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Science

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.
cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222

Posted by samzenpus from the only-one-on-the-block dept.
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
NASA

NASA To Cryogenically Freeze Satellite Mirrors 47

Posted by Soulskill from the ain't-it-cool dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA said it will soon move some of the larger (46 lb) mirror segments of its future James Webb Space Telescope into a cryogenic test facility that will freeze the mirrors to -414 degrees Fahrenheit (~25 K). Specifically, NASA will freeze six of the 18 Webb telescope mirror segments at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, or XRCF, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in a test to ensure the critical mirrors can withstand the extreme space environments. All 18 segments will eventually be tested at the site. The test chamber takes approximately five days to cool a mirror segment to cryogenic temperatures."
Image

Mexico Wants Payment For Aztec Images 325

Posted by samzenpus from the montezuma's-latest-revenge dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes "Starbucks brought out a line of cups with prehistoric Aztec images on them. Now the government of Mexico wants them to pay for the use of the images. Does the copyright on an image last hundreds of years?"
Networking

Affordably Aggregating ISP Connections? 180

Posted by timothy from the glob-glob-glob dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Has anyone setup a system to aggregate multiple ISP connections to form a high bandwidth site-to-site link? Load Sharing SCTP looked interesting, but it doesn't look like it has been widely adopted. Multi-Link PPP appears to be more widely supported for clients, but I can't find any good guides for setting up both sides of the connection for a site-to-site link. The hardware solutions I've found are expensive for a small business. Does anyone have experience using hardware solutions from Mushroom Networks (Virtual Leased Line, p2 of this document), Ecessa (site-to-Site Channel Bonding), or others?"

Comment How about this? (Score 2, Interesting) 128

by mencomenco (#29584431) Attached to: Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Sailboats

Has anyone tried adding the well-known Microban additives to marine paints?

TFA states that barnacle infestation begins with filming of bacteria on the hull, followed by algea eating the bacteria, then barnacles feeding on the algea.

Some Microban additives puncture bacteria and hence kill them. They are used in kitchen and medical equipment and institutional wall paints. Why not attack the root of the food chain rather than the top rung?

Comment Marketing 3X R&D in Medical Technology Also (Score 1) 442

by mencomenco (#29267967) Attached to: EA Spends 3x on Marketing Than Development

Imaging (x-ray, CAT & PET-scanners), Intensive Care & Surgical monitoring, Surgical robots & Remote Visualizing, drugs, and on and on.

Financing these new toys is a big driver of rising healthcare costs as expensive capital equipment is usually leased or purchased w/long-term financing. Like buying your house, the medical costs of using other people's money (mortgage) are usually equal to initial cost of the device.

Interestingly, compensation for supervising MDs & administrators tends to rise with device costs whereas operator salaries do not.

Comment Museum? Really? Why Not Meet Living Science? (Score 2, Informative) 435

by mencomenco (#29047035) Attached to: Science, Technology, Natural History Museums?

Why settle for exhibits when you can visit live labs, see real data and meet interesting, famous and soon-to-be-famous scientists? Come to Tucson and visit your dollars at work.

If Hubby weaned happily at Franklin he's gonna flip out for the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory where almost every major telescope on Earth (and beyond) gets it's mirror -- some are up to 20 feet across. Tours, interviews, whatever. While in Tucson make sure to sample our cooking, the food's insane great here! And, of course, you can marvel at the Grand Canyon either before or after.

Newest Scope is the Large Binocular Array Observatory, at Mount Graham, AZ (70 miles east of Tucson but close enough to I-10 for a day trip) Dual 20-foot mirrors, scanning the Universe with public tours, seminars, etc. Google it.

Star of the show is Kitt's Peak just 42 miles southwest of Tucson. It's the largest, most diverse gathering of astronomical instruments in the world and the only advanced astronomy site on this continent, with three major optical telescopes plus 19 other major instruments. Visitor center, tours, transportation all explained at the website.

What's up there? About two billion dollars of technology and fifteen or twenty of the best living astronomers, that's what. Including the Large Binocular Telescope with two, count 'em two, of the afor-mentioned 20-foot reflecting disks mounted in a dedicated six-story building.

Inventory:
KPNO Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope 4.0 m Ritchey-Chrétien reflector
WIYN Telescope 3.5 m Ritchey-Chrétien reflector
McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope Unobstructed solar reflector
KPNO 2.1 m Telescope Fourth largest on the mountain
Coudé Feed Tower Coudé spectrograph
SOLIS/Kitt Peak Vacuum Telescope Solar telescope
Razdow Telescope Weather monitoring for the solar telescopes
WHAM Telescope Milky Way temperature and density mapping
RCT Consortium Telescope Remotely controlled
WIYN 0.9 m Telescope Galactic studies
Calypso Observatory Only private telescope on the mountain
CWRU Burrell Schmidt Galactic studies
SARA Observatory Variable stars, undergraduate training
ETC/RMT No longer operating
Spacewatch 1.8 m Telescope 72 in mirror scavenged from the Mount Hopkins MMT
Spacewatch 0.9 m Telescope Spacewatch
Super-LOTIS Follow-on to the ETC/RMT
HAT-1 Recently relocated to nearby Mount Hopkins
Bok Telescope Versatile
MDM Observatory1.3 mMcGraw-Hill Telescope Originally at Ann Arbor
MDM Observatory2.4 m Hiltner Telescope Galactic surveys
HF radio-telescope, built atop a tank turret
ARO 12m Radio Telescope One of two telescopes operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, part of Steward Observatory
VLBA One of ten radio-telescopes forming the VLBA

Comment Re:Nokia n810 (Score 1) 426

by mencomenco (#27129519) Attached to: Best Wi-Fi Portable Browsing Device?

Right. Early 1960's Purdue & Rose-Hulman engineering underclassmen were required to obtain approved 12-inch slide rules at the campus bookstore and bring them to class daily. My MIT colleagues tell me they, too wore the Mother of All Jokes. However, as engineering salaries began to outstrip other majors the onus began to fade.

That's something I've never heard of, but according to Wikipedia people really walked around with slide rules on their belt.

Some engineering students and engineers carried ten-inch slide rules in belt holsters, and even into the mid 1970s this was a common sight on campuses. Students also might keep a ten-or twenty-inch rule for precision work at home or the office while carrying a five-inch pocket slide rule around with them.

Feed Techdirt: Neither Banks Nor Retailers Want To Spend Money On Credit Card Security (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
Banks and retailers continue their back-and-forth argument (via Payments News) over who should bear the burden of implementing new security guidelines handed down by credit-card companies. Retailers complain that they're having to shell out, while banks fire back that they're not the ones whose lack of compliance with security standards are contributing to breaches and data leaks. The incompetence of some retailers, in terms of security, is pretty astounding, and it seems fairly clear that they should implement better protections, particularly since it's the banks that get left holding the bag after breaches and fraud. Collectively, it sounds like both sides are trying to pass the buck, and get away with doing as little as possible under the standards the credit-card companies set. Those standards, then, don't sound like they're enforced particularly stringently, and they're backed up with meaningless fines. For instance, an ATT exec says Visa has threatened the company with paltry fines of $25,000 per month for not complying with new standards. The problem here seems to be a focus on compliance, though, rather than security. The issue doesn't seem to be creating secure systems to reduce risk, but rather spending as little money as possible to get in compliance with a set of standards, with little regard for the efficacy of the standards themselves.

Feed Engadget: Fruit-picking robots closer to reality (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Robots


It looks like Vision Robotics' would-be fleet of agriculture robots is getting a little closer to reality, with the previous crude 2D sketches of 'em now replaced with slightly less crude 3D models (among other developments). Last we heard from the company, its scout robot was still a long ways from hitting the farm, but Wired News is now reporting that Vision expects to have a prototype of it ready sometime next year, with the larger harvester bot expected to follow two or three years after that. As before, the company plans to have the scout robots plot out the best fruit-picking route, which the harvester would then follow, grabbing hard to reach fruit with the utmost delicacy -- no doubt picking up a few humans' jobs along the way.

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