Gary Foshee, a collector and designer of puzzles from Issaquah near Seattle walked to the lectern to present his talk. It consisted of the following three sentences: “I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?”
The event was the Gathering for Gardner earlier this [...]
Continue reading about Some Thoughts on Tuesday’s Child – Greg Egan
“It would be absurd to over-generalise from my experience, but equally absurd to treat it as singular. Perhaps neurologists will eventually pin down a particular mechanism associated with the kind of religious practice I’ve described, but to me it seems equally likely that the mechanisms will be diverse. What I do suspect I once shared [...]
An interview with David Conyers, from Albedo One Magazine
“Do transhuman characters with god-like powers alienate readers? Are they too far removed from human emotions and frailties that we experience in modern society?
The frailty of our bodies is an enormously important part of our current reality — and I very much doubt that anyone will ever [...]
Continue reading about Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures – Greg Egan
“Gummelt draws Petra Gummelt’s quasiperiodic tiling of the plane with overlapping decagons.
Decagonal tile
This tiling is related to the rhombic Penrose tiling, with a decagon associated with each “fat” rhomb, and the side-matching rules replaced by the requirement that wherever two decagons overlap, the coloured darts they contain are superimposed. Each decagon contains four darts, two [...]
“In Zendegi, Greg Egan has created a beautiful, brilliant, near-future world that expertly explores the consequences of mind-mapping technology in the politically volatile world of Iran.”
3.5 out of 5
http://io9.com/5564075/with-zendegi-greg-egan-plunges-us-into-the-techno+future-of-iran
Anti-ship defenses.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Railguns : Scales – Alastair Reynolds
Nico’s new home.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Chokepoint : Scales – Alastair Reynolds
By Russell Blackford :-
“7. Blackford: Is it similar when you deal with advanced scientific and mathematical concepts—concepts that might “lose” even readers with reasonable levels of scientific literacy—or do you see that as a different kind of problem? Again, I’m interested in how it feels from the inside to an author writing this kind of [...]
” Keep using crappy software, or the AI overlord will eat your children.”
5 out of 5
http://www.gregegan.net/INTERVIEWS/Interviews.html
“Schwarz performs two successive Schwarz-Christoffel transformations of the complex plane: f(z)=1+(z–z0)/(1–z0*z), which maps z0 to 1 and the unit disk centred on 0 to the unit disk centred on 1, and g(z)=(z+1)/(z–1), which maps 1 to infinity and the unit disk centred on 0 to half the complex plane; z0 is either a random point, [...]
“Laplace displays solutions of Laplace’s equation in three dimensions, sampled on the surface of a sphere. The intensity of each colour cycles between two randomly oriented spherical harmonics — functions whose angular dependence has a simple pattern of regularly spaced peaks and troughs.”
4 out of 5
http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/04/04.html
“Cantor is a 2-dimensional Cantor set, a square divided into nine parts with the middle rectangle removed, and the same process applied to the other eight rectangles, ad infinitum. The black region is the Cantor set; the gaps are decorated. A version where all the rectangles are identical squares can be described mathematically as [...]
Novelette
Number of words : 16300
Percent of complex words : 11.9
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 22.9
READABILITY INDICES
Fog [...]
Novelette
Number of words : 16300
Percent of complex words : 11.9
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 22.9
READABILITY INDICES
Fog [...]
Russian spacecraft.
3 out of 5
“J.D. longed to take the meerkat out of the sample case. She still had never touched its graceful curves with her bare hands, only through gloves. But it would be a mistake to open the box, a mistake to indulge herself and pass the sculpture around. It was too precious.
“The protocol calls for quarantine [...]
Prize awarded to young mathematicians.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Fields Medal : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
A type definition of 4096 bits.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Dark Integers : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Very, very small. Physics measurement.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Planck scale : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Bomb movie.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Dr Strangelove : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Comic strip detective.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Dick Tracy : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
American tv show.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about The West Wing : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Sydney suburb.
3 out of 5
Outside Sydney.
3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Blue Mountains : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Sea between Australia and New Zealand.
3 out of 5
Suburb of Sydney.
3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about West Ryde : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Where Alison lives.
3 out of 5
Major city in China.
3 out of 5
Australian city.
4 out of 5
Radio station, focused on new music for the young.
