The bright red spots at the edge of the Pinwheel Galaxy means bad news for life. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScIAnother beautiful image from the Spitzer Space Telescope; in this case, it’s Messier 101, more commonly known as the Pinwheel Galaxy. But the pretty red highlights at the edges of the galaxy are bad news for anyone looking for evidence of life. “If you were going look for life in Messier 101, you would not want to look at its edges,” said Karl Gordon of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “The organics can’t survive in these regions, most likely because of high amounts of harsh radiation.” The red color highlights a zone where organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are present throughout most of the galaxy, suddenly disappear.
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Is our region of space unique? Is it a void? Can you hear the echo? Credit: ESO. Edit: Ian O’NeillOn large scales, the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This means that no matter where you are located in the cosmos, give or take the occasional nebula or galactic cluster, the night sky will appear approximately the same. Naturally there is some ‘clumpiness’ in the distribution of the stars and galaxies, but generally the density of any given location will be the same as a location hundreds of light years away. This assumption is known as the Copernican Principle. By invoking the Copernican Principle, astronomers have predicted the existence of the elusive dark energy, accelerating the galaxies away from one another, thus expanding the Universe. But say if this basic assumption is incorrect? What if our region of the Universe is unique in that we are sitting in in a location where the average density is a lot lower than other regions of space? Suddenly our observations of light from Type 1a supernovae are not anomalous and can be explained by the local void. If this were to be the case, dark energy (or any other exotic substance for that matter) wouldn’t be required to explain the nature of our Universe after all…
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Filed under: Mac, PC, First Person Shooters, Online, Video
First it was Quake Zero, then it became Quake Live, and now we have a fresh new look at Quake Arena, id’s free-to-play, browser-based iteration of Quake III Arena. As you’d expect, the visuals are decidedly simple, but still stylish nonetheless. We noticed a few instances of gameshow-like billboards peppered throughout levels; while they simply read “Quake Live” in the video, it’s likely these are placeholders for in-game advertising.
The trailer beckons viewers to QuakeLive.com for more info, but the site is still serving the sole purpose of a gateway for beta signups. From what’s shown in the footage, it will eventually become a very robust matching and ranking component of the game. With QuakeCon kicking off in just a couple of weeks we expect to find out more details soon.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Polaris A (Pole Star) with its two stellar companions, Polaris Ab and Polaris B. Artist impression. Credit: NASAPolaris is a well known Cepheid variable, but its periodic brightness variations have been steadily decreasing in amplitude for the last hundred years. Around the beginning of the 20th Century, Polaris’ brightness fluctuated every four days by 10%. Only ten years ago this variation had dropped to 2%, leading astronomers to believe this steady decline in the variability of the star was about to end. That was until recent observations uncovered an increase in variability to 4%. Polaris is an odd star in that it is a Cephid variable with a declining variability, and now astronomers are baffled as to why the brightness fluctuation has been revived…
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: Photo: U.S. Air ForceThe 1950s was the decade of the test pilot and the experimental aircraft, as aviation technology turned to the jet engine and pushed its limits in both speed and endurance. With the world divided in Cold War, the stakes were high. Jet aircraft dominated both U.S. and Soviet arsenals and the data returned by subsonic and supersonic test flights had implications for the coming space race as well.
A number of aviation companies turned out experimental aircraft, primarily for the armed forces. The pilots who flew them measured success in ways their predecessors could only dream of. They set records for speed and altitude that were unimaginable only a few years earlier, piloting aircraft that were volatile, unpredictable and often flat-out dangerous. When the time came to select astronauts for the nascent U.S. space program, it’s not surprising that NASA recruiters turned to their ranks seeking the guys with the right stuff.
Hiller X-18
The X-18 was an experimental cargo-transport aircraft designed to be the first testbed for tilt-wing and STOVL (short takeoff and vertical landing) technology. The Hiller Aircraft Corporation began design work in 1955 and received a manufacturing contract and funding from the Air Force, resulting in the only X-18 ever produced.
: Photo: NASAThe Bell X-2 Starbuster was built to investigate flight characteristics in the Mach 2-3 range. This 1952 photograph shows an X-2 with a collapsed nose landing gear after a rough landing on its first glide flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The aircraft pitched and slid along its main skid, causing the right wingtip bumper to hit the ground and break off. The nose wheel collapsed upon making contact with the ground.
: Photo: NASAA composite photograph showing the Bell X-5’s variable-sweep wing.
The Bell X-5 was the first aircraft capable of changing the sweep of its wings in flight. It was inspired by the untested wartime P.1101 design of Germany’s Messerschmitt Company. The German design, however, could only be adjusted on the ground. Bell engineers devised a system of electric motors to adjust the sweep in flight.
: Photo: NASAThe Bell X-14 was an experimental aircraft flown during the 1950s. It was built to demonstrate unorthodox maneuverability, including vertical takeoff, hovering ability, transition to forward flight and vertical landing.
: Photo: NASAThe Douglas X-3 Stiletto was a 1950s experimental jet aircraft with a slender fuselage and a long, tapered nose, manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Its primary mission was to investigate the design features of an aircraft suitable for sustained supersonic speeds, which included the first use of titanium in major airframe components. It was, however, seriously underpowered for its purpose and could not even exceed Mach 1 in level flight.
: Photo: U.S. ArmyThe Goodyear Inflatoplane was an experimental aircraft made by the Goodyear Aircraft Company, a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The Inflatoplane was roughly equivalent to the commercial Piper Cub. Although a capable enough aircraft, the Inflatoplane project was discontinued after the Army was unable to find a valid military use and remarked, unkindly perhaps, that it “could be brought down by a well-aimed bow and arrow.”
: Photo: U.S. Air ForceThe Ryan X-13A-RY Vertijet, Ryan Model 69, was another vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. This one was used by the Air Force.
: Photo: NASAThe Vertol (later Boeing Vertol) VZ-2 (or Model 76) was designed in 1957 to investigate the tilt-wing approach to vertical takeoff and landing. The aircraft had a fuselage of tubular framework (originally uncovered) and accommodation for its pilot in a helicopter-like bubble canopy. The T-tail incorporated small ducted fans to act as thrusters for greater control at low speeds.
: Photo: U.S. ArmyThe Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee was a unique, direct-lift rotor aircraft, using a counter-rotating ducted fan inside a platform carrying a single pilot. The craft, which first appeared in 1953, was maneuvered by the pilot shifting his body weight to tilt the platform in the desired direction.
: Photo: U.S. Air ForceThe North American X-15 rocket-powered aircraft was part of the USAF/NASA/USN X-series of experimental aircraft, begun with the Bell X-1. The X-15 set numerous speed and altitude records in the early 1960s, reaching the edge of space and bringing back valuable data that was used in the designs of aircraft and spacecraft. The altitudes reached by the X-15 remained unsurpassed by any piloted aircraft (except the space shuttle) until the third space flight of SpaceShipOne in 2004.
: Photo: U.S. Air ForceThe Lockheed X-7 (dubbed the “Flying Stove Pipe”) was an unmanned testbed for ramjet engines and missile-guidance technology. It was carried aloft by a B-29 or B-50 Superfortress carrier aircraft. The booster ignited after launch and propelled the vehicle to a speed of 1,000 mph (1,625 km/h). The booster was then jettisoned, and the underslung ramjet took over from that point. The X-7 eventually returned to Earth, its descent slowed by parachute. A maximum speed of 2,881 mph (4,640 km/h, or Mach 4.31) was attained, setting a record for fastest air-breathing aircraft. A total of 130 X-7 flights were conducted between April 1951 and July 1960.
: Photo: NASAA Convair XF-92A in flight over Edwards Air Force Base around 1953. Powered by an Allison J33-A turbojet engine, with an afterburner, the XF-92 was America’s first delta-wing aircraft. The delta wing’s large area, thin airfoil cross-section, low weight and structural strength gave this design a great potential for a supersonic airplane.
Just a week and a half ago WordPress for the iPhone was announced with a pretty killer screencast detailing what you could do with it. Tuesday morning it finally showed up on the app store, and I’ve had ample time to play with it. The good news is that it’s very enjoyable to use and quite capable for creating posts on the go.
The key benefit to using this app is writing and publishing quick posts on the go. What I found after using it, though, is that it offers up far more to the discerning user who wants to use it as a very powerful publishing tool. You can upload photos either from your existing library or snap a quick shot with your phone’s camera. I can see this leading to many food-related photo blogs. Also nice is that whatever you write can be saved on your phone, so you can work on dozens of posts at once and only publish when you want. There’s also a great preview function that will show you what your post will look like without kicking you off to Safari.
I successfully connected two WordPress.com hosted blogs to the app in just a minute or two, although I ran into problems connecting my personal hosted blog that uses the software install from WordPress.org. It’s worth noting you’ll need version 2.5.1 or higher to hook it up to a hosted blog, although updating to the recently released 2.6 is definitely worth it for all those extra publishing goodies.
Unfortunately there are some serious shortcomings to the iPhone that bring the app down a notch. If you’re used to adding links to your posts there’s not a lot you can do without copy and paste. HTML code is fully supported, so as long as you’re good with your href tagging (which is brutal on the iPhone’s built-in keyboard) you’ll be able to add links from memory just fine.
Another quibble of mine is that drafts created on your computer won’t show up in your post queue on the iPhone app, meaning you won’t be able to start a post on your computer and finish it on the road. Ideally, future revisions will include better shortcuts for adding links and some support for fetching drafts from the cloud.
Hardcore users with a lot of readers will also be pining for some sort of comment management feature in future revisions. As it stands, you’ll have to log in to your WordPress dashboard from Safari and administrate them from there, which isn’t terrible, but it would be far more enjoyable to write and manage in one place.
All in all, it’s off to a great start, and compared to competitor TypePad, which had its app available at the launch of the app store, WordPress is just as full featured and opens up mobile blogging to the millions of WordPress.com and WordPress.org users. I’ve embedded screenshots and the screencast below.
(by Josh Lowensohn, Cross-posted from WebWare)
Extra Galaxies (xxxedit and linkxxx) A careful look at the full field of view for this sharp image reveals a surprising number of galaxies both near and far toward the constellation Ursa Major. The most striking is clearly NGC 3718, the warped spiral galaxy right of center. NGC 3718’s faint spiral arms look twisted and extended, its bright central region crossed by obscuring dust lanes. A mere 150 thousand light-years to the left is another large spiral galaxy, NGC 3729. The two are likely interacting gravitationally, accounting for the peculiar appearance of NGC 3718. While this galaxy pair lies about 52 million light-years away, the remarkable Hickson Group 56 can also be seen clustered just below NGC 3718. Hickson Group 56 consists of five interacting galaxies and lies over 400 million light-years away.Filed under: Portable Video
The New York Times is reporting that Amazon is scrapping its Unbox service in favor of a new online TV and movie store called Amazon Video on Demand. Unlike iTunes and Unbox, Amazon’s new digital store-front will stream any of 40,000 movies and television programs to customers. According to Bill Carr, Amazon’s VP for digital media, “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.” In this regard, the first 2 minutes of every video will begin to play when customers visit the video’s product page. Movies can be purchased and downloaded to your hard drive or stored in an Amazon video library allowing you to stream the content to other (any?) Internet connected devices. Films and TV shows from “almost all the major studios and television networks” will be available for sale or rental in the US at undisclosed prices — only Disney and its ABC subsidiary are holding out for uh, obvious reasons (Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest individual shareholder).
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Novae are kind of a big deal in the Universe, so you’d think that when one occurred we would notice, especially if it were visible to the naked eye. A star that exploded in June of 2007 in the constellation of Puppis, though, slipped by the network of professional and amateur astronomers that are dedicated to watching the skies for novel stars. Luckily, the orbiting X-ray telescope XMM-Newton just happened to be observing the area, and discovered the nova that everyone else had missed.
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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
In reality, quite a bit of time has passed since we’ve heard of the next great leap in the (seemingly) never-ending journey towards quantum computing, but we’re incredibly relieved to learn that at least someone is still out there, somewhere, pressing on. An international team of researchers have reportedly shown that they can “control the quantum state of a single electron in a silicon transistor, even putting the electron in two places at once.” Essentially, the team is using tiny semiconductor transistors to “control the state of a quantum system,” but there is still a long ways to go before any of this is meaningful. The crew managed to discover a few things by chance, yet to create a quantum computer, they would need to “position atoms of arsenic (or some other material) in the transistors more reliably.” For those of you way too geeked out, fret not — we’ll let you know when all of this technobabble finally amounts to something.
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Crescent Rhea Occults Crescent Saturn Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn captured crescent phases of Saturn and its moon Rhea in color a few years ago. As striking as the above image is, it is but a single frame from a recently released 60-frame silent movie where Rhea can be seen gliding in front of its parent world. Since Cassini was nearly in the plane of Saturn’s rings, the normally impressive rings are visible here only as a thin line across the image center. Although Cassini has now concluded its primary mission, its past successes and opportunistic location have prompted NASA to start a two-year Equinox Mission, further exploring not only Saturn’s enigmatic moons Titan and Enceladus, but Saturn herself as her grand rings tilt right at the Sun in August 2009.Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs
Gigabyte’s M912 has remained largely in the shadows since peeking its head out in early June, but now we’re finally getting a hint as to how much coin we’ll be forced to lay down in order to acquire one. Based on information from a Taiwanese poster over at UMPC Fever, the M912V, which arrives with Windows Vista, 1GB of RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth, should cost around $656. The WinXP-based M912X will reportedly check in at around $620, while the M912M arrives with a lower resolution display (1,024 x 600 versus 1,280 x 768 on the other two) and no Bluetooth for $556. Take all of this with a tablespoon of salt for now, but at least you’ve got a general frame of reference to work with as you plan out which netbook to squeeze into your gadget portfolio.
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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Strategy, E3
“Attack the enemy base!”
“Yes sir, I’ll enter a foot race.”
“No, launch the missiles!”
“We’ll harvest all nearby thistles.”
“Attack the enemy units. Please, listen to me.”
“Downloading latest DLC.”
“Oh … just forget it.”
This doesn’t happen in Tom Clancy’s EndWar. It may be a sad comment on the history of in-game voice commands, but the best compliment one can give to Ubisoft’s robust interface is that it works. There’s no need to plead with it in a robotic tone or a slowed pace, and no voice training is required beforehand. Despite slipping in an “uh” here and there while contemplating orders, EndWar understood everything we said. Well, everything aside from the muttered curses prompted by our utter defeat.
Gallery: Tom Clancy’s EndWar (PS3, Xbox 360)
Continue reading Joystiq E3 hands-on: Tom Clancy’s EndWar
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Filed under: Displays
The world already knew of Toshiba and Matsushita’s separate plans to barrel into the OLED realm, but Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology is all set to become the first in Japan to “mass produce organic electroluminescent, or OEL, display panels.” Reportedly, the two outfits will establish manufacturing lines in the Ishikawa Prefecture in fall of 2009, with plans to churn out one million 2.5-inch EL displays. Granted, the products will be rather minuscule in nature, with the idea being to fit them into cellphones, PMPs and other handheld gadgetry. Better hurry — Samsung’s pulling away over in South Korea.
[Via CNET]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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The Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 271 What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Most frequently when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides. Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Quite possibly, our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years.
Orion Crew Capsule. Credit: Howstuffworks.comNASA is debating whether the new Orion capsule should land in the water, like Apollo, or on land, similar to how the Russian Soyuz capsule returns to Earth. To help them determine the potential for human injuries with each possible landing scenario, NASA has used human cadavers during their tests. At first, this revelation may seem quite morbid or even gruesome. But as Keith Cowing said in his exposé article on Space Ref and NASA Watch on this subject, “Given the potentially hazardous nature of the tests required, cadavers must be used in the place of living persons.” Sometimes, crash-test dummies or computer simulations don’t provide the crucial information needed, such as the forces on the spinal cord or internal organs. If NASA doesn’t have that information, they can’t get accurate test results. Living test subjects could possibly be killed during the landing tests. Imagine the headlines if that happened. So they have used cadavers. The cadavers NASA used were donated to science to be used for exactly this type of purpose, and NASA, of course, went through the proper channels to obtain the cadavers and treats them in an ethical manner. So while this may seem a little grisly, NASA is doing the right thing.
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An international team of astronomers have compiled the largest-ever single collection of “gravitational lens” galaxies, and their survey yielded information on the masses of galaxies, including an inference of the amount of dark matter. Gravitational lensing occurs when two galaxies happen to aligned with one another along our line of sight in the sky. The gravitational field of the nearer galaxy distorts the image of the more distant galaxy into multiple arc-shaped images. Sometimes this effect even creates a complete ring, known as an “Einstein Ring.” The findings of this survey helps settle a long standing debate over the relationship between and mass and luminosity in galaxies.
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Read the rest of Hubble Survey of Gravitational Lenses Yields Measure of Dark Matter in Distant Galaxies (403 words)
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Filed under: Arcade, Retro, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, E3
Some would say Geometry Wars Retro Evolved was Xbox 360’s best launch game — it beat early hyped games like Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and Kameo to win the heart of 360 early adopters, despite the fact that it was 2D and a cheap XBLA version of a game that had previously been included with Project Gotham Racing 2. It held the record for a long time as the system’s most-downloaded game, and that title was well-deserved, considering that a lot of $60 games haven’t held a candle to the kind of frantic fun you can find pushing that little red ship around the board.
Now Bizarre Creations is attempting to follow up with Geometry Wars 2, and after our playthrough at E3, we’re sold. Not only has the developer filled out the game with multiplayer and co-op modes, but Bizarre has figured out a way to make the super simple, yet extremely fun gameplay go deeper than ever before.
Gallery: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
Continue reading Joystiq E3 hands-on: Geometry Wars 2
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Filed under: PC
Portfolio.com just published a short excerpt of its interview with EA boss John Riccitiello who tells the site that it’s “got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development” including “the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about — in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare.” One doesn’t need to connect too many dots to arrive at the conclusion that BioWare is returning to the Star Wars universe with a Knights of the Old Republic MMO.
Of course, this product has been rumored for … well, for a long time. Separately confirming a BioWare / LucasArts collaboration and a BioWare MMO project lead to certain obvious conclusions and countless other rumors and leaks seemed to do everything but confirm (and some denied) the project’s existence. Though it would appear Riccitiello wasn’t quite ready to put a name on that project – it’s Portfolio.com connecting those dots – by referencing that this is the game that “people are dying for us to talk to them about” he clearly seems to be pointing to KOTOR.
[Update: We've just spoken with N. Evan Van Zelfden, the writer of the report, who told us that when asked specifically if this game was "KOTOR Online", Riccitiello responded unequivocally, "Yes." So, there you have it - sounds like we can take off our skeptical glasses.]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Light from distant quasars–early galaxies that shine with tremendous brightness–has given researchers a new clue to the origin of vast magnetic fields studding today’s galaxies: They were running strong when the universe was only a third of its present age. [More]
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) continues to churn up stunning images as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter passes over the Martian surface. However, today’s example probably creates more questions than answers. Close to the Mars equator, south of Elysium Planitia, exists a crater and inside are some strange mounds that have so far eluded formal explanation. There are a few possibilities how these mounds may have formed and there may also be some examples on Earth too…
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Read the rest of The Mysterious Mars Mounds (312 words)
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M16 and the Eagle Nebula Young star cluster M16 is surrounded by natal clouds of cosmic dust and glowing gas also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region includes fantastic shapes made famous in well-known Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the upper left edge of the nebula is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 and the Eagle Nebula lie about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).
The ATV has carried out a series of boosts for the ISS (ESA)The International Space Station (ISS) is the jewel in the crown of human ingenuity and a testament to the incredible engineering mankind is capable of. The modular human outpost began construction in 1998 and it is hoped the final configuration will be complete by 2010. Apart from orbiting the Earth and the occasional re-boost by the docked Automated Transport Vehicle (ATV) “Jules Verne,” the ISS is going nowhere in a hurry. But wait a minute, isn’t that what the ISS is all about? Isn’t it simply an orbital science outpost? Well it is, but could it be something a bit more dynamic? Some critics cite the ISS as the most expensive waste of time the international collaboration of space agencies have ever been committed to; after all, who needs more zero-G experiments?Solution: Attach a rocket and a steerage system and behold, we have a huge interplanetary transport vehicle, capable of travelling to the Moon and possibly to Mars. Who needs the Constellation Program anyway…
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Read the rest of The Space Station as an Interplanetary Transport Vehicle? (595 words)
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Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360
click to view the entire gallery
Here are a couple interesting takeaways from our tour of the New Xbox Experience:
- “There’s nothing to announce” right now regarding a keyword search for the Marketplace. Let’s hope they either a) add one in or b) drastically improve how we find things
- Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (for example, we’re superstitious and we’d only rip odd-numbered discs).
- As an example, we were told that Devil May Cry 4 is approximately a 4 or 5GB installation and took about ten minutes.
- You’ll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times (and hey, bonus tip: no more noisy DVD drive while you’re playing!)
- The alerts look the same – actually, like the entire interface, they look sharper, cleaner. Oh, and the sound is the same.
- Yes, you can still use your gamertag pics and your themes (in fact, they look a lot better now!)
Gallery: New Xbox Experience
Continue reading Details on the New Xbox Experience: search, hard drive play, alerts, themes, pics
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You have to give it to Tom Clancy: He hasn’t let his success keep him from trying his hand at new things. One of his latest of these ventures is HAWX, a new action flight game that I got a chance to play during E3. I only got to sample the multiplayer, but what I saw left me really impressed.
At first, the game seems a fairly common take on the genre: You coast around in a strikingly realistic world that’s been generated by Google Maps. When you find a target, you can either paint them with heat-seeking missiles or blast them with machine guns (the latter of which I never had much luck with).Continue reading Joystiq E3 hands-on: HAWX
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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, E3
Yeah, but doesn’t it give you motion sickness? This is the response you get when you tell someone: “Dude, I just played Mirror’s Edge — it’s awesome.” And this is how you answer: “No, dude — you don’t get sick.”
Mirror’s Edge achieves bounding, bouncing payoffs without the queasy side effects with a dot. Yeah, a dot. What you don’t see in the “doctored” screens is a tiny blue/white blip. The dot isn’t working alone though, the developers found they needed to widen the camera’s field of vision as well as place it in the characters eyes as opposed to her head, reducing much of that first-person staple: head bobbing. The effect: a game that seems like it has no right not making you sick.
Gallery: Mirror’s Edge
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A 3-D image of a trough in the Nili Fossae region of Mars shows phyllosilcates (in magenta and blue hues) on slopes of mesas and canyon walls, showing water played a role in Mars’ past.
For all the Mars romanticists out there, we (yes, that means me, too) hope and maybe even dream that Mars once harbored water. And not just a little spurt of groundwater every once in awhile; we want the water to have been there in abundance and for enough time to make an impact on the planet and its environment. Now, proof of copious amounts of water in Mars’ past may have been found. Two new papers based on data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) found that vast regions of the ancient southern highlands of Mars hosted a water-rich environment, and that water played a sizable role in changing the minerals of a variety of terrains in the Noachian period – about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.
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Read the rest of New Evidence for a Wetter, Warmer Ancient Mars (424 words)
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Filed under: Networking
Every so often, we get wind of some new “breakthrough” from a few guys / gals in a lab that promises to simply revolutionize the web. A team from the University of Sydney is the latest bunch to do so, claiming that a piece of scratched glass (or a Photonic Integrated Circuit, if we’re being proper) could enable internet speeds 60 times faster than “current Australian networks.” Essentially, the “circuit uses the scratch as a guide or a switching path for information,” and the resulting product is “photonic technology that has terabit per second capacity.” Call us when you folks get everything ironed out — we’ll be over at Sigbritt Löthberg’s house.
[Via The Future of Things, thanks iddo]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I’ll come right out and say it: when the new Xbox 360 dashboard was unveiled during Microsoft’s press conference yesterday, I wasn’t really feeling the drastic change in design.
Yes, it’s much prettier, more user-friendly, and contains some sweet new community features and Netflix integration, but it’s so radically different from the current dashboard which I’ve grown to love over the years.
That (and the silly avatars) was my biggest concern about the upcoming update, until I saw the walkthrough video above.
Anyone who currently owns an Xbox 360 should be happy to know that the brand new Xbox guide looks almost exactly like today’s dash, so you shouldn’t have any navigation problems come this fall.
Filed under: Features, Microsoft Xbox 360, E3
click to enlarge
Immediately following this morning’s press conference, we got a chance to sit down with Xbox VP of Strategy and Business Development, Shane Kim, to pick his brain about the new Dashboard (called the “New Xbox Experience”) and its various components, like the Netflix integration, Avatars, Party support, Primetime, and more.
Netflix
- You must be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber as well as a Netflix subscriber to use the new Netflix service
- Similarly, anyone you share your movie with would also need to be an XBL and Netflix subscriber
- Like Netflix’s current streaming service, all content will be SD only for now. They could offer HD streams as soon as Netflix is ready to deliver
Avatars
- They’re not looking to create a “Home-like” environment for your Avatars – that doesn’t mean a third-party wouldn’t be able to do that, however
- You’ll be able to keep your gamertag pics if you so choose, though they’re encouraging everyone to transition to Avatars
- Games can reward you with items for your Avatar (chainsaw, please!)
- There will be no increase in the 100-friend cap on Xbox Live this Fall
- There will not be any Group (think Facebook) or Clan support in this update – they’re hoping the “Party” system will satisfy those requests (spoiler: it won’t)
Continue reading Details on New Xbox Experience, Avatars, Netflix, Primetime, et al
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Doing with a single E what takes ASUS three, Dell’s mini netbook looks to be on track for an August kill sprEee. We’ve already seen Dell’s launch timeline and specs, of course, and this morning we’ve got the hushed whispers of DigiTimes’ “market sources” again claiming that the Compal manufactured Dell 8.9-inchers will launch in August for $299. For that price, assuming everything we’ve heard so far is correct, you’ll get an instant-on Linux distro running atop Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 1,024 x 600 display, 3x USB, a wee SSD, integrated webcam, WiFi, and more in a 0.82-1.22-inch thick sled weighing about 2.2-pounds. With the netbook market now thoroughly saturated, we expect the Dell launch to mark the beginning of an industry shakeout. Any bets on who will survive?
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Filed under: Gaming
Oh yeah, we almost forgot that we have shots of the new Xbox 360 Dashboard — check ‘em out below. Hit up here and here for more on the big fall overhaul that will make your Xbox 360 Dashboard experience basically unrecognizable, for better or worse.
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The International Space Station, the ISS to most of us, has often been called the most expensive thing ever to be built. At $156 billion so far, with probably more to come later on, the ISS doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot. The pinnacle of international cooperation so far, one would imagine that with a great big space station in orbit, we could at least be doing something nifty with it rather than just inhabiting it with two people.
That is why Michael Benson, author of “Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes” and frequent Washington Post columnist, has recently postulated that we should use the ISS as an interplanetary vehicle.
I won’t give you the stations rundown; Wikipedia has that for you if you haven’t already heard it a million times. But needless to say, Benson’s idea of sending her off on an interplanetary journey to Mars makes a lot of sense on the surface.
Benson spends much of his article entitled ‘It’s All Decked Out. Give It Somewhere to Go.’ on the Washington Post website this Sunday countering foreseeable arguments with his plan, such as the argument that the new Constellation program is already prepped to have interplanetary goals; that the ISS needs to be resupplied too often; the amount of propellant needed to get the ISS anywhere. But as Benson write, “there are good answers to all these objections.”
For example, the ISS is already in low-Earth orbit, so any arguments regarding propellant are already severely diminished. In addition, Benson acknowledges that the new Constellation Ares boosters and Orion capsules can easily be adapted to a scenario in which the ISS becomes a central hub of activity for any mission. Add to that the fact that the Ares V rockets will be able to send stuff to the ISS to make it truly interplanetary safe, and you have the beginnings of a plan.
According to Benson the critics to his theory would continue their attack, and say that the ISS still needs a propulsion drive to get it places. Benson agrees, and points to work done by the US and Japanese space programs on ion-drive systems. According to Benson, both countries have conducted successful tests on such a system, and considering that the ISS is already in space, the more methodical and long burning acceleration (and subsequent deceleration) would be perfect for the ISS.
He does run in to trouble when trying to find a solution for a lander to travel from the ISS to a planetary surface. Landers are well behind in the developmental scheme of things when compared to the Ares boosters, but Benson does believe that with enough foresight, landers could be developed that would be perfect for his plan.
As for the overall cost of such an endeavor? Without actually addressing the future costs, Benson points to making the ISS fiscally useful, based on how much we’ve already spent on the ISS.
Totally aware of the unlikelihood of this happening, Benson’s idea should at least spark some thought. For those of us not necessarily fully ingrained in NASA or space culture, it seems like a good idea, and one might hope for seeing in our lifetime the ISS making a grand journey to Mars.
Posted by Josh Hill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102394.html
“The future continues to get better for most of the world, but a series of tipping points could drastically alter global prospects.”
2008 UN State of the Future Report
We’ve seen the future … and we may not be doomed. So says the UN 2008 State of the Future Report that finds life is getting better for people worldwide, but that governments are failing to respond to critical time-sensitive opportunities.
“This is a unique time in history. Mobile phones, the internet, international trade, language translation and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve its prospects,” reports 2008 State of the Future. “It is increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address our common challenges. Ours is the first generation with the means for many to know the world as a whole, identify global improvement systems, and seek to improve them.”
Humanity stands on the threshold of a peaceful and prosperous future, with an unprecedented ability to extend lifespans and increase the power of ordinary people – but these achievements may be overshadowed through inequality, violence and environmental degradation.
This massive new international report, due to be published late this month, and obtained and reported by The Independent was funded by organizations ranging from Unesco to the US army, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation, drawing on contributions from 2,500 experts around the world.
The report, produced by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of the United Nations Associations, many important things are already getting better: life expectancy and literacy rates are increasing worldwide, while infant mortality and the number of armed conflicts have been falling fast. Per capita income has been growing strongly enough to cut poverty by more than half by 2015 – except, importantly, in Africa.
Even better, it says, “advances in science, technology, education, economics and management seem capable of making the world work far better than it does today”.
Medical breakthroughs are offering the hope of defeating inherited diseases, tailoring cures to individual patients, and even creating replacement body parts. Information technology and pcs are spreading even to remote villages in developing countries and dramatically increasing in power to provide “collective intelligence for just-in-time knowledge to inform decisions.”It will be 25 years until a computer’s capacity equals the power of the human brain. After another 25 years, everyone will be able to access processing power greater than that of all the brains on Earth combined.
The internet, the report observes is “already the most powerful force for globalization, democratization, economic growth and education in history.
“The internet allows self-organization around common ideals, independent of conventional institutional controls and regardless of nationalities or languages. Injustices in different parts of the world become the concern of thousands or millions of people who then pressure local, regional or international governing systems to find solutions.
“This unparalleled social power is reinventing citizens’ roles in the political process and changing institutions, policy-making and governance.”
And this is happening in a world that is already becoming freer and more democratic. Over the past 30 years, the number of free countries has more than doubled from 43 to 90, it reports, while those that are partly free increased from 46 to 60. Just over one-third of humanity still lives in the 43 countries with authoritarian regimes, but half of these people are in China.
On the other hand, the report warns “half the world is vulnerable to social instability and violence due to rising food and energy prices, failing states, falling water tables, climate change, decreasing water-food-energy supply per person, desertification and increasing migrations due to political, environmental and economic conditions”. Other threats such as increasing terrorism, corruption and organized crime – remain undimished.
Food prices have more than doubled in a year and have already plunged 37 countries into crisis, greatly increasing hunger and poverty. And price rises seem set to continue because food production needs to increase 50 per cent by 2013 and double in 30 years.
“With nearly three billion people making $2 or less per day, long-term global social conflict seems inevitable without more serious food policies, useful scientific breakthroughs and dietary changes,” says the report.
Global warming is occurring faster than expected. This could cause southern Africa to “lose more than 30 per cent of its maize crop by 2030″ and help to increase the number of people facing water scarcity fourfold to a massive three billion by 2025. The rate at which the world’s ice is melting, it says, “has doubled over the last two years”, and it quotes a US military report which predicts that global warming “can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism.”Sea-ice last year shrank to 22 per cent below the previous record low, a level that had not been expected to be reached until 2030-50, opening up the Northwest Passage.
Nuclear power may not be the solution many governments think it will: “to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, about 2,000 nuclear power plants would have to be built, at $5-15 billion per plant, over 15 years – and possibly an additional 8,000 plants beyond that to 2050.”
The report says that there is not enough uranium in the world to fuel all those reactors, that another Chernobyl-type accident could halt the expansion in its tracks, and that the rapid spread of the atom around the world increases the chances of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.
The report estimates that there is a 75 per cent chance that terrorists will have acquired nuclear weapons within the next 10 years, observing “Links between terrorists and organized crime are worrisome, especially considering that, on average, there were 150 reports of unauthorized use of nuclear or radioactive materials to the International Atomic Energy Authority per year between 2004 and 2007.”
Organized crime, it adds, “continues to grow in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated global counter strategy”. It reckons that it is now worth some $2 trillion a year.
China’s largest car maker plans for half its cars to be hybrids within two years. But the report’s authors say that governments are not up to the job: “Many of the world’s decision-making processes are inefficient, slow and ill-informed, especially when given the new demands from increasing complexity and globalization. Climate change cannot be turned around without a global strategy. International organized crime cannot be stopped without a global strategy. Individuals creating designer diseases and causing massive deaths cannot be stopped without a global strategy. It is time for global strategic systems to be upgraded.”
Finally, the report notes that 850 coal-fired power stations are planned to go into operation across the US, China and India over the next four years. Each station would operate for about 20 years, greatly accelerating global warming. By 2050 25% of Europe’s electricity could come from solar-powered stations in North Africa. African leaders and aid organizations are to invest $10 billion a year in renewable energy over the next five years.
Posted by Casey Kazan.
(If you liked this post, please click on the ad in upper right column and help us pay the bills and get insanely rich! -Our thanks, your Galaxy Team).
Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula This beautiful cosmic cloud is a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Eighteenth century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged the bright nebula as M8, while modern day astronomers recognize the Lagoon Nebula as an active stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Striking details can be traced through this remarkable picture, processed to remove stars and hence better reveal the Lagoon’s range of filaments of glowing hydrogen gas, dark dust clouds, and the bright, turbulent hourglass region near the image center. This color composite view was recorded under dark skies near Sydney, Australia. At the Lagoon’s estimated distance, the picture spans about 50 light-years.As this story announced on Thursday, Galaxy Zoo has been given a grant of $50,000 by Google. As Bob says “The Google grant will enable us to add two key features to Galaxy Zoo. We will incorporate ‘GoogleSky’ technology into the website so it resembles the Google Maps interface. Then we will put Galaxy Zoo into the Google Sky interface which will allow people to zoom around the universe, click on any galaxy and classify it more easily.”
It’ll take us a while to get there but this should make classifying a lot more fun, and hopefully allow us to do all sorts of exciting things.
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The reigning champion for brightest star in the Milky Way is Eta Carinae, a highly unstable star prone to violent outbursts. Astronomers say Eta Car’s life will probably end in 100,000 years or so with a supernova explosion. That’s relatively soon in cosmic terms. But the Spitzer Space Telescope has unearthed a contender, both in brightness and in the supernova competition, found in the dusty depths of our galaxy’s center. Astronomers say the Peony nebular star might be as bright as Eta. But the biggest question may be, which star will be the first to go supernova?
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Read the rest of Eta Vs. Peony: Which Star Will Go Supernova First? (523 words)
There’s a group of NASA engineers who believe NASA is making a mistake with its new Constellation program to replace the shuttle, which will use the new Ares rockets for launches starting in 2014. Constellation is an all new program which requires everything to be built from the ground up. The group of engineers asks, why not use the systems we already have that work reliably? The engineers, who are working clandestinely after hours on their plans have been joined by business people and space enthusiasts, and they call the plan Direct 2.0. They believe this approach could be flying sooner than Ares, reducing the gap in the US’s access to space, and providing a smoother transition for the workforce. Additionally it is more powerful than Ares, has lower risks for the astronauts, adds additional servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, and reduces the cost to orbit by half.
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Read the rest of The “Other” Moon Rocket Some NASA Engineers Believe is Better Than Ares (417 words)
© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to
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Filed under: Gaming
Microsoft sure had itself a doozy of a press conference this year, but there’s still more in store for Xbox 360 users than what was detailed during the keynote. First off, with the upcoming update, Microsoft will let users store and play back games from their hard drives. You’ll have to have the disc in your drive for piracy reasons, but it won’t be spinning during game play, which means quieter gaming and quicker load times (and more 60GB sales, we thinks, how convenient). Next up, Microsoft will let users make Xbox LIVE Marketplace purchases on the web, which are then automatically downloaded to your 360 for your enjoyment when you get home — or walk across the room. The old “blades” Dashboard interface will be moved to the new Xbox Guide, which will provide a quick way to access everything on your 360. Finally, the 360 will support the 16:10 aspect ratio over VGA or HDMI, and work in 1440 X 900 and 1680 X 1050 resolutions.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Filed under: Gaming
Microsoft just announced at E3 that they’ll be giving the Xbox 360 a total software overhaul this fall. “When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and Dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software,” said John Schappert, head of Live services. New features will include those fancy new Mii-like 3D Avatars, a new emphasis on community with IM, video chat, and photo sharing, along with a brand new 3D slide interface for the main Dashboard screen. Avatars will be integrated into your GamerCard, but you can also create a “Live party” and invite your friends, with as many as 8 of your three dimensional homies hanging out at once — though you’re not hanging out in an actual 3D environment. You can use your avatar in certain Live Arcade games like Uno, and even in third party titles such as the upcoming Scene It? title. It sounds like Microsoft is taking cues from the Wii, Sony’s Home and Facebook all in one fell swoop, not bad at all.
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Deep in the large Magellanic Cloud a 325 light-year sized cosmic monster is born. Its open maw spans some 250 light years across, and from it spews massive particle winds. Held in its glowing gas jaws could be the expanding shells of old supernovae and it has even coughed forth hot X-ray emitting gas. What exactly is this wide-mouthed creature? Step inside…
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Read the rest of Cosmic Monster – N44 by Don Goldman (866 words)
© Tammy Plotner for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to
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A Dark Sky Over Death Valley This eerie glow over Death Valley is in danger. Scrolling right will show a spectacular view from one of the darkest places left in the continental USA: Death Valley, California. The above 360-degree full-sky panorama is a composite of 30 images taken two years ago in Racetrack Playa. The image has been digitally processed and increasingly stretched at high altitudes to make it rectangular. In the foreground on the image right is an unusually placed rock that was pushed by high winds onto Racetrack Playa after a slick rain. In the background is a majestic night sky, featuring thousands of stars and many constellations. The arch across the middle is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Light pollution is threatening dark skies like this all across the US and the world, and therefore the International Dark-Sky Association and the US National Parks Service are suggesting methods that can protect them.We’ve go exciting news; Galaxy Zoo has gotten time on our largest telescope
yet, the enormous 8m Gemini South telescope…
Hi there
Some of you may have had some interaction with me on the GalaxyZoo Forum on the topic of Gravitational Lenses. My name is Aprajita Verma and I am a researcher at the University of Oxford. I primarily work on galaxies at high redshift trying to understand their nature as we see them, how they began their lives and postulating about their fate.
When Kevin Schawinski first highlighted the Gravitational Lens forum to me, I have to say I was astounded and impressed by the sheer volume of activity and interest in identifying potential gravitational lenses by the Galaxy Zoo community. I have been interested in gravitational lenses since studying lensed objects such as the Cloverleaf Quasar and IRAS F10214+4724 as part of my PhD thesis. Subsequently, I have become involved with a number of observational projects that use integral field spectrographs (IFS) and I thought it would be great to get some IFS data on some of the systems that you guys have been identifying as potential lenses. An IFS is an imaging spectrograph, i.e. it takes an image of an object but the light that reaches each pixel of that image is simultaneously dispersed so that we can measure the spectrum of the object in each pixel that it covers. Observing gravitational lenses with integral field spectrographs provides us with three key advantages.
(1) It bypasses the normal 2 stage process of imaging followed by spectroscopy of the components.
(2) All of the multiple images (if present) or the full extent of any arcs can be observed in a single shot, giving us a multiplex advantage in sensitivity and also in efficiency (since we observe the full extent of the lensed images) than can be achieved with traditional long-slit spectroscopy.
(3) We can also measure the kinematics of the lensing galaxy which is important for determining an accurate lens model.
The Gemini North Telescope, from Gemini.
As an initial attempt, we applied for observing time for IFS observations with the 8m Gemini Telescope in Chile (see www.gemini.edu). This is one of the world’s largest telescope with a twin telescope (hence the name Gemini) in the northern hemisphere on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These telescopes are located at exceptional sites with very advanced instrumentation. GMOS or the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph has an integral field unit that is sensitive to light from ~450nm-900nm. The UK Gemini time allocation group has awarded us 12hrs of observing time to observe our highest priority targets. After trawling through your 120+ pages of entries and having the insightful opinion of lensing expert Phil Marshall (Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara) we have identified 5 high priority targets for confirmation as lenses with GMOS. Unfortunately we were only awarded low priority time (which means higher priority programs will be observed first), nevertheless we are hopeful that we can obtain data on at least one or two of the lens candidates. If you are interested, please keep an eye on the Gravitational Lens forum discussion where I’ll be discussing the shortlist and reporting on progress. The first stage is the definition of the science observations which are due on Monday 14th July that I am currently working on. The 2008B semester starts on the 1st August, so it’s 6 months of keeping fingers crossed for some data!
GMOS on the telescope, from the Durham AIG.
Sorry to not have posted info on this proposal before submission, but needless to say all Galaxy Zoo members are co-investigators and your thoughts and inputs are always welcome. None of this would have been possible without your hard work and enthusiasm. Thank you!
In an attempt to identify the Galaxy Zoo Gravitational Lens group and projects, Matthias Tecza (an IFU expert at Oxford who is involved with the proposal) and I came up with a project acronym of eGZeLENS (like “excellence”) – The extensive Galaxy Zoo LENsing Survey. I hope you all approve.
If you are interested, please keep an eye on the Gravitational Lens forum discussion where I’ll be discussing the our shortlist and reporting on progress.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comPASADENA, California — Like radio and gamma waves before them, the detection of gravity waves will likely expose a new layer of the universe and change the study of physics as we know it.
As Einstein predicted in 1912, gravity waves are emitted by massive bodies in space that don’t necessarily leave visual evidence of their existence, such as black holes. Directly observing gravity waves, in a sense, would make these invisible phenomena visible.
On the forefront of the discovery of gravity waves is one of the largest projects ever funded by the National Science Foundation, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The LIGO facilities house extremely long lasers that are sensitive to disturbances down to fractions of the width of a proton — just sensitive enough to register the relatively weak gravity waves.
While the main LIGO data is generated from 2.5-mile-long laser beams in Washington and Louisiana, upgrades to increase the lasers’ accuracy and sensitivity are developed on a smaller prototype at Caltech. Tour the LIGO labs at Caltech in this gallery.
Left: A pristinely ground and polished mirror hangs like a pendulum over a testing bench. Although transparent to visible light, this mirror reflects nearly 100 percent of the infrared light of the lasers inside the interferometer.
An interferometer is the device in which these lasers are contained. It uses the light from infrared laser beams to very accurately measure distance. The longer the laser beams, the more sensitive the interferometer can be. When a significantly strong gravity wave passes through an interferometer, it should change the length of the instrument only slightly due to the ripple in space and time that it causes.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe view from on top of the Caltech interferometer shows the “L” shape of the device, with each arm containing a laser beam that extends for 40 meters. These stainless steel chambers are emptied to roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, creating an impressive and necessary vacuum for the beams.
This is a similar but smaller prototype of the interferometers in Washington and Louisiana which have arms measuring 2.5 miles each. Having these two similar facilities allows scientists to confirm that a detected anomaly is actually a gravity wave and not cars passing by the labs, waves crashing on distant shores or even the minute inconsistencies in the lasers themselves.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comInside the vacuum chamber, the beam-splitter sits at the intersection of the two arms of the interferometer (the joint of the “L”). This table is composed of an array of mirrors, prisms, filters and other optical devices. From here, the infrared laser beam is sent down each arm of the system.
Each laser beam is calibrated to the same, extremely precise resonance. If one beam has met with any interference it can be measured here against the other beam.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe problem with detecting gravity waves is that the changes they exert over the Earth are extremely small. The powerful waves generated by distant events are relatively weak by the time they reach Earth. For this reason, the instruments used to detect them must be extremely precise and elaborate.
At left, the end of one arm of the interferometer contains one of four main mirrors (center right) along with an assortment of smaller mirrors. All these mirrors are used to calibrate and align the laser. The main mirror reflects the laser beam back to the joint of the “L” for measurement.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe laser (before it splits) originates in the white tube on the right. This tube contains the elaborate and delicate instruments used to correct for as much signal noise as possible.
The amount of noise-correcting technology at work in the lab is mind-boggling, with layers and layers of isolation. The beam comes out of a 20-cm quartz tube suspended on a pendulum, which itself is on springs, on a seismic isolation stack, in a vacuum chamber. The chamber is temperature-controlled and insulated with fiberglass.
The photons bouncing back and forth inside the suspended cylinder stay resonant at the exact length at which the interferometer operates. Any shift in frequency or deviation in length of the laser beam causes the cavity to fall out of resonance and is detected by the system.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comAn optics bench at the end of one arm of the interferometer is used to monitor the intensity, position and angle of the laser beam.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis optic bench is used to sense light from various ports at the intersection of the interferometer arms, which is where the gravity waves may some day be detected. To do this, it’s covered with LIGO-built detectors.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe three boxes in the center of this photo are quadrant photodiodes (QPDs), which are used to detect the precise position of the laser beam.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.com
The LIGO prototype interferometer requires an extremely high vacuum of roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, or about the level of vacuum found in low-Earth orbit. To attain this extreme level of emptiness, a vibration-free, magnetically levitated turbo-pump is employed. Pictured are a vacuum manifold and remote-controlled valves that help power the vacuum.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThese expansion bellows allow the length of the interferometer arm to be adjusted to compensate for the temperature expansion of the stainless steel. Without these bellows the high-vacuum chamber would be pulled and dragged across the floor every time the ambient temperature changed.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.com
From left: Alan Weinstein, Steve Vass and Rob Ward next to the LIGO interferometer.
Weinstein is a professor of physics and applies his understanding of high-energy physics to studying the nature of dark energy and detecting gravitational waves. Vass has managed the LIGO prototype lab for over 20 years.
Ward is a graduate student and one of the co-authors of a recent Nature article entitled “A quantum-enhanced prototype gravitational-wave detector.” The paper focuses on reducing the quantum-noise in the LIGO interferometer.
: Image: NASAThough the direct detection of gravity has yet to be accomplished, last month information generated by LIGO helped diagnose the cause of the Crab Nebula’s rapid energy loss.
A single worldwide computer — think of it. We are even now collectively assembling this megacomputer from our billions of net-connected devices. Its software is our collective online behavior. Forget Web 3.0: The One Machine is the next stage of tech evolution.
NGC 7331 and Beyond Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way. About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, NGC 7331 was recognized early on as a spiral nebula and is actually one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier’s famous 18th century catalog. Since the galaxy’s disk is inclined to our line-of-sight, long telescopic exposures often result in an image that evokes a strong sense of depth. The effect is further enhanced in this well-framed view by the galaxies that lie beyond this gorgeous island universe. The background galaxies are about one tenth the apparent size of NGC 7331 and so lie roughly ten times farther away. Their strikingly close alignment on the sky with NGC 7331 occurs just by chance. The visual grouping of galaxies is also known as the Deer Lick Group.
:In the 105 years since the Wright Brothers took to the air, dreamers, engineers and aviation buffs have designed every kind of airplane imaginable in a never-ending quest to fly higher, faster or further. Some were innovative, some were beautiful and some even made history. Others, well, let’s just say they must have looked good on paper.
Here’s a tribute to some of those that surely looked better on paper.
Tupolev TU- 144
The Concorde gets all the love, but Russia’s Tupolev TU-144 was the first supersonic transport and the only commercial plane to exceed Mach 2. The “Concordski” was fast but plagued by bad luck. Three crashes — including a dramatic mid-air breakup during the 1973 Paris Air Show — relegated it largely to a lifetime delivering mail. It was mothballed in 1985 but briefly brought back a few years later as a research plane.
:The Comet was the premiere commercial jet airliner and a landmark in British aeronautics when it first flew in 1949. Today it’s better known for its atrocious safety record. Of the 114 Comets built, 13 were involved in fatal accidents, most of them attributed to design flaws and metal fatigue.
:
The “Spruce Goose” was either a brilliant aircraft years ahead of its time or the biggest government boondoggle ever. By far the largest aircraft ever conceived — its wingspan was 319 feet — the Spruce Goose was intended to be a military transport plane. But it wasn’t finished until well after World War II ended, rendering it both obsolete and irrelevant. It only flew once.
:The Zubr was as useless as it was ugly. Not only was it incapable of flying with the landing gear retracted, the airframe was so highly stressed the plane could disintegrate without warning. If that wasn’t enough, it couldn’t take off with a payload much heavier than a few cartons of cigarettes. The Polish Air Force had a few in its fleet during World War II, but none of them saw combat.
:Cool name, lousy plane. Dr. William Christmas didn’t know the first thing about planes when he designed one for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and it showed. He didn’t think the plane needed wing struts, so of course the wings fell off during the plane’s maiden flight in 1918.
:With its carbon-composite construction, unique design and rearward-facing turboprop engines, the Starship was a groundbreaking aircraft. But it was slow, difficult to fly and a bear to maintain. It took to the air in 1989, but Beechcraft only sold a few of the 53 it built.
:The Hiller VZ-1 hovercraft must have looked good on paper, because it sure didn’t look good in the air. The idea was simple — a fan provides lift and the pilot steers by shifting his weight. The Defense Department loved it until it saw the Pawnee in flight. It was good for just 16 mph and it tended to be uncontrollable. The project was killed in the late 1950s.
efense Department projects are famous for cost overruns, and General Dynamic’s flying wing bomber was a doozy. The Flying Dorito was the most troubled of the stealth aircraft projects the Pentagon embraced during the 1980s, experiencing problems with its radar systems and use of composite materials. When the projected cost of each plane ballooned to $165 million, a Secretary of Defense named Dick Cheney killed it in 1991.
:With its anemic engine, poor maneuverability and gunner blocking the pilot’s view, the British B.E. 2 was doomed from the start. German pilots had no problem shooting them down during the First World War, making it just about useless as a fighter. It had no problems against German Zeppelins, though, so the plane lived out its days attacking them instead.
:The XB 15 was the largest plane ever built in the United States until the Spruce Goose came along. The heavy bomber was so massive it had passageways in the wings and bunks for the crew. But big planes need big engines and no one made one big enough to give the XB any kind of speed for its maiden flight in 1937. The plane maxed out at 200 mph, and the U.S. Army Air Corps killed the project. The only XB ever built saw duty as a cargo plane in the Caribbean during World War II.
We’ve known for a while that large astronomical events can spell bad news for life: supernovae unleash unimaginable levels radiation, asteroids can kick up climate-killing clouds, and black holes can suck things out of existence altogether. Now it seems that simply wandering too close to big star can evaporate a planet before it even forms.
University of Arizona astronomers have surveyed a thousand stars in the Rosette Nebula – that might sound like a song lyric, but we assure you it’s real scientific study. They found that those that most of those which ventured too close to O Stars were barren, stripped of even the potential of forming planets.
“O Stars” are the brightest and hottest of the main sequence stars. Gigantic surface temperatures of 30,000 Kelvin upward puts them at the blue end of the spectrum. They can be a hundred times the size and over a thousand times brighter than the friendly little G Star we call “The Sun”.
The recent work shows that the massive solar winds and radiation output from these hyper-bright lights in the night can strip away the dust disk that surrounds young stars, the raw material that could otherwise go into planet formation. To get some idea of the scale of the radiation involved, the danger zone extends 1.6 light years from the O star. That’s six trillion miles, otherwise known as “stay the hell away from those things”.
The scientists say that an already-extant planet could possibly survive a dalliance with these Death Stars, but I think they misunderstand our concerns. We aren’t actually concerned about the dainty little zettaton ball of rock; anything capable of beating up on a baby planet will certainly vaporize anything carelessly making a living on the surface. So our space searches for interesting planets can safely ignore anything within those danger zones.
Don’t worry though, there aren’t any O Stars within sixteen light years of Earth. As you can tell by the fact that you’re actually reading this.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
Source:
http://www.livescience.com/space/070418_star_dangerzone.html
We’ve all asked this question at some point: How long would it take to travel to the stars? And could I do it in my lifetime? There are many answers to this possibility, some very simple, others in the realms of science fiction. To make this easier to answer, we’ll address how long it would take to travel to the nearest star to the solar system, Proxima Centauri. Unfortunately, any route you take to the stars will be slow, even if you are powered by the most powerful nuclear propulsion technology…
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Remember the amazing image that the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured of the Phoenix Lander as it descended to Mars’ surface via parachute back on May 25? Well, the HiRISE scientists have done a little more processing of the image, and have turned up an additional detail they didn’t see at first: Phoenix’s heat shield. The heat shield, which had been jettisons just after parachute deployment, can be seen falling toward the surface. You have to look really, really close to see it. But that’s what these HiRISE folks do. It was incredible that they found the lander with the parachute in the image (go see the big, huge image they had to hunt for it HERE) and these guys get the eagle eyes of the year award for finding the heat shield.
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Read the rest of One More Item Found in Astounding HiRise Image of Phoenix Descending (350 words)
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One of the biggest questions that occupy particle physicists and cosmologists alike is: what is dark matter? We know that a tiny fraction of the mass of the universe is the visible stuff we can see, but 23% of the Universe is made from stuff that we cannot see. The remaining mass is held in something called dark energy. But going back to the dark matter question, cosmologists believe their observations indicate the presence of dark matter, and particle physicists believe the bulk of this matter could be held in quantum particles. This trail leads to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where the very small meets the very big, hopefully explaining what particles could be generated after harnessing the huge energies possible with the LHC…
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More than 200 scientists and longevity activists gathered at UCLA recently to discuss advancements in repairing humans. New technology is making it possible to imagine a world with ever greater life spans, but old world issues pervaded the discussions. The Methuselah Foundation’s Aubrey de Grey organized the event and kicked it off with a theoretical explanation of how human aging might be reversed in the future. He argues that there are seven kinds of damage in human cells, and his mission is to get scientists all over the world involved in creating the fixes.Filed under: Cellphones
It’s hard to think of any other device that’s enjoyed the level of exposure and hype that Apple found in the launch of the first iPhone. Who could forget it? Everyone got to be a gadget nerd for a day; even those completely disinterested in technology seemed to come down with iPhone fever. But the original device was still far from perfect: its limited capabilities (especially in the 3G department), high price of entry, and the small number of countries in which it was available kept many potential buyers sidelined. Until now — or so Apple hopes.
The wireless industry is a notoriously tough nut to crack, and it’s become pretty clear that the first iPhone wasn’t about total domination so much as priming the market and making a good first impression with some very dissatisfied cellphone users. With the iPhone 3G, though, Apple’s playing for keeps. Not only is this iPhone’s Exchange enterprise support aiming straight for the heart of the business market, but the long-awaited 3rd party application support and App Store means it’s no longer just a device, but a viable computing platform. And its 3G network compatibility finally makes the iPhone welcome the world over, especially after Cupertino decided to ditch its non-traditional carrier partnerships in favor of dropping the handset price dramatically. $200? We’re still a little stunned.
So now that Apple finally stands poised for an all out war on cellphone-makers everywhere, will the iPhone 3G stand up to the competition — and higher expectations than ever? Read on for our full review.
Update: Updated with some more battery tests. So far we’re not that impressed.
Gallery: iPhone 3G review – hardware
Continue reading iPhone 3G review
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While observing stars in our own Milky Way galaxy with the Hubble Space in an ongoing study that has spanned several years, astronomers stumbled upon a distant elliptical galaxy 1.2 billion light years away packed with clusters of stars too dim for most telescopes to see. Oddly, the light from some of these clusters are not young and blue as expected, but rather, older and redder -an observation Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues are wrestling to understand.
Globular clusters are tight-knit collections of stars that are among the oldest surviving structures in the universe. Our own Milky Way has at least 158 known clusters. While taking an image of one Kalirai accidentally captured a rare gem in the background: a distant elliptical galaxy brimming with its own collection of the clusters.
Kalirai and Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia led an earlier study, which began as an investigation of a globular star cluster in the Milky Way galaxy known as NGC 6397. The researchers acquired one of the deepest optical images ever taken with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, focusing on a small field within NGC 6397. This cluster, home to hundreds of thousands of stars, is 8,500 light-years away, making it one of the closest globular clusters to Earth.
Hidden in the background, however, were findings that may hold even greater promise for understanding the evolution of such clusters, Kalirai said. Within the population of stars and galaxies behind NGC 6397, the Hubble image revealed the large elliptical galaxy that contains several hundred globular clusters, which led to the new discovery and mystery of the apparently older, reddish stars.
Kalirai and Richer followed up the Hubble imaging observations with spectroscopic observations using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini South Telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. They were able to determine the distance of the elliptical galaxy hosting the globular clusters by measuring its redshift (a measure of how the expansion of the universe shifts the wavelengths of light from a distant object). This showed that the globular clusters are the most distant ever studied.
Previous studies by other researchers of globular clusters in nearby galaxies, including the Milky Way, have shown that these systems play a very important role in understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies. With a sample of almost 200 clusters in this one distant galaxy, Kalirai’s team will test whether the properties of these globulars are consistent with the idea that elliptical galaxies formed the bulk of their stars at early times. For the first time, the observations may also allow astronomers to test for evolution in the properties of globular clusters themselves, Kalirai told New Scientist.
Posted by Casey Kazan.
Sources:
New Scientist Link
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/8826
Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters (vol 682, forthcoming)
Albert Einstein was famously annoyed about God playing dice with the universe. Perhaps as an apology, God has set up the perfect demonstration of the theory of general relativity – it seems that if He moves in mysterious ways, those ways are at least consistent with four-dimensional spacetime.
A fundamental concept in relativity is the idea of curved spacetime, the idea that large masses bend surrounding space (and which has led to more people imagining bowling balls on sheets of rubber than could possibly have happened otherwise). The problem is that even our largest local mass might as well be called “The wee tiny little o’Sun-chan”. It looks pretty big, but that’s only because we’re really small.
The double pulsar PSR J0737−3039A/B has a number of properties that make it the perfect test for relativity. For one thing it doesn’t need that great big bloody name, because it’s the only double pulsar we’ve ever observed: just say “the double pulsar” to an astrophysicist and they’ll know what you mean, so there’s no need to copy out that serial number-looking code for your own studies.
The pulsars orbit each other every two and a half hours (rather than the month it takes the Earth and the Moon with, which have half the separation). It’s basically a vast mangler of spacetime, more than twice the mass of the Sun and made of the densest state of matter known to human science. The only way it could be a more perfect test is if the orbit was edge-on to the Earth, and what do you know, it is.
This means that twice every orbit we get 30 seconds of pure signal from one of the pulsars while the other is eclipsed behind it. By analyzing this data, scientists from McGill University have conducted the most extreme testing of Einstein’s theories possible to date. The math is pretty complicated, and has a nasty tendency to include terms like “The c-squared-sigma-B over G ratio is point nine four plus or minus point one three”, but the conclusion is one that we can all understand:
That Einstein fella? He was pretty damn right.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111831&org=NSF&from=news
Filed under: Tablet PCs
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With all the orbital missions at the various planets in our solar system, scientists have been able to glean an amazing amount of data to help us understand our neighboring worlds. But imagine a mission that could fly lower than orbital altitudes – actually flying in the atmosphere of another planet and closer to the surface – and imagine how much more detailed the data could be. This type of mission would be especially helpful on Venus, where the intense heat and crushing air pressure at the surface basically precludes the success of any type of lander mission. So, last year, when NASA formed a Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT) to study the concept of a flagship mission to Venus, waiting in the wings was Dr. Geoffrey Landis. For the past several years Landis and a group of scientists and engineers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center have been studying the concept of a solar-powered airplane at Venus. Landis says a small aircraft powered by solar energy could fly continuously in Venus’ atmosphere, and would be an ideal vehicle for gathering data on both the planet’s atmosphere and surface, with the ability to maneuver almost anywhere.
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Read the rest of Cruising the Cloud Tops of Venus With a Solar-Powered Airplane (928 words)
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Filed under: Laptops
No, not that dual-screen, silly. Or that one. Or that one! The dual-screen lappie we’re talking about actually has two LCD panels, one of which takes the place of a traditional keyboard / trackpad. Reportedly, V12 Designs — which takes credit for dreaming up the design some four years ago — is working with an undisclosed US firm in order to bring said concept to market. We’re told that the keyboard display will likely support haptic feedback so users can feel when a keystroke is registered, and of course, voice recognition will also play a large role. It’s not that we don’t think these are coming, but V12’s Valerio Cometti is suggesting that they’ll be ready for consumption in a mere 16 months. Don’t hate us for being skeptical, but… we’re skeptical.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
I was going to write another history post about the early days of the zoo to mark today’s anniversary. After all, it was around now – 9.30am – on July 11th that I realised just what we’d done, as our server went down under the pressure and email after email after email arrived in our inbox complaining about it – or helpfully pointing out that we had technical problems. For someone who thought that this project might be a spare time occupation it was a rude awakening and the story of the last year has in some sense been a struggle to catch up.
Those early days have been rehashed often enough, though, and I should save the best lines for public talks anyway. Let me use this chance, then, to give you a State of the Zoo report. Apologies first; the development of Zoo 2 has been slower than any of us would like, delayed not quite by hell and high water but by almost everything else. The designs and most of the coding are done, and – barring further hiccups – we’re a matter of a week or two away from releasing it to beta testing. First access will be given to those who help us out with a survey, so watch this space.
The delays are particularly embarrassing when compared to the speed with which Waveney responded to our call for help reclassifying mergers. That programme has been a huge success, and I’m delighted to bring you the latest news – in an email I received this morning Waveney reports :
Last night, just in time for the birthday celebrations, we reached the
milestone of all 44,805 images being checked for mergers having at least 10
clicks each.
This is a side project, and yet we’ve clocked up almost 10 Kevin-months between us. (Galaxy Zoo was inspired by Kevin’s original search through 50,000 Sloan galaxies, so the unit of galaxy classification is the Kevin-month.)
We have learnt our lesson, though. We have secured funding to put the Zoo on a stable footing for the next few years; the excuse that there is no-one working full time on the project will no longer be true. Future versions of the site – which will work through the Hubble Space Telescope archive and take data from the next generation of sky surveys – should follow in due course.
Speaking of Hubble, anyone who has had to listen to me babble in the last few months knows that we’re looking forward – successful repair mission depending – to pointing the world’s most famous telescope toward the Voorwerp, Galaxy Zoo’s poster object. I worry sometimes that we go on about it too much – perhaps it’s frustrating for those of you who aren’t Hanny – but it illustrates to me at least the sheer joy of this project. We’ve done the work we thought we’d do, but have discovered a wealth of other things along the way. The paper describing our initial observations of the Voorwerp will be submitted today, and there’s also news about our hunt for gravitational lenses. The overlapping galaxies project rolls on, too – we’re still working on the data we obtained on Kitt Peak a few months ago, and have three more nights in November.
I mentioned that we’d done what we thought we do; Kate’s paper – and following the evolution of that result was an interesting ride – ended up reassuring cosmologists, sparking debate about statistics here and in New Scientist – and telling us something about web design or the human brain (depending on whose hunch you believe). My paper set out the basic results, and its acceptance means that zooing data sets is now a recognised technique in astronomical data processing. Steven’s magnum opus deserves to be read by everyone studying galaxies – it is, I think, the definitive work on what galaxies live where, although not definitive enough to stop us spinning off further studies. Last but not least, Kevin’s paper finds the blue ellipticals that sent us searching through the SDSS in the first place.
There will be much more to say in year 2 of the Zoo, but for now I’m revelling in what’s happened so far. Astronomy has always – perhaps uniquely – been a science where anyone can contribute; we’ve always relied on amateurs to discover supernovae, monitor variable stars and to keep an eye on the planets. With modern light pollution and the hectic lifestyles many of us lead, finding the right place, the time and the money to take part has become increasingly difficult. I was lucky, as thanks to some excellent teachers and staff my school had a telescope we could use, but that kind of luck is sadly rare.
Galaxy Zoo opens up the chance to make real contributions to anyone with an internet connection. By taking part in Galaxy Zoo, you’re not only exploring the Universe, but also contributing to the progress of scientific knowledge. We really do know a little bit more about galaxies than we did a year ago, thanks to all the clicks on the website. It’s a stunning thought, and even one year on it stops me in my tracks.
So I’ll stop here. Happy birthday, everyone.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases. The study primarily focused on how this relationship affects children and adolescents. Lan Nguyen Chaplin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Deborah Roedder John (University of Minnesota) found that even a simple gesture to raise self-esteem dramatically decreased materialism, which provides a way to cope with insecurity.
“By the time children reach early adolescence, and experience a decline in self-esteem, the stage is set for the use of material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth,” they write in the study, which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research.
The paradox that findings such as these bring up, is that consumerism is good for the economy but bad for the individual. In the short run, it’s good for the economy when young people believe they need to buy an entirely new wardrobe every year, for example. But the hidden cost is much higher than the dollar amount. There are costs in happiness when people believe that their value is extrinsic. There are also environmental costs associated with widespread materialism.
In the book “Happiness: Lessons From a New Science”, Richard Layard exposes a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most of us want more income so we can consume more. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe and Japan.
Statistically people have more things than they did 50 years ago, but they are actually less happy in several key areas. There is also the considerable cost of what materialism does to the environment. We don’t yet know what final toll that could take in terms of quality of life and overall happiness. What many people don’t understand is that if we want to save the environment then at some level we have to buy and consume less. We don’t need to buy so much bottled water, for example. Studies have shown it’s usually not any purer than city tap water, which doesn’t leave mountains of plastic bottles strewn across the nations landfills. It also wastes energy and resources to make those plastic bottles and the many other unnecessary things that both youth and adults alike believe they need to have in order to enjoy life and feel good about themselves.
Mad Magazine summed it up with the statement, “The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments.”
That funny statement, is only funny because it’s somewhat true. The reason people want whatever is currently “hot” is because they believe it will contribute towards their satisfaction and happiness in life. The word “believe” is the key here. People believe that buying more and more things will make them happy, when in fact research has shown time and time again that this simply isn’t the case. What we do know for sure is that buying more and more unnecessary things is damaging our planet and contributing to global warming.
Sure, one person being less materialistic isn’t going to make a noticeable impact on the environment, but it will make a positive impact in that one life. Once entire nations start to understand the myths about what really makes individuals happy, the world will stand a fighting chance.
“Be The Difference You Want. To See In The World.”
~Mahatma Gandi.
Posted by Rebecca Sato
Links:
http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page6393.aspx
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/518546&erFrom=-9123002968287570526Guest
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/publications/books/2005/Happiness.htm
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/10/15/want-to-save-the-environment-buy-less-stuff/
As if recent reports of Mercurian rock-water weren’t exciting enough, H20 has been detected from an unlikely source even closer to home: Moon Volcanoes. Yes, that’s water from Moon Volcanoes, and anybody who says science is boring doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
For years the scientific opinion of satellite matched what you’d expect from the moon mission images – a barren, dusty plain that makes the Sahara look like the sixth great lake. The moon was believed to be utterly dehydrated, constantly baked to hundreds of degrees by direct solar radiation and with gravity too weak to hold any atmosphere. Any moisture would have to be delivered by cometary impact and then hidden in shadowed craters.
Recent results from a collaboration of American universities have changed all that. All previous studies on moon samples had a minimum moisture sensitivity of fifty parts per million; it turns out the precious water was hiding down at the forty-six per million mark. Analysing samples of volcanic glass beads with the new technique of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) the bashful water was finally detected.
The distribution of H20 in the samples is consistent with the original material being relatively rich in water, about as much as the Earth’s upper mantle, but the volcanic processes causing 95% of it to be lost. While most would have escaped into space, some is thought to have collected at the lunar poles in shadowed regions. Ready-made ice-banks just waiting to be tapped by future lunarnauts.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
Related Galaxy posts:
The Theia Hypothesis: New Evidence Emerges that Earth and Moon Were Once the Same
Source: Lunar Water http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/ci-mwd070708.php
This galaxy, Zw II 96 (about 500 million light-years away) resembles the Baby Boom galaxy which lies about 12.3 billion light-years away and appears in images as only a smudge.
A group of telescopes got together recently to check out a little hanky-panky going on in a galaxy in a very remote part of the universe. The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, Japan’s Subaru Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell and the Keck Telescopes, all on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico pooled their various optical, infrared, submillimeter and radio capabilities to see why a distant galaxy appears to be conceiving stars at a tremendously fast rate. This galaxy, which has now been dubbed the “Baby Boom” galaxy, is giving birth to about 4,000 stars per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy turns out an average of just 10 stars per year. These telescopes weren’t just playing the part of a Peeping Tom; astronomers want to find out more about this incredibly fertile galaxy.
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Read the rest of Baby Boomer Galaxy Found (535 words)
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More than 550 new applications arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch this morning in iTunes’ brand new App Store and more than 130 of them are available for free. Today we’re taking a look at the best free applications for your iPhone and iPod touch, available once you’ve got iTunes 7.7 and the iPhone 2.0 software update installed.
Note: Most of the apps listed here work with both iPhones and iPod touch models, but we’ve noted where an app requires the iPhone’s voice, SMS, or GPS capabilities to run.
Remote Controls Your iTunes Library
The iTunes App Store’s marquee freebie, the Remote app turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a remote control for your media library. Remote works almost exactly like the iPod application on your device—the main difference being that rather than playing back music on your iPhone or iPod touch, you’ve got access to your entire iTunes library and you’re playing it over your computer’s speakers.
Read more about setting up and using the Remote app>>
Google Mobile is Quicksilver for the iPhone/iPod touch
Google already has a fast and slick iPhone version, but this app is hyper-optimized for quick searching. Search-as-you-type results spin up for web pages, click-to-call business and residential phone listings, nearby stores and restaurants, and more—and Google Mobile’s brought to you by the guy who made one of our favorite free launcher desktop apps, Quicksilver.
Read more about how Google Mobile searches your contacts and the web>>
Jott Transcribes Speech to Text
iPhone only: Free voice-to-text service Jott is a natural fit for an iPhone app, and its implementation here is pretty nifty. You can simply say a note into the recording interface (at right), and it’ll show up in your Jott notes (or on Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, or Jott-connected applications). You can also simply type a note in, making the Jott app a quick interface for a lot of web apps. Managing all your notes with finger-swipe deletion is pretty handy as well.
Evernote
The universal stuff-gathering site Evernote gives you all the major tools of its desktop and web software in its iPhone app—add text, snap a phone cam shot, record a memo, or upload a photo, and it’s all available for organizing, tagging, or searching later. New in this interface is a straight-forward voice recorder; if you’d rather have your audio transcribed, you can use the Jott app as a gateway to Evernote. Given that even free users of Evernote can have the service scan their pictures and extract visible text, Evernote’s app makes your iPhone a serious universal capture device.
NetNewsWire
As Adam has detailed, users of desktop-based readers like NetNewsWire (Mac) or FeedDemon (Windows) have their reasons for sticking with them. NetNewsWire for iPhone syncs with either of those clients, meaning you won’t read the same items twice. There’s a “Clippings” feature for setting items aside for later (or when you’ll be offline) that also syncs to your desktop, and the interface is straightforward—and that’s about it. If you’re a Google Reader addict, you’re already set up with GReader’s iPhone beta view.
Read more about how NetNewsWire brings synced RSS feeds to Your iPhone>>
Zenbe Lists
Free service Zenbe works as a multi-account mail organizer in its web form, but they’ve stuck with to-do-style lists for their iPhone app. Those lists, however, can be edited on any browser and synced back to your Zenbe account, or published on an iGoogle page. The real benefit, though, is sharing with other Zenbe Lists users. Anyone you share with can then edit and update your list and sync them back to you—a kind of nifty no-real-computer-required list wiki.
Yelp
The iPhone app for business review site Yelp takes good advantage of your location-aware device to dish up the details on nearby restaurants, bars, gas and service stations, and much more. There’s a custom search function too, so you can always know when you’re in the presence of, say, high-quality sushi while you’re traveling, and how much reviewers say it’s going to cost you. A great app for traveling, or just seeing what the hive says about your home town.
Read more about finding and filtering everything around you with Yelp>>
Save Benjis
Save Benjis (as in the face on the bills) makes it seriously convenient to compare prices on online purchases, or the gadget that’s sitting right in front of you at the store. Type in a name, a product ID number, or other details, and you’ll get a list back with links and prices from Amazon, NewEgg, and other online merchants. If you’ve ever wondered how much markup you’re paying to grab that gear now, wonder no more. Saving Benjis also integrates well with Amazon for making actual purchases.
Read more about comparing prices on the fly with Save Benjis>>
Talking Phrasebook (French, Italian, German, Spanish)
Translation tools and dual-language dictionaries are great, but sometimes, you really just need to ask “How much to park here?” in German. The Talking Phrasebook apps offer phrases you’ll want to know translated from English to Spanish, French, German, and Italian, and you can click to hear them pronounced (or, perhaps, just have your iPhone speak for you).
Read more about getting the words you need quickly with Talking Phrasebook>>
Midomi
iPhone only: This one’s not terribly productive—unless you’re the type to spend far too much time trying to name that song you just can’t remember. For those moments, or for proving a friend right/wrong, Midomi is a true gift. You can type in an artist or song name to get more info (and you can write it phonetically), but the true joy is in humming or singing a few bars into your iPhone, waiting a bit, then seeing your song title come back. You can also hold your phone up to the music itself, and Midomi will try to ID it. Seriously neat stuff.
Read more about Midomi—and watch a video demonstration—at Gizmodo>>
Where
One of the most comprehensive location-aware apps in the Store, Where gives you all sorts of location-based information—like where the nearest restaurants, Zip cars, gas stations, and Starbucks locations are in relation to you. Enable Buddy Beacon to see nearby friends also using Where. Get to know the new place you’re visiting—or even your hometown—with one of the coolest features, called HeyWhatsThat, which identifies landmarks you can see from your location—like the names of nearby mountains and overhead constellations.
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
Send and receive instant messages over Wi-Fi, EDGE, or 3G networks, and manage your AIM buddy list right on your device with the AIM iPhone app.
PayPal
Send money from your iPhone or iPod touch to anyone—like your dinner companion when you’re splitting the bill—with the PayPal app. You’ve been able to send money via SMS using PayPal for some time now, but the app makes it even easier—it keeps you from having to remember the text message format.
Aside: Gedeon Maheux points out that six iTunes Store Apps listed under Productivity use the check mark as their icon. Group-think! [via Daring Fireball]
We’ll be updating this list with more free apps as we download and test ‘em out. What should we look at next? Post your favorite free iPhone application in the comments, and vote for the best you’ve seen (so far) below.
What’s your favorite free iPhone app so far?
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Even though the iPhone 3G won’t be out in the US until tomorrow, users are already getting new software a day early. An update to iTunes, the launch of MobileMe, the introduction of the App Store, and some leaked iPhone 2.0 firmware offer plenty of pre-iPhone Day entertainment.
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In the Heart of the Virgo Cluster The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky – about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. With its heart lying about 70 million light years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest cluster of galaxies, contains over 2,000 galaxies, and has a noticeable gravitational pull on the galaxies of the Local Group of Galaxies surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The cluster contains not only galaxies filled with stars but also gas so hot it glows in X-rays. Motions of galaxies in and around clusters indicate that they contain more dark matter than any visible matter we can see. Pictured above, the heart of the Virgo Cluster includes bright Messier galaxies such as Markarian’s Eyes on the upper left, M86 just to the upper right of center, M84 on the far right, as well as spiral galaxy NGC 4388 at the bottom right.Researchers have created the world’s first artificial DNA strand, with hopes it will be used in DNA computing and nanotechnology.
About 13,000 years ago, woolly mammoths roamed the North American continent and the first known human society in that region, known as the Clovis civilization, lived there as well. But geologic and archeological evidence shows they both suddenly disappeared, and scientists have long debated the mystery of the mass extinction of both animals and humans about 12,900 years ago. At that time, climatic history suggests the Ice Age should have been drawing to a close, but instead rapid climate change initiated an additional 1,300 years of glacial conditions. But scientists couldn’t agree on the cause of the sudden change in climate. However, about two years ago geophysicist Allen West proposed that an asteroid or comet exploded just above the earth’s surface at that time over modern-day Canada, sparking a massive shock wave and heat-generating event that set large parts of the northern hemisphere ablaze, setting the stage for the extinctions. Another scientist set out to prove West wrong, but ended up finding evidence to support the exploding asteroid/comet theory.
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Read the rest of Exploding Asteroid Theory Gains Evidence (347 words)
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The Southern Cross in a Southern Sky This breathtaking patch of sky would be above you were you to stand at the South Pole of the Earth. On the upper left of this image are the four stars that mark the boundaries of the famous Southern Cross. At the top of this constellation, also known as The Crux, is the orange star Gamma Crucis. The band of stars, dust, and gas crossing the middle of the photograph is part our Milky Way Galaxy. Just below the Southern Cross on the far left is the dark Coal Sack Nebula, and the bright nebula on the far right is the Carina Nebula. The Southern Cross is such a famous constellation that it is depicted on the national flag of Australia.
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