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.
EC2 instance type by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Amazon's informtion about their own intances is so bad and non-public that this was created: instances.vantage.sh/
tx e3e37ed5c1de2631c147bd39429e42ff634e95b7d72423bc32d6c6b9d8eef8ee (2014-07-01):
For my first official Journal entry I've decided to archive some old poetry. Here are a few of the computational poems I've created using cyphers.
Figure 1.
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpg
. Source.
Message:
"Even if we tried to do it on purpose, never would have we succeeded." My beloved Vincent.
TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
Figure 2.
BikeLady.jpg
. Source.
This seems to be a novel work uploaded by its creator artist Allen Vandever according to EMBII.[ref].
Figure 3.
Arecibo_message.svg
. Source.
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  1111
Figure 4.
He sleeps in a temple.jpg
. tx 460ed23bea89176cdfe18e13fce51ad5386ad8e3e1f7d6f5b4711b3be97b0502 block 360565 (2015-06-12). EMBII claimed on Twitter that he took this photo in Auckland, New Zealand. The shop on the right corner has a sign that starts with "Bo" and searching for "Auckland Bo" gave us the "The body shop" on the corner of Queen Street and Darby Street. Some things changed between 2015 and 2024, notably the bench is gone and the shop on the left corner changed, but we can go back in time in Google Street View to 2015 which further confirms the location.
Figure 5.
PIA17563.jpg
. Source.
Associated message:
NASA: A purple nebula, in honor of #Prince, who passed away today. Image: Crab #Nebula, as Seen by Herschel and #Hubble Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; #NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) #PIA17563
Figure 6.
Dr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source.
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.
Figure 7.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
Photography by EMBII, original art by TODO.
The associated message reads:
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
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.
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:
Audio:
ThinkPad by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
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".
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.
Figure 1.
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.
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:
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):
/P2SH/BIP16/slush/R,
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.
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:
Bibliography:
Video 1.
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.
Video 2.
Making a Microphone Work with an Oscilloscope by Environmental Radiation LLC (2012)
Source. Not the most detailed setup, but good.
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 :
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!
Figure 1.
as a function of for the elliptic curve
. Source. The curve is known to have rank 1, and the logarithmic plot tends more and more to a line of slope 1 as expected from the conjecture, matching the rank.
Video 2.
The $1,000,000 Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture by Absolutely Uniformly Confused (2022)
Source. A respectable 1 minute attempt. But will be too fast for most people. The sweet spot is likely 2 minutes.
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!
We have two killer features:
  1. 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-calculus
    Articles 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/derivative
  2. 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.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    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.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
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