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Submission + - Einstein's 'Lost' Model Of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding in Plain Sight'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dick Ahlstrom reports that Irish researchers have discovered a previously unknown model of the universe written in 1931 by physicist Albert Einstein that had been misfiled and effectively “lost” until its discovery last August while researchers been searching through a collection of Einstein’s papers put online by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different,” says Dr O’Raifeartaigh. “I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else.” In his paper, radically different from his previously known models of the universe, Einstein speculated the expanding universe could remain unchanged and in a “ steady state” because new matter was being continuously created from space. “It is what Einstein is attempting to do that would surprise most historians, because nobody had known this idea. It was later proposed by Fred Hoyle in 1948 and became controversial in the 1950s, the steady state model of the cosmos,” says O’Raifeartaigh. Hoyle argued that space could be expanding eternally and keeping a roughly constant density. It could do this by continually adding new matter, with elementary particles spontaneously popping up from space. Particles would then coalesce to form galaxies and stars, and these would appear at just the right rate to take up the extra room created by the expansion of space. Hoyle’s Universe was always infinite, so its size did not change as it expanded. It was in a ‘steady state’. “This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank,” says Simon Mitton. “If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents." Although Hoyle’s model was eventually ruled out by astronomical observations, it was at least mathematically consistent, tweaking the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to provide a possible mechanism for the spontaneous generation of matter. Einstein's paper attracted no attention because Einstein abandoned it after he spotted a mistake and then didn’t publish it but the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates Einstein's continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity.

Comment Re:Hand out the PP slides after the talk. (Score 5, Funny) 181

by Freshly Exhumed (#46427927) Attached to: Physics Forum At Fermilab Bans Powerpoint

But... but... explain to me how you can get a chalk board or white board to go "whooooooosh" when you go on to the next set of bullet points! I don't know about you but if it doesn't go "whooooooosh" I've lost everything salient and important about what you've presented. Oh ya one other thing... how do you get neat visual effects like folds and crinkly dissolves to happen with a chalk board or white board?

Submission + - HTTPS Traffic Attacks Leak Sensitive Surfing Details (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Researchers have built new attack techniques against HTTPS traffic that have been effective in learning details on users' surfing habits, leaking sensitive data that could impact privacy.
They tested against 600 leading healthcare, finance, legal services and streaming video sites, including Netflix. Their attack, they said in a research paper, reduced errors from previous methodologies more than 3 ½ times. They also demonstrate a defense against this attack that reduces the accuracy of attacks by 27 percent by increasing the effectiveness of packet level defenses in HTTPS, the paper said.

“We design our attack to distinguish minor variations in HTTPS traffic from significant variations which indicate distinct traffic contents,” the paper said. “Minor traffic variations may be caused by caching, dynamically generated content, or user-specific content including cookies. Our attack applies clustering techniques to identify patterns in traffic.”

Submission + - MirrorLink vs. Apple's CarPlay (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Apple's introduction of its iPhone automotive integration platform, CarPlay, yesterday signaled its entry into in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems — a market that up until now has consisted mainly of proprietary platforms with extremely limited mobile app capabilities. But open software efforts by the Linux Foundation and standards such as the Car Connectivity Consortium's MirrorLink and Google's recently launched Open Automotive Alliance are hoping to open up IVIs to any number of smartphones and related apps. ""The Apple [CarPlay] is just one standard. Right now MirrorLink is not compatible with iPhone..., but it can be," said Mark Boyadjis, manager of Infotainment & HMI systems at IHS Automotive. Alan Ewing, president of the Car Connectivity Consortium said we he first looked at Apple's CarPlay, he thought: "That's what we've been doing for two years. "It really validated the approach we'd already taken. But, we think the best mousetrap should win."

Comment Re:What's the solution? (Score 4, Insightful) 295

AFAIK the Mozilla folks have not had the same complaints about Linux graphics drivers, have they?

The solution is to avoid using the Google Chrome browser, unless you like being spied on all the time by Google. Load up Firefox with a completely fascist set of add ons and do your best to browse safely.

Submission + - Feds now oppose Aereo, rejecting cloud apocalypse argument

Submitted by v3rgEz
v3rgEz writes: TV streaming service Aereo expected broadcasters would put up a fight. The startup may not have seen the Justice Department as a threat, however. The Justice Department has now weighed in, saying in a filing that it’s siding with major broadcasters who accuse Aereo of stealing TV content. In its filing, the Justice Department noted it doesn’t believe a win for broadcasters would dismantle the precedent that created the cloud computing industry, as Aereo has previously claimed.

The case is expected to go before the Supreme Court in late April.

Submission + - Bug in the GnuTLS Library leaves many OSs and Apps at risk (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by williamyf
williamyf writes: According to our friends at ArsTechnica:

"The bug in the GnuTLS library makes it trivial for attackers to bypass secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protections available on websites that depend on the open source package. Initial estimates included in Internet discussions such as this one indicate that more than 200 different operating systems or applications rely on GnuTLS to implement crucial SSL and TLS operations, but it wouldn't be surprising if the actual number is much higher. Web applications, e-mail programs, and other code that use the library are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers monitoring connections to silently decode encrypted traffic passing between end users and servers."

What's even more, the coding error *may* have been present since 2005, so one has to wander, again, where were those "many eyes that render all bugs shallow" one keeps hearing about...

Submission + - 4-Year-Old Asks NASA For Homework Help, This Is What Happened (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: What happens when you are clueless about how to answer science questions given to you as part of your homework? You would normally seek your mom’s or dad’s help, right? Well, those are methods of the past now. Lucas Whiteley, a 4 year old from England, tried a different route and derived great satisfaction from the outcome. Why seek mom’s or dad’s help when NASA can prove generous dollying out help on its own?

Comment Quick Discharge batteries? (Score 1) 131

FTA: 'The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1,005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says.' So, situations in which a massive blast of current is required could benefit quite well from these batteries. I'm thinking like sitting at light on Mulholland and turning a knob on the Tesla's dashboard that is graduated in 1960's TV Batman style: Low-Medium-High-Zowie!

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