#help with Mechanical Engineering thesis

[artbyblastweave]

after reading Peter Clines Ex-Heroes pentalogy I can confidentiality say that Danielle Harris is one of the coolest heroes ever, what do you think of her?

^This lady So what I like about Danielle Morris/Cerberus is that she's a take on the Iron Man archetype in the context of an otherwise deliberately incredibly low-budget superhero universe, a setting where, with the exception of one millionaire, the superhero population consists almost entirely of working-class people in kludged-together wetsuits and motorcycle leathers who only get away with their low-rent costumes by virtue of the fact that they do, in fact, have incredibly potent superpowers. This is a hard circle to square, aesthetically, if you also want to introduce a hero who uses power armor, because that shit's expensive.

The solution? Cerberus doesn't debut after the other half of the book's elevator pitch, the zombie apocalypse, is already well under way. The fact that there's only one set of the armor despite the extensive documentation that must exist is due to the fact that the armor is a prototype, slated for eventual mass production but hastily deployed as a show of force by a rapidly disintegrating military that's at the point of just throwing whatever they've got at the wall to see what sticks. The typically-inadvisable trope of the suit's chief engineer also being the field pilot is initially justified by the fact that she's the only person left who knows how to operate it; and then by her reluctance to train a second person on how to operate it because she comes to be psychologically dependent on the physical protection it provides her. Protection that's at least somewhat illusory, to boot, because if you take a shot for every time the suit very realistically suffers a power failure or mechanical failure at a crucial juncture, you're going to lose your liver. The collapse of the logistics network impedes the armor's ability to work at full capacity almost from the start; those bracers on her arms in the above illustrations are for .50 Caliber machine guns that ran quickly out of ammo after her first skirmish and had to be mothballed. The series is very clear that Cerberus wouldn't be viable in the long run if she weren't on a team with several other superhumans, including an electrokinetic and a technopath, who can help cover the suit's weak points. Ironic, given the implication that the original point of Cerberus was so the army would have an answer to those same people. Overall, the armor is paradoxically portrayed as both viable and nonviable.

One of the really interesting things about Ex-Heroes's worldbuilding is that superheroes numbered in the dozens before the apocalypse, but supervillains only start to emerge in any real numbers after the apocalypse, when the prospect of being able to start a fiefdom or a cult of personality without someone noticing and coming to kick your shit are significantly greater; before that, criminals with powers mostly kept what they were capable of on the down low because there was no sane reason to adopt the kind of comic-book classic presentation that would call a superhero down on their heads. Thus the quiet thesis of the series is that quite a bit of classic superheroic nonsense would be actively facilitated by the end of the world and the collapse of society; the incentives and the restrictions would change, but heroism would remain pointedly necessary. Cerberus is also part of this quiet thesis. The perpetual tension of Tony Stark is that we know him to exist in a world full of cultural, legal and logistical restrictions, against which the specific fantasy of being Iron Man would inevitably run aground. Cerberus, as a superheroic identity, never existed alongside any of that. It's way easier to be a knight errant or a lone ranger if that's the only version of those things left that anyone can be.

[osakanone]

Hi, I'm Osaka

I'm a hobbyist designer, and I research esoteric concepts on the periphery of mecha to find new views nobody else is writing about. I also am obsesed with trying to push the genre forwards.

I also took up programming to build a game faster than ACFA, more airborne than Ace Combat, and more "art of the blade" than Zone of the Enders 2 by studying mecha games through the lens of published declassified military grade airwar and psywar human factors engineering and psychology concepts.

I want to make this game about mechposting and the trans experience, but I need your help: not money, but to speak with you about mecha.

The writing is simultaniously equal parts thesis to microfic a lot of the time, so your milage may vary.

Scroll through the mess below and find what suits you best.

Please.

Mecha Theory Writing

A comprehensive explanation of the evolutionary path from conventional ground and air vehicles, including a comprehensive outline of a functioning control-design based on the inceptor/software model seen in unmanned drones and 5th gen aircraft, complete with explanations.

The evolution of the walking thing called “mecha"  (original)

Chapter 0: Establishing terminology & Concepts Part 1: Defining "the mechaness" of something: the 8 principles of mecha Part 2: Feisability: Mecha aren't realistic, but not for the reason you think

Chapter 1: How does "mecha" come into existence/why would you want one? Part 1: An evolution from ground vehicles of today Part 2: Skating, to walking, to running, to flight Part 3: “Why transform in the vacuum of space?”

Chapter 2: Cockpit & Software Design Control Theory Part 4: On Mecha Control Theory: Considerations Part 4a: On Mecha Control Theory II: OKAWARA Part 4b: On Mecha Control Theory III: TOMINO  Part 4c: On Mecha Control Theory III: NAGANO

The World of Armored Core

An exploration of the world of Armored Core, using research into real phenomenon and engineering systems to infer how the world may itself function

Kojima particle physics (part 1): What are they? Kojima particle physics (part 2): The Human Consequences NEXT cockpit design (part 1): AMS and Lynx NEXT Cockpit Design (Part 2): G-force Tolerance Technocrat is SpaceX, and the legacy of Musk’s father (lmao) I am a 4th gen douchebag, and I love it (love-letter to ACFA) 4th gen shitpost: white gopnik

How To Domesticate Your Pilot

A husbandry guide for handlers, consisting of opinions and thoughts from various trainers and operators, as well as pilots. Includes practices, procedures, articles, stories and snippets.

I'm currently testing the waters with snippets and will likely be posting it out of order. I am extremely hungry for any and all possible feedback

If anybody knows the original source of the image of the eyes (which I first saw in a youtube ad) I'd love to know. I very much would like to commission them.

Inspired by mechposting

Chapter 3: Do not Abuse Your Wolves (Psychological patterning) Part 1: Action patterning (Initial Phases) Part 2: Action Patterning (Risks) Part 3: Once upon a mechanism

On mecha design: My personal thoughts on the assemblies of shape, form in the context of motion, action and function 1. Does anybody else have physical characteristics they find the most appealing? 2. Thoughts on self-altering dynamic form, and proportion designs 3. Shoji Kawamori and Armored Core: designers hallucinate, but do they hallucinate too? 4. Why is Gundam Gquuuuux called Gundam Gquuuuux?

Mechsploitation thoughts

#Mechposting

My personal thoughts on piloting culture, and mechanical design

1. The eroticism of the machine: Megastructures 2. Beyond pilebunker: The Grind-blade and the legacy of Overweapons 3. FLAT/Touchscreens are an act of hate: I will teach you love 4. You do not need to pick between a big hammer or daggers if you are a robot 5. O'Socks combat mix (tw: substance abuse) 6. Team dynamics, addiction, conflicts of interest and marketing 7. Commuication is hard, and mecha feet are cool 8. Morrigan Aensland is mecha and you cannot change my mind 9. re: Last Exile is not dieselpunk; its post-steampunk deleuzian dreams 10. Mecha PMC promotion is back, in pog form 11. Bodies, corporeal schema, and the body language of pilots 12. The blessing of the hounds; main system engaging combat mode 13. Exotic doctrine: Grappling & Booster-fu // torsion, aspect and control 14. Osaka, why do you always want to talk about ACFA? 15. You walk, so they can run

# Miscposting: Immacullate vibe-topia Pilot, for you: Love. Love. The sound of the ideal cockpit Left Hand/Right hand [gone]-- Mechposting vibes soundwall 🇸​​🇮​​🇨​​🇰​​🇧​​🇪​​🇦​​🇹​​🇸​ ​🇹​​🇴​ ​🇸​​🇪​​🇪​​🇰​ ��🇦​​🇳​​🇩​ ​🇩​​🇪​​🇸​​🇹​​🇷​​🇴​​🇾​ ​🇹​​🇴​: A #mechposting playlist [ongoing] Cicatrix: A writing playlist Sounds for violence: Mecha games vs FPS games

# Pilotcore: Dress & attire 1. Attire concept (includes #mechposting patch list) 2. Crew attire for things other than piloting a giant robot 3. Singleton over-jacket 4. Radios, straps and whips 5. Wearable keyboard for pilots 6. What color should a flight-suit be? (#AskOsaka from @siveine)

The Learning Tree

Reading this will help you grow as a person, or ask questions

"I experience depression as a failure of resource allocation systems" Adult social skills 101, because the world broke our ability to understand eachother Mental health: Things I wish I knew in my teens, my 20's or even my early 30's ​Sex-positivity, associations, critical thinking & deradicalization Crossing the hrt libido event horizon without libido heat-death by making biscuits Fool!: Your nostalgia isn't real: Your past has been stolen from you! Why Linux diehards are morons, and so is everybody else too On the ecology of slurs and the evolution of language Individualism can mean many things. The three fetishes of the human condition The real meaning of "you will not be an anime girl, you'll be your mom"

Nothing, but content for contented malcontents

Insightful, but stupid.

The collapse of the anime ecology's biodiversity Cycles of Nostalgia: Nobody is going to be nostalgic for Corporate Memphis Europe doesn't teach the Odyssey: Americentricism's fetishism is already its downfall Feeling used: The eternal disappointment of the Sawano Drop Lame? Bitch please: Clubbing deserves to go extinct every pmdd transmasc is that badass hot painting of satan crying The reviewer made a major error The Maid's Paradox Bread real

The horrors

Robo ComBAT: Cactus Jaque (original)

The Fear

Concerning plunges into the ne plus ultra culture of tomorrow

Humbert complex: When people prefer what they imagine to what's really there White Diamond, fascism, projection, ego, how Steven Universe botched its end. Sandwich names: the internet sucks now and smartphones are to blame! Gatekeeping is weird and knowledge-checks are arbitrary nonsense "The internet feels gross now", a trajectory of human events Providing feedback is also a skill and not everybody has it. AI isn't evil but it does embolden the worst people economics is just twitter brain for worth Do you?

