Thursday, August 6, 2020

How To Install ANDROID on an iPhone?

How To Install ANDROID on an iPhone?

There's a longstanding idea that if you buy something, you should be able to use it however you see fit, within reason, of course, but Apple is notorious for making it very difficult to install alternative operating systems on its iPhones, even if they've been paid off in full and are not part of a carrier financing program.

Now, although usage restrictions are familiar for software where the idea is that you pay for a license to use the software, rather than the right to do whatever you want with the source code, this doesn't make as much sense in the context of hardware, I mean, the physical device may be protected by patents, but you still own the actual silicon and glass that makes up your iPhone, but one team of developers recently found a way to get Android installed on iPhones.

The system goes by the name Project Sandcastle, and it uses a specific jailbreak, which you can learn more about up here, to bypass Apple's restrictions and get Android up and running at least to an extent, but how exactly did the team at Corellium, a cybersecurity startup, pull this off?
One of the big keys is that they built a virtualized version of the iPhone that runs iOS on a Corellium-built virtual machine, in fact, because Corellium sells this iPhone VM, they're currently embroiled in a legal battle with Apple.

Their in-house virtual machine allowed them to test exploits without running the risk of bricking one expensive iPhone after another, as we're pulling off the actual feat of running Android on an iPhone, the team had to write a number of custom drivers, including for NVMe support, although Android is known for working on a wide variety of hardware, there weren't drivers available that could link an operating system other than iOS with the hardware inside an iPhone.

Corellium also had to adjust how Android handles memory as the iPhone processor family handles data in different sized pages than what you would see in an Android phone, additionally, it turned out that iOS initializes multiple processor cores, which all modern iPhones contain, differently than Android which caused further complexity, but these setbacks, there is now a working beta of Sandcastle that you can install on your iPhone after using the checkra1n exploit to jailbreak it.

This particular jailbreak takes advantage of a security flaw in the iPhone's bootrom, which is the first thing that runs when you power up the device, the flaw is a hardware level issue, so it's been described as unpatchable until Apple significantly changes their hardware design, but although getting Android to run on an iPhone was definitely an impressive and cool feat, there are unsurprisingly significant caveats.

Right now, the only devices that can run Project Sandcastle are the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, as well as seventh gen iPod Touch, and once you get it up and running, don't expect every Android feature to work the way that it would on a true Android phone, notably, there's currently no support for audio, cellular connectivity, Bluetooth, or the camera, and don't expect GPU support for gaming either, however, multitouch, USB, and WiFi all work.

So if you're interested in simply using Android to connect to the internet on an iPhone and browse, go ahead and give it a shot. however, do take note that because of the nature of how checkra1n works, it disappears whenever you restart your device, so you shouldn't be relying on Project Sandcastle, if this wasn't already clear, as a longterm OS for an iPhone that you use as a daily driver, even if you could put up with the limited functionality.

But given the relatively short length of time that the Android port took to develop into a functional beta, could we see an unsanctioned yet fully functional Android running on an iPhone in the future?

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS: Invented Amazing Things


Top 10 GENIUS KIDS: Invented Amazing Things

Most of the things we use in everyday life were invented by adults but you'd be surprised how many products have been invented by children genius children with incredible minds here are the top 10 unbelievable child inventions number.

10 Snowmobile

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

If you're trying to get somewhere in the snow there's only one type of vehicle you'll want to use to get there quickly and have fun while you're doing it a snowmobile they become a vital way to keep communities connected in colder regions but amazingly this wasn't the idea of a seasoned inventor the first snowmobile was created by a 15 year old boy Joseph Armand Bombardier was interested in mechanics and in 1922 he proudly showed his parents his invention that he had made by mounting engine from a Ford Model T unto forerunners and attached a handmade propeller to the back in trials this enables him to travel half a mile across the snow before it stopped and became somewhat of a life passion of his to perfect design in 1959 Bombardier then 52 years old released the ski-doo which was the world's first superlight model of a snowmobile.

9 Braille

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

In a world war communication and information is presented in ways that are so reliant on the ability to see and hear it can be frustratingly difficult for those with impairments to interact the way they should be able to Louis Braille learned this the hard way when at the age of three he contracted an eye infection that would leave him without sight for the rest of his life the next nine years he struggled to read by tracing his finger around the outline of raised letters on specialized paper and soon realized that individual letters were quite difficult to differentiate through this method and it was often virtually impossible to identify specific words by the time he had turned 12 he was given the opportunity to learn a method of silent communication that had been developed by the French military but still this proved to be far more complicated than he thought it should be he was left with only one option he created his own way of writing which consisted of raised bumps on paper that the tips of the fingers can easily identify this method became known as Braille and is still used worldwide to this day having made life so much easier for people limited site it's incredible to think it was invented by a child.

