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.
Amazon's informtion about their own intances is so bad and non-public that this was created: instances.vantage.sh/
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain Interesting AtomSea & EMBII uploads by
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2026-04-05
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpgMessage:TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
tx 36d0d77acd760f0aa549b6b314f0c1e9690baa6bcc2d0f07ea9f3167f4a5ec99, block 318836 (2014-09-03)Cost: ~0.002 BTC ~ $0.77 at the time.
Several other interesting uploads were also made around block 318836 (September 2014):
RedRaven.jpgbitfossil.org/root/e17b83234402d85f3a18207eec11bc5c4397f88aa880aae4fb7d15802806a971/index.htmEarth3Archive.jpgbitfossil.org/root/ae8d3b46b934bedc363e11abe8c8607171994470957c286274f699a0b3a9bbd7/index.htmSkyEarth5Archive.jpgbitfossil.org/root/ae8d3b46b934bedc363e11abe8c8607171994470957c286274f699a0b3a9bbd7/index.htm
BikeLady.jpgBike Lady by Allen Lee Vandever. tx 2c4b9497af8c0c0eb9383357b40c3de33dba0b4f481099a32719f2b9036da8e7, block 319927 (2014-09-10)
Arecibo_message.svgArecibo message on tx c6d2e535cd2ba4659e954a61198c66fd98c60f6475cf8ff92a404f3fe3a16c4b, block 337874 (2015-01-07)
An "artificially" colored visualization of the Arecibo message ripped from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_message.svg (with attribution).
The cool thing about this image is that it highlights the striking parallels between the encoding of the Arecibo message with crypto graffiti, because in both cases people were creating undocumented new ways of communicating with strangers on a new medium in those early blockchain days.
The associated message contains the Arecibo message as ASCII 0's and 1's. When properly cut at the newlines, they draw the message as ASCII art, as the original Arecibo encoding intends, here's a version with the 0's replaced by spaces to make it more readabale:
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 11 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
11
11 1
11 1
1 1 1
11111
11 111 11 11
1 11 1
11 1 11 11 11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111
1 1
1 1
11111 11111
11 11 111 11
1 1 1
11 1 11 111 11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111
1 11 1
11
1 11 1
11111 11 11111
11
1 1 1
1 11 1
11 11 1
11 1 11
11 11
11 1 11
11 11 1
1 1 1
1 11 1
1 11 1
1 1 1
1 1 1
1 11
11 11
1 111 1 11
1 1
1 11111
1 1 111 1 1 11 11
1 111 1 111111
1 111 111 11 111
1 1 111 11
1 1 1 111111
1 1 1 11
1 11 11
111 1
111 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
111 1 1 1 1
1 1
11111
111111111
111 111
11 11
11 1 1 11
11 11 11 11
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1
1 1
1 1 1
1111 11111 1 1111He sleeps in a temple.jpgDr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source. Associated message:
The image is present e.g. at: www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/australian-man-claims-he-is-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-creator/ It was inscribed about two months after Craig publicly claimed that he is Satoshi.
This is a relatively unusual AtomSea & EMBII upload as it does not have the common toplevel transaction, everything, text + image fits into a single transaction. This is perhaps why the image is relatively low resolution to have a smaller size.
YellowRobot.jpgYellow Robot on tx 67b2facfd8160d4fa11b02829b6387d07537b57a7a24f19b029b2a5ae7b81830, block 450516 (2017-01-29)
The associated message reads:This is one of Ciro's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads. This is the cutest thing ever, and perfectly encapsules the "medium as an artform" approach to blockchain art. More Chiharu stalking at: ILoveYouMore.jpg.
Chiharu and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on a Bitcoin-based NFT sale system he's making called Sup!?, and in December 2023 gave 2/300 shares to Ciro Santilli. Amen. The transaction list can be seen on the web UI at: p2fk.io/GetObjectByAddress/1KUyhHLrK1ckY8W7Qu31h6gFkXoihWHMzi?mainnet=true&verbose=true It had unfortunately never sold as of 2025, the only activity was EMBII giving off some shares and two listings of 1/300 for 1 BTC. Poor EMBII!
Other possibly novel EMBII street photography:
- bitfossil.org/root/f2efd446475ad58a3ea808cc0f05a63c55cece9fced70d84799a1ffce5d307e4/index.htm "I will not Stop until the Finite becomes the Infinite."