My actual projects:

Art (I'm kind of private about my output and don't post often, sorry)

Pixelart: A very silly computer design that makes me smile idk

Games:

Project Force: 6dof aerodynamic high speed robot action [ongoing] Inspired by Armored Core For Answer, Freespace 2, Zone of the Enders 2 & Ace Combat 3, this game aims to merge their elements into a high speed mech sim.

e: yeesh this pinned post is getting kinda huge, I should break it into sub-pages or something so nobody can ever see any of it lol

[shewolf-sinclair]

I HATE when people dumb down Jason Todd “he’s impulsive/irrational/erratic/brash/dumb/the angry robin!”

WRONG

let me break it down for you fools because he’s actually like one of the most nuanced and complex characters to ever bless my presence (and he’s the best ((my fav)) robin argue with the wall) (tldr at the end but please read the post)

Starting out as robin they are ALL orphans. because that’s like bruce’s thing. BUT dick and tim had families before bruce adopted them. Jason did not. HE GREW UP ON THE STREETS. (+10 points for truama✨) which led him to grow up to be independent and resourceful. Bruce literally met him because he was trying to steal the bat mobiles tires with the intent of reverse engineering them to sell to the people of gotham because bullet proof tires in that kinda city would save lives source

As for being brash. Yeah. he is. he lacks people skills because HE GREW UP ON THE STREETS. yet he still knows how to sympathize with people and not be an ass ALL the time. he’s cocky sure but it’s a defensive mechanism after years of being treated like he doesn’t have value/having to prove himself. and damien is worse lets bsffr.

He’s impulsive. (likely adhd) Teenager. next question.

He’s the angriest robin! he only ever wants vengeance! WRONG. dick is angrier! he was so petty he left gotham and got a new identity just as a fuck you to bruce. any anger Jason has is not unmatched or outdone by other robins and he is rightfully angry he’s been dealt a crappy hand in life. he’s jealous of dick because bruce was ALWAYS comparing him and telling heroic stories of dicks feats. it’s hard not to push yourself to be as good as or better than the og and not to crack under said pressure.

He’s dumb! NOPE. he is as smart if not smarter than tim. He is BRILLIANT when he wants to be. (see above: resourceful) if you take titans (cw) as canon (why wouldn’t u its as canon as any other tv show??) he is a GENIUS. he taught himself chemistry so he could invent and mass produce drugs. he had a genius strategy to fuck with the titans; the puzzle of clues for which dick needed scarecrow, kory, gar, and conner to solve. Not to mention him finding doctor light earlier in the season. He leads the outlaws bc he is a natural leader and good at handling the details!!

He’s a villain! OKAY AND? SO WAS HARLEY BUT WE LUV HER !! DAMIEN WAS A TRAINED ASSASAIN! he puts so much effort into helping people (see above: resourceful) HE RISKED/LOST HIS LIFE FOR IT. HE IS FIERCELY LOYAL. even as red hood he obtains a strict moral code; no drugs to kids or by schools, don’t kill innocent uninvolved people(depends on which media you’re looking at). serve karma on a gold platter. unlawful but USUALLY NOT unethical. he also becomes a vigilante (and the JL for a bit) and does so much good! none of them are perfect ALL of the time. and considering the other DC villains, he’s not that evil.

strength?? no problem! he almost beat dick and bruce several times in the comics!! source

not to mention his proficiency for new things (see above: chemistry) his whole time as robin he uses bat tech. but redhood uses guns and knives. he just picked that up and was a skilled marksman immediately. (also truama response after nearly dying to death stroke)

so what hes kinda fucked in the head. aren’t they all? isn’t that… the point? it’s justified after everything he’s been through AND it makes hims a better character, more 3D more realistic and relatable.

also for the sake of this thesis partially disregard the wonderful work of art that is WFA it’s a fixit. for a reason. because the it was broken and needed fixing.

TLDR; you don’t have to like Jason Todd, or think he’s the best Robin, but you have to admit, he is a complex, layered, well written character. And stop mischaracterizing him and dumbing him down to this impulsive, angry, weak kid.

bonus: my Jason playlist

[enbyspaceartist]

SONADOW CROSS COUNTRY ROAD TRIP AU FANFIC (please ik it's will be cringe this is My first ever fic)

Sonic and tails were in the hanger doing the final modifications for the mobile home. They customized it to have everything sonic and shadow might need for the trip. From the front working towards the back was the driver and passenger seat of course. But behind those were the living area. It had a couch connected to the side underneath a long large window. It had a retractable coffee table in front of it aswell. Then there was the kitchen. They had electric oven, fridge and freezer. Along with planting of counter space. At the back of there was the bathroom and bedroom, the bedroom was at the very back with the 2 rear doors, sonic and shadow could open them up while relaxing in their bed together. They spent a lot of time on it to make sure it was perfect for the trip

"Thanks for helping me and shads with all this" said sonic while bolting in the the last tire.

"I had fun with this, been a bit since I had such a long term project like this. Do you and shadow have everything packed for the trip?" Replied tails from underneath the van, making sure nothing was leaking or loose.

"I'm still surprised you guys aren't just running or teleporting there with shadows chaos control"

"Me and shads agreed to take this trip nice and slow, enjoy as much as we can. Not to mention it'll be easier to carry all the stuff we packed in this" replied sonic as he slapped the hood.

"Where is shadow anyway" asked tails

"Getting some last minute groceries to stock pile the fridge and freezer. He should be here soon"

"Sooner than that" said shadow as he enters the hanger

Sonic runs to hug him awkwardly as to not squish the groceries he is holding

"You sure bought alot, can't wait to have your cooking" said sonic

"My cooking is the only thing that we will have that's edible considering your culinary skills" jabs shadow.

"OH how you wound me" sonic says dramatically with a hand over his forhead

"Thank you again for this tails" said shadow

"No problem, now I just finished inspections, your all set. Just need to pack your stu-"

Sonic rapidly packs all the luggage and food in a blink of an eye

"Done, now you take care bud and make sure to drink water and sleep while we're gone, and no sleeping at your work bench isn't gonna work"

"Uuuuugh fine DAAAaad" replied tails sarcastically

Sonic and shadow enter the van and start the engine, shadow begins to drive out the hanger. Sonic rolls down the windows and yells to tails

"Okay were off now, we'll call at every stop and don't forget your thesis for mechanical engineer next week. Your gonna ace it little dude!! Byeeeeee!!"

"Go have fun you love birds, and I know I will" tails yells back

"Ready?" Asks shadow

"Ready" says sonic, they both are excited for the journey ahead.

(If you read it ty so much and please provide me any feedback or what you would like for sonic and shadow to do on their road trip. The first writing will hopefully improve too as it continues, ty and have a great day byeeeeee)

[justforbooks]

Daniel Dennett

Controversial US philosopher who sought to understand and explain the science of the mind

Daniel Dennett, who has died aged 82, was a controversial philosopher whose writing on consciousness, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and evolutionary psychology helped shift Anglo-American philosophy from its focus on language and concepts towards a coalition with science.

His naturalistic account of consciousness, purged as far as possible of first-person agency and qualitative experience, has been popular outside academia and hotly opposed by many within it.

One of the so-called Four Horsemen of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, he also wrote on Darwinism, memes, free will and religion.

“Figuring out as a philosopher how brains could be, or support, or explain, or cause, minds” was how Dennett, aged 21, defined his project. Having gained a philosophy degree at Harvard University in 1963, he was then doing a BPhil at Oxford University under the behaviourist philosopher Gilbert Ryle, but spent most of his time in the Radcliffe science library learning about the brain.

Many philosophers were (as they still are) trying to accommodate the mind, and its subjectivity, in third-person science. Yet it seems impossible to identify “intentionality” (the “aboutness” of thoughts) or “qualia” (the “thusnesses” of experience) as nothing but brain states or behaviour.

In dealing with “intentionality”, Dennett, however, had a novel strategy – “first content, then consciousness” – that reversed the usual line of enquiry. He proposed “to understand how consciousness is possible by understanding how unconscious content is possible first”.

Nature, he argued, has its own unwitting reasons – “free-floating rationales” that are “independent of, and more fundamental than, consciousness”. The ability of organisms to respond appropriately, if unconsciously, to things in the environment is a “rudimentary intentionality”. And, over aeons, the “blind, foresightless, purposeless process of trial and error” has knitted “the mechanical responses of ‘stupid’ neurons” (in certain creatures’ brains) into a “reflective loop [that] creates the manifest illusion of consciousness,” he thought. “Mind is the effect, not the cause.” As spiders mindlessly spin webs, homo sapiens has spun “a narrative self”.

What Ryle had dismissed as “the ghost in the machine” could thus be exorcised, not by denying its existence but by seeing it for what it is – a conjuring trick rather than magic, an illusion fabricated by what (in his 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) he called evolution’s “reverse engineering”.

Dennett’s first book, Content and Consciousness was published in 1969. Sixteen other books and numerous papers adapted and extended its thesis – that intentionality can be ascribed, along a spectrum with no clear dividing line, impartially to minds, human brains, bees, computers, thermostats: it is a functional relation between object and environment. As to exactly when, in evolutionary or personal history, conscious intentionality arose, “don’t ask,” he said.

