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The headline annoyed the fuck out of me when I saw it in Google Science News. So I looked it up on Arxiv (costing Giz ... whoever they were ... some eyeball-seconds).

Link to original paper. Link to PDF.

Abstract.

During a systematic search for supermassive black holes (SMBHs) not in galactic nuclei, we identified the compact symmetric radio source B3 1715+425 with an emission-line galaxy offset ~8.5 kpc from the nucleus of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in the redshift z=0.1754 cluster ZwCl 8193. B3 1715+425 is too bright (brightness temperature â¼3Ã--10^10 K at observing frequency 7.6 GHz) and too luminous (1.4 GHz luminosity â¼10^25 W/Hz) to be powered by anything but a SMBH, but its host galaxy is much smaller (â¼0.9 kpc Ã-- 0.6 kpc full width between half-maximum points) and optically fainter (R-band absolute magnitude â¼â'18.2) than any other radio galaxy. Its high radial velocity â¼1860 km/s relative to the BCG, continuous ionized wake extending back to the BCG nucleus, and surrounding debris indicate that the radio galaxy was tidally shredded passing through the BCG core, leaving a nearly naked supermassive black hole fleeing from the BCG with space velocity >2000 km/s. The radio galaxy has mass

So, yes, a really interesting discovery. Not as pumped up as the headline writers (though even the paper-writers fell to the temptation of "A NEARLY NAKED SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE."

The discussion upthread between several participants about how this black hole could be escaping from the collision, in a gravitationally bound system. Utterly astonishingly, the paper's authors considered this point too (page 7 of the paper) :

[Brightest Cluster Galaxies] BCGs can have nuclear escape velocities up to 3000 km s^â'1, so the fleeing radio galaxy may still be gravitationally bound to the BCG and/or the cluster ZwCl 8193. [...] The high [SuperMassive Black hole] SMBH velocity relative to the BCG is consistent with (1) gravitational recoil following the merger of two spinning SMBHs or slingshot ejection of one SMBH from a triple system in the BCG or (2) the velocity of a galaxy that fell into the gravitational potential well in the center of the massive cluster ZwCl 8193.
[With reasons, the authors reject case (1)]
This leaves case (2), a formerly normal galaxy that fell into ZwCl 8193, was tidally stripped as it passed near the BCG nucleus, and is now rapidly moving away from the BCG. Only the SMBH and the small central portion of that galaxy denser than the BCG core remain intact,

Someone else asked where to point his telescope. The answer is (J2000 coords) RA 17d 17' 19.20" Dec +42d 26' 59.0" (check Simbad for Zwicky Cluster 8193)

Actually, this is a brown dwarf. The article doesn't mention it, but a link in the article has the following:

Basic data :
2MASS J23062928-0502285 -- Brown Dwarf (M0.08solMass)

In particular, is it possible that a particularly dense portion of the Oort cloud has slipped between the star and us?

The time series for the Kepler observations is about 1400 days long. In that time the precession of the equinoxes will have moved the putative Oort clump 190 arcsec across the sky. Within that radius SIMBAD finds 6 other catalogued stars, including 2 other KICs (which were monitored for variations). These don't show such variations ... so, your hypothesis has to do some special pleading to repeatedly vary this star, and not others in the same field of view.

We really have no idea what's in the Oort cloud or how it's distributed.

We expect it to obey the laws of gravity (such clustering will either collapse or disperse rapidly, making them extremely unusual), and to closely follow the laws of statistics.

If you were to ever try to solve a real MSA problem by hand, you would quickly understand how completely hopeless it is.

Nope nope nope. From scratch, perhaps it looks daunting. But the big parts are actually pretty easy. I should stress that BAliBASE is used as a benchmark for new alignment programs, including MultiZ (which, btw, is actually a little old now.)

Why not a public database of ALL the known celestial objects? It could be like a web service where you send it parameters, such as coordinate range, magnitude, object type, etc, and a CSV or XML list comes back.

