Slashdot Mirror

beaverdownunder writes "An Italian watchdog has fined Apple 900,000 euros ($1.2m, £750,000) for failing to inform Italian shoppers of their legal right to two years of technical support, recognizing instead only a one-year standard warranty. This had led people to pay extra for Apple's own support service, AppleCare, which overlapped with the government-mandated guarantee."

cswilly writes with the news that China's satellite navigation system, called Beidou, has been successfully activated. "With ten satellites now, 16 in 2012, and 35 in 2020, China is making damn sure they are independent of the U.S. military's lock on GPS. According to the article, 'Beidou, or 'Big Dipper,' would cover most parts of the Asia Pacific by next year and then the world by 2020.'" The BBC also has slightly more detailed coverage.

First time accepted submitter rtoz writes "Samsung Electronics has decided to buy out Sony's entire stake in their Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) joint venture. S-LCD Samsung will pay Sony 1.08 trillion won ($939m; £600m) in cash for Sony's entire stake (50% – 1 shares) in S-LCD Corp., a venture formed in 2004 to make TV panels. After acquisition, Samsung Electronics' stake in S-LCD will be 100%. The move comes as Sony has been restructuring its TV business, which has been making a loss for the past seven years."

wired_parrot writes "Responding to complaints from employees that email outside of working hours was disrupting their lives, Volkswagen has taken the step of shutting their email servers outside work-hours. Other companies have taken similar steps, with at least one taking the extraordinary step of banning internal e-mail altogether. Is this new awareness of the disruption work email brings on employee's personal life a trend?"

chrb writes "An International Trade Commission judge has issued a preliminary ruling that Motorola Mobility infringed one of Microsoft's patents. The disputed patent covers storing a meeting request on a mobile device, and was rejected by the European Patent Office as being 'obvious.' The judge also ruled that six other Microsoft patents were not being infringed. Experts say that this will strengthen Microsoft's hand in collecting patent fees on Android. Microsoft recently claimed that it now collects patent fees on over half of all Android devices sold."

As reported by numerous sources, Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 70 (69 by some tallies), after 17 years as the brutal head of North Korea. While the cause of death is uncertain, Bloomberg News says "Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."

mvdwege writes "The BBC reports that the reactors at Fukushima have reached cold shutdown, meaning they no longer need active cooling to stay at safe temperatures. Plans can now be made to start the cleanup of the site. Unfortunately, TEPCO has also admitted not all problems were out in the open until now; an estimated 45 cubic meters of contaminated water have leaked out of cracks in the foundation of a treatment plant."

esocid writes "Called the SMU 100 it costs £25,000 and sends out a three-meter 'wall of light' that leaves anyone caught in it briefly unable to see. Designed by a former Royal Marine Commando, it was originally developed for use against pirates in Somalia. While tasers and CS gas work well over short distances the laser is said to be effective at up to 500 meters (1,640ft). Being targeted by the beam has been compared to staring into the sun before being forced to turn away. Paul Kerr, managing director of Clyde-based Photonic Security Systems, which came up with the design, said 'If you can't look at something you can't attack it.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Canada will become the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto protocol on climate change, dealing a symbolic blow to the troubled global treaty. 'Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past,' says Environment Minister Peter Kent. 'We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto.' Kent, a Conservative, says the Liberals should not have signed up to a treaty they had no intention of respecting and says Ottawa backs a new global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, but insists it has to cover all nations, including China and India, which are not bound by Kyoto's current targets. Kent adds that meeting Canada's obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6 billion: 'That's $1,600 from every Canadian family — that's the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent liberal government.' Kent's announcement came just hours after negotiators in Durban managed to thrash out an agreement at the very last minute — an agreement to begin a new round of talks on a new agreement in the years ahead. 'Staying under 2C will require drastic, immediate action — with global emissions peaking in the next five years or so,' writes Brad Plummer. 'The Durban Platform, by contrast, merely prods countries to come up with a new agreement that will go into effect no later than 2020.'"

First time accepted submitter nhstar writes with an excerpt from an article in the Register: "If you're looking for a bit of light reading this holiday season, Cambridge University is here to help: they've digitized and made available online over 4,000 pages of the pioneering scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton's most important works. 'Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments,' Cambridge University Library's digitization manager Grant Young told the BBC."

First time accepted submitter crow writes "Two episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, thought to have been destroyed in the 1970s, have been found. Both were in the hands of a private collector who didn't know what he had. Like most episodes of the time, these were half-hour shows, part of a four-part story, and portions of both stories are still missing."

K7DAN writes "North Korea warned South Korea on Sunday of 'unexpected consequences' if Seoul displays Christmas lights near the tense border, and vowed to retaliate for what it called 'psychological warfare.' From the article: 'The tree-shaped, 30 metre-high steel structure on Aegibong hill - some 3km (2 miles) from the border - was illuminated by thousands of small light bulbs last year. It could be seen from the North's major city of Kaesong across the border, according to media reports. Pyongyang has previously accused Seoul of using the tree to spread the Christian message to people inside the secular state.'"

D H NG writes "The Arkansas Supreme Court had overturned a murder conviction due to a juror tweeting during the trial. Erickson Dimas-Martinez was convicted in 2010 of killing a teenager and was sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed the case on account of a juror tweeting his musings during the trial and because another juror nodded off during the presentation of evidence. Tweets sent include 'The coffee here sucks' and 'Court. Day 5. here we go again.' In an opinion, Associate Justice Donald Corbin wrote 'because of the very nature of Twitter as an... online social media site, Juror 2's tweets about the trial were very much public discussions.' Dimas-Martinez is to be given a new trial."

