The light barrier ...

A couple of days ago, I was astounded to hear of particles travelling at faster than the velocity of light in a vacuum. On further reading, in several experiments in Switzerland, news has it that neutrinos (sub-atomic particles with no mass) were discovered to have travelled some 60 nanoseconds faster than the time light took to travel for the distance (730 kilometeres) on which the experiments were conducted. Now, the velocity of light travelling in a vacuum, is 299,792,458 metres per second. This is a universal fact. Physics have accepted that the velocity of light as the ultimate barrier of speed. Nothing can go faster than the velocity of light. [A nanosecond is a billionth of a second or 0.000,000,001 second].

The scientists at CERN are still not confident of their discovery fearing that they could have made a mistake despite the 3 years that they have been at it. They are suggesting for other scientists to verify on their experiments elsewhere to show whether it's true that neutrinos or other particles do travel at hyper light speed, after all 60 billionth of a second is far too small a time difference.

Some say that Einstein has been proven wrong if the discovery is indeed true. My take is that Einstein formulas would need slight alterations.

The Ringgit yo-yo ...

I am sick of the Malaysian Ringgit. Just as I thought, that maybe now was the time for me to go for a holiday in London or in Europe because of their favourable exchange rates vis-a-vis the Ringgit, I was astonished to find out today that our currency is showing signs of weakening. With so much financial mess in Greece, Spain and Italy, and news about contagion and Greek defaults, the Euro and the Pound seem to be holding well. The MYR, with no such problems, is weakening with respect to most major currencies and the the USD.

On reading about the prospects of the MYR on the following days, pundits were of the view that for the next 6 months or so, the MYR would weaken to 3.20 - 3.30 to the USD. The strong currencies would still be the S$, the Swiss Franc, the AUD$, and the Yuan. Those who condemn the USD is nothing more than a piece of toilet paper shall be surprised to know that the toilet paper is still expensive. Prices of commodities like oil, palm oil, tin, rubber, copper and silver and even gold are retreating. Gold is now hovering at USD 16 hundred something as investors (actually hedge fund traders), sold their positions to get cash on strong rumours of a Greek default causing severe strain on the Euro. That's why the USD is gaining strength. Another plausible reason is China dumping US treasury bonds.

Remember the rise in the price of crude oil ? It went up and up from USD 40 barrel, then to 50, 70, 100 and finally to tantalisingly close to USD 150 per barrel before it collapsed to 70-80 and finally stabilising to USD 80-100 per barrel. Similarly with the price of gold that came to tantalisingly close to USD 2,000 per troy ounce (the recorded price was USD 1,921) before it collapsed to USD 16 hundred something per ounce. This is of course the work of the hedge fund traders and other commodity speculators. Digression ....

The US dollar continued its upward march to RM 3.30 to one USD. It seems to me that those "investors" are liquidating their positions here and everywhere else, including in Europe, and parking their money in US, confident that, despite the general perception of the USD being worth as much as a toilet paper, the USD is a safe currency after all.

Daylight robbery ...

At the KLIA Airport, it's reported in the media that five MACC officials tried to steal some USD 300,000 from three money changers who were on their way to Singapore. The funny thing is that why were 3 officers arrested ? What happens to the other two ?

Update 25/09/2011: What follows later is that, apparently, the 3 officers are transferred to do administrative work. They are not even suspended with no pay until brought to court after which they would return to work (if not guilty) or go to jail (if guilty). There is however no mention of what has happened to the money they forfeited, whether it's recovered or stashed somewhere.

Update 28/09/2011 Wednesday: In an update to this robbery, the Police reported that some money had been recovered and that they were looking for 2 more suspects.

How insulting ! ...

From an Indonesian point of view, the report today in Utusan Malaysia that the Indonesian government is to spend some RM 34.4 million over a period of 4 years (2011 to 2014) to modernise the Indonesian Army (TNI) is grossly insulting. Why, 10 bungalows in KL would cost about that much ! Even a couple of American made tanks would cost about as much !

The trouble is that those reporters in Utusan Malaysia don't seem to know the difference between a trillion, a billion and a million. The article states that Indonesia is to spend some 99 trillion rupiah and within bracket was the figure RM 34.4 million. At first I thought it was a printing error shown in the title of the article, but then the error persisted throughout the article leading me to the conclusion about the reporters' lack of arithmetic know-how. Not only that, in the past, I have across similar errors in Utusan Malaysia (which I subscribe to, by the way) such as for example when it's supposed to be a million, they wrote a billion and vice versa.

Just to enlighten those who cannot tell the difference between those large numbers, a million is the number 1 followed by 6 zeros (1,000,000), a billion is 1 followed by 9 zeros (1,000,000,000) and a trillion is 1 followed by 12 zeros (1,000,000,0000,000). After trillion, the next one is a quadrillion (15 zeros), followed by a pentillion (18 zeros) and so on. One may come across the word zillion which actually means simply as the number is so big as to be uncountable just as the word umpteen as in the phrase " I have warned him umpteen times, yet he wouldn't listen or this is the umpteenth time that I have warned him".

What I have just written about numbers is the American way of expressing big numbers. The numbering system in the British establishment is actually slightly different. A million to the American is the same million to the British. However, a billion to the American is a 1,000 times a million whereas a billion to the British is 1,000,000 times a million and so on with the American numbers having 3 zeros less than the British for the same word numbers.

For years, the American stuck to their system while the British stuck to theirs, after all the big number system was simply an interesting bit of arithmetic trivia without any practical use until sometime in the late '70s or early '80s. From the '80s, we start coming across a billion population, a billion dollars for the American budget spending, a billion ringgit scandal, a billionaire and so on. The number billion was popularised by the Americans (probably in their ignorance of the British billion) to refer to anything that was a thousand times a million, but was never accepted by the British establishment until lately.