Comment Re:Dark side of the moon... (Score 1) 186
The James Web Space Telescope will also reside in the Earth-Moon L2 point, and AFAIK it will transmit data directly to Earth, so communication from/to L2 should not be an issue.
Comment Re:Only more Evidence (Score 1) 78
I guess this is the right time to forecast that, once again, quality information is going to cost money?
PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles 361
darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."
Comment Err. no. (Score 1) 479
The masters of contemporary sci-fi (Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds) are surpassed only by precious few from the celebrated "classics." Those would be Clarke and Herbert.
Submission + - Giant Pyramid Structure Designed for New Orleans (inhabitat.com)
Jason Sahler writes: "Arcology may sound like a made up word — probably because it is. A hybrid of architecture and ecology, it is essentially a mega city which packs a ginormous population into one hyperstructure — think Death Star, Zion in The Matrix or the Anthill of Antz fame. Now, a real-life a group of ambitious designers has taken their looming pyramidal arcology and placed it smack dab on the Mississippi River as a proposal for the rebuild of New Orleans which is currently in progress. This 30 million square foot beast-building with an array of green features is aptly named NOAH (Get it? Noah and the Arcology?), and is meant to house 40,000 mostly human residents"
Submission + - VMWare acquiring SpringSource (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "Business software maker VMware Inc has agreed to buy privately held SpringSource for $420 million, its biggest-ever acquisition, to beef up a portfolio of programs that help companies run data centers."
Submission + - VMWare acquires SpringSource
sundling writes: "Creator of the popular Java Spring Framework, SpringSource has been acquired by VMWare. SpringSource itself has acquired a number of companies itself including G2One (the company behind Grails, the Java contender for the Ruby on Rails crowd) and Hyperic. SpringSource has also become home to other important Java projects like AspectJ for Aspect Oriented programming. Of all the open source Java Enterprise players, Spring tends to have vision that will definitely expand into the cloud. It was already putting the pieces together, but being acquired by VMWare should accelerate that direction."
Submission + - 11.6" netbooks face off
Dr. Damage writes: Netbooks have grown from tiny curiosities with 7" screens into surprisingly well-rounded little computers. The latest step? 11.6" displays with 1366x768 resolution and near-full-sized keyboards, believe it or not. Two such systems are available now for under $400 at U.S. retailers: an Aspire One at Walmart and the Gateway LT3103 at Best Buy. The Gateway packs an Athlon 64 processor and Radeon graphics, amazingly enough. The Tech Report bought them both and has compared them head to head in some depth, choosing a clear winner between the two.
Submission + - Growing a flower in lunar gravity (msn.com)
smooth wombat writes: If everything goes according to plan, an experiment designed to test if plants can grow in the limited lunar gravity will hitch a ride with a competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize. The press release from Paragon Space Development Corporation outlines its partnership with Odyssey Moon to be the first to grow a plant on another world. In addition to the experiment, Paragon will be helping Odyssey with the thermal control system and lander design. To win the prize, Odyssey must land its craft on the lunar surface by the end of 2014.
More details about the experiment, and obstacles to overcome, may be found in this MSNBC article.
More details about the experiment, and obstacles to overcome, may be found in this MSNBC article.
Submission + - The Most Beautiful Satellite Ever Built
Hugh Pickens writes: "Europe is set to launch the Goce satellite to map minute variations in the pull of gravity experienced across the planet in one of the most challenging space missions to date. The super-sleek spacecraft will provide use data to improve own understanding of how the oceans move, and to frame a universal system to measure height anywhere on Earth. Goce's striking good-looks are a requirement of the extreme environment in which it will have to operate. "This is the most beautiful satellite that has ever been built — and for good reason," says Reiner Rummel, from the Technical University of Munich, Germany adding that arrow shape and fins are necessary to keep the spacecraft stable as it flies through the wisps of air still present at an altitude just under 270 km. At the heart of the spacecraft is a gradiometer consisting of three pairs of "proof masses", or accelerometers aligned at 90 degrees, across each axis and mounted inside an ultra-stable casing. "Imagine a snowflake, which has a fraction of a gram, slowly falling down on to the deck of a supertanker. The acceleration that the supertanker experiences from that snowflake is comparable to the sensitivity of our instrument," explained Rune Floberghagen, Esa's Goce mission manager."
Comment Communication over trans-stellar distances is hard (Score 1) 774
"Detection of broadband signals from Earth such as AM radio,
FM radio, and television picture and sound would be
extremely difficult even at a fraction of a light-year
distant from the Sun. For example, a TV picture having 5
MHz of bandwidth and 5 MWatts of power could not be detected
beyond the solar system even with a radio telescope with 100
times the sensitivity of the 305 meter diameter Arecibo
telescope."
SETI@home FAQ
Comment Re:Jeez Late news, TES:EMPIRE trailer is available (Score 2, Informative) 130
That's the intro cinematic for Warhammer Mark of Chaos, and apparently there are also a lot of rickrolls out there entitled Elder Scroll V trailer.
Submission + - University holds jazz funeral for its mainframe
BDPrime writes: "Server Specs has a story about The University of Manitoba holding a New Orleans-style jazz funeral for its mainframe. The funeral included a full procession route on campus, "Amazing Grace" being played on the trumpet, and employees smashing a pinata made to look like a cartoon-y mainframe. Is the mainframe dead? Maybe not everywhere, but at The University of Manitoba it certainly is."
Submission + - Data Center Power Use to Grow by 10,000 Megawatts (datacenterknowledge.com)
1sockchuck writes: "A new study predicts that global electricity use by data centers will grow by 10,000 megawatts between 2005 and 2010. Power use by servers is growing 16 percent per year, according to the analysis by Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley Labs, whose previous research on the topic was featured in the recent EPA report to Congress on data center energy issues. The data highlights one of the major challenges in energy trends: the growing demand for power from emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific. The study, which uses IDC server data and was backed by AMD, projects that data center power usage in the Asia-Pacific region will grow at a 23 percent clip through 2010."
Submission + - Wikinews interviews editors of 'The Onion'
DragonFire1024 writes: "The Onion: An interview with 'America's Finest News Source' — Wikinews interviews Chet Clem and Sean Mills about the news empire that has become The Onion."
