Post

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Nov 12, 2024 • 6 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

Scrolly

Seymour Cray, "the Father of Supercomputing", claimed that Elves often helped him overcome computer design problems.

Seeking a way to cool the machine he built in 1985, at the time the fastest computer in the world, he characteristically chose to immerse it in artificial blood.

Although never a household name, Seymour Cray was a legendary figure in the computing world. His designs for supercomputers were ingenious to the point of miraculous, and the machines he designed and built were, for much of the 60s, 70s and 80s, the most powerful -- and the most expensive -- on the planet.

Cray was born in 1925, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and from an early age was fascinated with radios, motors, and electrical circuits. After a spell in the US Army, he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a Master's in applied mathematics.

A thread about a never-before-heard story.🧵

At his University instructor's suggestion, Cray went to work at a small company building specialized cryptographic equipment for the US Navy. The unlikely home of the company was a converted factory for manufacturing wooden gliders.

It was here that Cray designed his first computer, the 1103. "My guiding principle was simplicity", he said, and throughout his career, this remained the focus of his design philosophy. He was building RISC machines long before IBM coined the term in the 1970s.

In 1957, Cray and some others left to start Control Data Corporation, and it was here that Cray designed the 1604, one of the world's first fully-transistorised computers. The age of the vacuum tube was over.

cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/writing/…

He soon became chief architect of the 6600 machine, released in 1963 and regarded by many as the world's first true supercomputer, offering 9 Mflops (million floating-point operations per second) of processing power. The 6600 far outstripped IBM's 7094, until then the fastest machine available, and IBM were understandably upset. There is an apochryphal story that IBM chairman Thomas J Watson berated his staff with a memo asking how it was possible that giant IBM could possibly be outdone by tiny CDC, whose workforce numbered only 34, "including the janitor".

At CDC, Cray's legendary dislike of bureaucracy soon became apparent. Asked to write a five-year plan for the company, his response was: "Five year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One-year goal: Achieve one-fifth of the above".

CDC maintained their world lead with the 7600, also designed by Cray, running at 40 Mflops. In 1971 Cray broke to form his own company, and produced the Cray-1 in 1976. Now using integrated circuits in place of transistors, the Cray-1 delivered 170 Mflops. The first Cray-1 was sold to Los Alamos National Laboratory, for nearly $9 million. Sixteen more were subsequently sold, into the scientific number-crunching and intelligence markets.

youtube.com/watch?v=7Pvfbb…

Because of his insistence on using the latest technologies, which were sometimes not mature enough for the job, some of Cray's designs ran into trouble. For his next machine, the Cray-2, he intended to shift from the usual silicon chips to faster, but unproven, gallium arsenide technology. Manufacturing difficulties forced him back to silicon, and the Cray-2 arrived, delayed, in 1985. Nevertheless, it broke the giga-flop (one thousand Mflops) barrier. This was the machine that was cooled by being completely immersed in an inert fluorocarbon liquid, the same liquid used as artificial human blood. Ever stylish, Cray included a decorative fountain in the coolant circulation system.

As soon as one machine was completed, Cray would begin on the next, which was to be bigger, better and faster. There was a story that each spring he would build a sailboat to sail on the lake near his home, then burn it in the fall.

Cray's last completed machine was the Cray-3, of which only one demonstration model was ever built. After the only customer backed out, the machine, worth $30 million, was given free to the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

All through his career, fellow engineers marvelled at Cray's uncanny ability to hold every tiny detail of a computer design in his head. One story has it that Cray was called in to fix a baffling problem with a Cray-2. He locked himself in the machine room and after contemplating for 6 hours, eventually called an engineer. Cray pointed to a single wire and asked for it to be replaced. The machine worked again.

In 1995, Cray's company ran into financial trouble, and the planned Cray-4 machine was never completed. In the months before his death, at his new start-up company, SRC Computer Inc, Cray was working on a new supercomputer called the SRC-6.

There are many legends about Seymour Cray. John Rollwagen, a colleague for many years, tells the story of a French scientist who visited Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. Asked what were the secrets of his success, Cray said "Well, we have elves here, and they help me". Cray subsequently showed his visitor a tunnel he had built under his house, explaining that when he reached an impasse in his computer design, he would retire to the tunnel to dig. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem", he said.

Cray has been called solitary, uncommunicative, secretive, and difficult to get on with. Frank Sumner, Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Manchester, met Cray on several occasions and refutes suggestions that he was a prickly character: "He was a very friendly man, and perhaps the greatest all-round computer scientist ever", says Sumner.

