Slashdot Mirror

PerlJedi writes "Most nations with nuclear power capabilities have been re-assessing the risk/benefit of nuclear power reactors following the Fukushima plant melt down, a newly released study suggests the U.S. should expand its nuclear power production using 'Small Modular Reactors'. 'The reports assessed the economic feasibility [PDF] of classical, gigawatt-scale reactors and the possible new generation of modular reactors. The latter would have a generating capacity of 600 megawatts or less, would be factory-built as modular components, and then shipped to their desired location for assembly.'"

First time submitter StatureOfLiberty writes "The California Near Space Project launched a high altitude weather balloon from San Jose, California 4:00 PM local time Sunday afternoon (Dec 11). Over the past 3 days it managed to cross the United States and then the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon passed the coastline of Spain about 12:40 AM (US Eastern Standard Time) Wednesday morning (Dec 14). It has since popped and landed in the Mediterranean Sea. This is a huge accomplishment. The previous distance record was about 3,300 miles. This one traveled about 6,200 miles. Enthusiasts tracked the balloon via the web throughout most of the trip thanks to a ham radio technology called APRS which received data transmitted by the balloon and logged it to databases on the internet. Thanks to APRS stations around the world (some of whom changed their normal listening frequencies to help with the tracking process) data was available for most of the flight."

An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA has announced they have 'open-sourced' their new CUDA compiler so that their GPGPU platform can be brought to new architectures. NVIDIA's CUDA compiler is based upon LLVM. At the moment though they seem to be restricting the source code's access to 'qualified' individuals.' The official press release implies wider access to the source will happen later. It so happens that a few days ago AMD opened their OpenCL backend and added initial support to the Free Software r600 driver.

An anonymous reader writes "Jimbo Wales has suggested that English Wikipedia restrict its services for a period to protest against the anti-piracy SOPA bill in the United States. This follows a similar action by the Italian Wikipedia last month." Reader fiannaFailMan points out another bit of Wikipedia news: they've taken the wraps off a prototype for a new visual editor. A sandbox is available to try out. The Wikimedia Foundation hopes easier, more intuitive editing will shore up waning contributor numbers.

gotfork writes "As some Russians protest the results of the recent election, several commentators (Russian), have started looking at the results which are posted to the election commission web site and there's very strong evidence of fraud. Voter turnout correlates strongly with percent voting for the ruling party, United Russia, and there are a lot of polling stations with nearly 100% turnout and 100% voting for United Russia in some unusual places. The raw data is posted so you can do your own analysis."

judgecorp writes "Quantum dots are small semiconductors, whose properties are defined by their size and shape. British nanotechnology firm Nanoco has found they are ideal for displays, allowing the possibility of screens that can be rolled up — and which also use far less of the hazardous chemicals found in normal screens." In addition to being Cadmium free (a problem in the EU where the exemption for Cadmium in displays expires in 2014), they directly emit light using less power than traditional filtered color LCDs.

New submitter yukiloo writes "An early Christmas treat for the ordinary Joe who is stuck with a Christmas list that he cannot afford and is running out of time comes from two mathematicians (Evangelos Georgiadis, MIT, and Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers) and a computer scientist (Shalosh B. Ekhad). In their paper 'How to gamble if you're in a hurry,' they present algorithmic strategies and reclaim the world of gambling, which they say has up till recently flourished on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm by some sugary discrete code that could make us hopefully richer, if not wiser. It's interesting since their work applies an advanced version of what seems to be the Kelly criterion."

Hugh Pickens writes "Retuers reports that the world's No. 1 online social network is preparing for a blockbuster initial public offering that could create thousands of millionaires as Facebook employees past and present begin hatching plans on how to spend their anticipated new wealth. 'There's been discussions of sort of bucket list ideas that people are putting together of things they always wanted to do and now we'll be able to do it,' says one former employee who expects his shares to be worth $50 million and is planning to book a trip to space with Virgin Galactic that would cost $200,000 or more. 'It's been a childhood dream.' Another group of Facebook workers has begun laying the groundwork for its own jungle expedition to excavate a relatively untouched site of Mayan ruins in Mexico that sounds like Raiders of the Lost Ark. But for many of Facebook's staffers, the IPO will provide the means to pay off school loans and buy a house or new car and many homeowners and real-estate agents are eagerly anticipating a surge of new buyers that could push prime real estate to new heights. 'If a Facebook guy buys a house and wants to remodel it, maybe the contractor will buy another car,' says Buff Giurlani. 'Maybe the realtor will put a car in. There's a trickle-down effect.'"

