Category Archives: Technology

What is a Computer Bit and How Does it Work?

Man working on multi computers
Photo by CDC-Pexels

What Makes Computers Tick?

When you think of computing, you may have images of whizzing processors or geeks typing on screens. But did you ever wonder how all these devices work? If so, keep reading.

As technology continues to advance and computer literacy becomes more important than ever, we are going to break down what makes computers tick!

Electricity is the Common Demonator

Set of realistic vector hands pressing light switches
You turn on a switch and you are allowing current to flow. That is represented by a ‘1’ in a computer language called Binary Code. You press Off and cut out the electric current from flowing, which is represented by a ‘0’. Photo iStock.

You flick a switch and a light bulb turns on. You flick the switch again and the blub turns off. If I were to tell you that computers run on this simple principle, would you believe me?   Well, believe you should because that’s all there is. Simply refer to a bulb that is lit as the number ‘1’ and when it is off, refer to it as a ‘0’.

In other words, the values ‘0’ and ‘1’ are based on whether electricity, more popularly referred to as current, is flowing and is represented by ‘1’ or current is not flowing, represented by ‘0’.

So Should I Call Them Ones and Zeros?

Not exactly. These two values are known as bits. So whatever you are doing on the computer; such as reading this article, you are actually reading a long list of bits that the computer sees and then it translates those bites into words. 

Of course, it is a bit (pun intended) more detailed than that. Not complex though, just a little more to absorb. Starting with the fact that when I mentioned “reading a long list of bits”, we have to translate these “long lists” into an organized pattern that the computer can understand; in other words, how to translate them into something we humans will understand.

I’ll Byte!

Seamless pattern with abstract binary code, digital matrix background
4 rows of 8 bits = 4 rows of bytes. Photo: iStock

If you align eight bits in a row where some are set to ‘1’ and others are set to ‘0’, you have created what is referred to as a byte.

It’s an arrangement that has a particular meaning to the computer.

A byte can be any letter or number from A-Z, 0-9 respectively. It can also store special characters, For example, binary code 00001101 is equal to 13 in decimal form. The alphabetic character “M” is similar in bit arrangement, but with one bit (pun intended again) of a difference, and that is it has an extra ‘on’ bit – 01001100. 

If you were to type the letter ‘R” on your screen, it would involve a different combination of eight bits. In this case, for the letter ‘R, the sequence would be 01000010, and the letter ‘S’ would be 01000011, and so on. 

Let’s backtrack and look at how these bits equate to their electrical equivalent. For our ‘M’ example above, which has the bit arrangement of 01001100, that would equal the following combination of electrical current that is, in this exact sequence: off, on, off, off, on, on, off, off.

It is based on a table called ASCII (As Key), which displays the eight bits (bytes), in ascending sequence, where each byte equates to a letter or number.  

The particular instruction would depend upon the arrangement of the 1s and 0s. If you think this seems like some type of code, it is and is called binary code.

Bites and Bytes Review

  • A bit is a switch that is either electronically on or off.
  • A byte is a combination of eight bits.
  • Each pattern of bits in the bytes represents a number, letter or special character.

Understanding how computers use bits and bytes can help you understand how they process everything from the simplest math problems to streaming video or playing games online. Keep reading to learn more about this topic!

Why are Bits Important?

Bytes determine whether a file is an image, document, spreadsheet, movie, audio file or other medium and they tell your computer what to do with the information in that file.

Converting information into digital form is called encoding; the process of converting it back into its original state is called decoding. Encoding and decoding both involve assigning values to different pieces of information so that a computer can store and process it appropriately.

For example, let’s say you have a picture that you want to save on your computer. The picture will be broken down into individual pixels and assigned an identifying number. This number will represent the color of each pixel (e.g., red, blue, or green). Thus, encoding this picture involves assigning numbers to each piece of information in it—in this case, the colors of each pixel in the photo.

Decoding would work the same way it would give a pixel its original identifying number so that it could once again be identified as a specific color; thus allowing you to see the photo as intended by its creator!

Bits in Programming

When you’re programming a computer, you use bytes to represent information. For example, when the programmer asks the computer to calculate 5+5, it translates this into binary. “0001 0010 0101” So in binary, 5+5 is “0110 0100 0101” (This is called a binary addition). These two numbers are added together and the answer of 10 is sent back. And that’s how bits work!

Writing the Computer Program

PHP computer instruction
Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

Computer programs read what’s called instructions. It tells the computer to do things, as explained in the following examples.

