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mknewman writes:
SpaceShip 2 was successfully dropped off it's WhiteKnight 2 mothership today from an altitude of 45,000 feet and glided to a landing in the Mojave airstrip. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/10/5266767-spaceshiptwo-flies-free-for-first-time
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mknewman writes:
The Tevatron — located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois — has been furiously searching for the particle which would help to explain the origins of mass in the universe — and it looks like they might have found it. A rumor has been swirling about recently that the found particle is a "three-sigma," meaning that it's got a 99.7 percent statistical likelihood of being correct — but the lab itself has yet to confirm or deny. The Tevatron, which was completed 27 years ago, is the second largest accelerator in the world (after the LHC) and it's expected to be retired once the CERN facility is fully operational.
10766018
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mknewman writes:
EMC2 recently created a buzz in the fusion underground by reporting on its Web site that a series of experiments was able to "validate and extend" earlier results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard. The company is now using a $7.9 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a bigger test machine, known as WB-8. (WB stands for "Wiffle Ball," which refers to the shape of the machine's magnetic fields.)
What's more, Nebel and his colleagues are now seeking contributions to fund the development of what they say would be a 100-megawatt fusion plant — a "Phase 3" effort projected to cost $200 million and take four years.
"Successful Phase 3 marks the end of fossil fuels," the Web site proclaims.
10722666
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mknewman writes:
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane took to the air for the first time this morning from California's Mojave Air and Space Port.
The craft, which has been christened the VSS Enterprise, remained firmly attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane throughout the nearly three-hour test flight. It will take many months of further tests before SpaceShipTwo actually goes into outer space. Nevertheless, today's outing marks an important milestone along a path that could take paying passengers to the final frontier as early as 2011 or 2012.
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mknewman writes:
eReader, now a Barnes and Noble company, formerly PeanutPress and PalmPress (Palm), has started advertising a eInk book reader called the eSlick. Aparently from Israel, the reader sports an Open Source Linux OS, 6" E Ink® Vizplex screen 600 x 800 pixel resolution, 4-level grayscale, 512m memory, 2gb SD card, and support for eReader PDB, ePub, PDF, TXT. Also comes with $100 in eReader credits.
This is a bit of a surprise with B&N releasing their own Nook reader, I was expecting eReader support within Nook.
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mknewman writes:
The New York Daily News is reporting that Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williamsâ(TM) severed head was mistreated at an Arizona cryonics facility, according to details from a new book.
In âoeFrozen,â Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williamsâ(TM) head, which had been severed and frozen for storage, was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williamsâ(TM) frozen head with a monkey wrench.
Johnson writes that technicians with no medical certification photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate Williams.
Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
Johnson told the Daily News that he wired himself with an audio recorder for his last three months at Alcor, stole internal records and took gruesome photographs that are reproduced in the book.
5279167
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mknewman writes:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32034204/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Bats use sonar to navigate and hunt. Many have been killed by wind turbines, however, which their sonar doesn't seem to recognize as a danger. Surprisingly, radar signals could help keep bats away from wind turbines, scientists have now discovered.
Although wind power promises to be a clean source of energy, some researchers have raised concerns that wind turbines inadvertently kill bats and other flying creatures. For instance, in 2004, over the course of six weeks, roughly 1,764 and 2,900 bats were killed at two wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, respectively. The bats might not be killed by the wind turbine blades directly, but instead by the sudden drop in air pressure the swinging rotors induce, which in turn cause their lungs to over-expand and burst surrounding blood vessels.
The researchers discovered that radar helped keep bats away, reducing bat activity by 30 to 40 percent. The radar did not keep insects away, which suggests that however the radar works as a deterrent, it does so by influencing the bats directly and not just their food.
Radar signals can lead to small but rapid spikes of heat in the head that generate sound waves, which in turn stimulate the ear.
"A bat's hearing is much more sensitive than ours," Racey noted. "It may be so sensitive that even a tiny amount of sound caused by electromagnetic radiation is enough to drive them out of there."
Future research can design a radar system optimized at deterring bats.
So how does radar keep bats away? The researchers explained that a great deal of research suggests that people can actually hear radar pulses.
"This was noticed when radar arrays first started up during World War II," Racey said. "A portion of radar operators said they heard clicks in their ears when they were switched on."
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mknewman writes:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/07/beatles.remastered.catalogue/index.html
Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music have announced that as the date for the release of the entire original Beatles catalogue, digitally remastered.
That includes all 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in the UK. The package will also contain the LP version of "Magical Mystery Tour" (initially released as a double-EP in Britain, though available on CD since 1987) and the collections "Past Masters Vol. I and II" combined as one title
In acknowledgment of the more technologically advanced listeners, each CD will contain, for a limited time, an embedded brief documentary film about the album.
The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-released studio chat from the Beatles.
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mknewman writes:
NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.
The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.
NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report" to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29841715/
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mknewman writes:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6230782.html
The Coast Guard is urging boaters and flyers to obtain digital emergency beacons to better help rescuers find them when trouble strikes.
Beginning Feb. 1,the Coast Guard will only receive distress alerts from 406-MHz Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons or EPIRBs, that transmit signals to satellites.
The devices help rescuers pinpoint locations more effectively than analog distress signals, which have been commonly used.
The satellites the Coast Guard monitors will no longer process analog signals transmitted on beacons using 121.5 or 243.0 MHz, said USCG Petty Officer 3rd Class Tom Atkeson.
Officials said that rescuers will continue to receive analog signals. But they urge people to have a secondary method of contacting rescuers, such as marine radio.
The 406-MHz beacons are nearly 50 times more powerful than the 121.5 or 243.0 MHz beacons. A GPS-embedded 406-MHz EPIRB can shrink a search area to about 100 yards while an analog beacon offers an initial search area of 500 square miles.
Also, the newer beacons can reduce the number of false emergency alerts because satellites recognize digital distress signals but are unable to distinguish between analog signals that are emitted by emergency beacons and other items that use analog frequencies, such as ATMs, pizza ovens and stadium scoreboards.
With analog beacons, the only way to determine if an alert is an actual emergency is to send rescue crews to the area.
For information on EPIRBs and the switch over from analog signals to digital signals, please visit http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/.
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mknewman writes:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28773091/
MOSCOW — Russia's space chief says there won't be any more tourists headed to the international space station after this year.
Anatoly Perminov told the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that there will be no room for paying tourists because the space station's crew is expanding from three members to six.
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mknewman writes:
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=965
Aparently the late Robert Bussard's Polywell Fusion project is proceeding, with positive results of WB-6.
"The team has turned in its final report, and it's been double-checked by a peer-review panel, Nebel told me today. Although he couldn't go into the details, he said the verdict was positive."
