MIT Satellite Could Trounce Kepler Telescope, Finding Thousands Of Exoplanets In Just Two Years

MIT's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) MIT

From Popular Science:

The Kepler Space Telescope made headlines last week when it was announced that the planet-hunting instrument has already found its first five exoplanets. Researchers at MIT, however, think they can do better. A satellite proposed by a team of researchers there could scan a piece of sky 400 times larger than Kepler, observing 2.5 million of the closest stars and discovering hundreds of small exoplanets, several of which may be suitable for life. That is, if NASA decides to build it.

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The Third & The Seventh: Unbelievable CG Video

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

From Gawker.TV:

Alex Roman's The Third & The Seventh is a montage of enchanting slow motion shots of cameras, chairs, space shuttles, explosions, stairwells, bulbous water drops, and a trillion other things. It's all computer generated and will blow your mind. Watch!

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Hat Tip: GeekPress

'Longevity Gene' Helps Prevent Memory Decline And Dementia

Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that a "longevity gene" helps to slow age-related decline in brain function in older adults. Drugs that mimic the gene's effect are now under development, the researchers note, and could help protect against Alzheimer's disease. (Credit: iStockphoto/Anne De Haas)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 13, 2010) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that a "longevity gene" helps to slow age-related decline in brain function in older adults. Drugs that mimic the gene's effect are now under development, the researchers note, and could help protect against Alzheimer's disease.

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Haiti Earthquake Science: What Caused The Disaster

From The Live Science:

The major earthquake that struck Haiti Tuesday may have shocked a region unaccustomed to such temblors, but the devastating quake was not unusual in that it was caused by the same forces that generate earthquakes the world over. In this case, the shaking was triggered by much the same mechanism that shakes cities along California's San Andreas fault.

The 7.0-magnitude Haiti earthquake would be a strong, potentially destructive earthquake anywhere, but it is an unusually strong event for Haiti, with even more potential destructive impact because of the weak infrastructure of the impoverished nation.

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Google Is Not The Only Internet Site Attacked By China

Google China Cyberattack Part Of Spy Campaign -- MSNBC/Washington Post

Dozens of companies, human rights groups targeted in sophisticated strike.

Computer attacks on Google that the search giant said originated in China were part of a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e-mail attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies and research institutions in the United States, security experts said.

At least 34 companies — including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical — were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources. Google, which disclosed on Tuesday that hackers had penetrated the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates in the United States, Europe and China, threatened to shutter its operations in the country as a result.

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Google said it would stop bowing to Chinese Internet censors after
"highly sophisticated" cyber attacks on its systems. Photo AFP

More News on China's Attack Against Google And Other Websites

Security experts dissect Google China attack -- The Register
Chinese hackers force US showdown -- Sydney Morning Herald
Yahoo Also Targeted By Chinese Cyber Attacks -- Barrons
China defends web censorship after Google threat -- AFP
After Google Threat, China Defends Internet Policies -- Wall Street Journal
China's Google Dilemma: Soften on Censorship or Anger Millions of Internet Users -- Washington Post
A Heated Debate at the Top -- Wall Street Journal
Google Upgrades Security on Gmail -- New York Times
Little future for Google in China without search -- Reuters
Soul Searching: Google's position on China might be many things, but moral it is not -- Washington Post/Tech Crunch
What's the real battle in the fight between China and Google? -- The Telegraph
In Google’s Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity -- Reuters
Google exit from China could change face of Internet -- National Post

CES 2010: Que Touchcreen E-Reader Packs in Features

Google Threatens To Pull Out Of China

From The Telegraph:

Google, the internet search engine, has said it is ready to close down its business and quit China because of the country's increasing censorship.

In a head-to-head confrontation with the Chinese government, the company said that it will pull out of the country unless it is allowed to provide a totally uncensored service.

After the announcement, Google's China website immediately began to offer reports and images of the Tiananmen Square massacre and other highly sensitive events that Beijing has suppressed for decades.

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Life On Mars, Continued

This photomicrograph focuses on a large "biomorph" from a Mars meteorite
fragment known as Nakhla e4150ed. Its chemical spectrum appears to be primarily
iron oxide but with a carbon content slightly greater than the underlying matrix. David McKay / NASA

From MSNBC/Cosmic Log:

Do rocks from Mars bear the tiny fossilized signs of life? Scientists who think so say they'll subject meteorites from the Red Planet to a new round of high-tech tests in hopes of adding to their evidence.

For years, only one meteorite has figured in the controversy: ALH84001, a rock that was blasted away from Mars 16 million years ago, floated through space and fell through Earth's atmosphere onto Antarctica about 13,000 years ago. Scientists reported in 1996 that the rock contained microscopic structures that looked like "nano-fossils," but skeptics said the structures could have been created by chemical rather than biological reactions.

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Social Networking Promises A New Era Of Watching TV With Friends

TV Family "Ah, the times we had in 2010"

From Popular Science:

Someone wants to bring back the golden era of TV, when entire families watched the tube with microwave dinners balanced carefully on their laps. Motorola, Intel and UK-based BT envision a TV viewing experience that uses social networking to make you feel fuzzily connected to friends and family. According to Technology Review the goal is to "make TV social again."

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How Winning Can Mean Losing In Poker And Life

Karen Bleier / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

You can learn a lot about gambling if you're willing to analyze 27 million hands of online poker. Don't have time for that? No worries; sociology doctoral student Kyle Siler of Cornell University has done it for you. His counterintuitive message: the more hands you win, the more money you're likely to lose — and this has implications that go well beyond a hand of cards.