      1. Print Something
        When you tell your computer to print a document, there are instructions that tell it to do just that.
        Scan the document or picture.
        Contact the printer.
        Send the document or picture to the printer.
        Tell the printer to print it.
      2. An ATM Example
        In banking, a set of computer instructions tells the system to read a customer’s checking balance when he/she is at an ATM. If the individual attempts to withdraw funds that are more than what’s in the checking balance, the person would be told there is not enough money in the account for this withdrawal.
      3. Here are computer program instructions written in Python that determines if a variable input of a stock price is higher than 50 and display a corresponding message:
        # Get the stock price from the user
        stock_price = float(input(“Enter the stock price: “))# Check if the stock price is higher than 50
        if stock_price > 50:
        print(“Your stock is growing!”)
        else:
        print(“Your stock is not growing.”)

        In this example, the program prompts the user to enter the stock price, which is stored in the variable stock_price.

        The program then uses an if statement to check if the stock price is higher than 50. If it is, it displays the message “Your stock is growing!” using the print function. If the stock price is not higher than 50, it displays the message “Your stock is not growing.”

This is called an if/then condition and is extremely common in computer programming. Also called a logical statement.

The same situation will occur over and over and the same result will happen. There is no determination that there may be more issues occurring, such as possible fraudulent activity and that is where artificial intelligence comes in as we discuss in our AI 101 article.

Summing Up

A computer bit is the smallest unit of information that a computer can read. When you align eight bits in a row, it is called a byte and each byte represents a letter, number, or special character, which is defined by the arrangement of the bits in the byte.

The translation of each byte can be found in the ASCII table. Bits are used to process everything from the simplest math problems to streaming video or playing games online.

What are Semiconductors and How Do They Work?

Close up photo of a motherboard
Semiconductor Computer Chips. Photo by CristianIS https://pixabay.com/users/CristianIS-2094012/ on Pixabay

Overview

This is where we describe the device that controls the flow of electricity inside the semiconductor so that the bit patterns (bytes) can become the language that the computer will translate into human literacy, or in layman’s terms, translate from bytes to English characters, numbers, and special characters.

Driving the Current

You might say electricity hates semiconductors because current can only travel through them when you tell it to, or more specifically when you turn a switch on or off. It is similar to driving a car. You can’t drive down the road and not think there will be any obstacles such as a red light to stop you.

A good example is to picture your car as the current and the road as the semiconductor. Now imagine a light bulb at the end of the road. If the current (your car) continues to travel down the road without hitting a stop light, you will reach the bulb, and voila! You (the current) reached the bulb and lit it up.

Car on road with arrow pointing to light bulb
Photo by SS. Light bulb Pixaby.

But what if there was a red light on the road? You must stop the car (stop the flow of current) and then there is no voila. The bulb will not light because no electricity was allowed to continue down the road to reach it.  

Another analogy is when you turn on a faucet to allow water to flow. When you are done, you turn it off and the water stops flowing, but you can also control the speed or force at which the water comes out. It is this force that can be equated to voltage when referring to electricity. Let’s look at this in a bit more detail. 

The Voltage Factor

So the flow of electricity that is controlled through the semiconductor is via the amount of voltage that is being used. If too little voltage is implemented, then no electrical current will flow through, but if you raise the voltage, it will trigger the semiconductor to open the gate and allow the current to flow through. In other words, voltage is the controlling factor in whether current will or will not flow through the conductor.

The Managing Device Within the Semiconductor

This control of whether current flows or doesn’t flow through a semiconductor has a name – transistor, which is nothing more than a switch to allow or disallow electricity to travel through it. The transistor will open when a specific amount of voltage (force) is used but will close when not enough voltage is used.

Before semiconductors were introduced, transistors were controlled by vacuum tubes. They were large, bulky devices, but they worked the same way as today’s tiny transistors do. You may recall seeing old photos of large rooms filled with vacuum tubes. That’s what it took to just make some simple calculations.Transistor size comparisons

Transistor Sizes as Compared Throughout the Decades. Top-Left is a vacuum tube that would represent one transistor., equating to one state of either on or off. The rightmost device is a semiconductor computer chip that can contain hundreds or even thousands of transistors with simultaneous on and off states. Photo vlabo from iStock

Today’s transistors are tiny and the hundreds, if not thousands of vacuum tubes that filled a room can now fit on a computer chip the size of your fingernail. These ‘chips’, sit on a board, called a motherboard that connects the circuits which allow the current to run along with it.

Computer Board
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-circuit-board-343457/

The transistor’s on and off states create logic that represents the basic building blocks of the decision making process; however, we don’t refer to this process as on or off. Instead, we represent it by numbers. ‘1’ represents ‘on’ and ‘0’ represents ‘off’, which in computer talk are called bits.

Our article on how bits and bytes work explains this in more detail. 

What are Semiconductors Made Of?

