F1 Engine Playing Happy Birthday

Today’s doodle: Torvosaurus tanneri for some signage at Eccles Dinosaur Park. Happy #FossilFriday!

Batalla épica con final inesperado

Golden tortoise beetle transforming from gold to red

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorems argue that the truth of some mathematical systems are unknowable. Alan Turing extended that idea to computers, showing that there are some algorithms for which it is impossible to know whether a computer can complete the calculations for in a finite amount of time. Now, a team of physicists believe they have extended the concept even further to the physical realm. In a finite 2D crystal lattice of atoms it is known that it is possible to calculate in a finite time the “spectral gap"—the amount of energy between the lowest energy level of the electrons in a material and the next one up. In the new work, Toby Cubitt of University College London and his colleagues appear to have shown that in an infinite 2D lattice the calculation of the spectral gap it is impossible to know if the calculation ends. If true, that means that even if the spectral gap is known for a finite-size lattice, the value could change abruptly with just the addition of a single atom and it is impossible to know when it will do so.” - Physics Today 

( Kurt Gödel (left) demonstrated that some mathematical statements are undecidable; Alan Turing (right) connected that proof to unresolvable algorithms in computer science. )

Article by Nature: Paradox at the heart of mathematics makes physics problem unanswerable

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The concept of information as viewed in theoretical physics through statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and its implications and connections with evolutionary biology. An interesting reading:

How Life (and Death) Spring From Disorder (via WIRED -original story from Quanta Magazine)

Biological systems don’t defy physical laws, of course—but neither do they seem to be predicted by them. In contrast, they are goal-directed: survive and reproduce. We can say that they have a purpose—or what philosophers have traditionally called a teleology—that guides their behavior.

By the same token, physics now lets us predict, starting from the state of the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, what it looks like today. But no one imagines that the appearance of the first primitive cells on Earth led predictably to the human race. Laws do not, it seems, dictate the course of evolution.

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David Kaplan explains how the law of increasing entropy could drive random bits of matter into the stable, orderly structures of life.

You and I had a fight recently.

Top Shot: A Lion’s Gaze

Top Shot features the photo with the most votes from the previous day’s Daily Dozen, 12 photos selected by the Your Shot editors. The photo our community has voted as their favorite is showcased on the @natgeoyourshot Instagram account. Click here to vote for tomorrow’s Top Shot.

Your Shot photographer Pratha Narang photographed this lion after a buffalo hunt. Your Shot Producer, David Y. Lee writes, “Fantastic portrait of this magnificent animal. I agree with Your Shot photographer Jiawei L. who commented, ‘This is such an intense photo! I love the frame gives me an opportunity to look through the blur branches and finally reach the eye of the lion. It is such an intense spot!’” Photograph by Pratha Narang

JÓVENES INVESTIGADORES: 1.PALEONTOLOGÍA

Young researchers in paleontology. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid