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Posts tagged with "science"

中国导弹之父-- 钱学森 The Father of China's Rocketry

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2007年12月11日是中国导弹之父钱学森96岁生日,他是中国最伟大的科学家,也是世界最杰出的科学家之一。美国今天的航天梭就是以钱学森的理论和最初设计为基础发展而来的。至今,东西方学界认同钱学森是世界最有影响力的十大航天思想家之一。



He is 96 years old, and China is celebrating his birthday today, he is honored as people's scientist. His name is Tsien Hsue-shen (钱学森).

Even today he is recognized as one of the top 10 influential space thinkers in the world. He designed the precursor of today's space shuttle -- a 1950’s/1960’s delta winged spaceplane that was the ancestor of the space shuttle, in 1949. His fundamental theoretical work on this concept lead to him being called the ‘Father of the Dyna-soar’.

Tsien was born in China in 1911 into a well educated family. After graduating from college he went to study at MIT, later moved to Caltech, he received his PH.D in only three years, he was considered unusually gifted even among Caltech's stellar student body. In 1943, he and two others in the Caltech rocketry group drafted the first document using the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory - the pioneers of JPL. His knowledge of rocketry was adopted by the US army and they sent him and Theodore von Kármán to occupied Germany to interview enemy rocket scientists. During the Second World War, he participated in the "Manhattan Project". He dedicated and contributed greatly to America.

Despite this, Tsien became ensnared and an ultimate victim in McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts. He was put in prison, Caltech President flew to Washington to defend him and took him back to Caltech, yet he was put in house arrest by the US government, for 5 years. As a dignified scientist, he was traumatized and humiliated, he eventually went back(being deported) to China in 1955, along with his wife and their two American-born children.

Once in China, he single-handedly created the Chinese space programme: his work led to China's first intercontinental ballistic missile, and eventually to the rocket that sent the first Chinese astronaut into orbit. He is well respected as the father of Chinese rocketry. In 1979, Tsien was awarded Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award, an award that one must go to the school to claim, Tsien didn't go, 22 years later Caltech brought the award to him in Beijing. Tsien has fond memory of Caltech especially JPL and his friends there but he never set his foot in America again, he said, unless the US government apologize to him.

Here is a story from Dr. Frank Marble, Caltech’s Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Jet Propulsion, Emeritus. There is also a book "Thread of the Silkworm" by Iris Chang.

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Animusic: Aqua Harp & Harmonic Voltage

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What is animusic? Animusic is 3D computer graphics generated animated music. And here is a little more explanation quoted from New York Times: :coffee:

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The Development of China's "Artificial Sun"

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Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under extreme high temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.

If a device is developed that can withstand temperatures as high as 100 million Celsius degrees and control a deuterium-tritium reaction, it will be as though an "artificial sun" had been created able to supply infinite, clean energy for human beings.

On March 28, 2006, China finished its "artificial sun" EAST's first engineering adjustment, and on 2007-03-01 China's Xinhua news agency reported:


China's experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor completed

BEIJING, March. 1 (Xinhua) -- China has completed construction of a thermonuclear fusion reactor, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced here on Thursday.

"The Experimental Advanced Super conducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor has obtained state ratification for test results, use of funds, operational management and data authenticity," said a 34-person joint ratification committee at the CAS news conference.

The 34-person committee mainly consists of officials and experts with CAS, the State Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The EAST fusion reactor was tested earlier this month by CAS Institute of Plasma Physics in central China's Anhui Province, and succeeded in generating an electrical current of 250 kilo amperes in 5 seconds.

EAST fusion reactor, which replicates the energy generating process of the sun, has also been dubbed "the artificial sun".

The EAST is an upgrade of China's first-generation Tokamak device and the first of its kind in operation in the world, said Chinese scientists.

The Institute of Plasma Physics spent eight years and 200 million yuan (25 million U.S. dollars) building the experimental reactor. (Which is about one fifteenth of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.)

