20120629

Pentagon starts Phoenix trial to harvest defunct satellites

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Steve Dent on 6/28/12

pentagon-starts-phoenix-dead-satellite-trial

The Phoenix Frankenprogram to harvest the corpses of expired satellites and cobble together new ones seemed like one of DARPA's more daft ideas, but this one has actually kicked off its first phase of development. The plan is to first launch a service craft -- replete with robotic arms and enough processing horsepower to work independently if needed -- followed by the tiny base-unit skeleton satlets. The service mothership would dip into an orbital area called the "graveyard", grabbing pre-chosen cadavers and picking off usable parts, especially valuable antenna arrays, with its robo-limbs. Those parts would be jury-rigged to the bare-bones units, creating usable Pentagon satellites and saving the $10,000 per pound launch cost. So far, a $2.5 million contract to develop the needed technology has been put in place, and bids for the no-frills satlets went out last week. Plenty of dirty work is still needed, so check the video after the break to see if the overly-elaborate plan can un-moot $300 billion of orbiting cold metal.

Continue reading Pentagon starts Phoenix trial to harvest defunct satellites, MacGyver new ones from orbit

Pentagon starts Phoenix trial to harvest defunct satellites, MacGyver new ones from orbit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  sourceWired  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120627

Alan Turing's breakthrough machine gets a loving Lego tribute (video)

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Terrence O'Brien on 6/22/12

Alan Turing's breakthrough machine gets a loving Lego tribute

In the world of technology, having one of your inventions rendered in Lego form is the equivalent of a musician being parodied by Weird Al -- it's a sign you've truly made it and tribute to your influence. So, we're more than a little surprised to see that it's taken this long for the Turing Machine to be lovingly built from plastic bricks. The heart of this simple logic device is a Lego Mindstorms NXT set, but the soul is in Alan Turing's genius -- a man who was before his time and unjustly persecuted for failing to properly fit into society's molds. Dutch researchers Jeroen van den Bosand and Davy Landman built the device as a tribute to Turing, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this Saturday. If you're in Amsterdam you can see the machine yourself at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica's Turings Erfenis exhibit. Or, you can watch the short explanatory video after the break.

Continue reading Alan Turing's breakthrough machine gets a loving Lego tribute (video)

Alan Turing's breakthrough machine gets a loving Lego tribute (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PSFK  |  sourceecalpemos (Vimeo)  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Robotic quadrotors' training now complete, proven with razzle-dazzle Cannes ...

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Steve Dent on 6/27/12

robotic-quadrotors-cannes-light-sound-show

We've watched our potential quad-mech overlords from KMel Robotics evolve from agile solo acrobats to worker bees to deft synchronized performers. It seemed only a matter of time before they would hunt down Sarah Connor en masse -- or take the show-biz world by storm. Fortunately for us, the tricky flyers chose to embrace their flamboyant side at a tour-de-force 16-quad lightshow in Cannes, where they opened the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase. The soaring automatons pulled all their past tricks out of the bag, flying precisely with mirrors to bounce lights from below, all timed to dramatic music --which they also had a hand in controlling. The sparkly treat awaits right after the break.

Continue reading Robotic quadrotors' training now complete, proven with razzle-dazzle Cannes show (video)

Robotic quadrotors' training now complete, proven with razzle-dazzle Cannes show (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 09:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceKMel Robotics  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Bad Posture tells you to sit up straight, replaces your mom with an Arduino

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Terrence O'Brien on 6/26/12

Bad Posture tells you to sit up straight, replaces your mom with an Arduino

At certain point in every geek's life, their mother gives up and stops yelling at them to sit up straight. If the lack of constant reminders to maintain good posture has you slouching and hunching, there are countless technological substitutes. Even a few nice DIY ones. But we've got to give Ellen Sundh props for the simplicity of her solution. While similar projects rely on accelerometers, which can be difficult for the budding hobbyist to work with, to monitor the angle of your body, Bad Posture sticks with a simple bend sensor to keep tabs on your spinal cord. The flexible plastic is arranged vertically in a fabric belt that also houses an Arduino, a Wave Shield from Adafruit and a push button for calibration. Sit at your optimal angle, press the button and you're ready to go. Bend too much and the Wave Shield plays a warning -- "bad posture!" Check out the video after the break to see it in action.

Continue reading Bad Posture tells you to sit up straight, replaces your mom with an Arduino

Bad Posture tells you to sit up straight, replaces your mom with an Arduino originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Adafruit  |  sourceSundh.com  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Mars One project wants to put a reality show on Mars. No, seriously.

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Mark Raby on 6/26/12

If you think there are too many reality shows on this planet, just wait. If a pioneering Dutch company has its way, you'll be watching people live on an entirely different planet in a little over a decade from now. The project is called Mars One, and it aims to send people to the Red Planet in the year 2023, for the enjoyment of us Earthlings. This is a legitimate project, but of course we're skeptical about whether or not it will actually happen.

Here's how it will work. The show will send four trained astronauts to Mars, and every two years they will be joined by new inhabitants. Everyone will be bound by a stipulation that they can never return to Earth, so the population will grow ever so slowly. Apparently at some point a bunch of cameras will be set up on the planet, streams of which will be edited for a reality show like no other. It's been described as being like the CBS show Big Brother.

An ambassador to the project, physicist Gerard 't Hooft, said, "This project seems to be the only way to fulfill humanity's dream to explore outer space. It is going to be an exciting experiment. Let's get started." The monumental funding task will be handled by years of media spectacles. The first scheduled launch to Mars for initial equipment delivery is 2016. Hopefully we can look back on this post four years from now and say that things are actually on schedule.

[via Space.com]


Mars One project wants to put a reality show on Mars. No, seriously. is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

DC Comics arrive on Nook Tablet, Barnes & Noble lets you watch, zoom the Wat...

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Brian Heater on 6/26/12

Image

When we initially did our Nook Tablet / Kindle Fire battle royal, the choice between the devices for comics fans largely came down to the preference between the Marvel and DC universes. The lines, however, are blurring. Thanks to today's announcement, Justice League fans should find as much to love in the Nook Tablet and Color as Avengers devotees. DC has brought more than 100 graphic novels to the aforementioned devices and Android tablets running the Nook app. Barnes & Noble also used the opportunity to announce the new Zoom View feature, which lets readers focus on individual panels -- functionality that sounds fairly similar to what Comixology offers in its own popular app. For more information about Crisis on Infinite Nooks, check out the press release after the break.

Continue reading DC Comics arrive on Nook Tablet, Barnes & Noble lets you watch, zoom the Watchmen

DC Comics arrive on Nook Tablet, Barnes & Noble lets you watch, zoom the Watchmen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 02:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceDC Comics  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

LIPC weapon combines lasers and lightning, proves soldiers are a bunch of nerds

A step closer to the las-rifle :P

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Terrence O'Brien on 6/26/12

LIPC weapon combines lasers and lightning, proves soldiers are a bunch of nerds

The problem with laser weapons is this -- they need a lot, a lot of power. Seriously. Some of those big, plane-mounted prototypes choke down enough juice to power a whole city. Not so with the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel weapon being developed by researchers at Picatinny Arsenal. While still using plenty of electricity, this more moderately specced laser is just powerful enough to strip electrons off the air molecules around it generating a thin filament of plasma. Its not the high-intensity laser pulse that does the damage, though. Instead, the channel of plasma is used as a conduit for a high-voltage blast of electricity. That laser-assisted bolt of lightning could disable vehicles, people and even IEDs. There are plenty of obstacles, including making the weapon rugged enough for battlefield use and reliable enough to keep the plasma channel from leading the blast of electricity back into the laser and damaging it. Now, if only we could find the video that still above was taken from.

LIPC weapon combines lasers and lightning, proves soldiers are a bunch of nerds originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceU.S. Army  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120626

Google Build lets you play with Lego in Chrome

:D

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Ben Kersey on 6/26/12

Ready to waste the morning away? Google has partnered with Lego Australia to allow users to build objects using the popular plastic blocks right from within their browser. You can choose from a multitude of different building blocks, and build anything that you can think up. Not only that, but your creation isn't randomly floating around the internet, instead assigned a virtual plot of land in Australia using Google Maps.

Once you fire up Build you'll be able to see a zoomed out map of Australia. As you search the continent and zoom in to different spots, you'll see different creations from netizens that you can interact with or simply observe. If you want to go about building your own creation, you can choose your own plot of land or have the map randomly select somewhere in Australia.

After you're finished, your final build is submitted to Google for approval, just to make sure anything naughty doesn't slip through. Build has launched in Australia first, with New Zealand next on the list. After that, Google will open it up to even more countries so that you can build on more familiar territories.

[via The Next Web]


Google Build lets you play with Lego in Chrome is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120625

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 review: meet the company's new top-of-th...

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Dana Wollman on 6/25/12

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 review: meet the company's new top-of-the-line tablet

When ASUS first teased the Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 back at CES, many customers looked on, simmering with rage. You see, only several weeks earlier the company started selling the Transformer Prime, a top-tier tablet priced at a not-so-cheap $500. It was a state-of-the-art product...until ASUS unveiled the TF700, a tablet that was similar, only better. It, too, has a Tegra 3 chip and 8-megapixel camera, but it adds a higher-res, 1920 x 1200 display and promises improved signal reception, a pain point for the Prime.

Little did those disgruntled Prime owners know it would actually be a long time before the TF700 ever became available. Now, we're finally hearing it will go on sale in the US in mid-July, at which point the Prime is expected to drop in price before it gets discontinued. But is the TF700 all that much of an improvement over the original? And how does it stack up against comparably priced tablets, such as the new iPad, Acer Iconia Tab A700 and Toshiba Excite 10? Check out our early review to find out.

Continue reading ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 review: meet the company's new top-of-the-line tablet

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 review: meet the company's new top-of-the-line tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120622

Voyager may exit our solar system much earlier sooner than expected

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Shane McGlaun on 6/22/12

NASA launched the Voyager 1 probe back in 1977 and sent it on its journey through our solar system to study planets as it passed on its way outside of our solar system. Back in December of 2011 NASA mentioned that Voyager 1 was entering into a new region of space, the stagnation region, which is sort of like a bubble around our solar system. This region is one of the last indicators that the probe is still within our solar system.

Voyager 1 may soon become the first manmade object to leave the solar system, and the probe could leave our solar system much sooner than previously thought. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are currently still in what's known as the Heliosheath where the sun's solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Both of the probes are still transmitting the data about the location through the Deep Space Network. The fact that a pair probes constructed in the 70s are still functional is impressive.

The scientists are watching three data sets to determine when the probe leaves our solar system. One of those data sets is the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager is encountering. The second data set is the intensity of energetic particles created inside the heliosphere. Scientists say that when the intensity subsides significantly, they will know Voyager has left our solar system. While Voyager is still within our solar system's heliosphere, magnetic field lines are running east to west and scientists believe when the probe passes into interstellar space, magnetic field lines are expected to be in a more north-south direction.

"From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25 percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager was encountering," said Mr. Stone. "More recently, we have seen very rapid escalation in that part of the energy spectrum. Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month."

[via TheBunsenBurner]


Voyager may exit our solar system much earlier sooner than expected is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Easter Island statues get new theories from NatGeo

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Chris Burns on 6/22/12

This month you'll be getting a greater taste of what it means to be a scientific researcher on Easter Island courtesy of National Geographic, but before the big study is dropped, a few key bits have been revealed. The first of these comes from archaeologists Carl Lipo of Cal State Long Beach and Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii. These two fellows not only have new research leading us to believe that the island hadn't been inhabited until 400 years after common theory up until this point tells us it was, and they've found a new way that the famous rock head statues could have made their way to the shores of the island as well.

The first bit of this research that's been pushed thus far as the life and death of the original human inhabitants (and the stone head creators) shows them to have been relatively irresponsible with the ecosystem. In the 2005 book "Collapse" by UCLA anthropologist Jared Diamond, he shows Polynesians settling on the island at around AD 800, they choosing this remote, cool, and dry island to settle on with little thought of the consequences for farming and agriculture.

In his theory, these the inhabitants did indeed create the statues we see today, but the reason their society broke down was their cutting down of all the trees on the island without realizing that they wouldn't grow back quickly enough to maintain the environment. Once a tree is cut down on this island, it takes one whole heck of a lot more time to grow back than it does in a place that isn't ravaged by high winds and volcanic ash. Once the trees were cut down, the topsoil blew away and was destroyed, the people were forced to eat birds (all of the birds, as it were), then eventually each other. Once the Dutch arrived in 1722 on Easter Sunday, they found the inhabitants to have descended into barbarism.

New research from Libo and Hunt, published in their very recent book "The Statues That Walked," agrees with the idea that some sort of ecological disaster took place, but they've got a bit more to say about rats than Diamond's claims. This theory says that Polynesian settlers didn't arrive on the island until AD 1200 and that the rats that came with them on the boats they arrived on the island with took a large part in destroying the ecosystem. Rat teeth marks have been found on large amounts of buried nuts from Easter Island palms (now extinct), this leading these researchers to believe that the rats not only took a big bite out of the bird population, but the tree population as well – burying the nuts from the trees in this way stopped the seeds from being reseeded naturally, thus ending the tree line with great success.

As far as the stones went, it's been a common theory (with little evidence) that these massive heads were pulled down from the island's volcano (where their stone was indeed sourced) on massive sledges made of the wood from the trees that are now extinct. As part of the research done for this new project and study of the island, a team lead by Hunt and Lipo proved that with a "rock and roll" method of moving the stones with man-made ropes and a team of 18 people, the stones could very well have been maneuvered down from the volcano one at a time.

The footage of this moving of the stones as well as a whole bunch more research on the island will appear on National Geographic's "Nova" later this year – stay tuned!

[via LA Times]


Easter Island statues get new theories from NatGeo is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.



 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Asteroid 2012 LZ1 highlights holes in Earth’s asteroid detection program

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Shane McGlaun on 6/22/12

Something happened this month that you probably weren't even aware of. Astronomers working at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wells, Australia spied an asteroid in the skies on June 10. That asteroid was originally estimated to be 500 m or 0.31 miles wide. The shocking part of the discovery is that on the cosmic scale the asteroid was going to pass fairly close to Earth.

The asteroid only came 3.4 million miles away from the planet, which in reality is a very long way away. The truly disturbing part for some scientists was no one even knew the asteroid was there until four days before it passed the earth. Had the asteroid actually been on a collision course with our planet, four days wouldn't give time to respond.

To add insult to injury, once the asteroid was closer to earth it was discovered that it was almost twice as large as previously believed at 0.62 miles wide. Scientists say the reason the size observations were so off was because the surface of the asteroid was very dark and didn't reflect light. The reason the asteroid went unobserved until it was so close to our planet had to do with the fact that it was detected in the southern hemisphere skies were we have a few asteroid watching programs.

[via Discovery]


Asteroid 2012 LZ1 highlights holes in Earth's asteroid detection program is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120621

Drobo debuts a duo of Thunderbolt drives: the 5D for desktops and the Mini f...