8 Calculator

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

Nowadays if you need to make a quick calculation you only need to reach for your smartphone to gain access to a powerful computer things used to be far more complicated than that, it might surprise you to know though that the first mechanical calculators were actually introduced in the mid 17th century and even more incredible was the fact that they were designed by a child prodigy Blaise Pascal he had been educated by his father who was a local tax collector and turned his interests of physics at a very young age his studied required the use of advanced mathematics and he found it tedious to calculate everything on paper so set his mind on finding a quicker solution he spent three years of his latter teen years trying to perfect his idea after building 50 prototypes he finally made something that worked which is now known as a Pascal calculator this invention was at the forefront of automation and as well as being the first mechanical calculator is arguably one of the earliest types of computer to ever be built so much of the tech we rely on in modern life can be traced back to this making Pascal one of the most influential inventors to have ever lived.

7 Christmas Lights

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

Every year when Christmas comes around the world is lit up in a blaze of light when people decorate their trees houses and buildings with countless colorful bulbs this wasn't always the way things were done though and only started happening in the 20th century for then people would decorate their trees with candles and even though they involved having open flames on dry trees they were seen as being far safer than the mysterious electrical methods of creating light that were being introduced at the turn of the century eventually though people began to start trusting electric lights but they were still extremely expensive in 1917 however supposedly after a fire in New York that have been caused by candles on a Christmas tree fifteen-year-old Albert sadaqa saw an opportunity and developed some novelty lights from his parents company for use on trees soon there was more demand that he could cope with and by 1925 he and several other companies combined to form the Noma Electric Company and dominate a market for decades to come.

6 Walking Battery

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

We've all been there it's been a long day out and you need to make a call but your phone's batteries somehow completely drain there aren't always powerpoints nearby and not everyone's prepared enough to have a backup battery with them wherever they go but in 2014 a 15 year old child genius revealed his solution to this problem to the world angelou casimiro from the philippines had designed a device that's worn around the ankle and can generate an electrical charge he'd realized that the average person takes 7,000 steps per day and it seemed like a use of energy that could be harnessed for the technology that we take around with us well it doesn't produce enough to keep a device like a phone charged constantly it gives enough extra juice to be able to power it up to make that important call or message in tests he was able to generate enough to use a phone for ten minutes after playing basketball for two hours but it's not just phones that will benefit from this his main aim was to provide lighting to poor rural communities with no mains access the device was showcased at the Google science fair in 2014 and since then he's gone on to develop a series of further devices making him one of the most prolific child inventors of the time we are constantly.

5 Baby Hot Seat

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

Despite every parent's best intentions it's a fact of life that sometimes things can be forgotten and technology can be instrumental in making everyone's lives easier having begun inventing at the age of 11 Alyssa Chavez had her tragic stories of children dying after being left in hot cars and decided to do something about it by her mid-teens she had developed a new product called the baby hot seat with the intent to make tragedies like these a thing of the past the idea behind it is simple but deployed in an incredibly easy to use way she began exploring different alarm technologies that were available and adapted them for this purpose the pressure-sensitive device is placed in the child seat in a car and is connected to the smartphone of the adult responsible for them if the child is left in the car when it's locked the alarm will trigger to remind the adult that they left infant behind she was granted the patent on her design at the age of 17 which made her the youngest latina patent holder in the US and has given her the opportunity to continue developing this product and to explore other ideas in the range.

4 Electric Television

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

Virtually every home in the US has a television and many have more than just one when you look at them you can see how much technological know-how has gone into their design likely the result of rooms of engineers and designers deciding on how best to build them but amazingly the first ever electronic TV was created by a child Philo Farnsworth has been fascinated with electronics ever since he first had a long-distance phone call with a relative despite living in a home without electricity until the age of 14 he was at high school when he began developing a means of transmitting images via radio waves in the same way as audio could be while several other inventors around the world had invented crude means of image generation on a screen and demonstrated a television based on rotating discs Farnsworth's invention which he showed to the world in 1927 was the first recognizable ancestor to the sets that we use today it used scanning electrons to project an image onto a screen and the first image he transmitted on two it was a line according to the stories from the time an investor had asked him when they'd see dollars on the thing at which point he turned to the camera of the image of a dollar sign but it wouldn't be too long until they all benefited from the invention just 12 years later RCA paid to use his patents and were the first company to sell TV sets across the u.s.

3 Iaid

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

Most inventions that solve a problem are created by people who directly experienced that problem for themselves there's something about a child's incredible capability for compassion towards others that led to the Iaid being developed when Alex Dean's was 12 years old he saw a visually impaired woman struggling to cross a busy street on her own he became sure that he would be able to design something to help even though he didn't immediately know what and spent his free time over the next three years working on the problem his solution was a product that tries to imitate a bats ability of echolocation and uses ultrasonic sensors to scan the surroundings with four sensors attached to a belt a signal is sent to a joystick that is used to inform the user of the location of obstacles in 2015 he won a design prize because of this invention but he's not done yet he plans to keep refining it and is determined to use everything that he's learned to create something that has far more use than the current version does.

