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Databases

First MySQL 5.5 Beta Released 95

Posted by kdawson from the taking-care-of-business dept.
joabj writes "While MySQL is the subject of much high-profile wrangling between the EU and Oracle (and the MySQL creator himself), the MySQL developers have been quietly moving the widely-used database software forward. The new beta version of MySQL, the first publicly available, features such improvements as near-asynchronous replication and more options for partitioning. A new release model has been enacted as well, bequeathing this version the title of 'MySQL Server 5.5.0-m2.' Downloads here."
Space

Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88

Posted by kdawson from the toil-and-trouble dept.
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."

Comment Re:Title (Score 1) 625

by ausmusj (#24967269) Attached to: Research Finds Carbon Dating Flawed
Absolutely. However, how many times in the course of human understanding have "well-understood laws of ..." been completely turned upside down? It used to be a "well-understood law" that the Earth was flat. It also used to be a "well-understood law" that the universe orbited the Earth. Do you really think "Gee, wow, finally, we *really* know absolutely what is going on - no more surprises to be had! *We're* the ones who understand everything to it's utmost - no chance we might discover something else that will turn yet another scientific fact upside down!"?

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