We can take what he called a “physical stance” towards something (considering its constituents and their causal interlockings) or a “design stance” (seeing it as fabricated, by evolution or humans, to serve a particular function) or an “intentional stance” (explaining its behaviour in terms of goals that it would sensibly pursue if it were rational).

“The intentional stance is thus a theory-neutral way of capturing the cognitive competences of different organisms (or other agents) without committing the investigator to overspecific hypotheses about the internal structures that underlie the competences.” We treat chess-playing computers, some animals and humans, as if they had beliefs and desires. But, he was furiously asked, don’t we humans actually have them?

Yes and no, apparently. There is no one-to-one match between brain states and mental states. It is the creature as a whole that has intentionality. The discrete individually identifiable mental states that we seem to be having are (in reality) “an edited and metaphorialised version of what’s going on in our brains” – equivalent to “user illusions” on a computer screen: like the hourglass, folder and dustbin icons, they betoken the complex processes occurring behind the scenes.

“No part of the brain is the thinker that does the thinking, or the feeler that does the feeling,” said Dennett, nor is, or does, the brain as a whole. Instead there are “multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating multiple drafts as they go” – until, from among “concurrent contentful events in the brain … a select subset of such events ‘wins’ … The way to explain the miraculous-seeming powers of an intelligent intentional system is to decompose it into hierarchically structured teams.” These consist of “relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi that produce the intelligent behaviour of the whole”.

“Yes we have a soul but it’s made of lots of tiny robots” was the headline of an article about him in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and Dennett endorsed it with amusement. He loved making furniture, building fences, mending roofs, tinkering with cars and boats; and, among the many things he constructed were sets of nested Russian dolls to illustrate his philosophy. The outside doll was “Descartes”; inside that was “the Middle Ghost” (a reference to Ryle’s) – but inside that was a “Robot”. “We are not authorities about our own consciousness,” he said. The robot is masked by the ghost.

Dennett pronounced qualia to be illusions. Ever since Descartes, we have tended to assume that we have “mental images”, as if, said Dennett, we could view little pictures, visible only to ourselves in an inner “Cartesian theatre”.

If so, we should be able to count the number of stripes on the tiger we are imagining, and say whether we have been seeing it face-on or sideways. No such definite information is available. Mental images are indeterminate in a way that pictures cannot be, and closer to generalised linguistic descriptions. So limited and poor is our access to our own conscious experiences, said Dennett, that it “does not differ much from the access another person can have to those experiences – your experiences – if you decide to go public with your account”. Indeed “our first-person point of view of our own minds is not so different from our second-person point of view of others’ minds”. We take an intentional stance on ourselves.

Dennett’s views remained pretty consistent throughout numerous books and papers, but in recent years he became more lenient towards mental imagery. He was impressed by neuroscientific research suggesting that there are specific observable brain activities that potentially may be decoded as imaging processes.

And, having been stern in denying what is disparagingly called “folk psychology” (a term he invented), he began to describe himself as “a mild realist” about mental states, prepared to concede that “the traditional psychological perspective” is not merely something described by third-person observers.

Avoiding accusations that he smuggled in the subjectivity he so adamantly denied, Dennett had recourse to “memes”, a concept (invented by Dawkins) modelled on that of genes. Memes are units of cultural practice, including anything from language to drama to wearing a baseball cap backwards to clapping as a form of praise. They are, in Dennett’s words, ‘“prescriptions” for ways of doing things that can be transmitted to, and from, human brains, and that “have their own reproductive fitness, just like viruses”. We are infected by memes, and it is “the memes invasion … that has turned our brains into minds”.

Dennett also applied a Darwinian approach to free will. “A billion years ago, there was no free will on this planet, but now there is. The physics has not changed; the improvements in ‘can do’ over the years had to evolve.” We are now able to predict probable futures, and to pursue or avert them. We are not deluded about having that capacity; as we are, he fulminated, about religion. Breaking the Spell (2006) was judiciously named. That was what he was urging religious people to do.

Born in Boston, Dennett spent the first five years of his life in Lebanon. His father, also Daniel, was a counter-intelligence officer posing as a cultural attache to the American embassy in Beirut. He died in a plane crash in 1947 (later, Dennett’s sister, the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett, would claim Kim Philby’s connivance in it). Dennett’s mother, Ruth Leck, a teacher and editor, took the children back to Massachusetts.

Reprieved from matching up to his father’s expectations, Dennett said, he nonetheless grew up in his father’s shadow. But little could sap his exuberant self-confidence. Characteristically, the title of his 1991 book was Consciousness Explained.

In 1959, having just begun a maths degree at Weslyan University, Connecticut, Dennett read Willard van Orman Quine’s From a Logical Point of View. He was so excited that he decided “to be a philosopher, and go to Harvard and tell this man Quine why he is wrong”. The first two he managed, though for a time he worried that Quine (later a great friend) was more interested by Dennett’s sculpture than his philosophising.

Dennett did contemplate being a sculptor, and would, he said, certainly have studied engineering had his family not been so arts-oriented. Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts, in 1993 he joined the Humanoid Robotics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to construct a robot (Cog) that would be not only intelligent but conscious. The project ended in 2003, and Cog was retired to a museum.

Dennett was Austin B Fletcher professor of philosophy at Tufts, and visiting professor at a host of other universities, including Oxford and the London School of Economics. His memoir, I’ve Been Thinking, was published in 2023.

He and his wife, Susan (nee Bell), whom he married in 1962, lived in North Andover, Massachusetts, and he also hobby farmed in Maine for more than 40 summers, blissfully “tillosophising” on a tractor, sailing his boat Xanthippe, fixing buildings and digging drains. Dennett loved solving puzzles and disinterring the inner workings of machines – above all those of “the miraculous-seeming” mind. “No miracles allowed,” he said.

He is survived by Susan, a daughter, Andrea, and son, Peter, and six grandchildren, and his sisters, Cynthia and Charlotte.

🔔 Daniel Clement Dennett, philosopher, born 28 March 1942; died 19 April 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[jcmarchi]

MIT graduate programs empower the next generation of naval leaders

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-graduate-programs-empower-the-next-generation-of-naval-leaders/

MIT graduate programs empower the next generation of naval leaders

Designing a ship or submarine for the U.S. Navy requires an understanding of naval architecture, hydrodynamics, electrical and structural engineering, materials science, and more. That’s why the Navy works so closely with MIT, where some of the world’s foremost experts in each of those disciplines converge.

The largest among the graduate-level naval programs at MIT is the 2N Graduate Program in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. The three-year 2N program helps naval officers work at the intersection of different academic disciplines to design ships and submarines from the ground up and solve the complex technical problems that arise from completing missions on the sea.

“The 2N program is designed to take officers who have experience operating ships and submarines and get them the technical foundation they need to be technical leaders in the Navy,” says 2N Professor of the Practice Andrew Gillespy, who graduated from the program himself in 2008. “We’re building the next generation of ship and submarine designers for the U.S. Navy.”

The MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program also enrolls naval officers, in its dedicated master’s program in oceanography and applied ocean science and engineering, where they work on Navy-related research ranging from autonomous vehicles to applied ocean science, physical oceanography, and more. While the 2N program, which was founded back in 1901, has been around a lot longer than the MIT-WHOI Program, naval officers were among the first graduates of MIT-WHOI in 1970.

“The Navy’s been with us from the beginning,” WHOI Senior Scientist Ann Tarrant says. “MIT’s various naval offerings really show the strong link between the institutions. It shows MIT’s commitment to doing research that is valuable to our nation’s security, and the high esteem the Navy places on MIT more broadly.”

At MIT, both the 2N and MIT-WHOI programs are housed within the Department of Mechanical Engineering; MIT-WHOI, which also offers a doctoral program, is jointly hosted by the Department for Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Still, the programs engage students and faculty from across the Institute.

“Our students work with pretty much every professor who touches ocean engineering,” Gillespy says. “One of the great parts about our program is the ability for the students to do one-on-one thesis work with the best professors in the world here at MIT. That is something that the Navy really, values.”

A century of training naval leaders

MIT was one of the first educational institutions to include oceanography in its curriculum and has played a leading role in advancing the discipline. The Department of Mechanical Engineering first offered a program in marine engineering and naval architecture in 1886, which led to the Department of Naval Architecture.

The program has changed names several times since then, but it can be mapped to today’s Center for Ocean Engineering, which continues to support the Navy and MIT’s naval programs through its research.

The 2N program was founded in 1901 and has been taught by active-duty faculty members for close to a century. Students in the program, who also include members of the U.S. Coast Guard as well as foreign naval officers, jump back into academia with two years of classes followed by an industry-sponsored design project.

“The program gives you a solid foundation in naval engineering and the leeway to study what’s interesting to you; this way you can bring new research back to the fleet,” says Adam Jay Pressel, who’s entering his third and final year in the 2N program. “Being a full-time graduate student and naval officer at one of the best universities in the world is probably the best job I’ll ever have.”

Gillespy notes that while the requirements for most MIT master’s students is 72 credits plus a thesis, 2N graduates earn around 300 credits over their three years.

The reason for the high course load is that 2N graduates get two master’s degrees, and the 2N Naval Engineer’s degree is earned by meeting both MIT and the Navy’s requirements.