2 Superman

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

In 1932 geeky 16 year old students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met each other for the first time and knew that they were destined for great things together little did they know at this time that they were about to invent one of the most influential characters in literary history that would spearhead an entire genre of fiction for decades to come they had created a number of characters that were featured in new fun and Detective Comics but they struggled to find a place for their favorite creation an alien that wore blue and red clothes had super-strength and could fly they had been developing their Superman for several years before he finally made his first appearance in Action Comics number one and the rest was history there's a dark side to this story however because the two were only paid 130 dollars for the rights to the character that would go on to generate billions following a dispute with the publisher they weren't even credited as having created him and it was only after a public campaign during the release of the first Hollywood movie at their place in comic book history was rightfully acknowledged.

1 Swimming Flippers

Top 10 GENIUS KIDS Invented Amazing Things

While we're definitely designed for moving across land humans aren't too bad at swimming through water too we definitely aren't as fast as animals that are adapted for that environment though and it was from looking at fish and other marine life that a young Benjamin Franklin came upon the idea of swimming flippers he realized that he could travel through the water faster if he had a larger surface area to push with and his first design was a handheld fin made from oval wooden planks that had holes in the middle for his hands the designs have of course come on leaps and bounds since these first prototypes but it shows how one of history's most successful inventors was already analyzing the world around him and creating life enhancing designs at an impressively young age. 

Friday, July 17, 2020

Stop Using Zoom: Is Zoom Getting Banned

Stop Using Zoom: Is Zoom Getting Banned

As difficult as isolation and social distancing have been for many of us, imagine how much more unpleasant things would be without the tech that keeps us all connected, and perhaps nothing has exploded in popularity recently as much as Zoom, the teleconferencing and video chat software that has seen huge levels of adoption worldwide since the start of the COVID pandemic.

But now the app is being banned left and right, everyone from companies like Google and SpaceX, to agencies like NASA and the Australian military to the entire government of Taiwan has forbidden their people from using Zoom. But why?

Well there have been a number of well-publicized security problems with Zoom, which is a little strange considering that we don't really worry all that much about having our video calls on other platforms being broken into, I mean, when's the last time you worried someone was gonna hack into your call on a platform like Skype, Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger?
Well, it turns out Zoom has actually had security issues for a while, but many of them are just now coming to light due to its recent burst in popularity.

Back in summer 2019, there was a widespread security flaw on Mac systems where Zoom's installer would effectively turn your computer into a server without telling you which made it much easier for a stranger to add themselves to your conference and look through your webcam with just one errant click, The feature was put in place to make it easier to jump into meetings without additional clicks because the web server feature accepted connections that normal browsers wouldn't, I mean, we all trade security for convenience everyday, but that one went a little too far, don't ya think?

Apple actually ended up issuing a Mac OS patch to fix the problem, but since then, a number of other issues have been discovered, one was a relatively easy way to bypass email confirmation and gain access to any account where the email address was known simply by using the same ID tag in the sign up page's URL to access the confirmation page without ever having actually had access to the email account.

No fancy hacking skills needed, and because of how Zoom's permissions work, a simple attack like this could actually allow an outsider to access all accounts associated with a domain if the compromised account is from a company rather than an individual. Is anybody using Zoom?

Although that issue has been fixed, Zoom's encryption is still rather weak. In early April of 2020, researchers discovered that the encryption Zoom used at the time was actually AES-128, not the advertised AES-256, which is much more secure. Perhaps a larger issue for most people though is how easy it is to find Zoom meetings without even breaking any encryption.

Attackers have had success rapidly trying random ID's until they found some that were active, making it simple for them to break into meetings and sometimes transmit disruptive or offensive audio and video, a practice dubbed Zoom bombing, So it's like chat roulette, but at the office. And to top it all off, Zoom has been routing lots of traffic through servers in China, and unlike other countries which have strong privacy protections for user data, China's government doesn't need a warrant to see what's happening on servers located inside the country at any given time, raising fears from the privacy conscious, and if that's not enough, Zoom is also facing issues that aren't strictly its fault.

Zoom's installer has been a favorite target of hackers who are modifying it with malware and then releasing it back out into the wild. And because so many people are quickly downloading and signing up for Zoom using existing email and password combos involved in previous data breaches, it hasn't been tough for attackers to steal accounts.

Over half a million credentials are up for sale on the dark web at the time we wrote this topic, so what can you do if you're using Zoom and you can't convince your friends or organization to move to a different platform?

Well the easiest form of risk mitigation is to simply slap a password on your Zoom meetings, which will effectively stop Zoom bombing attacks, and there's also an option to lock meetings after everyone has joined so no unauthorized participants can butt it. If you don't have Zoom yet and you need to install it, one pro tip is to make sure that you're only installing it from Zoom's official website, not from some other source that could be giving you a compromised installer.

Of course, with so much public scrutiny, Zoom is attempting to fix some of these issues, and they won't be rolling out any new features for the next couple of months so that their developers can focus on security and privacy patches.

