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Windows

Submission + - An unusual campaign: Download our software, and we pay money (loadandhelp.com)

Submitted by
martin-k
martin-k writes: "SoftMaker runs an unusual campaign this year to promote its office suite for Windows and Linux: Download an unrestricted copy of SoftMaker FreeOffice for free, and we pay money. Not to you, but to charity projects around the world. Each download is worth 10 Euro cents of SoftMaker donations. Not a lot by itself, but if you multiply this with a large group people, it might become a sizeable amount of money that helps needy people. The Load and Help campaign is in full swing, with more than 15,000 downloads already completed."
NASA

Submission + - Cassini Discovers First River On Another World (thespacereporter.com)

Submitted by AbsoluteXyro
AbsoluteXyro writes: NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).
Space

Submission + - Hubble sees tribe of baby galaxies 13+ billion light years away

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Using Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that are all over 13 billion light years away... including one that appears to be a record breaker at a staggering 13.3+ billion light years distant. That one is seen as it was only 380 million years after the Big Bang. This observation reaches into the era of the young cosmos when stars were first forming, and allows astronomers to better understand what the Universe was like back then — a time we know very little about."

Submission + - Atheist blogger sentenced to 3 years of prison for insulting Islam (alarabiya.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Egyptian blogger Alber Saber, maintainer of the Egyptian Atheists Facebook page, has been
sentenced to three years in prison under Egypt's blasphemy law for posting the trailer for the anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims. This film was widely blamed for al-Qaeda's coordinated attacks on US embassies on September 11 of this year, which were meant to pressure the US for the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is imprisoned in the US for his role in the World Trade Center attack of 1993.
Science

Submission + - Congress promotes antivaccination quackery

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A recent hearing of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform became a bully pulpit for antivaccination rhetoric when Representatives Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.) made speeches connecting vaccines to autism — a connection that medical experts have shown does not exist. Although there were actual medical researchers there as witnesses, they were mostly berated by the Congressmen on the panel.

Vaccines are one of the most successful medical advancements in human history, having saved hundreds of millions of lives, and after copious studies have been shown to have no connection with autism. Despite this, a vocal antivax lobby exists, including, clearly, members of Congress. In part this is why preventable and potentially fatal diseases like pertussis and measles are once again on the rise."
NASA

Submission + - MESSENGER probe finds strong evidence of ice at Mercury's north pole

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Just in time for the holiday season, the NASA space probe MESSENGER appears to have all but confirmed the existence of ice at Mercury's north pole. Ice has long been suspected to be hiding in permanently shadowed areas in deep craters at the planet's pole, but new data show several converging lines of evidence (thermal and visible light mapping, radar, neutron emission) that as much as a trillion tons of ice may be buried just centimeters deep under the surface. Scientists also see evidence of organic (carbon-based) molecules as well. That's not life, but it's more of an indication that volatile compounds can exist on the solar system's innermost planet."
Space

Submission + - Astronomers get picture of nearby exoplanet

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "While nearly a thousand planets are known to orbit other stars, getting direct pictures of them is extremely difficult due to the glare from their host stars. Fewer than a dozen images of exoplanets exist. However, we can now add one more to the list: Kappa Andromedae b, or Kap And b for short. It's about 170 light years away, and orbits Kappa And, a massive star bright enough to see with the naked eye. One hitch: its mass puts it right at the upper limit for a planet, and it may edge into brown dwarf territory. Further observations are needed to pin its mass down."
Space

Submission + - NASA satellite sees black hole belching out hundred million degree X-rays

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "NASA's NuSTAR satellite, designed to detect cosmic X-rays, detected a flare of high-energy emission coming from the Milky Way galaxy's central supermassive black hole. The X-rays were the dying gasp of a small gas cloud being torn apart, heated to a hundred million degrees, and then falling into the black hole itself. Events like this are relatively uncommon, so it's fortunate NuSTAR happened to be observing the black hole when it flared."

Comment Re:Don't complain about crime then (Score 4, Informative) 254

by Kinky Bass Junk (#41717821) Attached to: Facebook Won't Take Down Undercover Cop Page In Australia
There isn't really any problem here, this is just the Vic Police overreacting. The vehicles are 100% obviously cop cars, with exactly the same antenna and will always have some form of lightbar inside or outside the vehicle. Anyone who can't spot an undercover cop in Australia needs their eyes checked.
Space

Submission + - Alpha Centauri has an Earth-sized planet

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Astronomers have announced that the nearest star system in the sky — Alpha Centauri — has an Earth-sized planet orbiting one of its stars. Alpha Cen is technically a three-star system: a binary composed of two stars very much like the Sun, orbited by a third, a red dwarf, much farther out. Using the Doppler technique (looking for very small changes in the velocities of the stars) astronomers detected a planet orbiting the smaller of the two stars in the binary, Alpha Centauri B. The planet has a mass only 1.13 times that of the Earth, making it one of the smallest yet detected.However, it orbits the star only 6 million kilometers out, so it's far too hot to be habitable.

The signal from the planet is extremely weak but solidly detected, giving astronomers even greater hope of being able to find an Earth-like planet orbiting a star in its habitable zone."
Space

Submission + - First planet found in a four-star system... by amateur planet hunters

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "For the first time, a planet has been found in a stellar system composed of four stars. The planet, called PH-1, orbits a binary star made of two sun-like stars in a tight orbit. That binary is itself orbited by another binary pair much farther out. Even more amazing, this planet was found by two "citizen scientists", amateurs who participated in Planet Hunters, a project which puts Kepler Observatory data online for lay people to analyze. At least two confirmed planets have been found by this project, but this is the first — ever — in a quaternary system."
Youtube

Submission + - Skydiver Baumgartner sets YouTube live view record (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner smashed a number of records with his "edge of space" stunt — including for live streaming.

More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch the 43-year-old break the speed of sound live on Google's YouTube site. It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website's history, Google UK confirmed to the BBC.
Space

Submission + - Dying star weaves a trillion-mile-wide spiral in the sky

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Using the newly-commissioned ALMA radio observatory, astronomers have taken detailed images of one of the most amazing objects in the sky: the red giant R Sculptoris. As the star dies, it undergoes gigantic seizures beneath its surface that blast out waves of gas and dust from the surface. These normally expand into a spherical shell, but the presence of a nearby companion star changes things. The combined orbits of the two stars fling out the material like a garden sprinkler, forming enormous and incredibly beautiful spiral arms. Measuring the size and shape of the spiral shows the last eruption was 1800 years ago, lasted for nearly two centuries, and expelled enough material to make a thousand earths."

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