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Math

Submission + - A New Theory of Everything?

Submitted by goatherder
goatherder writes: The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi's theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider.
Math

Submission + - Surfer stuns physicists with theory of everything (telegraph.co.uk) 1

Submitted by j823777
j823777 writes: GARRETT LISI is an unlikely individual to be staking a claim for a theory of everything. He has no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii. In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, California, to teach snowboarding. Until recently, physics was not much more than a hobby.

That hasn't stopped some leading physicists sitting up and taking notice after Lisi made his theory public on the physics pre-print archive this week (www.arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770). By analysing the most elegant and intricate pattern known to mathematics, Lisi has uncovered a relationship underlying all the universe's particles and forces, including gravity — or so he hopes. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
Java

Submission + - Will JavaFX Trump Ajax and Flash

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The single biggest announcement of JavaOne this year was Chris Oliver's JavaFX Script, a declarative language for writing Flash-like rich Internet applications. Equally important, the Java virtual machine is opening up to scripting languages like Ruby, Groovy, and Scala. This will enable it to enter new domains that were previously the fiefdom of scripting languages like Python and Perl. JavaFX Script is a step into the rich Internet application domain pioneered by the Java platform but more recently colonized by Flash and Ajax.
Google

Submission + - Is Google Evil?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Absolutely! Their motto is just a marketing ploy!
Yes, but just since the IPO.
Almost; just a few more stories to go...
Not really, but heading that route.
Never! I love the Google!
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Patient bleeds dark green blood

Submitted by jefft0
jefft0 writes: A team of Canadian surgeons got a shock when the patient they were operating on began shedding dark greenish-black blood. The man emulated Star Trek's Mr Spock — the Enterprise's science officer who supposedly had green Vulcan blood. In this case, the unusual color of the 42-year-old's blood was due to the migraine medication he was taking.
Networking

Submission + - Proof that women hate men. (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
mikeeusa2
mikeeusa2 writes: """"Mary Winkler Could Only Serve 60 Days(This is the woman who shot and killed her preacher husband in the back with a shotgun).

Daringest on Sat, 2007-06-09 03:49. informs us:

The trial of Mary Winkler is saddening and disappointing, but it's not surprising. Women get away with murder probably everyday.

The foreman was on the jury this Friday morning on CourtTV. According to him the women on the jury wanted to acquit the murderess. He, the jury foreman, was disappointed by the verdict but said the decision was a compromise since the ten women on the jury wanted to set her free.

Lisa Bloom, host of the CourtTV program and daughter of famed misandrist Gloria Allred, said the defense attorney was smart to keep the platform heels next to the defendant when she was on the stand. Apparently, Mz. Bloom thinks this helped the female jurors to sympathize with and exonerate the murderess. If a man wants his wife or girlfriend to wear heels, he deserves to be killed.

When a man gets married, he gives his wife the right to take his life, as well as his rights and property.

What's interesting is that in another case some months ago, a man was sentenced to eight (8) years in jail for trespassing in a women's apartment and trying on her underwear. So women believe a man who tries on her underwear should be jailed for eight years but a woman has a right to kill a man just because she feels like it. Where's the "equality" here?""""
Censorship

Submission + - Slashdot is filtered in Iran !

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "It is a while that slashdot is filtered in Iran and other interesting and scientific sites are becoming banned one after another .People in Iran are used to see their favorite sites banned without any logical reason . It seems that a robot which is sensitive to specific words is used to control the passing traffic without any human supervision and there are no places to complain about or no one is going to be responsible about it. The main purpose of censorship was said to be stopping people's access to pornographic and political sites , The number of dedicated hosts in European countries are increased which are just used for VPN connections. In Iran, people simply know how to tunnel using softwares like VTUND and OpenVPN and where to buy VPN accounts . What they are doing is hiding their head under snow and claiming nothing's going on."
Mars

Submission + - Enough Water to Cover Mars... Found on Mars.

Submitted by
AbsoluteXyro
AbsoluteXyro writes: "Using a penetrating radar instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter, enough frozen water has been found at the Martian south pole to cover the planet in over 30 feet of pure liquid water should it ever be thawed out. From the SPACE.com article: "The reflected beams revealed that 90 percent or more of the frozen polar material is pure water ice, sprinkled with dust particles. The scientists calculated that the water would form a 36-foot-deep ocean of sorts if spread over the Martian globe." This has serious implications for thirsty humanoids."
Space

Submission + - String-nets may be a new state of matter

Submitted by Charmed, I'm sure
Charmed, I'm sure writes: Researchers have discovered what may be a new state of matter. Physicists Xiao-Gang Wen at MIT and Michael Levin at Harvard have postulated that "string-nets" are a new state of matter and that electrons are not 'true' fundamental particles as physicists have believed. Using the idea of quantum entanglement as a basic property, Wen and Levin wondered whether electrons 'were not fundamental particles, but merely the ends of long strings of other "true" fundamental particles? With this idea, the pair developed a new model for matter, where it was made up of these strings, woven together to form what they dubbed "string-nets." Developing and running computer simulations of this model showed that it gave rise to both conventional particles as well as the quasi-particles, those which carried a fractional charge that began this whole adventure.' The structure of herbertsmithite, a mineral discovered in Chile in the early 1970s, supports their theory.
Microsoft

Submission + - How to Run Vista without activation for a Year

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end-run around one of Microsoft's key anti-piracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today.

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013258"
The Matrix

Submission + - Fundamental particals not so fundamental

Submitted by SpinyNorman
SpinyNorman writes: A new "string-net" theory of matter by researchers Xiao-Gang and Michael Levin, initially created to explain the fractional quantum hall effect (FQHE), has been shown to derive fundamental particals such as quarks and gluons, as well as naturally giving rise to Maxwell's equations of light. The new theory also predicts a new state of matter that appears to have been experimentally verified, and oddly enough also occurs naturally in a gemstone, Herbertsmithite, that was discovered over 30 years ago. The new theory builds on the work of Nobel physicist Robert Laughlin, and according to the New Scientist report has already attracted the attention of luminaries such as Fields medallist Michael Freedman who describes it as beautiful.

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