Transistors are made of silicon and germanium, an element typically found in sand. The physical characteristics of silicon and germanium can be perfect conductors to allow current to flow without much resistance, but can also be perfect insulators to stop any current from flowing, which makes it a truly superior mineral when you need to control electricity.

Summary

Transistors allow current to flow or not to flow through it. The material that the current resides in is silicon, which is used because its properties allow it to work well as a conductor but just as well as an insulator. Each on or off state is represented by a ‘1’ or ‘0’ and is called a bit. Eight bits make a byte, and it is the particular pattern of bits in each of the bytes that determines a certain instruction for the computer to follow.

Here’s Why Your Car Overheats

Before we begin, we need to note that if you have an electric vehicle (EV), this information will not apply, since EVs don’t have radiators and subsequently, cannot overheat, but if you do have a conventional gas car, the information supplied below can be very helpful so that you don’t get stuck with a radiator that overheats.

Overview

Woman looking at an overheated car
Photo: iStock

When it comes to nightmares for conventional car owners, engine overheating is probably on your list. If you want to avoid regular car repairs, proper maintenance is necessary, including keeping your vehicle’s radiator in tip-top shape.

However, before you do that, you need to understand why your car’s radiator can overheat. There are many different causes of engine overheating.

The following are the most common causes.

Your Car’s Radiator

Gas engines can get very hot. This is because energy is discharged as the spark plugs ignite causing the pistons to make their repetitive up-and-down motion.

To keep the heat energy from getting out of control, the engine block is constantly being cooled via engine coolant that circulates the engine. The coolant liquid that resides in the radiator helps reduce the heat within the enginean so that it doesn’t overheat.

The radiator is one of the key components of the cooling system that is responsible for keeping your engine cool. It is an enclosed vented chamber containing channels for the fluid (normally water) that transfers heat from one location to another more efficiently than if there were no intermediary medium at all.

Radiators are most commonly used in automobiles with internal combustion engines, but they are also found in other applications such as air conditioning systems, industrial process cooling, and heating systems in homes.

Car Radiator
Car Radiator. Photo: iStock

Low Coolant 

But what if there is no coolant available?

Low or no coolant in the radiator is the leading cause of engine overheating; therefore, it is vitality important that you regularly check your coolant and fill it up if it’s low. Moreover, this is especially important in the summer. 

Poorly Working Electric Fan

Apart from a low coolant level, another thing that often causes engine overheating is a defective electric fan. At times, your fan will burn and will stop working. Therefore, you must regularly check whether the fan motor of your car is working.

Broken Fan Belt

Your car will overheat if its fan belt is broken. Usually, a fan belt is found in older cars, and fixing it is easy. Also, by looking at the engine, you can easily tell whether or not you have a broken fan belt.

Leaky Water Pump

Look beneath the car when you stop it in case your vehicle continues to overheat regardless of what you do. You may have a water leak from the pump if you witness a significant amount of liquid beneath your car.

Check the coolant level in the radiator. If it is low on more than one occasion, it is most likely that you have a leaky water pump. To test this out, make sure your radiator is filled with coolant, and then take the car for a short drive. If your coolant keeps going low then you most likely have a water pump that is not functioning properly. If this is the case go to your repair shop as soon as possible and get it fixed. 

Blocked Radiator

If your car has over 50,000 miles, then there’s a good chance that the radiator is filled with gunk, preventing it from running properly. Solving this problem is easy. All you have to do is flush your radiator. If you flush your car’s radiator once a year, you will prevent it from getting blocked. Best to have your mechanic do this for you.

Thermostat That Does Not Open

At low speeds, thermostats do not need to come into play. However, once you push the accelerator, the thermostat must open to allow more coolant to flow through. If that does not happen then your car is likely to get overheated.

There you have it—why your car overheats. Regardless of what causes it, you must get an overheated engine fixed as soon as possible. 

Going to your local car repair shop is your best bet for doing it right.

 

Life in Outer Space and the UFO Phonenomena

Milky Way Galaxy
Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash

Is There Intelligent Life Out There?

One of our previous articles discussed the minerals of Star Trek, giving rise to the hope that there is extraterrestrial life out there, but the honest discussion about ET’s existence is a loaded subject. 

For this article, we are going to focus on the probability of whether life exists in outer space; in other words, what are the odds that there really is intelligent life on other planets?

As difficult as it is to wrap our heads around the sun’s fusion process, which is equivalent to 100 billion atomic bombs per second, we will go one step further and try to understand the immense size of our universe, and then look at the formulas that scientists have developed to determine ET’s existence.

