17567328
submission
gregg writes:
An exploding star spotted 30 years ago in a nearby galaxy appears to be a newborn black hole, astronomers reported on Monday.
X-ray observations suggest the supernova, called SN 1979C, is a black hole in the making, a team of U.S. and European astronomers said.
16300922
submission
gregg writes:
A researcher has calculated the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit of pi — and a few digits either side of it. Nicholas Sze, of technology firm Yahoo, determined that the digit — when expressed in binary — is 0.
10392544
submission
gregg writes:
HM Cancri has been confirmed as a binary system of two white dwarfs orbiting one other so close, they complete one orbit every 5.4 minutes.
9026712
submission
gregg writes:
Caucasians and Asians don't examine faces in the same way, according to new research. PhD student Caroline Blais, of the Université de Montréal Department of Psychology, has published two studies on the subject: one in Current Biology and the other in PLoS One.
7547118
submission
gregg writes:
The FCC has had it with CableCARD, pointing out that after a decade of work, there are only 14 certified devices on the market that aren't directly controlled by the cable companies. In the FCC's ideal world, cable signals will be wide open to all devices, including Xbox 360s, TiVos, and PS3s. It's the latest broadside from the FCC's new Disrupter-in-Chief.
6989736
submission
gregg writes:
KTVY and CNN are reporting that NASA is announcing a large lunar ice field found by the L-CROSS mission.
6373455
submission
gregg writes:
This August, a team of 35 undergraduate students from Cornell University sank the competition at the 12th annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, sponsored by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Office of Naval Research. The competition takesplace in a large acoustic testing pool operated by the US Navy SPAWAR Systems Center. It calls for entries to pass through a gate, follow a path, ram a submerged buoy, fire through a square target with small torpedoes, drop markers into bins containing simulated targets, recover a PVC target and surface through an octagon shape, all without human intervention.
4819567
submission
gregg writes:
The BBC is reporting that the periodic table will soon have a new addition — the "super-heavy" element 112.
More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery.
4589045
submission
gregg writes:
Microsoft took over Caligari TrueSpace earlier last year and later released the software as freeware. They have now decided to discontinue TrueSpace — the first services will be disabled by tomorrow.
2975993
submission
gregg writes:
Six weeks before the nation's television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, the Obama administration is asking Congress to consider a delay.
In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are "woefully inadequate" and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be "reconsidered and extended."
