标签: orion

  In the case of the Doppler panel, imagine the sound a train's horn makes as it approaches you and then passes you and recedes into the distance. As the train approaches, the sound waves are compressed (as shown to the right of the sculpture); as the train recedes, the sound waves are stretched out (as shown to the left of this image). With regard to the Orion's belt panel, this is a visualization of the 42 strongest stars in a 6x7 degree section of the constellation of Orion, showing Orion's belt and sword as imaged through a hole the size of a pencil-tip (0.1 mm), where the central 99% of the hole is blocked. The ring patterns from the 42 different stars will then interfere with each other producing a very complex result. This panel was produced by convolving a point spread function with the 42 point sources from a star catalog. When we returned inside the building and started to walk around, I was surprised to see pictures of yours truly plastered everywhere announcing my talk.     My presentation was scheduled to start at 12:15pm. So, at around 11:55am we strolled up to the lecture theater to make sure that I could use their equipment. The theater itself was huge (much bigger than it appears in the photo below). We entered at the top to see tier-after-tier of chairs arranged like a movie theater.       You can only imagine my surprise to find that the lecture theater was jam-packed full. "Oh wow," I thought to myself, "they must really want to hear what I have to say." And then the bell rang and everyone got up and left (grin). The image above shows the state of play about 20 seconds after the lecture had just ended. Happily, my audience soon began to arrive, and we ended up with quite a crowd. The image below shows the scene after I had just finished my presentation and folks were coming down to chat with me. I'm the guy facing the crowd and furthest away from the camera (Joseph took this picture, which may explain the blurred effect :-)   And how did my talk go? Well, it would be immodest of me to "blow my own horn" as they say, but I did receive quite a number of complements at the time and also via email afterwards. For example, I received one email that read as follows: Dear Max. I found your talk today both exciting, inspiring, and entertaining. Three of my favorites. ;-) The writer then goes on to say that when he was young he hung out with some friends who built a computer. He didn't have any money to buy electronic components so he instead went into the software side of things. He finished as follows: Now that you have some of my background, I will get to the real point of what I wanted to say... Thank you for your talk and converzation today. You brought some of that old glow, optimism and happiness of the early years back to me. Don't misunderstand, I have not been unhappy. It is just that you brought to the top of my stack of thoughts that there is so much more cool stuff to enjoy. Well, what can I say? This is high praise indeed. I have to tell you that receiving feedback like this is what makes all of the time it takes to pull one of these presentations together so worthwhile. Last but not least (for this column), the following image shows me after my talk. We were walking past the library portion of the building when we spotted yet another poster advertising my presentation.   The white box in my hands is a present from the university. It contains a miniature model in cast aluminum of one of the "Equations in Stainless Steel" panels that adorn the outside of the building. The one I have represents the interference patterns caused by someone singing a pure high C (C6 = 1046.5Hz) while walking toward one wall – and away from another – at a brisk stroll of 10m per second. (Just in case you were wondering, a temperature of 15C is assumed ). If you are ever passing by my office, please feel free to drop in and I would be delighted to show it to you. Following my talk we had a wonderful lunch with the attendees, and then we toured the department to see all of the research they are doing. This includes some incredible work with FPGA reconfiguration, self-learning robots, interactive music systems, and... but I'm afraid this will all have to wait until the next installment of my Norwegian Odyssey...