Slashdot Mirror

Two new observatories are being built on Mount Wilson in California -- home to the 100-inch Hooker telescope, one of the largest aperture telescopes in the world, and CHARA array, the world's largest optical interferometer. As IEEE Spectrum reports, "they could house Facebook's first laser communications systems designed to connect to satellites in orbit." From the report: Construction permits issued by the County of Los Angeles show that a small company called PointView Tech is building two detached observatories on the mountain peak. PointView is the company that IEEE Spectrum revealed last year to be a previously unknown subsidiary of Facebook working on an experimental satellite called Athena. In April, PointView sought permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to test whether E-band radio signals could "be used for the provision of fixed and mobile broadband access in unserved and underserved areas."

That application was still pending at the FCC before the current U.S. federal government shutdown took effect, but it and other public documents and presentations now strongly suggest that PointView is planning to utilize laser technology, possibly both in Athena and future spacecraft. [...] Planning documents show that construction work on PointView's Mount Wilson observatories began in July and passed inspection in the middle of December. If the observatories are part of a laser satellite installation, they might use an optical ground station conceptually similar to [German company Mynaric]. This transmits its own laser beam up into the atmosphere for a drone -- or potentially a satellite -- to lock on to. Facebook and the Mount Wilson Institute didn't comment, but the report does go on to cite scientific papers authored by Facebook researchers suggesting that the company is committing resources to orbital lasers. "In a series of papers published in 2017 and 2018, engineers Raichelle Aniceto and Slaven Moro subjected multiple components, including an optical modem, to radiation similar to that experienced on orbit," reports IEEE Spectrum.

jamstar7 writes "From the article: 'NASA is reportedly mulling the construction of a floating Moon base that would serve as a launching site for manned missions to Mars and other destinations more distant than any humans have traveled to so far. The Orlando Sentinel reported over the weekend that the proposed outpost, called a "gateway spacecraft," would support "a small astronaut crew and function as a staging area for future missions to the moon and Mars."' This is actually a good idea, using the Moon as a staging base for exploring the cosmos. Once we build manufacturing capability there, why not build spacecraft there? We can build bigger, more spacious craft so as to not lock up future astronauts in a closet for months or years at a time." Moon base isn't quite accurate: it would be a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point about 60000 km from the surface of the dark side of the moon.

gManZboy writes "Everyone knows that some software development projects succeed and other fail -- the question has always been 'why'? I'm sure we all have our favorite (likely anecdotal) explanations. Well, these guys decided to actually go out there and do a formal survey, and they've got some real data on why projects actually fail (as reported by development project managers -- care to guess where 'changing requirements' ranks?). They've developed a diagnostic formula people can use to gauge the likeliness that the project they're working on right now is (or isn't) going to fail."

Freshly Exhumed writes "Add another bonus point for the Darwinians/evolutionists. A macaque at the Safari Park Zoo in Ramat Gan, Israel has recovered from a near-fatal illness in an unusual way: she has switched exclusively to walking on her hind legs. Given theories of human history that stress the effect of disease on events and changes, as in William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, what if an illness was the cause of the shift to bipedal motion by our evolutionary ancestors, and rote imitation by offspring or another set of circumstances locked it in? No matter, this could be a fascinating study of the macaque's altered brain functions."

An anonymous reader writes "The European Space Observatory has imaged Halley's Comet at the farthest point (past Neptune) in which such a 10-kilometer diameter iceball has ever been observed. To image a comet as a raven-black object, without its bright dust tail (coma), is equivalent to seeing a lump of coal at the distance between the Earth's poles and to do so in the evening twilight. The last gasp seen from Halley's Comet was 1991, when a gigantic explosion happened, providing it with an expanding, extensive cloud of dust for several months. It is not known whether this event was caused by a collision with an unknown piece of rock or by internal processes (a last 'sigh' on the way out). Halley has an orbital period just over 76 years and will return in 2062."

WolfWithoutAClause writes "It's been known for decades that the universe is expanding. The current evidence points to this rate of expansion increasing, and if so, there's no obvious reason why the expansion rate couldn't continue to increase ever faster. A physicist, Simon Caldwell, has taken this to inevitable conclusion and suggested the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart, followed a millisecond later by the destruction of all the atoms in the universe. Ouch. New Scientist says we may only have 22 billion years left. Almost enough time for a quick game of Everquest then."

riptalon writes "The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a NASA Explorer mission has announced the first results based on a year of observations from the L2 Lagrangian point. MAP carries two back-to-back microwave telescopes to study variations in the cosmic microwave background, to much greater accuracy than the COBE satellite. The excruciating details of the results on the age, geometry and composition of the universe can be found in this paper. Executive summary: 13.7 billion years old, flat, 4.4% baryons, 22% dark matter and 73% dark energy."

lotusFlow writes: "According to this NYTimes article, Lucent has developed a chip with a layer of transistors that is one molecule thick. This development is considered a new tep above nanotech because "here you direct the molecules with self-assembly to go where you want them to go." Commercial applications of this technology are years in the making, of course."

Bartleby writes "Here is MS's letter about the 'service issues that have generated questions about security.' A textbook example of PR-driven understatement. When my colleague and I logged in to his Hotmail account with no password using simple HTML, we thought it rated a little higher than a 'service issue.'" Previous Slashdot story about this Hotmail 'service issue' here.

The GNOME project has released version 0.3 of Gnumeric, the GNOME spreadsheet. Gnumeric is, from what I can see, progressing very nicely. In addition the gnome-games and gnome-admin 0.30 modules were released today. RPMs are already available. Perhaps more importantly, we have a sort of call to arms - the "code name" for 0.30 is "Bouncing Bonobo". The Bonobo species is in danger of extinction, however. If you would like to help, or would like more info, check the GNOME web page, or the Bonobo Protection Fund.