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Submission + - Tevatron data doesn't match predictions (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Asmodae
Asmodae writes: Top and Anti-Top quark events in the Tevatron have some unpredicted behavior that might need a new explanation. From the article: "A number of theoretical papers suggest interesting new physics mechanisms," the authors note, "including axigluons, diquarks, new weak bosons, and extra-dimensions that can all produce forward-backward top-antitop asymmetries."
Technology

Submission + - An Artist Captures CRT Televisions Turning Off (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Not necessarily tech-related in the most conventional of senses, but cool nonetheless. Stephan Tillmans, a Berlin-based artist, recently set to work capturing television screens the exact second they had been turned off. Each abstract system, according to Ignant, a German design, art and photography blog, is like a fingerprint. Unique to the moment of release, the duration of exposure and the device type, each of Tillmans' photographs is one-of-a-kind. Tillmans explains on his personal website: "The television picture is no longer visible — instead, a structure of light, which in a fraction of a second, disappears in the picture tube and collapses."
Japan

Submission + - Robots Help Out In Fukushima Nuclear Disaster (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: The team working to contain the partial meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant got some help from a robot, allowing workers to observe the site at a safe distance, according to Asahi Shimbun.

Called Monirobo, for "Monitoring Robot," the machine was loaned out by Japan's Nuclear Safety Technology Center. About 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) long and 1.5 meters high, it is equipped with a radiation detector, temperature and humidity sensors, and a 3D camera system. It can also collect samples and can be remotely operated from a kilometer away.
Security

Submission + - Does RSA SecurID have a US authorized back door? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Does the RSA SecurID two-token authentication system include a back door that was built in at the request of the U.S. government in exchange for letting RSA export SecurID? Does the RSA SecurID two-token authentication system include a back door that was built in at the request of the U.S. government in exchange for letting RSA export SecurID?"

Comment Re:OK, maybe I'm a bit grumpy today. (Score 1) 226

by ScientiaPotentiaEst (#35578692) Attached to: Happy 80th Birthday, William Shatner!
Aren't Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong more inspiring? To bring it even closer to this crowd, how about John Carmack? He's working his way up from first principles - developing real hardware. It surprises me that the technical people ostensibly filling this discussion site are apparently more interested in wildly inaccurate space opera.

Comment OK, maybe I'm a bit grumpy today. (Score 5, Interesting) 226

by ScientiaPotentiaEst (#35578162) Attached to: Happy 80th Birthday, William Shatner!

Why is it every time there's an article posted in connection with some soap opera in space, so many /. denizens are all over it with 100's of posts. Yet whenever there's an article on the real thing (space probes, man in space, deep space observation, etc.), either there are only a few tens of posts (many frivolous), and/or there's actual opposition (waste of money, rich bastards in space, etc.).

Fun and entertaining as he is (and indeed, happy birthday to the man), Shatner is an actor. Neil Armstrong, Wernher von Braun, Burt Rutan, Carl Sagan are/were the real deal - scientists, engineers, astronauts.

Of course, I might be jumping the gun. Perhaps this article will garner few posts.

Why is my karma going up in smoke? :-)

Submission + - GLOBE at Night Aims to Map Global Light Pollution (globeatnight.org) 1

Submitted by Kilrah_il
Kilrah_il writes: Light pollution is a big problem this days, affecting not only astronomers and wild life, but also everyone else because of wasted energy. GLOBE at Night aims to raise awareness by urging people to go outside and find out how much light pollution there is in their area. "The campaign is easy and fun to do. First, you match the appearance of the constellation Orion in the first campaign (and Leo or Crux in the second campaign) with simple star maps of progressively fainter stars found. Then you submit your measurements, including the date, time, and location of your comparison. After all the campaign’s observations are submitted, the project’s organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide."
Science

Submission + - Sludge in Flask Gives Clues to Origin of Life (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In the 1950s, scientist Stanley Miller conducted a series of experiments in which he zapped gas-filled flasks with electricity. The most famous of these, published in 1952, showed that such a process could give rise to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But a later experiment, conducted in 1958, sat on the shelf--never analyzed by Miller. Now, scientists have gone back and analyzed the sludge at the bottom of this flask and found even more amino acids than before--and better evidence that lightning and volcanic gasses may have helped create life on Earth.
Censorship

Submission + - China starts censoring phone calls mid sentence (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
bhagwad
bhagwad writes: "Several reports have emerged that China is cutting off phone calls mid sentence when contentious words like "protest" are used. Seems like China's draconian censorship regime is going into overdrive with even more sophisticated censoring. Of course, this comes on the heels of Google accusing them of mucking around with Gmail as well."
Space

Submission + - Cold 'Star' No Hotter Than a Summer's Day (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have found two brown dwarfs--so-called failed stars that are too small to sustain the stable burning of hydrogen--that are colder than any previously seen. They're so cold and so small that they are almost like giant planets. One's temperature is barely 300 kelvin--about as warm as a bright summer day on Earth. The two objects could be the first examples of a proposed class of ultra-cool brown dwarfs known as the Y-class. And because they are almost as cold as "gas giant" planets—Jupiter is about 150 K—studying them could offer a better handle on what the atmospheres of alien worlds look like.

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