Seeing Molecules: Kekulé's Dream Writ Large

As a chemist in a former life, I can't help but comment on this watershed moment in science, even though it's probably been blogged to death. Nanotechnologists at IBM Zürich have imaged the naturally occurring organic molecule pentacene (essentially, 5 benzene ring-molecules bolted together in a row). Why is this a big deal?

Bandwidth and Latency are Related Like Overclocked Chocolates

Prior to the appearance of special relativity theory (SRT) in 1905, physicists were under the impression that space and time are completely independent aspects of reality described by Newton's equations of motion. Einstein's great insight, that led to SRT, was that space and time are intimately related through the properties of light.

Space and time are related

Instead of objects simply being located at some arbitrary position x at some arbitrary time t, everything moves on a world-line given by the space-time pair (x, ct), where c is the universal speed of light. Notice that x has the engineering dimensions of length and so does the new variable ct: a speed multiplied by time. In Einstein's picture, everything is a length; there is no separate time metric. Time is now part of what has become known as space-time—because nobody came up with a better word.

Data + Models == Insight

Al Bundy, of the TV show Married with Children, understood it and performance engineers should too. What am I talking about? The theme music for that show is the tune "Love and Marriage" as sung by Frank Sinatra. Just like the song says about love and marriage, so it is with measurements and models ... You can't have one without the other.