Friday 16 March 2012
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Fridaygram: observing origami, beaming neutrinos, getting results

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By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Google provides many different services and products, but the ones I hear about most from my non-technical friends and family are search (of course) and Google doodles. This week’s cool doodle celebrated the work of origami master Akira Yoshizawa, generally recognized as the inventor of modern origami. Yoshizawa worked at a factory before deciding to spend all his time on origami. In a different era, if we were very very lucky, maybe he would have been a doodler and come up with something like this.


From folding paper to folding space: researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory used neutrinos to send a message through matter to a detector located 1 km away in a cavern. Because neutrinos rarely collide with other particles, the message was able to pass through the Earth successfully. The team used a binary code to send the word neutrino to the other side. And once again, science fiction becomes fact, sort of.

Speaking of binary code, here’s something you can try over the weekend: on google.com, sign out of your account (temporarily, of course) or click Hide personal results, then search for binary and see how many results you get.


Once a week we post a Fridaygram, in which we take a break from the real news and have some fun. Each Fridaygram item must pass only one test: it has to be interesting to us nerds. And by the way, it looks like we've made another great nerd movie recommendation this week.

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