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Michael Gorman on 6/21/12

Drobo debuts a duo of Thunderbolt drives the 5D for desktops and the Mini for road warriors

Drobo's been delivering quality desktop storage for businesses and prosumers for awhile now, but previously, the company hadn't dipped its toe into Thunderbolt waters. But that's about to change with its two new units. The 5D is a BYOD desktop offering with two Thunderbolt ports and one USB 3.0 socket for connecting up to five hot-swappable, 3.5-inch drives to your Mac or PC. It also has an mSATA SSD for data-caching quickness and a variable-speed fan to keep things cool and quiet. We don't know exactly when the 5D will go on sale -- Drobo's not telling until July -- but it'll cost under $850 when it does, and that price includes a Thunderbolt cable.



Meanwhile, the Mini is the first Drobo meant to be taken on the road. It packs up to four 2.5-inch drives in its front bays, plus, like the 5D, there's an mSATA SSD nestled in its underside that serves as a caching tier to speed up your main storage -- all in a 7.3 x 1.8 x 7.1-inch package weighing three pounds when fully loaded. All the drives are hot-swappable, a process made simple and easy with a trick, spring-loaded mechanism (patent pending) that lets users swap drives as they would SD cards. As for connecting the thing to your computer, dual Thunderbolt ports (for daisy chaining) and one USB 3.0 port reside round back along with the power plug and two vents for the Mini's variable-speed fans. Ringing the front face of the Mini are five LED strips that serve as drive indicators and capacity meter to let you know when a drive has failed or you're running out of space. Intrigued? Well, we got a sneak peek at the Mini and a little history lesson about its origins at Drobo HQ, so join us past the break for more.

Continue reading Drobo debuts a duo of Thunderbolt drives: the 5D for desktops and the Mini for road warriors

Drobo debuts a duo of Thunderbolt drives: the 5D for desktops and the Mini for road warriors originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 03:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120620

Standard Model of particle physics rules on the line

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Chris Burns on 6/19/12

This week it appears that the universe will be hanging together with a bit different set of rules than we've been lead to understand for the past 40 years may be disproven in a variety of ways thanks to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This location has scientists in Menlo Park, California researching collisions between electrons and the antimatter that love them. What they've done here is to suggest that a subatomic particle (a B-bar meson) decays more often than it should according to the Standard Model.

The actual finding has these B-bar mesons, made of both antimatter and matter, breaking apart into three other particles too often. These other three particles are a D meson, an antineutrino, and a tau lepton, making this process one which gets the name "B to D-star-tau-nu." The B-bar mesons are made specifically of a bottom quark and an antiquark, and because they've been observed decaying in this way so often at the lab where they're being researched, the Standard Model does not currently compute, so to speak.

BaBar spokesperson Michael Roney of the University of Victoria in Canada sent out a statement which explained the situation in part:

"The excess over the Standard Model prediction is exciting, but before we can claim an actual discovery, other experiments have to replicate it and rule out the possibility this isn't just an unlikely statistical fluctuation." – Roney

This announcement was spoken on as well by BaBar physics coordinator Abner Soffer of Tel Aviv University, who noted that everyone was, for lack of a better word we're sure, rather excited about the prospects:

"If the excess decays shown are confirmed, it will be exciting to figure out what is causing it. We hope our results will stimulate theoretical discussion about just what the data are telling us about new physics." – Soffer

The current tests on the BeBar experiment have been in the works and being observed between 1999 and 2008 – a massive amount of time by most science experiments standards: but this is no average experiment. To move forward from this point, the project will have to be expanded to other experiments. CSMonitor suggests that the Belle project at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan, which also produces B mesons, could be used.

We'll be following along with this story until it breaks our basic understanding of space, and we hope it'll happen soon! It's always exciting to find that everything we know is wrong, wouldn't you say?

