James The Amazing Randi Lecture at Princeton: The Search for the Chimera Muon Ray 2024-10-21 | James The Amazing Randi Lecture at Princeton: The Search for the Chimera
Progression of the Northern Lights over Ireland on Oct 10th 2024 - Huge Display! 🌌 Muon Ray 2024-10-11 | Like watching tides of green and red in the sky. The dynamism of geomagnetism!
Massive Sunspot (half-Jupiter radius) directly facing Earth! 🌎 🌞 👁 #sunspot #solar #astronomy Muon Ray 2024-08-14 | ...
Giant Sunspot directed at Earth 🌎, Geomagnetic Storm over the Weekend?! Muon Ray 2024-08-09 | Giant Sunspot (half-Jupiter radius at least!) the biggest I've seen this summer of solar gazing.
Massive Cluster of Sunspots! Possible/Probable X-Class Solar Flares Soon?! Muon Ray 2024-06-19 | probably some of the closest clusters of large sunspots I've seen so far, with more ahead as we reach the true peak solar maximum in 2025.
Flight over The Sands of Dune Du Pilat, Arcachon Bay France Muon Ray 2024-05-29 | A drone flight over the impressive sand dunes of Pilat that form a part of the coast of the Arcachon Bay, West of Bordeaux in France. The dune is 104 meters at its highest point and is a natural wonder that has fascinated humans for millennia with archaeological artifacts still revealing mysteries of the activities here ranging from sea salt refining to pottery production. The dunes are shaped mostly due to currents from the Atlantic depositing sand in waves as can be seen stretching out toward the ocean, with wind assisting in the movement of the sane dunes inward from the coast where it meets a forest and thus piles up. The explanation as to how such a large volume of sand can be deposited so neatly in one place is still debated however geologists mostly agree the sand from the dune was created millions of years when the Pyrénées Mountains to the south and the Central Massif Mountains to the east eroded. Local rivers carried sand from the mountains to the ocean where it drifted ashore and created the massive dune.Moreover, much like the entire straight sandy coast of the Landes, was formed at the end of the Holocene post-glacial transgression, around 6000 years ago, when the sea level stabilized at its current level. this exposed a lot of sand which would otherwise be still underwater.
Ultraviolet Reactive Etching of The Four Treasures of Ireland 🇮🇪 ft. Newtons Rings 🌀 Muon Ray 2024-05-20 | Fun with a 405nm UV laser and artwork! featuring Newton's Interference Rings.
La Palma Volcanic Fields and New Lava Beach in Tazacorte - Drone Flying in Canary Islands Muon Ray 2024-05-13 | Up until relatively recently there was a small beach in Tazacorte on La Palma Island called "Playa Nueva". It exists in a new incarnation today as the Cumbre Vieja Volcanic Eruption in September 2021 on La Palma created a lava flow that literally forged a new part of the coastline which will, over time, form a new beach! Here is some UAV footage of the newly created lava fields shot by myself and my friend in July 2023. Enjoy!
Garden Plants in Near-Infrared using Samsung S9 Camera 📷 and Dual-Bandpass Filter #shorts Muon Ray 2024-04-30 | filter used here: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/156189179840 short video on using dual bandpass filter to image plants in NIR using an unmodified smartphone camera 📷
Reusing a Neodymium Laser Crystal as an Experimental Quantum Memory and Signal Amplifier 🔮 💎 🌀 Muon Ray 2024-04-19 | fun tests with optics that never grows old!
Quantum Entanglement Nodes made with ppKTP for use in gate operations, distillation and more! Muon Ray 2024-01-16 | Some recent progress on my ongoing quest to build, install and integrate quantum optics to form a network, featuring the control of SPDC quantum entanglement sources using the mobile IoT app Blynk along with Polarization characterization equipment made by Thorlabs that can in principle perform a Bell basis measurement of polarization entangled states which is the key for performing gate based operations such as the SWAP operation which can help with the process of entanglement distribution to distant clients in a network. XOR is another gate based operation in quantum networks, in particular of use in creating one-time-pads for key generation. Stay tuned for more!Coding used here:github.com/MuonRay/Quantum_Polarimetry_Tomography
Viewing The Milky Way in Infrared - Astrophotography with a Multispectral Drone Camera Muon Ray 2024-01-07 | A compilation of some infrared videos of the edge-on star lanes of the galaxy as viewed from Earth! Taken with my trusty modified drone on my astrophotography travelsmusic: Infrared Records Dexxtrous Aquarius - Remix
The Crazy AI Chatbot Takeover of Banking ft. the N26 App - A Discourse on Experiences so far Muon Ray 2024-01-02 | Huddle 'round the fire and I'll tell you a tale....