Siler, whose work was published in December in the online edition of the Journal of Gambling Studies and will appear later this year in the print edition, was not interested in poker alone but in the larger idea of how humans handle risk, reward and variable payoffs. Few things offer a better way of quantifying that than gambling — and few gambling dens offer a richer pool of data than the Internet, where millions of people can play at once and transactions are easy to observe and record.

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OLED Could Be Apple Tablet’s Secret Solution For E-Reading

From Gadget Lab:

An OLED display would be a pricey, but perfect, screen for e-book reading on a tablet, like the one Apple is rumored to be announcing later this month.

OLEDs are serious power drainers, but if Apple were to implement a reading mode with a black background and light-colored text, then an OLED screen would consume far less energy. That’s because OLEDs consume power differently than LCDs; they only use power when pixels are turned on. That means blacks won’t consume any energy, and such a reading mode would substantially preserve battery life, an analyst told Wired.com.

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Nasa Photographs 'Trees' On Mars

The "trees" are really trails of debris caused by landslides
as ice melts in Mars's spring Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

A Nasa probe has sent back photographs of what appears to be trees on the planet's surface.

The images appear to show rows of dark "conifers" sprouting from dunes and hills on the planet surface. But the scene is actually an optical illusion.

The photographs actually show sand dunes coated with a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, less than 240 miles from the planet's north pole.

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Wind Chill Blows: It's Time To Get Rid Of A Meaningless Number.

From Slate:

Wind chill dropped as low as 52 below zero in parts of the Midwest on Thursday, with similar conditions expected for early Friday. Meanwhile, parts of northern Texas may be hit with a wind chill of between minus-1 and minus-9 degrees—the coldest local weather in 12 years. In this column, first published in 2007 and reprinted last winter, Daniel Engber explains that "wind chill" is little more than shameless puffery.

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No Needle In A Haystack Too Small For DARPA's Dream Goggles

Future Goggles Will DARPA's magic 3D goggles improve on this night vision spec? U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

Defense agency demands that metaphors become reality, stat.

DARPA's dreamers and brainiacs have set their sights on a new technology for the U.S. military -- high-tech binoculars or goggles that would supposedly have the ability to find the not-so-proverbial needle in a haystack. The Register pointed out the U.S. Department of Defense proposal issued last week.

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My Comment: My girlfriend now knows what I want for my birthday.

Bering Strait's Ups And Downs Alter Climate

Gatekeeper. The Bering Strait seems to regulate sea level during ice ages.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL/MISR team

From Science Now:

The Bering Strait, the 80-kilometer-wide stretch of ocean between Russia and Alaska, can strongly influence the climate of the entire Northern Hemisphere, researchers have calculated. The findings answer a question that has dogged scientists for the past decade, and they demonstrate how seemingly slight changes in certain factors can impact global climate.

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Women With Full Lips 'Look Younger'

Marilyn Monroe had full lips

From The Telegraph:

Women who have plump full lips look younger than their years, scientists have said.

Devotees of collagen injections and silicone implants have long believed it and now research has backed their theory that a bee stung pout can belie their true age.

Even if the woman in question has wrinkles, eye bags, sagging jowels and greying hair, a rosy and firm set of lips will make them appear younger.

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NASA Feels 'Plutonium Pinch' Earlier Than Expected

Plutonium-238's high heat-production rate and 89-year half-life makes it a good power source for long space missions (Image: US Department of Energy)

From New Scientist:

NASA is feeling the pinch in its plutonium supplies.

Many spacecraft are powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, but the US no longer produces the material. Instead, NASA relies on its shrinking stockpile, topped up with purchases from Russia.

Previous estimates suggested the decline would not affect solar-system exploration until after 2020, but NASA is already tightening its belt. Candidates for NASA's next "New Frontiers" mission, which aims to launch an exploratory spacecraft by 2018, will not be allowed to rely on plutonium for power, effectively limiting the candidate probes to solar power only.

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'Wet' Computing Systems To Boost Processing Power

Sketch of artificial wet neuronal networks.
(Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 12, 2010) — A new kind of information processing technology inspired by chemical processes in living systems is being developed by researchers at the University of Southampton.

Dr Maurits de Planque and Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) are working on a project which has just received €1.8 from the European Union's Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiatives, which recognises ground-breaking work which has already demonstrated important potential.

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Doomsday Clock To Change This Week

DOOMSDAY CLOCK ANNOUNCEMENT from TurnBackTheClock.org on Vimeo.

From Live Science:

The minute hand of the famous Doomsday Clock is set to move this Thursday, and for the first time, anyone with Internet access can watch. Which way the hand will move and by how much have not been made public.

The event will take place at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) on Jan. 14 at the New York Academy of Sciences Building in New York City. While the actual clock is housed at the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences offices in Chicago, Ill., a representation of the clock will be changed at Thursday's news conference. (You can watch the live Web feed at www.TurnBackTheClock.org.)

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My Comment: My prediction .... the clock is going to move closer to midnight by one minute.

Dark Matter 'Beach Ball' Unveiled

Image: The trail of matter left by an orbiting galaxy hints at the dark matter's shape

From The BBC:

The giant halo of dark matter that surrounds our galaxy is shaped like a flattened beach ball, researchers say.

It is the first definitive measure of the scope of the dark matter that makes up the majority of galaxies' masses.

The shape of this "dark matter halo" was inferred from the path of debris left behind as the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy slowly orbits the Milky Way.

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