Jos Kirps's Popular Science and Technology Blog
The Hollywood Actress who invented WiFi basics in 1942
November 09, 2007
Extactly 94 years ago on November 9, 1913, Hedy Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria. She became an actress, appeared in serveral european movies, emigrated to the U.S. duing the Second World War and started a quite successful Hollywood career.On August 11, 1942, Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a U.S. Patent for their frequency hopping concept. Their invention was able to change between 88 frequencies using a piano roll and was intended jam torpedo communication and detection systems.
It was a controversial concept back then which was ahead of both its time and technology. The U.S. military first used their technology during the Cuba blockade in 1962, but their achievements remained mostly unnoticed during the next decades. Only ten years ago, in 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr and Antheil an award for their invention.
Lamarr's frequency-hopping idea can be considered to be the basic communications concept behind todays portable phones and WiFi internet technologies.
She was married six times and died in Altamonte Springs, Florida on January 19, 2000.
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The Z Machine is the world's most powerful X-ray source
November 19, 2007The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. It is operated by Sandia National Laboratories to gather data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear weapons. The Z machine is located at Sandia's main site in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
When the Z machine fires, the energy from a 20-million-ampere electrical discharge vaporizes an array of thin, parallel tungsten wires, creating plasma. Originally designed to supply 50 terawatts of power in one fast pulse, technological advances resulted in an increased output of 290 terawatts, enough to study nuclear fusion. Z releases 80 times the world's electrical power output for a few billionths of a second.
The image shows electrical discharges that illuminate the surface of the Z machine. By early 1998, the Sandia National Laboratories accelerator had achieved temperatures of 1.8 million degrees, close to the 2 to 3 million degrees required for nuclear fusion. Sandia announced the fusing of deuterium in the Z machine on April 7, 2003.
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Introducing CERN, the world's largest particle physics lab
November 29, 2007The CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory and a leader in high-energy physics research. It was founded by 12 european States in 1954 and is situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. The complex also has a large computer centre, which is best known for the invention of the World Wide Web (WWW, what most people call the "Internet" today) by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990.
It offers multiple particle accelerators and technologies for physics research, scientists and experts from all around the world are collaboration here to study the nature of energy and matter. There are about 2600 full-time employees, and almost 8000 scientists and engineers work on experiments conducted at CERN. A large number of important achievements in particle physics have been made at CERN, including the discovery of W and Z bosons, the determination of the number of neutrino families, the creation of antihydrogen atoms or the discovery of direct CP-violation for example.
Currently work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is in progress, which will be the largest acceleration ever built by mankind. It consists of a 27 km circular tunnel located 100 meters under the surface and shall be ready in 2008. The LHC will be running six experiments and generate a tremendous amount of computer data which required the design of completely new network technologies. The following image shows the ATLAS and CMS experiments (check out the engineers on the images to get an impression of their size):
"CERN" originally stood for "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire" (which is french for "European Council for Nuclear Research"). The name was changed into European Organization for Nuclear Research shortly after it was founded, nevertheless the "CERN" abbreviation was kept as it had been widely accepted.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
December 24, 2008
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Spend your Holidays at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
March 03, 2009About 23 years ago, on April 26 1986, reactor 4 at the Chernobyl plant exploded after a safety device test during the reactor shutdown rendered the core unstable. The test had been run by an unexperienced crew who had overrun and disabled numerous security systems and had thus ignored many security rules.
After the disaster a protective box was placed over the wrecked reactor, which has become known as the "sarcophagus". It was never designed to last for the 100 years needed to contain the radioactivity found within the remains of reactor 4, and experts even fear that it may collapse one day. This is why a new shelter is planned to be installed within the next few years.
Most people working at the power plant lived in Pripyat, a city located only a few miles from the plant that had been built for the power plant workers and their families. After the accident the 50,000 habitants of Pripyat as well as another 85,000 people within a 30 kilometer zone (the so called "zone of alienation") had to be evacuated.
Today Pripyat is an abandoned city, although some people living in the villages surrounding Pripyat returned to their homes after the accident and still live there today.What most people do not know is the fact that the nuclear plant was not shut down after the accident. The three remaining reactors continued operating, and shortly after the disaster the city of Slavutych was constructed to replace Prypiat. Despite the high levels of radiation thousands of people still worked at the Chernobyl plant until it was finally shut down in December 2000 after massive pressure and payments by western nations. Reactor 2 had already been shut down in 1991 after another severe accident which seriously damanged its reactor building.
Over twenty years after the accident radiation levels are still high in Pripyat, although they are no longer considered to be life threatning for visitors. The core of the reactor 4 still contains a large number of highly radioactive materials, but these don't have direct contact to the atmosphere.
It's now even possible to visit Pripyat for everyone as tourist offices in Kiew offer visits to the abandoned city. The main roads have been decontaminated and most buildings are open to tourists, although it's not recommended to stay too long inside rooms that have not been decontaminated. The bus will even take you to the nuclear power plant so that you may take a closer look at the sarcophagus.
There are still people working at the power plant today, their job is to keep an eye on the shut down reactors and to fix the sarcophagus until a new steel containment structure will be ready to replace it. Sometimes visitors are even allowed to enter the nuclear plant, and on rare occasions you may also enter the control room of reactor 4.
Entering the sarcophagus is, of course, strictly prohibited for tourists, although some workers of the plant enter it on a regular basis to check its structure. Workers are only allowed to remain a few minutes at a time inside the sarcophagus as radiation levels are still quite high here, even if the core itself has been covered by thousands of tons of sand, lead, clay, boron and concrete.
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