Five must-read stories from the past week include using big data to predict how long you will live; cutting-edge simulations that reveal how supermassive black holes were born; a mathematician’s predictions of 2016 major league baseball season winners; a new visit to one of Hubble’s most iconic and popular images that shows the Pillars of Creation in infrared light; and how security algorithms based on hard mathematical problems provide a basis for virtually unbreakable cryptographic techniques.
Hard Mathematical Problems Provide Basis for Virtually Unbreakable Cryptographic Techniques
Cryptographic methods are typically created following the ad-hoc principle: somebody comes up with an algorithm; others attempt to break it — if they don’t succeed, it means that the algorithm is secure. Cryptography researchers opted for a different approach. They based their security algorithms on hard mathematical problems.
Pillars of Creation in Infrared
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revisited one of its most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. This image shows the pillars as seen in infrared light, allowing it to pierce through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar — but just as amazing — view of the pillars.
Mathematician Predicts 2106 Major League Baseball Winners
This is the 19th year that NJIT’s Professor Bruce Bukiet has applied mathematical analysis to compute the number of regular season games each Major League Baseball team should win. Though his expertise is in mathematical modeling (rather than baseball), his projections have consistently compared well with those of so-called experts.
Cutting-edge Simulations Reveal How Supermassive Black Holes Were Born
Near the edge of the visible Universe are some of the brightest objects ever observed, known as quasars, which are believed to contain supermassive black holes of more than a billion times the mass of our Sun. Simulations have revealed for the first time exactly how these black holes formed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
Could a Computer Tell You When Your Time is Up?
Statisticians, computer scientists and medics are launching a new project to predict how long you will live. They will use big data to predict life expectancy — and particularly how various chronic diseases and their treatments impact longevity. And they say that there are many benefits to knowing how long you might live.
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