I wonder how many library-of-congresses that is?

Something like Simbad? The interface is tedious (but powerful), the amount of data and maps/photos is enormous.

It exists, or close enough[*] - it's called SIMBAD:

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/

* - new objects are added all the time, so it takes a while for that information to make it into SIMBAD

I've looked a bit this morning and can't find anymore info about the star itself. What its apparent magnitude it? What constellation its in? Etc.
All I can figure out is its referred to as Kepler 22 which only makes sense in relation to the program. But I'd love to be able to try and see the star through a telescope.

Go to the exoplanet encyclopedia website instead of a place that headlines "Psychics and Missing Babies -- Dissecting the Blame Game" and "Top Tips from 2011 to Help Earth, Economy: Photos"

http://exoplanet.eu/star.php?st=Kepler-22

Son of a B, e.eu has got nothing. Simbad's got nothing. There is nothing at all other than it exists and there are press releases all over along with fluffy talk about the release. But even the "official record" has nothing. Give it time and it'll get populated. Heck by the time you read this, e.eu might have data.

This is what Kepler-16 looks like on simbad, someday we'll have this level of data for -22

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=Kepler-16

I donno what a simbad is, a friend of mine went around calling it "sinbad" like the sailor for a while. Which is probably a cooler name, at least in the US.

But why speculate. The cited Arxiv entry gives you the star's several names ; SIMBAD then gives you the rest:
Yes, we're talking about flare stars, which is right ; M5 sounds good. 6-7 mag sounds good ... "distance" is given as 4pc, and the source for that is Astron. J., 132, 866-872 (2006) - 27.07.06 25.08.09 August 2006 "Identification of new M dwarfs in the solar neighborhood. " ... nothing in the abstract about distance methods (for 1078 objects, including our object of interest).

[SIGH] and that says "We have estimated the distances for our stars using the absolute magnitudes derived from relations (2) and (3). The uncertainties in the distances are on the order of 37%. Nearly half of our stars lie within 50 pc. There are 41 stars that lie within 10 pc. We have the distances measured from parallax for 12 of these, 3 of which are greater than 10 pc."

Ah, right, I see.
There are a number of relationships established form a mix of theory and calibration between [various spectral characteristics] and [distance]. Various techniques, various differing estimates ; 37% variation in the estimates (for the 1000-odd set considered). Then for a sub-set, they looked at parallax data and found that only 1/4 of the subset are appreciable overestimates. So they're not terribly bad estimates. But that 37% variation should be remembered.

they'd find it was a more typical, brighter red dwarf, further away.

"brighter" means a higher absolute magnitude. Which also means either a greater surface area, or a higher surface temperature. In either case you're not talking about a red dwarf. I'm not sure how you'd detect the "greater surface area" case ... but given that they're looking at flare stars, then they would probably be looking at stars with brightness variations (which would mitigate against larger stars). The "higher surface temperature" case would clearly show in the spectra, so you could reject (or "put aside for later study") those stars simply at the spectroscopy stage.

I don't know why it's not in Hipparcos. Too dim (doubtful, absolutely) ; too red (possible) ; wrong place (didn't Hipparcos have an orbital error?). But I'm sure that I could find out from the published sources. Given enough time.

12 billion light years away means 12 billion years ago. That water will be scattered asunder by now.

I wonder if a cosmologist could check the validity of that statement because it seems to neglect universe expansion. Looking online at APM 08279+5255, its redshift is 3.911. Plugging that into wolframalpha indicates the the lookback time is 12bn years, but that the "actual" distance at this time is nearly 23.7bn lightyears. Redshift: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/bibobj?2008A%26A...479..703G&APM+08279%2B5255 Wolfram: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=redshift+z%3D3.911&a=FSelect_**LookbackTimeFromRedshift--

