Phenomena - World-of-Newave.info World-of-Newave.info http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 2008-08-08T01:54:35Z Latest news and articles about Phenomena Copyright (c)2004-2008.§/Newave SARL. All rights reserved. {SCIENCE} - Five scientific discoveries that got the wrong name Naming phenomena after their discoverers is a great way of honouring their work, but what happens when the system breaks down? http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/five-scientific-discoveries-that-got-the-wrong-2008084741.htm 2008-08-05T10:30:00Z 2008-08-05T10:30:00Z Newscientist.Com http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/dn14461-five-scientific-discoveries-that-got-the-wrong-name.html?feedId=online-news_rss20 Five scientific discoveries that got the wrong name {new window}   Www.Newscientist.Com - Naming phenomena after their discoverers is a great way of honouring their work, but what happens when the system breaks down?
Five scientific discoveries that got the wrong name - opinion - 05 August 2008 - New Scientist {...}
Published: August 5, 2008, 10:30 am - Indexed: August 6, 2008, 9:48 pm - Page Size: 76KB
Category: Science

]]> {RESOURCES > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Clive Thompson on Real-World Social Networks vs. Facebook 'Friends' Benjamin Waber has a grim piece of news for managers and CEOs: You're out of the loop. Waber, a PhD student in MIT's Human Dynamics Group, studies the way groups interact socially — based on who's talking to whom. But unlike most social scientists, who simply ask people about their behavior, Waber and his colleagues measure it. They outfit employees with special badges that work with base stations to log all conversations between employees, including location and duration. With this data, Waber's team can plot exactly how information flows inside a firm. Almost every time he analyzes a group, Waber discovers that the super-connector — the crucial person who routes news among team members — isn't the manager. "The manager is almost always peripheral," Waber says. "It's some random guy." And that person is usually overworked and overstressed. He isn't given enough support to fulfill his role, because nobody in the firm knows he's doing it in the first place. If you study the org chart, the higher-ups are in control. But if you study reality, those same managers barely know what's going on. This type of research has evolved into a new field called reality mining. By tracking people using location-aware devices like mobile phones or electronic badges, scientists are revolutionizing our understanding of how social networks function. Of course, we think we know how they work. We've all become addicted to some combination of email and LinkedIn and Facebook and blogs, and at the click of a button we can pinpoint our online friends, right? But once you step away from your computer, Waber and other reality miners have found, the real world often works in ways that are quite different from the virtual one. On the Web, the best way to solve a problem is to engage an extensive network; the person who provides information, advice, or answers is often someone you know only vaguely — a weak link. In the face-to-face world, though, Waber says, groups are more productive when the team members know each other well, sharing extremely strong links. That's because face-to-face teamwork requires intimacy, he says, and "when you're among friends you can really capitalize on preexisting protocols" — nods, grunts, in-jokes — for talking and listening. Reality mining can also spot when a group is in a groove. Sandy Pentland, the MIT professor who heads up the lab where Waber works, has discovered that highly creative teams socialize in a "pulsing star" pattern: They fan out to gather information, then regroup. "People explore during the day," Pentland says, "and then later get very tight and inbred, with everybody talking to everybody." If you have enough data about commonplace conversations, you can even predict when those conversations are going to take place. Working with Pentland, Nathan Eagle tracked the physical interactions of 100 MIT students over an academic year, using their cell phones. After a few months, Eagle could deduce likely future meetings with impressive accuracy. "So if we know that," he says, "why not design our calendars to sync up?" But this isn't just about understanding reality. It's about tweaking it. When Waber examines company-wide communications, he can spot inefficiencies — two employees who don't know each other. Introduce them over coffee and — presto! — the office metabolism accelerates. The technical term for this is tightening a network, and Waber is trying it out at several firms around the world. The scary part of reality mining, as everyone involved readily admits, is that it's a potential privacy nightmare. Do you really want your boss gathering this much data about your daily activities? Or imagine this stuff in the hands of direct-marketing types. Or law enforcement. Still, the benefits might outweigh the risks, particularly at the public-policy level. Mining companies is cool; mining countries could yield lifesaving info. Eagle is currently analyzing 12 billion anonymized calls placed during one month in the UK. With that much data, he hopes to better understand human mixing patterns, which could help predict the spread of disease outbreaks, social trends, and other hidden phenomena. We've learned to map our virtual lives. Now it's time to map the real ones, too. Email clive@clivethompson.net. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/business/resources/news-and-media/clive-thompson-on-real-world-social-networks-vs-2008089442.htm 2008-08-05T05:00:00Z 2008-08-05T05:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-08/st_thompson Clive Thompson on Real-World Social Networks vs. Facebook 'Friends' {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - Benjamin Waber has a grim piece of news for managers and CEOs: You're out of the loop. Waber, a PhD student in MIT's Human Dynamics Group, studies the way groups interact socially — based on who's talking to whom. But unlike most social scientists, who simply ask people about their behavior, Waber and his colleagues measure it. They outfit employees with special badges that work with base stations to log all conversations between employees, including location and duration. With this data, Waber's team can plot exactly how information flows inside a firm. Almost every time he analyzes a group, Waber discovers that the super-connector — the crucial person who routes news among team members — isn't the manager. "The manager is almost always peripheral," Waber says. "It's some random guy." And that person is usually overworked and overstressed. He isn't given enough support to fulfill his role, because nobody in the firm knows he's doing it in the first place. If you study the org chart, the higher-ups are in control. But if you study reality, those same managers barely know what's going on. This type of research has evolved into a new field called reality mining. By tracking people using location-aware devices like mobile phones or electronic badges, scientists are revolutionizing our understanding of how social networks function. Of course, we think we know how they work. We've all become addicted to some combination of email and LinkedIn and Facebook and blogs, and at the click of a button we can pinpoint our online friends, right? But once you step away from your computer, Waber and other reality miners have found, the real world often works in ways that are quite different from the virtual one. On the Web, the best way to solve a problem is to engage an extensive network; the person who provides information, advice, or answers is often someone you know only vaguely — a weak link. In the face-to-face world, though, Waber says, groups are more productive when the team members know each other well, sharing extremely strong links. That's because face-to-face teamwork requires intimacy, he says, and "when you're among friends you can really capitalize on preexisting protocols" — nods, grunts, in-jokes — for talking and listening. Reality mining can also spot when a group is in a groove. Sandy Pentland, the MIT professor who heads up the lab where Waber works, has discovered that highly creative teams socialize in a "pulsing star" pattern: They fan out to gather information, then regroup. "People explore during the day," Pentland says, "and then later get very tight and inbred, with everybody talking to everybody." If you have enough data about commonplace conversations, you can even predict when those conversations are going to take place. Working with Pentland, Nathan Eagle tracked the physical interactions of 100 MIT students over an academic year, using their cell phones. After a few months, Eagle could deduce likely future meetings with impressive accuracy. "So if we know that," he says, "why not design our calendars to sync up?" But this isn't just about understanding reality. It's about tweaking it. When Waber examines company-wide communications, he can spot inefficiencies — two employees who don't know each other. Introduce them over coffee and — presto! — the office metabolism accelerates. The technical term for this is tightening a network, and Waber is trying it out at several firms around the world. The scary part of reality mining, as everyone involved readily admits, is that it's a potential privacy nightmare. Do you really want your boss gathering this much data about your daily activities? Or imagine this stuff in the hands of direct-marketing types. Or law enforcement. Still, the benefits might outweigh the risks, particularly at the public-policy level. Mining companies is cool; mining countries could yield lifesaving info. Eagle is currently analyzing 12 billion anonymized calls placed during one month in the UK. With that much data, he hopes to better understand human mixing patterns, which could help predict the spread of disease outbreaks, social trends, and other hidden phenomena. We've learned to map our virtual lives. Now it's time to map the real ones, too. Email clive@clivethompson.net.
Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com {...}
Published: August 5, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: August 6, 2008, 11:38 pm - Page Size: 50KB
Category: Business > Resources > News and Media

]]> {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - 6th man on moon says space aliens are real (and have visited us) Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, told a radio station yesterday that he knows for a fact that space aliens exist and have visited Earth. From Wikipedia: On July 23, 2008 Edgar Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio. Mitchell claimed the Roswell crash was real and that Aliens have contacted humans several times but that governments have hidden the truth for 60 years stating "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real". In reply, a spokesman for NASA stated "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue." Link has audio clips from show, as well as a NASA spokesman's bemused response. Edgar Mitchell says aliens are real (Kerrang Radio, thanks Avi Solomon!)... http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/6th-man-on-moon-says-space-aliens-are-real-and-have-20080746928.htm 2008-07-24T18:38:07Z 2008-07-24T18:38:07Z Boingboing.Net http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/24/6th-man-on-moon-says.html 6th man on moon says space aliens are real (and have visited us) {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, told a radio station yesterday that he knows for a fact that space aliens exist and have visited Earth. From Wikipedia: On July 23, 2008 Edgar Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio. Mitchell claimed the Roswell crash was real and that Aliens have contacted humans several times but that governments have hidden the truth for 60 years stating "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real". In reply, a spokesman for NASA stated "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue." Link has audio clips from show, as well as a NASA spokesman's bemused response. Edgar Mitchell says aliens are real (Kerrang Radio, thanks Avi Solomon!)...
6th man on moon says space aliens are real (and have visited us) - Boing Boing {...}
Published: July 24, 2008, 6:38 pm - Indexed: July 25, 2008, 9:46 pm - Page Size: 173KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> {VIDEO GAMES > W} - Indie Game Developers Enlist Algorithms to Do the World-Building for Them What's the difference between an indie game and a blockbuster? About 5 million man-hours. Producing a big-budget title like Grand Theft Auto 4 requires armies of people to spend years painstakingly sculpting every individual object in the game world. Indie games, which are designed by small teams of geeks, can't possibly match that. But an increasing number of garage coders are building elaborate 3-D environments by outsourcing the design work — not to Bangalore, but to algorithms. Take the upcoming online game Love (shown here), due out later this year. Around 100 players will be able to explore the virtual world together, establish towns, and fight monsters. And its impressionistic watercolor environment was created by an army of one, Swedish coder Eskil Steenberg. Love's world starts as a generic landscape divided into almost 100,000 blocks. "The game's engine uses an algorithm to turn the blocks into hills, valleys, and oceans," Steenberg says — a method called procedural generation. It then examines the terrain and adds bridges, tunnels, and buildings to ensure that each area is interesting and accessible. Once the world is created, it can still be modified. "It's like a Lego kit that both the players and the game itself can use," he says. Players can rearrange trees and boulders, reconfigure buildings, or hollow out new caves in hillsides. The gorgeous vistas are also subject to natural phenomena like erosion, thanks to Steenberg's tectonics system. Love's vast, morphing creation demonstrates how one man can become like a god — he sets the world in motion and lets simple rules, random numbers, and inhabitants do the rest. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/games/video-games/news-and-reviews/w/indie-game-developers-enlist-algorithms-to-do-the-20080729724.htm 2008-07-23T14:00:00Z 2008-07-23T14:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/16-08/pl_games Indie Game Developers Enlist Algorithms to Do the World-Building for Them {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - What's the difference between an indie game and a blockbuster? About 5 million man-hours. Producing a big-budget title like Grand Theft Auto 4 requires armies of people to spend years painstakingly sculpting every individual object in the game world. Indie games, which are designed by small teams of geeks, can't possibly match that. But an increasing number of garage coders are building elaborate 3-D environments by outsourcing the design work — not to Bangalore, but to algorithms. Take the upcoming online game Love (shown here), due out later this year. Around 100 players will be able to explore the virtual world together, establish towns, and fight monsters. And its impressionistic watercolor environment was created by an army of one, Swedish coder Eskil Steenberg. Love's world starts as a generic landscape divided into almost 100,000 blocks. "The game's engine uses an algorithm to turn the blocks into hills, valleys, and oceans," Steenberg says — a method called procedural generation. It then examines the terrain and adds bridges, tunnels, and buildings to ensure that each area is interesting and accessible. Once the world is created, it can still be modified. "It's like a Lego kit that both the players and the game itself can use," he says. Players can rearrange trees and boulders, reconfigure buildings, or hollow out new caves in hillsides. The gorgeous vistas are also subject to natural phenomena like erosion, thanks to Steenberg's tectonics system. Love's vast, morphing creation demonstrates how one man can become like a god — he sets the world in motion and lets simple rules, random numbers, and inhabitants do the rest.
Read the latest video game, gaming systems and console news, including Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, handhelds PSP and Nintendo DS from Wired.com {...}
Published: July 23, 2008, 2:00 pm - Indexed: July 25, 2008, 9:55 am - Page Size: 45KB
Category: Games > Video Games > News and Reviews > W

]]> {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Software to video meteors (and other stuff in the sky) UFOCapture is a Windows application that helps you videotape meteors and other fast-moving stuff in space. You hook up a sensitive video camera to your computer, point it out your window, and while you slumber, the software saves all the good bits. It?s full of falling stars! But wait a minute. There are even more videos from this same user. Does he waste every night looking at the sky? Does he goes through hundreds of hours of videos searching for meteors? Is this a hoax? No, he just uses a fantastic piece of software that automates mostly everything: the UFOCaptureV2! It?s joined by the UFOAnalyzer and the UFOOrbit. The whole package automates the process of detecting unusual phenomena in the sky, and even attempts to automatically classify and analyze it. Check the samples of videos captured by the software: meteors, birds et al and, what I was quite skeptical when I first saw it, even sprites, elves and jets! Of course, it wouldn?t be worth its name if it didn?t also capture UFOs. The software is free for use for 30 days, and the price is more than worth it, as the developer actively adds features and corrects bugs, being also available in support forums. For less than U$5,000 one would be able to set up a system, and that?s from scratch: the most expensive parts would be the high-sensitivity night camera and associated optics, and the dedicated PC. This is my favorite. What is it? Link (Forgetomori)... http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/software-to-video-meteors-and-other-stuff-in-the-20080741323.htm 2008-07-19T21:20:05Z 2008-07-19T21:20:05Z Boingboing.Net http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/19/software-to-video-me.html Software to video meteors (and other stuff in the sky) {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - UFOCapture is a Windows application that helps you videotape meteors and other fast-moving stuff in space. You hook up a sensitive video camera to your computer, point it out your window, and while you slumber, the software saves all the good bits. It?s full of falling stars! But wait a minute. There are even more videos from this same user. Does he waste every night looking at the sky? Does he goes through hundreds of hours of videos searching for meteors? Is this a hoax? No, he just uses a fantastic piece of software that automates mostly everything: the UFOCaptureV2! It?s joined by the UFOAnalyzer and the UFOOrbit. The whole package automates the process of detecting unusual phenomena in the sky, and even attempts to automatically classify and analyze it. Check the samples of videos captured by the software: meteors, birds et al and, what I was quite skeptical when I first saw it, even sprites, elves and jets! Of course, it wouldn?t be worth its name if it didn?t also capture UFOs. The software is free for use for 30 days, and the price is more than worth it, as the developer actively adds features and corrects bugs, being also available in support forums. For less than U$5,000 one would be able to set up a system, and that?s from scratch: the most expensive parts would be the high-sensitivity night camera and associated optics, and the dedicated PC. This is my favorite. What is it? Link (Forgetomori)...
Software to video meteors (and other stuff in the sky) - Boing Boing {...}
Published: July 19, 2008, 9:20 pm - Indexed: July 20, 2008, 11:14 pm - Page Size: 49KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> {NEWS > TECHNOLOGY} - Gallery: Einstein's Legacy: Inside the Quest for Gravity Waves : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comPASADENA, California -- Like radio and gamma waves before them, the detection of gravity waves will likely expose a new layer of the universe and change the study of physics as we know it. As Einstein predicted in 1912, gravity waves are emitted by massive bodies in space that don't necessarily leave visual evidence of their existence, such as black holes. Directly observing gravity waves, in a sense, would make these invisible phenomena visible. On the forefront of the discovery of gravity waves is one of the largest projects ever funded by the National Science Foundation, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The LIGO facilities house extremely long lasers that are sensitive to disturbances down to fractions of the width of a proton -- just sensitive enough to register the relatively weak gravity waves. While the main LIGO data is generated from 2.5-mile-long laser beams in Washington and Louisiana, upgrades to increase the lasers' accuracy and sensitivity are developed on a smaller prototype at Caltech. Tour the LIGO labs at Caltech in this gallery. Left: A pristinely ground and polished mirror hangs like a pendulum over a testing bench. Although transparent to visible light, this mirror reflects nearly 100 percent of the infrared light of the lasers inside the interferometer. An interferometer is the device in which these lasers are contained. It uses the light from infrared laser beams to very accurately measure distance. The longer the laser beams, the more sensitive the interferometer can be. When a significantly strong gravity wave passes through an interferometer, it should change the length of the instrument only slightly due to the ripple in space and time that it causes. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe view from on top of the Caltech interferometer shows the "L" shape of the device, with each arm containing a laser beam that extends for 40 meters. These stainless steel chambers are emptied to roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, creating an impressive and necessary vacuum for the beams. This is a similar but smaller prototype of the interferometers in Washington and Louisiana which have arms measuring 2.5 miles each. Having these two similar facilities allows scientists to confirm that a detected anomaly is actually a gravity wave and not cars passing by the labs, waves crashing on distant shores or even the minute inconsistencies in the lasers themselves. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comInside the vacuum chamber, the beam-splitter sits at the intersection of the two arms of the interferometer (the joint of the "L"). This table is composed of an array of mirrors, prisms, filters and other optical devices. From here, the infrared laser beam is sent down each arm of the system. Each laser beam is calibrated to the same, extremely precise resonance. If one beam has met with any interference it can be measured here against the other beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe problem with detecting gravity waves is that the changes they exert over the Earth are extremely small. The powerful waves generated by distant events are relatively weak by the time they reach Earth. For this reason, the instruments used to detect them must be extremely precise and elaborate. At left, the end of one arm of the interferometer contains one of four main mirrors (center right) along with an assortment of smaller mirrors. All these mirrors are used to calibrate and align the laser. The main mirror reflects the laser beam back to the joint of the "L" for measurement. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe laser (before it splits) originates in the white tube on the right. This tube contains the elaborate and delicate instruments used to correct for as much signal noise as possible. The amount of noise-correcting technology at work in the lab is mind-boggling, with layers and layers of isolation. The beam comes out of a 20-cm quartz tube suspended on a pendulum, which itself is on springs, on a seismic isolation stack, in a vacuum chamber. The chamber is temperature-controlled and insulated with fiberglass. The photons bouncing back and forth inside the suspended cylinder stay resonant at the exact length at which the interferometer operates. Any shift in frequency or deviation in length of the laser beam causes the cavity to fall out of resonance and is detected by the system. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comAn optics bench at the end of one arm of the interferometer is used to monitor the intensity, position and angle of the laser beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis optic bench is used to sense light from various ports at the intersection of the interferometer arms, which is where the gravity waves may some day be detected. To do this, it's covered with LIGO-built detectors. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe three boxes in the center of this photo are quadrant photodiodes (QPDs), which are used to detect the precise position of the laser beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe LIGO prototype interferometer requires an extremely high vacuum of roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, or about the level of vacuum found in low-Earth orbit. To attain this extreme level of emptiness, a vibration-free, magnetically levitated turbo-pump is employed. Pictured are a vacuum manifold and remote-controlled valves that help power the vacuum. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThese expansion bellows allow the length of the interferometer arm to be adjusted to compensate for the temperature expansion of the stainless steel. Without these bellows the high-vacuum chamber would be pulled and dragged across the floor every time the ambient temperature changed. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comFrom left: Alan Weinstein, Steve Vass and Rob Ward next to the LIGO interferometer. Weinstein is a professor of physics and applies his understanding of high-energy physics to studying the nature of dark energy and detecting gravitational waves. Vass has managed the LIGO prototype lab for over 20 years. Ward is a graduate student and one of the co-authors of a recent Nature article entitled ?A quantum-enhanced prototype gravitational-wave detector.? The paper focuses on reducing the quantum-noise in the LIGO interferometer. : Image: NASAThough the direct detection of gravity has yet to be accomplished, last month information generated by LIGO helped diagnose the cause of the Crab Nebula's rapid energy loss. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/news/technology/gallery-einstein-s-legacy-inside-the-quest-for-gravity-20080736414.htm 2008-07-12T05:00:00Z 2008-07-12T05:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/07/gallery_ligo Gallery: Einstein's Legacy: Inside the Quest for Gravity Waves {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comPASADENA, California -- Like radio and gamma waves before them, the detection of gravity waves will likely expose a new layer of the universe and change the study of physics as we know it. As Einstein predicted in 1912, gravity waves are emitted by massive bodies in space that don't necessarily leave visual evidence of their existence, such as black holes. Directly observing gravity waves, in a sense, would make these invisible phenomena visible. On the forefront of the discovery of gravity waves is one of the largest projects ever funded by the National Science Foundation, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The LIGO facilities house extremely long lasers that are sensitive to disturbances down to fractions of the width of a proton -- just sensitive enough to register the relatively weak gravity waves. While the main LIGO data is generated from 2.5-mile-long laser beams in Washington and Louisiana, upgrades to increase the lasers' accuracy and sensitivity are developed on a smaller prototype at Caltech. Tour the LIGO labs at Caltech in this gallery. Left: A pristinely ground and polished mirror hangs like a pendulum over a testing bench. Although transparent to visible light, this mirror reflects nearly 100 percent of the infrared light of the lasers inside the interferometer. An interferometer is the device in which these lasers are contained. It uses the light from infrared laser beams to very accurately measure distance. The longer the laser beams, the more sensitive the interferometer can be. When a significantly strong gravity wave passes through an interferometer, it should change the length of the instrument only slightly due to the ripple in space and time that it causes. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe view from on top of the Caltech interferometer shows the "L" shape of the device, with each arm containing a laser beam that extends for 40 meters. These stainless steel chambers are emptied to roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, creating an impressive and necessary vacuum for the beams. This is a similar but smaller prototype of the interferometers in Washington and Louisiana which have arms measuring 2.5 miles each. Having these two similar facilities allows scientists to confirm that a detected anomaly is actually a gravity wave and not cars passing by the labs, waves crashing on distant shores or even the minute inconsistencies in the lasers themselves. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comInside the vacuum chamber, the beam-splitter sits at the intersection of the two arms of the interferometer (the joint of the "L"). This table is composed of an array of mirrors, prisms, filters and other optical devices. From here, the infrared laser beam is sent down each arm of the system. Each laser beam is calibrated to the same, extremely precise resonance. If one beam has met with any interference it can be measured here against the other beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe problem with detecting gravity waves is that the changes they exert over the Earth are extremely small. The powerful waves generated by distant events are relatively weak by the time they reach Earth. For this reason, the instruments used to detect them must be extremely precise and elaborate. At left, the end of one arm of the interferometer contains one of four main mirrors (center right) along with an assortment of smaller mirrors. All these mirrors are used to calibrate and align the laser. The main mirror reflects the laser beam back to the joint of the "L" for measurement. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe laser (before it splits) originates in the white tube on the right. This tube contains the elaborate and delicate instruments used to correct for as much signal noise as possible. The amount of noise-correcting technology at work in the lab is mind-boggling, with layers and layers of isolation. The beam comes out of a 20-cm quartz tube suspended on a pendulum, which itself is on springs, on a seismic isolation stack, in a vacuum chamber. The chamber is temperature-controlled and insulated with fiberglass. The photons bouncing back and forth inside the suspended cylinder stay resonant at the exact length at which the interferometer operates. Any shift in frequency or deviation in length of the laser beam causes the cavity to fall out of resonance and is detected by the system. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comAn optics bench at the end of one arm of the interferometer is used to monitor the intensity, position and angle of the laser beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis optic bench is used to sense light from various ports at the intersection of the interferometer arms, which is where the gravity waves may some day be detected. To do this, it's covered with LIGO-built detectors. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe three boxes in the center of this photo are quadrant photodiodes (QPDs), which are used to detect the precise position of the laser beam. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe LIGO prototype interferometer requires an extremely high vacuum of roughly one-billionth of an atmosphere, or about the level of vacuum found in low-Earth orbit. To attain this extreme level of emptiness, a vibration-free, magnetically levitated turbo-pump is employed. Pictured are a vacuum manifold and remote-controlled valves that help power the vacuum. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThese expansion bellows allow the length of the interferometer arm to be adjusted to compensate for the temperature expansion of the stainless steel. Without these bellows the high-vacuum chamber would be pulled and dragged across the floor every time the ambient temperature changed. : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comFrom left: Alan Weinstein, Steve Vass and Rob Ward next to the LIGO interferometer. Weinstein is a professor of physics and applies his understanding of high-energy physics to studying the nature of dark energy and detecting gravitational waves. Vass has managed the LIGO prototype lab for over 20 years. Ward is a graduate student and one of the co-authors of a recent Nature article entitled ?A quantum-enhanced prototype gravitational-wave detector.? The paper focuses on reducing the quantum-noise in the LIGO interferometer. : Image: NASAThough the direct detection of gravity has yet to be accomplished, last month information generated by LIGO helped diagnose the cause of the Crab Nebula's rapid energy loss.