Hugh Pickens writes "Planetary scientists say there are aspects to our planet and its evolution that are remarkably strange. In the first place there is Earth's strong magnetic field. No one is exactly sure how it works, but it has something to do with the turbulent motion that occurs in the Earth's liquid outer core and without it, we would be bombarded by harmful radiation from the Sun. Next there's plate tectonics. We live on a planet that is constantly recycling its crust, limiting the amount of carbon dioxide escaping into the atmosphere — a natural way of controlling the greenhouse effect. Then there's Jupiter-sized outer planets protecting the Earth from frequent large impacts. But the strangest thing of all is our big Moon. 'As the Earth rotates, it wobbles on its axis like a child's spinning top,' says Professor Monica Grady. 'What the Moon does is dampen down that wobble and that helps to prevent extreme climate fluctuations' — which would be detrimental to life. The moon's tides have also made long swaths of earth's coastline into areas of that are regularly shifted between dry and wet, providing a proving ground for early sea life to test the land for its suitability as a habitat. The 'Rare Earth Hypothesis' is one solution to the Fermi Paradox (PDF) because, if Earth is uniquely special as an abode of life, ETI will necessarily be rare or even non-existent. And in the absence of verifiable alien contact, scientific opinion will forever remain split as to whether the Universe teems with life or we are alone in the inky blackness."

jd writes "There has been research for some time showing that London cab driver brains differ from other people's, with considerable enlargement of those areas dealing with spacial relationships and navigation. Follow-up work showed it wasn't simply a product of driving a lot (PDF). However, up until now it has been disputed as to whether the brain structure led people to become London cabbies or whether the brain structure changed as a result of their intensive training (which requires rote memorization of essentially the entire street map of one of the largest and least-organized cities in the world). Well, this latest study answers that. MRI scans before and after the training show that the regions of the brain substantially grow as a result of the training, and they're quite normal beforehand. The practical upshot of this research is that — even for adult brains, which aren't supposed to change much — what you learn structurally changes your brain. Significantly."

Lauren Weinstein excerpts the most interesting part of a BBC story about the safety hazards associated with the Chevy Volt — specifically, the risk that its battery pack could catch fire after even a minor impact. While it might be unsurprising that GM was reluctant to shout out safety warnings that would dampen early sales of its much touted hybrid, according to the linked story the NHTSA was as well, and for the same reason: "Part of the reason for delaying the disclosure was the 'fragility of Volt sales' up until that point, according to Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA."

First time accepted submitter loic_2003 writes "Iranian TV has broadcast footage of an advanced U.S. drone aircraft that Tehran says it brought down using electronic methods to override its controls. The BBC's James Reynolds watched the footage and said the fact that the drone appeared undamaged provided some evidence to support Tehran's version of events. The film was captioned 'RQ170 — advanced U.S. spy plane' and carried on the Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 channel."

An anonymous reader writes "A Swiss team may have found an alternative to silicon microchips which could result in smaller, more flexible and less energy hungry processors. The Swiss team's chip does not use silicon, but molybdenite (MoS2) a dark-colored, naturally occurring mineral that is able to be used in much thinner layers (paywall)."

New submitter Lurching writes "Scientists have developed a vaccine that protects mice against a deadly form of the Ebola virus. First identified in 1976, Ebola fever kills more than 90% of the people it infects. The researchers say that this is the first Ebola vaccine to remain viable long-term and can therefore be successfully stockpiled. The results are reported in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (abstract)."

First time accepted submitter punit_r writes "Indian minister for Communications & Information Technology Kapil Sibal met officials from Facebook, Google, YouTube and Yahoo on Monday, 5 December 2011, and told them to screen what goes on the sites. He basically asked the websites to actively screen content. How do you screen such massive amount of data? Well, the IT minister has the perfect recipe: 'We'll use humans to screen content and not technology,' said the IT minister. Meanwhile, he got it back from the social media."

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that with 4,000 people killed in Syria since March, the government has banned the iPhone and threatened confiscation and prosecution for anyone found with an iPhone as the government tries to control information getting out of the country. Most international media have been banned from Syria since the uprising began, so footage of the violent crackdown has primarily come from activists filming material themselves and posting it on the internet. A mobile app for the iPhone called Souria Wa Bas (which roughly translates as 'Syria and That's All') covers the actions of opposition groups, including the Local Coordination Committees which claim to have members across the country and includes links for news, videos, and a map of opposition hot spots. The app's creators say they produced Souria Wa Bas to counter regime accounts of the opposition's activities. 'Under the fast-moving events in Syria and the deliberate attempts to distort the facts by some. We have compiled the most important Syrian news sources available,' say creators of the app at the Apple store."

Spaceflight Now reports that hope has faded in the attempts to hear from the troubled Phobos-Grunt probe, and the listening project has been shuttered. After the craft's launch, says the article, "ESA continued trying to establish communications this week with tracking stations in Australia and the Canary Islands, but the 29,000-pound Phobos-Grunt spacecraft never responded. ... The agency's communications site in Perth, Australia, contacted Phobos-Grunt at least twice Nov. 22 and Nov. 23, but the probe has remained mysteriously silent since then." (Similar coverage also at the BBC.) See RussianSpaceWeb.com for a more detailed timeline.

Demerara writes in with a story about a unique codebreaking competition sponsored by the UK government. "UK intelligence agency GCHQ has launched a code-cracking competition to help attract new talent. The organization has invited potential applicants to solve a visual code posted at an unbranded standalone website. The challenge has also been 'seeded' to social media sites, blogs and forums. A spokesman said the campaign aimed to raise the profile of GCHQ to an audience that would otherwise be difficult to reach. 'The target audience for this particular campaign is one that may not typically be attracted to traditional advertising methods and may be unaware that GCHQ is recruiting for these kinds of roles,' the spokesman said."