Although Cray said of himself in an interview with the Smithsonian Institute in May 1995, "I was one of those nerds before the name was popular", he will be fondly remembered as the father of the supercomputer, a man whose genius changed the world.

Cray avoided publicity, and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work

For Cray, the excavation project is more than a simple diversion. "I work when I'm at home," he recently told a visiting scientist. "I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I'm not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go back up and work some more."

Rollwagen knows that Cray is only half kidding and that some of the designer's greatest inspirations come when he is digging. Says the chairman: "The real work happens when Seymour is in the tunnel."

web.archive.org/web/2008052116…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

More from @Unexplained2020

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Jun 8

This is just mind blowing but controversial theory by Julian Jaynes who suggested that Ancient humans lacked modern consciousness, mistook inner voices as commands from gods, and even cared for dead relatives as if they were still alive, due to a divided “Bicameral” mind.

In his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes argued that the "bicameral mind" was a way of thinking where people literally heard voices in their heads and obeyed them like divine commands. He believed this mental state stopped working around 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean.

He said this change led to the rise of modern human consciousness, where people became more self-aware and made decisions on their own.

Jaynes also suggested that people we now call schizophrenic might still have parts of this old way of thinking, and if someone from ancient times were alive today, we would likely see them as schizophrenic too.

In 1976, an American psychologist named Julian Jaynes, who lived from 1920 to 1997, published a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

In this book, he made a bold and unusual claim: that humans weren’t actually aware of their own thoughts until about 1000 BC.

He believed that when ancient people heard inner voices in their heads, they didn’t realize those voices came from their own minds.

Instead, they thought these voices were gods speaking to them and telling them what to do, which is how stories of divine communication may have started.

julianjaynes.org/about/about-ja…

Jaynes introduced his theory about the bicameral mind in the 1970s, most psychologists didn’t respond positively.

In January 1979, William Thomas Jones wrote a paper questioning how any intelligent person could believe Jaynes’s theory.

He analyzed the book in detail to show why Jaynes’s conclusions were unrealistic and explored why, despite this, some people still took his ideas seriously.

Jones argued that Jaynes’s supporters were drawn to the theory because they disliked Darwinian evolution and natural selection, felt nostalgic for the supposed lost state of bicamerality, and wanted a simple theory that could explain everything about human nature.

Read 10 tweets

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Jun 4

This Man says NASA asked for his help to understand ORBS that were harassing their astronauts. He said these are Angelc Beings, they come out of orbs and can be as tall as 125 feet with wings and even smile at the astronauts.

For the first time, Chris Bledsoe, an American experiencer revealed on Bledsoe Said So podcast that the government is very afraid of mysterious beings or phenomena that he calls "plasmoids" or angelic beings because they cannot control them and have no way to defend against them.

He has attended high-level meetings in Washington, D.C. with congressmen and military officials who are scared and uncertain about how to handle these beings.

According to him, the government does not want the public to interact with or even think about these entities because they fear losing control.

To prevent this, they try to twist the truth or create fear by labeling the beings as aliens, plasmoids, or Chinese drones. This creates confusion and fear in people who don't understand what is really going on.

Chris explains that he worked with NASA for years and has proof, including photos, videos, and official documents, as well as meetings with high-level scientists.

NASA was interested in him because these beings seemed to like him and communicated with him, while avoiding official agencies. NASA wanted to know why the beings chose him and why they were bothering their astronauts.

He claims that all astronauts have seen orbs or these beings in space, even though this has never been officially released.

These beings appear outside space shuttles, looking through the windows, or floating above the shuttle bay or space station. Sometimes they are glowing, and there are reports of several of them standing together, up to 125 feet tall, with wings, smiling at the astronauts.

Chris describes them as energy beings that come out of glowing orbs. He says they are angelic and can appear in many forms. They can be six or seven feet tall or much larger.

They can look like drones or flying saucers and can even split into two or many forms. He says this is the first time he has spoken publicly about these things, even though he has known about them for 18 years.

youtu.be/qVUt4VzKUsM

Read 4 tweets

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Jun 2

This will totally blow your mind. This Man found in his compelling study that our cells use higher-level systems to talk to each other and organize what they do.

One of those higher-level systems is bioelectricity — a kind of electrical communication that happens not just in neurons (brain cells), but in all cells. These electrical patterns help cells figure out where they are in the body and what they should become.

The groundbreaking work of Michael Levin, a scientist at Tufts University, and his research could radically change how we understand biology, development, and even intelligence itself.

Traditionally, scientists have believed that genes, the information stored in our DNA, are the main drivers of this process. Genes control how cells behave, what kind of cells they become, and how organs form. Since sequencing the human genome, most biological research has focused on figuring out how genes do all this.

