Thursday, October 31, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Superbright Supernovas' Cause Potentially Revealed | Space.com
Superbright Supernovas' Cause Potentially Revealed | Space.com
The cause of a mysterious, long-lasting, superbright form of supernova, the most energetic stellar explosion in the universe, may now have been discovered, astronomers say.
Surprisingly, these outbursts may be driven by the birth of magnetars, dead stars that rank among the most powerful magnets in the cosmos, according to a study published online today (Oct. 16) in the journal Nature.
Supernovas result from the deaths of stars. These explosions can briefly outshine all of the other stars in their galaxies. [Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions]
More than a decade ago, scientists first detected a new, extremely rare class of supernova. These incredibly bright explosions, known as superluminous supernovas, are up to 100 times brighter than other types of stellar outbursts.
A number of these explosions fade very slowly, matching theoretical models of what are called pair-instability supernovas. Astrophysicists suspected that within the extremely massive stars thought to give rise to pair-instability supernovas — ones more than 140 times the mass of the sun — conditions are just right for gamma-rays, the highest-energy form of light, to convert into pairs of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, known as positrons.
These gamma-rays normally exert pressure that helps support the star against the crushing effects of its own gravity. However, as gamma-rays get converted to matter, the star loses this support and collapses in on itself. This, in turn, causes a runaway explosion that completely obliterates the star.
Scientists had suggested these slow-fading explosions generate huge amounts of radioactive matter, enough to equal several times the mass of the sun. This debris produces superluminous supernovas' slowly dimming light through radioactive decay, according to the idea.
Now, however, researchers have discovered two superluminous supernovas whose slow-fading light was apparently not generated by radioactive decay. Instead, these supernovas may be caused by a type of explosion that creates extremely magnetic neutron stars known as magnetars.
Astronomers discovered two superluminous supernovas named PTF 12dam and PS1-11ap, which lie about 1.6 billion light-years and nearly 10 billion light-years from Earth, respectively. The light from these explosions was blue in color and increased rapidly to their peaks over the course of about two months, whereas pair-instability supernovas should be redder and increase more slowly.
Computer models suggest explosions that create magnetars could generate the light patterns seen from these newfound supernovas. Magnetars are a kind of neutron star, remnants of dead stars that are only about as large as a city but contain at least as much mass as the sun.
Magnetars possess magnetic fields up to 5,000 trillion times more powerful than that of the Earth. Magnetars that expel glowing matter in vast amounts more than 10 to 16 times the mass of the sun during their births could explain these newfound supernovas, researchers said.
"It was exciting to find such a great match to the predictions of the magnetar model, which also fits most of the fast-declining superluminous supernovas," study lead author Matt Nicholl, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told SPACE.com. "Two types of supernova which previously looked very different can actually both be explained quite nicely by this model."
The brightness and colors of PTF 12dam and PS1-11ap are similar to another recently observed superluminous supernova, SN 2007bi, originally suggested to be a pair-instability explosion. This suggests that pair-instability explosions may be even rarer than before thought, accounting for less than one out every 100,000 supernovas.
SN 2007bi was only thought to be one of a handful of pair-instability supernovas. These new findings could banish pair-instability supernovas back to the realm of theoretical possibility, although they do not rule them out, Nicholl said.
Superbright Supernovas' Cause Potentially Revealed
by Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor | October 16, 2013 01:01pm ET
 |
 A picture of the newfound blue-tinted superluminous supernova PTF 12dam.Credit: Matt Nicholl et al. |
Surprisingly, these outbursts may be driven by the birth of magnetars, dead stars that rank among the most powerful magnets in the cosmos, according to a study published online today (Oct. 16) in the journal Nature.
Supernovas result from the deaths of stars. These explosions can briefly outshine all of the other stars in their galaxies. [Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions]
More than a decade ago, scientists first detected a new, extremely rare class of supernova. These incredibly bright explosions, known as superluminous supernovas, are up to 100 times brighter than other types of stellar outbursts.
A number of these explosions fade very slowly, matching theoretical models of what are called pair-instability supernovas. Astrophysicists suspected that within the extremely massive stars thought to give rise to pair-instability supernovas — ones more than 140 times the mass of the sun — conditions are just right for gamma-rays, the highest-energy form of light, to convert into pairs of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, known as positrons.
