Slashdot Mirror

Jon Wild writes: "Eric Weisstein's online encyclopedia of mathematics, originally located at http://www.treasure-troves.com among Eric's other encyclopedias, and most recently hosted by Wolfram Research, has for some time been the most complete and reliable mathematical resource on the web. Now Wolfram has yanked it due to a lawsuit by CRC Press, the publishers of a print edition of the encyclopedia. See the announcement at http://mathworld.wolfram.com."

Wigs writes: "There's a nice article on spaceprojects.com about NASA's current competition, or rather the lack of it. From the article: 'The Microsoft antitrust litigation, as well as the consumer benifits resulting from AT&T's break-up, have substantially raised public awareness about the negative impact that monopolies can have on society. Many people who know much about NASA distrust it as well ... It seems NASA would benefit from having publicly funded competition, resembling what Japan's two competing civilian space agencies have.' I've heard that companies like United Space Alliance have looked into the possiblity of purchasing a shuttle, but have been shot down by NASA officials. Other companies looking to get into the single stage to orbit competition are Rotary Rocket, Kelly Space, and Pegasus (actually 3-stage). However, these are all private companies. This article discussing public funding, namely the National Science Foundation."

szyzyg writes "For the fisrt time ever astronomers have been able to observe waves and flows on the surface of a star other than the sun. Alex Lobel and Andrea Dupree managed to detect these flows on the surface of the supergiant Betelgeuse - the bright red star in the constellation of Orion. This star is so large that its radius is about the same as the distance at which the earth orbits.... i.e. about 150 million km. It's almost at the upper limit for stellar sizes predicted by Eddington "

szyzyg writes "For the fisrt time ever astronomers have been able to observe waves and flows on the surface of a star other than the sun. Alex Lobel and Andrea Dupree managed to detect these flows on the surface of the supergiant Betelgeuse - the bright red star in the constellation of Orion. This star is so large that its radius is about the same as the distance at which the earth orbits.... i.e. about 150 million km. It's almost at the upper limit for stellar sizes predicted by Eddington "