“We encourage them to get the second degree in an area they’re interested in and really want to pursue,” Gillespy says. “We’ve had students working in electrical engineering on power systems, in mechanical engineering, and system design and management, which is the joint program with the business school and the engineering program. That program is great because we’re not just engineers. In the future, our students are going to be technical leaders, so getting that leadership and management expertise from the business school is great. But you probably can’t pick a course at MIT that we haven’t had somebody get a second degree in.”

The MIT-WHOI master’s program is usually a little over two years long and features coursework at WHOI and MIT followed by a master’s thesis. Naval students have worked on topics like ocean circulation, autonomous vehicles, and meteorology.

“Having naval officers really benefits our whole student body and program,” Tarrant says. “They have a lot of extremely valuable real-world experience, and they help us understand how the research we’re doing can make an impact in the Navy and on the world.”

Tarrant notes that many faculty members and researchers at both MIT and WHOI work on projects funded by the Navy, and naval officers bring valuable perspectives to that work.

“It helps us align the work we do with the Navy’s mission,” Tarrant says. “WHOI and MIT more broadly have a long-standing relationship with the Navy that really helps us.”

MIT leaves its mark

Naval officers’ work at MIT has gone on to make a huge impact on the Navy. Several students’ ship design and conversion projects from the 2N program have gone on to become actual ships the Navy builds. In 2019, 2N students worked on converting a massive destroyer called the DDG 1000 to accommodate hypersonic missiles. The students concept design showed it was feasible, and the Navy is actively overseeing that conversion now.

The graduates themselves have also gone on to assume leadership roles at every level of the Navy. The current program manager for a major Navy initiative designing a new class of submarines is 2N graduate Admiral Pete Small ’05, SM ’05, who previously taught as a professor of the practice at MIT.

“Our program has a really proud history of producing officers that are great leaders and have the technical foundation to lead highly advanced programs,” Gillespy says.

Gillespy says his own experience in the Navy has underscored the value of the 2N program. He and several other graduates of the program were responsible for designing the Columbia-class submarine, which is scheduled to go into service in 2031.

“Every day when we were designing the Columbia class submarine, we had the world’s experts in a particular area come in and present their design thoughts and what they’re working on, and being able to have intelligent conversations and push the program forward across all the disciplines was critical,” Gillespy says. “There wasn’t a course that I took here that I couldn’t trace back to a discipline that I was working on. My fellow officers echoed the sentiment of how well MIT prepared us to do submarine design.”

[paradox-gaming-network]

Chrono Odyssey Probably Won’t Save the Genre, But It Reminds You Why You Fell in Love with MMOs

Chrono Odyssey has my attention, but not my hype. I’ve learned the hard way that overhyping a video game is often the fastest route to disappointment. Somewhere along the line, enthusiasm became a performance. Social media success hinges on being loudly optimistic about every new MMORPG, as if each one is the genre’s final salvation. If you’re measured or critical, or worse, cautiously optimistic, you don’t trend. You just vanish.

I suppose that’s fine. I’m old. I remember Betamax.

I dove into Chrono Odyssey for the first time on 20 June 2025. That might surprise some people, since I usually approach a new game like a doctoral thesis. I consume everything—mechanics, lore, community takes—before I ever touch the keyboard. This time? I showed up unprepared and joked I’d be taking my F for skipping the reading. Felt weird. Still hit Start.

I was pleasantly surprised by Chrono Odyssey’s intro cinematic and character creator. The tools are stunning, living up to every expectation you’d have from a game built in Unreal Engine. My first character didn’t take long, since livestreaming limited how deep I could go, but even tossing on a few customizations gave me a clear sense of identity. Then, as I previewed the different armor sets, an idea hit me.

Imagine if, while creating your character, each outfit preview came with a short description: where it drops, what it means, how you earn it. That alone could hook certain players immediately. I might see a set of ranger furs and think, "I want to look like that." Then I learn it drops at level 40 after clearing a specific dungeon. Now I’ve got a goal. The developer has me locked in at least until I get there. Would it retain every player? No. Would it help retain some? Definitely. And that’s the game.

On the topic of player retention, Chrono Odyssey has a major problem: a lack of a substantial tutorial, no real easing in, and no early success moments to hook players. This will frustrate anyone new to this type of game. It is not the only issue, and other creators will highlight different flaws, but for me, how a game starts matters most. I do not mean the game should be easy. The challenge is part of the charm. What I care about is whether it is easy to play even when the content itself is difficult.

To be honest, I felt completely lost during my first hour in Chrono Odyssey. For me, that breaks immersion. When I can't figure out basic systems, I start itching to Google answers, and that is never a good sign. This wasn’t the good kind of challenge, like solving a puzzle or deciphering a map. That kind of frustration can be rewarding. Instead, I was told to level my mining to two, but the quest giver didn’t sell pickaxes, didn’t tell me who did, and no vendor nearby had one either. That kind of confusion doesn’t add depth. It just adds friction.

I stuck with the game, partly because I was enjoying the world and its difficulty, and partly because I was streaming. Eventually, I found the tools I needed to craft some gear. Why was I so focused on gearing up so early? I was tired of getting faceplanted by every single NPC I met. After running around mining, chopping trees, gathering plants, and skinning wolves, I finally cobbled together a full set of level five gear. When I returned to the world, every NPC was still planting me like a tomato in your grandfather’s garden. At least now, I felt properly dressed for the occasion.

After some wandering, I hit the first Chrono Cave and immediately got stuck. The back of the room was a door, but it didn’t look like one. Once I figured that out, I found myself dying repeatedly to the boss. Frustration started piling up, so I left the cave and returned to the open world.

What happened next surprised me. Places I had already visited now had new quests waiting. Maybe I reached a certain level, maybe dying to the boss triggered something, or maybe the server caught up. I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that the world suddenly felt alive.

Naked guy trapped on a rock near a waterfall? No problem, good sir—I will help you. Guy who wants me to take him to his farm so he can collect his wife’s things and then apparently take a header off the cliff? Absolutely. I will help you out and then accept your wife’s sickle as a thank-you. As I adventured (and it has been so long since I’ve been on a good adventure), I felt the world coming alive around me. This was due to facing adversity—and dare I say it? Failure.

This is exactly why Chrono Odyssey has me intrigued. Most MMORPGs from the past 15 years follow the same pattern: pick up a quest, kill a boss, move to the next hub, and repeat until you hit max level. That’s when the "real" game begins. Chrono Odyssey flips that on its head. It introduces something else entirely: frustration.

Even as I write this, I’m itching to get back in. I’m only level seven, but I want to see where the game takes me. More than that, I want the final piece to craft my green bow. I want another shot at the guy who is blocking my story progression. I want to be successful. I need to be successful.

That tunneling, chunneling, pug-faced blocker of my progress is going down.

By now, if you know me, you’re probably wondering where the sarcastic, sardonic, condescending, surgically analytical Jahlon of yesterday has gone. Where are the flaws? Where is the cutting feedback?

The truth is, I’m not qualified to talk about the biggest problem in this game: combat. I’ve said for years that I am not an action combat player, and I’m not about to pretend otherwise just to fit in with the trendy YouTuber, streamer, influencer crowd.

Do I think the combat is good? No, I do not. Do I think any action combat is good? Sometimes. Does this combat play well? In my experience, no. It doesn’t feel buttery smooth. It feels like a fifteen-year-old with a learner’s permit trying to drive grandma’s stick shift, double clutching, grinding gears, lurching hard enough to spill your coffee.

That’s the feedback from a tab-target player. If you are an action combat player and disagree, feel free to tell me. I will not argue with you. This just isn’t my domain.

In this game, my realm is gathering. The pace is slow—slow enough that most short-form content junkies with ADHD will probably bail on it. That works in my favor. I don’t mind a gathering animation that gives me time to sip coffee between trees and rocks. I will happily dominate the auction house with my hard-earned goods.

The artisan system, though, feels messy so far. Multiple gathering professions filter into one processing profession, which then branches into different crafting disciplines. I am not exactly thrilled by that setup, but I need more time with the game before passing final judgment.

Let’s talk about the other hot-button issue: pay-to-win. The developers have promised it will not be part of Chrono Odyssey. The monetization model is buy-to-play, with a cash shop focused on cosmetics and convenience items.

That brings out the Jahlon you know, whether you love him or hate him. I trust Kakao Games to avoid pay-to-win about as much as I trust John Smedley not to ruin another Star Wars Galaxies.

If anyone at Kakao is offended by that, that is fine. You have earned every inch of the reputation you carry as a game developer and publisher. You also have a chance to change it. Chrono Odyssey and Archeage Chronicles both have potential. This could be Kakao’s redemption arc, a chance to prove that a studio can make money with a box price and a fair cash shop.

The combat situation, the lack of a strong foundation tutorial, and the high potential for pay to win is why I am not about to rate this game as a 10. Or a 9. Or even an 8. Based on what I have seen, this game is a solid 7 with good bones, fair skin, and maybe a winning smile.

They need to invest more in the first hour or two. The tutorial should grab players and get them to turn off YouTube and pay attention. Fortunately, fixing that does not require hundreds of thousands of dollars. It only takes an extra line or two of dialogue in the right places.

They also need to keep their word on monetization. If the game slips into pay-to-win territory, people will leave. Some will post hateful comments about the game or this review simply because it is Kakao, or because it is a Korean MMO. I cannot even blame them. That reaction has become Pavlovian.

All we can do now is wait with bated breath, see if things improve, and use the closed beta to offer real feedback.