ClockEndGooner writes "The BBC is reporting that a team led by Dr. Friedemann Freund from NASA and Dr. Rachel Grant from the UK's Open University have found that 'animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater that occur when an earthquake is about to strike.' Just prior to the quake that struck L'Aquila, Italy in 2009, Grant observed a mass toad exodus from a colony she was monitoring as part of her PhD project, and her published results prompted NASA to contact her as they found that highly stressed tectonic plates released a greater amount of positively charged ions that affected the water quality, which was sensed by the toads. According to NASA's Freund, 'Once we understand how all of these signals are connected, if we see four of five signals all pointing in [the same] direction, we can say, "ok, something is about to happen."'"

An anonymous reader writes "An angry snakecharmer in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has let loose dozens of snakes in a government office, sparking chaos and panic. Hakkul, of Lara village in Basti district, dumped the snakes, including a number of cobras, at the land revenue office in Harraiya town on Tuesday. Many of the frightened villagers and officials ran out of the office, while others climbed on top of tables. No one was bitten or injured but the snakes are yet to be caught."

Alioth writes "The BBC has an article on the BBC Microcomputer, designed and manufactured by Acorn Computers for the BBC's Computer Literacy project. It is now 30 years since the first BBC Micro came out — a machine with a 2 MHz 6502 — remarkably fast for its day; the Commodore machines at the time only ran at 1MHz. While most U.S. readers will never have heard of the BBC Micro, the BBC's Computer Literacy project has had a huge impact worldwide since the ARM (originally meaning 'Acorn Risc Machine') was designed for the follow-on version of the BBC Micro, the Archimedes, also sold under the BBC Microcomputer label by Acorn. The original ARM CPU was specified in just over 800 lines of BBC BASIC. The ARM CPU now outsells all other CPU architectures put together. The BBC Micro has arguably been the most influential 8 bit computer the world had thanks to its success creating the seed for the ARM, even if the 'Beeb' was not well known outside of the UK."

First time accepted submitter peepster84 writes "The UK government is to kick-start an innovative project to fly radar satellites around the Earth, with an initial investment of £21m. NovaSar-S would have a number of viewing modes that could enable it to perform a wide range of roles, from flood monitoring and land cover management to disaster mapping and maritime enforcement — notably ship tracking and oil spill detection."

Orome1 writes "A group of hackers that go by the name of 'Teamp0ison' has apparently compromised one (or more) of UN's servers and dumped over 1000 email addresses, usernames, and passwords of their staff." The BBC has a bit more, including a denial that anything of value was compromised.

itwbennett writes "A BBC article outlines a push to make software programming a basic course of study for British schoolchildren in hopes that Britain could become a major programming center for video games and special effects. Can earlier exposure to better technology courses reverse the declining enrollment in university computer science courses and make coding cool?"

ProbablyJoe writes "A poll for the BBC shows that worldwide support for nuclear power has dropped significantly in the past 6 years. However, while support has dropped in most countries, the UK has defied the trend, where 37% of the public support building new reactors. Unsurprisingly, support in Japan has dropped significantly, with only 6% supporting new reactors. The U.S. remains the country with the highest public opinion of nuclear power, though support has dropped slightly. Much of the decline in approval has been attributed to the events in Fukushima earlier in the year, although a recent Slashdot poll indicated that many readers' opinions had not been affected by the events, and there was an even split between those who found the technology more or less safe since the events. With reports on the long lasting effects in Fukushima still conflicted, is nuclear power still a viable solution to the world's energy problems?"

a_hanso writes "A new study suggests that the effects of rising levels of carbon dioxide on temperature may be less significant than previously thought. 'The new models predict that given a doubling in CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels, the Earth's surface temperatures will rise by 1.7 to 2.6 degrees C. That is a much tighter range than suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, which suggested a rise of between 2 to 4.5 degrees C."

Hugh Pickens writes "VOA reports that the latest effort to cut the U.S. government's debt apparently has ended in failure as leaders of the special 12-member debt reduction committee plan to announce that they failed in their mandate from lawmakers to trim the federal debt by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Democrats and Republicans blame each other for the collapse of the effort. 'Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms,' said Republican Senator Jon Kyl. 'They weren't going to do anything without raising taxes.' Democratic Senator Patty Murray, one of the committee's co-chairs, says that the Republicans' position on taxes was the sticking point. 'The wealthiest Americans who earn over a million a year have to share too. And that line in the sand, we haven't seen Republicans willing to cross yet,' Now in the absence of an agreement, $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs are set to take effect starting in January, 2013, and the lack of a deal will deprive President Barack Obama of a vehicle for extending a payroll tax cut and insurance benefits for unemployed Americans, which expire at the end of the year." (Though the official deadline for the committee's hoped-for plan is tomorrow — the 23d — they were to have provided it for review 48 hours prior.)

suraj.sun sends this excerpt from the BBC: "Particles called D-mesons seem to decay slightly differently from their antiparticles, LHCb physicist Matthew Charles told the HCP 2011 meeting on Monday. The result may help explain why we see so much more matter than antimatter. The team stresses that further analysis will be needed to shore up the result. At the moment, they are claiming a statistical certainty of '3.5 sigma' — suggesting that there is less than a 0.05% chance that the result they see is down to chance. The team has nearly double the amount of data that they have analyzed so far, so time will tell whether the result reaches the 'five-sigma' level that qualifies it for a formal discovery."

ackthpt writes "A team of engineers claims to have created the world's lightest material. Made from a lattice of hollow metallic tubes, the material is less dense than aerogels and metallic foams, yet retains strength due to the small size of the lattice structure (abstract). The material's density is 0.9 milligrams per cubic centimeter. Among other things, it's potentially useful for insulation, battery electrodes, and sound dampening."

AmiMoJo writes "New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming. The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011. An international team of researchers took measurements of the radioactive element caesium-137 in soil and grass from all but one of Japan's 47 regions. The researchers estimate that caesium-137 levels close to the nuclear plant were eight times the safety limit, while neighbouring regions were just under this limit."

First time accepted submitter Beowulf878 writes "In yet another data-collection feast by the government in the UK, a local council has proposed fitting at least one CCTV camera per taxi to record every conversation. Obviously the reason given is our own safety. Thoughts?"

Honken writes "A recent study by scientists at Duke University has found that transparent deep-sea octopuses turn red when exposed to blue light similar to what predators emit, allowing them to hide using both transparency and by absorbing the wavelengths of the blueish light emitted by deep-sea predators. The Register quickly made the not-so-obvious connection to Kindles and squid video playback, whereas Discovery News reports on slightly more useful yet exotic applications, such as fishing nets that are invisible only to the species that it intends to catch."

You asked Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer, questions on topics ranging from debunking superstition to extraterrestrial life to funding space exploration; read on below for his answers. Thanks for taking part, Phil! My galaxy is bigger than yours?
fuego451

In January of '09, The BBC ran a story on research done by scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Using the VLBA they found what they felt was very good evidence that our galaxy is about the same size as Andromeda (150k ly). However, very few of their fellow astronomers, including you, are touting this new size. Why? Was the study flawed?

From reading the story, the study looks legit; it's using techniques that have been around a long time and are well-understood. The reason I didn't write about it is because I didn't know about it! Well that's one reason. I get a bazillion press releases, and I can't write about all of them; I physically can't — that pesky only 24 hours in a day thing — and I've found that if I write too many in-depth astronomy posts every day, my traffic actually drops. Weird, isn't it? But true, so I pick which ones interest me the most and write about those.

In this case, too, I see a story every few months claiming we're bigger than M31, then another saying M31 is bigger than us. Even if each study is done perfectly, and turns out to be right, I can't write about them every time. It's overload on the reader, and it becomes an issue of everyone saying, "Wait, which way was it last time?" Incremental stories are very tough to write, especially in a series. It's like when astronomers find the lowest mass planet yet, and really it's just barely lower mass (within the error bars) of the last one. It's interesting, but unless it really blasts through the last record and brings us into new territory, it's ultimately just a footnote. Cool, and important, but if I wrote about every one I wouldn't have nearly enough time to watch TV and moon over River Song.

Extra Solar Planetary Imaging
mklopez

I just had an interesting argument with a coworker. The point: while he can accept that space-based telescopes would be able to do direct imaging of extra solar planets — assuming that they can directly capture the photons traveling across all the involved light-years without interference — he just doesn't believe that is possible to image those planets from the Earth surface, given atmospheric interference. He says that the images from Hawaii and other Earth observatories are just software interpolations that try to "guess" and "process" (his words) the anomalies in the images as planets... in other words, they are unintentionally "photoshopped" (again, his word). The basic question would be, then: how can a telescope inside our atmosphere be able to "take pictures" of something as faint as extrasolar planets?

Well, to be clear, your friend is wrong. :) The images taken using Keck, Gemini, the VLT and others are just as legit as the ones from Hubble (I have a gallery of them here.) The Earth's air does mess up images pretty well, since it's turbulent and fuzzes out light coming down. But there are several techniques that are used that are physically and actually compensating for that motion, including adaptive optics and laser guide stars. This isn't some sort of interpolation or picking out blips, it's literally measuring how much the atmosphere is distorting things and compensating for it. In some cases, over small areas of the sky, these techniques allow for higher resolution imagery than Hubble can produce!

Seeing faint planets near stars is really hard; if it were easy, we would've been doing it a century ago. But this new tech is pretty good at what it does. It's not magic, it's science.

Space junk
dcsmith

How serious is the amount of 'space junk' orbiting Earth? Will it have a substantial impact on the future of space flight, manned or otherwise? What are some of the best (or at least most innovative) ideas you've heard about for deorbiting big junk or cleaning up smaller bits of debris?

Well, NASA sure takes it seriously. The space station has had to boost itself to different orbits several times to make sure it got out of the way of some bit of debris or another. NASA has an entire office devoted to looking at debris and tracking it (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/) and the National Reconnaissance Office does as well. Everything bigger than the size of a tennis ball in orbit is tracked, and there are thousands of them. At orbital speeds, a fleck of paint can put a hole in a spacesuit — it can have the same energy of impact as a bullet!

Big stuff is trackable, so while it's dangerous at least you can do the math and get some advance notice of a potential impact. The tiny stuff is far more dangerous, because you don't know where it all is — and also because there's lots more smaller stuff than bigger stuff (take a hammer, smash a rock, and them look at how many big pieces you get versus tiny ones).

One idea I thought was cool to get rid of debris is to hit it with a laser, heating it up and boiling off material. That acts like a wee rocket, pushing the debris into orbits which allow them to decay faster. Pretty cool, and possible though difficult in a practical sense. There's a *lot* of stuff up there. One thing is for sure; we need several different strategies to get rid of this stuff. There's no one panacea for it.

Naked eye astronomy
rickett81

I enjoy gazing at the heavens sometimes but by no means would call myself an astronomer. Short of purchasing a telescope and driving out of the city, do you have any suggestions for 'naked eye' astronomy in an area of moderate light pollution?

Yeah! There are approximate a bajillion sites that can predict satellite passes for a given location; I always use Heavens Above. Random satellite passes are fun, but seeing something like the space station or Hubble is very cool. Iridium flares — bright flashes off of reflective surfaces on Iridium commsats — are really nifty to see. And many get bright enough to spot even from places where light pollution is a problem.

There's also meteor showers, of course. But my best recommendation to everyone is to get a pair of inexpensive but solid binoculars. You can see Jupiter's moons, craters on our own Moon, Saturn's rings, and more. And they're always good to have around if you hike or just see a bird or something in the distance. I always have a pair handy. Always.

Where to start helping?
modi123

Way back when I was a freshman in college I was considering a carrier in astronomy and physics, but I opted for the more flashy and showy job of application development. Is there room for hobby astronomers to contribute in a meaningful way to the global community, or should I stick with the crowd-sourcing projects on zooniverse.org?

