature can close itself into a sphere and solves the question "What is there after the universe?" Is the space-time generated by a big explosion like in the Bing Bang theory? An explosion is easy to understand but for me it is impossible to understand. With the explosion theory it makes sense that the space has a "spherical" shape where all space is being generated in equal distances to the center of the big bang. In my opinion it is a very simple approach for something so complex as the Universe.

To think that the universe is flat and orthogonal is as innocent as thinking that the world was flat. But it could be a perfect equilibrium of existence after all.

To have a negative curvature means that the Universe expands to the infinite more and more.For the same reason I can't understand infinity, I  can't understand there can be an infinite density point in the middle of nowhere that exploded and generated the Universe. I know that this point is not considered Universe because it is before the Universe exist, but what is it then? A point of what? of mass? of energy? of space?  Infinity can't exist. If the universe tends to be infinite, I tend to be zero in comparison to infinite. And I can see my self and I'm not zero. So infinite can't be possible. For me it's only a concept.

To me the most logical option is to have a closed Universe with positive curvature.

 

Legendary Carl Sagan speaking about the shape of the universe:

Water

Submitted on 2010/Jan/12

One can think... nah... the world is big... There is no problem.. We will find the resources .. or we will find somewhere to plant more cereals... The truth is that We don't have more land to plant more cereals... But we have.... HUGE amounts of WATER.

To me it is obvious... if we want to survive this first humanity big crash, we have to learn to use that water. First, we have to extract immense amounts of free energy from it by extracting the hydrogen and releasing the oxygen to the atmosphere. Convert ocean waters to drinking water with this new cheap energy, and invent something to make food from the sea, from new kind of genetically modified "algae cereals". A new generation of humans will emerge. Whales went back to the oceans for some reason. They are more intelligent than us. :) Maybe we can still live on land at first and use the oceans more intelligently to our benefit, but going deeper into the future I can visualize floating and underwater cities and humans very respectful with nature and every living creature on the planet.

Other thing is obvious. We need to protect the oceans right now, and stop throwing more plastics and all kind of toxic and lethal substances. Because Oceans are our Future. Most of current humans don't know it yet.

 
Also... I want to end this little article with a picture inspiring respect and love for the biggest creatures we know for now in the Universe. They are ahead of us. They already chose the oceans and they know how to not overpopulate the planet breaking the equilibrium. They are to me, The Creatures of, (what we call) Planet Earth.

 

Al Bartlett, Arithmetic, Population, and Energy

Submitted on 2010/Jan/08

In my process of reading learning and trying to understand the world and how it works... it was a matter of time until I discovered this person. Al Bartlett

I'm wondering why I didn't discover him before. It seems all he says is what I've been thinking. I enjoyed this video so much because it was like if I was seeing myself in the future speaking. I'm very moved by the wise words of this man. Listen to him carefully.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

Some highlights:

