Live collisions from CERN on your phone.

Developing Android apps can be challenging and rewarding, especially if graphics and thus mathematics is involved. That applies for the apps I develop myself but even more so for this one that I just found.

If you want to view live 3D displays of collisions direct from CERN on your ( Android ) phone then download this free app called LHSee.

There is also a YouTube video about the development of the app which was done at the University of Oxford.



Did you know that there is even a Lego model of the Atlas collider?

From Intelligent Design to Geometry

Just some thoughts...

When I express my doubts about the success of the Apollo project people smile behind my back but that's about it. Friendships aren't broken and neither are ( employment ) contracts. ( See: AULIS on Apollofor more info ). In the last century science turned into a multi billion dollar industry and that certainly has changed the world of academics. Questioning a general accepted theory can ( and will ) ruin careers. Examples are questioning the cause of Aids, and questioning Darwin's Evolution Theory.

Evolution Theory basically says that we evolved over time by a process called mutation and natural selection. Those who question the Evolution Theory in fact question that very, very complex machines evolved from 'mud'. Darwin didn't answer that question because when Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species on 24 November 1859' he wasn't even remotely aware of the complexity of the cells making up life. DNA wasn't discovered until ten years later in 1869 by Friederich Miescher and it took until 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. Intelligent Design Theory accept Evolution Theory but only up to a certain point. They argue that somewhere in the beginning some information or 'design' had to be injected into the system. Who put it there? I would ask.

To the point.

Anyway, these thoughts entered my mind because I am thinking of building a 'DNA-type-of' geometry building block for a computer program. With the help of a computer these geometries should be able to construct ( divide ) themselves in a scene graph and evolve, multiply and so on. At the moment it's just an idea. I started to look for a way to understand more about DNA by finding popular science books on the subject. I haven't learned much about biology and chemistry and what I have learned seems forgotten. But I am only interested in DNA as a computer, or data structure. Then I found this website 'DNA seen through the eyes of a coder'. Since I am a coder ( computer, Android, programmer ) by profession that was exactly what I was looking for. Take this for example, DNA is not binary, DNA is quaternary. Computer letters normally consist of 8 bits called a byte, so using that system there are 256 possible letters. The equivalent of a byte in DNA is the codon and has three places. So in DNA language there are 64 possible letters. Read more on the site.

More to follow on this geometry project soon, I expect.

Diophantus of Alexandria

Diophantus (+/- 250 AD) of Alexandria has been called 'the father of algebra' and an entire branch of mathematics has been named after him, the study of Diophantine Equations. The most famous problem in this field 'Diophantine Equations' is Fermat's 'Last Theorem'. Fermat was reading Diophantus' comments on the Pythagoran theorem when he conjectured that for an exponent n > 2, the equation \[ x^n + y^n = z^n \] has no integer solutions. This theorem was considered the hardest open problem in mathematics until solved by Andrew Wiles in 1994. Diophantus work was lost to the Western world for thousand years.

Anyway, I thought about Diophantus when I came across this beautiful equation which has an infinite number of integer solutions \[ x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = x^2 +y^2 + z^2.\]