#dimensional measurement tools

[testingservicesusa]

Essential Dimensional Measurement Tools for Quality Control

In the manufacturing and engineering pulling process, Quality control (QC) plays a very significant role in that it is responsive to the standards and quality of the products to be manufactured. Emulsed within this process is dimensional measurement, which involves confirming the correct size, shape, and dimension of the various parts and components. Dimensional measurement tools are widely used in any industry that requires precision and quality, including aerospace, automotive, and electronics. This article will discuss some of the basic dimensional measurement instruments that help in sustaining quality standards.

1. Calipers Calipers are general-purpose instruments used for measuring thickness, width, depth, inside and outside diameters, and other dimensions with a fair degree of precision. There are three primary types of calipers: vernier, dial, and digital. Vernier calipers need a professional hand to read the measurements, which involves reading a scale. Dial calipers have a dial that has the measurements while the digital ones have an electronic display and can be switched between metric and imperial.

2. Micrometers Micrometers are other measuring instruments, which are widely used in the given field. They are suitable for use when taking measurements of small dimensions that need a lot of precision. A micrometer is an instrument that has a calibrated screw with a spindle that either slides towards or away from a stationary anvil. When the screw is rotated, the users can get very accurate readings normally with an error margin of about ± 0.001mm.

The different types of micrometers are outside micrometers for outside dimensions, inside micrometers for inside dimensions, and depth micrometers for depth. Digital micrometers have other advantages including an electronic readout and the capacity to store or transfer data. Micrometers are the most common choice where pieces need to be produced to very specific standards as in aerospace or medical fields.

3. Height Gauges Height gauges are employed for measuring the heights of objects and for scribing points on a workpiece at specific heights. Usually used in quality control and inspection departments, these are set on a granite surface plate to minimize any vibration. A height gauge is an instrument that has a sliding measuring head that can be slid up and down a vertical beam to get the height relative to the surface of the plate.

Modern height gauges may have digital readouts and can be set up to perform a particular quality control function. It is often utilized to measure the height, flatness, and perpendicularity of parts and therefore it is a very important tool in industries.

4. Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) are sophisticated and fully automated instruments employed in industries that require high accuracy in the measurement of the geometric properties of an object. CMMs can be used in contact or non-contact form depending on the application. Contact CMMs employ a probe that comes into contact with the object to make the measurements while non-contact CMMs employ laser or optical scanning.

CMMs are used to measure any surface and geometry of an object and are very useful in measuring objects such as engine parts or turbine blades. Because of their accuracy and flexibility, CMMs are widely used in QC laboratories to offer precise 3D dimensions and dimensional control. Despite being more expensive than simple tools such as a caliper, CMMs have high accuracy and can record data to be reviewed later for quality assurance.

5. Surface Plates While surface plates themselves are not measuring instruments, they are used to improve the accuracy of dimensional measurement. Constructed from granite or cast iron, surface plates are flat and stable in temperature, and can support height gauges and CMMs. In quality control surface plates are used to check the flatness, squareness, and parallelism of the workpieces.

6. Optical Comparators Optical comparators are devices that are used to make a part image and project it on a screen so that the inspector can compare it with a master model. These devices are especially helpful for measuring the workpiece profile and edge of shapes such as gears and cams and other shaped workpieces or machined parts. Since the part is compared to a standard overlay, deviations are easily seen and therefore, optical comparators are suitable for quality control in production lines.

Conclusion Quality control across industries requires dimensional measurement tools. When it comes to using tools such as calipers and micrometers, CMMs, and optical comparators they are essential when it comes to determining the quality of products to be produced. This paper aims to establish that by choosing the right tools and ensuring that they are well-maintained, manufacturers can improve their quality control, minimize wastage, and produce quality products in the market.

[qsmetrologyprivatelimited]

Coating Thickness Gauge

[mariacallous]

A Mayan city lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico has been revealed. The discovery occurred in the southeastern state of Campeche, and archaeologists have named it Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.

“The larger of Valeriana's two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a classic Mayan political capital: enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway; temple pyramids; a ball court; a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse); and a probable E-Group assemblage, an architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD 150,” says the study, published in the journal Antiquity.

The city's discovery didn't require breaking through the jungle with machetes or patiently excavating with brushes and spatulas. Nor did researchers need tape measures, binoculars, or compasses to find their way through the thick foliage. Instead, they employed state-of-the-art technology: lasers, drones, and satellite maps. With these tools, they discovered a city hidden for centuries beneath the thick Mexican jungle, unearthing pyramids, enclosed plazas, and an ancient reservoir.

Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, made the discovery. His analysis revealed a huge network of previously unexplored settlements.

Auld-Thomas and his fellow researchers have succeeded in mapping the city beneath the jungle thanks to airborne laser scanning, better known as lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote-sensing technique that uses pulsed lasers and other data collected through flyovers that can generate accurate three-dimensional models of surface features, revolutionizing the way archaeologists explore the hidden past.

Laser pulses generate a topographic map in a manner similar to how a bat uses echolocation: Laser light is fired from an aircraft, bounces off objects on the ground, and returns to the detector located on the underside of the aircraft. In Mexico, although only a small fraction of the pulses pass through the dense jungle, the large number of pulses emitted allows enough light to reach the ground, creating a map with a resolution of up to 1 meter. Based on the timing and intensity of the returning pulses, the detector can map the contours of the terrain, revealing hills, ditches, and ancient ruins covered in vegetation. The technology is also being integrated into autonomous cars to help them avoid crashes.

“For a long time, our understanding of the Mayan civilization was limited to an area of a few hundred square kilometers,” Auld-Thomas says. “This limited sample was obtained with great effort, with archaeologists painstakingly scouring every square meter, hacking away at vegetation with machetes, only to discover they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone's house 1,500 years ago.”

While Auld-Thomas knew that lidar could be a valuable tool, he was also aware of its high cost. Funders are often reluctant to invest in lidar surveys in areas where there is no visible evidence of Mayan settlement, despite the fact that this civilization reached its peak between 250 and 900 AD.