[volcanicobservervigil]

Opus 2025 Review

Mark Anthony Green’s “Opus” movie first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and left audiences utterly confused and underwhelmed. The film is “supposed” to offer analysis over the topics of celebrity culture and the sycophantic journalists that trail behind them, but it seems much more like a purposeless rant without a thesis statement. It is hard to believe that the primary issue with this film is how boring it is in its entirety considering it manages to seamlessly blend dry comedy and horror. This mad experiment of a film is saved, however, from being an absolute dumpster fire due to an unexpectedly bold performance from John Malkovich.

He then abruptly vanished, retreating to a compound in the middle of nowhere. When the world learned that his first album in over 25 years, ‘Caesar’s Request’, was about to be released, the anticipation was off the charts. To further stoke the fire, Moretti and his publicists invite a handful of journalists to his makeshift city—a sprawling mansion filled with blue robe-wearing servants whose only job was to fufill Moretti’s every wish. (Cult-ish, if you didn’t pick up on the undertone). Among this elite group is Stan Sullivan, a music magazine editor with a big name (Murray Bartlett), and one of his apos, Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri). Blaming most of the work on himself, Sullivan claims he will do all the writing polished up and put together, and she is along just for the note-taking. But one of the reasons we can tell she’s the real journalist in the couple is her refusal to blindly accept everything Moretti serves. Other guests include characters played by Juliette Lewis, Melissa Chambers, Stephanie Suganami, and Mark Sivertsen while Amber Midthunder and Tatanka Means are the Moretti life’s servants.

Anyone who has watched “The Menu,” “Blink Twice,” or many other recent critiques of sociopathic power players understands how “Opus” is headed, meaning that it’s more about the journey than the destination, which is a quite tiresome one in this case. While everyone else succumbs to the allure of Moretti, Ecton is the only one who gets the sobering picture here – it’s not a case of a pop star making a comeback, but rather a man who’s dominated popular culture in his absence is now a cult leader. She intends to write that tale, but Stan continues to argue that it focuses too strongly on ‘the music.’ It’s an example of pop culture journalism getting it wrong, which does feel like a rather weak premise to use as the backbone of an entire film.

As if thinking that his rant on the celebrity culture and those who chronicle it would be interesting by itself, Green fails to include enough captivating scenes and characters to his film. There are small moments that contribute to the chaotic absurdity of it all, like the listening party where the guests are shaved everywhere by a cult member prior to attending. However, these moments do nothing and never build in a way that heightens tension. It is strange for the purpose of being strange, but in reality, it’s not nearly weird enough. For “Opus” to be successful, it needed to venture into territory that Green seems to avoid. Unlike this film, which is dull and timid at its core, “Opus” needed to get frightening, violent, and disturbingly odd.

Green’s inefficiency with his cast allocation does not help the matter, either. The interesting Lewis is so sidelined that one must assume some greater part was trimmed, whereas Chambers and Suganami seem to pass through the narrative without ever having a meaningful presence in any part of the production. It is only Malkovich who does deliver anything, performing his own numbers (song credits to Nile Rodgers & The-Dream) as he shimmies through his scenes in the manner of a python recently transformed into a pop idol. Even Edebiri is stuck within the parameters of the script, rendered too much of a mechanism in this story’s engine, moving the film from A to B without being truly in control of the narrative, let alone having agency.

In the beginning of the film, Ariel complains about her lowly standing at her publication to a friend (Young Mazino). His response is honest, if cruel: She has no story in an interesting life plot. In essence, Ariel has no means to differentiate herself. The idea, presumably, is that the events that follow provide Ariel the POV she always needed. However, this ultimately turns out to be self-commentary about the film itself, one that does the very thing a character needs to do to navigate life—talk without a point.

Babygirl 2024 Review

Bad Boys 4 2024 Review

Eephus 2025 Review

The Gorge 2025 Review

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Architecture is more than just designing buildings — it’s about creating spaces that inspire, innovate, and endure. But before budding architects can bring their visions to life in the real world, they must first master the foundations of design, theory, technology, and structural understanding — all within the walls of their academic institutions.

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[honorarydoctorate]

PhD Full Form in India: Everything You Need to Know

What is the Full Form of PhD?

PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. It is the highest academic degree awarded in various disciplines, signifying expertise and significant research contributions.

Overview of PhD in India

In India, a PhD is pursued after completing a master’s degree (such as MA, MSc, MTech, MBA, or MPhil). It involves in-depth research in a chosen subject, leading to the submission of a thesis or dissertation.

Eligibility Criteria for PhD in India

To pursue a PhD in India, candidates must meet specific eligibility requirements:

Educational Qualification: A postgraduate degree (Master’s or MPhil) with at least 55% marks (50% for reserved categories).

Entrance Exam: Most universities require a PhD entrance test (PET) or accept national-level exams like UGC NET, CSIR NET, GATE, or JRF.

Interview: After clearing the entrance, candidates must pass a personal interview to discuss their research proposal.

PhD Admission Process in India

The admission process generally involves:

Application Submission – Candidates apply to universities offering PhD programs.

Entrance Exam – Most institutions conduct an entrance test (some accept NET/GATE scores).

Interview & Research Proposal – Shortlisted candidates present their research ideas before a panel.

Final Selection & Enrollment – Selected candidates enroll as PhD scholars and start their research work.

Popular PhD Entrance Exams in India

Here are some common PhD entrance exams:

UGC-NET – For research fellowships and university teaching positions.

CSIR-NET – For science and engineering fields.

GATE – Required for PhD admissions in IITs, NITs, and other technical institutes.

ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF – For PhD in agricultural sciences.

Duration of PhD in India

The duration of a PhD in India varies:

Minimum Duration: 3 years

Maximum Duration: 5-6 years (as per UGC guidelines)

Types of PhD Programs in India

PhD programs in India are offered in different modes:

Full-Time PhD – Scholars engage in full-time research with stipends or fellowships.

Part-Time PhD – Designed for working professionals who want to pursue research along with their jobs.

Online/Distance PhD – Some universities offer flexible research programs with minimal campus visits.

Top PhD Specializations in India

PhD programs are available in various disciplines, including:

Engineering & Technology (Computer Science, Mechanical, Civil, etc.)

Management & Business Studies (Marketing, Finance, HR, etc.)

Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, etc.)

Social Sciences & Humanities (History, Economics, Sociology, Psychology, etc.)

Law & Legal Studies

Medicine & Healthcare

Top Universities for PhD in India

Some of the best universities offering PhD programs in India include:

IITs & IISc (for Science & Technology)

AIIMS (for Medical Sciences)

IIMs (for Management Studies)

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)

Delhi University (DU)

Banaras Hindu University (BHU)

Funding & Scholarships for PhD in India

Several scholarships and fellowships are available for PhD students in India:

UGC Junior Research Fellowship (JRF)

CSIR NET Fellowship

INSPIRE Fellowship (for Science students)

ICSSR Doctoral Fellowships (for Social Sciences)

IIT/NIT Research Assistantships

Career Opportunities After PhD in India

A PhD opens up numerous career paths, such as:

Academia & Teaching – Become a professor or researcher in universities.

Research & Development (R&D) – Work in government or private research labs.

Corporate Sector – Many companies hire PhD holders for specialized roles.

Entrepreneurship & Consultancy – Start your own research-based venture.

Government Jobs – Join organizations like ISRO, DRDO, ICAR, or CSIR.

Conclusion

A PhD is a prestigious qualification that enhances knowledge and career prospects. If you have a passion for research and innovation, pursuing a PhD in India can be a rewarding journey.

Got more questions? Drop them in the comments! 🚀

Hope this helps! Click on the headings for more details. Let me know if you need any modifications. 😊

[sunaleisocial]

Professor Emeritus Lee Grodzins, pioneer in nuclear physics, dies at 98

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/professor-emeritus-lee-grodzins-pioneer-in-nuclear-physics-dies-at-98/

Professor Emeritus Lee Grodzins, pioneer in nuclear physics, dies at 98

Nuclear physicist and MIT Professor Emeritus Lee Grodzins died on March 6 at his home in the Maplewood Senior Living Community at Weston, Massachusetts. He was 98.   

Grodzins was a pioneer in nuclear physics research. He was perhaps best known for the highly influential experiment determining the helicity of the neutrino, which led to a key understanding of what’s known as the weak interaction. He was also the founder of Niton Corp. and the nonprofit Cornerstones of Science, and was a co-founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

He retired in 1999 after serving as an MIT physics faculty member for 40 years. As a member of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS), he initiated the relativistic heavy-ion physics program. He published over 170 scientific papers and held 64 U.S. patents.

“Lee was a very good experimental physicist, especially with his hands making gadgets,” says Heavy Ion Group and Francis L. Friedman Professor Emeritus Wit Busza PhD ’64. “His enthusiasm for physics spilled into his enthusiasm for how physics was taught in our department.”

Industrious son of immigrants

Grodzins was born July 10, 1926, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the middle child of Eastern European Jewish immigrants David and Taube Grodzins. He grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire. His two sisters were Ethel Grodzins Romm, journalist, author, and businesswoman who later ran his company, Niton Corp.; and Anne Lipow, who became a librarian and library science expert.

His father, who ran a gas station and a used-tire business, died when Lee was 15. To help support his family, Lee sold newspapers, a business he grew into the second-largest newspaper distributor in Manchester.

At 17, Grodzins attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating in less than three years with a degree in mechanical engineering.  However, he decided to be a physicist after disagreeing with a textbook that used the word “never.”