Well first, those citizen science projects are freaking fantastic. They're producing all kinds of interesting science. Zooniverse is a good place to start.

It used to be that comets and asteroids were all discovered by amateurs, but robotic telescopes rule the night now. Still, "amateur" observations play a big role; that big storm on Saturn last year was discovered by an amateur, as were several asteroid/comet impacts on Jupiter. Those are rare events, of course, and discovered because there are lots of amateurs looking at the sky. Realistically, any specific person's odds of contributing that way are small, but overall the combined probability approaches 1. :)

But those online citizen science projects are only getting bigger, and more are on the way. It's a fun way to do real science, and make a difference.

And we do need more and better astronomy app, so maybe you chose the right career after all.

Viewing the Transit of Venus Next June
nani popoki

Next June, I plan to travel from Boston to Hawaii (probably Kauai) to view the transit of Venus. I can take a small (90mm mak cas) telescope and a solar filter, but trying to cope with airline carry-on luggage restrictions and get a 4" diameter, 10" long aluminum cylinder through airport security is going to be a pain. Can viewing the transit be done using a camera obscura technique like one might use for viewing a partial solar eclipse?

For those wondering, a transit of Venus is when the planet passes directly in front of the Sun as seen from Earth; the next one is in June 2012, and there won't be another until 2117 (weirdly, due to orbital math, they come in pairs each separated by 8 years, but then the next pair coming over a century later). So this is your chance. TransitofVenus.org has tons of info. I saw the last one in 2004, and it was awesome. All I used were special glasses that blocked sunlight; Venus was visible as a tiny dot on the Sun's face.

Getting a telescope through security is risky; they could damage it, or it could be stolen, or they could decide it's a weapon, and then parts of *you* might get transited that you would prefer remain unocculted. You could ship the 'scope through the mail in advance, which is probably safe enough. You could also just use binoculars to project the Sun's image on a piece of paper; this is great for viewing, but difficult to photograph. Still, probably better than a pinhole camera or camera obscura.

Threats from Space?
north.coaster

We're always hearing about threats to our planet from outer space. Asteroid impacts Gamma Ray bursts. Invaders from Mars. The list goes on. What do you think is our biggest threat from space, and why?

We're all gonna DIEEEE AIIIIEEEE!!!

OK, with that out of the way... it depends. You have to weigh severity with chance. So, a GRB can sterilize the Earth in ten seconds flat, but the odds of one happening in your lifetime are millions to one against (and we don't have any good GRB candidates close enough to do the trick anyway). The Sun will expand into a red giant and fry the planet for real and for sure... but not for 5 billion years. So lots of big disasters aren't much to fret over.

My two biggest concerns are asteroid/comet impacts, and solar storms. A blast from the Sun can't really hurt us directly, but it can really mess up satellites, and a lot of our navigation and economy depends on them. Also, they can cause big blackouts over large areas (like Quebec had in March 1989), and that's pretty serious. We can take measures to prevent this (hardening our satellites against storms, and adding more power capacity to the grid to handle overloads) but that's expensive, difficult, and hard to convince company CEOs of the threat. With the solar peak coming in 2013/2014, we'll just have to see what happens.

Asteroids and comets are probably the biggest threat. We *know* no dinosaur killer is on its way here for at least a century or three, so that's cool. But the Tunguska event in 1908 (a 20 megaton explosion) and the Meteor Crater impact (in Arizona, also about 15 — 20 MT) were caused by rocks only about 50 meters across at most, and we wouldn't see one of those coming in until it was practically in our atmosphere. Literally.

But there are people taking this seriously (like the B612 Foundation). We're looking for killer rocks, and there are ideas of ways to push them away from us. I gave a TEDxBoulder talk on this, with details: It's only 12 minutes, and should scare you and then mollify you.

A couple of questions on NEOs
hairyfeet

I'm strictly a layman sky gazer so apologies if I don't use the right terminology. 1. What would you say our risk level for NEOs is? I know we make fun of the Naburu or whatever that crazy rogue planet thing is called but last I heard we had only mapped about 2% of the sky and with all that space it does make me wonder if we would actually see a NEO that was a danger before it was too late to do anything, and as a follow up 2. If we were to spot a NEO that was a danger do you believe we could divert it with our current technology, if so how so? Gravity tractor, using nukes as shockwaves to divert, maybe solar sails? How far away would the NEO have to be detected at for these to work?

I already talked about dangers from NEOs in the answer above, so there you go. The mapping question is a good one, but you have to be careful. For example, we know there is no Nibiru because if there were its gravity would have affected the orbits of other planets. Also, a planet as big or bigger than Jupiter would be naked eye visible for decades (centuries, really) before getting here. So in that case we don't need to map the whole sky.

Same thing, kinda, with asteroids. We have mapped so many now that the odds of one as big as the dinosaur killer coming in the next few centuries is really small. Smaller ones really are hard to find though. The good news is we're getting better at it, and more telescopes are coming that will map the sky more and more.

If we do see one, the best course of action depends on how big it is, and how much time we have. If time is short before impact (like
Fermi question
JoshuaZ

What do you think is the answer to Fermi's question? That is, why do you think we see no signs of intelligent life other than humans?

I don't know what the answer is. I mean, duh, no one does. The idea that we're first is not so slanderous to me, but the problem with it is the timescale. Planets like Earth could have easily formed a billion years earlier than Earth, and that's a helluva long time. Even with slower-than-light ships you can colonize the entire galaxy in just a few million years, a fraction of a billion years. So that bugs me.

We know there are lots of Sun-like stars out there (billions of 'em) and Earth-like planets are looking like they're pretty common too, given what we're learning. So it may boil down to how easy it is for life to arise (which I think is pretty easy)... but also on alien psychology. Of all the factors in the Drake equation, I suspect that's the one that we'll never know until we meet aliens. Maybe they won't care about exploration and contact. Maybe they are so weird we can't even guess what's going on.