bmsleight writes "Android is nice, but I do not want to pay to print or be beholden to the cloud to do everything or chroot. I just want a tablet that can run a MythTv-client, OpenOffice.org and good old apt-get instead of an app market. I have a Joggler — which costs £60 — I'd like something similar but with a battery, a bigger screen, and other modern tablet features. So, what's the best tablet for running a real GNU/Linux distribution (ideally Debian)? Bonus points for the best apt-get-able distribution that works with a tablet."

wisebabo writes "So here's a proposal by NASA to send landers to Europa to look for life. They are sending two landers because of the risks in landing on Europa. They got that right! First is the 500 million mile distance from the Sun, which will probably necessitate RTGs (Juno uses solar panels, but they are huge) and will cause at least an hour of lag time for communications. Then there is the intense gravitational field of Jupiter, which will require a lot of fuel to get into Jovian and then Europan orbit. (It's equivalent to traveling amongst the inner planets!) The radiation in space around Jupiter is tremendous, so the spacecraft may need to be 'armored' like Juno. Landing on Europa is going to be crazy; there aren't any hi-res maps of the landing areas (unlike Mars) and even if there were, the geography of Europa might change due to the shifting ice. Since there is no atmosphere, it'll be rockets down all the way; very expensive in terms of fuel — like landing on the Moon. Finally, who knows what the surface is like; is it a powder, rock hard, crumbly or slippery? In a couple respects, looking for life on Titan (where we've already landed one simple probe) would be a lot easier: dense atmosphere, no radiation, radar mapped from space, knowledge of surface). If only we could do both!"

wisebabo writes "So here's a proposal by NASA to send landers to Europa to look for life. They are sending two landers because of the risks in landing on Europa. They got that right! First is the 500 million mile distance from the Sun, which will probably necessitate RTGs (Juno uses solar panels, but they are huge) and will cause at least an hour of lag time for communications. Then there is the intense gravitational field of Jupiter, which will require a lot of fuel to get into Jovian and then Europan orbit. (It's equivalent to traveling amongst the inner planets!) The radiation in space around Jupiter is tremendous, so the spacecraft may need to be 'armored' like Juno. Landing on Europa is going to be crazy; there aren't any hi-res maps of the landing areas (unlike Mars) and even if there were, the geography of Europa might change due to the shifting ice. Since there is no atmosphere, it'll be rockets down all the way; very expensive in terms of fuel — like landing on the Moon. Finally, who knows what the surface is like; is it a powder, rock hard, crumbly or slippery? In a couple respects, looking for life on Titan (where we've already landed one simple probe) would be a lot easier: dense atmosphere, no radiation, radar mapped from space, knowledge of surface). If only we could do both!"

Gaygirlie writes "Ars Technica has posted an interesting article about new findings regarding quantum physics and photosynthesis. Their excerpt for the article: 'Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis. Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it has been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.' Here's a little background info for those unaware of what coherence and quantum coherence are."

Gaygirlie writes "Ars Technica has posted an interesting article about new findings regarding quantum physics and photosynthesis. Their excerpt for the article: 'Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis. Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it has been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.' Here's a little background info for those unaware of what coherence and quantum coherence are."

ScuttleMonkey writes "A joint venture between Intel and Micron has given rise to a new 128 Gigabit die. While production wont start until next year, this little beauty sets new bars for capacity, speed, and endurance. 'Die shrinks also tend to reduce endurance, with old 65nm MLC flash being rated at 5,000-10,000 erase cycles, but that number dropping to 3,000-5,000 for 25nm MLC flash. However, IMFT is claiming that the shrink to 20nm has not caused any corresponding reduction in endurance. Its 20nm flash uses a Hi-K/metal gate design which allows it to make transistors that are smaller but no less robust. IMFT is claiming that this use of Hi-K/metal gate is a first for NAND flash production.'"

Orome1 writes with a summary of a large survey of web applications by Veracode. From the article: "Considered 'low hanging fruit' because of their prevalence in software applications, XSS and SQL Injection are two of the most frequently exploited vulnerabilities, often providing a gateway to customer data and intellectual property. When applying the new analysis criteria, Veracode reports eight out of 10 applications fail to meet acceptable levels of security, marking a significant decline from past reports. Specifically for web applications, the report showed a high concentration of XSS and SQL Injection vulnerabilities, with XSS present in 68 percent of all web applications and SQL Injection present in 32 percent of all web applications."

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)."

Hugh Pickens writes "The magnitude-9.0 Tohoku-Oki temblor, the fifth-most powerful quake ever recorded, triggered a tsunami that doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power at landfall, as seen in data from NASA and European radar satellites that captured at least two wave fronts that day, which merged to form a single, double-high wave far out at sea. This wave was capable of traveling long distances without losing power. Ocean ridges and undersea mountain chains pushed the waves together along certain directions from the tsunami's origin. 'It was a one-in-10-million chance that we were able to observe this double wave with satellites,' says study team member Y. Tony Song. 'Researchers have suspected for decades that such 'merging tsunamis' might have been responsible for the 1960 Chilean tsunami that killed about 200 people in Japan and Hawaii, but nobody had definitively observed a merging tsunami until now.' The study suggests scientists may be able to create maps that take into account all undersea topography, even sub-sea ridges and mountains far from shore to help scientists improve tsunami forecasts."

TechCrunch features an article (the first of three, actually) outlining the development of a clever hardware keyboard for the iPad. It's hard to write about Kickstarter projects, because there are so many cool ideas that seem to deserve funding it's simply overwhelming. The TouchFire keyboard is one of those cool ideas, too, but it's far surpassed the founders' original funding goals and is nearing production. The TouchFire isn't wired, but it isn't wireless, either, in the conventional sense, because it provides no signal of its own: it's a transparent overlay that provides a tactile interface to the iPad's on-screen keyboard, and — the tricky part — is thin enough to actually swipe through when you're not using it for text-entry. The keyboard takes advantage of the iPad 2's built-in magnets for stability, though it works with the original iPad, too. (Hopefully an Android version will come soon, but the variety of screen resolutions and on-screen keyboard shapes makes that harder.) I talked with co-creator Steve Isaac (it's his account at TechCrunch, too) a few weeks back, and he said that the hardest part of the development work has been producing the complex mold shapes that form each collapsible key. The resulting tablet-with-keyboard reminds me superficially, and pleasantly, of the TRS-80 Model 100. (The Tandy actually had much better battery life than an iPad, but could do far less. It also weighed 3.1 pounds and cost more than a thousand dollars in 1983, which means nearly $2400 today; such is progress.) Prototypes are tight (and I don't have an iPad), but I hope to give an in-person report on the TouchFire soon.

mask.of.sanity writes "Thieves have made off with $45k after they intercepted a victim's two factor online banking codes used to verify large transactions. The scammers got the Australian executive's mobile number from his daughter, and work place details from his willing secretary. Armed with this data, they bluffed Vodafone which ported his phone number, meaning the criminals could verify the bank's two factor verification codes generated during their spending spree and the victim never knew a thing."

ananyo writes "Research in human cells shows that proteins called septins are able to build cages around pathogens to prevent them from infecting other cells. According to the researchers, the newly discovered defense system could lead to new therapies for diseases. The microbes trapped in the cage are later broken down by the cell."

Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Heusser writes that when he went to work for Google all the people he met had a sort of early-twenties look to them. 'Like the characters in Microserfs, these were "firstees," young adults in the middle of the first things like life: First job out of college, first house, first child, first mini-van,' writes Heusser. 'This is what struck me: Where were the old dudes?' and then he realized something very important — you get fifteen years. 'That is to say, your half-life as a worker in corporate America is about age thirty-five. Around that time, interviews get tougher. Your obligations make you less open to relocation, the technologies on your resume seem less-current, and your ability find that next gig begins to decrease.' By thirty-five, half the folks who started in technology have gone on to something else — perhaps management, consulting, on to roles in 'the business' or in operations. 'Yet a few stick it out. Half of the half-life is fifty, and, sure, perhaps 25% of the folks who started as line technologists will still be doing that when they turn fifty,' adds Heusser. 'But by the time you turn thirty-five, you'd better have a plan.'"

After years of beautiful concept cars, envy-inspiring demos, and missed production targets starting in 2008, high-efficiency car startup Aptera is liquidating its assets. A pointed excerpt from Wired's account: "The truth is, Aptera always faced long odds and has been in trouble for at least two years. The audience for a sperm-shaped, three-wheeled, electric two-seater was never anything but small. It didn’t help that production of the 2e — at one point promised for October 2009 — was continually delayed as Wilbur ordered redesigns to make it more appealing to the mainstream. Aptera had a small window in which to be a first mover in the affordable EV space, and that window closed the moment the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt hit the market. At that point, Aptera teetered on the brink of irrelevance." As a compulsive driver, I had been hoping to one day drive one of these to save gas money.