Campeche: A Center of Dense Urbanization Since the Mayan Era

In this case, the lidar data was originally collected over a decade ago, for completely unrelated purposes. The scans were completely in 2013 by the Mexican firm CartoData, using a Riegl LMS-Q780 sensor. Processing was carried out by the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), and the data was made publicly available a few years later by the M-REDD+ Alliance.

The dataset includes three transects and three study blocks. The transects have an approximate width of 275 meters and a total length of 213 kilometers, covering an area of 58.3 square kilometers. The survey blocks cover a total area of 64.1 square kilometers, distributed in three locations: south of the town of Xpuhil, near the archaeological site of Río Bec; near the villages of Dos Lagunas and Bel Ha; and near the town of Ucum, in northern Campeche.

The study mentions that the analysis of 6,764 structures in the lidar data blocks reveals a settlement density of 55.3 structures per square kilometer, comparable to other research in the region. These data are useful for assessing settlement density on a regional scale and exceed values recorded in Belize and Guatemala. However, they do not provide a complete picture of the level of urbanization, which requires analysis of local variability and density gradients. For this purpose, a kernel density estimation was applied to the study blocks, the results of which are consistent with the densities recorded in other Mayan archeological sites such as Oxpemul and Becan.

Archeologists in the 20th century were correct in stating that the interior of Campeche is a substantially anthropogenic landscape, i.e., human-modified, with urbanized areas where rural populations interacted with dense cities. Settlement density data, ranging from 49 to 61 structures per square kilometer, indicate that cities and dense settlements are common in large parts of the central Maya lowlands. New discoveries, such as the city of Valeriana, reinforce this view, showing that urbanization was a widespread phenomenon in the region.

Archaeologists increasingly recognize that the world's tropics and subtropics hosted a wide variety of urban forms in antiquity. Many of these settlements followed a pattern of spatial dispersion, commonly called “low-density urbanism.” However, it is now being recognized that these urban landscapes were not uniform, but exhibited significant variations in settlement density, both within and around cities and between subregions.

At the same time, the growing body of research has revealed a greater abundance of settlements and cities than had previously been contemplated. This has generated a tension between two developments: On the one hand, the recognition of high variability in settlement density and, on the other, evidence of a more densely urbanized past than previously thought.

Although lidar was developed in the 1960s to study clouds and atmospheric particles, its application in archaeology is relatively recent. It was not until the last decade that archaeologists began employing it to unearth hidden landscapes. In 2009, archaeologists Diane and Arlen Chase of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, pioneered the use of lidar to map a Mayan city, revolutionizing the way ancient civilizations are detected and studied.

According to the study, some researchers argue that the discovered landscapes reflect a high population density, while others suggest that the surveys are biased and overrepresent the most densely populated areas. This leaves open the question of whether as yet unexplored areas could confirm the existence of a higher urban density or show less dense occupation.

[botaniqueer]

Back to actual science posting, as far as we can currently measure, the universe itself appears to have Euclidean geometry (triangles angles add up to 180 degrees) or something very close to it. This is known as a flat universe.

Due to margin of error, it is also very possible that the universe has curvature and is just globally too big for us to detect it with our tools, and in that case it would be non-Euclidean and it just looks flat due to the scale we operate on and the observable universe not being large enough for us to easily tell (if at all).

An elliptical geometry (think spheres and their higher dimensional counterparts) corresponds to a closed universe which has positive curvature and triangle angles are over 180 degrees, and the saddle/Pringle shape— hyperbolic geometry is called an open universe, and that one has negative curvature with triangles’ angles adding up to under 180 degrees. A flat universe has a curvature of 0.

PBS touches on this in this video!

[santoschristos]

Kin 95 Men – Blue Auto Existing Eagle - 15.4 Reigning Planet: Jupiter Family: Polar Clan Chromatics : Blue Quinta Forza: Kin 221 – Drago Cosmico Rosso – 1.13 Galactic Signature/Mantra Kin: “I Define to Create Measuring the Mind Seal The Output Of The Vision with the Self-Existing Tone of Form I'm Guided@ by the Power of Magic I am a Polar Kin, Converting the Galactic Spectrum Blue. “ Glyphic Keywords: Mind / Create / Vision Tone Keywords: Measure / Form / Define Expect Light: Vision Corresponds to Action – Act the Vision / Determination / Grace and Power / 360 Degrees Viewing of Things / Flight – Life, Stable. “Message”: When the Self-Existing Blue Eagle, Kin 95, Appears to You in the Form of an Archetype and/or Number, It May Want to Communicate to You that,... “Absolute Mentis Form of its own Univocal and Broad Vision, which presses to Descend and find its purpose, in the right Measure in the Cre-Active Planetary Universe: from the High Mind or Sky Mind, down to the Senses, Body and Earth, to Become FreeMind RealizzAbile. Unique, indispensable and irreplaceable tool / desktop computer, as an Active Third Eye (internal receiver of Light/Divine Information), it will help us to disperse and flourish the fertile soil: Conscious Plan, of Dreams and Projects (Unconscious Plan), that from higher and parallel Dimensional Spheres, wait and yearn to re-connect to us, crossing those bridges that had separated us so far, finding Home again, that is: Balance and Order lost Primitive Genetics. Understanding the use of Magic Tools that are useful in reading, translating and interpreting Signs, we will achieve and gain the Expansion of Sensory Perceptive States beyond Human comprehension. Waking up, the long-awaited Psychonauts Road will open for us: to travel therefore our Psyche/Mind, from and through us, in the direction of unveiling and decoding complicated, different, and unknown to us systems: Interdependent Intelligence forms and ReUnifying CosmicMind - Open Transmission with our Galactic Brothers -. ” Shadow Expectations (to be Transformed): Square Mindset, actually Ancient Way of Thinking / Egoic Mind / Far from Earthly Life – Dysfunctional Detachment / “Flying” Too High: Impact - Devastating Fall. 1.13 11.11 Taken from: - TZOLKIN MAYA AND HIS 260 PERMUTATIONS - Harmony of a Life Drawing, to Surf the Galactic Language and Live in Synchronicity Our Daily Life, According to the Natural Course of Time 13.20 - Book + Oracle Deck ... Prox. te

Blue Self-Existing Eagle Image by Mahaboka

[mbta-unofficial]

I am getting flak for my opposition to the north-south rail link and want to clarify: The commuter rail isn’t set up to move you from point A to point B unless point B is Boston. This is because of the economy of scale. Given the practical reality, you should probably drive most short trips in MA unless you live in Boston because very few single town pairs have sufficient gravity to warrant a mass transit solution. This isn’t to say that more or better trains aren’t an overall good, but a system that is overbuilt is going to limit its own ability to effectively serve the public, and cars are, practically speaking, a more autonomous and therefore efficient mode of transport in zones of uniform low density.

