Leap Year

Most of us are aware that the current year 2016 is completely divisible by 4, and hence is a "Leap Year".

Fun fact: The quotient of 2016/4 = 504 is ALSO divisible by 4, making 2016 a "Leap Leap Year"

Fun fun fact: The year 1984 was a "Leap Leap Leap Year".
Try it yourself.

Also:

Sorry to disappoint the folks claiming January 2016 to be special because it has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays, which supposedly happens only once every 823 years… This ain't true.

Just 6 years later, January 2021 will also have the same set of 5s.

A month with 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays occurs almost every year. This is because the first three weekdays of any 31-day month are repeated 5 times in that month. So, any month that has 31 days and begins on a Friday will have 5 Fridays-Saturdays-Sundays.

LIGO

A gravitational wave, created during the merger of two black holes, passes through the Milky Way galaxy, our Solar system, the Earth. And, at about 3:30 PM IST on 14 September 2015, it passes through you and me and our cat, travelling at the speed of light. 


Not only could we detect it, but we can hear it… A 'sound' that originated 1.3 freaking billion years ago. 
Science is sexy.

I have been reading about gravitational waves in particular, and waves in general, and here's something that at least I wasn't aware earlier. 
We have seen tides rising up on a beach. In reality, a tidal 'wave' is nothing but a mass of water held in its place by the gravity of Moon (or Sun). The 'wave' stands still, and it's we standing on the ground are going towards it due to Earth's rotation.

People are mixing up ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitational waves’, assuming both to be the same. In fact, they aren’t. 
Gravity waves are ripples caused by gravity and are observed in a planetary environment, for example, atmosphere and water bodies. They are easy to observe... Just visit a nearby beach and observe the tides.
Gravitational waves, on the other hand, are ripples in gravity itself (or more precisely, ripples in the space-time). They propagate through *everything* and are very difficult to observe. 
The LIGO team observed gravitational waves.

The more I read about the LIGO experiment, the more intriguing it becomes. Consider the facts…
A pair of black holes; one 36 times massive as Sun, the other 29 times, are circling each other at 250 times a SECOND.
1.2 BILLION years ago, they merged, forming a black hole with mass 62 times as the Sun. The 3 solar masses lost in the process sent a ripple through space-time, in the form of gravitation waves.
The wave reached Earth on 14 September 2015. The impact it had: Displacing a 4-kilometer long mirror by 10^-18 meters, which is one-thousandth of the diameter of a PROTON.

And if you think THIS is amazing, consider that Einstein predicted this a HUNDRED years ago.

Periodic Table

Today, Google reminded all of us that February 8 is the birthday of Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of Periodic Table of Elements. It's been a decade since I last used this table, and yet it continues to fascinate. 


As on today, the Element 118, temporarily named Ununoctium, is currently the newest element in this table. 


Richard Feynman predicted that number 137 defines the table’s upper limit: Adding any more protons would produce an energy that can be measured only by an imaginary number, rendering element 138 and higher impossible.


We are yet to reach there… Let's see what happens.

Microsoft Outlook

As a regular user of Microsoft Outlook, it has always frustrated me that we cannot use the standard Ctrl + F key-combination to search through an email. This combination works with all other Microsoft products. 


I tried searching for the reason for this exception. It turns out that the Ctrl + F key-combination was REMOVED from Outlook because of a "bug report" submitted by a beta tester, who had become accustomed to using this key-combination for forwarding the email in an earlier email program he used. 


Name of that beta tester? 
William Henry Gates, III… More popularly known as Bill Gates. :)