GadgetMountainMan - Slashdot User

The Race To Beer With 50% Alcohol By Volume 297

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @09:18AM from the good-stiff-12-pack dept.

ElectricSteve writes "Most of the world's beer has between 4% and 6% alcohol by volume (ABV). The strength of beer achieved by traditional fermentation brewing methods has limits, but a well-crafted beer that is repeatedly 'freeze distilled' can achieve exquisite qualities and much higher alcohol concentrations. An escalation in the use of this relatively new methodology over the last 12 months has seen man's favorite beverage suddenly move into the 40+% ABV realm of spirits such as gin, rum, brandy, whiskey, and vodka, creating a new category of extreme beer. The world's strongest beer was 27% ABV, but amidst an informal contest to claim the title of the world's strongest beer, the top beer has jumped in strength dramatically. This week Gizmag spoke to the brewers at the center of the escalating competition. New contestants are gathering, and the race is now on to break 50% alcohol by volume."

Palm Pre and WebOS Get Native Gaming 49

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:48PM from the break-out-your-rocket-launcher dept.

rboatright writes "WebOS developers have been waiting, and with the 1.3.5 release, Palm's open source page suddenly listed SDL. Members of the WebOS internals team took that as a challenge and within 24 hours had a working port of Doom running in SDL on the Pre, in a webOS card. 48 hours later, they not only had Quake running, but had found in the latest LunaSysMgr the requirements to launch a native app from the webOS app launcher from an icon just like any other app. At the same time, the team demonstrated openGL apps running. With full native code support, with I/O available via SDL, developers now have a preview into Palm's future intent with regard to native code SDK's, and a hint of what's coming."

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:11PM from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.

Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @11:50AM from the even-superer dept.

drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:52PM from the i-for-one dept.

likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Comment Atmospheric Conditions? (Score 1) 500

by GadgetMountainMan on Thursday March 26, 2009 @02:42PM (#27345789) Attached to: Mythbusters Accidentally Bust Windows In Nearby Town

Everyone seems to state that they didn't know how big this explosion was going to be. I strongly doubt that. Ammonium Nitrate is a commonly used explosive so the size of boom is well known.

I had the good fortune of witnessing the disposal of a 39,000 lb solid rocket engine last summer (a considerably larger boom than 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate) and the entire morning the demolition crew was monitoring the atmospheric conditions to guarantee that the shock wave wouldn't be reflected into Salt Lake City. It seems that in a previous disposal the atmospheric conditions were such that the shock wave from the explosion was reflected over 20 miles into the city where it too broke some windows.

This would seem to be a similar case. The size of the explosion would have been well known, however the technicians setting up the explosion may not have been aware of how the atmosphere could propagate the shock wave of a detonation of this scale.

Different air temperatures, or wind directions at the time of the detonation could easily have made this a non-issue.

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