Compared with similar devices in other countries, EAST was the cheapest and fastest to build and the first to go into operation.

In 2003, China joined the 4.6-billion-euro ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the largest international program dedicated to experiments in thermonuclear fusion.

China is one of seven participants in the international cooperation program, which also includes the United States, the European Union, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Japan and India.

About 2,000 Chinese researchers are engaged in studying thermonuclear fusion.

News Terms: "artificial sun" and Tokamak

Principle: exporting the energy generated during the process by artificially slowing the hydrogen bomb explosion, and converting the energy into electricity.

Keeping the fusion reaction stable and sustainable is an ongoing issue. A tokamak is needed. In Russian, "tokamak" refers to keeping a magnetic controlled fusion process stable.

Experts say that although people usually call the nuclear fusion experimental device an "artificial sun", this is actually a misconception. A real "artificial sun" involves simulating the solar energy model by using a nuclear fusion reactor.


Source and More reference about: China's "artificial sun"

陶哲轩 Terence Tao -- The Mozart of Math 数学莫扎特

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Here is a remarkable story about a math prodigy named Terence Tao. Obviously his parents have done so much for him and they did it correctly -- they let the child develop his talent naturally and comfortably according to his own pace. Another interesting observation from this story is that it seems that a person who is extremely good at one or several areas intellectually could be lost in some other areas. For example, Terence Tao had hard time to understand the concept of essay, he felt it's undefined and vague. I have known quite a few good math students who have hard time to do ordinary things such as ride a bicycle or play sports.

OK, first, a report of Terence Tao in Chinese 陶哲轩: 一个华裔数学天才的传奇, then a translation of the main article of this post 陶哲轩:数学的莫扎特. Finally, a report of Terence Tao in English from New York Times:



LOS ANGELES —Four hundred people packed into an auditorium at U.C.L.A. in January to listen to a public lecture on prime numbers, one of the rare occasions that the topic has drawn a standing-room-only audience.

Another 35 people watched on a video screen in a classroom next door. Eighty people were turned away.

The speaker, Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the university, promised “a whirlwind tour, the equivalent to going through Paris and just seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.”

His words were polite, unassuming and tinged with the accent of Australia, his homeland. Even though prime numbers have been studied for 2,000 years, “There’s still a lot that needs to be done,” Dr. Tao said. “And it’s still a very exciting field.”

After Dr. Tao finished his one-hour talk, which was broadcast live on the Internet, several students came down to the front and asked for autographs.

Dr. Tao has drawn attention and curiosity throughout his life for his prodigious abilities. By age 2, he had learned to read. At 9, he attended college math classes. At 20, he finished his Ph.D.

Now 31, he has grown from prodigy to one of the world’s top mathematicians, tackling an unusually broad range of problems, including ones involving prime numbers and the compression of images. Last summer, he won a Fields Medal, often considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics, and a MacArthur Fellowship, the “genius” award that comes with a half-million dollars and no strings.

“He’s wonderful,” said Charles Fefferman of Princeton University, himself a former child prodigy and a Fields Medalist. “He’s as good as they come. There are a few in a generation, and he’s one of the few.”

Colleagues have teasingly called Dr. Tao a rock star and the Mozart of Math. Two museums in Australia have requested his photograph for their permanent exhibits. And he was a finalist for the 2007 Australian of the Year award.

“You start getting famous for being famous,” Dr. Tao said. “The Paris Hilton effect.”

Not that any of that has noticeably affected him. His campus office is adorned with a poster of “Ranma ½,” a Japanese comic book. As he walks the halls of the math building, he might be wearing an Adidas sweatshirt, blue jeans and scruffy sneakers, looking much like one of his graduate students. He said he did not know how he would spend the MacArthur money, though he mentioned the mortgage on the house that he and his wife, Laura, an engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, bought last year.

After a childhood in Adelaide, Australia, and graduate school at Princeton, Dr. Tao has settled into sunny Southern California.

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