“I was pretty good in math and was undecided about my future,” Grodzins said in a 1958 New York Daily News article. “It wasn’t until my senior year that I unexpectedly realized I wanted to be a physicist. I was reading a physics text one day when suddenly this sentence hit me: ‘We will never be able to see the atom.’ I said to myself that that was as stupid a statement as I’d ever read. What did he mean ‘never!’ I got so annoyed that I started devouring other writers to see what they had to say and all at once I found myself in the midst of modern physics.”

He wrote his senior thesis on “Atomic Theory.”

After graduating in 1946, he approached potential employers by saying, “I have a degree in mechanical engineering, but I don’t want to be one. I’d like to be a physicist, and I’ll take anything in that line at whatever you will pay me.”

He accepted an offer from General Electric’s Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, where he worked in fundamental nuclear research building cosmic ray detectors, while also pursuing his master’s degree at Union College. “I had a ball,” he recalled. “I stayed in the lab 12 hours a day. They had to kick me out at night.”

Brookhaven

After earning his PhD from Purdue University in 1954, he spent a year as a lecturer there, before becoming a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) with Maurice Goldhaber’s nuclear physics group, probing the properties of the nuclei of atoms.

In 1957, he, with Goldhaber and Andy Sunyar, used a simple table-top experiment to measure the helicity of the neutrino. Helicity characterizes the alignment of a particle’s intrinsic spin vector with that particle’s direction of motion. 

The research provided new support for the idea that the principle of conservation of parity — which had been accepted for 30 years as a basic law of nature before being disproven the year before, leading to the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics — was not as inviolable as the scientists thought it was, and did not apply to the behavior of some subatomic particles.

The experiment took about 10 days to complete, followed by a month of checks and rechecks. They submitted a letter on “Helicity of Neutrinos” to Physical Review on Dec. 11, 1957, and a week later, Goldhaber told a Stanford University audience that the neutrino is left-handed, meaning that the weak interaction was probably one force. This work proved crucial to our understanding of the weak interaction, the force that governs nuclear beta decay.

“It was a real upheaval in our understanding of physics,” says Grodzins’ longtime colleague Stephen Steadman. The breakthrough was commemorated in 2008, with a conference at BNL on “Neutrino Helicity at 50.” 

Steadman also recalls Grodzins’ story about one night at Brookhaven, where he was working on an experiment that involved a radioactive source inside a chamber. Lee noticed that a vacuum pump wasn’t working, so he tinkered with it a while before heading home. Later that night, he gets a call from the lab. “They said, ‘Don’t go anywhere!’” recalls Steadman. It turns out the radiation source in the lab had exploded, and the pump filled the lab with radiation. “They were actually able to trace his radioactive footprints from the lab to his home,” says Steadman. “He kind of shrugged it off.”

The MIT years       

Grodzins joined the faculty of MIT in 1959, where he taught physics for four decades. He inherited Robley Evans’ Radiation Laboratory, which used radioactive sources to study properties of nuclei, and led the Relativistic Heavy Ion Group, which was affiliated with the LNS.

In 1972, he launched a program at BNL using the then-new Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator to study interactions of heavy ions with nuclei. “As the BNL tandem was getting commissioned, we started a program, together with Doug Cline at the University of Rochester, tandem to investigate Coulomb-nuclear interference,” says Steadman, a senior research scientist at LNS. “The experimental results were decisive but somewhat controversial at the time. We clearly detected the interference effect.” The experimental work was published in Physical Review Letters.

Grodzins’ team looked for super-heavy elements using the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Super-Hilac, investigated heavy-ion fission and other heavy-ion reactions, and explored heavy-ion transfer reactions. The latter research showed with precise detail the underlying statistical behavior of the transfer of nucleons between the heavy-ion projectile and target, using a theoretical statistical model of Surprisal Analysis developed by Rafi Levine and his graduate student. Recalls Steadman, “these results were both outstanding in their precision and initially controversial in interpretation.”

In 1985, he carried out the first computer axial tomographic experiment using synchrotron radiation, and in 1987, his group was involved in the first run of Experiment 802, a collaborative experiment with about 50 scientists from around the world that studied relativistic heavy ion collisions at Brookhaven. The MIT responsibility was to build the drift chambers and design the bending magnet for the experiment.

“He made significant contributions to the initial design and construction phases, where his broad expertise and knowledge of small area companies with unique capabilities was invaluable,” says George Stephans, physics senior lecturer and senior research scientist at MIT.

Professor emeritus of physics Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62 recalls working on a Mossbauer experiment to establish if photons changed frequency as they traveled through bright regions. “It was an idea held by some to explain the ‘apparent’ red shift with distance in our universe,” says Weiss. “We became great friends in the process, and of course, amateur cosmologists.”

“Lee was great for developing good ideas,” Steadman says. “He would get started on one idea, but then get distracted with another great idea. So, it was essential that the team would carry these experiments to their conclusion: they would get the papers published.”

MIT mentor

Before retiring in 1999, Lee supervised 21 doctoral dissertations and was an early proponent of women graduate students in physics. He also oversaw the undergraduate thesis of Sidney Altman, who decades later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For many years, he helped teach the Junior Lab required of all undergraduate physics majors. He got his favorite student evaluation, however, for a different course, billed as offering a “superficial overview” of nuclear physics. The comment read: “This physics course was not superficial enough for me.”

“He really liked to work with students,” says Steadman. “They could always go into his office anytime. He was a very supportive mentor.”

“He was a wonderful mentor, avuncular and supportive of all of us,” agrees Karl van Bibber ’72, PhD ’76, now at the University of California at Berkeley. He recalls handing his first paper to Grodzins for comments. “I was sitting at my desk expecting a pat on the head. Quite to the contrary, he scowled, threw the manuscript on my desk and scolded, ‘Don’t even pick up a pencil again until you’ve read a Hemingway novel!’ … The next version of the paper had an average sentence length of about six words; we submitted it, and it was immediately accepted by Physical Review Letters.”

Van Bibber has since taught the “Grodzins Method” in his graduate seminars on professional orientation for scientists and engineers, including passing around a few anthologies of Hemingway short stories. “I gave a copy of one of the dog-eared anthologies to Lee at his 90th birthday lecture, which elicited tears of laughter.”

Early in George Stephans’ MIT career as a research scientist, he worked with Grodzins’ newly formed Relativistic Heavy Ion Group. “Despite his wide range of interests, he paid close attention to what was going on and was always very supportive of us, especially the students. He was a very encouraging and helpful mentor to me, as well as being always pleasant and engaging to work with. He actively pushed to get me promoted to principal research scientist relatively early, in recognition of my contributions.”

“He always seemed to know a lot about everything, but never acted condescending,” says Stephans. “He seemed happiest when he was deeply engaged digging into the nitty-gritty details of whatever unique and unusual work one of these companies was doing for us.”

Al Lazzarini ’74, PhD ’78 recalls Grodzins’ investigations using proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) as a sensitive tool to measure trace elemental amounts. “Lee was a superb physicist,” says Lazzarini. “He gave an enthralling seminar on an investigation he had carried out on a lock of Napoleon’s hair, looking for evidence of arsenic poisoning.”

Robert Ledoux ’78, PhD ’81, a former professor of physics at MIT who is now program director of the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency with the Department of Energy, worked with Grodzins as both a student and colleague. “He was a ‘nuclear physicist’s physicist’ — a superb experimentalist who truly loved building and performing experiments in many areas of nuclear physics. His passion for discovery was matched only by his generosity in sharing knowledge.”

The research funding crisis starting in 1969 led Grodzins to become concerned that his graduate students would not find careers in the field. He helped form the Economic Concerns Committee of the American Physical Society, for which he produced a major report on the “Manpower Crisis in Physics” (1971), and presented his results before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at the Karlsruhe National Lab in Germany.   

Grodzins played a significant role in bringing the first Chinese graduate students to MIT in the 1970s and 1980s.

One of the students he welcomed was Huan Huang PhD ’90. “I am forever grateful to him for changing my trajectory,” says Huang, now at the University of California at Los Angeles. “His unwavering support and ‘go do it’ attitude inspired us to explore physics at the beginning of a new research field of high energy heavy ion collisions in the 1980s. I have been trying to be a ‘nice professor’ like Lee all my academic career.”

Even after he left MIT, Grodzins remained available for his former students. “Many tell me how much my lifestyle has influenced them, which is gratifying,” Huang says. “They’ve been a central part of my life. My biography would be grossly incomplete without them.”

Niton Corp. and post-MIT work

Grodzins liked what he called “tabletop experiments,” like the one used in his 1957 neutrino experiment, which involved a few people building a device that could fit on a tabletop. “He didn’t enjoy working in large collaborations, which nuclear physics embraced.” says Steadman. “I think that’s why he ultimately left MIT.”

In the 1980s, he launched what amounted to a new career in detection technology. In 1987, after developing a scanning proton-induced X-ray microspectrometer for use measuring elemental concentrations in air, he founded the Niton Corp., which developed, manufactured, and marketed test kits and instruments to measure radon gas in buildings, lead-based paint detection, and other nondestructive testing applications. (“Niton” is an obsolete term for radon.)

“At the time, there was a big scare about radon in New England, and he thought he could develop a radon detector that was inexpensive and easy to use,” says Steadman. “His radon detector became a big business.”

He later developed devices to detect explosives, drugs, and other contraband in luggage and cargo containers. Handheld devices used X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition of metal alloys and to detect other materials. The handheld XL Spectrum Analyzer could detect buried and surface lead on painted surfaces, to protect children living in older homes. Three Niton X-ray fluorescence analyzers earned R&D 100 awards.

“Lee was very technically gifted,” says Steadman.

In 1999, Grodzins retired from MIT and devoted his energies to industry, including directing the R&D group at Niton.

His sister Ethel Grodzins Romm was the president and CEO of Niton, followed by his son Hal. Many of Niton’s employees were MIT graduates. In 2005, he and his family sold Niton to Thermo Fisher Scientific, where Lee remained as a principal scientist until 2010.

In the 1990s, he was vice president of American Science and Engineering, and between the ages of 70 and 90, he was awarded three patents a year. 

“Curiosity and creativity don’t stop after a certain age,” Grodzins said to UNH Today. “You decide you know certain things, and you don’t want to change that thinking. But thinking outside the box really means thinking outside your box.”

“I miss his enthusiasm,” says Steadman. “I saw him about a couple of years ago and he was still on the move, always ready to launch a new effort, and he was always trying to pull you into those efforts.”

A better world

In the 1950s, Grodzins and other Brookhaven scientists joined the American delegation at the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.

Early on, he joined several Manhattan Project alums at MIT in their concern about the consequences of nuclear bombs. In Vietnam-era 1969, Grodzins co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists, which calls for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and toward solving pressing environmental and social problems. He served as its chair in 1970 and 1972. He also chaired committees for the American Physical Society and the National Research Council.

As vice president for advanced products at American Science and Engineering, which made homeland security equipment, he became a consultant on airport security, especially following the 9/11 attacks. As an expert witness, he testified at the celebrated trial to determine whether Pan Am was negligent for the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and he took part in a weapons inspection trip on the Black Sea. He also was frequently called as an expert witness on patent cases.

In 1999, Grodzins founded the nonprofit Cornerstones in Science, a public library initiative to improve public engagement with science. Based originally at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine, Cornerstones now partners with libraries in Maine, Arizona, Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California. Among their initiatives was one that has helped supply telescopes to libraries and astronomy clubs around the country.

“He had a strong sense of wanting to do good for mankind,” says Steadman.

Awards

Grodzins authored more than 170 technical papers and holds more than 60 U.S. patents. His numerous accolades included being named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1964 and 1971, and a senior von Humboldt fellow in 1980. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received an honorary doctor of science degree from Purdue University in 1998.

In 2021, the Denver X-Ray Conference gave Grodzins the Birks Award in X-Florescence Spectrometry, for having introduced “a handheld XRF unit which expanded analysis to in-field applications such as environmental studies, archeological exploration, mining, and more.”

Personal life

One evening in 1955, shortly after starting his work at Brookhaven, Grodzins decided to take a walk and explore the BNL campus. He found just one building that had lights on and was open, so he went in. Inside, a group was rehearsing a play. He was immediately smitten with one of the actors, Lulu Anderson, a young biologist. “I joined the acting company, and a year-and-a-half later, Lulu and I were married,” Grodzins had recalled. They were happily married for 62 years, until Lulu’s death in 2019.

They raised two sons, Dean, now of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hal Grodzins, who lives in Maitland, Florida. Lee and Lulu owned a succession of beloved huskies, most of them named after physicists.

After living in Arlington, Massachusetts, the Grodzins family moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1972 and bought a second home a few years later in Brunswick, Maine. Starting around 1990, Lee and Lulu spent every weekend, year-round, in Brunswick. In both places, they were avid supporters of their local libraries, museums, theaters, symphonies, botanical gardens, public radio, and TV stations.

Grodzins took his family along to conferences, fellowships, and other invitations. They all lived in Denmark for two sabbaticals, in 1964-65 and 1971-72, while Lee worked at the Neils Bohr Institute. They also traveled together to China for a month in 1975, and for two months in 1980. As part of the latter trip, they were among the first American visitors to Tibet since the 1940s. Lee and Lulu also traveled the world, from Antarctica to the Galapagos Islands to Greece.

His homes had basement workshops well-stocked with tools. His sons enjoyed a playroom he built for them in their Arlington home. He also once constructed his own high-fidelity record player, patched his old Volvo with fiberglass, changed his own oil, and put on the winter tires and chains himself. He was an early adopter of the home computer.

“His work in science and technology was part of a general love of gadgets and of fixing and making things,” his son, Dean, wrote in a Facebook post.

Lee is survived by Dean, his wife, Nora Nykiel Grodzins, and their daughter, Lily; and by Hal and his wife Cathy Salmons. 

A remembrance and celebration for Lee Grodzins is planned for this summer. Donations in his name may be made to Cornerstones of Science.

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The M.Tech, or Master of Technology, is a postgraduate degree that is supposed to equip engineers with higher technical knowledge and specialised skills in various engineering domains. As technology develops at breakneck speed, pursuing an M.Tech engineering is becoming increasingly vital for those wishing to deepen their expertise in artificial intelligence, data science, or cybersecurity. This article will provide an all-inclusive overview of M.Tech courses, specialisations, and the career prospects awaiting graduates in this dynamic field.

Overview of M.Tech Engineering

This degree program usually involves two years and consists of coursework and research. The nature of the study is such that it provides much theoretical knowledge coupled with practical engagements through projects in the laboratory environment. M.Tech eligibility for entry usually mandates a B.Tech or B.E. award in a pertinent field, typically requiring competitive entrances, such as the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering and entrance tests tailored to specific institutions.

Courses for M.Tech Engineering

The M.Tech programs expose students to a mixture of core subjects vital to engineering, including Advanced Engineering Mathematics, Digital Systems, Engineering Mechanics, and a significant number of electives. These help students explore particular interests within the specialities, such as Embedded Systems, Data Mining, or Renewable Energy Technologies. A crucial component of the M.Tech experience is project work or thesis, where students carry out original research, developing practical skills and a deepened understanding of their specific field.

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Specialisation may significantly determine graduates' careers. Some of the most recent popular specialisations include Computer Science and Engineering, Information Technology, Communication Engineering, Structural Engineering, VLSI Design, Power Systems, Data Science and analytics, Cybersecurity, and Machine Learning and AI.

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The admission process for M.Tech programs is competitive, often requiring candidates to score well on entrance exams like GATE. Preparation strategies include detailed study of core concepts in engineering, previous years' papers, and enrolling in coaching courses if necessary. Most of the time, the application process involves sending academic records, entrance exam scores, and sometimes personal statements to the institutions of interest. Candidates have to keep tabs on major timelines like the examination dates and deadlines for filling out the applications so they don't miss out.

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Many graduates find employment easily in various industries like IT, manufacturing, construction, and R&D. Typically, M. Tech graduates often find employment in roles such as software developers, project managers, research scientists, and data analysts. Many multinationals also hire M.Tech students. Besides, with the M. Tech degree comes an opportunity to pursue higher education at a PhD level, which results in a full-time research-based career. Starting salaries vary a lot, but as of the recent trends, they usually range between INR 6-15 lakhs per annum, with good scope for growth in pay as the experience increases.

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To summarise, M.Tech is an excellent opportunity for students to acquire knowledge and career opportunities in various engineering fields. A student with the right specialisation, practical experience, and skill set can advance in his or her career by many folds. If you are considering your next educational step, look into engineering colleges in Pune could be a promising path. Do share your thoughts or experiences about M.Tech studies; we would love to hear from you!

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The Disappearance of Ettore Majorana & The Key to Quantum Computing

“Ettore was too intelligent. If he has decided to disappear, no one will be able to find him.” 

-Enrico Fermi

Ettore Majorana was born in 1906 to a wealthy family in eastern Sicily, where his father, an engineer by trade, served as the Director of the Catania telephone company. Ettore was shown to be gifted in mathematics from a young age, being able to multiply three-digit numbers or extract cube roots all in his head. At the same time he was a shy child, often hiding under a table when asked to show his abilities, and would not emerge until he had shouted out the answer from underneath. 

In 1921 the Majorana family moved to Rome, where Ettore had already been sent to attend boarding school. Ettore completed boarding school in 1923, earning a diploma in classical studies and immediately entering an engineering preparatory program, which he graduated from in 1925. He then began a three-year engineering school, although he never graduated: Emilio Segrè, a classmate and friend of Ettore’s, had recently dropped out of engineering school in order to study theoretical physics at the University of Rome, and he convinced Ettore to follow the same path. They would both go on to study under a then 27 year-old Enrico Fermi.

After Ettore’s admittance to the university, he met with Fermi briefly and was shown some of Fermi’s work on his statistical model of the atom. After observing some of the figures Fermi had generated with the help of a mechanical calculator, Ettore left and returned the following day with his own set of figures he had calculated, and seeing that they matched Fermi’s exactly, announced Fermi to be correct. Within a week he had begun his thesis work with Fermi which would be completed one year later in 1929, and receive a grade of 110/110, with distinction. Ettore would continue publishing papers for the next few years, and 1932 he received his teaching diploma from the university, with the examination board reporting he possessed a “complete mastery of theoretical physics.”

Although Ettore was a proven genius in his field, he published very few papers when compared with his peers, and viewed his own work as boring. Once he had solved a problem or developed a theory, he no longer thought of it as interesting and showed no desire to publish his findings. One example was related to the discovery of a new particle: After reading that Irène Curie and Frédérick Joliot had identified a neutral particle entering matter and expelling a proton, Ettore believed the particle was yet unknown to science. At the time, the only known neutral particles were photons (i.e. light), but Ettore understood that a photon would not have enough mass to remove a proton, and the particle must be something new. Shortly afterward, this theory was confirmed in James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron.

