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Harmonic oscillators form the basis of much of our modern technologies from cell phones to GPS to radio and TV. When multiple frequencies are present in a given signal, we typically rely on the frequency domain (e.g., FFTs) for characterization rather than the time domain....

Martin Armstrong has an excellent blog post about the date and time corresponding to one of the most important irrational numbers in all of mathematics, science and engineering. Of course, this only works for those countries in which the month number is placed before the day...

The European Space Agency has announced that the next two Galileo satellites are on schedule to be launched March 27. The first experimental Galileo satellite was launched in late 2005 and the second was launched in April 2008. Both were decommissioned in Summer 2012. The first...

Boston Dynamics’ latest creation is amazing for at least two reasons. First, it is easily able to traverse a variety of terrains (including hills and stairs), can ‘trot’ over flat surfaces and is able to maintain its balance despite severe disturbances. However,...

The dash cam footage of the Taiwanese plane crash indicates a possible multiple-failure scenario. Initial reports indicate the plane lost power on one engine. This, by itself, might cause a loss of altitude but it does not explain the sharp left roll to 90 degrees just before the...

A large asteroid will pass by Earth on Monday/Tuesday (Jan 26-27) providing amateur astronomers a unique viewing opportunity. An asteroid is considered to be of considerable concern when it is larger than 100 meters and passes within 20 Earth-to-Moon distances. Asteroid 2004 BL86...

European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain briefed the media on January 16, 2015 for the traditional start-of-year press conference on the activities and challenges for 2015. Dordain discussed the 22Aug2014 failure of the first two Galileo full-operational...

As of this writing, the search for the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 ‘black boxes’ is now entering the third week. Searchers are homing in on these data recorders (see my recent blog post here) but the difficulties are reminiscent of the two-year search needed to find the...

There has been conflicting news today regarding the so-called ‘black boxes’ (cockpit voice and flight data recorders) of AirAsia Flight QZ8501. A senior Indonesian government official was quoted as saying “The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in...

If you have seen the image of the robot mosquito, it looks very impressive. Various websites have described it as being perfectly camouflaged. It can spy on you without you even realizing that it is not an insect. There’s just one small problem. It is not real. It is not...