3 out of 5
In Wellington.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Victoria University : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Company that wants to exploit Bruno and Alison’s discovery.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Industrial Algebra : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Mongol warlord.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Genghis Khan : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
An actress.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Hedy Lamarr : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
An actor.
3 out of 5
English billionaire.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Richard Branson : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Campbell’s wife, an organic chemist. Also a lecturer at Victoria University.
3 out of 5
Quantum mathematician.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Gerard Hooft : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Political theorist.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Machiavelli : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Bruno’s girlfriend.
3.5 out of 5
A number theory researcher working at Victoria University.
3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Tim Campbell : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Alison’s daughter.
3 out of 5
Alison’s mentor.
4.5 out of 5
Bruno’s friend and co-watcher.
4.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Alison Tierney : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Bruno’s counterpart on the far side.
3.5 out of 5
Mathematical defect mapper and watcher.
5 out of 5
Continue reading about Bruno Costanzo : Dark Integers – Greg Egan
Number of words : 12600
Percent of complex words : 13.1
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 15.3
READABILITY INDICES
Fog [...]
Small, shiny ball-shaped ocean creature.
4 out of 5
Major character in 1984.
3 out of 5
Science fiction novel by George Orwell.
3 out of 5
Early human ancestor.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Australopithecus : Luminous – Greg Egan
A Chinese race that Bruno looks nothing like.
3 out of 5
In Minhang. Houses Luminous and Yuen works there.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about People’s Institute for Advanced Optical Engineering : Luminous – Greg Egan
Large corporation.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about McDonnell-Douglas : Luminous – Greg Egan
Large corporation.
3 out of 5
Where Alison studied ring theory.
3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Fu-tan University : Luminous – Greg Egan
International Asian broadcaster.
3 out of 5
Aggressive UK IT company that wants their secrets.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Industrial Algebra : Luminous – Greg Egan
Universe creation event.
3 out of 5
Follower of Plato’s ideas.
4 out of 5
No three positive integers a , b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Fermat’s Last Theorem : Luminous – Greg Egan
Chinese dialect.
3 out of 5
Good for stopping bleeding.
4 out of 5
Continue reading about Surgical grade tissue repair cream : Luminous – Greg Egan
Chinese supercomputer made of light.
4 out of 5
Implanted carrying technology that breaks if disconnected from the host’s biology.
4 out of 5
Swiss city.
3 out of 5
Finnish city.
3 out of 5
Market in Shanghai.
4 out of 5
Vietnamese city.
3 out of 5
In Shanghai.
4 out of 5
Large Chinese city.
4 out of 5
A famous mathematician.
3 out of 5
Alison’s supervisor for her Ph.D. on advanced applications of ring theory.
4.5 out of 5
Chilean dictator.
3 out of 5
Chinese leader.
3 out of 5
Artist.
3 out of 5
A writer.
3 out of 5
Princeton researcher.
3 out of 5
Friends of theirs.
3 out of 5
Continue reading about Julia and Ramesh : Luminous – Greg Egan
Bruno’s ex-lover and co-operator. Has idea that mathematics might be wonkier than we think.
4.5 out of 5
Alison’s ex-lover and co-operator. Mapper of mathematical defects.
5 out of 5
“Escher is inspired by the conflicting orientation cues that are used throughout the artwork of M.C. Escher. The technique of projecting selected faces from hypercubes is adapted from deBruijn’s method for quasiperiodic tilings, which is illustrated in the deBruijn applet.”
4 out of 5
http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/02/02.html
“SO(3) is a schematic of the group of rotations in three dimensions. Any rotation can be specified by a vector pointing along the axis of rotation, with a length equal to the amount of rotation; using this correspondence, each cube here has been rotated by its own position vector, relative to the central cube. The [...]
“The effect of parallel-transporting vectors along a path, viewed as a linear map between the tangent spaces at the beginning and end of the path, is known as the holonomy for that path, and will always take the form of some rotation, R. The family of geometries for which the applet evaluates each spin network [...]
Continue reading about Spin Networks Technical Notes – Greg Egan
“This essay contains spoilers for my novel Quarantine. If you haven’t read it, and have any intention of doing so, you will probably enjoy it more if you read it before you read this essay.
Quantum mechanics was born early in the twentieth century as a way of dealing with some puzzling aspects of the behaviour [...]