When greater Boston has trains and buses that serve significantly more demand than they do now, a north south rail link could be a logical next step, but for right now the corridors that would represent the greatest increase in T Benefit are Everett, chelsea and SoWa/Roxbury/Dorchester and it’s not close.

The tool I have to measure this is a gravity model, which doesn’t give you an absolute number of trips but can give you a comparison between two city pairs.

Population (x) x population (y)/distance^2

Let’s look at some pairs:

Boston-Hingham

Boston population (in thousands): 675

Hingham population (in thousands): 24

Distance: 17 miles

Score: 56

Boston-Concord

Concord population (in thousands): 18

Distance: 18 miles

Score: 37.5

Concord-Hingham

Distance: 31 miles

Score: 0.44

These three pairs show that while only slightly fewer people are likely to travel to boston from concord than hingham, people are 100 times less likely to make a trip from hingham to concord than boston. These are fairly characteristic of commuter rail communities, and transit should reflect that. The commuter rail is organized to get people to boston for a reason. Now, compare that to boston-cambridge or boston-brookline.

Brookline population: 63,000.

Distance: 4 miles

Score: 2,657

Cambridge population: 118,000

Distance: 3 miles

Score: 8,836

These are well connected, peer urban areas with light or heavy rail in proportion to their weight. But now look at Everett:

Population: 49,000

Distance: 4 miles.

Score: 2,064

logically, It should have nearly as much transit as Brookline, which has two and a half legs of the green line. It doesn’t, although the T is fixing this with increased bus connectivity. SoWa/Roxbury/Dorchester is the hardest one to look at here because it’s actually part of boston, meaning I have to change some assumptions about distance and population. I have been up to this point using government center as my boston location, and I’ll pick franklin park as my location for dorchester. I’ll be subtracting the dorchester and roxbury populations from the boston population to get an estimate.

Dorchester pop: 100,000

Roxbury Pop: 60,000

Adjusted Boston Pop: 515,000

Distance: 4.8miles

Score: 3,576

Now, depending on location, these residents might be served by the red or orange lines, but the scores are much higher and there is still nothing like the connectivity of brookline or cambridge. This is a major result of boston’s historic redlining, which I’ve discussed before.

These communities, with scores in the thousands, are desperate for better transit. There are ten thousand trips made on that kind of connection for each trip made between Lowell and Foxborough, and until those communities, who are disproportionately minority, have access to good transit, I won’t worry about the rail link.

There’s a reason this is called a gravity model: it’s an inverse square law, which can be generalized with calculus to cover a whole two dimensional field. Someone who is better at math than me probably already has mapped MA in this way. But the force of gravity between any two communities outside of Worcester-Boston-Springfield-Providence is probably going to be weak, or at least much weaker than the gravity pulling those commuters towards Worcester-Boston-Springfield-Providence.

So with these numbers in mind, who is the rail link for? Which communities are driving the demand for large scale movement of people not to Boston, but past it? Why should the MBTA take on the entire downtown MPA and MASSDot and the Legislature and try to build through the very land government center is on to link north station to south? Why not instead build from Fields Corner to Back Bay and give transit access to one of the most populous transit deserts in the city? Or From Maverick To Malden by way of Chelsea and Everett? It’s just such a low priority for me, and I think it should be for you too.

[scuttling-comfuddlement]

Welcome to my shop!

We have a lot of trinkets, tools, and pets! We can also have some things custom-made for you, if you'd like. Our door is always open, and we welcome anyone. Even if you don't buy anything.

The currency is coins, but we are willing to negotiate. We will often take items needed for crafting and such as payment.

Items:

We have cloaks of camouflage, which shift color to blend in to your surroundings.

We've got the lighthearted potions. A powder to make a person rhyme for a few hours, a candy that gives them a high voice for a day or two, and the kaleidoscope glasses cleaner. Makes em see everything like a kaleidoscope, obviously.

We've got the ones that alter emotions. Buy 2, get one free! Or you can mix and match to your heart's desire.

How about the soaps? One makes it so you never have to bathe again, it'll keep you clean. Another one makes mosquitoes terrified of you. Permanently.

Or there's the arm-band that gives you an outfit that morphs into whatever you deem fitting for the occasion.

As for the armband, I recommend wearing clothes underneath, just in case it malfunctions. Just leggings and a t-shirt. I've had angry customers wanting refunds and they were a pain in the knuckles.

Also, a pill that makes you not a loser. I take it daily. I don't think it's too effective.

There's the leaf crown that gives you the ability to photosynthesize... but your eyes will turn green while you're wearing it. Which isn't the worst of things. Green eyes are pretty.

There's a thermometer, it measures figurative warmth and cold.

We've got the magnet from the Shaggy Man in the Wizard of Oz. Makes people love you. Honestly, I think all the love potions are overrated.

We've also got bracelets with attachable charms including but not limited to: charisma, intelligence, stamina, strength, speed, stealth, wit, etc.

There is also a pocketknife that can never be lost, a notepad that takes notes for you, and a book that changes its story every time you finish it.

A pair of hair-pieces. You exchange it with a person, and it allows controlled, consensual telepathic communication. The simple ones are a button apeice. The multi-dimensional ones cost a seashell for a pair, but if you get the multiple dimension ones, I can offer you a discount.

We have nail polish that can turn your fingernails into claws that can cut through metal.

