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Submission + - When Galaxies Collide (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Aspiring Astronomer
Aspiring Astronomer writes: According to a recent study, when two galaxies of a similar mass collide, both galaxies will begin producing more stars. However, when one galaxy considerably outweighs the other, the larger galaxy begins producing more stars, whereas the smaller galaxy's star production begins to slow. This may be because the larger galaxy is able to draw gases from the smaller one, resulting in the formation of more stars.
The Milky Way may experience a collision of it's own, because the Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards us at speeds upwards of 200,000 miles per hour. No need to worry, though; this collision is a few billion years away.

Submission + - The Programming Talent Myth

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Jake Edge writes at LWN.net that there is a myth that programming skill is somehow distributed on a U-shaped curve and that people either "suck at programming" or that they "rock at programming", without leaving any room for those in between. Everyone is either an amazing programmer or "a worthless use of a seat" which doesn't make much sense. If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution. According to Edge this belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution is both "dangerous and a myth". "This myth sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. It is actively harmful in that is keeping people from learning programming, driving people out of programming, and it is preventing most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see." If the only options are to be amazing or terrible, it leads people to believe they must be passionate about their career, that they must think about programming every waking moment of their life. If they take their eye off the ball even for a minute, they will slide right from amazing to terrible again leading people to be working crazy hours at work, to be constantly studying programming topics on their own time, and so on.

The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"

Submission + - In blow, native Hawaiian panel withdraws support for world's largest telescope (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) – a state agency established to advocate for native Hawaiins — voted Thursday to withdraw their support for construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano. The vote follows weeks of protests by Native Hawaiians who say the massive structure would desecrate one of their most holy places. The protests have shut down construction of the telescope, which would be the world’s largest optical telescope if completed.

The vote, which reverses a 2009 decision to endorse the project, strikes a powerful if symbolic blow against a project that, for many native Hawaiians, has come to symbolize more than a century of assaults against their land, culture and sovereignty.

Submission + - Cosmologists Find Eleven Runaway Galaxies

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Discovery News reports that 11 homeless galaxies have been identified by Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Moscow State University, and his fellow astronomers. "The 11 runaway galaxies were found by chance while Chilingarian and co-investigator Ivan Zolotukhin, of the L’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie and Moscow State University, were scouring publicly-available data (via the Virtual Observatory) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the GALEX satellite for compact elliptical galaxies."

Submission + - Spitzer Space Telescope Finds New Planet (brevardtimes.com)

Submitted by Aspiring Astronomer
Aspiring Astronomer writes: Astronomers discover a gas planet 13,000 light-years away in our galaxy by using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This newfound planet is one of the most distant planets known, as it is located much closer to our galaxy's central disk than our solar system.
The telescope was able to determine an approximate distance of this planet by joining techniques of microlensing and parallax to create a measurement for the planet. This combined the use of a ground telescope in Chile with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Knowing the distance of this newly discovered planet helps scientists calculate the mass of the planet, which is about half that of Jupiter.

Submission + - Live Rocket Engine Test

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Copenhagen Suborbitals, the amateur manned space program, is conducting a rocket engine test today sunday. The event is streamed Live in HD on YouTube from 1 PM localtime (GMT+2). The rocket engine is named BPM 2 and is a prequel to a planned series of test of the BPM 5 rocket engine currently being build. The purpose of the BPM 2 test is primarily to test a newly constructed mobile test stand and to test various fuel additives before the BPM 5 test series are to begin later in the first half of 2015.

Submission + - Netflix's Daredevil Show Debuts; Early Reviews Positive (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Daredevil has been a staple of Marvel's superhero universe since the 1960's. But Daredevil's most recent on-screen legacy was a terrible film starring Ben Affleck in 2003. Since then, Marvel has gotten a lot better at adapting comics to the big and small screen, and last night saw the debut of a new Daredevil television series. It's a Netflix original, which means the whole first season went up at the same time. Early reviews of the show are quite complimentary. Slate praises the acting and adds, "Daredevil is a bloody show that also bleeds: It has more interest in human bodies than much recent Marvel fare, and more interest in human beings as well. It’s remarkably patient, resisting the urge to tell its viewers everything at once, a restraint largely enabled by the binge-y sprawl of the Netflix format." Ars Technica says the violence can be a bit over-the-top at times, but praises how the choreography and cinematography reflect the main character's blindness. The Verge simply says Daredevil raises the bar for superhero television, even though many new shows have found success recently.

Submission + - Supernovae may not be standard candles; is dark energy all wrong?

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: The accelerated expansion of the Universe — and hence, dark energy — was discovered by taking the well-understood phenomenon of type Ia supernovae and measuring them out to great distances. The results indicated that they were fainter than expected, and hence more distant, and hence the Universe's expansion must be accelerating. But new results have just come out, showing that supernovae may not be standard after all. Does this mean dark energy may not be real, or that it may just be slightly weaker than we previously thought?

Comment Re:Thought Experiment (Score 5, Informative) 32

by Aspiring Astronomer (#49453769) Attached to: Stars Form Near Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole
What an interesting theory! I have very limited knowledge of space and black holes, as this was my first submission (and it made the front page - whoohoo!), and I am still in high school. I do, however, plan to continue studying astronomy throughout high school and eventually in college. So, plan on seeing more submissions from me as my knowledge grows! :)

Submission + - Stars Formed Near Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole - How? (discovery.com) 3

Submitted by Aspiring Astronomer
Aspiring Astronomer writes: Scientists reported that stars have formed near the supermassive black hole in the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. How could this be if a black hole exerts so much gravitational force that not even light can escape? Many astronomers believe that this may actually be what is facilitating the formation of these stars. According to Yusef-Zadeh, the gases and dusts constantly flowing towards black holes compress and heat up, creating enough disturbance to cause the materials to collapse and then form a star. Yusef — Zadeh now speculates that in addition to stars forming near black holes, that planets may, too. The disk around a protostar (a mass of gas and materials that form early in star formation) breaks off into clumps of matter, and when paired with the extreme force of a black hole, may cause the formation whole planets.

Submission + - As encryption spreads, U.S. grapple with clash between privacy, security (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: For months, federal law enforcement agencies and industry have been deadlocked on a highly contentious issue: Should tech companies be obliged to guarantee U.S. government access to encrypted data on smartphones and other digital devices, and is that even possible without compromising the security of law-abiding customers?

NSA director Adm. Michael S. Rogers wants to require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it?

What's to stop the FISA court from secretly ordering all key masters to secretly give their key to the NSA? How would we know that the government doesn't already have all of the keys?

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