Our Top Story Tonight | Solar Dynamics Observatory First Light April 22, 2010 | 1 | YoctoNewton Detector Smashes Force Measurement Record
April 08, 2010 | The International System of Units (SI) has illuminated scientific measurement since 1795 when the first six SI prefixes were introduced. These ranged from mega (10^6) to milli (10^-6) and served scientists well for almost two hundred years. In 1960, however, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures which standardises and regulates the system, decided that a greater range of prefixes were needed and introduced the tera (10^12), giga (10^12), nano (10^-9) and pico (10^-12) prefixes. Since then, this organisation has introduced various new prefixes at either end of the scale culminating with the introduction of the yotta (10^24) and yocto (10^-24) prefixes in 1991. These most recent prefixes have yet to be widely used but that looks set to change with the announcement today by Michael Biercuk and buddies, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder Colorado, that they've built a device capable of detecting yoctonewtons. |
| 2 | A trick of the light
Apr 15th 2010 | THREE centuries have passed since the polymath Sir Christopher Wren predicted that "a time will come when men will stretch out their eyes—they should see planets like our Earth." By most astronomers’ accounts, that time is just about nigh. Indeed, detecting big planets orbiting other stars is no longer tricky—nearly 450 such exoplanets have been catalogued. Smaller, rocky planets orbiting at a comfortable distance from their stars—as the Earth does—remain more elusive. Most exoplanets have been discovered by inferring their presence from the rhythmic wobble their gravity imparts on their home star—like a waltz between two dancers of markedly different weights. The problem is that this method favours the discovery of large planets close to their stars. As a result, the catalogue of planets is filled with "hot Jupiters", huge bodies baking brightly in the light of their sun. | 3 | News Flash: Cassini Captures First Movie of Lightning on Saturn Nancy Atkinson
| | NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured images of lightning on Saturn, allowing the scientists to create the first movie showing lightning flashing on another planet. "Ever since the beginning of the Cassini mission, a major goal of the Imaging Team has been the detection of Saturnian lightning," said team leader Carolyn Porco in an email. Porco said the ability to capture the lightning was a direct result of the dimming of the ringshine on the night side of the planet during last year's Saturn equinox. "And these flashes have been shown to be coincident in time with the emission of powerful electrostatic discharges intercepted by the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave experiment," Porco added. The sound in the video approximates the electrostatic discharge signals detected by the instrument. "The process of electrostatic discharge and lightning production is tied to the motions of electrically charged particles and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere," Porco said, "and the same is believed to be true for the atmospheres of the giant planets. Measuring the power of lightning strikes in a planetary atmosphere can tell of the energy contained in the thunderstorms that spawn them and of the vigor of the atmospheric motions." | 4 | Behind the Air Force's Secret Robotic Space Plane Sharon Weinberger
| When the engines of a 19-story Atlas V ignite in April at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the liftoff will look like any other for the workhorse launch vehicle. After about 4 minutes, the engines will cut off and the rocket's first stage will fall away, freeing the second stage to boost the upper section of the rocket into low Earth orbit. Away from prying eyes, the mission will cease to be ordinary. A few seconds after the second stage fires, the fairing, a protective shroud that surrounds the cargo at the rocket's tip, will split in half, revealing the classified payload: a 29-foot-long delta-wing spacecraft called the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. It might look like a miniature version of the space shuttle, but this spacecraft is unmanned, and instead of NASA, the U.S. Air Force is operating it. The moment the X-37B emerges from the shroud will mark the fulfillment of a dream the Department of Defense has been pursuing for nearly 50 years: the orbital flight of a military vehicle that combines an airplane's agility with a spacecraft's capacity to travel in orbit at 5 miles per second. At the end of its maiden trip, which could last days or even weeks, the X-37B will glide to Earth under robotic control without the benefit of engines. Instead, it will rely on flight-control surfaces in the tail to steer it through a fiery re-entry, during which the nose and leading edges of the wings must resist 3000-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures. The flight will end in secrecy with a 230-mph touchdown on an isolated runway at an Air Force base in California, most likely Vandenberg. If all goes well, the X-37B will be the first unmanned space plane to complete an orbital mission. | 5 | Visualizing Science
