I might not be the best person to start this but I'll give it a try. There may be astronomy-related web bits that don't fit into the existing categories.
Interesting Earth Science Picture of the Day today. I like the idea of a carbon star. Wonder if they are more graphite-like or diamond-like into their core composition? Maybe all are not "carbon" copies.
Thanks, Ron-Astro Pharmacist, for creating this thread. I saw something that isn't astronomical, but which is interesting anyway. Google wants to shape up, did you know? It wants to separate facts from fiction.
Hal Hodson wrote:
THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free "news" stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.
Google's search engine currently uses the number of incoming links to a web page as a proxy for quality, determining where it appears in search results. So pages that many other sites link to are ranked higher. This system has brought us the search engine as we know it today, but the downside is that websites full of misinformation can rise up the rankings, if enough people link to them.
A Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. "A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy," says the team (arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519v1). The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.
The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.
I thought that was interesting. It is very good if Google is going to feed us fewer lies, isn't it?
Ann
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 3:04 am
by rstevenson
Yikes! Did I just read what I just read?
Google says, "Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth." And then they say, "Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings."
That seems to equate "contradictory" with not agreeing with the "proxy for truth." So if you say something on a web site that no one has said before, it will slide down in the rankings, never to be seen again -- even if it is true!
Somebody needs to rethink this. Yes, the number of untruth sites is too high, and yes, they get too much attention, but this isn't the answer.
Rob
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 3:47 am
by geckzilla
If someone says something for the first time and it's not yet actively being discussed (and linked to) then it doesn't matter whether it's true or not because its rank is going to be at the very bottom either way. Still, Rob, I think you are right to be dubious about the matter. I'm hopeful for it, though. Trying something is better than nothing. If it goes awry then hopefully adjustments are made. I'm definitely tired of the Daily Fail and all other kinds of misinformation dominating the 'net.
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:42 am
by Markus Schwarz
So, would this mean that if more websites say intelligent design is true than sites saying it's false, Google considers intelligent design to be true
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:47 am
by geckzilla
If there is near-unanimous agreement on intelligent design then at that point it may very well fit the definition of fact. But it's not anywhere near unanimous.
ScienceCasts: Subtracting Gravity from Alzheimer's
Wonder if they were "Nuts about spiders?" That ISS group could have starred in the next B-movie? "Spiders on a Space Station"
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:16 pm
by BMAONE23
Sounds like SyFy material to be certain
Synopsis:
3 Scientists breed mutated spiders on the ISS. Due to a radiation blast from a solar CME, the spiders begin to grow. Intrigued by the changes, the astronaut/scientists do not immediately destroy the mutant arachnids as they are also displaying signs of increasing intelligence. The subjects continue growing in both size and intelligence until they are able to pounce on and consume the astronauts.
After communications is lost, NASA makes plans to send another crew to determine the malfunction but when they don't report back after opening the hatch NASA considers abandoning the facility. In the months that follow Russian Japan and the ESA make plans to attempt salvage missions but when they get within sight of the ISS, the station is covered in a mysterious webbing and all the space suited astronauts have eight appendages on their suits.....
Wonder if they were "Nuts about spiders?" That ISS group could have starred in the next B-movie? "Spiders on a Space Station"
Interesting tidbit about the spiders in space (and the free educational web service), Ron!
Recently I've been watching a bit of Simpsons, and in Deep Space Homer NASA sends ants into space (along with Homer, oh no):
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Ann
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 2:02 pm
by Ron-Astro Pharmacist
I guess light can play tricks on you or you can play tricks with light. Or even pay to see light tricks. Whatever way you look at it - the Optics Picture of the Day is trippy. http://www.atoptics.co.uk/fz1109.htm
The world’s most powerful particle accelerator is about to be turned back on and enter into a second phase of collisions. Today, Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, spoke of ‘a new era for physics’ during the press briefing, held at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Heuer said, “I want to see the first light in the dark universe. If that happens, then nature is kind to me.”
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has undergone important upgrades and repairs over the past two years since the first shutdown. The particle collider boasts new magnets, superior cryogenics, higher voltage and higher energy beams that will allow the machine to run at nearly double the collision energy of the first run.
The first circulating beams of protons in the LHC are planned for the week beginning 23 March, and by late May to early June the LHC aims to be running at 13 TeV. One hope is that these higher energies will allow physicists to extend the search for new particles and to check previously untestable theories such as the elegant theory of supersymmetry which could extend the standard model of particle physics. ...
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:15 pm
by Ron-Astro Pharmacist
From Quantum Shorts
"Earlier this month, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Google reported a milestone on the path to building a quantum computer. You can read the paper they published in Nature or some of the many news stories, maybe starting with this nice piece from UCSB."
Within a few hours of installing the program, I had a reasonably accurate (I think) ray trace model of my Celestron 6SE SCT (minus Schmidt corrector plate and otherwise based on my own measurements, as Celestron doesn't appear to publish much in the way of specifications) and Nikon D5100 DSLR sensor, viz:
If anyone is interested, here is my model, including some inactive approximations to different focal reducers. You can simply copy this data onto the O/S clipboard and paste it into the program:
It seems it's a runaway. Most distance estimates show it at about 6 light years. But apparently in about 10,000 years it may only be around 3.85 light years away.
Back in the 70's there was the British study - Project Daedalus.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Maybe it's time to resurrect and modify the idea? No telling what we could accomplish within 10,000 years and it wouldn't be as far as originally thought. Instead of 5 billion years for our star, red dwarfs last for trillions of years. All aboard - next stop Bernard's star.
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 7:45 pm
by Ron-Astro Pharmacist
There are some very clever people out there that help us imagine things we'll probably never see.
Gas-nados are erupting on the sun. They may be showering its surface with cooked "squarks" that bite with scintillating symmetry and tantalizing tessellations.
Just having some phun with physics.
Re: What did you see on the web today?
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 11:26 pm
by Beyond
Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:Quarknado 1
Gas-nados are erupting on the sun. They may be showering its surface with cooked "squarks" that bite with scintillating symmetry and tantalizing tessellations.