So, short answer: beats me. We should keep looking.

Light pollution
Frenzied Apathy

There are a large number of light pollution articles to be found on the Sky and Telescope website. We amateur astronomers are keenly aware that light pollution isn't just about being able to see more stars from our backyard. Yet, when I mention the subject to friends, family, co-workers, etc, I often get a blank stare. "What's 'light pollution'?" What do you think can/should be done to improve widespread public awareness of light pollution and its effects?

That's a tough one. I've written about it a few times, but it doesn't reach the right people. Public advocacy works; I know some towns have changed lighting to reduce light pollution. That's still small scale though. The best way is to drag people out to dark sites; my wife and I were recently in the mountains at night and she was shocked at how many stars she could see. That may not be a practical way to change lots of minds, though! So honestly, I don't know. I wish I did. Usually, switching to more efficient lights that are also not polluting the sky save money, too, but that does seem to be a hard sell. If someone has a solution, let me know!

Pie in the Sky
Colonel Korn

If you could give Apollo-level funding to a single NASA program, what would it be? Would you direct that money internally or involve private space companies?

I don't think that's the right way to ask that question. NASA does a LOT of stuff, a lot of it very cool. Some of it could be better directed, I think. I'm not so sure I see the need for a heavy lift rocket from NASA, for example, when private companies are well on their way to making those. I prefer NASA innovate, rather than do stuff others can do.

So what I'd like to see is to have their budget doubled. Boom! Just like that. That, plus heavy lift capability from private industry, and there's no more worrying over scraping a gram or two off a Mars probe; you make it as big as you want, and if something doesn't fit, you build another one and launch it later. It's not that the money isn't there — we spend 10+ million bucks *an hour* in Iraq and Afghanistan — it's that we don't choose to do it.

Finally, what do you think of lunar-based observatories from a cost vs. performance standpoint?

I like the idea of a radio telescope on the far side, blocked from Earth's interference. But I'm not sold on optical lunar scopes. Putting them in orbit around Earth is way cheaper, and you don't have to worry about lunar dust, or gravity warping your optics, and a hundred other issues.

If, someday, we have a lunar colony, then yeah! There are plenty of native materials that can be used to build 'scopes. Until then though, space-based is the way.

Mars, Europa, Enceladus or Titan?
wisebabo

Is this like MFK?

If you had to choose a major (Discovery?) class probe to look for life beyond earth which celestial body would you send it to?

• Mars (methane outgassing?)
• Europa (subsurface ocean?)
• Enceladus (water "fountains"?)
• Titan (liquid water, ammonium, hydrocarbon ocean?

Oh. Well, as a scientist, Mars, which has so much cool stuff going on — it's a freaking *planet* — that there're endless things to learn. As a human and scifi fan, Europa. The scientific payoff is arguably less than Mars, but the idea of exploring an undersurface ocean is awfully tempting. And it's a lot closer than Saturn. I think it and Enceladus are tied for interest, but Europa is a lot easier to get to. I'd like to see a dedicated Titan probe eventually, but since we don't have unlimited funds, I think it's smarter to go with a safer bet. We don't *know* life can arise in lakes of liquid methane, but we do know it can in water. So overall: Europa.

Are you familiar with Peter Ward's book "Life but not as we know it" in which he makes a strong case for Titan? Do you agree?

I haven't read it. But life on Titan, but in the end, is still speculation, no matter how solidly it's based in known science. That's true for Europa too, of course but the speculation is less extended, since we know there's liquid water there. So I think I'd rather see a probe go to someplace where we know the circumstances for life are good.

Funding for small, interdisciplinary projects?
LeDopore

I've noticed a disturbing trend that as funding levels drop, agencies are receding more to their core areas of study and leaving interdisciplinary scientists high and dry. Furthermore, it seems that there's an inverse relationship between the fund-ability of a project and its efficiency: if a (say) particle physics project is so inefficient it requires 1000 scientists 10 years to get 1 bit of data (like the Top quark discovery) then they're guaranteed to have well-coordinated funding and lobbying effort, whereas projects that deliver results on only a shoestring budget might not have enough people working on them to get any funding at all.

I'm working at the interface between neuroscience and algorithm theory, and I've already made some very interesting discoveries using borrowed time/funding, but I have trouble shopping my ideas to either pure neuroscience/medical funding agencies (who don't understand the math) or to computer science funding agencies (who don't appreciate the biology). Both sides seem generally excited and encouraging, but neither is willing to fund my future research, since (despite a promising track record) I'm out of the expertise of anyone out there.

My question is, are we doomed to a future dominated by big science projects working in entrenched specialties on the least-efficient, longest-term, too-big-to-fail science investigations out there? If not, how do we promote efficient, small-scale, interdisciplinary project funding?

I'm no expert in this, but I have to wonder if the 'net is changing that. The example is TV shows. It used to take a vast budget, a huge staff, and all kinds of expertise to make a show, and it still might be crap. :) Now, people can do it for not much money at all, and lots of stuff on the web is pretty damn good! And it's egalitarian in many cases, with the best stuff rising up.

Science may be the same way. Small projects can get funded through microdonations — Kelly Weinersmith is doing this, and raising funds for her research into parasites, for example (http://www.weinersmith.com/?p=483). Citizen science projects are popping up all over the place. It's a funny time right now, with things in transition, but I suspect it'll solidify in the next few years.

Funding for the JWST?
wisebabo

Do you support finishing the JWST, which is now substantially behind schedule and over budget? (I realize that many of the problems were caused by Congress but unfortunately that's where we are today). What about if a substantial amount of the money needed to complete it is taken out of other astronomy related programs?

