Slashdot Mirror
Domain: upi.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to upi.com.
Stories · 104
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Russia Loses Inflatable Spacecraft
Treeluvinhippy writes: "This article is a little light on details, but it looks like the Russians lost the Demonstrator-2 spacecraft. For those who don't know this craft was the inflatable launched from a submarine. Slashdot has the scoop of the launch right here" -
Bringing Echelon In From the Cold
An anonymous reader writes: "UPI columnist James C. Bennett says that governments are going to spy no matter what. So he suggests that it would be better to admit that Echelon exists, and formulate some reasonable guidelines on such spying, than to pretend that it doesn't and let governments go about their business without any scrutiny. Interesting suggestion. But who will watch those watchers? And who will watch them? " -
Studying Black Holes in the Lab
Alien54 writes: "As seen in this UPI Report, Lab-created "dumb holes" - the acoustic, or sound wave analogs of black holes - may provide important experimental evidence for quantum gravity, a theory that unifies atomic and gravitational forces. Dumb holes arise when fluids flowing faster than the speed of sound form regions that trap sound waves. They too have a surface of no return -- the "acoustic horizon". While black holes remain interstellar objects, researchers can create dumb holes (Sonic Black Holes) in a laboratory. Dumb holes that trap sound waves may yield experimental evidence used to understand quantum gravity because these acoustic black holes exhibit all the characteristics - paradoxes included - of their light-wave brethren. well not quite all. For one thing, sonic black holes do not involve gravity and distortions of space and time." -
The Eyes Have It
Feelgood writes: "Yahoo is carrying a Reuters report that thermal imaging may be used in airports to detect liars. Shouldn't be a problem that 1 out of 4 liars will get away and 1 in 10 innocents will be incorrectly nailed." There's a UPI story about the lie detector possibilities and a blurb in Nature. From the UPI article, the inventor has a good appreciation of the ethical considerations. Will anyone else care?