smithtuna33 writes: Ever wondered what the metal skin on your car is actually good for? Engineers at BMW have decided that fabric might be just as good. The doors literally peel away from the side of the car, the engine bay opens up down the middle, and pretty much everything is hidden until the fabric reveals it. It is a stunning concept for cars down the road, and the video is well worth watching.
fyc writes: "Universe Today has posted the facts about what really happened when Soyuz TMA-1 had to make an emergency landing 300 miles off course last week. The craft, carrying South Korea's first astronaut, appears to have suffered a technical fault when the descent module carrying the crew and the Soyuz propulsion module failed to separate in time for the re-entry."
ancientribe writes: Dark Reading reports that a group of European researchers has found a way to disrupt the massive Storm botnet by infiltrating it and injecting "polluted" content into it to disrupt communication among the bots and their controlling hosts. Other researchers have historically shied way from this controversial method because they don't "want to mess with other peoples' PCs by injecting commands," said one botnet expert quoted in the article.
Our Solar System is traveling at a 60 to 90 degree angle compared to the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy and scientists have now discovered why. It seems our solar system originated not in the Milky Way Galaxy, but in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which is in the process of being eaten by the Milky Way.
BigBadBus writes: "An Italian Team is claiming to have found the impact crater resulting from the 1908 Tunguska impact.
From the BBC website:
A University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground.
Lake Cheko — though shallow — fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists.
Their investigation of the lake bottom's geology reveals a funnel-like shape not seen in neighbouring lakes.
In addition, a geophysics survey of the lake bed has turned up an unusual feature about 10m down which could either be compacted lake sediments or a buried fragment of space rock."
Of course, this is highly controversial, but its a hell of a lot better than the gas eruption theory mentioned
in one of Arthur C.Clarke's "Mysterious World" books."
Early clinical trials suggest promise for an artificial skin that integrates into human skin - painful grafts from other parts of the body are currently the only option
Great essay from 1990 by Bill Holm: No papers, no pay. It's an interesting equation, and I think it has not surfaced before in Minnesota. Neither of my Icelandic grandfathers, for instance, had papers enough to work in Marshall, and...
Matthew Sparkes writes: "The New Horizons spacecraft has taken the closest ever photos of Jupiter's Little Red Spot, which is actually a storm the size of Earth which has been raging since 2005. New Horizons targeted the storm when it passed Jupiter to gain speed for its journey to Pluto. The source of the red hue remains an open question. Some scientists believe hurricane-like winds lift material from beneath Jupiter's cloud-tops up to an altitude where radiation from the Sun can chemically alter it, producing the red colour. Scientists have estimated that winds in the storm were whipping around the atmosphere at 180 metres per second."
ancientribe writes: When you've got a full-blown security breach on your hands, what do you do? If you've been smart, you'll already have a computer security incident response team — and a plan — in place. But many companies are too resource-strapped to have a full-blown, fully-tested incident response strategy. Here are some tips on what to do — and what not to do.
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
-- Bertrand Russell