In 1933, Ettore received a grant of 12,000 Lire (~80,000 current USD) in order to travel to Leipzig, Germany and work with Werner Heisenburg. Ettore arrived in Leipzig in January of 1933, and his stay was punctuated by the appointment of Adolf Hitler as the chancellor of Nazi Germany, and the early days of dictatorship. After roughly six months in Leipzig, Ettore also traveled to Copenhagen for a three month visit with Niels Bohr. After this trip, however, Ettore ceased publishing papers entirely. It is not known why exactly he developed writer’s block, although it is often attributed to a serious case of gastritis developed in Germany which led to continued health issues. 

Ettore’s academic interests deviated from physics in the following years, and he began to study philosophy, including the works of Schopenhauer. (A philosophical pessimist and atheist) He also branched out into studies of economics and politics, seemingly leaving behind his interest in physics until 1937, when a selection of new physics chairs for Italian universities took place, and Fermi encouraged Ettore to apply for a position.

Although three candidates had already been selected for the three open positions, the examination committee requested that he supply a new paper for the consideration of his application. Based on his own previous research and theories, Ettore wrote and published his final paper, “Symmetrical theory of the electron and the positron,” which built on the theory at the time that every particle of matter had an antimatter counterpart. (This theory would eventually be verified by Ettore’s school friend Emilio Segrè) Ettore sought to show that the equations used to demonstrate the theory of antimatter also suggested that another type of particle could exist, one which was both matter and antimatter at the same time.

Unfortunately, Ettore was not selected for any of the physics chair positions, likely due to the son of an examination committee member occupying one of the chosen positions. Instead, the committee recommended him for a teaching position in Naples, which he accepted and began in January 1938, at a salary of 26,000 Lire. (~105,000 current USD) But after teaching for a few months, Ettore abruptly withdrew all of his savings from his bank account, and boarded an overnight boat to Palermo, Sicily on March 23. After arriving in Sicily, he sent a letter, followed by a telegram, to Antonio Carrelli, the Director of the Naples Physics Institute. A second letter was received by Carrelli shortly after the first. The first letter read as follows:

“March 25 1938

Dear Carrelli, I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship and the sympathy you gave me over the past months. I ask you to remind me to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11 pm tonight, possibly later too. E. Majorana”

A telegram was then sent instructing Carrelli to disregard the first letter he will soon receive, followed later by the second letter:

“March 26, 1938

Dear Carrelli, I hope you got my telegram and my letter at the same time. The sea rejected me and I’ll be back tomorrow at the Hotel Bologna traveling perhaps with this letter. However, I have the intention of giving up teaching. Don’t think I’m like an Ibsen heroine, because the case is different. I’m at your disposal for further details. E. Majorana”

Carrelli immediately contacted Ettore’s family, and Ettore’s brother traveled to Naples where he determined that Ettore had boarded a return boat to Naples from Palermo on March 26, and shared a cabin with a professor from the University of Palermo. From this point on, any record of Ettore Majorana disappears, and nothing is known for certain about his whereabouts or fate.

Many theories have been put forward by those close to Majorana of his disappearance and possible death. The most obvious explanation is that Majorana, after attempting once in Palermo, took his own life on the boat back to Naples. This is supported by his notes sent to Carrelli, and proposed by several colleagues and friends of Majorana in Rome, including Emilio Segrè. Majorana’s family disputes these claims, and insists that he was too devout of a Catholic to commit suicide and instead retreated into a monastery, citing the fact that Majorana had withdrawn his savings before departing. This is supported by Majorana’s priest in Naples during this time, Monsignor Riccieri, who said that although he could not reveal details due to the sanctity of the confessional, Majorana had been experiencing “mystical crises.” Finally, several theories exist around Majorana’s advanced knowledge of quantum physics and the development of nuclear weaponry. Some believe that due to the volatile state of Nazi and Fascist politics in Europe at the time, Majorana may have been murdered for his knowledge which could have led to atomic weapons, possibly by Nazi agents seeking to tie up loose ends related to Heisenberg’s work. Others argue that knowing the potential for nuclear weapons and the power of the knowledge that he held, he decided to disappear, and fled to South America.

The South America theory seems to be the most well supported, with a report after his disappearance that Majorana had checked into a hotel in Buenos Aires. Detectives were dispatched to investigate, but they could not find any conclusive evidence that Majorana had stayed at the hotel. Unsubstantiated reports of sightings in Argentina or Venezuela came and went in the ensuing years, and eventually the case went cold. However, in 2011, the Rome Attorney’s Office announced a new investigation into Majorana’s disappearance, based on a statement made by a witness who had allegedly met with Majorana in Buenos Aires after the end of WWII. A photograph which allegedly showed Majorana was also analyzed by the Italian police’s RIS (Department of Scientific Investigations), who concluded the photo was of Majorana. Finally, in 2015 the Rome Attorney’s Office issued a statement that based on new evidence, Majorana had been living in Valencia, Venezuela between 1955 and 1959, and declared the investigation into his disappearance officially closed. This conclusion is still disputed to this day, with many not believing there was enough evidence to verify the theory.

In 2024, we may not have answers as to what really happened to Ettore Majorana, but we do know that his work has continued to be relevant past the nuclear era and into the era of quantum computing. Much like the nuclear arms race of the 1930s and 40s, a different type of arms race is currently taking place between tech corporations and physics researchers: one to discover the elusive Majarona particle described in his 1937 paper. 

The problem with the majority of quantum computing systems is their use of an atom for the computational quantum bit (qubit). Atoms, being made up of subatomic particles, are inherently noisy, and when outside environmental noise is added on, this creates a very unstable system. Due to this, current quantum computers need to be refrigerated to extremely low temperatures to function without errors. 

In 1997, the physicist Alexei Kitaev theorised a solution to this issue by taking advantage of an interaction between electrons and the empty space between them: Under certain conditions, a group of electrons and the “holes” around them can sync up and behave like a single particle. Shuffling the fragments of these quasi-particles around changes the probability of their final state, and because the outcome depends on how the fragments were shuffled, the particles have a sort of “memory." 

Kitaev realised that this behavior could apply to quantum computing, substituting an electron quasi-particle for the atom in a qubit. The key to carrying out computations with this system relies on linking an electron and a hole so perfectly that the electron effectively splits, producing two half-electron/half-holes. These particles would exist with zero charge and zero energy, the same as the particles which Majorana had theorised in his final paper a year before his disappearance. Since the electron is split between matter and antimatter, it does not technically exist in one place, making it unaffected by environmental noise. And because of the “memory” these electron quasi-particles have, they would also generate far fewer errors than atom-based qubits, requiring fewer qubits to process the same amount of data.

For the past 20 years, researchers at Microsoft, Google, and the University of California Santa Barbara, among others, have been attempting to create the Majorana particle. Many have claimed to be successful, but under further scrutiny were shown to have missed the mark. But work on the Majorana particle continues, with many physicists seeing it as quantum computing’s only hope of turning delicate, unstable devices into practical, powerful computers.

The story of Ettore Majorana’s life and legacy will always be occupied by countless theories. Whether pertaining to his academic work, or his disappearance, his life creates more questions than answers. Research into Majorana continues to this day, with a folder found in 2020 in the archive of his colleague and friend Emilio Segrè, with instructions that it is not to be opened until 2057. While we may never know what truly happened after Ettore’s disappearance, we do know that he was among the greatest physics minds of his generation, and his work will continue to inspire scientific advances into the future.

“Because you see, in the world there are various categories of scientists: people of a secondary or tertiary standing, who do their best but never go very far. There are also those of high standing, who come to discoveries of great importance, fundamental for the development of science. But then there are the geniuses, like Galileo and Newton. Well, Ettore was one of these. Majorana had what no one else in the world had ..."

-Enrico Fermi

Citations:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/173/1/012019/pdf

https://www.science.org/content/article/ghostly-quasiparticle-rooted-century-old-mystery-unlock-quantum-computings-potential

https://cerncourier.com/a/ettore-majorana-genius-and-mystery/

https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html

Physics Who’s Who Cheat Sheet & Further Reading:

Enrico Fermi: Italian and naturalized American physicist, member of the Manhattan project, and originator of the Fermi Paradox. (If there are aliens, “Where is everybody?”) Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938.

Emilio Segrè: Italian and naturalized American physicist, discovered the antiproton along with two new elements. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.

Irène Curie and Frédérick Joliot: French physical chemists, and the daughter and son-in-law of Marie Curie. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the discovery of new artificially prepared radioactive isotopes.

James Chadwick: English physicist, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for the discovery of the neutron.

Werner Heisenburg: German physicist, considered the founder of quantum mechanics, and was one of the main scientists behind Germany’s nuclear weapons program during WWII. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.

Niels Bohr: Danish physicist, made early contributions to ideas of atomic structure and quantum theory, and developed the Bohr model of the atom. (The one you probably learned about in high school) Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Majorana’s Final Published Paper:

http://www.physics.umanitoba.ca/u/tapash/Majorana_1937.pdf

A Brilliant Darkness, by João Magueijo:

https://archive.org/details/brilliantdarknes0000magu

What is Real, by Giorgio Agamben:

https://archive.org/details/giorgio-agamben-what-is-real

The Moro Affair and The Mystery of Majorana, by Leonardo Sciascia

https://archive.org/details/moroaffairandmys0000scia