Bacteria From Beer Lasts 553 Days In Space

An anonymous reader writes "Some specific bacteria colonies from Beer (the place, not the beverage) left for several days outside the ISS actually survived extreme temperatures, UV and other radiations, lack of water and all the like. They were later brought back to Earth for examination: such resistant bacteria may be the base of life support systems or bio-mining on colonies off Earth, and of course for terraforming, eventually. No clue in the article about how dangerous those bacteria might have become after the exposure or when they'll start eating their examiners."

Comments

Look How Small the Internet Is

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

People tend to view the internet as this vast bazaar of millions of sites and voices. But images like this show just how homogeneous and centralised the majority of the net really is. Over a third of this images is taken up by perhaps 50 sites/conglomerates. That's less than the amount of channels you get on subscription television.

Faced with this image, the net neutrality debate is brought into focus. This is the image Telcos see when they think of the internet. All they care about is what happens with these large icons, and how much these icons are paying. What happens to the dotted paste in the background is of least concern to them. If their actions change the consistency, quality or effect of that paste, they won't care. Only the top 1000 or so companies actually matter in the scheme of things. This is the same image Advertisers see as well.

And in a sense, they are right if this image is to be believed. At least, if your thinking is centred on the actions of mass populations over individuals. Personally, I feel this image is getting more homogenised as time goes by and that if we look at the same image ten years from now that dotted paste will have shrunk to a thin layer surrounding perhaps less than 200 large icons. And of course, Google will take up 2/3 of it.