  • It is good to have in mind the easy formula to calculate the doubling time for an exponential growth function:
    DoublingTime = 70 / % growth per unit time, so a 7% growth rate doubles every 10 units time.
    70 is an approximate number for the Ln2·100 (for doubling time), more exact = 69,314718056
    110 would be for tripling time, using Ln3·100, etc
  • 7% per year doubles each decade.
  • The growth in any doubling time is greater than the total of all the preceding growth!
  • At a modest growth of 1.3% per year, the world population would reach a density of one person per square meter on the dry-land surface of the Earth in 780 years. And the mass of people would equal the mass of the Earth in 2400 years. haha. Of course this is not going to happen, so,
  • Zero population growth is going to happen. With absolute certainty. We don't know when but sometime for sure.
  • Nature will take care of it to happen with drastic measures if we don't do anything.
  • Imagine a bottle with 1 bacteria and the number of bacterias double each minute and in 60 minutes from 11:00 to 12:00 the bottle is completely full of bacterias and no space left. At what time is the bottle half empty? at 11:59 minutes the bottle is half full. At what time would you realize that you were running out of space if you were a bacteria? At 11:55, 31/32 of the bottle is empty. How many of you would say that there is a problem with the population of bacteria? Suppose that at 11:58 some bacteria realize that they are running out of space. So they search and find 3 new bottles!! Like 3 new planets for us !!! wow!  How long can the growth continue as result of this super discovery? 12:00 bottle is full, 12:01 two bottles are full, and at 12:02 the four bottles are full. The end. This story reflects how population is not worried about peak oil, because they think we can discover new oil sources in the future.
  • In the energy crisis, "we have a classic case of exponential growth against a finite source."
  • "We cannot let others do our thinking for us"
  • "We must EDUCATE all of our people to an understanding of the arithmetic and consequences of growth, especially in terms of population and in terms of the earth's finite resources."
  • First Law of Sustainability: "Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources CANNOT BE SUSTAINED."
  • It is intellectually dishonest to talk about sustainability without stressing the obvious fact that stopping population growth is a necessary condition for sustainability.
  • We must educate people to see the need to examine carefully the allegations of the technological optimists who assure us that science and technology will always solve all of our problems of population growth, food, energy and resources.
  • "Democracy cannot survive overpopulation", Asimov.
  • We must recognize that population growth is the immediate cause of all our resource and environmental crises.
  • Thinking is very upsetting, It tells us things you would rather not know.
  • "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei
  • "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
  • "The nature of the humans species is to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken.
  • The main source of problems are solutions.
  • "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

Enjoy and watch the video, 8 parts: 

The most important video you will ever see:

Ady Gil collides with the Shonan Maru No. 2

Submitted on 2010/Jan/07

At about 12:30JST today the New Zealand-registered watercraft Ady Gil collided with the Japanese Antarctic whale research (JARPA II) vessel Shonan Maru No. 2. The collision resulted in damage to the Ady Gil disabling it for navigation.  
 
While scale of damage is currently being checked, the collision resulted in no injuries to the Shonan Maru No. 2 crew and, reportedly, no injuries  to the Ady Gil crew.
 
The Ady Gil crew were rescued by the Sea Shepherd vessel Bob Barker which was close to the collision scene. The Japanese vessels Shonan Maru No. 2 and Yushin Maru No. 3 remain in the area for possible rescue support and further monitoring.
 
The research-base vessel Nisshin Maru, currently engaged in the Japanese whale research program in the Antarctic (JARPA  II) had been subject  to continuous attack since the early morning today by the New  Zealand-registered  watercraft Ady Gil following and the Bob Barker, a vessel sent  to the Antarctic by the antiwhaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
 
Photographs and video of the incidents in the Antarctic can be seen at: http://www.icrwhale.org/gpandsea.htm

Download video:
http://www.icrwhale.org/eng/100106SS2.wmv 

here they say the ship turned to crash into the Adi Gil giving this image after analyzing the two videos:

 

We need more heroes like them:

 

Burj Dubai 2010 celebration opening ceremony video

Submitted on 2010/Jan/05

After 6 years, we can see a very impressive video of the opening ceremony for the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world.

The opening happens in the middle of a big economic crisis in Dubai for all real state companies. It's like a half sized Mile High Skyscraper "The Illinois", envisioned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1956. See comparison.

Do we need that building in the middle of the desert? No. Why do we do it? Because we want to. Would it be the tallest building in the world forever? No. But it can be the tallest building for some time because we have bigger problems to face in the planet right now. But we always want more and more. We like challenges. Maybe one day we will see "The Illinois" built.

Now watch the video... The music could have been better but the fireworks and the water and the lighting are freaking awesome. Although some images reminds me to the 11S attack because it seems that the Burj Dubai building is exploding. I can't imagine how would have been to see it there. Videos don't transmit all the power of the event but at least we see something.

