Technically Speaking

If information is knowledge and knowledge is power, then Google must be all powerful. I say this because of the thing you can find on Google if you know how to look for them. A new Google hack has come to my attention that brings back some information that is a bit troubling. I must say that it is also good for the more you know about something the better you are to act upon it. The hack is this:

visa 4356000000000000..4356999999999999

When this query is put into the Google search, an idea of the brut strength of Google becomes apparent. You can find things like this, which may worry you if you found your name on it.

I’m not really sure if Google knows what it can do, but they take an interesting stance toward their provision of data.

With 4 billion Web pages on the Internet, Google is not able to police its archives very effectively, a source at the company said. The firm has legally positioned itself as an intermediary of content beyond its control, which releases it from being held responsible for any content the company archives or to which it links.

That means consumers are left to carefully watch their information. Yet, the degree to which fraud has become more common makes consumers like Ernst fatalistic.

“I am sure that the information is out there,” the fraud-fighter said.

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I have seen the book Google Hacks on the shelves of the bookstores but was never interested in what was inside, so I never even opened a copy. I will be picking up a copy now so I can hopefully know what others are able to find out about me. Then we will need to know how to protect ourselves, perhaps that too can be found on Google.

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Here is another one of those hard core physics books I like so much. I haven’t read this yet but it looks really interesting. Brian Greene, the author, explains the new ideas in string theory. Observations have been made, with the help of the Hubble Telescope, that suggest that the universe is expanding and speeding up in its expansion. Since this new fact has been observed and true, the old theories are no longer valid. This is what Amazon has to say about the book.

From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?
Greene uses these questions to guide us toward modern science’s new and deeper understanding of the universe. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly different objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation, Greene reveals our world to be very different from what common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of physics insists that it run in any particular direction and that “time’s arrow” is a relic of the universe’s condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in a vibrant eleven-dimensional “multiverse,” pulsating with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.

Sparked by the trademark wit, humor, and brilliant use of analogy that have made The Elegant Universe a modern classic, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

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Amazon is currently selling the book for $17.37, regular price is $28.95. What a bargain!

Popular Science notes an interesting book on some of the world unsolved mathematics problems. I happen to be a math wiz, well I use to be, as well as a physics wiz. I have always wanted to waste some time trying to solve one of the world’s greatest math puzzles. This book look like it would be a great inspiration for me. Hopefully it will inspire you as well. Her is an excerpt of PopSci’s article;

Prime Obsession, the story of what many mathematicians consider to be the great unsolved problem of their field, begins as two very different books. The first details the life of Bernhard Riemann, the 19th century German mathematician who influenced everything from number theory to general relativity. The second is a guided tour through his most vexing contribution, the Riemann hypothesis. As you ascend the number scale, the frequency of primes-those numbers divisible by only one and themselves-drops off in a pattern that Riemann described but never proved. Author John Derbyshire, both a novelist and a mathematician, writes in the prologue that he originally intended to divide this book in two. Less math-inclined readers could choose to read only the chapters that covered Riemann’s interesting life and skip the dreaded symbols, numbers and graphs required to explain his famous hypothesis. In its final form, however, the two narratives have merged. As Riemann’s story progresses and the shy prodigy matures into a devoted mathematician, the mathematics becomes his life. The Riemann hypothesis, as Derbyshire shows through approachable examples and colorful quotes from leading mathematicians, has now acquired a life of its own. It is hardly easy to explain, but Derbyshire does his very best. He also takes his time to do so. We don’t learn exactly what the Riemann Hypothesis is until we’re well into the second half. In short, Riemann developed a complex function that reveals a pattern to the distribution of primes, but he didn’t provide a proof. For over one hundred and fifty years, mathematicians have been trying to finish the job. There have been advances, retreats, false victories declared and hollow predictions revealed. Through it all, the Riemann hypothesis remains, as daunting as ever.

I found this plug for a book on Quantum Mechanics and felt that I had to have it. Unfortunately, Amazon shows this book out of stock. I will be trying to get a copy ASAP. Quantum Mechanics is a very tough subject to get a complete understanding of, as is noted below. I am in hope that this book may enlighten me on the subject.

Jim Al-Khalili, author of Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed (Sterling Publishing Co., $25), sometimes throws his hands in the air-”And yet we have seen in the first half of this book how difficult it is to translate what is essentially advanced mathematics into words that make sense”-but for the most part he attacks the subject straight on. He effectively explains everything we do know and, perhaps as important, how we got there, and he does so excitedly-exclamation points abound in this book. Quantum is also richly illustrated and contains numerous short sections, separate from the main story, with graphic explanations of difficult experiments and phenomena, from the double-slit experiment to quantum tunneling.

The best sections come when the author tells you what he really thinks. Al-Khalili, a University of Surrey physicist, belongs to what he calls the “shut up while you calculate” school of theoretical physics. He agrees with Bohr that there’s no point thinking about meaning while working within the very effective mathematics of quantum mechanics. Yet he also wants to understand what those electrons are up to when we’re not looking at them. Al-Khalili doesn’t have the answers-no one does just yet-but he does address the possibilities, leaving the reader in a somewhat more enlightened, certainly more interested, but no less perplexed state.

Source: PopSci.com