Building Bridges between Synchronization and Quantum Entanglement in Networks Muon Ray 2023-12-11 | The similarities between so-called classical synchronization and quantum entanglement is not lost on some of the emergent, self-similar behavior, that exists in these systems. This can be seen in the systems themselves, separately. Perturbations in quantum systems lead to discontinuities that can lead to decoherence however systems of entangled quantum oscillators can also display error-correction in certain topological states, such as toric and/or surface codes. Classical systems meanwhile display so-called chimera states that exist as a "phase state" between order and disorder to an extent that these states can actually steer a self-organized system back from a chaotic edge and maintain itself durable. I have explored these concepts in a previous video: However here I wish to showcase some of the actual simulations I've done with software and hardware which does not necessarily take us into using the exotic systems found in a quantum optics lab. However we can compare our simulated networks with such systems and in fact there are some striking crossovers in how a quantum network can be emulated using nonlinear crystals, or Josephson junctions, and in our system of coupled oscillators driven by, a metaheuristic, i.e. the firefly algorithm. Metaheuristic algorithms meanwhile that port and parse some of the measurement spaces found in quantum systems, i.e. the Poincare/Bloch/Riemann Sphere and represent them as "squashed" pseudo-quantum states represented as HSV values say can nevertheless display some of the "quantumness" which can be described using, among other things, the path integral formalism of quantum mechanics and even resembles the behavior of real-world quantum states of matter such as entangled networks, Bose-Einstein condensates, currents and flows of Cooper pairs in superconductors etc. From all of this we could very well as, are all of these variations on a common physical theme? Another question we could ask in this research is, at what scale does entanglement end and synchronization begin and vice versa?
Detecting Polarization Entanglement from a BBO SPDC Quantum Light Source 🌀💎🌀 Muon Ray 2023-12-04 | A day without non-linear optics is like a day without sunshine! Equipment coding here: github.com/MuonRay/Quantum_Polarimetry_Tomography
Experiment in making Periodically-Poled KTP (ppKTP) for Quantum Optics Research (sorry 4 bad audio!) Muon Ray 2023-11-26 | a big focus of my research is buying bespoke optics components and repurposing them for quantum optics experiments and the relative abundance of KTP (potassium titanyl phosphate) along with micro electrodes motivated me (among other things) to try and see if current setups using BBO (beta-barium borate) can be enhanced with modified components that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to integrate into existing systems. Measuring the degree of polarization-entanglement is the next step and it too uses a lot of off-the-shelf technology but, again, restructured for a different purpose. In many instances the research goal is to create new architectures in networks that already exist in the classical domain. As a point of fact a lot of my research has taken me into bridging classical networks and their components into the emerging field of "quantum" networks. In many ways the components for "quantum" networks already exist, the networks themselves just have to be tailored with a different approach than before.
Some Personal Feelings and Thoughts on The Dublin Riots Muon Ray 2023-11-24 | Genuinely more feelings than thoughts but definitely a discourse is needed to prevent future devastation
Harvest Supermoon September 2023 Muon Ray 2023-09-28 | a view of the moon this month reveals a lot more detail thanks to it being closer than usual! a chance to appreciate some of its more interesting features such as Reiner Gamma!
Giant Neptune-Sized Sunspot! 🌤 possible increase of X-Class Solar Flare Activity?! 🔥 Muon Ray 2023-07-08 | been watching this for a few days, hope to see more bad boys like it!
Moon Gazing 🌙 on the Summer Solstice ✨ - Shortest Night of the Year 2023 Muon Ray 2023-06-21 | captured using my phone and Newtonian reflector telescope.
Sunspot Hunting! Muon Ray 2023-05-31 | looking at some of the massive sunspots that have been appearing recently on the solar surface. plenty more to come as peak solar maximum approaches
Astronomy Ireland Classes 2023 - Starts April 19th Muon Ray 2023-04-12 | I'm happy to be presenting these classes again for @astronomyireland over the next 8 weeks after 2 sessions of beginners classes between last year and the start of this year. Inquire on the astronomy Ireland website for more details.