We've also got earrings that give you controlled selective hearing. And yes, we also carry the magnetic kind.

Pets:

Some new items!

Bags, that when you put something into it, it does not have any weight. Great for traveling.

Little metal beetles that can be programmed to detect almost anything you'd like; such as water, warmth, certain types of plants, or even tracking animals.

Mirrors that show not physical appearance, but personality.

Hourglasses that measure the time until your next sneeze.

Candles. You can put a memory you want to forget into them, and then when it burns out, the memory will be gone.

Fish eggs. They're for fish about the size of a minnow, but you can use them to relay messages. They whisper in your ear. And all of the species have a hive mind, so you could use them to spy.

Well, the fish, we've also got birds. The parakeets will pretty much do what you tell them to. They're smarter than most. We've got the axolotls, they basically just look cute and question everything you do. Our crabs are crabby, our frogs can make it rain, toads will selectively eat the bugs you don't like, and turtles are pretty wise. The squirrels are excellent trackers, and can find almost anything. But they'll never shut up.

We're not supposed to sell the hawks because they have an extremely keen sense of justice, and have injured their owners for being prejudiced or unjust. If I made an exception, you'd have to raise it from a fledgling, to raise it loyal to you.

We are currently working on getting larger animals. Ferrets coming soon!

You'd have to sigh a waiver for that though.

Some new pets!

Monkeys! They're pretty awesome. No magical abilities, but quite well behaved and very fun to spend time with. But they need a lot of enrichment.

Glow worms that can read books to you.

Caribou. Very friendly and great emotional support.

Hummingbirds. They bring better luck.

Sloths. They sleep so you don't have to. This is literal. If you let them sleep, you will not need sleep.

Employees:

If you're interested in buying something from my shop, feel welcome to come in! Speak to one of these people if you want to buy something, or have something custom made.

Firefly: Troubled past, silly, easy to please, cares deeply about people and is a fierce fighter. Gone most of the time on quests and such.

Ohtacaro: Quiet, smart, stereotypical ninja, has a cat named Randir. He and Otsi'stia have a sign language that they came up with for private conversations.

Otsi'stia: She is clever, practical, and the twin sister of Ohtacaro. She is less withdrawn than he is, but usually won't start a conversation for no reason. Hates small talk. Will get straight to the point.

Hotaru: Cheerful, hyper, enthusiastic. She's innocent and loves everyone. She just wants to help people. She is easily fascinated by little things. Especially koi fish.

Jon: Has a sense of humor, charming, and loves books. He is good at planning and dealing with people. He won't take abuse, and won't let you abuse his friends, either. He hates it when things get awkward.

Rena: A little bit bossy. She can be a grouch. You do NOT want to get on her bad side. But the number one way to get on her bad side is to be mean to Hotaru. She goes on runs to clear her head, and is currently taking anger management courses, because Jon and Lilian made her do it.

Lilian: The comforting, motherly one. She'll probably invite you in for a cup of tea, or babysit your pets or children or irresponsible friends. She wants you to be okay. She usually has calming music playing in the background, and she can be really poetic when she wants to be.

Soraya: The mechanic/scientist/inventor. Not a great fan of eye contact. Shy, as in, almost never speaks to anyone. Has her own space to work in, and stays there most of the time, but often goes to the library, or to the abandoned lot to test things out. She is extremely intelligent and a problem solver.

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS OUR UNIVERSE EXPANDING INTO??

Blog#265

Wednesday, January 25th, 2023

Welcome back,

That’s a great question. The answer, though, is that it’s not a great question. It’s a little tricky, so let me walk you through it. Yes, our universe is expanding. Our universe has no center and no edge. The Big Bang didn’t happen in one location in space.

The Big Bang happened everywhere in the cosmos simultaneously. The Big Bang was not a point in space. It was a point in time. It exists in all of our paths.

When we say the universe is expanding, we mean that if you map a bunch of galaxies and measure the average distances between those galaxies, you’ll get a number, and then you wait a little bit, a year, a billion years, whatever, and then you go to make the same measurement.

Those distances, the average distances, are going to be larger. When we say we live in an expanding universe, we’re saying that the distances between galaxies, on average, grows with time. And that’s it. There’s no center, there’s no edge.

From our perspective here in the Milky Way, it looks like the entire universe is expanding away from us. But if I go to literally any other galaxy in the entire cosmos, I get the same view. It looks like all the galaxies are expanding away from me.

The universe doesn’t expand into anything or from anywhere. The universe expands from itself and into itself. And I know that’s very hard to visualize, but thankfully, we have these powerful tools like mathematics that allow us to grapple with techniques that even we can’t imagine.

There does not have to be a frontier. We can define this very well mathematically, but let me ask you, “What is the center of the Earth?” You’ll say, “It’s the core where all the molten iron stuff is and all the mole people live. It’s in the center of the Earth.” OK. You can point to that.

But what if I were to ask you a slightly different question instead: “What is the center of the surface of the Earth?” Just latitude and longitude, give me the center of that. There is no answer.

We have a North Pole. We have a South Pole. But those are arbitrary. You can put those wherever you want. And imagine our Earth was getting bigger and we were to measure the distance between New York and Paris, and then every year that distance is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

There’s no center, no edge. And yet the distance between any two points still grows. This is very easy to visualize in two dimensions. We live in a three-dimensional universe. I can’t imagine it. I can’t think of it. I can think of the analogies in two dimensions, and I can trust the mathematics to take me into three dimensions.

Originally published on nautil.us

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, January 28th, 2023)

"CAN A STAR SURVIVE A BLACK HOLE??"

