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mknewman writes:
NASA has secretly been working on a plan to develop a manned outpost on the far side of the moon, but the lofty plan has been kept quiet until after the presidential election, according to media reports.
According to Space.com, the plan has probably already been cleared by the Obama administration. Officials kept the plan under wraps in case Mitt Romney won the presidential election.
The plan would set up a manned station in an area of space called the "earth moon libration point," CNN reported. The spot is a point in space where the gravitational forces of the moon and Earth are roughly balanced.
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mknewman writes:
Looks like the embargo on the Higgs discovery has been broken, there is a video up describing the details.
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mknewman writes:
"The U.S. government's secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens. They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the resolving power of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics."
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mknewman writes:
A refreshingly simple new idea has emerged in the complicated world of high energy physics. It proposes that the early universe was a one-dimensional line. Not an exploding sphere, not a chaotic ball of fire. Just a simple line of pure energy.
Over time, as that line grew, it crisscrossed and intersected itself more and more, gradually forming a tightly interwoven fabric, which, at large distances, appeared as a 2-D plane. More time passed and the 2-D universe expanded and twisted about, eventually creating a web — the 3-D universe we see today.
This concept, called "vanishing dimensions" to describe what happens the farther one looks back in time, has been gaining traction within the high energy physics community in recent months.
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mknewman writes:
AT&T says it is ending its $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile USA after facing fierce government objections.
The cellphone giant said Monday that the actions of the government to block the deal do not change the challenges of the wireless phone industry, which it says requires more airwaves to expand.
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mknewman writes:
The European Space Agency reported Wednesday that a ground station in Australia has re-established contact with Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe, two weeks after a mysterious post-launch glitch.
On Tuesday, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia's deputy space chief, Vitaly Davydov, as saying that "chances to accomplish the mission are very slim." Then ESA said its tracking station in Perth, Australia, made contact with the probe late Tuesday (20:25 GMT, or 3:25 p.m. ET).
"ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communication with the spacecraft," the agency reported on its website Wednesday.
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mknewman writes:
CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli dangled an intriguing teaser in today's release: "As we speak, hundreds of young scientists are still analyzing the huge amount of data accumulated so far; we'll soon have new results and, maybe, something important to say on the Standard Model Higgs Boson."
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mknewman writes:
n honor of South Park's 15th season, Comedy Central, in conjunction with Frito-Lay, will begin selling Cheesy Poofs on August 28 in Wal-Mart stores across the country. They will be available through September 18.
Leigh Anne Brodsky, President of Nickelodeon Consumer Products, described the soon-to-be released product as "a salty snack that's cheesy in flavor," and she expects that they will be well-received by fans. Co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, themselves, were on-board and involved with the development of real-life Cheesy Poofs to ensure the snack remained faithful to the iconic animated version.
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mknewman writes:
Computer hackers shut down al-Qaida's ability to communicate its messages to the world through the Internet, interrupting the group's flow of videos and communiqués, according to a terrorism expert.
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mknewman writes:
A distant galaxy with stars that began forming just 200 million years after the big bang has been discovered. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose and how early the universe evolved, scientists report.
The galaxy was spotted with the Hubble Space Telescope. It is visible through a cluster of galaxies called Abell 383, whose powerful gravity bends the rays of light like a magnifying glass. The so-called gravitational lens amplifies light from the distant galaxy, making it appear 11 times brighter and allowing detailed observations.
Infrared data from Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the galaxy's stars formed when the universe was 200 million years old. Observations with the W.M. Keck Observatory on Muna Kea in Hawaii revealed the observed light from the galaxy dates to when the universe was 950 million years old. The universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago.
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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.
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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.
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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.