Live Telescope Viewing of Venus-Jupiter Conjunction - Irish Skies March 1st 2023 Muon Ray 2023-03-02 | Livestream for Week 5 @astronomyireland Venus-Jupiter Conjunction March 1st 2023
Telescope Viewing of The Venus-Jupiter Conjunction on March 1st 2023 - Ireland 🇮🇪 ✨ Muon Ray 2023-03-01 | March 1st close encounter of bright Venus and Jupiter in the evening sky ✨
Drone Flight over Túria Forest Park - Valencia, Spain ❂ Muon Ray 2023-02-22 | Just North of the Spanish city of Valencia is a Forest Park that surrounds the main river of Valencia, The Túria, which stretches quite far around some of the suburban communities of Valencia and serves as a very effective greenbelt and nature reserve. It is also surprisingly well connected with the Valencia metro system having stations almost within the forest itself! The main communities within this zone is a place referred to as L'Eliana.Music credit (used under ℗ right to reproduce use): Track: Raytracing (shortened edit)Artist: Sleeping PandoraAlbum: Signs In The SkyRelease Year: 2020Country: Germany℗ 2020 Sleeping Pandora℗ 2023 MuonRay❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂If you enjoy the music, please support the band/artist:sleepingpandora.bandcamp.comhttps://spoti.fi/3aiR3udbit.ly/2Ta7Iuifacebook.com/sleepingpandora❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂
Floating High Over The Canyon Cliffs at Cuenca, Spain Muon Ray 2023-01-24 | Music: Floating High by Sleeping Pandora - youtube.com/watch?v=OZWQYM5Lrw8Cuenca is one of Spain's most gravity-defying regions. It sits across a steep spur of a mountain, whose slopes descend into deep gorges of the Júcar and Huécar rivers. Cuenca itself is the name given to the medieval town in the Castile-La Mancha region of Spain, built on the steep sides of the mountain. The region is sometimes called Spain's Grand Canyon and is a very popular climbing site in this part of the country. Knowing this I was tempted to do some drone flying in the region during the winter time, when there is relatively few climbers so as not to disturb them. There is a lot of evidence of human activity however it is still pleasantly natural in most of the canyon.
Quantum Entanglement Network using Non-linear Optics with beta-Barium Borate BBO crystals 💎 Muon Ray 2023-01-20 | Showcasing some recent developments and hands-on progress in the field of using nonlinear quantum optics in communication networks in our lab with the intent to bridge quantum and classical synchronization. In this network nodes using nonlinear crystals such as BBO and ppKTP can be used to generate entangled signal and idler photons which can be distributed via free space or fiber forming a node in a network that can, in principle, carry quantum information. It is also the intention to have similar, scalable quantum communications technologies such as this in operation at different bands such as in the microwave and c-band for telecoms fibers for example 1550nm allowing for a quantum internet.
Capturing Emission Spectra from a Lightning Bolt during a Thunderstorm in Ireland October 19th 2022 Muon Ray 2022-10-20 | I've always wanted to see if I could capture at least a low resolution image of emission spectra from a clear shot of a lightning bolt using a diffraction grating and a camera and last night presented a rare opportunity to test this idea!
2022 Nobel Prize in Physics Quantum Entanglement Experiments Explained - Aspect, Zeilinger, Clauser. Muon Ray 2022-10-05 | Here I go over some of the concepts behind this years Nobel Prize in physics, which was awarded to Anton Zeilinger, Alain Aspect and John Clauser for Experiments on Quantum Entanglement and the CHSH Tests.
Plane Flying Across the Moon! 11th August 2022 Supermoon Muon Ray 2022-08-12 | a scene I was not expecting!
Using my FLIR thermal infrared camera to examine my portable solar panels for energy harvesting. Muon Ray 2022-08-09 | a brief video of me doing some infrared visual inspection of solar cells.