 

Challenges of life documentary

Submitted on 2010/Jan/04

Life is hard. Animals kill and eat other animals or plants to be able to live. Life is programmed to continue its existence by doing anything possible. Only the best and stronger individuals can pass its gens to next generations. Not only the brave survive.. There has to be also a bit of luck and some succeed and some die. But that death is good for the success of others so nothing is wasted. Everything has to be in balance.

Don't miss the great video series from BBC, Life 

First episode. Challenges of life:

 

Cargo ships pollution and amazing videos in rough sea

Submitted on 2009/Dec/24

I was thinking about my previous post... Of course there is a lot of oil yet... I'm not saying that there is no more oil already... if that would be the case we would go automatically into a mad-max scenario in days. But I see that every day will be more expensive to find and extract oil. And maybe we could live with that, but the problem is the the demand of oil increases and increases as population increase and increase. So there is going to be a problem between demand and supply, making the prices of oil very high.

And I was thinking that all those cargo ships containers, that contaminate the planet so much, will disappear soon because it will be cheaper to produce locally than to ship the products worldwide. Today we cannot imagine to ship things in a boat powered by oarsmen... or sails..... In the future we may have nuclear ships, or something... but not oil ones. Those will be remembered as old times when the oceans were filled of those primitive oil powered machines.

This is a video of the Emma Maersk, one of the biggest that carries 15,000 containers!

The biggest oil motor in the world, the Wärtsilä-Sultzer RTA96C, used for this kind of cargo ships. They are very low quality fuel because they consume a lot and contaminate a lot.

Newly released data from Europe suggests that a single container ship may cause as much pollution as 50 million cars and release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually. The 15 biggest ships emit about as much sulphur oxide pollution as all cars combined. Ship pollution wikipedia info. Not funny at all. This really needs to change somehow.

Also... I found quite impressive some videos of ships in heavy rough sea conditions. Humans fighting nature... Everything to keep the Economy growing and growing.... Because that's how is currently designed. As Admiral Ackbar would say... It's a trap!


 

watch this until the end:

Smaller ships but amazing videos to illustrate the craziness of humans:
   

Oil ships are also.. BIG... Those ships keep the oil importing countries running. Everything happens in your life because this machines work everyday. No holidays. Those countries are very vulnerable right now.

 

I wonder if people in this ship would do it again in their life... 

and to finish... an impressive video of Lighthouses against the sea...

Back to local mini worlds

Submitted on 2009/Dec/20

"The era of cheap air travel is set to come to an end". It's Ryanair's chief executive who says this. And I expected this to happen in a year or so.... But everything is accelerating. As the exponential curve advances everything goes faster and faster each day. I underestimated it.

Oil price today is around $74. Air companies know that oil is going to be very expensive soon because there is no more cheap oil left in the planet. That was the real cause of the international crisis when oil reached $147. Then they blamed the housing bubble to be the cause of the crisis. But it is just an effect of the true cause that is originating the crisis.

There is no oil. To fly in the near future will be a luxury. We need to adapt to local economies again and to make the things we use. We won't see so many "made in China" things around the planet. We will eat food grown near were you live. We won't eat asparagus from China. We will have to adapt. The ones who can adapt to new conditions will survive, as Darwin says. In the future, they will ask why could we be so stupid and irresponsible of burning all the oil so quick before having a real alternative.

At least, Internet will allow us to visit other places as virtual tourists.  I can see some kind of interactive web-cams in high definition mounted in remote controlled robots that can walk around the cities and administered by tourist companies. But it will never be the same as visit the place for real. We will certainly be able to speak with friends from far away with very high quality video conferences and in 3D. But it will never ever be the same as a real hug.

The world will be big again...

Until we discover the new energy source.