So for the southern hemisphere you want to fetch the 6dF catalogue, for the northern, zcat.
The best to get those is using vizier, for instance as two tab-separated file.
zcat -- http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/193 -- select zcat -- select column vh only, this is recessional velocity in km/s
6dF -- http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/249 -- select spectra -- select column z only, this is redshift

You will find conversions between distance, velocity and redshift z in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
The first 2 columns will refer to the RA/Dec. You can plot these directly, or optionally convert into some other coordinate system (e.g. galactic). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_coordinate_system

So for the southern hemisphere you want to fetch the 6dF catalogue, for the northern, zcat.
The best to get those is using vizier, for instance as two tab-separated file.
zcat -- http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/193 -- select zcat -- select column vh only, this is recessional velocity in km/s
6dF -- http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/249 -- select spectra -- select column z only, this is redshift

You will find conversions between distance, velocity and redshift z in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
The first 2 columns will refer to the RA/Dec. You can plot these directly, or optionally convert into some other coordinate system (e.g. galactic). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_coordinate_system

Wikipedia
SIMBAD

Just like folks at Apple realized with their OS X, we in the Linux world, need an alternative to X. I heard that Google Chrome OS will get rid of it entirely. I would like to hear from anyone who disagrees.

Nouveau guys seem to disagree:

http://icps.u-strasbg.fr/~marchesin/nvdri/fosdem1.pdf

• VideoLAN primary mirror - France - Download (HTTP)
• VIA Centrale Reseaux, École Centrale Paris - France - Download (HTTP)
• Twente University - Netherlands - Download (HTTP)
• IRCAM - France - Download (HTTP)
• Université de Strasbourg - France - Download (FTP)
• Cr@ns, ENS Cachan - France - Download (FTP)
• Providence University - Taiwan - Download (FTP)
• Endpoint Corporation - Sweden - Download (FTP)
• Optralan - USA - Download (HTTP)
• Brno University of Technology - Czech Republic - Download (HTTP)
• Brno University of Technology - Czech Republic - Download (FTP)
• Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná - Brazil - Download (FTP)

The NASA Extragalactic Database

and SIMBAD:

(Sorry, no idea what this one stands for -- it's French, but I don't know if it is an acronym or proper name)

I have used Clustal for multiple sequence alignments. There is a gui (ClustalX) and a scriptalbel command line version (ClustalW). Available for all platforms and source included with the download.

Also keep an eye on POY that does direct optimization on sequences. Also available for all platforms with BSD style licence.

For just viewing and manual editing of alignments there is BioEdit. Free, but not open source. Windows only.

For a general sequence assembly/analysis/kitchen sink approach try the Staden Project. Open source and available for Windows, Linux and OSX.

Hope this is useful. I have never worked with protein sequences, but I have done a lot of DNA sequenceing and alignment!

I don't know more about the phenomenon (yet), I just wanted to confirm it and the story you told.

I'm studying nanoscale science (still at the beginning) and we visited the institute where the guy you mentioned is working. He introduced us to the institute and some technical aspects and we were led through the laboratories, which was very interesting.

Of course he told us the story about the misunderstanding, too. Here's the guy: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/ Here are several publications about the phenomenon and other topics: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/pub.html

I don't know more about the phenomenon (yet), I just wanted to confirm it and the story you told.

I'm studying nanoscale science (still at the beginning) and we visited the institute where the guy you mentioned is working. He introduced us to the institute and some technical aspects and we were led through the laboratories, which was very interesting.

Of course he told us the story about the misunderstanding, too. Here's the guy: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/ Here are several publications about the phenomenon and other topics: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/pub.html

Do you mean something like putting the PC in one of these:
http://www-chimie.u-strasbg.fr/~lcoc/Gloves%20box. gif?

For Physics and Astronomy examples (the ones I know the most about) try:
http://arxiv.org/

http://adswww.harvard.edu/

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/ and http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl et al

and now of course http://scholar.google.com/ as well.

For Physics and Astronomy examples (the ones I know the most about) try:
http://arxiv.org/

http://adswww.harvard.edu/

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/ and http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl et al

and now of course http://scholar.google.com/ as well.