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| Here are some of the winning photographs and illustrations from the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge: | 6 | Commodore 64 may come back as Warren Beatty The C64 is dead. Long live the C64 Cade Metz 15th April 2010 | When the Commodore 64 returns from the dead, it may not be called the Commodore 64. In mid-March, a company calling itself Commodore USA unveiled what appeared to be a new incarnation of the iconic early-80s machine. "You fell in love then. Fall in love again," the site said as it dissolved from an image of the original Commodore 64 to a slightly-less-retro machine with, yes, a built-in keyboard. According to the site, this apparent reincarnation of the Commodore would include not a mere 64 kilobytes of memory, but a 64-bit quad-core processor - plus Gigabit Ethernet, a DVD-RW drive, and a 500GB hard disk. The site - which has a retro look of its own - said the machine would debut in June, and according to Barry Altman, the man behind the company, it's still set for a June arrival. But when Altman originally launched the site, he didn't have the rights to the Commodore name. And now he says the company has merely secured the temporary right to use the name as he negotiates a more complete deal. And if he does secure the rights, he's not quite sure the machine will be called the Commodore 64. | 7 | Samsung issues warnings about 3-D TV
April 15, 2010 | Pregnant women, drunk people and "those who are sleep deprived" should not watch 3-D television because of potential health issues, electronics manufacturer Samsung says on its Web site. The company also says people at risk for stroke or epileptic seizures should consult a medical professional before watching TV in three dimensions. Samsung and Panasonic began selling the first 3-D TVs in the U.S. last month. | 8 | 20 Open Source Programs To Maximize Your Windows Experience D Salmons 13/04 - 2010 | The words "Open Source" and "Linux" go together like "Microsoft Office" and "Windows" – some things just naturally flow. However, open source programs on a Windows operating system is not as commonly thought of, even though it is more popular than you may think. DRAWING AND IMAGES GIMP is probably the widest known and used open source imaging program. The ever capable GIMP can be favorably compared to the expensive industry standard Photoshop. There is a learning curve to using GIMP, but lots of videos and tutorials on the web will show you how to get the most out of it. | 9 | The Entertainment Industry's Dystopia of the Future April 14th, 2010 Richard Esguerra | We're not easily shocked by entertainment industry overreaching; unfortunately, it's par for the course. But we were taken aback by the wish list the industry submitted in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's request for comments on the forthcoming "Joint Strategic Plan" for intellectual property enforcement. The comments submitted by various organizations provide a kind of window into how these organizations view both intellectual property and the public interest. For example, EFF and other public interest groups have asked the IPEC to take a balanced approach to intellectual property enforcement, paying close attention to the actual harm caused, the potential unexpected consequences of government intervention, and compelling countervailing priorities. The joint comment filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others stands as a sharp contrast, mapping out a vision of the future where Big Media priorities are woven deep into the Internet, law enforcement, and educational institutions. | 10 | How to get the best cell phone service possible Yardena Arar April 13, 2010 | Verizon Wireless's "Dead Zone" ads may be creepy, but they capture the essence of a problem familiar to many cell phone users: When you're indoors, even within your carrier's coverage area, the network's signal sometimes simply isn't strong enough to support voice calls or data services. A slew of products now address the problem--but they don't come cheap. The signal-boosting products generally fall into one of two categories: femtocells or signal repeaters. Both types of equipment can deliver strong signals within buildings, but they work in fundamentally different ways. Femtocells act as miniature cell phone towers that connect to a home network router and use your wired broadband connection to move voice calls and data services to and from your carrier's network. Femtocells don't rely on the carrier's towers at all, but because they use technology that can direct data and calls back to the carrier networks over the Internet, most of them are sold by the carriers themselves. | 11 | Cat Brain Inspires Computers of the Future Charles Q. Choi 16 April 2010 | Electronic devices that mimic how brain cells in a cat work could allow computers to one day learn and recognize information more like humans do. Such brain-like devices might accomplish more complex decisions and perform more tasks simultaneously than conventional computers are capable of, researchers added. "We are building a computer in the same way that nature builds a brain," said researcher Wei Lu, a computer engineer at the University of Michigan. Microchips typically rely on transistors, which are essentially switches that can flick on or off to represent data as the binary digits or bits 0 and 1. | 12 | Why America's Telecom System Stinks Paul Venezia Apr 19, 2010 | I had a cathartic experience last week courtesy of Lawrence Lessig, legendary open source champion and Harvard law professor. Though the choice of Lessig as keynote speaker at Storage Networking World in Orlando was odd -- he wasn't going to be talking about storage, after all -- he delivered an electrifying speech on broadband, Net neutrality, God, the universe, and everything. Suffice it to say, I was fired up. After the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision last week to overturn the FCC's authority to enforce Net neutrality, I was peppered with requests for a response, probably because I've taken a hard line defending Net neutrality before. I should have had something to say, but a thousand obligatory words decrying the court's decision seemed pointless. I figured a response would come to me eventually, and it did -- about 60 seconds into Lessig's talk. | |