Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Image

Air Force Sonic Booms Ignite Crocodiles' Sex Drives 61

Posted by samzenpus from the making-beautiful-booms-together dept.
It turns out the key to a male crocodile's heart is a sonic boom. Crocodiles at an Israeli farm have begun making mating calls in response to sonic booms created by air force planes breaking the sound barrier. From the article: "The males have already begun their mating calls, described by the newspaper as 'the sound a vehicle breaking,' normally reserved for the crocodiles' spring mating season, Israeli newspaper Maariv reported. David Golan of the Hamat Gadar crocodile farm in the Golan Heights, believes the reptiles were responding to the sonic booms, wrongly believing they were the calls of rival males encroaching on their territory
Space

Submission + - NASA records solar blast of epic proportions (spaceweather.com)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: As predicted, the a "mega-filament" of solar magnetism erupted on Dec. 6th, producing a blast of epic proportions. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action as the 700,000-km long structure lifted off the stellar surface and--snap!!--hurled itself into space.
The eruption produced a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by the STEREO-A spacecraft: video. Earth was not in the line of fire; the cloud should sail wide of our planet. Earth-effects might be limited to pretty pictures.

Some nice pictures in the article
Idle

Submission + - The world's most expensive iphone - £5 MILLI (dailymail.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: British designer Stuart Hughes, 38, of Liverpool, was commissioned to make two of the bespoke handset by a mega-rich Australian businessman.
The handset is wrapped in more than 500 individual flawless cut diamonds totalling 100 carats.
It features two interchangeable diamonds which fit over the 'home' button — a single cut 7.4 carat pink diamond and a rare 8 carat single cut flawless diamond which are together worth more than £4 million.
The back of the phone is plated in rose gold and the Apple logo glitters with 53 diamonds.

Comment Re:Doubtful (Score 1) 169

by Arvisp (#33273384) Attached to: Town Gets Patent On Being the Center of Europe
This is all disputable. There are more than 5 places that claim to be centre of Europe. The strongest candidate being in Lithuania :D After a re-estimation of the boundaries of the continent of Europe in 1989, Jean-George Affholder, a scientist at the Institut Géographique National (French National Geographic Institute) determined that the Geographic Centre of Europe is located at 5454N 2519E.[2] The method used for calculating this point was that of the centre of gravity of the geometrical figure of Europe. This point is located in Lithuania, specifically 26 kilometres (16 miles) north of its capital city, Vilnius. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_europe#Lithuania
Idle

Submission + - First 3-D Porn Movie and it's from Hong Kong (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: Christopher Sun of Hong Kong is directing a new porn movie that will actually be in 3-D. The movie is being called “3-D Sex & Zen: Extreme Ecstasy” and will be the first 3-D IMAX porn movie.
Science

Submission + - Sun's 'quiet period' explained (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity.
The most recent so-called "solar minimum" occurred in December 2008.
Its drawn-out nature extended the total length of the last solar cycle — the repeating cycle of the Sun's activity — to 12.6 years, making it the longest in almost 200 years. The new research suggests that the longer-than-expected period of weak activity may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun.
Iphone

Submission + - Apple, AT&T sued over iPhone 4 Attennas (appleinsider.com) 1

Submitted by bannable
bannable writes: Apple has been accused of violation of the Federal Communications Act, three counts of products liability related to negligence, defect in design and breach of implied warranty, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, fraud by concealment, unfair business practices and more.

"The iPhone 4 manifests design and manufacturing defects that were known to Defendants before it was released which were not disclosed to consumers, namely, a connection problem caused by the iPhone 4's antenna configuration that makes it difficult or impossible to maintain a connection to AT&T's network," the California complaint reads.
Space

Submission + - Spitzer telescope pictures star being born (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: Astronomers at the American Ivy League universities discovered the youngest known star in the Perseus star-forming region, about 800 light-years or more than 4700 trillion miles away from the Milky Way. Despite its tiny size, scientists believe they caught the precise moment the star, called L1448-IRS2E, was formed born. It is the most detailed glimpse of a star’s birth to date.
They took an extraordinary image of it using Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope. It has “just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust” and only detected the faint light after it was emitted by the dust surrounding it.

Slashdot Top Deals

Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.

Close