Also note that Roque de los Muchachos Observatory at La Palma (where I've been observing) has even better conditions, but the weather at the Roque can get really bad. I've had my share of that too... Too bad Maidanak is a country that has a mad dictator... :-(

Also, I wouldn't call the VLT interferometer "clunky"... It looks impressive to me, but then I have never had any use for it...

Anyway, the conclusion is that we really need space observatories for certain applications, not least to validate ground-based observations.

I'm not an expert on this, but companies like Oracle clearly state that Sun is SMP, as are smaller systems like Dell and HP, whereas systems like Sequent (now IBM) and SGI are NUMA.

Read Sun's own paper I linked to on their site and realise NUMA means non uniform memory access. Plain and simple, Sun's architecture doesn't have uniform access to all memory, hence it is NUMA by definition.

I don't mean to be annoying, but I'm skeptical. However, I'm prepared to be convinced by statistics, and I would find this very interesting. Do you have any?

Well, you weren't very convinced about Sun's stats telling you their system was NUMA... but here is about where Linux started beating Solaris at single threaded stuff (benchmarks of different opterating systems on the same hardware are very difficult to come by on the web).

here is one a bit later. So far we have Linux handily beating Solaris even on SPARC hardware.

here is one fairly recently. (note that Linux and solaris weren't run on the same machine here, or even the same architecture, but I figure the 700 mhz P3 Xeon 1 M is roughly equivalent to the 900 mhz Ultrasparc III 8 Mb cache. Probably the SPARC even has the edge.

Now also just think about why everyone would be out to beat Linux if it is so slow? Why would Sun be trumpeting that Solaris 10's TCP stack is 30% quicker than Linux? Why does Microsoft try to rig all these benchmarks to show NT beating Linux?

Those companies really have the resources and no legal obstacles to do comprehensive testing and benchmarking of their product vs Linux, so if they really are faster, and wanted to show that, they could just publish the comprehensive results to open, reproducable tests. Instead they sneak around sniping here and there when they get the chance...

As I understand it, GenBank is just a catalogue of gene sequences, which is to say, the end results of data analysis. This is equivalent in the astronomy world to a catalogue of galaxies or stars or whatnot (which virtual observatories will also include). Of course you can get new science from such a database, but it's a very different kettle of fish to making available all the raw data that the geneticists used to derive the gene sequences in the first place, which could be even more useful (well, I imagine so, but perhaps it wouldn't be useful at all to other geneticists). So a virtual observatory is not mere hyperbole, IMHO, because it can be used to make what are effectively "new" observations of astronomical objects, as well as datamine previously compiled catalogues (a la GenBank, or in astronomy, NED or SIMBAD).

Erm, well, I'm rambling a bit so I'll shut up now.

It was discovered in 1991 by the brazilian astronomer Kepler de Oliveira Filho

Older references:
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?b ibcode=1998BaltA...7..183K&db_key=AST&high=3af2b23 b0113874 http://www.iowastatedaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/ 1998/05/26/3bf43e3e0d51a?in_archive=1
http://www.joiabr.com.br/curiosidades/jconline.htm l

According to Simbad, 37 Gem has a parallax of about 50 milliarcseconds; this data is from the Hipparcos satellite. In other words, it's about 17 parsecs (56 light years) away.

No doubt, the inhabitants of 37 Gem are listening with interest to our broadcast stations from 1947. Perhaps they consider World War II a big "reality TV" show.

• ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/gnuwin/
• http://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gnuwin/
• http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/gnuwin.epfl.ch/iso/
• http://www.pctip.ch/downloads/dl/22197.asp
• http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnuwin2/iso/
• ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnuwin2/iso/
• ftp://ftp.is.co.za/mirrors/GnuWin/
• http://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/windows/gnuwin/
• http://khazad.dyndns.org/pub/win32/
• http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/iso/

We would appreciate new mirrors, especially outside Europe. Thanks to several European Mirrors the load of our server has drastically dropped, but is still very impressive. Have a look at the stats: http://mapc77.epfl.ch/gnu-generation/statistics/gn uwin/

So if you have 650MB spare on a fast server we would be happy if you could mirror the ISO image.