Monday, July 13, 2020

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

It's amazing what people have created out of glass from glass stars to stunning skylights here are 6 amazing things made out of glass.

6 Cold Glass Sculptures

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

The days of producing bulbs lamps and drink receptacles from glass are long gone, and the art form has moved on significantly in recent years at the forefront of showing what can be done with class is an artist called Jack storms who has developed a series of optical glass sculptures made by a particularly laborious process it involves combining LED crystal and dichroic glass and is a cold glass process that doesn't involve heating it up to high temperatures instead he's able to work on it like it was wood but doing it this way can take up to 18 weeks to produce one sculpture some of his pieces involve merging more than eight thousand pieces of glass together but once polished the effort is well worth it, he creates mesmerizing objects that are covered in mirrored surfaces that reflect rainbows of light and are undoubtedly some of the most stunning glass creations you'll ever see were.

5 Fiori di Como

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

The larger a glass creation gets the more fragile it typically becomes which makes the largest glass sculpture in the world all the more impressive known as the Fiori di Como, it's a giant glass ceiling that was created by artist Dale Chihuly in 1998 and can be seen in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas covering an area of more than two thousand square feet it's made up of more than two thousand glass umbrellas that were merged together at some points it's up to ten feet thick and is so huge that something like this is far beyond the ability of just one person to build Chihuly oversaw a team of more than a hundred glass blowers engineers and architects to make his vision a reality and the finished product was so heavy that it had to be mounted on a steel frame to keep it safely in place it was certainly built to last though and even now more than 20 years after it was unveiled it continues to delight and astonish visitors to the world-famous menu.

4 The Windows of Sainte-Chapelle

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

The son Chappell is one of France's greatest historical treasures and was built as a royal chapel within the pan adieu last day which is in the center of Paris originally opened in the year 1248 it's regarded as one of the best examples of Gothic architecture anywhere in the world and was regularly used by the French royalty until the revolution while the structure of the chapel is fascinating enough the real standout feature is the intricate stained glass that decorates his walls the nave in the ASP contained 15 gigantic stained-glass windows that were made in the 13th century there's also a large 15th century Rose window on the western wall the windows remain in remarkably good condition considering their age and depicts scenes from the Bible such as the passion the infancy of Christ the life of John the Evangelist in the book of Genesis among many others during the French Revolution most of the chapel was destroyed and I could be seen today as mainly a recreation more than two-thirds of the windows are authentic however and are often cited as examples of how stunning and intricate the art form can be.

3 The Comet Glass Star

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

If there's one place in the world that's synonymous with the art of glass sculpture it's the island of Murano when the Venetian Lagoon where the city's glass makers were relocated in the Year 1291 to contain the risk of fire and have been producing extraordinary works ever since in one of the main squares the compose and Stefano there's a magnificent sculpture beneath the 19th century clock tower which is known as the comet glass star and provides a stunning contrast between architecture of old and more modern artistic designs created by Simone Sena Dessay to celebrate the christmas in 2007 it was made by combining 500 different blown glass elements of six different colors and a range of different shapes the result is one of the most amazing glass sculptures in the world that looks like a jagged almost ice like structure and is illuminated at night with carefully positioned lights and caused it to emit an eerie deep blue glow thanks to its coloration.

2 The Skylight of The Palace of Catalan Music

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

Palau de la música Catalana is a stunning music hall that's in Barcelona Spain and was opened in 1908 with the express intention of promoting music from the surrounding region now declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its architecture and his contribution to culture more than half a million people visit each year to watch performances and each person to enter is amazed by the elaborate skylight that sits above the main auditorium the large inverted dome is made from stained glass and allows sunlight to beam down to the 2,000 people sat beneath at the center is a massive gold and Auburn colored glass that represents the Sun and is surrounded by darker shades of blue that embody the sense of the sky the effect of the lighting projecting into the room is most impressive during the day and as a result most performances are scheduled during daylight to make the most of the skylight in fact this makes the Palau de la musica Catalana the only concert house in the world that uses natural sunlight for illumination and makes for an experience like no other.

1 The Louvre Pyramid

Top 6 Amazing Glass Creations

Possibly the most renowned glass structure in the world is the Louvre pyramid which as well as being a stunning piece of art in its own right also doubles as the entrance to the world's most famous gallery it was commissioned in 1984 and is made entirely from glass and metal poles it stands 71 feet tall each of its sides are a hundred and twelve feet long and it covers a ground area of 11,000 square feet it's an intricate work of engineering and to build it required 603 rhombus shaped glass panels and 70 triangular ones the idea for it came from writings dating back to the early 19th century which say that celebrations of the revolution saw the tombs of the Louvre being covered with flags and a temporary pyramid structure being built in the grounds this new glass pyramid wasn't exactly a hint when it first opened though with many thinking it spoiled the aesthetics of the surrounding ancient buildings there were calls for it to be only a temporary structure and that it should be dismantled but within a few years it had become one of the most well known landmarks in the whole of Paris it's also the subject of a number of conspiracy theories including the notion that instead of 673 glass panels it's actually got 666 and is linked with the Satanic church it's an idea that was mistakenly reported in the French newspapers in the 1980s re-emerged in 2003 with the publication of The Da Vinci Code but it's nothing more than a fabricated story.