[forgetful-ontologist]

can you make a round square

it's called a circle, numbnuts. and no. i can't, and neither can you. if god is real, they hate circles more than anything. real circles do not and cannot exist, and the universe itself will do everything it can to stop you from making a perfect circle. every circle you have ever seen was a mere simulacra, grasping flailing at an impossibly perfect form.

for those of you DOUBTERS who don't believe me. I can guarantee you have never seen a real circle in your life. and i will prove this to you.

a true circle has only 2 significant properties. it must have a perfectly constant radius in 2 dimensions, and absolutely no aspect in any other dimension. both points present difficulties that are impossible to resolve. first, we must understand that nothing real is only 2 dimensional. this immediately violates our 2nd requirement. we can posit that somethings might have surface, but surfaces aren't real either (more on this in a moment). to the first point, it must have a perfectly constant radius in 2 dimensions, because otherwise the length of its perimeter would not satisfy the relation c=r2pi. unfortunately, a circumference is a kind of surface, which immediately means it cannot exist. to explain, everything real must be composed of some finite set of elements, and so cannot at any moment, have a well defined radius or circumference. granted, we can make some pretty good approximations, but unless there is a last digit to pi, it simply cannot be done to any measure of precision which can meet our exact requirements.

to perhaps give a grounded example, it is impossible to cut a perfectly round circle. some rotary tools can get you pretty close, but at the atomic scale, you might as well have a hexagon. i figure the event horizons of black holes ought to be pretty damn round, but those are still not 2 dimensional. however, you might be tempted to say "ah, but misthey ontologist, it *does* have a well defined radius and circumference". even assuming this is still insufficient, because the spacetime has more tricks up its sleeve.

hypothetically, even once you design a reference frame in which spacetime itself does not warp any direct observational measurement of the radius or circumference of the black hole, the circle you have defined is still entirely inside the black hole, and therefore still perfectly undefined and unobservable in any real sense. just at the very moment you think you have grasped the edge of the circle, it could not be further from your reach. also hawking radiation will fuck you for any blackhole of finite size, but we're gonna assuming you got lucky and observed a black hole at one exact moment during which there was no spontaneous decay.

so i am sorry, but no. and dont ask me any more stupid questions.

[teodora-djuric]

Literally Anything: some thoughts on Sunface Maslačak

A playlist of songs that inspired me, listen while you read for the Full ExperienceTM!

Watch the film here

Hypostasis is the accumulation of blood and fluid in the body under the influence of gravity, as a result of poor circulation or death. Hypostasis is the foundational material of reality. the god particle.

I wrote this essay many months ago but never published it. It's likely that the very thing that drove me to make Sunface is the thing that’s held me back from putting this out. Old habits die hard.

The first idea of Sunface Maslačak (for whom I’ll use it/its) came from asking myself “what CAN I do? Realistically, using only the materials immediately available to me, how do I make something of some significance to me?”. I considered what was occupying me at the time: light, and the idea of a Good, Polished Product. In my small Toronto apartment, I hauled out all the battered cardboard boxes I never intended to use for art, and made some anyway. A box— like a mask—is a container. It inherits some qualities from the content inside, and it visually broadcasts valuable information to its beholder; the size and shape, the colour. The internal contents give it weight, maybe sound. I am the internal content, and Sunface is the container, and Sunface exists in a container, is made of it! From that I started building on the central theme: building something Good with what you already have. The film is about my constant failure to do so artistically as well as personally.

Light.

I was (and still am) enamoured with light depicted symbolically, like in my 2022 painting maturity /remain kind. I painted light as an invasive force that exists within the two-dimensional subject, establishing a mutual exclusivity to its and the humanoid figure’s existences, only occasionally overlapping. The Sunface mask follows this principle. It’s a symbol of light which cannot produce its own, and in fact casts stark shadows. My apartment faces west, which means hot daylight blasts through my windows before disappearing entirely into night. But, this let me have fun exploring the different ways it refracts and bounces off objects. I wanted to minimize my use of artificial light (save for my salt lamp at the end), to push my tolerance for what I could leave out of my control during the creative process. So, natural light becomes a living thing as intrusive as its symbolic form, and forces me to work with it like a partner. 

The Good work.

One thing I often hear as an artist is “you have to know the rules of something before you break them”, or “you have to paint realism before you can paint abstraction”. The reality is I was never good enough at painting for that. The reality is I'm not good enough at mask to make a ‘masterwork’. I had to force myself to believe that I couldn’t wait for the materials and experience to give me the tools to make something Good, I just had to do it anyways. I purposefully haven’t explained what I mean by Good, and hopefully you’ve realized why. Good to me has always meant polished, perfect, insightful, untouchable. Creating Sunface Maslačak has been my attempt at practicing forgiveness as a part of unlearning this, packaged in a moment of my teenage existence. The mask is by all accounts suspiciously crafted. It’s asymmetrical, and all of my measurements are visible on it. I cut the eyes ‘upside down’, and unaligned with my actual features. I plastered an elastic on the back and suddenly I had the first mask I had made since high school drama class. And I say this next thing to encourage anyone else who might suffer the same freezing indecision I do: I was elated by the creation of this shitty little thing that I made with my own hands, even if I hated its imperfection. I decided then to craft an entirely, intentionally flawed story for this character, as a journal and record of my learning to film, craft, perform, and edit. Fuck it, we half-ass everything.

Maslačak and Pinocchio.

When I was born up until I was three, my hair grew straight up and swayed in the wind, often prompting cashiers to laugh at what looked to be an electrically charged infant. A family friend nicknamed me maslačak – dandelion. I hated wearing socks and tore them off with my teeth at every opportunity; I poured juice on my feet to ‘wash’ them; and once when my father caught me eating something I shouldn’t have he asked “what do you have in your mouth?” to which I innocently replied “teeth.”. All this to say, I’m told I was a genuine child. When I was in primary school one of my favourite books was an illustrated edition of Pinocchio, and my favourite story was one where Pinocchio eats the breakfast Geppetto bought for himself. In the original stories Pinocchio is a rotten and petulant child, but through the consequences of his actions, and the guidance of the cricket, Geppetto, and the Blue Fairy, Pinocchio becomes a lovely and wise child who spits proverbs off the top of his head, which means he’s become a real (read: Good) boy.

