Scientific Artist

Got today’s EPOD with a groundbreaking image of a Dyson sphere construction around Polaris imaged in the early hours of this morning.

Thank you Jim for continuing to publish my work 🙂

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/

Well here’s something you might not be aware of.

An ancient proof of the infinity of the primes goes something like this.  Multiply all the primes together up until you get to what you think is the last prime, and then add 1, and you will generate a further prime.  At first glance this seems to look good.  If we take the first 6 primes which are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 & 13 then we can generate primes in the following way.

2 x 3 + 1 = 7 (prime)

2 x 3 x 5 + 1 = 31 (prime)

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 + 1 = 211 (prime)

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 + 1 = 2311 (prime)

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 x 13 + 1 = 30031 (not a prime!!)

Bet you didn’t see that one coming 🙂

I let my images speak for themselves.

I do not need to “gloss up” a mediocre image with flowery prose – mainly because I don’t produce any mediocre images 🙂

Mathematics as Language

Got today’s EPOD with the Coma-Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies panorama.  A 2-framer taken with the Canon 200mm lenses and around 5-hours of 15-minute subs per frame.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work 🙂

If you have need for high-resolution, high quality images for books, magazines, posters, framed artwork, inspirational image for offices/buildings – then take a look at the following fine-art photo-libraries for your next project:

1.  For scenes of the New Forest:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157661372909775
2.  For Mathematical structures:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157625498790798
3.  For coastal scenes:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157625231061479
4.  For astrophotography:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157622020758946
5.  For Dartmoor panoramas:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157621877819395
6.  For Photomicroscopy:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157621951960100
7.  For Macrophotography:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157621951344990
8.  For High-Speed Flash Photography:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/albums/72157621810713655

Could I please re-iterate:  None of my images are available “free of charge”.  Please take a moment to look at the “Image Agency and Copyright Notice” section.

Thank you.

I have got a LOT of negative comments to make about book Publishers, but here’s the one I want to share with you today.

I was asked to review a book that was being considered for publication – all o.k. so far.  But two questions the publisher wanted answers to were:

1.  Are there any competing books?
2.  Potential readership/market for the book?

Now this is a doubly annoying question for the following reasons.  Firstly the Author(s) have already given full answers to these questions on submitting the manuscript.  Secondly – if this information is so important, why don’t the publishing staff do a little bit of work AND LOOK UP THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS THEMSELVES???

Rant over.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

If you have played with the square root function on an electronic calculator you may have noticed something odd.  It looks like if you take the square root of ANY number that is not actually a perfect square, then you get an irrational number, with the decimal places spilling over the edge of your calculator’s display.  Is this in fact true?  Is the square root of any number that is not itself a perfect square an irrational?  Let’s find out.

We start off in the conventional way by assuming that the square root of 2 IS rational and may be given as m/n where m & n are both integer.

1)  √2 = m/n

2)  m² = 2 n²

That much we have seen before, but now comes the really clever bit.  Factor m & n into their unique prime factors:

3)  m₁ m₁ m₂ m₂ m₃ m₃ … m_r m_r = 2 n₁ n₁ n₂ n₂ n₃ n₃ … n_r n_r

Now here’s the problem.  The prime number 2 will appear an even number of times on the left hand side of the equation (if it appears at all) and an odd number of times on the right.  Since the decomposition into primes is unique the prime number 2 cannot appear an even number of times on one side of the equality and an odd number of times on the other.  So the square root of 2 cannot be written in the form m/n with m & n integer.  The square root of 2 is an irrational number.

A) Although the above was shown to be true for root 2, the same argument of course would hold true for any prime number. The square root of any prime number is an irrational.

B) Replace 2 with any integer that is not a perfect square. Now that integer may be decomposed into its prime factors, and, if the number is not a perfect square, then once again we will have an odd number of primes on one side of the equality and an even number of primes on the other.  The square root of any integer that is not a perfect square is also an irrational.

C) Finally, replace 2 with any perfect square. With even numbers of primes on both sides the solution is trivial.