Link to us if you find GNUWin II useful. Also talk about it to your friends, famlily and of course on the internet.

Experience suggests that the scans will be of mediocre quality (missing some pages, missing parts of other pages, frequently having insufficient contrast to be legible, and losing any colour or greyscale information present in the originals).

Really? I think most astronomers would disagree, the ADS has scanned a significant fraction of the back catlogue of astronomical journals. While most of the journals now publish electronic editions as well as paper most of these only go back to the mid to late 90's, online access to the back catalogue is amazingly useful for research. A full list of back catalogue of journals they provide access to is here as you can see they've scanned some of them all the way back to the 1880's or 90's. Scan quality is uniformly good, I've yet to find a badly scanned journal article and I' use this service every day.

Experience suggests that the scans will be of mediocre quality (missing some pages, missing parts of other pages, frequently having insufficient contrast to be legible, and losing any colour or greyscale information present in the originals).

Really? I think most astronomers would disagree, the ADS has scanned a significant fraction of the back catlogue of astronomical journals. While most of the journals now publish electronic editions as well as paper most of these only go back to the mid to late 90's, online access to the back catalogue is amazingly useful for research. A full list of back catalogue of journals they provide access to is here as you can see they've scanned some of them all the way back to the 1880's or 90's. Scan quality is uniformly good, I've yet to find a badly scanned journal article and I' use this service every day.

Australia

ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brisbane)
Austria

ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Vienna)

ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Vienna)
Belgium

ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Costa Rica

ftp://ftp.ucr.ac.cr/pub/Unix/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Czech Republic

ftp://ftp.cesnet.cz/OS/Linux/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2 /i586/ (Brno)

ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)

ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Dist/Mandrake/m andrake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)
Denmark

ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Koebenhavn)

ftp://ftp.sunsite.dk/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aalborg)
Estonia

ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Finland

ftp://ftp.song.fi/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Espoo)
France

ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Nancy)

ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Angers)

ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake /8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/pub/linux/distributions/man drake/8.2/i586/ (Strasbourg)

ftp://linux.ups-tlse.fr/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Toulouse)
Germany

ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Esslingen)

ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.fh-giessen.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Giessen)

ftp://ftp.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/pub/os/linux/mandrak e/dist/8.2/i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Goettingen)

ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Muenster)

ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Munchen)

ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Chemnitz)

ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Clausthal)

ftp://ftp.uasw.edu/pub/os/linux/mandrake/dist/8.2/ i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (bayreuth)

ftp://ftp.uni-kassel.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Kassel)

ftp://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/systems/linux/mandrake/8 .2/i586/ (Mannheim)

ftp://ftp.vat.tu-dresden.de/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

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ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aachen)
Greece

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ftp://ftp.edisontel.it/pub/Mandrake_Mirror/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/
Latvia

ftp://ftp.latnet.lv/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Netherlands

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ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Wageningen)
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Portugal

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ftp://tux.cprm.net/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Russia

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
Singapore

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Slovakia

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Spain

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Sweden

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ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dalarma)
Switzerland

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ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Turkey

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United Kingdom

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United States

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ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Wisconsin)

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Illinois)

ftp://mirrors.ptd.net/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Pensylvania)

ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/

ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/ftp.mandr akesoft.com/pub/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Hampshire)

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Hawaii)

http://mandrake.dsi.internet2.edu/Mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (For Internet2 academic institutions only)

Here's an interesting paper on the same subject...

...and if you still believe in habitable zones, like most of the astronomical community, there are some interesting papers talking about habitable zones in the systems with known extra-solar planets. For instance...

• Can terrestrial planets exist in the habitable zones of known exoplanetary systems?
• The stability of the orbits of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of known exoplanetary systems

Here's an interesting paper on the same subject...