Levin, however, argues that genes are not the full story. He compares genes to low-level computer code. In computer science, programmers don’t usually work with machine code directly—they use higher-level tools that make things easier to understand and control.

This Thread will change everything you know about biology 🧵

Bonus Post!

This Doctor Believes That Death Is Not the Annihilation of the Human Mind: Consciousnes Continues Even When Brain Is Dead

howandwhys.com/sam-parnia-nea…

Levin suggests that biology has higher levels of organization that go beyond genes. One of these higher levels is what he calls the bioelectric network—a system where cells communicate using electrical signals, not just chemical signals or genetic instructions.

We usually think of neurons (brain cells) as the only cells that talk to each other using electricity. But Levin's research shows that many types of cells can do this. And these bioelectric signals help guide development, healing, and even complex decisions about what body parts to grow.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Read 9 tweets

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

May 19

The CIA trains people not to look directly at the people they are following, as otherwise they can 'sense' they are being stared at and turn around. This Man argues that this is due to consciousness being extended outside of the brain.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist who has written over 100 scientific papers and 9 books, and has helped write 6 more. His books have been translated into 28 languages.

In 2013, a top think tank in Switzerland named him one of the world’s 100 most important thinkers. On ResearchGate, a popular site for scientists, he ranks in the top 4% for research interest.

On Google Scholar, his work has been cited many times, giving him high academic scores. For twelve years in a row, Watkins magazine has listed him as one of the most spiritually influential living people.

His work has appeared in many well-known magazines and newspapers, and he has been featured on BBC radio and TV.

In the interview, philosopher Hilary Lawson asks Rupert Sheldrake why the scientific community has been so critical of his work, even though he has been very successful with the general public. Sheldrake explains that the scientific community is not just one group—it’s made up of many different people with different opinions.

When he first shared his ideas, some scientists were interested and friendly, while others were more skeptical. He had especially good experiences with scientists in India, who were open to his ideas like morphic resonance.

But things changed after he published his first book, A New Science of Life, in 1981. A powerful editor at the science journal Nature, Sir John Maddox, harshly criticized the book and even said it was “a book for burning.” This public attack made Sheldrake seem like an outsider or a heretic in the eyes of many scientists, which made others afraid to openly support him.

Sheldrake believes that the scientists who attack him most often are militant atheists. He explains that these people treat materialist science almost like a religion, and because his work challenges their worldview, they react very strongly. This kind of criticism also appears on platforms like Wikipedia, where a group called “guerrilla skeptics” has taken control of his biography and prevents others from changing it.

However, Sheldrake also says that most scientists are not so extreme. When he gives talks at scientific institutions, people often come up to him privately afterward and say they’re very interested in his work and have had similar experiences, like feeling telepathic connections or sensing when their dog knows they’re coming home. But they admit they’re afraid to speak up about it because they don’t want to be judged or attacked by their peers. Sheldrake tells them that they’re not alone, and many of their colleagues feel the same way in secret.

iai.tv/video/rupert-s…

Bonus Post!

This Woman Claims She Died, Traveled Through a Velvety Void, Lived as a Mantis Creature on Another Planet, and Witnessed Visions of Earth’s Future

howandwhys.com/angela-rose-ha…

Read 7 tweets

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Apr 30

One of Brazil’s strangest unsolved alien related mysteries: The Lead Masks Case. Two men were found dead on a remote hill near Rio de Janeiro. No injuries.. No struggle... Just... lying there with weird lead masks covering their eyes, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

In August 1966, two dead bodies were found on a hill near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. An 18-year-old boy named Jorge was flying a kite when it got lost in the jungle. While searching for it, he came across the bodies and told the police.

The dead men were lying side by side on some leaves. They had strange lead masks covering their eyes. These were not normal masks—they were made of heavy metal and didn’t cover the whole face, just the eyes.

When police investigated, they learned the men were radio technicians named Miguel and Manoel. They were from a town called Campos dos Goytacazes. Miguel was 34 years old, and Manoel was 32.

According to their families, Miguel and Manoel had traveled to Niteroi (a nearby city) three days earlier. They took a large amount of money with them and said they were going to buy parts for their work. While in the city, they also bought raincoats and a bottle of water.

This strange case became known as the “Lead Mask Mystery” because of the odd masks found on the men. No one knows for sure how or why they died, and the case remains unsolved.

In the evening of the same day, they were last seen alive. A local security guard saw them with two other men, going towards Vintém Hill by car. After that, Miguel and Manoel went out of the car and started walking toward the hill, but the two other men did not leave the car and drove away.

