33251627
submission
dsinc writes:
The universe is a marvelously complex place, filled with galaxies and larger-scale structures that have evolved over its 13.7-billion-year history. Those began as small perturbations of matter that grew over time, like ripples in a pond, as the universe expanded. By observing the large-scale cosmic wrinkles now, we can learn about the initial conditions of the universe. But is now really the best time to look, or would we get better information billions of years into the future — or the past? New calculations by Harvard theorist Avi Loeb show that the ideal time to study the cosmos was more than 13 billion years ago, just about 500 million years after the Big Bang. The farther into the future you go from that time, the more information you lose about the early universe.
33154825
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dsinc writes:
Forbes' Alex Knapp writes about the Tesla idolatry and confusing his genius for godhood: "Tesla wasn’t an ignored god-hero. Thomas Edison wasn’t the devil. They were both brilliant, strong-willed men who helped build our modern world. They both did great things and awful things. They were both brilliantly right about some things and just as brilliantly wrong about others. They had foibles, quirks, passions, misunderstandings and moments of wonder."
33115157
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dsinc writes:
The decision to remove the evolution of the horse and archaeopteryx from Korean science textbooks is proving to make quite a stir on the internet,
A number of core references to the theory of evolution contained in the science textbook such as archaeopteryx and ‘the changes of horse over time’ have disappeared from the textbooks. This was the result of the Christian organization’s petition. The bio-science community hitherto remained dismissive of the Creationists’ challenge to the theory of evolution express dismay. As the calls to ‘defend evolution’ among a number of university students and biologists are getting more vocal, there are others who chime in to significantly update the ancient science textbooks that have not been revised for decades.
31688031
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dsinc writes:
Here's a practical application for your physics education: using math to successfully beat a traffic ticket in court. Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist based at the University of California San Diego, did just that to avoid paying a fee for (purportedly) running a stop sign.
Krioukov not only proved his innocence, but he also posted a paper detailing his argument online on the arXiv server. The succinct abstract for his paper certainly distinguishes itself from other research papers:
"A way to fight your traffic tickets. The paper was awarded a special prize of $400 that the author did not have to pay to the state of California."
31509211
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dsinc writes:
Mystery solved: The Simpsons live in the Springfield that's in Oregon, the creator of the animated family reveals.
31240907
submission
dsinc writes:
In August 1967, Congress refused to support NASA’s plans for the 1970s. Citing fiscal restraint, it rejected piloted Mars/Venus flyby missions in 1975 and 1977 and canceled the Voyager Mars/Venus program, NASA’s only robotic program planned for the decade. The Apollo Applications Program, which had been tapped as the agency’s main 1970s piloted program, suffered a cut of half a billion dollars.
After lengthy negotiations, in late February 1968 NASA came up with a blueprint that included Mariner-based robotic Mars and Venus spacecraft as precursors to piloted Mars and Venus flybys and robotic pure science missions to Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond.
31197643
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dsinc writes:
Neil deGrasse Tyson on how we could deal with this very real threat; in 2029 we'll be able to know whether, seven years later, Apophis will miss Earth or slam into the Pacific and create a tsunami that will devastate all the coastlines of the Pacific Rim.
30629497
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dsinc writes:
Brendan Eich, the CTO of Mozilla, weighs in on the recent dispute about about HTML5 video and supported codecs. It's a rather long read, but very interesting; he emphasizes that Mozilla will never require downstream source redistributors to pay royalty fees, that "mobile matters most" and that "Mozilla is here for the long haul".
30535275
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dsinc writes:
A Polish security researcher, Krzysztof Kotowicz makes an worrisome entry in his blog: with a few lines of Javascript, any web site could list the extensions installed in Chrome (and the other browsers of the Chromium family).
Proof of concept is provided here: http://koto.github.com/blog-kotowicz-net-examples/chrome-addons/enumerate.html
As there are addons which deal with very personal things like pregnancy or religion, the easiness of access to those very private elements of your life is really troubling.
30386867
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dsinc writes:
For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment as well as comfort to their owners and users around the world.
They’ve always been there. Year after year. Since 1768. Every. Single. Day.
Today, the editors have announced that they would discontinue the 32-volume printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica when the current inventory is gone. Nevertheless, the encyclopedia will live on—in bigger, more numerous, and more vibrant digital forms.
30316733
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dsinc writes:
Spencer voluntarily subjected himself to the U.S. military calls the Active Denial System, an energy weapon, commonly known as the “Pain Ray,” that turns electricity into millimeter wave radio frequency and heat. Tribulations and reflections within the article.
29968557
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dsinc writes:
Two months ago, an unknown attacker slipped in a Zeus-infected version of Slowloris into the list of DDoS tools that Anonymous has been distributing to its supporters, according to Symantec.
t’s not clear how many Anonymous supporters used the infected Slowloris, so there’s no way to gauge how many were (or still are) unknowingly transmitting their own bank account data to a remote server. Security companies have previously Internet users backing Anonymous not to participate in the DDoS attacks because they are breaking the law. Now, Symantec says they “may also be at risk of having their online banking and email credentials stolen.”
29903709
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dsinc writes:
Researchers from the University of Sydney have done some advanced crunching of numbers regarding the effects of FTL space travel via Alcubierre drive, taking into consideration the many types of cosmic particles that would be encountered along the way. What the research team — led by Brendan McMonigal, Geraint Lewis, and Philip O’Byrne — has found is that these particles can get “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship, as well as within the warp bubble itself.
When the Alcubierre-driven ship decelerates from superluminal speed, the particles its bubble has gathered are released in energetic outbursts. In the case of forward-facing particles the outburst can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of the ship.
29711745
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dsinc writes:
Though Darwinian theory dramatically revolutionized biological understanding, its strictly biological focus has resulted in a widening conceptual gulf between the biological and physical sciences. The analysis leads the authors to conclude that abiogenesis and evolution, rather than manifesting two discrete stages in the emergence of complex life, actually constitute one single physicochemical process. Based on that proposed unification, the extended theory offers some additional insights into life’s unique characteristics, as well as added means for addressing the three central questions of biology: what is life, how did it emerge, and how would one make it?