So, in the breakfast story, Geppetto returns home from jail (it was Pinocchio’s fault) to find Pinocchio without feet (also Pinocchio’s fault) or food, crying. He crafts the puppet some new feet, and gives him the three pears Geppetto was able to afford for his own breakfast. Some whining and hesitation later, Pinnochio has eaten all the pears whole, and has learned a new lesson. Now, Pinocchio is a children’s story for a reason-- more a function of teaching obedience, less of a rule of reality. The belief that dictated this process, my life: “you already have everything you need”, is interrupted by the paradox that “it is still not enough”. intolerable, I think.

Aw man, this is about Capitalism again, isn’t it?

The process of making Sunface Maslačak has been rife with frustration: Cardboard unsticking from the walls; relying entirely on natural and inconstant light; the shoddy construction of the mask making it flip off my face at every opportunity. I think there’s a sense in live performance, since the market is so oversaturated and opportunities are so few, that every little chance you get to create has to be perfect, whole. But then, Amateur comes from the Latin for lover, friend. I questioned why I felt so much discomfort with my unpolished project, and realized I was falling victim to the idea that something good had to also appear effortless. The invisible seam, the sound-treated recording booth, a sculpture with nary a fingerprint in sight. How sad is that, that in order to appreciate or praise something, we have to divorce it from human effort? Each mistake in Sunface Maslačak is the practice of loving effort. I want you to know how hard I worked on this! I also want you to know I didn’t work that hard! My mom happened to be cooking dinner when I wanted to record the background piano! At the time of writing this (March 10, 2024), I watched an interview with Anita Rodriguez who says something that blasted me to pieces: “Capital does not want labour, capital is hostile to labour.” (23:45). Capital wants a product, and a product is an ideal and a perfect symbol, divorced from the labour it took to make,and the guilt of being aware of the labour. This is how we sustain the impersonal individual/product, the pear without the farmer. Perfectionism and burnout are epidemics because we are expected to ignore our very real human limitations in order to improve exponentially and produce More. So, Sunface is my attempt at showcasing struggle. This aspect of my existence, shared with you, but mostly shared with myself. The girl who lived it isnt dead, I'm made of the same stuff she is. And a whole lot of cardboard.

[pandimensionalemporium]

The Emporium Chronicles 1 - Sky Pirate

Time in the Pan-Dimensional Emporium was a questionable concept. Since it sailed through the void between worlds, there were no days, no months, no years, not even aeons by which to measure. Nevertheless, it wasn't too long after the new proprietor's arrival that the sky pirate appeared in the lobby.

It was quite the surprise to both of them. Being a sensible sort of person, the pirate responded to her sudden removal from her engine room by remaining calm. Being by nature polite, she finished wiping her oil-blackened hands on a rag before asking, "What's this place then?"

The proprietor, who had been knitting in an armchair and quite unprepared for visitors, hastened to change into a suitable form. As their natural shape was something like a cloud of glittering night wrapped in a woolly jumper, it tended to startle people.

"I do beg your pardon," they said. "Welcome to the Pan-Dimensional Emporium! This is the shop between worlds, where even the most far-fetched need may be met. I shall endeavour to guide you, but what you find here is up to you. Erm. Though I must admit, I didn't think anyone could get here yet."

The sky pirate looked around, taking in the wood-panelled counter, cluttered shelves, and the drifting void outside the windows. "Damn. I'm even more lost than I thought."

"The Emporium should find its way to people in need you see. But since the guidance system is currently a mess of corroded bits and bobs, I rather thought it was jammed."

"Listen, I really need to get back to my ship. We’re lost in the butt-end of nowhere and the crew's relying on me."

"Are you the captain?"

"Engineer."

"Oh! Then we might be able to help each other. If you could fix the Emporium's guidance system, it could attune a navigation device for your world. That would soon set you back on track."

The sky pirate sucked her teeth for a moment, then nodded. "Can't promise I'll know how to work your machine, but cogs are cogs and wires are wires. Lead on."

The Emporium's navigation room was directly underneath the lobby. They took the lift, which played them a cello symphony as they descended. The diamond grille opened onto a walkway suspended above a great inverted dome of glass. It offered a magnificent view of the void in all directions except up, where a ceiling instead displayed starry maps of a dozen or more worlds. The walkway led out to a platform directly over the centre of the dome. It was a circular navigator's study complete with charts table, mysterious brassy equipment, and even a leather armchair, but no walls.

The proprietor led the way to a bank of machinery tucked behind the table. "If you open that panel you'll see the problem."

The sky pirate took out her spanner and tutted. "You've had some cowboys in here."

"Tell me about it. I only took the place on recently, and it's a real mess. Gremlins in the library, rusted pipework all over the place, a whole wing covered in trees - it'll take me forever to get it into a decent state. Not that 'forever' has much meaning here, but it's the principle of the thing."

From somewhere under the machinery, the sky pirate grunted. "Couldn’t you get people in to help?"

The proprietor watched her deftly unscrewing problematic parts, cleaning the pieces, and reattaching them in what looked like a far more sensible arrangement. "You know," they said, "I think perhaps I could."

It was a companionable stretch of non-time. The proprietor passed down tools, fetched water and engine oil, and dug spare screws out of a drawer. The sky pirate tsked and huffed and wrangled things back into working order. At last, they both sat with mugs of thick tea and admired her handiwork.

"Think it'll work?"

"I'm sure it will." The proprietor fetched out a small grey tablet from a box beside the machine. "On its native plane, they call this a GPS. The Emporium can work a little magic to make it suitable for your world, and then it should guide you wherever you wish to go."

The sky pirate's eyes narrowed. "It’s a magic map?"

The proprietor smiled. "More or less. Though I suspect you’ll figure out its inner workings in no short order." They plugged the tablet into the newly-renovated guidance system and tapped a few brass buttons. A few seconds later the system beeped, and the proprietor handed the device to the sky pirate.

She accepted it with great care. "Thank you. If it does what you say, this might just save my whole crew."

And with that, she was gone.

The proprietor sighed, and leaned against the platform’s railing. The void stretched away, streamers of pink and purple energy threading an endless depth of star-studded blue. "Well," they said to no one in particular, "it seems the Pan-Dimensional Emporium is open for business."

