A young fisherman in a distant past looks across the sea and ponders: "What an unimaginably big stretch of water!" He has no idea where it ends or even if it ends. But he knows one thing: over time spans of many years the rainfall into the sea adds up to a lot of water, and therefore the sea must be rising. This means that in a number of generations the sea will inevitably flood the lands, making the world an inhabitable place. But it also means that in the past the sea must have been much shallower. Too shallow for fish to thrive in. An inevitable conclusion forces itself upon our young fisherman. His generation is a very privileged one. A generation that lives late enough to find fish to feed on, and early enough to find land to live on. A remarkable coincidence.

In the It-From-Bit series I have reported extensively on Verlinde's 'entropic gravity' concept. I have also provided you with an illustrative 'mikado universe' picture of entropic gravity. This got topped off with my own intuitive notion that in an entropic universe, not only gravity, but also accelerated cosmic expansion emerges. As a result, in one fell swoop, entropy eliminates the need for a fundamental force of gravity as well as the need for dark energy. 

Imagine you are tasked to build the ultimate computer memory. You are provided with an unlimited budget and all the resources you need. 

How big a memory capacity could you build? 

Which country does not belong in the following list: Burma, Liberia, Somalia, United States?

OK, that was not too difficult. As astute Scientific Blogging reader you got that right. Somalia has made the step to metric (SI) units already half a century ago, and therefore does not belong in one list together with the three remaining countries that haven't embraced the metric system yet. 

With the press of a button, yesterday Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands activated LOFAR and started the recording of its first official image. LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) is by all standards a big radio telescope. Centered in the North East of the Netherlands, it stretches far over the Dutch borders into Northwest Europe.


LOFAR location spread across Europe

Rock-paper-scissors, RPS. Who hasn't played it as a child? The game, known by a variety of names such as Rochambeau, Jan-ken and Kauw-bauwi-bo, is played all over the world. The rules are straightforward, and can be explained to a five-year old:

Both players simultaneously make one of three gestures representing rock (clenched fist), paper (open hand) or scissors (index and middle finger apart). Rock gets beaten (wrapped) by paper, paper gets cut by scissors, and scissors get smashed by rock. Identical gestures create a tie. The objective is to select a gesture that beats that of the opponent.