...and if you still believe in habitable zones, like most of the astronomical community, there are some interesting papers talking about habitable zones in the systems with known extra-solar planets. For instance...

• Can terrestrial planets exist in the habitable zones of known exoplanetary systems?
• The stability of the orbits of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of known exoplanetary systems

Europa does have very likely evidence of a liquid ocean, but the article then uses that to 'assume' of living creatures there (bac). How can there be?

While I would be the first to argue that we have no proof of life, the martian meteorites not withstanding, Europa is probably our "best bet" to find it inside our own solar system.

For instance have a look at these papers from the AAS DPS meeting,

• Infrared spectra of extremophile bacteria under Europan conditions and their astrobiological significance
• Europa, Convection, Tidal Heating, and Astrobiology

or even

• Europa's Habitability follows from Classical Dynamical Astronomy

Europa does have very likely evidence of a liquid ocean, but the article then uses that to 'assume' of living creatures there (bac). How can there be?

While I would be the first to argue that we have no proof of life, the martian meteorites not withstanding, Europa is probably our "best bet" to find it inside our own solar system.

For instance have a look at these papers from the AAS DPS meeting,

• Infrared spectra of extremophile bacteria under Europan conditions and their astrobiological significance
• Europa, Convection, Tidal Heating, and Astrobiology

or even

• Europa's Habitability follows from Classical Dynamical Astronomy

Europa does have very likely evidence of a liquid ocean, but the article then uses that to 'assume' of living creatures there (bac). How can there be?

While I would be the first to argue that we have no proof of life, the martian meteorites not withstanding, Europa is probably our "best bet" to find it inside our own solar system.

For instance have a look at these papers from the AAS DPS meeting,

• Infrared spectra of extremophile bacteria under Europan conditions and their astrobiological significance
• Europa, Convection, Tidal Heating, and Astrobiology

or even

• Europa's Habitability follows from Classical Dynamical Astronomy

This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...

• Probable asteroidal origin of the Tunguska Cosmic Body
• Atmospheric Entry of Tunguska-like Meteoroids: 2D Numerical Model
• On the nature of the Tunguska meteorite

I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.

This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...

• Probable asteroidal origin of the Tunguska Cosmic Body
• Atmospheric Entry of Tunguska-like Meteoroids: 2D Numerical Model
• On the nature of the Tunguska meteorite

I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.

This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...

• Probable asteroidal origin of the Tunguska Cosmic Body
• Atmospheric Entry of Tunguska-like Meteoroids: 2D Numerical Model
• On the nature of the Tunguska meteorite

I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.

This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...

• Probable asteroidal origin of the Tunguska Cosmic Body
• Atmospheric Entry of Tunguska-like Meteoroids: 2D Numerical Model
• On the nature of the Tunguska meteorite

I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.

This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...

• Probable asteroidal origin of the Tunguska Cosmic Body
• Atmospheric Entry of Tunguska-like Meteoroids: 2D Numerical Model
• On the nature of the Tunguska meteorite

I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.

Also the qouted gigaton of mass loss is not really that much. The Sun has 2x10^30 kg, and loses 5x10^9 kg per second (one from solar wind, four more from conversion of mass into the radiated energy). So one gigaton is just 200 seconds of normal mass loss.

Yeah, really fscking long ones; plus they've got this vertical oscillation. I think Sol's orbit is 200 MYears and the oscillation is 26 MYears. It's thought there may be some correlation between mass extinctions here on earth and when we go through the thickest part of galaxy.

The periodicity of the Sun's vertical oscillation is closer to 30Myr, but appart from that you're correct. See for instance Rampino (1997) in the Journal of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, or Rampino et al. (1997) in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

For a more popular slant, and a slightly more famous name, you could also have a look at Shoemaker (1999) in the Annual Review Of Earth And Planetary Sciences (Yes, that Shoemaker, as in Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9).