See the latest multimedia and applications including videos, animations, podcasts, photos, and slideshows on Wired.com {...}
Published: July 12, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: July 12, 2008, 11:29 am - Page Size: 34KB
Category: Science > News > Technology

]]> {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Scott Brown's Nostalgorithm for Pop-Culture Sensations Oh, X-Files sequel. Like your subtitle says: I want to believe. I really do. But above all, I want to want. And I don't. What gives? I hearted you monstrously in the '90s. And I like knowing a sequel is out there, the same way I like knowing my AOL account is out there: comforting, but I feel no special urge to visit. I'm guessing I'm not the only one. Why is that? Why do some beloved pop fantasies evolve into mini-religions, while others fade like an old pair of Jams? Hollywood doesn't have the answer. They'll green-light just about anything, from a live-action He-Man movie to The Smurfs in 3-D. Our only hope here is science. So I turn to a scientist — my former college roommate Noah Helman. Back in the '90s, he was our dorm's brainy, not-quite-as-hot Scully; I, its stubby Mulder, the believer. We used to watch The X-Files together, in real time, then debate it over warm Squirt. (These were the heady days before Television Without Pity.) Now he's a busy molecular biologist, but he agreed, for the sake of science, to help me determine the perfect "nostalgorithm" — a differential equation that will determine a pop object's nostalgic potential while explaining why a Thundercats movie intrigues, but the X-Files sequel leaves me cold. Let's begin with the simplest factor: Time (t). As any former Giga Pet owner knows, stuff peaks, then gets old. Thus: Popular velocity (ΔPopularity/Δt) = -L x t where L = probability of lameness. Off its peak, we see exponential decay in Popular Velocity over time: Popularity(t) = exp(-L x t) = e-Lxt Translated crudely from the calculus, this simply means pop properties have expiration dates, like Lunchables or Tom Cruise. Or The X-Files, which has been off the air for six years now and was in steep decline four years prior to cancellation. And fan love doesn't steadily decline — it plummets as exposure (E) reaches an unhealthy level: Popular velocity = (-L x t) - L2 x (Popularity - E)3 Ergo: even worse news for The X-Files, one of the '90s more overexposed phenomena. But as Noah points out, non-awesome pop objects are primed to become awesome again. The X-Files is solidly non-awesome — so perhaps a popular re-awesomeness awaits it, è la Grunge, Trump, and Steel? Perhaps — but probably not this month. While what's old is eventually new again, it takes about a generation (tgen = 20 years) for kids to pick up what their parents discarded. And so: Which gives us a swooping, hilly graph (see figure, above) and strands The X-Files movie in that sad little valley: 10 years off its peak popularity in 1998 — when the first film opened and attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince us that bees are scary. According to our formula, the proper release date for this X-Files movie is 2018 — not 2008. (That date satisfies the math but also halves David Duchovny's smolder-quotient.) But time and generational reclamation aren't the only factors. (If so, where's that big-budget Airwolf movie?) There's also niche: Paranormal procedurals like Medium are milking the X meme, along with Lost, which regularly pits science against faith, but without the smoky will-they-or-won't-they (all due respect to authors of Jack/Locke yaoi fan-fic). What about the resurgence of Star Trek less than a decade after its cancellation? Space westerns must be the exception. I ask Noah about these additional factors, and he asks me for a grant. Who needs him? I can blitz my way through this: The graph for this one looks, well, kind of like Airwolf barebacking KITT. And I'm not sure it explains anything. But it has left me strangely, counterintuitively jazzed for this upcoming X-Files movie — all this reminiscing makes me want to catch up with Mulder and Scully and, hell, even Flukeman. This is the point where Noah throws his TI-73 at my head and pronounces me hopeless. Maybe no amount of ratiocination can capture the messy heuristics of true devotion. Maybe bees are scary. Is $10 really too much to pay to find out? Probably, but I'm doing it anyway. What can I say? I want to believe. Email scott_brown@wired.com. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/scott-brown-s-nostalgorithm-for-pop-culture-sensations-2008075773.htm 2008-07-02T05:00:00Z 2008-07-02T05:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-07/pl_brown Scott Brown's Nostalgorithm for Pop-Culture Sensations {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - Oh, X-Files sequel. Like your subtitle says: I want to believe. I really do. But above all, I want to want. And I don't. What gives? I hearted you monstrously in the '90s. And I like knowing a sequel is out there, the same way I like knowing my AOL account is out there: comforting, but I feel no special urge to visit. I'm guessing I'm not the only one. Why is that? Why do some beloved pop fantasies evolve into mini-religions, while others fade like an old pair of Jams? Hollywood doesn't have the answer. They'll green-light just about anything, from a live-action He-Man movie to The Smurfs in 3-D. Our only hope here is science. So I turn to a scientist — my former college roommate Noah Helman. Back in the '90s, he was our dorm's brainy, not-quite-as-hot Scully; I, its stubby Mulder, the believer. We used to watch The X-Files together, in real time, then debate it over warm Squirt. (These were the heady days before Television Without Pity.) Now he's a busy molecular biologist, but he agreed, for the sake of science, to help me determine the perfect "nostalgorithm" — a differential equation that will determine a pop object's nostalgic potential while explaining why a Thundercats movie intrigues, but the X-Files sequel leaves me cold. Let's begin with the simplest factor: Time (t). As any former Giga Pet owner knows, stuff peaks, then gets old. Thus: Popular velocity (ΔPopularity/Δt) = -L x t where L = probability of lameness. Off its peak, we see exponential decay in Popular Velocity over time: Popularity(t) = exp(-L x t) = e-Lxt Translated crudely from the calculus, this simply means pop properties have expiration dates, like Lunchables or Tom Cruise. Or The X-Files, which has been off the air for six years now and was in steep decline four years prior to cancellation. And fan love doesn't steadily decline — it plummets as exposure (E) reaches an unhealthy level: Popular velocity = (-L x t) - L2 x (Popularity - E)3 Ergo: even worse news for The X-Files, one of the '90s more overexposed phenomena. But as Noah points out, non-awesome pop objects are primed to become awesome again. The X-Files is solidly non-awesome — so perhaps a popular re-awesomeness awaits it, è la Grunge, Trump, and Steel? Perhaps — but probably not this month. While what's old is eventually new again, it takes about a generation (tgen = 20 years) for kids to pick up what their parents discarded. And so: Which gives us a swooping, hilly graph (see figure, above) and strands The X-Files movie in that sad little valley: 10 years off its peak popularity in 1998 — when the first film opened and attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince us that bees are scary. According to our formula, the proper release date for this X-Files movie is 2018 — not 2008. (That date satisfies the math but also halves David Duchovny's smolder-quotient.) But time and generational reclamation aren't the only factors. (If so, where's that big-budget Airwolf movie?) There's also niche: Paranormal procedurals like Medium are milking the X meme, along with Lost, which regularly pits science against faith, but without the smoky will-they-or-won't-they (all due respect to authors of Jack/Locke yaoi fan-fic). What about the resurgence of Star Trek less than a decade after its cancellation? Space westerns must be the exception. I ask Noah about these additional factors, and he asks me for a grant. Who needs him? I can blitz my way through this: The graph for this one looks, well, kind of like Airwolf barebacking KITT. And I'm not sure it explains anything. But it has left me strangely, counterintuitively jazzed for this upcoming X-Files movie — all this reminiscing makes me want to catch up with Mulder and Scully and, hell, even Flukeman. This is the point where Noah throws his TI-73 at my head and pronounces me hopeless. Maybe no amount of ratiocination can capture the messy heuristics of true devotion. Maybe bees are scary. Is $10 really too much to pay to find out? Probably, but I'm doing it anyway. What can I say? I want to believe. Email scott_brown@wired.com.
Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com {...}
Published: July 2, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: July 8, 2008, 10:23 am - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - How to See 93 Million Miles: Plan a Trip to a Total Solar Eclipse A total solar eclipse will cut a swath of shadow through Greenland, the Arctic, Russia, Mongolia and China on August 1. And thousands of people will travel to remote locations just to stand in the dark for three minutes -- and maybe perceive the vast size of the solar system. Locations are rarely convenient, and planning a successful eclipse trip involves specialized maps, astronomical charts, statistical weather data, GPS and optical gear, backcountry camping equipment (perhaps), and a good working relationship with uncertainty. The reward, though, can be like a short trip into space. The corona itself is a big freakish thing: a feathery halo of streaming particles along magnetic field lines, which look not like nice summer rays but kill-you-dead radiation. It's also so big and far away as to bend one's sense of scale. At least three planets are usually visible, and this August there will be four: Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Mars. On my second eclipse the sight of the sun and grouping of planets overtook me: I knew I was looking at the Middle. The absence of the blinding photosphere provides depth perception, with the corona serving as a reference point relative to the planets in front of and beyond the sun. It allows you to see the big mechanical picture, like a life-sized version of the classroom model, minus a few parts. With some mental effort, it's possible to actually grasp a sense of the size of the solar system. It can crack your brain a bit. I've seen three solar eclipses, venturing to Eastern Europe, South America and Africa. The plan this time is to trek into the Gobi Desert from Mongolia, where transport options are restricted to Jeep and camel, to an area in the center of the shadow's path in China. That's the plan, at least. There are border and government permission issues to deal with, and plans may not survive first contact. There's the part about actually getting there. In my eclipse travels I've canoed down the Zambezi River under a cloud of migrating bees, helped push a jackknifed tractor trailer over a cliff to clear a mountain road, hitchhiked with a Catholic priest who offered to sell me diamonds, and found myself atop crests of dunes with nomadic, eclipse-chasing ravers with black circles and orange halos painted on their foreheads. Every trip is jammed with this stuff. Information The place to start is the NASA eclipse page, administered by the godfather of eclipse chasing, astronomer Fred Espenak, with help from Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson. The repeating orbital geometries of the sun, Earth and moon, called the Saros cycles, result in total solar eclipses (when the moon completely blocks the sun) every year or two somewhere in the world. This site posts maps of the umbral paths as well as a trove of other resources, including photography guides. Shadow Time This year's eclipse traverses thousands of miles between Canada and China, so how do you pick a spot? Factor No. 1 is duration; You want as much time as possible. The point of greatest eclipse, where the shadow hits the surface of the Earth most head-on and lasts the longest, is near the Russian city of Nadym, with 2 minutes, 27 seconds, of totality beginning at 3:27:07 p.m. local time. An important note: A partial eclipse is not worth traveling to. Even 99 percent coverage results in 100 percent disappointment. Good Weather Factor No. 2, probability of clear skies, often trumps factor No. 1. Statistical weather data indicates an average August cloud amount of 60 percent in Nadym -- not a good bet. Weather prospects are terrible for most of the path except for one area showing under 30 percent, marked on a meteorological map by a tiny beige blob between the Chinese towns of Yiwu and Nom. It would be easiest to begin in China and travel to this area, but the rest of my trip is focused in Mongolia, which makes planning more difficult. In any case, this brings us to the fun part: local circumstances and conditions. Travel Maybe your spot's in a war zone, or an atoll in the Pacific, or some other back-of-beyond. Can you take a train? A bus? A donkey cart? Keep in mind that forests and buildings obscure sightlines, and nearby mountains usually create convective clouds in otherwise-clear areas. Also, a dramatic natural event loses a bit of charm when viewed from the shoulder of a busy highway, or overlooking a sewage-treatment plant. Research transport and site choice details by all available means (Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Google Earth, embassies, friends), scout your location as early as possible upon arrival, and be prepared to move. Gear As for gear, one essential item is eclipse-viewing shades. Aluminized Mylar or No. 14 welder's glass works well, and disposable cardboard glasses with protective filters can be ordered online. Even a bare cuticle of sunlight can fry your retinas when you stare at it, but the only way to experience totality is with your own eyes, and it's even better with magnification if you're willing to lug some gear. Astrophotographers come equipped with big lenses and solar filters designed (and required) especially for this purpose. A look through a properly equipped telescope will blow your mind with views of huge arcs of flame, called prominences, erupting off the sun's limb, as well as sunspots and close-ups of the corona, millions of kelvins hot. Shadow Protocol Timing here is critical, as the second-contact phenomena, when totality is beginning, are spectacular. Over a few short seconds the sun narrows to a sliver, and everything around you shimmers as though the air itself is polarized. Planets and a few bright stars appear. People begin to shout and applaud at the last hot gleam of the sun, set atop the crescent like an oozing orange-white gem -- the "diamond ring effect." This immediately breaks apart into a fiery arc of beads, known as "Bailey's beads," as the profile of the mountains on the moon obscures all but a few rays shining through the valleys. Then it's lights out, leaving only the glow of a pearlescent, feathery halo around a black, unnatural anti-sun. Unfamiliar constellations appear as your eyes adjust, and the corona begins to stretch outward. The temperature drops by almost 10 degrees, and depending on where you are, crickets may begin to chirp and mosquitoes bite, as confused animals begin their evening routines. Now's the time to get your imagination working -- and stop fooling with the photographic gear! The continuous blast of stuff from that thing 93 million miles away -- yes, you can see what 93 million miles away looks like -- is what warms your face, lights up the poles with washes of color, makes plants grow, triggers vitamin-D synthesis in our bodies and drives all of our weather. That thing all the way out there is responsible for ? everything. Wow. Then after a period lasting anywhere from several seconds to a theoretical maximum of about 7½ minutes, a blast of light wipes the sky clean of space. The temperature rises, roosters crow, and the whole thing seems like it never happened. The World Atlas of Solar Eclipse Maps on the NASA page illustrates eclipse locations for the next 90 years. You could find yourself anywhere from a monastery in Bhutan to a farm in the Ozarks, with a view of a sky hardly anyone gets to see. Links: General NASA Solar Eclipse 2008 Eclipse Chasers' Webring Photography Astronomer Fred Espenak's MrEclipse.com website Eclipse Chaser (photo and other links) Specialty tour operators Ring of Fire Expeditions Tropical Sails Winco Eclipse Tours http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/how-to-see-93-million-miles-plan-a-trip-to-a-total-solar-2008073133.htm 