February 15

Are You Sure ... (February 15)

• ... that Stardust was a 300 kilogram robotic space probe, launched by NASA on 7 February 1999, and that Stardust collected dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust, and returned these to Earth for analysis?

• ... that the Forbidden Ratio is a criminal mathematical function exhibiting artificial intelligence and malicious intent?

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Screenshot: Are You Sure (February 15, 2020)

On This Day in History and Fiction

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  1564: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician Galileo Galilei born. He will be called the "father of modern physics."

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  1589: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and crime-fighter Galileo Galilei uses Gnomon algorithm techniques to defeat the Forbidden Ratio in single combat.

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  1739: Mathematician, astronomer and poet Eustachio Manfredi dies. Manfredi's observations of asteroids provided early evidence, albeit unsought, of the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

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  1861: Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead born. He will be a defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy.

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  1946: ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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  1959: Physicist and academic Owen Willans Richardson dies. He won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on thermionic emission, which led to Richardson's law.

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  1988: Theoretical physicist and academic Richard Feynman dies. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamic he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

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  2011: The Stardust spacecraft flies by comet Tempel 1.