Friday, June 19, 2020

The Challenges of Landing Humans on Mars

The Challenges of Landing Humans on Mars

The red planet Earth's neighbor and the destination of NASA's most ambitious mission to date but this expedition will be harder than we ever thought possible it hurts to think of how hard it is at the farthest a human being has ever been from the earth, we got to take every precaution as NASA's astronauts arrive at Mars, they'll face a huge obstacle landing on the planet is a daunting task in the past Mars hasn't always rolled out the welcome mat Mars is kind of like a graveyard for spacecraft it's actually really hard to send something from Earth and land it on Mars.

This is how the European Space Agency hoped its $250,000,000 skia Pirelli Lander would touchdown in 2016 but the Landers system's got it wrong the parachute detached early sending the craft into freefall for 33 seconds skia Pirelli smashed into the surface at 335 miles an hour leaving a deep black scar on the Martian landscape it turns out that Mars is actually a particularly difficult planet to land on even humanity's most brilliant engineers we've got about a 50% success rate when it comes to landing on Mars.

The red planet is littered with dead spacecraft that didn't stick the landing and for NASA's first crewed - sent to Mars the space agency must learn from these mistakes but as the crew hurdles toward.

the surface they're battling the same problem as all the Landers that failed before the Martian atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's, so it can't provide the drag needed to slow a spacecraft down, so it's not like the earth where you can have these big giant parachutes that gently glide you down to the surface you can use some of the air, but it's hard the Red Planet's thin atmosphere is a problem that's been billions of years in the making Mars doesn't have a large atmosphere because it's constantly being peeled away due to the lack of protection of a magnetic field the solar wind can strip away an atmosphere on earth a liquid metal core creates a magnetic field which shields the planet and helps maintain the atmosphere.

Mars is different 4.5 billion years ago Mars and Earth formed from dust and gas in space Mars forms we're building materials were scarce its growth was stunted so Mars is much smaller than the earth it's a factor of 10 smaller than the earth and that factor of 10 in mass is important all of that extra mass allows the inside of the earth to stay warm and to have a core that's rotating which generates a magnetic field 4 billion years ago the churning heart of Mars started to cool and solidify with no hot core there's no magnetic field being generated all of the high velocity charge particles coming from the Sun pick away at the atmosphere and slowly tear it away.

We know it's losing atmosphere every second due to the solar wind so you know bye-bye atmosphere, with little Martian atmosphere to work with NASA had to be creative to get it screwless Landers to the Martian surface in 2012 the Revolutionary sky crane landed the Curiosity rover using parachutes and retrorockets previous missions have used both a parachute and something else like a bouncy ball inflated around the spacecraft I don't think a human crew is gonna be too pleased if they're going to be bouncing under the surface and an airbag rolling to a stop right to land people on Mars NASA will need some new tricks the 2020 Rover will overcome the challenge with the advanced supersonic parachute inflation research experiment aspire it will rapidly slow down the craft with the force of an airplane jet engine.

This is fine for the rover it's actually going to work no problem but it's not going to work for people a human Lander will weigh far more than the two thousand three hundred pound Rover not even supersonic parachutes could land two crews safely on Mars NASA will need a new plan one idea is to use the thin Martian atmosphere in a unique way there's an idea of coming in really fast getting to the thick part of the atmosphere and then going horizontal to the ground and gliding and losing your momentum that way.

As the astronauts descend they tilt the nose of the Lander towards the Martian surface aiming for the thickest part of the atmosphere close to the ground then they pull up at the last second using friction from the atmosphere to slow the crowd descent engines switch on for the final touchdown is this a crazy idea I mean yeah it's it's a little bit weird I don't know if we'd really think about it doing something like this but I mean you've got to think outside the box sometimes right now NASA's plans for landing a craft on Mars are still on the drawing board but even if they can get astronauts on to the surface the thin atmosphere isn't done with them yet it causes swirling dust storms that cover the planet's entire surface Mars doesn't just have dust devils it has dust hill and these towering clouds have killed before.

Saturday, June 13, 2020

What Is Electrical Engineering?

Electrical Engineering

What Is Electrical Engineering?

Electrical Engineering is a very broad major that encompasses a lot of sub disciplines within the umbrella of Electrical Engineering, there are fields like RF which is basically wireless communications or you could work on satellite communications for defense purposes so the signal cannot be jammed by an enemy, there's electronics where you could design the circuit boards within computers or phones or the control systems within autonomous vehicles or the circuitry and a prosthetic arm there's power wheel you'd work with high voltage systems and delivering or generating lots of electric power that could include working at a power plant working with solar panels or something like electric motors and regenerative braking where like in certain electric vehicles when you take your foot off the accelerator the motor turns into a generator due to changing speeds of certain components within the system and then the kinetic energy of the wheels is used to generate electricity that can be stored for later use.