2008-07-01T05:00:00Z 2008-07-01T05:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/06/solar_eclipse How to See 93 Million Miles: Plan a Trip to a Total Solar Eclipse {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - A total solar eclipse will cut a swath of shadow through Greenland, the Arctic, Russia, Mongolia and China on August 1. And thousands of people will travel to remote locations just to stand in the dark for three minutes -- and maybe perceive the vast size of the solar system. Locations are rarely convenient, and planning a successful eclipse trip involves specialized maps, astronomical charts, statistical weather data, GPS and optical gear, backcountry camping equipment (perhaps), and a good working relationship with uncertainty. The reward, though, can be like a short trip into space. The corona itself is a big freakish thing: a feathery halo of streaming particles along magnetic field lines, which look not like nice summer rays but kill-you-dead radiation. It's also so big and far away as to bend one's sense of scale. At least three planets are usually visible, and this August there will be four: Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Mars. On my second eclipse the sight of the sun and grouping of planets overtook me: I knew I was looking at the Middle. The absence of the blinding photosphere provides depth perception, with the corona serving as a reference point relative to the planets in front of and beyond the sun. It allows you to see the big mechanical picture, like a life-sized version of the classroom model, minus a few parts. With some mental effort, it's possible to actually grasp a sense of the size of the solar system. It can crack your brain a bit. I've seen three solar eclipses, venturing to Eastern Europe, South America and Africa. The plan this time is to trek into the Gobi Desert from Mongolia, where transport options are restricted to Jeep and camel, to an area in the center of the shadow's path in China. That's the plan, at least. There are border and government permission issues to deal with, and plans may not survive first contact. There's the part about actually getting there. In my eclipse travels I've canoed down the Zambezi River under a cloud of migrating bees, helped push a jackknifed tractor trailer over a cliff to clear a mountain road, hitchhiked with a Catholic priest who offered to sell me diamonds, and found myself atop crests of dunes with nomadic, eclipse-chasing ravers with black circles and orange halos painted on their foreheads. Every trip is jammed with this stuff. Information The place to start is the NASA eclipse page, administered by the godfather of eclipse chasing, astronomer Fred Espenak, with help from Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson. The repeating orbital geometries of the sun, Earth and moon, called the Saros cycles, result in total solar eclipses (when the moon completely blocks the sun) every year or two somewhere in the world. This site posts maps of the umbral paths as well as a trove of other resources, including photography guides. Shadow Time This year's eclipse traverses thousands of miles between Canada and China, so how do you pick a spot? Factor No. 1 is duration; You want as much time as possible. The point of greatest eclipse, where the shadow hits the surface of the Earth most head-on and lasts the longest, is near the Russian city of Nadym, with 2 minutes, 27 seconds, of totality beginning at 3:27:07 p.m. local time. An important note: A partial eclipse is not worth traveling to. Even 99 percent coverage results in 100 percent disappointment. Good Weather Factor No. 2, probability of clear skies, often trumps factor No. 1. Statistical weather data indicates an average August cloud amount of 60 percent in Nadym -- not a good bet. Weather prospects are terrible for most of the path except for one area showing under 30 percent, marked on a meteorological map by a tiny beige blob between the Chinese towns of Yiwu and Nom. It would be easiest to begin in China and travel to this area, but the rest of my trip is focused in Mongolia, which makes planning more difficult. In any case, this brings us to the fun part: local circumstances and conditions. Travel Maybe your spot's in a war zone, or an atoll in the Pacific, or some other back-of-beyond. Can you take a train? A bus? A donkey cart? Keep in mind that forests and buildings obscure sightlines, and nearby mountains usually create convective clouds in otherwise-clear areas. Also, a dramatic natural event loses a bit of charm when viewed from the shoulder of a busy highway, or overlooking a sewage-treatment plant. Research transport and site choice details by all available means (Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Google Earth, embassies, friends), scout your location as early as possible upon arrival, and be prepared to move. Gear As for gear, one essential item is eclipse-viewing shades. Aluminized Mylar or No. 14 welder's glass works well, and disposable cardboard glasses with protective filters can be ordered online. Even a bare cuticle of sunlight can fry your retinas when you stare at it, but the only way to experience totality is with your own eyes, and it's even better with magnification if you're willing to lug some gear. Astrophotographers come equipped with big lenses and solar filters designed (and required) especially for this purpose. A look through a properly equipped telescope will blow your mind with views of huge arcs of flame, called prominences, erupting off the sun's limb, as well as sunspots and close-ups of the corona, millions of kelvins hot. Shadow Protocol Timing here is critical, as the second-contact phenomena, when totality is beginning, are spectacular. Over a few short seconds the sun narrows to a sliver, and everything around you shimmers as though the air itself is polarized. Planets and a few bright stars appear. People begin to shout and applaud at the last hot gleam of the sun, set atop the crescent like an oozing orange-white gem -- the "diamond ring effect." This immediately breaks apart into a fiery arc of beads, known as "Bailey's beads," as the profile of the mountains on the moon obscures all but a few rays shining through the valleys. Then it's lights out, leaving only the glow of a pearlescent, feathery halo around a black, unnatural anti-sun. Unfamiliar constellations appear as your eyes adjust, and the corona begins to stretch outward. The temperature drops by almost 10 degrees, and depending on where you are, crickets may begin to chirp and mosquitoes bite, as confused animals begin their evening routines. Now's the time to get your imagination working -- and stop fooling with the photographic gear! The continuous blast of stuff from that thing 93 million miles away -- yes, you can see what 93 million miles away looks like -- is what warms your face, lights up the poles with washes of color, makes plants grow, triggers vitamin-D synthesis in our bodies and drives all of our weather. That thing all the way out there is responsible for ? everything. Wow. Then after a period lasting anywhere from several seconds to a theoretical maximum of about 7½ minutes, a blast of light wipes the sky clean of space. The temperature rises, roosters crow, and the whole thing seems like it never happened. The World Atlas of Solar Eclipse Maps on the NASA page illustrates eclipse locations for the next 90 years. You could find yourself anywhere from a monastery in Bhutan to a farm in the Ozarks, with a view of a sky hardly anyone gets to see. Links: General NASA Solar Eclipse 2008 Eclipse Chasers' Webring Photography Astronomer Fred Espenak's MrEclipse.com website Eclipse Chaser (photo and other links) Specialty tour operators Ring of Fire Expeditions Tropical Sails Winco Eclipse Tours
Get the latest in science news, including space, physics, planet earth, discoveries, NASA, satellites, and space travel from Wired.com {...}
Published: July 1, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: July 2, 2008, 4:25 pm - Page Size: 48KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Watching the Skies: Space Is Really Big — But Not Too Big to Map In 1930, a young astronomer named Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto. He did it with a high tech marvel called a blink comparator; he put two photographs of the same patch of sky taken on different nights into the contraption and flipped back and forth between them. Stars would stay fixed, but objects like comets, asteroids, and planets moved. Astronomers have since traded photographic plates for massive digital images. But Tombaugh's method — take a picture of the sky, take another one, compare — is still used to detect fast-changing stellar phenomena, like supernovae or asteroids headed toward Earth. True, imaging the entire sky, and understanding those images, won't be easy. The first telescope that will be able to collect all that data, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, won't be finished until 2014. Perched atop Cerro Pachón, a mountain in northern Chile, the LSST will have a 27.5-foot mirror and a field of view 50 times the size of the full moon seen from Earth. Its digital camera will suck down 3.5 gigapixels of imagery every 17 seconds. "At that rate," says Michael Strauss, a Princeton astrophysicist, "the numbers get very big very fast." The LSST builds on the most ambitious attempt to catalog the heavens so far, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Operating from a New Mexico mountaintop, the SDSS has returned about 25 terabytes of data since 1998, most of that in images. It has measured the precise distance to a million galaxies and has discovered about 500,000 quasars. But the Sloan's mirror is just one-tenth the power of the mirror planned for LSST, and its usable field of view just one-seventh the size. Sloan has been a workhorse, but it simply doesn't have the oomph to image the entire night sky, over and over, to look for things that change. The LSST will cover the sky every three days. And within the petabytes of information it collects may lurk things nobody has even imagined — assuming astronomers can figure out how to teach their computers to look for objects no one has ever seen. It's the first attempt to sort astronomical data on this scale, says Princeton astrophysicist Robert Lupton, who oversaw data processing for the SDSS and is helping design the LSST. But the new images may allow him and his colleagues to watch supernovae explode, find undiscovered comets, and maybe even spot that killer asteroid. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/watching-the-skies-space-is-really-big-mdash-but-20080643856.htm 2008-06-24T05:00:00Z 2008-06-24T05:00:00Z Wired.Com http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_asteroids Watching the Skies: Space Is Really Big — But Not Too Big to Map {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - In 1930, a young astronomer named Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto. He did it with a high tech marvel called a blink comparator; he put two photographs of the same patch of sky taken on different nights into the contraption and flipped back and forth between them. Stars would stay fixed, but objects like comets, asteroids, and planets moved. Astronomers have since traded photographic plates for massive digital images. But Tombaugh's method — take a picture of the sky, take another one, compare — is still used to detect fast-changing stellar phenomena, like supernovae or asteroids headed toward Earth. True, imaging the entire sky, and understanding those images, won't be easy. The first telescope that will be able to collect all that data, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, won't be finished until 2014. Perched atop Cerro Pachón, a mountain in northern Chile, the LSST will have a 27.5-foot mirror and a field of view 50 times the size of the full moon seen from Earth. Its digital camera will suck down 3.5 gigapixels of imagery every 17 seconds. "At that rate," says Michael Strauss, a Princeton astrophysicist, "the numbers get very big very fast." The LSST builds on the most ambitious attempt to catalog the heavens so far, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Operating from a New Mexico mountaintop, the SDSS has returned about 25 terabytes of data since 1998, most of that in images. It has measured the precise distance to a million galaxies and has discovered about 500,000 quasars. But the Sloan's mirror is just one-tenth the power of the mirror planned for LSST, and its usable field of view just one-seventh the size. Sloan has been a workhorse, but it simply doesn't have the oomph to image the entire night sky, over and over, to look for things that change. The LSST will cover the sky every three days. And within the petabytes of information it collects may lurk things nobody has even imagined — assuming astronomers can figure out how to teach their computers to look for objects no one has ever seen. It's the first attempt to sort astronomical data on this scale, says Princeton astrophysicist Robert Lupton, who oversaw data processing for the SDSS and is helping design the LSST. But the new images may allow him and his colleagues to watch supernovae explode, find undiscovered comets, and maybe even spot that killer asteroid.
Get the latest in science news, including space, physics, planet earth, discoveries, NASA, satellites, and space travel from Wired.com {...}
Published: June 24, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: June 24, 2008, 7:06 am - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Dogs that know when their owners are coming home experiment Avi Solomon says: "Amazing videos of experiments that test whether dogs can know telepathically when their owners have decided to come home." The Dogs That Know Phenomena We're looking for dogs and owners willing to participate in a research project looking at the special bond that we share with our animals. You may be wondering if you've heard of this somewhere before. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, and former Fellow of Cambridge University investigated this phenomena in the mid-90s. He even wrote a book titled, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. While many dog owners, trainers and other experts have witnessed this behavior some scientists remain unconvinced. This research project aims to resolve this question. We invite you to help. Rupert Sheldrake's original research on this is here. Link... http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/dogs-that-know-when-their-owners-are-coming-home-20080639018.htm 2008-06-11T20:27:39Z 2008-06-11T20:27:39Z Boingboing.Net http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/11/dogs-that-know-when.html Dogs that know when their owners are coming home experiment {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Avi Solomon says: "Amazing videos of experiments that test whether dogs can know telepathically when their owners have decided to come home." The Dogs That Know Phenomena We're looking for dogs and owners willing to participate in a research project looking at the special bond that we share with our animals. You may be wondering if you've heard of this somewhere before. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, and former Fellow of Cambridge University investigated this phenomena in the mid-90s. He even wrote a book titled, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. While many dog owners, trainers and other experts have witnessed this behavior some scientists remain unconvinced. This research project aims to resolve this question. We invite you to help. Rupert Sheldrake's original research on this is here. Link...
Dogs that know when their owners are coming home experiment - Boing Boing {...}
Published: June 11, 2008, 8:27 pm - Indexed: June 11, 2008, 9:49 pm - Page Size: 53KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]>