[concept art via Greg Stewart, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory]


Standard Model of particle physics rules on the line is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120619

Vanishing neutrons could be travelling to a parallel universe

WOW! :D

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Terrence O'Brien on 6/18/12

Vanishing neutrons could be travelling to parallel universes

Time to break out your theoretical physics cap for a moment. A new idea about the cause of neutron loss (a phenomena in which neutrons seem to momentarily disappear), is pushing the boundaries of easy to conceptualize science. Zurab Berezhiani and Fabrizio Nesti of Italy's University of l'Aquila have suggested that the particles could briefly be visiting parallel universes before returning. Experiments have shown that the rate of loss is dependent on the direction and strength of an applied magnetic field -- an anomaly that doesn't jibe with current physics. If a parallel universe existed consisting of so-called "mirror particles," however, the neutrons could temporarily swap places with its invisible twin before returning to its rightful place in this world. More experimentation is needed, but if the predictions of Berezhiani and Nesti are correct, it could indicate that we're surrounded by mirror particles in a parallel universe -- a potential culprit for the mystery of dark matter.

Vanishing neutrons could be travelling to a parallel universe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TG Daily  |  sourceThe European Physical Journal  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

20120614

Scientists discover liquid methane lake on the tropical side of Titan

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via SlashGear by Shane McGlaun on 6/14/12

Scientists have long wondered what process drives the replenishing of the lakes of liquid methane on the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan. Scientists have a keen interest in Titan because it's often likened to a primordial Earth. Using a mosaic of images recorded by the Huygens probe's imager/spectral radiometer overlaid with images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005, scientists have discovered a lake of liquid methane in a strange place on Titan.

The discovery of this large, shallow methane lake in the moon's tropical region has offered scientists insights at the process driving the creation of liquid methane lakes. The scientists say if they can confirm more observations about the lake, it could point to significant subsurface methane deposits feeding the lake in the tropical the climate. Another possibility according to the scientists is that the moon recycles methane with the liquid in previously discovered polar methane lakes migrating underground back to the tropical zone of the moon where it bubbles to the surface again to form lakes.

Scientists say that this represents a significant discovery that may shed light on the methane cycle on Titan. Scientists say that surface deposits of liquid methane on Titan aren't sufficient to fully support the moon's methane cycle. Therefore, some unknown process has to be supplying methane over the 4.5 billion year history of Titan sunlight would've broken down the methane into its components, carbon and hydrogen. Previous studies of the moon's climate indicated that any liquid on its tropical surface would quickly evaporate, so this new discovery could invalidate what scientists previously believed about Titan.

[via CSMonitor]


Scientists discover liquid methane lake on the tropical side of Saturn's moon Titan is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Linus Torvalds shares Millennium Technology Prize with pioneering stem cell ...

 
 

Sent to you by diluted via Google Reader:

 
 

via Engadget by Donald Melanson on 6/13/12

Linus Torvalds shares Millennium Technology Prize with pioneering stem cell scientist

It's not often we see Linux creator Linus Torvalds in a tux (as opposed to with a Tux), but he had a good reason to ditch the casual look this week. He was just named as the co-recipient of the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize (often referred to as the "tech Nobel"), an award that he shares with pioneering stem cell scientist Dr. Shinya Yamanaka -- the two will also each get an equal cut of €1.2 million prize fund. Torvalds was of course recognized for the creation of Linux itself, with Dr. Ainomaija Haarla of Technology Academy Finland (the prize's organizers) noting that Torvalds' work "has kept the web open for the pursuit of knowledge and for the benefit of humanity -- not simply for financial interests." What's more, Torvalds also sat down for a fairly in-depth interview with the BBC for the occasion, in which he talks about Linux at length and offers a few thoughts on Google, Microsoft and Raspberry Pi -- you can find it at the link below.

[Image credit: Millennium Technology Prize]

Linus Torvalds shares Millennium Technology Prize with pioneering stem cell scientist originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMillennium Technology Prize  | Email this | Comments

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Man’s 10-year Civilization II game sheds insight to the future

http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/OVxbps91QZ0/
\m/
Sent to you via Google Reader