Continue reading about Quantum Mechanics and Quarantine – Greg Egan
“The energy eigenfunctions of Schrödinger’s equation for a two-dimensional square-well potential with infinitely high walls are:
φn,p(x,y,t) = (2/√LM) sin(nπx/L) sin(pπy/M) exp(–2πiEn,pt/h) (1)
where L and M are the dimensions of the well in the x- and y-directions (x and y being zero at one of the corners of the well), n and p are [...]
“The surface of a hypersphere in 5 dimensions can be described by the equation:
x2 + y2 + z2 + u2 + w2 = R2 (1)
where x,y,z,u,w are the 5 spatial coordinates, and the origin of the coordinate system lies at the centre of the hypersphere.
Suppose this hypersphere is rotating as a rigid body. In general [...]
Continue reading about Partition of Unity Detailed – Greg Egan
“The standard way to embed a torus in 3 dimensions is:
(x, y, z) = ((a – b cos B) cos A, (a – b cos B) sin A, b sin B) (1)
where a and b are the major and minor radii of the torus, and A and B are angles that vary from 0 to [...]
“The relationship between the orbital period, T, and the separation between the neutron stars, a, is given by Kepler’s Law: the period squared is proportional to the separation cubed.
T2 = (4π2/GM) a3
where M = m1+m2 is the combined mass of the two stars, and G is the universal gravitational constant.
The total power being [...]
“Consider a space station moving in a circular orbit around some massive body (a planet, a star, or perhaps a black hole), “tidally locked” so that it always keeps the same face towards whatever it’s orbiting. At the centre of the station objects will be weightless, but away from the centre how will they move? [...]
Continue reading about Orbits and Tidal Accelerations Detailed – Greg Egan
“In Chapter 20 of Incandescence, the Splinterites derive a spacetime geometry that is symmetrical under rotations around a single axis. This is a much harder feat than the case of a geometry that has spherical symmetry. In our own history, the spherically symmetrical case was solved by Schwarzschild in 1915, but the Kerr spacetime, with [...]
Continue reading about Deriving Part of the Kerr Geometry – Greg Egan
“In Chapter 12 of Incandescence, the Splinterites succeed in deriving a possible geometry for the spacetime they inhabit. They come up with the simplest possible geometry that conforms to Zak’s principle (that the sum of the three perpendicular “weights”, or tidal accelerations, is zero, after the effects of spin have been removed) while explaining the [...]
Continue reading about Deriving Newtonian Spacetime Geometry – Greg Egan
” * Quantum and Classical Behaviour
* Pure States
* Superpositions
* Mixtures and Density Matrices
* Subsystems
* How Entanglement Hides Quantum Interference”
5 out of 5
http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Decoherence/DecoherenceNotes.html
Continue reading about Decoherence Technical Notes – Greg Egan
” * Preliminaries
* (A) Blueshift outside the hole, for a stationary observer
* (B) Red- and blueshifts inside the hole, for a stationary observer
* (C) Red- and blueshifts for a free-falling observer
* (D) Apparent position and brightness [...]
Continue reading about Cordelia’s Tour Technical Notes – Greg Egan
“This applet models a Newtonian rotating elastic hoop as a polygon with point masses at the vertices, and edges consisting of elastic material; the edges are assumed to have negligible mass, always to be straight line segments, and to obey Hooke’s law exactly. (Note that only one in every 10 vertices is marked, rather than [...]
“In the history of special relativity, numerous thought experiments have involved rotating rings, disks and hoops. One striking feature of a uniformly rotating body in special relativity is that a family of observers who are tied to the body — and hence in a colloquial sense might seem to be “at rest” relative to each [...]
Continue reading about Rotating Elastic Rings, Disks and Hoops – Greg Egan
“In thought experiments in special relativity, when a rocket engine pushes on the rear of a spacecraft, or a tether is dragged behind an accelerating craft, assuming that these extended objects respond to the forces on them instantly and without deformation can lead to confusion and apparent paradoxes. The idealisation of a rigid body, which [...]
Short Story
Number of words : 4400
Percent of complex words : 10.4
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 19.3
READABILITY INDICES
Fog [...]
A child substitute made by genetic modification of the donor’s DNS. Stupider than puppies.
4 out of 5
Part of the system used for making and monitoring Cuties.
3.5 out of 5