Solar-Pumped Nd YAG Laser Experiment Demo with Potential Uses in Energy and Space Exploration Muon Ray 2022-07-14 | In 2018 I experimented with a setup using a ND:YAG laser crystal pumped with solar radiation using a Fresnel lens. Such technologies can offer a way to create Magnesium using solar power.Magnesium-containing salts, extracted from seawater, can be made into targets can be partially irradiated with a laser of 1064nm, pumped using solar energy to create a reduction in the Magnesium compounds creating pure Magnesium metal. Magnesium can react with water to produce electricity and hydrogen gas by an oxidation reaction, wherby the magnesium gains oxygen and becomes Magnesium Oxide. This compound can be reduced again by the same 1064nm solar pumped laser.One can imagine this being done continuously on a conveyor system and fed into a reaction chamber with water to create Hydrogen Gas and electricity on demand.It is hoped, using advancements in techniques such as 3D printing design, that as the availability of fuel cell technology becomes more widespread in its development and use, along with PV solar energy electrolysis of water becoming more refined and efficient, a real energy economy based on hydrogen could be created at some point in the future.Until then, experimenting with the applications of hydrogen in powering vehicles and generating electricity in decentralized systems should be the top priority of this research.
Brief Discussion of CERNs LHC 13.6 TeV Collision Record Breaking Energy Achievement - #LHCRun3 Muon Ray 2022-07-06 | Could observing 13.6TeV Proton collisions bring about new physics discoveries? That is what is now possible at CERN as the Large Hadron Collider started its 3rd run on July 5th 2022, a full decade after the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
Alien Desert Landscape Evolution 🏜 - AI Generated Animation Muon Ray 2022-07-03 | A test animation made using AI and frame interpolation software of a desert on a hypothetical planet with alien flora evolving with the landscape. I am working on animation that uses image-guided AI software along with frame interpolation in animations for future videos on the topics of speculative biology.
Exploring Evolution in Green - A Short Tour of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland Muon Ray 2022-06-12 | Exploring the evolution of various plants in viewing their emergent and convergent forms in their respective habitats as represented at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland located in Glasnevin, Dublin.
Flowering Plants Captured in Ultraviolet - How Bees 🐝 See 👀 The World 🌎 Muon Ray 2022-05-29 | here is a test of my drone camera Ultraviolet Imaging Filter in order to get a bees wye view of the world!
Simulations of Cosmic Ray Muon Cherenkov Radiation using CERN ROOT (2011 presentation) Muon Ray 2022-05-06 | Code used here:github.com/MuonRay/Muon_Cherenkov_Simulation_CERN_ROOTHere I share a relic of sorts from my past I found and restored recently. It is a presentation I gave back in Summer 2011 (almost 11 years ago!) I did an internship at UCD school of physics the year before I got my Bachelor of Science degree. I was fortunate enough to do some work in a subject area which interested me a lot at the time and still does namely the detection of cosmic ray particles in Cherenkov telescopes. Cosmic ray muons are created in the upper atmosphere by collisions between high energy cosmic rays from astrophysical sources - black holes, supernova, galactic cores and so forth. As the particles, mostly protons but occasionally heavy nuclei, interact with the atoms in Earth's atmosphere they create showers of decaying particles some of which are particles called pions. these particles quickly decay into muons which are themselves unstable but due to relativistic time dilation can survive the trip down to earth and can create a cone of Cherenkov radiation which can be detected by telescopes used to detect gamma ray events in space that create similar electron and positron showers to cosmic rays. Cherenkov astronomy is widely used in different contexts, for surface gamma ray observation, underground neutrino detectors and in detectors used in particle accelerator facilities such as the LHC.The work I did back in 2011 was to create a muon Cherenkov simulation code in C/C++ that can be implemented in CERN's ROOT compiler. The code in a nutshell uses the Monte Carlo method to integrate over the photon count of cherenkov photons, produced by cosmic ray muons, with the photon flux being computed using an equation called the Frank-Tamm equation. The code is pretty temperamental and is bulky, which is one of the main flaws of CERN ROOT, however this was quite a good learning exercise for me at the time and enhanced my focus towards physics used in coding and simulation science in general. Looking back on this time in my life is interesting as I was a lot more naive about life and science in general and in particular about the role of physics in society and how to use physics principles in the real world and in research situations. I was always very independent in my work ethic and I remember spending a lot of time working on this alone and I learned a lot since how important it is to have others, supervisors and colleagues actively supervise and monitor such work as otherwise it can become cryptic and also a kind of dead and undynamic stone tablet rather than an active tool - this is why I find platforms such as Github and others so essential to my coding endeavors today. Not only do I get necessary feedback that motivates more development but honest criticism, failings and avenues to improve and apply my work elsewhere. So if you are interested in suing this code or others like it on my GitHub please do!
Physics in the 5th Dimension - Lisa Randall Interview with Koichi Wakata on Japanese TV (~2006) Muon Ray 2022-04-28 | I was given a copy of this interview from a TV producer in Japan which featured the American physicist Professor Lisa Randall after she wrote her book "Warped Passages" on Physics in the 5th dimension. In this short interview Professor Randall is interviewed by the famous Japanese JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, who was the commander of the ISS and is a veteran of the NASA Space Shuttle missions. He is one of the most decorated astronauts in the world at present and is still in active duty.Professor Lisa Randall, professor of physics at Harvard University, explains some of her theoretical models on extra-dimensional, warped spacetime. Lisa Randall is a leading expert on particle physics and cosmology. She works on several of the competing models of string theory in the quest to explain the fabric of the universe.Stephen Hawking had also made similar claims, while also stating that cosmological studies done on data from the new Planck Satellite mapping the Cosmic Microwave background may also confirm predictions of M-Theory with extra-dimensions being one possible consequence.In summary, Gravity in our dimension is a very weak interaction and has 1/Planck scaled interactions. However, Lisa Randall, along with Raman Sundrum and others, have shown that in warped dimensions the gravitational interaction is strengthened by 16 orders of magnitude stronger, as the Kaluza-Klein partner to the graviton scales as 1/TeV scaled interactions. Space-Time warping in higher dimensions lowers mass scales for observed particles, pure Standard Model Gravitons would be of huge mass scales, impossible to reach using human technology. However, near the brane, higher dimensional partners of the graviton would carry its momentum in a 5D brane and would have a rescaled, much lower mass. This could make it detectable with current technology.Gravitons could therefore be generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at certain, as of yet, unknown energy modes. Several modes may exist and oscillate at higher dimension modes which may lie outside the LHC energies at some point, as it passes the 5D brane outside the bulk space. Hence, if the LHC does have sufficient energy to reach one of the KK-mode graviton modes then it could be possible to detect Quantum Gravity at the LHC. Higher modes may also allow artificial black holes to be condensed out of higher fluxes of KK-mode gravitons. These black holes may only consist of a few, fermionic states of supersymmetric gravitons at the lowest energy state so it would instantly be destroyed by the Hawking Process. This would be a huge leap forward into studying M-Theory.Lisa Randall's work is very high powered but she is a great communicator of science and is great in interviews at explaining her work so that everyone can share in the exploration.
Boleycarrigeen Ancient Stone Circle, County Wicklow, Ireland - UAV Flight in RGB and Near-Infrared Muon Ray 2022-04-09 | Among the scores of monuments and structures in the area of Ireland's Ancient East lies Boleycarrigeen Stone Circle in County Wicklow, well known for its association to astrology and solar alignment.It was a joy to walk up the hill with my best friend and deploy my drone with him to examine this superb monument. Using a combination of RGB and Near-Infrared imaging I am hoping to quantify NDVI and SAVI metrics in order to map the tracks and overall shape of the monument in contrast to the surrounding vegetation. This technique is hoped to test remote sensing techniques that can reveal features of this monument and others that have receded into soil or ground vegetation. Another name for this embanked circle is "The Druidical Circle." It was nestled amongst a pine tree plantation for many years. At the present time these trees have been cleared, so now is a good time to visit but don't leave it too long as fresh planting was in evidence. Of the original 18 stones 12 still remain upright, sadly one of these is broken. The circle is about 14 metres in diameter and a has possible winter solstice sunset. The eastern portal stone stands 1.9 metres high and the stones appear to be graded in height towards the southwest.The circle is 13.5m in internal diameter. and is defined by eleven evenly spaced upright stones 1.3-1.8m apart.During the Winter Solstice the sun rises over the Carrickgeen side of Keadean Mountain and shines directly though the epicenter of the stone circle. During the Summer Solstice as the sun rises directly over Keadean the Sun Shines through the Two Larges Passage Stones on the East of the Circle, highlighting the incredible importance of this stone circle itself. One can only admire, appreciate and applaud the sophistication of our Ancient ancestors who planned and designed and built over hundreds of years extremely sophisticated Solar Alignment site.
Drone Environmental Monitoring of The Bandama Caldera Thermophilic Forest in Gran Canaria Muon Ray 2022-04-04 | In a recent trip to Gran Canaria, I visited one of my favorite natural landscapes there; the Bandama Caldera which hosts a diverse variety of plant and animal life. Since the weather was clear and the illumination was good I decided to deploy my drone to perform some visual inspection and near-infrared environmental monitoring with NDVI, ENDVI and SAVI metrics extracted using my github codes:github.com/MuonRay/PythonNDVIUsing my freely available Python codes I can convert near-infrared images captured using my modified NIR camera with my custom made filters to perform remote sensing using my drone. I am continually working on refining the method and analysis of performing NDVI in the field and will soon be able to perform the analysis in real time using my phone which can run my python scripts using a mobile app. I hope to showcase this soon in a future video.in video music credit:Enhance by | e s c p | escp-music.bandcamp.comMusic promoted by free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Mystical Imbolc Spectral Fire! (Thanks to a little bit of Copper Emission Spectra!) Muon Ray 2022-02-01 | #imbolc 2022 spectral fire using copper salts to produce a colorful plasma that looks very similar to aurora!
Exploring The Ancient, 5,000+ Year Old, Seefin Tomb in County Wicklow Ireland. Muon Ray 2022-01-23 | the great thing about living in Ireland is the sheer amount of publicly accessible, and in some cases open to explore, tombs that are hidden around the country. This gives us a close and intimate connection with the past and it is our duty to protect their noble works and artifacts for future generations to admire and give just honors to those that built these great and enduring monuments. for something to surface 1000s of years of Irish weather deserves a toast or two, or 5,000!
James Randi Talks About Richard Feynman - Problem Solving Tricks and Pranks Muon Ray 2022-01-21 | In this short clip, from the talk here:youtube.com/watch?v=qpeN3DVwk4Qthe famous conjurer James "The Amazing" Randi, talks about his friendship with the physicist Richard Feynman and how Randi played tricks, pranks and "brain-busters" on the physicist for several years of their friendship and how Feynman, by using his deductive skills and honest feedback from Randi, was able to determine how the tricks were done! Using evidence-based reasoning and honest research is the best possible way to use our education in the modern world to deduce the real workings of tricks, bluffs and pranks that may be in good fun or, as Randi had uncovered during his life, be quite deadly such as in the case of "faith" healing and "alternative" medicine.
The Moons Mysterious Magnetic Force-Field Region Reiner Gamma 🌕 Muon Ray 2022-01-18 | Part 2 of Moongazing of some observations of the mysterious Reiner Gamma area which lies close to the crater Reiner and is visible through most telescopes. what makes this region special is that although it looks like a crater or lava tube, Reiner Gamma is in fact a region of high albedo that has been partially magnetically shielded by the process of radiation bombardment on the moon over millions of years. How does it remain shielded? There is an anomolous magnetic field around this region in a shape very similar in a way to that of a bar magnet which is the most likely explanation, although by no means the only one. Furthermore it is not fully known how this anomaly came to be, perhaps formed due to volcanism or an influence from an impact. it is still a mystery!
Viewing The Mysterious Lunar Region of Reiner Gamma - a strange magnetic anomaly on the Moon. Muon Ray 2022-01-18 | During some late night Moon Gazing of the January #WolfMoon I decided to do some observations of my favourite region on the moon - the mysterious Reiner Gamma area which lies close to the crater Reiner and is visible through most telescopes. what makes this region special is that although it looks like a crater or lava tube, Reiner Gamma is in fact a region of high albedo that has been partially magnetically shielded by the process of radiation bombardment on the moon over millions of years. How does it remain shielded? There is an anomolous magnetic field around this region in a shape very similar in a way to that of a bar magnet which is the most likely explanation, although by no means the only one. Furthermore it is not fully known how this anomaly came to be, perhaps formed due to volcanism or an influence from an impact. it is still a mystery!
Viewing The Orion Constellation in Infrared | Astrophotography with a Multispectral Drone Camera Muon Ray 2022-01-14 | Here I showcase some of the timelapse multispectral images I made of the Orion Constellation, in which you can clearly see some the nebula which make up the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. These were made over the course of a few nights using my multispectral converted drone camera, modified with narrow-bandpass filters. of particular interest to me are features in the near-infrared which, though difficult to see from the ground, showcase rich information hidden in the nebulae and dust clouds. Astrophotography onboard drones is a new field of inquiry and one in which I hope to see greater developments in the near-future as cameras improve.
The Music of Richard Feynman | Interaction of Sound, Light and Matter Muon Ray 2022-01-04 | Here I showcase an interesting way to visualise music with a kind of fractal/psychedelic hologram effect using my 3-color laser projector system using a WiFi speaker system and an old reflective anti-static bag used to ship electronics! And no better music to visualise with such a system than the inventive and idiosyncratic music of the great Richard Feynman. Enjoy the patterns made by marimbas, congas and his famous bongo drums in this rare series of recordings!
Drone Archaeology | Tomb Hunting Using NDVI, NIR Threshold with Bitwise NOT in Python Muon Ray 2021-12-17 | Coding Repository:github.com/MuonRay/Drone_ArchaeologyHere I showcase recent developments I have made in using Near-Infrared imaging with drones in order to perform feature detection in the environment, in this case for archaeological examination. Python coding was used to process drone-captured Near-Infrared Images into Normalised Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) greyscale images which are further processed using both a segmentation of ndvi around the tomb region followed by a contour overlay in the perimeter of the tombs. The lower values of NIR reflectance can be caused by plant growth stress, itself potentially caused by partially or completely submerged rock from a tomb, wall, cairn or road. The image processing technique makes use of the bitwise xor function to highlight the lower regions of NIR reflectance, segmenting them using a threshold mask. By highlighting the low NIR regions and performing NDVI on these regions, we can create a clear image feature in which we can draw a clear contour around using an automated contour tracer.Version 2 uses a standard contour, Version 4 is an attempt, with limited success, to overlay feature boxes over the tomb images with the intent to extend the code into more automated feature detection of individual boulders, cairn formations and other features. Updates to this last step will be ongoing, with hopes to combine with other indexes, such as ENDVI, to allow for better segmentation of ancient structures that may create vegetation stress that can be sensed remotely. Drones specifically designed to use NDVI can make use of more calibrated NIR captures that can provide greater accuracy however we have found the modified DJI Mavic Pro 2 offers unparalleled image resolution, having a 20MP camera as compared to more standard 5MP NDVI cameras on the market.
Irelands Loughcrew Cairn Tombs Scanned in Near-infrared for NDVI Analysis (full-video soon) #shorts Muon Ray 2021-12-07 | Near-infrared is an incredibly useful wavelength for remote sensing. using Normalised Differential Vegetation Indexing (NDVI) combined with image analysis we can map and catalogue partially coveted or even soil submerged cairn tombs which cover the landscape of Ireland which may help assist in uncovering the extent of known tombs and may allow for new tombs to be discovered by routine and seasonal surveys using modified aerial imaging systems on UAVs.
Quantum Entanglement Random Number Generator Experiment using Arduino and Python (ft. Fractals!) Muon Ray 2021-12-06 | Coding Used:github.com/MuonRay/Quantum_Entanglement_Experiments_Arduino_PythonHere I make a long overdue demonstration of a setup that I have been working with on and off for a long time - A Compact Quantum Entanglement Source for use in, among other things random number generation for use in encryption, simulation and as a "probe" of the most pure, irreducible form of randomness itself.Using a non-linear crystal made of Beta-Barium Borate (BBO) I am able to generate 2 entangled photon beams of wavelength 810nm each from a pump laser beam of 405nm which is pulsed using the Arduino and directed into the splitter. the entangled photons are in quantum superposition of the H and V modes, with the indeterminacy being a perfect 50/50 split. These are directed by beamsplitters into 2 detectors which either detect a H or V mode but never both. Whichever silicon phototransistor sensor on the arduino detects the H and which detects the V mode is purely random creating a random number source that is irreducible and thus unhackable. The random numbers generated by this scheme are a stream of integer bits. To generate purely random non-integers I use a CCD and a split mirror that directs the 2 photons into an aperture of a connected CCD microscope sensor. By splitting the image were the 2 beams of entangled photons meet and correlating the 2 images to detect random changes we can assume due to the nature of entanglement that the difference between the images must be in part due to the random fluctuations of the vacuum as the 2 entangled photons when cross-correlated should be equal but of opposite polarization. the randomness is beneath the intrinsic shot noise of the CCD sensor as quantum entangled photon streams generated in such a scheme allow for sub-shot noise imaging in holography setups. A python code for generating cross-correlated images is also available to use in this repository however it requires time to correlate across all the pixel data. this can be used as a way to produce sub-shot noise images using standard CCD microscope cameras in such a setup.I hope, with future improvements and optimizations to this setup to incorporate an ethernet shield to the arduino and to share the random numbers generated in pulses on a webpage that can be viewed freely for use in open-source experimentation using quantum random numbers.