I'm torn about this. I supported JWST up until recent revelations that it would cost more than even NASA's overestimates. Cost overruns may have to come out of other NASA missions, and that's *NOT* acceptable. The House wants to kill it, but the Senate wants to fund it, but they still haven't said where the money will come from! It's a mess.

Canceling it outright would be a mistake, I think, since it's the only big astrophysics project NASA has going right now, and it'll keep a lot of astronomers employed for a long time. :) But of course it will revolutionize science the way Hubble did — which was also hugely over budget, behind schedule, and a political nightmare, BTW. Yet that's not how people think of Hubble now at all.

So I honestly don't know what to do. maybe we'll get a better idea once the Senate and House hammer out their two different budgets. But given the atmosphere in Congress, I wouldn't make bets either way.

Dangerous Bad Astronomy
BeardedChimp

In science a simple misconception can lead to thousands and millions of people being skeptical and disbelieving. For example the large number of people who think that humans evolved from chimpanzees rather than sharing a common ancestor. In astronomy, what misconception would you class as most dangerous to the general public's understanding?

I don't think there's any one misconception that's most dangerous, but I might say that the idea that there are mysterious things out here poised to kill us that the government is covering up might be most pernicious. Lots of people — kids mostly, but not all — are terrified over 2012, and think some giant planet or solar flare will kill us all. That makes me so angry I want to kick puppies [Note: that's a metaphor. Puppies do not make up fake doomsday scenarios in order to bilk people out of money and scare them half to death.]. Not that people are wrong in this belief — ignorance is curable — but that so many people spread this idea to sell books. 2012 is 100% unadulterated pure crap, with absolutely no basis at all. None. Yet I get emails from people who are scared out of their minds over it.

At the risk of oversimplifying, it comes from a lack of scientific thinking, lack of skeptical training, and the atmosphere of governmental mistrust. If we as a people had a better grasp of science and the process behind it, a lot of this garbage would evaporate. But this is the price we pay for not supporting science education more.

Trends in misconceptions?
vlm

Do you see long term trends in various misconceptions? It seems subjectively to me that the "vernal equinox egg" deal was way more popular in the '80s. Its a random variable on the timescale of a couple years.

The only trend I see is overall permanence. :) Things come and go, but there are always *things*.

The egg myth does seem to be dying, and I'm more than happy to take full credit for that. :) But other stuff comes in and fills the vacuum.

Other misconceptions, like "the far side of the moon is always dark" or "the moon always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise" have a relatively constant rate of mis-belief over time. Another type of misconception is the flash in the pan like the "face on Mars" which gets intense media attention for awhile and then fades (permanently?) into obscurity. Do you see any general trends in the distribution of the three types of misconceptions over time, like one getting more or less popular or ... maybe due to social media or something?

Some of these idea stick around because of inertia or a lack of proper debunking (like the Moon being bigger on the horizon; that one has a hatfull of bad explanations). Others because they seem plausible, are exciting, have a veneer of scientific language, and spread faster than a solid debunking can — like a pole shift causing superstorms or that Betelgeuse will explode in 2012. These specific claims come and go, but stuff like them will always be around.

I don't see much trending going on, but I haven't done the statistics. :) But as long as we have instantaneous communication (like Twitter) and a population that isn't familiar with the science, we'll always have this problem. Heck, *astrology* trends on Twitter all the time (probably once a month; I should check that!). Sheesh.

Cold Fusion
afabbro

Ever since I read Gary Taubes' "Bad Science," I've been unshakably convinced that cold fusion is an example of pathological science, and Pons/Fleischman's "room temperature fusion" was utter nonsense.

However, CF believers seems to soldier on year after year. As recently as 2009, the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center reported finding neutron bursts when using heavy water electrolysis, though their claims were not accepted by the mainstream scientific community.

Has anything emerged since the debunking of Pons/Fleischmann that gives any credence to cold fusion?

Anything real? Nope.

That was easy. :)

Seriously, there will always be perpetual motion believers, no matter what the science — and overwhelming evidence — shows. There may yet be a real version of cold fusion, but it's clear that Pons, Fleischmann, and companies like Steorn are wrong. But when has being completely and utterly wrong ever stopped people?



Anthroporelevence
EdZ

You've made your position fairly clear on whether the current recent warming trend in global temperature is anthropogenic. My question is: do you think a mere reduction in (or cessation of) anthropic CO2 emissions will significantly reduce this trend, and whether larger scale geoengineering is an inevitable requirement to maintain the abnormally long stable warm period that humanity has thrived in for the last few millennia?

I'll be honest: I have no idea. That's something you'd have to ask the experts about. It's entirely possible it's too late to do much, or maybe we still have some time. But it's going to be impossible to get *anything* done until the global warming deniers in government are tossed out, or at least made less powerful. When the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee says humans don't cause climate change (and so many sitting members of that committee are out-and-out climate change deniers), getting substantive change implemented is impossible.

Mad Scientist
Restil

Any chance of ever bringing back your Mad Scientist section, where you do a Q&A sort of like the Straight Dope, only with generally more Astronomy related topics? That's the particular feature that caused me to discover your site in the first place.

First, thanks! It was fun to do that, but incredibly time consuming. However, I have plans...stay tuned. :)

Star Trek or Star Wars?
jellomizer

Which do you find more annoying: Star Trek which can spend a good portion of the show trying to explain how and why they break the laws of physics? Or Star Wars, which breaks the laws of physics but doesn't care to explain itself?

Trek. Done and done.

Star Wars was space opera, and never depended on the science. Trek was more science fiction, but the writers really blew it many times with the saving of the ship at the last second with technobabble; that's not science fiction, it's a plot device. Still, Trek did have lots of good science in it, and the point I like to make is how many people it inspired to become scientists, me included. And more shows these days are using science advisors, though of course if the plot demands twisting the science, oh well. I live with it, because I like a good story, too!

Uranus
TheDawgLives

How do you pronounce the name of the seventh planet from the Sun? I'm in favor of Futurama's solution: rename it to Urrectum.

I claim that's the only funny joke that's been made about the planet. Leave it to Futurama!

I personally pronounce it "YOOR-in-us", but it probably should be "oo-RAN-us". There's a lot of confusion over this, references to butts notwithstanding.

Doing this for some time
by 0racle

You've been doing The Bad Astronomer thing for a while. How come you haven't become a better astronomer by now?

They say the sky's the limit, and to me that's really true, because I'm bad, I'm bad, come on, you know it.

Just to tell you once again, who's bad?

Diggester sends this quote from an article at the BBC: "The ID24 beam line at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility will use X-ray beams to subject iron and other materials to extraordinary temperatures and pressures. How the X-rays are absorbed should give insight into the mysterious processes going on at and near the Earth's core. For example, the work could unravel why the Earth's magnetic field can 'flip.' ... The samples are compressed at a pressure millions of times higher than that on the Earth's surface. High-power lasers are then fired through the diamonds at the samples, heating them to higher than 10,000C. Then X-rays are used as a probe to determine the precise composition and chemistry of samples."

New submitter benfrog writes "Despite repeated attempts over the past few days, Russia is unable to make contact with Phobos-Grunt, the probe that was supposed to make it to Mars and never left Earth's atmosphere. Estimates now vary widely on the time left to contact the probe, but it is descending toward Earth and will likely turn into scrap before it can be reached." Official information is still hard to come by, but the Planetary Society Weblog has been keeping up with the story.

l_bratch writes, quoting from the BBC, "'British computer chip designer ARM has unveiled its latest graphics processing unit (GPU) for mobile devices. The Mali-T658 offers up to ten times the performance of its predecessor." ARM claims that its latest GPU, which will be ready in around two years, will have graphics performance akin to the PlayStation 3. If this has acceptable power consumption for a mobile device, could we be seeing ultra-low power hardware in high-end PCs and consoles soon?"

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a technical glitch allowed reporters to listen in on a private conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama, made in a backroom meeting at the G20 summit, treating listeners to a rare insight into the importance of personal relationships in international politics. 'I can't stand him any more,' said Mr. Sarkozy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 'He's a liar.' Mr. Obama replied: 'You're sick of him. I have to deal with him every day!' According to Reuters, the two presidents were apparently 'unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.' The reporters made 'a group decision... not to report the conversation as it was considered private and off-the-record,' but Arrets Sur Images, a French website that covers current affairs, got wind of the exchange and broke the story."

First time accepted submitter wanzeo writes "With the current G-20 summit dominated by global financial uncertainty, previously unsuccessful tax strategies are getting new attention. In a short interview with the BBC, Bill Gates explains his support for a potential tax on financial transactions. The concept is sometimes called the Tobin tax after its originator, Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin, who first put forth the idea in 1972. Gates points to the success of Britain's Security Settlement Tax, and suggests that large economies like Germany, France, and the U.S. have expressed interest in his plan."

ronaldm writes "Trigger-happy Scottish pyromaniacs celebrating Guy Fawkes Night last night ended up watching their creation go spectacularly wrong, when all the fireworks were triggered at the same time — resulting in the show being 29 minutes shorter than the 30 minutes it was supposed to last." The fireworks in suburban Baltimore were much more sedate, but lasted longer. How did you spend your Bonfire Night?

Several readers have submitted news (as covered by an AFP article carried by the Sydney Morning Herald) that a massive iceberg is forming in the Antarctic. The rift in the PIne Island Glacier "is widening at a rate of two metres a day, said NASA project scientist Michael Studinger. When the ice breaks apart, it will produce an iceberg more than 880 square kilometres, said Mr Studinger, who is part of the US space agency's IceBridge project. But the process is not a result of global warming, he said." Also at the BBC.

First time accepted submitter mariocki writes "British music industry body BPI has requested BT block access to Pirate Bay. In response, BT say they will only do so if they receive a court order. But after BT recently lost a court case forcing them to block Newzbin, it looks like it's a case of when — not if — this will happen."

MrSeb writes "China has joined two space vehicles together in orbit for the first time. The unmanned Shenzhou 8 craft, launched earlier this week, made contact with the Tiangong-1 space lab at 1729 GMT. The union occurred over China itself. Being able to dock two space vehicles together is a necessary capability for China if it wants to start building a space station towards the end of the decade."

Tasha26 writes "A trainee surgeon, Mark Frame, has figured out how to save U.K.'s NHS thousands of pounds by taking advantage of 3D-printer technology. Success in orthopedic operations relies on surgeons having an accurate 3D model of the area where the operation will take place. Such models take time to produce and cost up to £1200 ($1915). Mark, a self-confessed 'technology geek,' used open source OsiriX software to convert CT scans into files which are readable by the 3D printers at Shapeways, a company in the Netherlands. Within a week they produced and delivered the first plastic 3D model of a child's forearm at a cost of £77 ($123). Mark has written a free guide so that other surgeons can make their own bones, which is being considered for publication by the World Journal of Science and Technology."

intellitech sends this quote from a NASA news release: "Tractor beams — the ability to trap and move objects using light — are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary or atmospheric particles and delivering them to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft for analysis." Reader Bob the Super Hamste adds, "The article along with the BBC's coverage discuss briefly three methods of how this can be done with lasers. The first method called 'optical tweezers,' in which a molecule is trapped where two beams cross (PDF). However, it requires an atmosphere to work. The second method using solenoid beams has already worked in the laboratory (PDF). The third method using Bessel beams has yet to be experimentally proven."

RdeCourtney writes "The BBC is reporting that from 1 January 2012, Google will charge for the Google Maps API service when more than the limit of 25,000 map "hits" are made in a day. Google is rumoured to be charging $4 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit. Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging 'will only affect 0.35% of users.'"