2023 Update on Extraterrestrial Life

It was already known that one of Saturn’s moons – Enceladus has oceans, but its Cassini spacecraft just recently found that its oceans contain the element phosphorus, which is a key chemical element in the building blocks of life.

This brings us one step closer to finding out if life exists right in our own backyard.

But what about intelligent life?

So What Are the Odds?

It is estimated that there is an average of 1 – 2 billion stars in any recorded galaxy and there are over 2 trillion galaxies out there. If 10% of each galaxy contains a solar system, that is, it contains a star that has planets revolving around it, then we can estimate that each galaxy has between 100 – 200 million solar systems, with some that may be fairly similar to ours.

AI creation of space alien
Illustration Courtesy of Hotpot.ai

If 1% of the stars in each solar system have a planet just distant enough from their sun where life could evolve, called the habitable zone or as some scientists call it, the Goldilocks Zone, we could have 1 – 2 million possible planets that could contain life.

Going further, if 1% of these planets have the right ‘ingredients’ to build intelligent life, then there is the possibility that there may exist 10,000 stars that could have planets with intelligent life in each galaxy.

Just to be more realistic, we can cut the odds even further and take 10% of this result, which would equate to the possibility of 1,000 stars with extraterrestrial life in each galaxy.

That would mean that there could be 1,000 x 2 trillion galaxies = 2,000,000,000,000,000 (2 quadrillion) planets with intelligent life. How many is that? Just take a look at this numerical comparison; thus, If we use the estimate of two trillion galaxies in the universe, that would mean ET may live on over 2 quadrillion planets in our universe.

Don’t even try to comprehend how many fusion reactions occur here every second when you include all of these stars. Fuhgeddaboudit!

What About the Scientific Formulas?

The above calculations were based on a general layman’s assumption, but have the experts given the possibility of extraterrestrial life serious thought?

American astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Frank Drake developed a formula that he presented at a meeting in Virginia in 1961. It is called the Drake Equation, which calculates the possibilities of life on other worlds within our own Milky Way galaxy.

Drake Equation
Nasa Photo

We won’t go into the calculations, but in a general sense, it is based on our assumptions above but uses trigonometry to formulate a much more explicit and precise determination of ET’s existence. For you science and math connoisseurs, feel free to give it a shot below!

The terms are as follows:

N : The number of planets in the galaxy where electromagnetic emissions are detectable
R: The rate of scanability to have exoplanets with habitable Fnes revolve around them
fp : The fr those stars that have solar systems
ne : The number of planets in each solar system within the Goldilocks Zone
f:r of planets on where life may exist
fi : The number of planets where intelligent life may exist
fc : The number of planets that have civilizations with a technology where we can detect their signals
L : The length of time that these civilizations have produced these signals

What About the UFO Sightings?

Now we come to the discussion of UFOs. If life does indeed exist, are they here or not?

Where are the Pictures?

Illustration of a space ship with human hands reaching out to it
Photo: iStock

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Director of the NYC Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space had an interesting thought.

He said with all the cell phones that people have these days (which account for hundreds of millions), not one person has come forward with a clear picture of a UFO, alluding to the assumption that if there is life in outer space, they most likely have not reached us.

We are sure Dr. Tyson believes that intelligent life does exist, but he is being realistic in suggesting that ET still has to come here before he calls home.

What About Worm Holes?

Dr. Tyson’s view is the opinion of one expert and his statement is by no means conclusive. With that said, Dr. Tyson welcomes the opinions of other experts in the field, such as his colleague theoretical physicist and CUNY Professor Dr. Michio Kaku, who advances to theories beyond current reality and states that aliens could be here by way of quantum computing. (To see the complete discussion of Dr. Tyson and Dr. Kaku, check out our article on quantum computing).

The Quantum Link

We earthlings are only at the fetal stages of quantum computing, but Dr. Kaku suggests that it’s quite possible that extraterrestrial life has already harnessed quantum computing and in so doing, they have been able to obtain the answer to many questions that have baffled humans for mellimena. One such question would be is – how did the big bang happen?

Moreover, if they are able to tackle that question, there is no doubt that they also have been able to determine how a wormhole operates. A wormhole is a phonenoma that allows one to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other or event from one galaxy to another in a matter of minutes.

If this is the case, then perhaps ET is already here and with their advanced capabilities, they could easily cloak themselves from the vision of us Earthlings and if Dr. Kaku’s theories are correct, maybe, just maybe the suggestions of aliens in Men in Black are right!

Conclusion

It is mostly a unanimous decision by scientists that extraterrestrial life does exist and there is agreement that there also is intelligent life out there somewhere, so the question is are they here on Earth or not? And that is where there are still open discussions.

But regardless if they are here, would they look like us? If not what would they look like? Another interesting dilemma to consider!