Yeah, really fscking long ones; plus they've got this vertical oscillation. I think Sol's orbit is 200 MYears and the oscillation is 26 MYears. It's thought there may be some correlation between mass extinctions here on earth and when we go through the thickest part of galaxy.

The periodicity of the Sun's vertical oscillation is closer to 30Myr, but appart from that you're correct. See for instance Rampino (1997) in the Journal of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, or Rampino et al. (1997) in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

For a more popular slant, and a slightly more famous name, you could also have a look at Shoemaker (1999) in the Annual Review Of Earth And Planetary Sciences (Yes, that Shoemaker, as in Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9).

Never mind the whole thing, I'd settle for some ribosomal RNA sequences that I could compare with other existing rRNA sequences from the public databases. It'd be a simple matter to grab some sequences from The Ribosomal RNA Project database, align them with a sequence from this bacteria in ClustalX, and then generate a phylogenetic 'tree' with fastDNAml, which gives a nice, simple representation of how closely related the sequences are to each other.

It's fun to do. At least, I think so, but then again, I'm a sick puppy.

As for COM, it is a gift from god. COM and DirectX are two technologies sorely missing from Linux. However, CORBA and COM are two entirely different beasts. Wheras COM is a (relativly) simple API, CORBA is quite a beast. Look at the two APIs.

The GNOME team is working to develop Bonobo to address the problems of Corba. From what I have read, the interface is very similar to COM (I haven't used COM before). It essentially just acts as a wrapper for CORBA.

As for using CORBA in the Gnome environment, the GNOME team has developed Gnorba, a wrapper for Corba. Gnorba simplifies things by using GOAD to launch servers. From what I understand, the GNOME team is encouraging people to develop with Bonobo instead of Gnorba.

Now that the components are there, people just need to develop applications to take advantage of them.

disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan. picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. ev en if th e parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)

It sounds kind of strange, yes. However, they didn't say they found I-129, just that they found some I isotopes and lots of Xe-129. Now, I guess it might be possible to make some a priori assumption on the relative abundance of isotopes of I and deduce it from there. A ADS search for Whitby says that he has been using I-Xe dating a lot lately. I failed to find a reference to the cited work, however. But of course, it is wise to remain skeptical, we will see if this will be accepted eventually.

is in progress since the beggening of the 80's, when AT&T was still monopolistic and When lucent technologies where still named bell labs.
they use to conduct such research has explained here. On the ability to send ultra short pulse at the speed of light, pushing thus the ability to send data faster. 5remmebre at that time sending mail from the US to france meant you knew the path with all interconnecting nodes and you needed to belllabs!princeton!leeds!amsterdam!jussieu )

This is what I mean. From the Orbit Beginners Documentation FAQ

Does ORBit work with other ORBs?

Yes. This is one of the primary features of CORBA, and available through the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP). There is one pitfall: ORBit has a proprietary security mechanism to authenticate clients. If interoperability is desired then you might have to figure out a work around for this.

If large ammounts of not only interstellar but intergalactic hydrogen exist out there, it may eliminate the need for "dark matter" in explaining the continued expansion of the universe.

If there wasn't an appreciable amount of intergalactic hydrogen out there, my thesis would have been very dull indeed, since it hinged on imaging the distribution of high-temperature (around 10^9K) electrons trapped in the gravity well found in clusters of galaxies. There the group I was working with used radio interferometry techniques to produce maps of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect like this one . This matter can also be 'seen' by it's effect on gravitational lensing, where the additional matter affects the strength of the lensing. So the presence of this ionized hydrogen is well known - those electrons had to come from somewhere! Using highly ionized oxygen as a tracer for fully ionized hydrogen is the interesting step here, and I hope they have some really solid connection between the two because this entire publication rests on the assumption that oxygen is accurately tracing the hydrogen.

There is a bias in astronomy that unless you prove it in the optical wavelengths you haven't proved it at all, and this looks like one of those announcements.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes