Google Doodle

Google turns 20 with Easter eggs and special images to celebrate

Posted by

0


You can see the garage where Google started today in Street View and a few other goodies.

guuugle.jpg
 

 

To celebrate 20 years, Google has updated its eponymous search engine. The company also hid a few easter eggs in the site to acknowledge how far it has come.

The familiar Google Doodle, which usually relates to a holiday or fun fact, is a clickable video. If you click, the video plays an animation sequence of Google’s most popular queries since 2000.

If you need to search something fairly outdated, like “MP3 file” or “chat room,” Google search now has something snarky to say about it. If you search one of these terms, the search engine reminds you that it’s 2018 and asks if you meant a more relevant search like “stream music” or “text the group.”

If you’re interested to see where the company got its start, Google Maps in Street View gives you a detailed look inside the original garage headquarters. You get the full experience of the search engine’s first office with wires snaking through hallways, paperwork strewn across the desks, the original logo design, and old desktops displaying Google in its infancy.

As Google reflects on its past, it also looks toward the future. Ben Gomes, vice president of Google News and Assistant announced updates to the search engine on Monday.

To make the desktop browser more like the app, Google is launching Discover and redesigning Google Images.

Google’s image search has been updated to be more visual with Instagram type Stories. When you search an image, Google’s algorithm will rank results based on website authority. The more relevant the image is to the entire website, the higher it will appear in the search.

Google Lens also lets users “draw” on an image they’ve searched which can trigger a deeper, more specific search. The new updates include activity cards to keep track of search history and more intelligent query suggestions.

Microwave oven to blame for mystery signal that left astronomers clueless

Posted by

0


 
SONY DSC 

A mysterious signal baffled the scientists working in the famous Australian radio telescope observatory for almost two decades, has been found to have very humble rather local links. The peculiar signals were actually the product of the Microwave kept in the kitchen of Parkes observatory, which was used by the staff to warm their lunch.

 According to Simon Johnston who is the head of astrophysics at CSIRO said that the mysterious signals were first detected by the scientists in 1998 and were named perytons. The source of the signal was found to be reasonably local, in the region of 5km around the Telescope. The signals were not very frequent hence were hard to study in detail and appeared at least twice every year. Initially experts thought these were some kind of interference caused by the lightning strikes in the atmosphere above the observatory; however this was just a hypothesis.

After almost seventeen years since the first signal was detected, in January this year scientist at the observatory installed much more sophisticated detectors to analyze the interference. The readings provided by the detectors showed the strength of the signals in the range of 2.4 GHz, which was a familiar figure, a figure normally associated with Microwave ovens. Initial testing of the Microwave kept at the facility did not give perytons, however when the over door was opened during it was heating the food, suddenly the interference was detected.

 Despite the fact that most of the scientists operate the telescope from remote locations and are not present at the facility at all times, however there are a number of other operational staff on duty who occasionally heat up their lunch in the Microwave oven kept in the kitchen area. The interference was rare because the Telescope had to be facing the direction of Microwave and the door of the Oven had to be open while it was heating the food, to generate short but pretty significant signals.

Johnston said that the interference is a major issue when it comes to sophisticated observatories, and astronomers have always been raising concerns about the increasing radio interference in the atmosphere. However Johnston admitted that this problem is going to get much more complex considering the uncontrollable surge in mobile technology and radio communications. The reason most of the observatories are built in the middle of nowhere is because astronomers prefer to work under conditions where least possible local interference hinders their work.

During the Apollo missions to the moon, the Parkes Observatory was used to relay communication and telemetry signals to NASA, providing coverage for when the moon was on the Australian side of the Earth. The telescope also played a role in relaying data from the NASA Galileo mission to Jupiter that required radio-telescope support due to the use of its backup telemetry subsystem as the principal means to relay science data.

The observatory has remained involved in tracking numerous space missions up to the present day, including:

Mariner 2
Mariner 4
Voyager
Giotto
Galileo
Cassini-Huygens

Apollo 11 broadcast

When Buzz Aldrin switched on the TV camera on the Lunar Module, three tracking antennas received the signals simultaneously. They were the 64 metre Goldstone antenna in California, the 26 metre antenna at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra in Australia, and the 64 metre dish at Parkes.

In the first few minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between the signals being received from its two stations at Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, searching for the best quality picture.

A little under nine minutes into the broadcast, the TV was switched to the Parkes signal. The quality of the TV pictures from Parkes was so superior that NASA stayed with Parkes as the source of the TV for the remainder of the 2.5 hour broadcast. For a comprehensive explanation of the TV reception of the Apollo 11 broadcast, see “The Television Broadcasts” from the report “On Eagles Wings”.

On Monday, 31 October 2011, Google replaced its logo with a Google Doodle in honor of Parkes Observatory’s 50th Anniversary. It was only visible on Google in Australia.

Google doodle honours oldest pupil

Posted by

0


Google image of Kimani Maruge in class
Google has created a doodle to honour a Kenyan believed to be the oldest person to have enrolled in primary school.

The doodle on the internet giant’s Kenya home page marks the 11th anniversary since Kimani Maruge went to school for the first time, aged 84.

Mr Maruge, who died in 2009, said when he started lessons that he wanted to learn to read the Bible and to count.

Google said its doodle was a reminder that it is never too late to learn something new.

Mr Maruge, a veteran of Kenya’s struggle for independence from British rule, rose to fame when he enrolled at a school in the town of Eldoret in western Kenya on 12 January 2004.

“Kimani Maruge was an extraordinary Kenyan whose passion for education throughout his life shines as a beacon worldwide on the importance of lifelong learning,” said Dorothy Ooky, Google’s communications manager for East and Francophone Africa.

Kimani Nganga Maruge, 84, sits on 19 January 2008 in Eldoret, western Kenya
Mr Maruge went to the same school as his grandchildren

“Doodles are used to celebrate the lives of famous scientists, artists, and pioneers throughout history and Google is thrilled to feature a Kenyan whose life stood for such an important cause.”

Although he had no papers to prove his age, Mr Maruge was said to have been 84 when he enrolled at Kapkenduiywo primary school.

Two of his grandchildren had attended the same school.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as the oldest person ever to have begun primary school.

After starting lessons, he lived for a further five years before dying of stomach cancer in 2009.

Google’s Top Searches of 2014

Posted by

0


Americans looked to Google for information on Ebola, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and the actor Robin Williams’s suicide this year—all of which ranked among the hottest search terms of 2014. Google has announced the results of its “14th Annual Year in Search,” an inventory of the year’s most-searched-for keywords and phrases. The data gives us a chance to look back and relive some of the major events of 2014, many of them in science (see Scientific American’s list of the top 10 science stories of the year).

The searches that rank highest are those that have gained the most ground when compared with searches during a similar time period last year. In that sense, the results show not only what the world is looking to the Internet to find—but also subjects that were truly trending in 2014 after receiving little attention in 2013. Google captures 68 percent of Internet searches from desktops worldwide, according to NetMarketShare.

In this year’s results the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge comes in at number 6 among the top U.S. searches—representing the nation’s zeal for dumping cold water over our heads all summer to raise money for the ALS Association for research on treatments for the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). The phrase “What is ALS?” also ranked as number 2 among the top 10 most-searched questions starting with the phrase “What is…?”

“What is Ebola?” was the most searched phrase in that category, and Ebola was also the number 3 top search term overall in the U.S. “Ebola symptoms” also ranked first in a list of symptom-related searches—beating out pregnancy and the flu, in a country where true Ebola symptoms were detected far less frequently than either of the other two.

Hurricane Arthur, which hit the coast of North Carolina in mid-summer, was this year’s most searched natural event—whereas California’s drought didn’t even make the list, perhaps because it has been ongoing since 2011 (and so did not show the required spike in traffic). Arthur was followed by the magnitude 8.2 Chilean earthquake in April and the magnitude 6.0 tremblor that struck northern Californiain August.

In technology a Google Doodle commemorating the Philae Lander, a robotic probelaunched by the European Space Agency to land on and explore a comet, was the ninth-most popular doodle of the year in the U.S. and the Flappy Bird game was the fifth-most popular search term of all, ranking higher than either the ISIS terrorist army invasion in the Middle East or the events in Ferguson, Mo.

It also seems that if you want to be remembered, it pays to be in show business—all of the people whose deaths landed them in the top 10 list for most-searched-for losses were actors and actresses at some point in their careers, including the notable poet, singer and actress Maya Angelou who passed away on May 28.

As past coverage at Scientific American has shown, the most popular Google searches have many correlates both proposed and proved—a boost in searches on business and politics foretells a dive in the stock market, strange weather prompts people to search for climate change in a pattern that predicts their political affiliation, and a spike insearches for flu medicine could someday help us to see when and where the flu is actually striking.

Below is a selection of this year’s U.S. trends. If you spot any other science-related trends in Google’s master list, please note them as a comment.

Trending Searches

1.         Robin Williams
2.         World Cup
3.         Ebola
4.         Malaysia Airlines
5.         Flappy Bird
6.         ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
7.         ISIS
8.         Ferguson
9.         Frozen
10.       Ukraine

Trending Natural Events

1.         Hurricane Arthur
2.         Chile Earthquake
3.         Napa Earthquake
4.         Hurricane Iselle
5.         Oso Mudslide
6.         Hurricane Odile
7.         Arkansas Tornado
8.         Hurricane Julio
9.         Alaska Earthquake
10.       Hurricane Ana

Trending Symptoms

1.         Ebola
2.         Flu
3.         Pregnancy
4.         Asperger’s syndrome
5.         ALS
6.         Lupus
7.         Diabetes
8.         Lyme Disease
9.         Typhus
10.       Respiratory virus

Trending Searches for “How to…”

1.         Airdrop
2.         Contour
3.         Vote
4.         Kiss
5.         Craft
6.         Colorblock
7.         Wakeboard
8.         Refurbish
9.         Delegate
10.       DIY

Trending Searches for “What is… ”

1.         Ebola?
2.         ALS?
3.         ISIS?
4.         Bitcoin?
5.         Asphyxia?
6.         Gamergate?
7.         WhatsApp?
8.         MERS?
9.         Hamas?
10.       Airdrop?

Top Dog Questions

1.         Why do dogs eat grass?
2.         Do dogs dream?
3.         Why do dogs howl?
4.         Why do dogs have whiskers?
5.         Why do dogs chase their tails?
6.         How to clean dogs ears
7.         Why are dogs noses wet?
8.         How to stop dogs from digging
9.         How to introduce dogs
10.       Why do dogs bury bones?

Trending Google Doodles of 2014

1.         U.S. Valentine’s Day 2014
2.         World Cup 2014 #27 (Boss)
3.         2014 Winter Olympics
4.         Rubik’s Cube
5.         Doodle 4 Google 2014 U.S. Winner
6.         Nelson Mandela
7.         John Steinbeck
8.         Audrey Hepburn
9.         Philae Robotic Lander
10.       International Women’s Day 2014

Trending Selfies

1.         Selfie Olympics
2.         Monkey
3.         Oscar
4.         Obama
5.         Squirrel
6.         David Ortiz
7.         Zach Mettenberger
8.         Colin Powell
9.         Elephant
10.       Shark

Top/Trending Books

1.         Boy, Snow, Bird
2.         Blood Will Out
3.         Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art
4.         City of Heavenly Fire
5.         Flash Boys
6.         The Invention of Wings
7.         All the Light We Cannot See
8.         Words of Radiance
9.         Yes Please
10.       Capital in the Twenty First Century

Trending People
not including deaths

1.         Jennifer Lawrence
2.         Kim Kardashian
3.         Tracy Morgan
4.         Ray Rice
5.         Tony Stewart
6.         Iggy Azalea
7.         Donald Sterling
8.         Adrian Peterson
9.         Renée Zellweger
10.       Jared Leto

Trending Deaths

1.         Robin Williams
2.         Joan Rivers
3.         Philip Seymour Hoffman
4.         Maya Angelou
5.         Jan Hooks
6.         Harold Ramis
7.         Shirley Temple
8.         Lauren Bacall
9.         Mickey Rooney
10.       James Avery