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.

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."

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."

theodp writes "Steve Jobs took the secret to his grave, but Stanislav Datskovskiy offers some interesting and illustrated speculation on why HyperCard had to die. 'Jobs was almost certainly familiar with HyperCard and its capabilities,' writes Datskovskiy. 'And he killed it anyway. Wouldn't you love to know why? Here's a clue: Apple never again brought to market anything resembling HyperCard. Despite frequent calls to do so. Despite a more-or-less guaranteed and lively market. And I will cautiously predict that it never will again. The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world. One where the distinction between the "use" and "programming" of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure. A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone. A world in which Apple's walled garden aesthetic has no place.' Slashdotters have bemoaned the loss of HyperCard over the past decade, but Datskovskiy ends his post on a keep-hope-alive note, saying: 'Contemplate the fact that what has been built once could probably be built again.' Where have you gone, Bill Atkinson, a nation of potential programmers turns its lonely eyes to you."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, Europe's Largest IT Company, wants a 'zero email' policy to be in place in 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful, and that staff spend between 5-20 hours handling emails every week. 'The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool,' says Breton. 'The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.' Instead Breton wants staff at Atos to use chat-type collaborative services inspired by social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter as surveys show that the younger generation have already all but scrapped email, with only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds using it. For his part Breton hasn't sent a work email in three years. 'If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message. Emails cannot replace the spoken word.'"

patiwat writes "Thailand has warned Facebook users that they could face 3 to 15 years in jail if they press 'share' or 'like' on images or articles considered unflattering to the Thai monarchy. And it doesn't just apply to Thai subjects: a U.S. citizen was arrested and convicted while visiting Thailand for posting a link to an unauthorized biography of King Bhumibol on his blog. Convictions for virtual lese majeste have sky-rocketed in recent years as efforts to defend the widely revered royal family from criticism have ramped up."

patiwat writes "Thailand has warned Facebook users that they could face 3 to 15 years in jail if they press 'share' or 'like' on images or articles considered unflattering to the Thai monarchy. And it doesn't just apply to Thai subjects: a U.S. citizen was arrested and convicted while visiting Thailand for posting a link to an unauthorized biography of King Bhumibol on his blog. Convictions for virtual lese majeste have sky-rocketed in recent years as efforts to defend the widely revered royal family from criticism have ramped up."

MightyMartian writes "The company I work for has just had their government contract renewed, which is good news, giving me several more years of near-guaranteed employment! However, in going through all the schedules and supplementary documents related to the old contract, which we will begin winding down next spring, we've discovered some pretty stiff data remanence requirements that, for hard drives at least, boil down to 'they must be sent to an appropriately recognized facility for destruction.' Now keep in mind that we are the same organization that has been delivering this contract all along, so the equipment isn't going anywhere. What's more, destruction of hard drives means we have to buy new ones, which is going to cost us a lot of money, particular with prices being so high. I've looked at using encryption as a means of destroying data, in that if you encrypt a drive or a set of files with an appropriately long and complex key, and then destroy all copies of that key, that data effectively is destroyed. I'd like to write up a report to submit to our government contract managers, and would be interested if any Slashdotters have experience with this, or have any references or citations to academic or industry papers on dealing with data remanence without destroying physical media?"

MrSeb writes with this excerpt from an article in Extreme Tech: "Light-emitting diodes are a cornerstone of consumer tech. They make thin-and-light TVs and smartphones possible, provide efficient household, handheld, and automobile illumination, and, of course, without LEDs your router would not have blinkenlights. Thanks to some engineers from MIT, though, a new diode looks set to steal the humble LED's thunder. Dubbed a diode for light, and crafted using standard silicon chip fabrication techniques, this is a key discovery that will pave the path to photonic (as opposed to electronic) pathways on computer chips and circuit boards. The diode for light — which is made from a thin layer of garnet — is transparent in one direction, but opaque in the other. Garnet is usually hard to deposit on a silicon wafer, but the MIT researchers found a way to do it."

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.)

angry tapir writes with this excerpt from Tech World: "Researchers from German security firm Recurity Labs have released a JavaScript implementation of the OpenPGP specification that allows users to encrypt and decrypt webmail messages. Called GPG4Browsers, the tool functions as an extension for Google Chrome and now is capable of working with GMail." A quick gander at the source leaves me with the impression that it should be more or less portable to other browsers. It's also built using a lot of off-the-shelf Javascript libraries. (Who knew Javascript had a bignum library and a number of cipher implementations?)

itwbennett writes "In a court filing, Oracle accused HP of secretly contracting with Intel to keep making Itanium processors so that it can continue to make money from its locked-in Itanium customers and take business away from Oracle's Sun servers. Oracle says that Intel would have long ago killed off Itanium if not for these payments from HP. For its part, HP called the filing a 'desperate delay tactic' in the lawsuit HP filed against Oracle over its decision to stop developing for Itanium."

bs0d3 writes "Bradley Manning has finally been scheduled for a day in court. On December 16, he will have an Article 32 hearing (military pre-trial). Private Manning has been in jail for one and half years. The Article 32 hearing will begin at Fort Meade, Maryland. The primary purpose of the hearing is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government's case, as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery. Further trial dates and locations are still unknown."

eldavojohn writes "In the grand scheme of things, antibiotics are a very temporary solution to aid humans in combating bacteria. Bacterial resistance to said antibiotics is an increasing fear and DARPA's 'Rapidly Adaptable Nanotherapeutics' solicitation reveals they're interested in a more permanent solution as modifying the genes of harmless bacteria can result in powerful bioweapons. Like siRNA, DARPA is hoping for more nanomolecules that can specifically target cells and deliver medicine to them anywhere in the body. Most amazing about this proposal is that it's aimed at small businesses and hopes to turn a process that takes decades to study a new antibiotic into a few weeks to manufacture nanomedicine to specifically target bacteria."

bs0d3 writes "Parents are being sold on the idea of buying DNA tests for their kids, to find out which sports they will be better at. The company called Atlas is based in Boulder, Colorado; and is selling DNA tests for $160. They are looking for what's called the ACTN-three gene, the gene behind what is called 'fast-twitch explosive muscles.' Children that don't have ACTN-three will be better suited for endurance sports like long distance running or swimming. Children that have a lot of it will be better suited for sports like football, rugby, wrestling, or hockey. Kids that have some ACTN-three will not be the fastest and not the slowest, they don't burn out the quickest and they don't last the longest. They are categorized as capable of playing just about any type of sport they like."

gbrumfiel writes "For forty years, the Higgs boson has remained a theoretical construct, but by Christmas, scientists may have a pretty good idea of whether it's real or not. Nature News reports that a new analysis has further narrowed the Higgs range, and data gathered this autumn at the LHC should be enough to show a faint signal from a Higgs, if it's there. (Already one signal has disappeared earlier in the year.) Physicists hope to finish their analysis of the autumn data by the year's end, but even if they come up empty-handed it won't be the end of the story. The Higgs is commonly referred to as the particle that endows others with mass, but its real appeal is the ability to unify the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. If there is no Higgs, some other mechanism for creating a unified 'electroweak' force should be found inside the LHC."

stuckinarut writes "NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created. From the article: '"Our new topographic view of the moon provides the dataset that lunar scientists have waited for since the Apollo era," says Mark Robinson, Principal Investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera from Arizona State University in Tempe. "We can now determine slopes of all major geologic terrains on the moon at 100 meter scale. Determine how the crust has deformed, better understand impact crater mechanics, investigate the nature of volcanic features, and better plan future robotic and human missions to the moon."'"

New submitter PerlJedi writes "There is a very cool write up on the Make blog about an effort to build the world's largest tesla coils. Quoting: '"Somehow lightning can generate huge discharges with only about a fifth of the voltage per foot that lab discharges require," Leyh explains. "The part that especially fascinates me is that this mysterious ability kicks in around 200' in length, which is right at the edge of what we can produce with a practical machine." Leyh wants to see if humans can replicate this voltage economy effect, and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the building of two 10-story Tesla Coil towers (obviously superseding his current coil-size world record).'"

MojoKid writes "At the supercomputing conference SC2011 yesterday, Intel announced its new Xeon E5 processors and demoed their new Knights Corner many integrated core (MIC) solution. The new Xeons won't be broadly available until the first half of 2012, but Intel has been shipping the new chips to a small number of cloud and HPC customers since September. The new E5 family is based on the same core as the Core i7-3960X Intel launched Monday. The E5, while important to Intel's overall server lineup, isn't as interesting as the public debut of Knights Corner. Recall that Intel's canceled GPU (codenamed Larrabee) found new life as the prototype device for future HPC accelerators and complementary products. According to Intel, Knights Corner packs 50 x86 processor cores into a single die built on 22nm technology. The chip is capable of delivering up to 1TFlop of sustained performance in double-precision floating point code and operates at 1 — 1.2GHz. NVIDIA's current high-end M2090 Tesla GPU, in contrast, is capable of just 665 DP GFlops."

An anonymous reader writes "id Software is still planning to release the Doom 3 source this year, but it's been delayed by a patent issue that's causing John Carmack to personally rewrite some of the code. The patent issue in Doom 3 concerns the Carmack's Reverse algorithm and has led Carmack to rewrite it in the open-source Doom 3."

holy_calamity writes "Technology Review has an update on a screen technology from Qualcomm called Mirasol that delivers LCD-like colors and video but sips power like e-ink. Demonstration Android tablets with 5.7 inch Mirasol displays apparently held up well in bright light and were responsive enough for gaming. Qualcomm are in the process of building a $1 billion new factory to make the screens, which should appear in devices from phone and tablet makers next year."

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica reports on the developing story between the RIAA and music reseller ReDigi, 'the world's first online marketplace for used digital music,' who first came online with a beta offering on October 11th, 'allowing users to sell "legally acquired digital music files" and buy them from others "at a fraction of the price currently available on iTunes.'' If the notion of selling 'used' digital content is challenged in court, we may finally receive a judicial ruling on the legality of EULAs that will overturn the previous Vernor v. Autodesk decision."

First time accepted submitter Red_Chaos1 was the first to write with news that, as of around 06:30 UTC, the NYPD appears to have begun removing the encampment of Occupy Wall Street. At 06:34 UTC the Mayor's office issued a tweet declaring: "Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared." Around 07:15 UTC the first of several large dumpsters were deposited and the police began throwing tents and other debris into it. Reports also indicate that a Long Range Acoustic Device is on the premises. The police are using helicopters and physical barriers to prevent news coverage, but the Occupiers are streaming the events (alternative stream; #occupywallstreet on irc.indymedia.org is also rather active for those who don't fancy flash or twitter.) As of 09:15 or so, the situation according to those near NYC is that the park has more or less been cleared.

RulerOf writes "A few years ago, my girlfriend's grandfather was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. Ever since, he has had progressively more trouble with daily activities. While his wife and family are able to help him with most things, at the age of 88 and without many living friends left, he dearly misses the ability to read printed text. He was able to get by for some time with magnifying glasses and other basic aids but now even those do not help. Recently, a local clinic which specializes in treatment for low-sight and blind individuals made him aware of and showed him several assistive reading devices that successfully allowed him to read. He mentioned this to his family members, and when I was told about it, I thought that these devices sounded like they were not much more than a camera attached to an LCD monitor or television with a little bit of special software thrown into the mix." (Read on below for more.) RulerOf continues: "Some investigation online turns up products such as these, and their prices are so prohibitively high ($2400-$3000) that the manufacturer won't even list them on their website. Furthermore, the effects that these devices can apply to the pictures they output look awfully similar to the effects filters built into many webcams, and the ability to zoom and pan a live view of the screen is something that I've done effortlessly for years on OS X, and that I know exists in many Linux desktop environments. My current plan is to try to build something like this with a used Mac Mini, a Logitech HD Webcam with a full-screen view of the camera always up, and a Magic Trackpad to control zoom level and screen position, plugged into a huge LCD TV that he already owns. Have any of you ever built something like this? Am I wrong in thinking that the ease of use would be comparable to the purpose-built devices when configured correctly? Is this something that might work better with a newer nettop device, a digital camera or camcorder, and Windows (where I'm skilled at automating things) or Linux at the core instead?"

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?

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?

bs0d3 writes "Schools nationwide, including The University of Missouri and Washington University, are snapping up .xxx domain names to avoid people making porn sites with their names in the url. The new .xxx domain will be launched later this year, and before that, everyone with a trademark will have the opportunity to reserve names during what's called a "sunrise period". Someone is promoting the possible horrors of what could happen as a way to sell these domains, which cost up to $200 dollars per domain per year. Even though these schools may already be protected from defamation and trademark infringement, they still feel compelled to buy these names."

theshowmecanuck writes "The Telegraph has an article talking about the 60th anniversary of The Lyons Electronic Office I (LEO I), complete with an old video from the mid '50s about LEO II. The LEO I was the first major computer business system. It was installed at a large catering company in the U.K. named J. Lyons and Co. that operated a chain of tea shops among other business interests. So, blame them or praise them, November 17, 2011 will mark 60 years since the day in 1951 that the Brits started the age of business computing. All hail our tea- and biscuit-powered computer overlords."