Lamb-Retherford experiment Updated 2025-07-16
Published as "Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method" by Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford (1947) on Physical Review. This one actually has open accesses as of 2021, miracle! journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.72.241
Microwave technology was developed in World War II for radar, notably at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Before that, people were using much higher frequencies such as the visible spectrum. But to detect small energy differences, you need to look into longer wavelengths.
This experiment was fundamental to the development of quantum electrodynamics. As mentioned at Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) chapter "Shrinking the infinities", before the experiment, people already knew that trying to add electromagnetism to the Dirac equation led to infinities using previous methods, and something needed to change urgently. However for the first time now the theorists had one precise number to try and hack their formulas to reach, not just a philosophical debate about infinities, and this led to major breakthroughs. The same book also describes the experiment briefly as:
Willis Lamb had just shined a beam of microwaves onto a hot wisp of hydrogen blowing from an oven.
It is two pages and a half long.
They were at Columbia University in the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. Robert was Willis' graduate student.
Previous less experiments had already hinted at this effect, but they were too imprecise to be sure.
Mitochondrial protein import Updated 2025-07-16
The process that imports proteins encoded in the nuclear DNA and made in the cytosol into the mitochondria.
Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) suggests that proteins are somehow tagged with extra amino acids for this.
Mitochondria have DNA because they need to be controlled individually Updated 2025-07-16
Argued at Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) page 212.
Basically, energy supply has to be modulated rather quickly, because we spend a lot sometimes, and very little other times.
Even not turning it off quickly enough is a problem, as it starts to generate free radicals which fuck you up.
If control came from the nucleus, it has no way to address different mitochondria. But it might be that only one of the mitochondria needs the change. If the nucleus tells all mitochondria to stop producing when only one is full, the others are going to say: "nope, I'm not full, continue producing!" and the one that need to stop will have its signal overridden by the others.
Mitochondrial DNA mutates faster than nuclear DNA Updated 2025-07-16
Wikipedia mentions "Since animal mtDNA evolves faster than nuclear genetic markers" with a few sources.
Some sources:
- Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) page 361 mentions:so this property is also important for the human mitochondrial molecular clock.
While nuclear DNA can barely distinguish between chimps and humans, the mitochondrial clock ticks fast enough to reveal differences accumulating over tens of thousands of years
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3350313 says it for metazoans
- www.quora.com/Why-does-mitochondrial-DNA-mutate-faster
Human mitochondrion Updated 2025-07-16
DNA stuff at: human mtDNA.
Big companies manage to publish white papers in peer reviewed journals Updated 2025-07-16
Big companies like Google are able to publish white papers as peer reviewed papers just due to their reputation, e.g. without giving any source code that is central for the article.
It is insane.
E.g.: AlphaGo is closed source but published as www.nature.com/articles/natnure16961 in 2016 on Nature.
Papers With Code Updated 2025-07-16
Server-side rendering Updated 2025-07-16
Intel Xe Updated 2025-07-16
Intel Arc Updated 2025-07-16
Special-purpose acquisition company Updated 2025-07-16
This is some fishy, fishy business.
Hydrogen line Updated 2025-07-16
Pickering series Updated 2025-07-16
The Google Story Updated 2025-07-16
Has some good mentions, but often leaves you wanting more details of how certain things happened, especially the early days stuff.
Does however paint a good picture of several notable employees, and non-search projects from the early 2000's including:
- the cook dude
- porn cookie guy
- the unusual IPO process
Paints a very positive picture of the founders. It is likely true. They gave shares generously to early employees. Tried to allow the more general public to buy from IPO, by using a bidding scheme, rather than focusing on the big bankers as was usual.
The introduction mentions that Google is very interested in molecular biology and mining genetics data, much like Ciro Santilli! Can't find external references however...
Two of the most compelling areas that Google and its founders are quietly working on are the promising fields of molecular biology and genetics. Millions of genes in combination with massive amounts of biological and scientific data are an excellent match for the Google search engine, the tremendous database the company has in place, and its immense computing power. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome and is working closely with biologist Dr. Craig Venter and other leaders in genetics on scientific projects that may lead to important breakthroughs in science, medicine, and health. In other words, we may be heading toward a time when people can google their own genes.
The book gives good highlight as to why Google became big: search was just an incredibly computationally intensive task. From very early days, Largey were already making up their own somewhat custom compute systems from very early days, which naturally led into Google custom hardware later on. Google just managed to pull ahead on the reinvest revenue into hardware loop, and no one ever caught them back. This feels more the case than e.g. with Amazon, which notoriously had to buy off dozens of competitors to clear the way.
Cover of The Google Story
. High-frequency trading as a form of Nirvana Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli once talked to a man who had been working on high-frequency trading for the last six years.
He was quite nice.
Ciro asked him in what way did he feel his job contributed to the benefit of society.
He replied that it didn't contribute at all. It was completely useless. More than that, it so completely useless, that it was even pure. A bit like advanced mathematics, but not even providing beauty for anybody outside of the company, since everything is a closely guarded trade secret, unlike mathematics which is normally published for the vanity recognition.
And so, Ciro was enlightened.
Hermite functions Updated 2025-07-16
Not the same as Hermite polynomials.
Hartree-Fock method for the helium atom Updated 2025-07-16
As shown at Schrödinger equation solution for the helium atom, they do repel each other, and that affects their measurable energy.
This changes however at higher orbitals, notably as approximately described by the aufbau principle.
Aufbau principle Updated 2025-07-16
Boring rule that says that less energetic atomic orbitals are filled first.
Much more interesting is actually determining that order, which the Madelung energy ordering rule is a reasonable approximation to.
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.