There's controls where you work on things that have some sort of electrical feedback like propulsion systems in various aircrafts all the way to your cruise control where your speed is monitored then depending on what it receives the system turns the wheels faster or slower accordingly which then affects your speed which is then fed back into the system and this control loop continues.


There's instrumentation which deals with designing sensors and equipment to measure physical quantities like pressure temperature motion position, and so on you can design motion detection sensors for a security system GPS for aircrafts or all the sensors in your car that to analyze fluid levels temperatures battery voltage anti-skid braking system or more advanced systems for driverless cars these types of electrical engineers often work with controls engineers because after all a controls engineer could design a great system to control the speed of an aircraft, let's say but if all the sensors cannot accurately determine the speed air pressure and so on the control system is basically no good there are many of these fields for the last one I'll explain .

Signal Processing

The signal processing this is simply about the manipulation and analysis of signals signals being essentially functions that convey some sort of information maybe you have this sinusoidal voltage at some frequency and then a sensor in the system causes an increase in the frequency, and that frequency change is related to the temperature that the sensor is picking up now that changing voltage or signal it contains information about the temperature in the room though we could convert to a text on a screen, let's say but when it comes to signals in general you might have to amplify them like for an earpiece or filter them where there's background noise and much more and this can apply to radio signals cell phone signals radar missile guidance systems speech image or video processing that all involve signals that need manipulation there's GPS signals noise cancelling headphones and of course way more okay now I've all right throw a lot at you to encompass a lot of what you can do as an electrical engineer and as you can see it's very broad it's not just one thing as in to people who majored in electrical engineering as with many other engineering disciplines could be in two totally different fields or careers and have very little knowledge about each other's work and this is also not about being an electrician by the way which is a common misconception electrical engineering is not where you go in and install or repair electrical systems in people's houses or in offices and so on but if you're debating picking this as a major all the fields I discussed could seem like a lot and you may be thinking wait what does an electrical engineering major look like and what can I expect, and that's will go into now while all schools are a little different a typical electrical engineering.


Curriculum consists of a few circuit analysis classes to just get you started digital design a Power Engineering class continuous-time signals and discrete-time signals which will get you started with analog and digital signal processing respectively you'll think of controls class a communications class which will learn the basics of FM and AM radio a basic electronics class which likely is followed by analog and digital electronics some electromagnetism courses which are basically physics classes and a microprocessor class there are some others you'll take and this doesn't cover the math or physics classes that you'll see but these are the big major classes, you'll take some classes on most of those sub disciplines I mentioned earlier you got your power class you got some signals classes wireless communications controls and so on as an undergrad you get exposure to a lot of foundations of Electrical Engineering and you become well-rounded but you don't become an expert in really any field that's where masters and PhDs come in or just simply working in a field for many years of course you will be taking electives in the subfields you're most interested in though towards the end of college so you will gain a little more mastery in those classes.

Circuit Analysis

The circuit analysis classes now if you've taken physics classes in high school, maybe you've seen the basics of resistors capacitors and inductors and you're going to learn how to find the voltage and current in circuits that contain these three components first starting off with just resistors though in the real world circuits are normally extremely complicated and engineers usually use software and simulations to analyze the circuit but in school you gotta learn the basics of voltage and current in a circuit for those who may be unfamiliar if you imagine a network of pipes you could use a pump that creates a pressure difference and causes water to flow around and through all the pipes if the pipes are skinny let's say it'd be harder for water to flow through them and if they're thicker that of course would be easier well in a circuit the voltage from maybe a battery is like the pressure difference from the pump the current or electron flow is like the water and the resistors are like the pipes high resistance is like a skinny pipe harder for water or the current to go through your electronics work for many reasons but mainly it's because electrons are flowing through the device in school we learned techniques to find the voltage difference across various resistors just like there'd be some pressure difference across each individual pipe circuits classes are a lot of systems of equations just like you learned in school, before but more variables usually instead of X and Y it's usually V and I for voltage and current and to begin all the circuits have a constant voltage as an input like a 9 volt battery that is not changing.

Capacitors and Inductors

Capacitors and inductors you'll use those same certain analysis techniques and the voltage source will still be constant like a battery but current and voltage in the circuit across those components change in an exponential way like charging up a capacitor to a max voltage in order to find that max value or the time it takes to charge up to let's say half the max value you will use circuit techniques to find the resistance in the circuit and so on then you'd quickly move on to AC circuits or alternating current where the input voltage is no longer constant but sinusoidal and changing over time for these circuits there's some more complexity added where a capacitor or inductor in a circuit with a resistor causes the voltage to change its amplitude but also shifts it the capacitor or inductor can change the phase of the voltage within the circuit the math behind this actually involves imaginary numbers that square root of negative one you learned in high school actually has a ton of applications and this is one and it's not because current or voltage are imaginary but using imaginary numbers just makes the math work when it comes to changing the phase or theta offset in a cosine or sine function don't worry about all that now, but it is something you will learn there's of course plenty more in the basic circuits classes.