These gamma-rays normally exert pressure that helps support the star against the crushing effects of its own gravity. However, as gamma-rays get converted to matter, the star loses this support and collapses in on itself. This, in turn, causes a runaway explosion that completely obliterates the star.
Scientists had suggested these slow-fading explosions generate huge amounts of radioactive matter, enough to equal several times the mass of the sun. This debris produces superluminous supernovas' slowly dimming light through radioactive decay, according to the idea.
Now, however, researchers have discovered two superluminous supernovas whose slow-fading light was apparently not generated by radioactive decay. Instead, these supernovas may be caused by a type of explosion that creates extremely magnetic neutron stars known as magnetars.
Astronomers discovered two superluminous supernovas named PTF 12dam and PS1-11ap, which lie about 1.6 billion light-years and nearly 10 billion light-years from Earth, respectively. The light from these explosions was blue in color and increased rapidly to their peaks over the course of about two months, whereas pair-instability supernovas should be redder and increase more slowly.
Computer models suggest explosions that create magnetars could generate the light patterns seen from these newfound supernovas. Magnetars are a kind of neutron star, remnants of dead stars that are only about as large as a city but contain at least as much mass as the sun.
Magnetars possess magnetic fields up to 5,000 trillion times more powerful than that of the Earth. Magnetars that expel glowing matter in vast amounts more than 10 to 16 times the mass of the sun during their births could explain these newfound supernovas, researchers said.
"It was exciting to find such a great match to the predictions of the magnetar model, which also fits most of the fast-declining superluminous supernovas," study lead author Matt Nicholl, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told SPACE.com. "Two types of supernova which previously looked very different can actually both be explained quite nicely by this model."
The brightness and colors of PTF 12dam and PS1-11ap are similar to another recently observed superluminous supernova, SN 2007bi, originally suggested to be a pair-instability explosion. This suggests that pair-instability explosions may be even rarer than before thought, accounting for less than one out every 100,000 supernovas.
SN 2007bi was only thought to be one of a handful of pair-instability supernovas. These new findings could banish pair-instability supernovas back to the realm of theoretical possibility, although they do not rule them out, Nicholl said.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
10 Useful Features Hidden in VLC, The Swiss Army Knife of Media Players
10 Useful Features Hidden in VLC, The Swiss Army Knife of Media Players
10 Useful Features Hidden in VLC, The Swiss Army Knife of Media Players
There’s a good chance you already use the VLC media player. But VLC isn’t just a media player — it’s a complete Swiss Army Knife for digital videos and music, filled with useful and fun features you haven’t found yet.
If you’re just using VLC to play back local media files, you’re only using a tiny fraction of VLC’s capabilities. There’s so much more you can do with VLC, whether you’re using it on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
CreepyDOL system can destroy your privacy for about US$500
CreepyDOL system can destroy your privacy for about US$500
CreepyDOL is a new personal tracking system that allows a user to track, locate, and break into an individual's smartphone (Image: Shutterstock)
Image Gallery (2 images)Brendan O'Connor is an unabashed hacker who has worked for DARPA and taught at the US military's cybersecurity school. CreepyDOL (Creepy Distributed Object Locator), his new personal tracking system, allows a user to track, locate, and break into an individual's smartphone. "For a few hundred dollars," he says, "I can track your every movement, activity, and interaction, until I find whatever it takes to blackmail you."
Privacy is becoming ever more difficult to insure in today's connected world. It is not clear whether it is governments or businesses that are more interested in your innermost secrets, but both have a pretty good handle on most of us. CreepyDOL and similar systems now threaten to make the ability to ferret out a person's private affairs available to anyone with the inclination and a few hundred dollars to spare.
CreepyDOL is a network of sensors that communicates with a data-processing server. The sensor network runs on boxes about the size of a small external hard drive, with each node containing a Raspberry Pi Model A, two Wi-Fi adapters, and a USB hub. Previously developed by O'Connor, these are called F-BOMBs (Falling/Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors) and are sufficiently rugged to be thrown, or even dropped from a UAV. Each F-BOMB costs just over US$50, giving a network of 10 a price of around $500.
The F-BOMBS run software that allows the nodes to communicate with each other, as well as look for Wi-Fi traffic within its detection range. The nodes look for various forms of data, including Dropbox and iMessage data, that can provide information about the user of the smartphone. Some data only reveals that a particular protocol is being used by a particular user, while others may leak a great deal of personal information, including names, pictures, and email addresses. To stay within the law, O'Connor tested CreepyDOL with software settings that made the sensor nodes blind to any but his own smartphones.
All the acquired information is reported back to the data processor, which analyzes, organizes, and stores the personal data. The system includes the ability to display people moving around the area covered by the sensor network in real time.
The impact of CreepyDOL is that it eliminates the idea of "blending into a crowd." If you're carrying a wireless device, CreepyDOL will see you, track your movements, and report home, even if you aren't using it.
O'Connor appears (mostly) to be wearing a white hat in this project. “At some level I’m doing this because it’s interesting, but I’m also doing it to prove that this level of knowledge and detail isn’t only the province of intelligence agencies anymore. If you think that only the government, with millions and billions to blow on watching someone can create this problem for privacy, then we’re not going to solve it.”
On the other hand, his security consultancy Malice Aforethought is selling F-BOMBS to the public. Will CreepyDOL emerge from the hacker underground? Time will tell.
Source: Malice Aforethought
WD announces My Cloud, an external drive that connects to your home network for $150 (video)
WD announces My Cloud, an external drive that connects to your home network for $150 (video)
WD announces My Cloud, an external drive that connects to your home network for $150 (video)
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Fantasy Ink: Bernie Wrightson: The House of Mystery
Fantasy Ink: Bernie Wrightson: The House of Mystery
The best way to start off the Countdown to Halloween is with some classic art by Bernie Wrightson!
House of Mystery #193, August 1971.
House of Mystery #194, September 1971.
House of Mystery #207, October 1972.
House of Mystery #209, December 1972.
House of Mystery #211, February 1973.
Bernie Wrightson: The House of Mystery
The best way to start off the Countdown to Halloween is with some classic art by Bernie Wrightson!
House of Mystery #193, August 1971.
House of Mystery #194, September 1971.
House of Mystery #207, October 1972.
House of Mystery #209, December 1972.
House of Mystery #211, February 1973.
NASA's New Moon Probe Begins Final Leg of Lunar Trek | Space.com
NASA's New Moon Probe Begins Final Leg of Lunar Trek | Space.com
NASA's newest lunar probe is gearing up to begin the final phase of its month-long trek to the moon.
The space agency's LADEE moon dust spacecraft is in its third and final orbit around Earth before moving to the moon, and everything is looking good. The lunar probe launched into space on Sept. 6 to begin its circuitous route to the moon.
LADEE's second burn, designed to take it into a high elliptical orbit, was so "perfect" that the third maneuver planned to take the probe into an even higher orbit will not be necessary, NASA officials wrote in a mission update on Sept. 27. The loveseat-sized probe will make its final close flyby of Earth Tuesday (Oct. 1).
After its last close approach, "LADEE will travel to the point at which it will be captured around the moon using an initial Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI-1) burn of the onboard main engine," Butler Hine, LADEE project manager, wrote. "After that, LADEE will be in lunar orbit."
LADEE's name is pronounced "laddie" and is short for the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. Since the probe began orbiting Earth, scientists on the ground have successfully tested the spacecraft's three science instruments and laser communications experiment. The spacecraft's antenna that will be used to send information to the ground is also functioning well. LADEE is expected to transfer into lunar orbit on Oct. 6.
The healthy instruments will be responsible for investigating some long-standing mysteries about the moon's thin atmosphere and strange dust when it is expected to enter the into moon's orbit on Oct. 6.
The thin atmosphere of the moon represents the most common known kind of atmosphere in the solar system, NASA scientists have said. By understanding the composition of the moon's atmosphere, researchers might be able to more accurately classify the atmospheres of large asteroids, many moon and even small planets like Mercury.