Audio:
alien.wavblock 318638 bitfossil.org/root/a3a24d6ea01ce481a50346818b8977220687f3ba385838fe8894ce61c9718bbc/OneGiantLeapForMankind.mp3at tx 4f5b25fa8021c67235423930580e69121aa0d2c2bb779f75139bf442f8dc7297 EMBII-indexed at 743f3286b00fc96c13db4b16d5aead8a1e059fee9ce775b1761be9be5bdc2501 and then indexed at: 0427ec598df38b7d7dc75721316c0bbdec54de4871e11aff8ea64f3717c07efbThe toplevel index does appear on Bitfossil: bitfossil.org/root/0427ec598df38b7d7dc75721316c0bbdec54de4871e11aff8ea64f3717c07efb/index.htm but the audio is not there as it was for Spock below, maybe a bug on upload/Bitfossil?Spock_Live_Long_And_Prosper.mp3block 345858 bitfossil.org/root/1bc87dbff1ff5831287f62ac7cf95579794e4386688479bab66174963f9a4a0c/index.htm. Audio of Mr. Spock saying the Vulcan salute.OuterSpace.mp3block 409471 bitfossil.org/root/c14c1bd862bab6269052bf0a2cda7a35940d7a2d9c3415d4fb8fb8dcb9394fae/ "Outer Space by embii 4MB Large file storage test Apertus 0.3.5-beta" OMG, I don't want to calculate how much it cost to upload this, it will make me sad.At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1655969645927563266 EMBII mentions that this inscription, made by him, is the largest inscription he knows of.TODO song composer/performer?- bitfossil.org/root/c2b170ff450f4529dfbd784e0cf5cdddaca494e67a243dd846c0a9450a5558af/ (2021-03-13) contains
Seikilos.mid, a MIDI file
Interesting text:
- block 273522 bitfossil.org/root/70fd289901bae0409f27237506c330588d917716944c6359a8711b0ad6b4ce76/index.htm pi to 1000+ decimal digits:
- bitfossil.org/root/8522787e7e49f3f3b6a9f9e86bc30336d26a3acbaecc93809d2e8b4bb1c4d611/ "Antarctic Ice Cores Revised 800KYr CO2 Data" evidence for global warming
- bitfossil.org/root/ffa6893a70bcde9b940df9823e0f597f0b6cff964c78473c77db838655e1aeb5/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudato_si', global warming related
HTML pages:
- block 335290 bitfossil.org/root/0166db6053f1969c28de8b1f9a8fa4ec890cc4bdfee7602757993b306bb7f295/ JavaScript animated timer clock counting down until the start of the next year
- block 340379 bitfossil.org/root/062990d54045a9c316110fb713009d1313b2f64c4b216d66891c7284d6c1ca0e/ links to bitfossil.org/root/062990d54045a9c316110fb713009d1313b2f64c4b216d66891c7284d6c1ca0e/bong-ball.html and has a working JavaScript Pong
- block 328445
tom-signature.jpgbitfossil.org/root/daa050bf8ac22752e40412c9265b4533f68ab8e6ed26d2db1eeee6710e7d9e4b/index.htm Unrendered HTML of:Likely an obituary for: Thomas L. Magliozzi. Images show fine though.- www.cartalk.com/content/tom-and-rays-bios-photos-2
- www.cartalk.com/content/rant-and-rave-36 "The New Theory of Learning" which agrees perfectly with backward design
- block 401648 bitfossil.org/root/31c5e5336512568e4a1deb4bbf0e57c3565c32094c0e1a118c48e7929ab49e35/bong-ball.html another one! This one is full-screen, and does not have JavaScript
alerts :-) - block 401657 bitfossil.org/root/03cb74f270d498302d4dd9cbe82c090d801c8840ab6cb26b71d862489b981db8/ has a JavaScript Pac-Man
This is Ciro Santilli's favorite laptop brand. He's been on it since the early 2010's after he saw his then-girlfriend-later-wife using it.
Ciro doesn't know how to explain it, but ThinkPads just feel... right. The screen, the keyboard, the lid, the touchpad are all exactly what Ciro likes.
The only problem with ThinkPad is that it is owned by Lenovo which is a Chinese company, and that makes Ciro feel bad. But he likes it too much to quit... what to do?
Ciro is also reassured to see that in every enterprise he's been so far as of 2020, ThinkPads are very dominant. And the same when you see internal videos from other big tech enterprises, all those nerds are running... Ubuntu on ThinkPads! And the ISS.
Those nerds like their ThinkPads so much, that Ciro has seen some acquaintances with crazy old ThinkPad machines, missing keyboard buttons or the like. They just like their machines that much.
ThinkPads are are also designed for repairability, and it is easy to buy replacement parts, and there are OEM part replacement video tutorials: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vseFzFFz8lY No visible planned obsolescence here! With the caveat that the official online part stores can be shit as mentioned at Section "Lenovo".
Further more, in 2020 Lenovo is announced full certification for Ubuntu www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/06/03/lenovos-massive-ubuntu-and-red-hat-announcement-levels-up-linux-in-2020/#28a8fd397ae0 which fantastic news!
The only thing Ciro never understood is the trackpoint: superuser.com/questions/225059/how-to-get-used-of-trackpoint-on-a-thinkpad Why would you use that with such an amazing touchpad? And vimium.
Members of the orthogonal group.
Starting at tx cbbaa0a64924fe1d6ace3352f23242aa0028d4e0ff6ae8ed615244d66079cfb1 (2011-08-05), Catholic Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr started to inscribe prayers in the miner messages of his mining pool "Eligius pool", usually one verse per message.
Saint Eligius by Petrus Christus
. Source. Off-chain image for illustration. Eligius pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of goldsmiths and miners[ref]These are some of the earliest inscriptions in the blockchain, and therefore extremelly visible.
Although the prayer verses appear contiguous in ASCII dumps, Eligius was not actually mining every block: it is just that in those early days, miners still hadn't started adding advertisement messages to every block, so only Eligius shows up and appears contiguous.
At some point, opponents noticed these messages, and started adding atheist mockery graffiti replies, which appear interspersed in ASCII dumps with the prayer.
The first prayer is the Latin version of the Divine Praises, a Catholic prayer composed in 1797 in Italian by Luigi Felici for the purpose of making reparation after saying or hearing sacrilege or blasphemy. Luke claims he was referring to anything in particular that came prior in the blockchain: twitter.com/LukeDashjr/status/1749182637569122434. There arent many earlier inscriptions at all to refer to in any case! The prayer and correspondong interrupts (in transaction outputs, not by other miners) ordered by block are:
- 139690 (2011-08-05) prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius."
- 139717 prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.'
- 139758 interruption:
***************************************************. This is not a Coinbase message: www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/23befff6eea3dded0e34574af65c266c9398e7d7d9d07022bf1cd526c5cdbc94. This Bitcoin input script appears to spend a standard P2PKH output, but it first adds an extra value to the stack which contains the***. - 139792 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo.'
- 139831 prayer: "Benedictum Nomen Iesu.'
- 139838 (2011-08-06) interruption: "I LIKE TURTLES" (tx 78eb16507b3d3df615e3b474e853db4667f4b11954ec6d918b1ded0fca7ad25a)
- 138898 prayer: "Benedictum Cor eius sacratissimum."
- 139904 prayer: "Benedictus Sanguis eius pretiosissimus."
- 139921 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus in sanctissimo altaris Sacramento."
- 139942 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
- 139954 interrupion: "aC-C-C-COMBO BREAKER" (tx 138c024a76df99ecafd2236d5429cf574b7778a3c6508bd83f116c832f3c6980)
- 139960 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
- 139977 prayer: "Benedicta excelsa Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima."
- 139990 (2011-08-06) prayer: "Benedicta sancta eius et immaculata Conceptio."
Then comes:and various others + output message interruptions.
- 140181 Latin Trinitarian formula
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
- Act of Contrition
- Act of Hope
Then at last come the first miner message interruptions. Luke explained on Twitter[ref] that they were also made by Eligius pool, as there was a system in which contributors besides Luke could submit their own strings:followed by more prayers and interruptions such as tx ec92d245822fa1ff862f3314b9102f36fe1eb8bc055865674c75323540aedef6:
- 142547: (2011-08-25) tx 8e1e44a48b5e79636675d1476f8e4add075bbeb7f49e00ec743eed56f17feaaa A yandere game is starting in 60 seconds! Please type "]yandere" to join. Yandere Simulator comes to mind, but it can't be because that was pitched 2014.
- 142550: "A yandere game is starting in 60 seconds! Please type "]yandere" to join."
- 142573: (2011-08-25) "Militant atheists, bit.ly/naNhG2 -- happy now?". A Rickrolling link. Perhaps one of the fist.
- 142596: (2011-08-25) "<cjdelisle> ran out of prayers?! That explains the price drop.". Possibly quoting this dude on som twitter.com/cjdelisle Bitcoin IRC channel givesn the
<USERNAME>format? - 142640: "an de ti go su by ra me ni ko hu vy la po fy ton": Tonal system numerals. Interesting.