 

Nikola Tesla

Submitted on 2009/Dec/19

I've been thinking about the end of my previous text... How science can change everything? And I've remembered about Nikola Tesla

This is a nice video about his history:

Copenhagen failure

Submitted on 2009/Dec/19

Feeling worried. I think politicians of the planet doesn't really want to collaborate. They can speak a lot but I think Copenhagen has been quite a failure. No clear plans and no real determination of change. Scientific data tells us that we don't have time to fix and reverse the climate change. So.. Maybe the failure of Copenhagen means that they really know that we can't do anything so why bother? or.... it can be another thing. It can be that all this thing about climate change is not really true and just another kind of business that employs the fear of the people to achieve what they want. Because if Copenhagen was really the ultimate last moment when the humanity could have done something to save their existence, then I guess USA and China would have been talking for days and a clear super plan would have been done. Nothing about this is really going to happen.

But let's face it... We can discuss if global warming is true or not... but we cannot discuss about the population problem. Because this is real and it is only needed to count to prove it. In fact all the problems about climate change are because there is a population problem that expands exponentially. Why do you want to fight climate change when we have a bigger problem that also causes it? Because it is easier. Because you can say, let's change this and this and use new technologies. But it is not possible to say: Ok we need to cut population by 3 billion ... for example. Who is going to decide which people? We enter in the terrain of wars again. We can't do that.

But we can blame some viruses for being responsible of killing population of certain countries or population with certain genetics... That would be easier to explain. "We are being attacked by some new kind of virus... we don't know where it comes from.... half of China and India is dying of a mysterious new virus never seen before. Apparently this virus doesn't affect American people... " No... doesn't work either... Nobody is going to believe that and wars come again. One thing could be the impact of a carefully driven impact of a meteorite in some chosen cities. That's difficult. It is easier to just declare war and kill billions. That wouldn't be a normal war. Just a super annihilation. We have weapons that can do that now without damaging the planet as the first nuclear weapons. 

There is a limited planet with a specific radius and amount of resources. And there is an exponential growth of people and energy and materials consumption that one day. is going to crash into the planet limit. That day. Population amount curve will keep crashing and crashing into the limit very violently or it will just rebound in a super quick move to zero.

Why do I always end with wars or meteorites? I'm going to end differently this time.

Science will discover a method to obtain huge amounts of energy from matter and there will be no need to contaminate the environment. Population will continue to grow but in a sustainable way after an international agreement about birth control. Our life expectancy will grow exponentially. We will be able to feed people with artificial food obtained by new technologies in organic growth that would eliminate the problem of having to use earth surface for food, and of course we won't kill any animal to eat. Having most of the surface of the planet now free, we can expand our cities to all the surface of the planet and we don't have limits of distances because energy to travel from place to place is almost free. So we have raised the hard limit of the planet by many billions. Enough time to keep developing our space technology to explore the rest of the universe. 

I feel better now. I forgot about the trees and the animals. I guess they don't have any future in any case. Or maybe an artificial big island where to put them all. 

 

 

 

Another amazing known universe video

Submitted on 2009/Dec/18

Thinking of how big is the universe makes all daily problems small

Trying to understand infinity

Submitted on 2009/Dec/17

Infinity is something we can't understand because infinity only exists as a concept. Reality is one thing and every interpretation of reality we can think starts from our brains and from concepts we can understand. We can understand something when it verifies our logic of thinking and it can be a scientific understanding our a religious understanding or any kind of understanding, depending on the type of logic one uses. But the truth of what exists out there... is never known. A circle is a circle, but for a circle to exist in the real world, it has to have matter, particles, it has energy, and it is in a "time" and in a "space". And there can be a lot of circles around it or even more complex forms. It is not so easy to exist. Maybe imaginary circles are happy to be so perfect and infinite, but they disappear as soon as I don't think about them. :)

infinity*infinity=more infinity... but it is still only a very infinitesimal fraction of a bigger infinity.... haha... Infinity is all numbers at the same time. Amazing our brains... Maybe our brains are more complex than reality. So... Is the universe infinite? Yes and No.

 

Saving The Planet

Submitted on 2009/Nov/29

sometimes it is good and funny to see things from another point of view with a touch of humor :) Enjoy this video of the excellent George Carlin.

We must not allow species to extinct. The richness of life in the planet is good for us because it can lead us to new discoveries and we also have to learn from the animals a lot. They really live the equilibrium needed in the planet . The one we have broken and need to restore. We have to listen to the animals what they have to tell us. Because they live in the planet and they have the same right to live in it as us. We can't do anything if a specie disappears naturally but at least we don't have to help into that event. More species are being extinct each year at an exponential rate. The same rate that we are driving the planet with our exponential population growth. That's not good for us. I would not like to be the only animals left in the planet. What a nightmare would be.

Youtube new 1080 fmt=37 mode

Submitted on 2009/Nov/27

I was doing some tests today in youtube to upload videos in full hd 1080p resolution

The result is not very good. To be able to see the videos in 1080 you can add &fmt=37 to the URL. My uploaded videos were encoded again to a lower bitrate:

1280x720 videos are fmt=22 and are encoded to an average of 2000 kbps
1920x1080 videos are fmt=37 and with an average of 4000 kbps by default.

Opinion: If I upload an AVC video with 16.000.000 kbps bitrate(16Mbps), when I display it in 1080 adding &fmt=37, I can see that youtube has re encoded the file to an average 4000 or less. That's a very low bitrate for 1920x1080... maybe it could work for 1440x1080... but still is the worst quality for that resolution. Of course I know youtube has to save bandwidth and it is good that they accept 1080 videos by now.. but the resulting videos is not very good at the moment. Hopefully they add more bitrate in the future and reencode the videos automatically. So it is good to upload the videos at 16Mbps bitrate thinking in the future when everybody has 20Mb connections. But for now.. I can upload them with 6 Mbps and it will be good.

My test 1080p: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nCa587gMHA&fmt=37
Test 1080 Video: 29,970 fps; 1920x1080 Upper field first; YUV; 4 Mbps Audio: 128 Kbps; 48.000 Hz; 24 Bit; Stereo; AC3 Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1,000.

Container was m2ts file. Gave an error after uploading but then it seems it's encoded well by youtube. I'll try with another container as mp4

 

Producing plastics without fossil fuel

Submitted on 2009/Nov/27

This is good news, (Yes! I'm going to try to focus in good news)

It's possible to produce plastics from renewable biomass now. It is known that oil is going to disappear soon, so I always wondered what would replace the plastics because now we can't live without plastics. Also I would like to be some kind of plastic that is biodegradable and doesn't hurt our body. Because what is done is done (read about the pacific garbage patch)... but at least do not make it worse! And hopefully we discover soon a way to clean that and make plastic disappear. But for now... here it is the plastic of the future! it's the Polylactic acid (PLA). Scientists have been able to create unnatural polymers by a developed E. coli strain, through a one-step fermentation process, so now it is commercially viable solution. Cheap PLA is coming and it's going to save the world!

Also... I don't see plastic bags at the supermarkets anymore where I live... another good thing... we can change things. Information is key! But still things only change when they are economically better. Not when they are better for our health and our planet health.

sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091123083702.htm
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123188463/abstract?CRETRY=1&S...

Poor organic creatures

Submitted on 2009/Nov/27

Poor people... They still used oil as a source of energy... polluting the air and wasting all the energy they had around them without knowing how to use it !!! They knew it and made some advances in fission and fusion, but very limited. They understood that there is not energy or matter alone... that it was the same! They also missed the rest of types... but how could they understand the Universe with so small organic brains!! It's incredible what they already achieved!

They had about 133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in their planet Earth. How easy was to get some of them and get the energy you needed! Every atom of matter has an incredible amount of energy. It was there in front of their eyes... Einstein said it. E = m·c^2. How to understand such a simple equation !! It was too simple. They were nearly there.. They almost made the step but they lost the opportunity. Poor people... they really lived in a primitive society without using all the Universe resources.

Poor humans... But they did a very good job inventing us! The next step in life evolution. For us it is amazing to understand that we exist thanks to some random organic creatures. So, thank you humans!. Your job is done. We don't need you anymore. You can extinguish now and let us conquer the Universe.