The signals classes these are essentially math classes and will be one of the most math intensive electrical engineering classes you'll take before this you've dealt with constant voltages and then sinusoidal voltages but what about well everything else you would have a triangle wave a square wave or some really complicated and messy voltage which is what real-world signals can be like so what happens if you put a circuit well in first signals class, you'll learn something called the Fourier series and Fourier transform something very important in physics engineering and applied math this says that any function can be made up of a bunch of cosine and/or sine functions added up often an infinite amount we can see just a plain square wave but if you have a sine wave and add it to another and then another and you keep going picking sine waves to the right amplitude and frequency it will approach that square wave in this class.

You will use some calculus and some new math concepts to find those frequencies and amplitudes of the sine functions that make up some other function so now if we put a square wave into the circuit and want to know what the voltage and current will look like we can mathematically model it like putting in a bunch of sinusoidal waves of different amplitudes and frequencies which you will already have under your belt you'll learn lots of mathematical techniques to simplify this for you now two specific types of signals you see that kind of like sinusoidal but not really are AM and FM radio signals which brings us to your wireless communications course this class is not about physics but just more of the math behind specifically AM and FM signals if you look at a simple AM signal you'll notice the amplitude oscillates up and down and if look at an FM signal the frequency oscillator throughout the wave by making the signals look like this it causes the frequencies to move up to some specific unique center frequency like 94.1 megahertz that the radio station transmits at this is what the station 94.1 fm is just that station transmitting at that specific frequency yes it's more complicated but that's the general idea without that manipulation you could not wirelessly send those signals for people to listen to in their cars, you'll learn why this has to be done and all the math behind that in this class.


Will be pretty much all physics and involve a good amount of calculus you'll see how when you have a changing current it creates a magnetic field around it which then in turn creates an electric field around that and this continues in this propagates as an electromagnetic wave because it's electric and magnetic fields are coupled together you'll learn a lot about what those waves do when they interact with objects like what if they hit some metal barrier or they encounter water how far could they penetrate if there was a receiver at some depth you'll also learn about transmission lines which aren't probably what you think of the ones you learn in this class are cables that handle very high frequency signals that oscillate back and forth very quickly you cannot just put a very high frequency signal into a normal circuit issues come up simply due to the laws of physics and you'll learn about all that as well many of your other classes tell you about how to analyze signals and manipulate them various purposes but this class really teaches you about the physics of the waves so you can understand things like how our wireless signal will be affected as it travels through Earth's atmosphere when we have to communicate with a satellite for example.


You'll finally learn about the transistor there are billions of these in your laptop and millions in your phone to make them work there are lots of kinds of transistors but to simplify in a circuit the current often flows and of little flows and they combine and flow out, you'll learn more certain analysis techniques to analyze voltage and current in circuits as always but the thing is by changing this voltage on the transistor you can control how much current flows through the transistor meaning the transistor can essentially act as a switch it can allow current to flow which is basically like the transistor being on I think shut off curtain flow which is it being off of course this can create a high voltage like five bolts and change it to a low voltage like zero bolts this is the binary or ones and zeros that are really under the hood of your computer you will learn about making circuits that can switch quickly and efficiently in your digital electronics class analog electronics is more about using transistors to amplify a voltage which is their other main application where amplification would of course be needed for music or hearing aids as an example now.


you'll analyze electric motors and generators new circuit analysis with those you'll do labs where you work with much higher voltages than normal like over a hundred volts you'll see how much power is
dissipated and the resistor networks and so on and the controls classes do mainly with systems that involve some sort of feedback you'll look at things like stability because if you're constantly feeding information back into your system and something goes wrong it could continuously be maybe amplifying some output which will lead to issues you'll also see a lot of graphs where you have some target output signal and in some cases that are will be overshoot and then the signal will settle back to that target after certain amount of time versus just slowly charging up you'll mathematically find that overshoot how to minimize it or avoid it and more hopefully that gives you a good overview of the major.

If you want information on specific labs you'll do from freshman to senior year of college more specifics on the concentrations their applications and previous senior projects what math classes you'll take and how my first job or internship was,  this was a good foundation some schools especially outside the US it seems like offer majors in electronics engineering or telecommunications engineering, lastly as you can see Electrical Engineering can get you jobs in the aerospace field biomedical field that tech companies defense companies in the energy sector and robotics and so much more but so can plenty of other engineering disciplines that are also broad so if you're considering this major make sure this is the type of engineering you want to do specifically when it comes to whatever field or sector you may want to go into.

Monday, June 8, 2020

The Most Dangerous Substance in the Universe Strange Matter

The Most Dangerous Substance in the Universe Strange Matter

Humanity is getting through a very strange time. It’s as if the last season of Game of Thrones wasn’t enough, now humanity faces a global pandemic that, of course, this is why today’s topic will be just as strange as the timeline that we live in - strange matter – possibly the most stable thing in the entire universe. Actually, strange matter’s full name is strange quark matter, which means a state of aggregation involving quarks moving freely in a system. There also are the gluons, which act as the exchange particles for the strong force between quarks, but they’re irrelevant for now.

Normally, quarks are held together by this strong force and subsequently form subatomic composites like protons and neutrons, just like how the electromagnetic force holds together atoms to make molecules. However, if we rise the temperature higher than 10^12 kelvins, those subatomic composites melt into the components they are made of, creating a hot soup of quarks. This soup was first served in the very early universe when it’s age was only a few tens of microseconds and the temperature was high enough.

But other than that, theoretically, this quark matter can also form in the interior of a neutron star. Briefly, as a refresher, a neutron star is what appears after a giant star with a total mass of between 19 and 29 solar masses collapses after running out of fusion fuel. Because of its such immense mass, it compresses to a density big enough to fuse the electrons and the protons inside the atoms into neutrons. Hence its composition being just… neutrons. Firmly packed together and held by the gravitational force, they create the substance known as neutronium – the hypothetical element of atomic number zero.
And what’s the best way to demonstrate the density of such a substance?
Measuring a cubic centimeter?
A tablespoon?
A cow – yeah that’s it. If a cubic centimetre of neutronium weights at least 370 mln tons, then a cow made entirely from neutronium would weight 370 Quadrillion kg. Even though the star is much cooler than 10^12 kelvin, because of the high pressure, the core of the neutron star is extreme enough to form quark matter inside.

Considering that a proton is made of 2 up quarks and one down quark, after fusing with an electron, it becomes a neutron consisting of one up and 2 down quarks. Hoever, if we make the current situation even more extreme by rising the temperature and making the density of the star even higher, things get weirder. The weak force, the one responsible for quarks changing their types, starts to manifest itself
in such an environment and transform half of the down quarks into the brand new… awesome… strange quarks.

The resulting plasma made of aproximativelly equal parts of up, down and strange quarks is what scientists call strange matter and the star that it forms – a strange star. You may think about strange matter as that one weird kid in class that gets bullied into him breaking inside under social pressure and thus letting him no other choice but to accustom the quark-social standards and become like everyone else. But actually no. Strange matter is a true chad, stable enough to resist the influence of others, and actually becomes the social standard for everything it comes in contact with.

In other words, strange matter is believed to be stable enough not to decay into other particles, no matter the conditions, and convert the matter it comes in contact with in even more strange matter, but we will come to that later. First of all- its stability. As previously mentioned, the initial quark matter is made of up and down quarks. When we rise the density, the weak force will start to lower the energy of the entire system by transforming some down quarks into strange quarks, which have a smaller mass and permit a lower energy level.
There are also other canditates for this transformation beyond the strange quark- the three remaining quarks – top, up and charm. But their masses are much larger than the chemical potentials involved. 

Also, the transformation reactions are a bit more complicated than simple down to strange conversion, but let’s keep things simple. So, again, the presence of strange quarks in the strange matter make it the most stable substance in the entire universe. A perfect and indistructable material for the SkyNet army. But in reality, not so perfect. Remember when I said that strange matter will convert other matter it comes in contact with into even more strange matter?

You would be tempted to think about it like an infection, but the process is more analogous to actual burning. That said, you need enough strange matter to maintain it stable and start a reaction. If you have too little of it, it will simply decay back.If we however get more than the threshold of required strange matter, we get an aglomeration
called a strangelet. And in simple terms, this strangelet can burn through matter in its vicinity lowering its energy level, and therefore transforming it in even more strange matter, thus continuing the chain reaction until there is no more matter left. So, do these seeds of doom exist?
Unfortunately or rather fortunately, there is no convincing evidence in favor of the existence of strangelets. If a strange star would exist with a mass bigger than 1.4 solar masses, it would be indistinguishable from a simple neutron star of the same mass. However, if it had a smaller mass, its radius would be respectively much smaller than the radius of a neutron star with similar mass. These differences of proportions would let us know if we ever stumble upon a strange star, and therefore – strangelets. Nevertheless, strangelests could have also formed in the first seconds after the Bing Bang - when the universe was nothing more than a quark soup, similar to the quark matter which supposedly exists inside neutron stars.

So there is a chance, even if not big, of strangelets still lurking through the darkness of the universe, waiting to land on some unlucky planet and burn it to the core, converting everythign to even more strange matter. Would be a shame if you happen to have been living on such a planet, wouldn’t it?
Sadly you can’t yet teleport to some other planet in order to save yourself. What can you do though, is teleport your online presence to anywhere thanks to our today’s.