FFS Luke-Jr leave the blockchain alone!
Oh, and God isn't real
The last Luke prayer appears to be on block 143822 (2011-09-03)
... the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.
Then there is a bit of radio silence, until finally Slush Pool started self advertising for the first time on block 163970 (2012-01-26):They had been mining for a long time by then (December 2010 according to en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Slush_Pool), but this is when they decided to add a human readable ASCII message as well.
/P2SH/BIP16/slush/R,From then on, miner messages would be forever polluted with ads, and Luke's multi-miner message feat would never again be reproduced.
The non-obvious interruptions are all well known memes/anime references:
- "I like turtles": knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-turtles
- Combo breaker: knowyourmeme.com/memes/combo-breaker
- "Yukkuri Shiteitte ne": knowyourmeme.com/memes/yukkuri-shiteitte-ne
- "kLhLUKE-JR IS A Pedophile! Oh, and God isn't real, sucka. Stop polluting the blockchain with your nonsense.", tx 9740e7d646f5278603c04706a366716e5e87212c57395e0d24761c0ae784b2c6, block 141460
- "Help me, ERINNNNNN!!": touhou.fandom.com/wiki/Lyrics:_Help_me,_ERINNNNNN!!
- "EASY MODO? How lame!F?": knowyourmeme.com/memes/kimoi-girls
Bibliography:
- 2011-08-19 bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38007.0 "Eligius miners aware of prayers in block headers?" from on bitcointalk.org by user "Graet" who quotes prior discussion from a Bitcoin IRC channel:<luke-jr> cosurgi: by design, it contains "random" data-- I've just been setting some of that "random" data to prayers<Graet> mm interesting luke-jr i understand you are strong in your faith but you dont think putting prayers in might alienate some ppl - after all btc is multidenominational<luke-jr> Graet: Catholics do not believe in freedom of religion.<Graet> and you make your non catholic miners aware of this?
- 2011-11-02 bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52979.0 "Mysterious transaction spotted in blockchain!"
Timeline:
- 2021-08-02 arrested in the USA for extradiction
- 2023-11-06 Stepped down from monero Core Team
- www.quora.com/How-is-a-voice-transmitted-from-one-phone-to-another
- www.quora.com/How-many-wires-does-a-telephone-use/answer/Peter-Yardley-1
Basic analogue phones connected to the public exchange use two wires mainly arranged as a twisted pair to reduce noise. The voice signal is differential (the voltage in one wire equal and opposite to the other) biased above ground by 48V. Using a twisted pair reduces induced noise because the noise signal will induce an equal voltage in each wire and because the signal is transmitted as the difference the effect of the induced noise will be dramatically reduced.
Phone Intercom by Make (2014)
Source. This video illustrates will the incredible simplicity of the connection of a telephone system. Compare that to the relative complexity of wireless communication, which requires modulation.The BSD conjecture states that if your name is long enough, it will always count as two letters on a famous conjecture.
Maybe also insert a joke about BSD Operating Systems if you're into that kind of stuff.
The conjecture states that Equation 1. "BSD conjecture" holds for every elliptic curve over the rational numbers (which is defined by its constants and )
Equation 1. . Where the following numbers are defined for the elliptic curve we are currently considering, defined by its constants and :
- : number of elements of the elliptic curve over the finite field, where the finite field comes from the reduction of an elliptic curve from to . can be calculated algorithmically with Schoof's algorithm in polynomial time
- : rank of the elliptic curve over the rational numbers. We don't really have a good general way to calculate this besides this conjecture (?).
- : a constant
The conjecture, if true, provides a (possibly inefficient) way to calculate the rank of an elliptic curve over the rational numbers, since we can calculate the number of elements of an elliptic curve over a finite field by Schoof's algorithm in polynomial time. So it is just a matter of calculating like that up to some point at which we are quite certain about .
The Wikipedia page of the this conecture is the perfect example of why it is not possible to teach natural sciences on Wikipedia. A million dollar problem, and the page is thoroughly incomprehensible unless you already know everything!
Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture by Kinertia (2020)
Source. Konrad Dannenberg was a notable German-American aerospace engineer who contributed significantly to the field of rocket science, particularly during his work with NASA. He was involved in the development of various rocket technologies and played a key role in the Apollo program, which enabled humans to land on the Moon. Dannenberg's expertise in propulsion systems was influential in the success of several missions.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. - Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact













