Comment overload (Score 1) 89
The site's dead Jim.
Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant 105
Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"
Comment US did do GPS (Score 2, Informative) 115
The US census did use GPS to pinpoint the exact locations of households. So Brazil can't do that much better....
Submission + - Richest Planetary System Discovered with 7 Planets (eso.org) 1
eldavojohn writes: "The European Southern Observatory has announced that with the aid of their 190 HARPS measurements they have found the solar system with the most planets yet. Furthermore they claim 'This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets. Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system.' The star is HD 10180, located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, that boasts at least five planets (with two more expected) that have the equivalent of our own Titius–Bode law (their orbits follow a regular pattern). Their survey of stars also helped reinforce the correlation between 'between the mass of a planetary system and the mass and chemical content of its host star. All very massive planetary systems are found around massive and metal-rich stars, while the four lowest-mass systems are found around lower-mass and metal-poor stars.' While we won't be making a 127 light-year journey anytime soon, the list of candidates for systems of interest grows longer."
Submission + - Windows 95 Turns 15
An anonymous reader writes: 15 years ago on this day, Microsoft's then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today's "social desktop", I'd much rather have the simpler and more sparese (pre Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials.
Artist Photoshops Scenes From WWII Into Present Day
150
Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov has taken old World War II photos and photoshopped them over the locations in present day. The scenes from places like Prague, Vienna, and Moscow are incredibly well done and a neat way to appreciate history.
Comment Re:Just a DSLR (Score 2, Informative) 85
The above post is almost completely correct. However, even the cheapo equatorial drives should be ok for wide-field astrophotography with a 18-55mm lens. Their poor guiding will only start to show if you attempt to do zoomed shots on specific targets. So as long as you don't care about taking pictures through your telescope then this should be ok.
Submission + - Climategate's final days (discovermagazine.com)
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Climategate may be on its way out. An investigatory committee at the Pennsylvania State University has formally cleared climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct. Mann was central in the so-called Climategate scandal, where illegally leaked emails were purported to indicate examples of scientists trying to cover up any lack of global warming in their data. This finding by the committee is another in a series of independent investigtions which have all concluded that no misconduct has occurred."
1,400 Megapixel Pan-STARRS Telescope Comes Online 54
ElectricSteve writes "Astronomers in Hawaii have announced they've successfully managed to boot up the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope. Working from dusk to dawn every night, Pan-STARRS is able to map one-sixth of the sky each month, allowing astronomers to track all moving objects, calculate their orbits, and identify any potential threats to Earth. There are four Pan-STARRS cameras in total, each capable of capturing around 1.4 billion pixels over a sensor measuring 40 centimeters square. The focal plane of each camera contains an almost complete 64x64 array of CCD devices, each containing approximately 600x600 pixels, for a total resolution of 1.4 gigapixels."
Comment Re:Ann Arbor (Score 1) 560
I'm on the 10th floor of my building and we had some pretty decent swaying going on.
Comment SE Linux issues (Score 1) 261
I would love to install this on my RHEL5 office system, but our IT guy has SE Linux enabled on all the systems. The new firefox throws AVC denials so I guess I'm stuck with older versions.
and we don't have root access.
Is LGP Going the Way of Loki Software? 124
An anonymous reader writes "After the demise of Loki Software, Linux Game Publishing sprouted up in its place, and for the past nine years has ported a number of games to Linux. But LGP may now be sharing the same fate as Loki. Linux Game Publishing hasn't updated its blog or news pages in months, has stopped responding to e-mails, and its only active ports are games they began work on in 2002/2003."
Comment Re:Perseus is going to be pissed (Score 2, Informative) 34
An actual Spitzer image of L1448 is here: http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~jjtobin/images/L1448.jpg and the preprint of the Astrophysical Journal paper is located here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.2443
Submission + - Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Benchmarked And Reviewed (tomshardware.com)
tc6669 writes: Tom's Hardware just posted an interesting review of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It includes an expanded set of OS benchmarks which they also performed on the previous LTS release (8.04) to see just how much the mainstream Linux distro has progressed in two years.
Comment Re:ooooooh! It "passed" a "test" ! (Score 4, Informative) 82
BEfore we wet our pants in excitement, let's remember:
* The Hubble passed a slew of design reviews too.
* Even so, it went up with many, many flaws, including:
* Electronics not shielded well enough to handle the South Atlantic Anomaly.
* Gyroscopes not qualified for the temperature cycles and SAA.
* Solar panels that oilcan buckle when going from sunlight to shade.
* Solar panel mount that does not go through the center of mass of the scope, so oilcan buckling causes the whole thing to oscillate.
* Unbalanced and uncushioned light cap that likewise shakes the whole thing when it's operated.
Although the new scope will have been checked against that list of problems, without major overhaul of the management structure, it's likely the same thing will happen this time.
Granted Hubble had many problems when it launched mainly because it was one of the first and most advanced general purpose observatories launched.
We have had tons of experience building space telescopes over the past 30 years since Hubble was designed and Hubble is the only one that is serviceable by the shuttle.
Just to list all the successful observatories since Hubble:
Infrared Space Observatory (Europe)
Chandra X-Ray observatory
Spitzer Space Telescope
WMAP
FUSE
Herschel Space Observatory (Mostly Europe)
Planck (Europe)
Suzaku X-Ray observatory (Japan)
and probably a few others I forgot about.
Bottom line, we know a lot about building space telescopes now, the doom and gloom you forecast is probably a bit over the top. Every project has problems, that's why we have brilliant engineers to find solutions.
