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Submission + - Woman arrested after not returning movie she rented 9-years prior (intellihub.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Could you imagine being arrested for failing to return a movie you renter 9-years earlier? Well that’s just what happened to one South Carolina woman recently

Staff Writer

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. (INTELLIHUB) — “Failure to return rented movie or cassette” is what the warrant said, after Kayla Finley found out when filing some paperwork with the city herself. Finley, 27, was arrested while down at the city office reporting a “crime”–that’s when reports say the police told her what she was being arrested for.

Submission + - Scientists create pizza that can last years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have created a pizza that can be stored for up to three years while still remaining edible. 'It pretty much tastes just like a typical pan pizza that you would make at home and take out of the oven or the toaster oven,' said Jill Bates who heads up the lab. 'The only thing missing from that experience would be it's not hot when you eat it. It's room temperature.'

Submission + - Online Database Allows Scientists to Recreate Early Telescopes (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When Galileo Galilei shook up the scientific community with evidence of a heliocentric world, he had a little tube fitted with two pieces of glass to thank. But just how this gadget evolved in the nascent days of astronomy is poorly known. That uncertainty has inspired a group of researchers to compile the most extensive database of early refracting telescopes to date. Now, the scientists plan to use modern optics to recreate what Galileo — and the naysaying observers of his time — experienced when they first peered through these tubes at the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus.

Submission + - Is Our Universe a Simulation?

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Mathematician Edward Frenkel writes in the NYT that one fanciful possibility that explains why mathematics seems to permeate our universe is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics — not in what we commonly take to be the real world. According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we are simply discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used. This may strike you as very unlikely writes Frenkel but physicists have been creating their own computer simulations of the forces of nature for years — on a tiny scale, the size of an atomic nucleus. They use a three-dimensional grid to model a little chunk of the universe; then they run the program to see what happens. "Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not," writes Frenkel. "If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one." The question now becomes is there any way to empirically test this hypothesis and the answer surprisingly is yes. In a recent paper, “Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation,” the physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage outline a possible method for detecting that our world is actually a computer simulation (PDF). Savage and his colleagues assume that any future simulators would use some of the same techniques current scientists use to run simulations, with the same constraints. The future simulators, Savage indicated, would map their universe on a mathematical lattice or grid, consisting of points and lines. But computer simulations generate slight but distinctive anomalies — certain kinds of asymmetries and they suggest that a closer look at cosmic rays may reveal similar asymmetries. If so, this would indicate that we might — just might — ourselves be in someone else’s computer simulation.

Submission + - Merkel wants a European communication network to avoid US spying. (aljazeera.com)

Submitted by dov_0
dov_0 writes: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will talk to French President Francois Hollande about creating a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the US.

Merkel, who visits France on Wednesday, has been pushing for greater data protection in Europe following reports last year about mass surveillance in Germany and elsewhere by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

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