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Space

Scientists discover massive ring around Saturn->

Submitted by Gravedigger3
Gravedigger3 writes "The ring's orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane. The bulk of it starts about 3.7 million miles (6 million km) away from the planet and extends outward another 7.4 million miles (12 million km). Its diameter is equivalent to 300 Saturns lined up side to side. And its entire volume can hold one billion Earths, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said late Tuesday. "This is one supersized ring," said Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Verbiscer and two others are authors of a paper about the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The obvious question: Why did it take scientists so long to discover something so massive? The ring is made up of ice and dust particles that are so far apart that "if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn't even know it," Verbiscer said in a statement."

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Comment: How would this look animated and slowed down? (Score 1) 229

by Gravedigger3 (#29424103) Attached to: Most Detailed Photos of an Atom Yet

I have always imagined atoms as I saw them in textbooks, a nucleus with balls spinning around it so fast it would look like a sphere. Now the first image holds up to this and looks about what I expected a photograph of an atom to look like. But I don't quite understand the second image. If those two ovals represent a single atom then why does it appear to split?

It states in the article that the photo is of "two states' of the atom. Does the electron cloud just flow around the atom in such a way as to make it appear to be splitting in the second picture?

Comment: Re:Fuck em. Time to expatriate. (Score 1) 388

by Gravedigger3 (#28914709) Attached to: Tenenbaum Lawyers Now Passing the Hat

Destroy your life? Slinging drugs to tourists in Eastern Europe actually sounds like much more of a life than being a wage slave here trying to dig my way out of debt. Tourists + Drugs = $$$ and the exchange rate will mean that if you are taking in Euro or American and converting it to Crown (Czech currency) you will be living like a rock star. Imagine the women.

Of course, like most things, reality would probably suck all the fun out of this fantasy if I actually tried it.

Comment: Re:The buyers... (Score 3, Insightful) 85

by Gravedigger3 (#28849229) Attached to: Gamerscore Hacking and Its Underground Economy

No this is stupider than buying MMO accounts. That, although also stupid, I can at least understand. Some people (with more money than time) want to jump into an MMO without all the tedious grinding and have a hi-level avatar that can whoop some ass.

An XboxLive Gamerscore serves no purpose that I am aware of except to quantify all your wasted time into points that you can use to prove yourself "superior" to other gamers.

I mean if a high gamerscore gave me extra health in Halo 3 or even special items for offline games I could MAYBE understand. But this is just plain retarded.

Comment: Re:gosh (Score 1) 517

by Gravedigger3 (#28846439) Attached to: Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum

The ability to get the law changes seems to directly correlate to the amount of money people are able to throw at the right politicians to further their agenda. The people who are passionate about the issue are usually not in a financial position to "lobby" against the current laws. Therefore people do the next logical thing, which is to ignore the laws which they are unable to change (see Marijuana).

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

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