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NASA

Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished By Fermi Telescope 95

Posted by Soulskill from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.
eldavojohn writes "New observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the 'fog' of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies — as we previously hypothesized. For now, the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in 'here be') symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this, given Fermi's observations: 'Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.' And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space — like star formation and dark matter."
Image

Space Exploration Needs Extraterrestrial Ethics 162

Posted by samzenpus from the fly-softly-and-carry-a-big-laser dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Professor Andy Miah notes there's already international government policies taking hold on outer space — and a need for new ethical guidelines. 'For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?' And what rights do astronauts have? 'Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?' But more importantly, professor Miah notes that 'the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,' pointing out that 'A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration ... For example, the United Kingdom's 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of space products contributes two to three times their value in GDP.'"

Comment Re:How soon we forget (Score 1) 493

by arjay-tea (#28637665) Attached to: How Microsoft Has Changed Without Bill Gates

"The killer app soon followed, Lotus 1-2-3. One showing of this app to anyone in business made DOS so valuable that pc's became as ubiquitous as water."

Sure businesses were buying PC's by the truckload for the spreadsheet apps. But where was the productivity? I remember hearing this refrain for almost a decade in the late 80's and early 90's on CNBC: "where is the productivity increase from all these PC's?"

That refrain stopped with the advent of the World Wide Web. The web was where the productivity turned out to be.

Back then, Sun and Netscape had a vision for the web that is still relevant today. Their vision got stomped on by MS. Hard.
MS couldn't stop the tide from coming in however, but they sure made a mess down by the shoreline.

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