When the police arrived at the scene, they found the two male bodies in business suits, covered by raincoats, laying on the dead leaves and branches. Their faces were covered with strange lead masks. The police did not find any sign of a fight, no gun wound, no injuries or marks on their bodies.

According to the relatives and friends of the victims, both men were into the research of extraterrestrials and UFOs. Besides, they planned to make contact with some supernatural powers from another planet on Vintém Hill. But what those forces were, no one could say for sure.

Some people believe they were planning to make contact with aliens, using their electrical equipment. What’s more, some strange notes were found with the dead bodies, translating as follows:

“Sunday, one capsule after lunch; Wednesday, one capsule at bed-time.” The second one: “Be at the place arranged at 16:30. Take capsules at 18:30. After feeling effects, protect half the face with lead masks. Await the agreed signal.”

The wife of one of the victims said that a day before leaving, he had told her that he was waiting for the most important test, which would confirm or deny everything that he believed in, that is, the supernatural.

A close friend of the deceased confirmed that a few months before, the men had tried to create a kind of apparatus for contact with supernatural entities, which exploded during the experiments.

Read 5 tweets

Vicky Verma

@Unexplained2020

Apr 21

Pope Francis has died! However, not many people know that the Vatican has over 50 miles of underground archives containing the world’s history. Let that sink in… 50 miles. And this isn’t even a conspiracy theory.

The Vatican’s Secret Archives are real and located in one of the most famous religious and cultural places in the world—the Vatican. These archives stretch across 53 miles of shelving and include 35,000 volumes of catalogs. They hold documents that are over 1,200 years old.

The name “Secret Archives” adds to their mystery and makes people think of hidden secrets or dark stories. Because the indexes aren’t public and access is limited to certain scholars, many people imagine that the archives hold shocking or even strange things. Some even believe the Vatican is hiding aliens there!

But in truth, the archives are not actually meant to be “secret.” The word “secret” comes from a Latin word, secretum, which really means “private.” These archives were always meant to store the Pope’s official documents, letters, and important Church records.

Inside, you’ll also find some of the Church’s most valuable historical papers, with some dating back to the 700s. For a long time, not even religious scholars could read them. That changed in 1881 when Pope Leo XIII, a forward-thinking Pope, opened the archives to researchers. Since then, the documents have helped tell the story of both the Church and the wider world.

One of the most important documents in the Vatican's Secret Archives changed the course of religious history. It’s the official paper that shows the Catholic Church kicking out Martin Luther. Luther was a German man who challenged the Church by writing his famous 95 Theses, which started the Protestant Reformation. In response, Pope Leo X wrote a statement called Decet Romanum Pontificem, officially excommunicating Luther. This allowed Luther to start his own church and created a major split in Christianity that still affects the world today.

Another fascinating document in the archives is called the Chinon Parchment. It records the trial of the Knights Templar, a Catholic military group that was accused of crimes like heresy during the Crusades. The parchment is huge—about the size of a dining table—and was lost for hundreds of years due to a filing error. It wasn’t rediscovered until 2001, hidden in a box with other papers. Once found, it was properly sorted and made available to researchers.

When the Vatican made the Chinon Parchment public in 2007, it revealed something surprising: in 1308, Pope Clement V had actually cleared the Knights Templar of heresy. This new information helped restore the group’s reputation, which had been damaged for centuries.

All these documents—and many more—are stored in a special place near the Vatican Library in Rome. The archives include regular stacks and reading rooms, but also an underground fireproof bunker to protect delicate materials. There’s even a school for clergy to study history, and because it’s the Vatican, there’s sacred art to enjoy as well.

Access to the archives isn’t open to everyone. Only carefully approved scholars are allowed in. Still, the Vatican has become a bit more open in recent years. In 2010, journalists were allowed to visit for the first time—partly due to public interest after Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons. In 2012, the Vatican held a public exhibition for the archives’ 400th anniversary, showing off some of its most important documents.

In 2019, Pope Francis announced that the Vatican would open up its archives on Pope Pius XII. During an event honoring the 80th anniversary of Pius’s election, Francis said, “The Church is not afraid of history.”

Bonus Post!

UFOs are biblical and they may hold the key to a major future event. Rep. Burchett & Rep. Burlison claim UFOs could be 'angels' sent by GOD as they say sightings are consistent with scriptures from the Bible

howandwhys.com/us-congressmen…

Read 8 tweets

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

Vicky Verma

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @Unexplained2020

Vicky Verma

Vicky Verma

Vicky Verma

Vicky Verma

Vicky Verma

Vicky Verma

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!