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* Posts by Alan.Griffiths.2013

7 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jan 2016

NIST readies 'post-quantum' crypto competition

Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Re: I find it heartening . .

It has been about 75 years since Hardy said that.

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Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Re: I find it heartening . .

"No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years." -- G. H. Hardy

Sadly, even the best mathematicians sometimes get things very wrong.

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EU set to bin €500 note

Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Re: To stop criminals and terrorists

Make them from U235 and wait for someone to accumulate a critical mass.

A €500 note has dimensions 160 x 82 x 0.11 millimetres which I think has a volume of 1.4432e-6 m³.

The density of U235 is c.19,100 kg/m³.

Critical Mass is a minimum of about 52 kg (depending on purity and shape).

So therefore all they'd need is 52/19100 = 0.0027 m³ which would be equivalent to approximately 1,884 €500 notes = €942,000.

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IBM's 'neurosynaptic chip' to power nuke-watching exascale rig

Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Re: relative brain power

1 million neurons == a cockroach == 0.00001163 human

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Europe's satellite laser comms system set to shine

Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Devil

There's already a satellite comms system called Skynet...

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)

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Philae's phinal phling: Germans made weekend spin-up attempt

Alan.Griffiths.2013
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Re: Mercury plummeting?

Thumbs up Mr Godwin.... ;-)

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Alan.Griffiths.2013

Mercury plummeting?

"the mercury is expected to plummet to around minus 51 degrees Celsius"

Mercury freezes at -38.83 °C

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