Read More

[venticuliao]

the role of the fatui in teyvat

is childe evil?

the opinions on this are always split. i dont think it matters whether he's kind to his family or whether he wouldn't hurt innocent people, characters can be multi dimensional and still be evil.

childe is a nice guy, he treats his subordinates respectfully and follows his own orders while still having his own agenda. he says he believes in the tsaritsa's goal, whatever that is, and that he thinks of himself as a weapon. because of this, he lends his strength to her cause while at the same time using those instances as her harbinger to improve in the battlefield.

when shiki taishou asked him if he had an end goal in labyrhinth warriors, he said he didnt. he'll sharpen himself as a weapon for as long as he can, there's no goal mark.

a new star approaches

in liyue he was tasked to lure the geo archon out to get his gnosis. since he couldnt get it peacefully with the initial scheme (exuvia was empty), he had to turn to plan b. this wasnt a last minute desperate trick, because he had to prepare the sigils to awaken osial in the first place. but like he said, he didn't intend to involve innocent people and he tried not to use this plan.

speaking objectively, harming people was not the goal of the whole thing for childe, the threat of harm was. and we know he was supposed to do all this, in accordance to zhongli's own plans. the city was never in actual danger, whatever childe did.

so, in terms of actions, he didnt do shit. the results is he did no evil deeds, and what he thought he did was planned by zhongli. and in terms of intention, he didnt mean to harm the innocents either. he had no intentions and did no actions that cause harm.

so is he evil?

it all relies on hypotheticals with him as a character. could he have done harm? is his awareness that he could have done harm what matters here? does he justify it to himself with the tsaritsa's goal? do the ends the tsaritsa promises justify the means?

the tsaritsa's goal

we dont know what the tsaritsa's plan actually is. if we choose to believe it is noble enough to justify the sacrifices, it's only blind hope. the organization gets down to really shady stuff, they use their soldiers as tools without much care, both the lower ranks and the harbingers themselves: signora's death remains unaddressed, despite her thinking it would cause a diplomatic issue with inazuma, and pulcinella's reaction was pretty tame. arlecchino is the only one who resented it, and they themselves arent a harbinger out of loyalty to the tsaritsa, since childe tells us they would betray her in a minute.

there's harbingers like childe and signora who do speak of the tsaritsa's goal highly, but there's others like scaramouche and arlecchino who were in it exclusively for self gain (the fatui use them as tools in return either way).

evil in teyvat

those who do cause harm purposefully in teyvat are usually motivated either by the pursuit of a form of power (archon war, childe seeking to improve himself, scaramouche attempting to become a god, etc) or by karmic resentment (osial after being defeated, azhdaha who was abandoned, scaramouche taking revenge against the raiden gokaden, dvalin being forgotten by the people of mond, etc).

azhdaha and osial were both imprisoned to prevent the harm they would cause, and zhongli understands their resentment. he treats both as old friends, not as enemies. liyue is filled with gods that zhongli killed, and xiao still has to deal with the resentment that outlives their physical death (and demons he himself carries karma for). but neither the killing or the imprisonment were intended as a moral punishment for those involved, they're measures zhongli took to protect liyue. and he doesnt resent or morally condemn azhdaha or osial.

in sumeru, the dangerous pursuit of knowledge is treated like something inherent in human nature. alhaitham compares them to organisms that live out of light. and cyno says the rules of the akademiya are meant to protect the scholars from themselves.

rather than tied to morals, evil in teyvat seems more of a force of nature that has to be dealt with. but if it's killed, it still remains.

how exactly did the harbingers end in the fatui?

we only know of childe, signora, scaramouche and (allegedly) pierro's origins.

in general terms, they're characters whose nature became incompatible with teyvat.

signora became the crimson witch to destroy monsters that were ravaging the nation, but her own form is dangerous, so people hunt her back. this is a kind of "evil"/harmful force that needed to be either killed or contained for the survival of teyvat's people.

scaramouche was deceived into believing he didnt have a place among humans. when his creator says "hes too fragile as a human and a tool" in HoOD, she means using him like a puppet is too cruel due to his humanity, but he has more value to people as a puppet, so others will end up using him. niwa could have proved otherwise, but alas. either way, scara's nature was pretty much incompatible with humans.

all we can theorize is that pierro is a khaenri'ah survivor, which speaks for itself

but what do u do when you no longer can be a part of the world you live in? where do you hide?

the fatui might be using the harbingers as tools, but they're also sort of containing them as a refuge. in signora's case is much more explicit, since the cryo delusion contains her dangerous form. the power that they have would otherwise run loose in teyvat without a place like this to channel it.

given that the only other solutions are imprisonment or death (or in cases like scara's, emotional pain), do they really have a choice in where they end up?

which brings me to childe

childe cant undo his experience in the abyss. and he carries a part of it within him (not just foul legacy, but the change he went through itself).

of all things in teyvat, the abyss is the only one that cannot coexist with its natural world. it's feared and rejected, the very existence of it is harmful to the continent.

childe's own family put signed him up in the fatui because they could no longer handle him after coming back from the abyss.

childe himself, like the other harbingers, has a nature that is incompatible with the rest of teyvat. and his is in a darker pit because it comes from the abyss itself.

if he wasnt in the fatui, where hes provided enemies to channel his need for battle, could he really exist somewhere else? it's not like he can undo falling into the abyss or its repercussions. he didnt choose it in the first place.

so

on the question, "is childe evil?", the answer most people come to is he isnt, but he does choose to do evil for the fatui.

but regardless of if he actually believes in the tsaritsa's goal, after all this, does he truly have a choice?

[qsmetrologyprivatelimited]

Imaging Solutions

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

A sharper view of the Milky Way with Gaia and machine learning

A group of scientists led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) have used a novel machine learning model to process data for 217 million stars observed by the Gaia mission in an extremely efficient way.

The results are competitive with traditional methods used to estimate stellar parameters. This new approach opens up exciting opportunities to map characteristics like interstellar extinction and metallicity across the Milky Way, aiding in the understanding of stellar populations and the structure of our galaxy.

With the third data release of the European Space Agency's Gaia space mission, astronomers gained access to improved measurements for 1.8 billion stars, which provides a vast amount of data for researching the Milky Way.

However, analyzing such a large dataset efficiently presents challenges. In the study, researchers explored the use of machine learning to estimate key stellar properties using Gaia's spectrophotometric data. The model was trained on high-quality data from 8 million stars and achieved reliable predictions with small uncertainties.

The work is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"The underlying technique, called extreme gradient-boosted trees allows to estimate precise stellar properties, such as temperature, chemical composition, and interstellar dust obscuration, with unprecedented efficiency. The developed machine learning model, SHBoost, completes its tasks, including model training and prediction, within four hours on a single GPU—a process that previously required two weeks and 3,000 high-performance processors," says Arman Khalatyan from AIP and first author of the study.

"The machine-learning method is thus significantly reducing computational time, energy consumption, and CO2 emission." This is the first time such a technique was successfully applied to stars of all types at once.

The model trains on high-quality spectroscopic data from smaller stellar surveys and then applies this learning to Gaia's large third data release (DR3), extracting key stellar parameters using only photometric and astrometric data, as well as the Gaia low-resolution XP spectra.

"The high quality of the results reduces the need for additional resource-intensive spectroscopic observations when looking for good candidates to be picked-up for further studies, such as rare metal-poor or super-metal rich stars, crucial for understanding the earliest phases of the Milky Way formation," says Cristina Chiappini from AIP.

This technique turns out to be crucial for the preparation of future observations with multi-object spectroscopy, such as 4MIDABLE-LR, a large survey of the Galactic Disk and Bulge that will be part of the 4MOST project at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.

"The new model approach provides extensive maps of the Milky Way's overall chemical composition, corroborating the distribution of young and old stars. The data shows the concentration of metal-rich stars in the galaxy's inner regions, including the bar and bulge, with an enormous statistical power," adds Friedrich Anders from ICCUB.

The team also used the model to map young, massive hot stars throughout the galaxy, highlighting distant, poorly-studied regions in which stars are forming. The data also reveal that there exist a number of "stellar voids" in our Milky Way, i.e. areas that host very few young stars. Furthermore, the data demonstrate where the three-dimensional distribution of interstellar dust is still poorly resolved.

As Gaia continues to collect data, the ability of machine-learning models to handle the vast datasets quickly and sustainably makes them an essential tool for future astronomical research.

The success of the approach demonstrates the potential for machine learning to revolutionize big data analysis in astronomy and other scientific fields while promoting more sustainable research practices.

IMAGE: Large-scale map (330,000 light years side length) of the density of the 217 million stars from the Gaia DR3 XP sample in Galactocentric Cartesian co-ordinates. Credit: F. Anders, Universitat de Barcelona

[viratsteelspecial-blog]

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[evasive-anon]

PROJECT HALFA IR 2

Government Experiment AU where the Dan's (Dan/Danny/Dani) are created in a GIW lab to investigate the Ghost Zone after Jack and Maddie create the Ghost Portal. In this AU the GZ is radioactive and slowly kills any humans who venture inside so the GIW decide to create human ghost hybrids in order to further their research and capture additional subjects for their experiments. Masterpost. GHOST PORTAL INCIDENT REPORT 00002 Date: Date: 1 JANUARY 20XX Incident Type: Spectral Entity Intrusion Personnel Involved: Security Team Delta Research Team Alpha Location: Site-XX, Containment Chamber-XXXX Description: On 1 January 20XX, an unexpected incident occurred involving the unauthorized manifestation of a spectral entity through the Ghost Portal, identified as the "Box Ghost".

Sequence of Events: At approximately [REDACTED TIME], the Ghost Portal exhibited anomalous fluctuations in energy levels, signifying an imminent spectral manifestation. Security Team Delta was immediately dispatched to the containment chamber, equipped with standard spectral hazard gear and containment tools. The (self-proclaimed) Box Ghost, a previously unknown spectral entity, with “power over all containers cardboard and square”, materialized from within the Ghost Zone and breached the Ghost Portal. The Box Ghost, upon entering our reality, proceeded to wreak havoc within the containment chamber, demonstrating the ability to manipulate various spherical cardboard objects into spectral boxes. Research Team Alpha, responsible for studying interdimensional anomalies, initiated emergency containment procedures and coordinated with Security Team Delta to neutralize the spectral threat. Despite containment efforts, the Box Ghost exhibited heightened spectral abilities, making containment challenging. During the encounter, the Box Ghost unleashed ectoplasmic energy blasts and displayed a tendency to mock and taunt personnel present. Upon the arrival of additional security reinforcements, the Box Ghost, exhibiting an unexpected degree of cunning, retreated back through the Ghost Portal into the Ghost Zone. Recovery and Containment: Security Team Delta, in collaboration with Research Team Alpha, successfully restored containment within the chamber after the Box Ghost's departure. The containment chamber underwent thorough inspection for any residual spectral anomalies or lingering effects. Footage of the Box Ghost was unable to be recovered- hypothesized that the ectoplasmic energies of the extra-dimensional entities may disrupt equipment.  Immediate Actions Taken: All cardboard containers have been removed from Containment Chamber-XXXX. Security protocols for the Ghost Portal have been enhanced, and additional measures, including an Ectoranium Shield Wall, have been implemented to prevent entities from breaching the portal. The Ghost Portal has been placed on heightened security alert, and all interdimensional experiments are suspended until a thorough investigation is completed. Research Team Alpha is updating the ecto-specimen classification database based upon data gained from the encounter. Security personnel are undergoing additional spectral hazard training to better prepare for future instances of unexpected spectral intrusions. The incident report will be submitted to higher authorities for review, and recommendations for further containment improvements will be implemented accordingly. Drs. Fenton have drafted several new designs for spectral containment that have been provided to leadership for review before development.  This incident underscores the need for continuous vigilance and research into spectral anomalies associated with the Ghost Portal. The unexpected manifestation of the ‘Box Ghost’ highlights the inherent risks and challenges in containing entities from the Ghost Zone.