Rich Polak spends most of his days repairing and maintaining vacuum chambers used to test ion thrusters for NASA's deep space missions. Though his job is anything but routine, Polak recently experienced an unusual change of scenery. He spent three days in a sports arena fixing robot parts for high school students.

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of scientists has shed new light on a galaxy system known as 3C442A. They discovered there is not just one galaxy near the middle of 3C442A, but two in the process of merging. These two galaxies are on their second pass toward a collision, having already experienced a close encounter.

History tells us Columbus discovered America in 1492 and, five years later, John Cabot reached the mainland of North America before Columbus could claim South America for Spain. What if new evidence was unearthed to suggest that while Columbus was still exploring the Caribbean, Cabot had claimed the whole of North America for England and, at the same time, established its first Christian church?

Filed under: Digital Cameras

The trickle of digital cameras out of BenQ looks to be holding steady, with the company following up its P860 and T700 cams released last month with its new DC-E605 model, itself and update to the DC-E600. Like that earlier model, the big selling point here is the cam's "3D-rotating lens," which promises to speed up your zooming while still keeping things in focus. That questionable benefit aside, the cam's other features all look to be decent enough, with a 6 megapixel CCD, 3x optical zoom, and a 2.4-inch LCD on the rear, along with 32MB of built-in memory and an SD slot for expansion. While those specs aren't a heckuva lot different than the earlier E600, this latest cam does look to add a bit more in the way of features, including shake-reduction in sports mode, and an apparently new user interface. BenQ's also managed to keep the cam fairly pocketable, measuring just under an inch thick, 3.6 inches wide, and 2.36 inches tall. While there's no word on price, we wouldn't expect it to be too far off the E600's $300 asking price.

[Via LetsGoDigital]

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