LADEE is also designed to look into a strange glow Apollo astronauts saw on the horizon of the moon before sunrise. The glow may have been created by small dust particles lofted high into the lunar atmosphere, and data collected by LADEE could help scientists nail down an answer to that moon conundrum.
The $280 million LADEE mission launched to the moon atop the first flight of a Minotaur V rocket booster on Sept. 6 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. Once in orbit around the moon, LADEE is expected to perform 100 days of science.
NASA's New Moon Probe Begins Final Leg of Lunar Trek
By Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer | October 01, 2013 07:20am ET
 |
 Artist’s concept of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in orbit above the moon as dust scatters light during the lunar sunset.Credit: NASA Ames / Dana Berry |
The space agency's LADEE moon dust spacecraft is in its third and final orbit around Earth before moving to the moon, and everything is looking good. The lunar probe launched into space on Sept. 6 to begin its circuitous route to the moon.
LADEE's second burn, designed to take it into a high elliptical orbit, was so "perfect" that the third maneuver planned to take the probe into an even higher orbit will not be necessary, NASA officials wrote in a mission update on Sept. 27. The loveseat-sized probe will make its final close flyby of Earth Tuesday (Oct. 1).
After its last close approach, "LADEE will travel to the point at which it will be captured around the moon using an initial Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI-1) burn of the onboard main engine," Butler Hine, LADEE project manager, wrote. "After that, LADEE will be in lunar orbit."
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer will uncover details of the moon's thin atmosphere. See the full LADEE moon dust infographic here.
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist
The healthy instruments will be responsible for investigating some long-standing mysteries about the moon's thin atmosphere and strange dust when it is expected to enter the into moon's orbit on Oct. 6.
The thin atmosphere of the moon represents the most common known kind of atmosphere in the solar system, NASA scientists have said. By understanding the composition of the moon's atmosphere, researchers might be able to more accurately classify the atmospheres of large asteroids, many moon and even small planets like Mercury.
LADEE is also designed to look into a strange glow Apollo astronauts saw on the horizon of the moon before sunrise. The glow may have been created by small dust particles lofted high into the lunar atmosphere, and data collected by LADEE could help scientists nail down an answer to that moon conundrum.
The $280 million LADEE mission launched to the moon atop the first flight of a Minotaur V rocket booster on Sept. 6 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. Once in orbit around the moon, LADEE is expected to perform 100 days of science.
Heck Yes! The First Free Wireless Plan Is Finally Here
Heck Yes! The First Free Wireless Plan Is Finally Here
The First Free Wireless Plan Is Finally Here
FreedomPop, promiser of free data, is finally launching the first actually free service plan into beta today. It comes with free texts, free minutes, and free data. All you have to do is front $100 for a phone.
We first heard about FreedomPop's free wireless service aspirations earlier this year, and now the details and the beta have finally arrived. The biggest piece of the puzzle we were missing until now was the phone: it's aHTC Evo Design 4G WiMAX running Android 4.0. Meh. But it's only $100 and the service is free! Slightly less meh!
As you can probably tell by the name, these handsets slurp up 4G data by piggybacking on Sprint's WiMAX instead of LTE, but Sprint's WiMAX coverage is actually better than its fledgling LTE network, for now. And, the HTC Evo Design is just the first of a few—hopefully better—phones which will be coming (or will at least be announced) later this year.
As for the plan itself, a few things have changed. Users will get 200 free anytime minutes, 500MB of free 3G/4G data, and 500 free texts (as opposed to unlimited, like originally pitched) every month, for free. Free free free. And if that doesn't do it for you, you can get extra data at the price of $.02/MB as you go, or you can pick up packs of 1GB for $10, 2GB for $20, 4GB for $35, or 5GB for $40. And for voice and text, you can go unlimited for $11 a month.
The world is getting pretty crowded with alternate service providers, most piggybacking on Sprint, and each peddling one superpower or another. Republic Wireless has its Wi-Fi and fantastic phone, and players like Zact and Ting have super granular billing. But free? Free service is a serious thing to bring to the table, and this kind of shake-up can only work out well for consumers.
Found: This robot solves a Rubik's Cube in the blink of an eye - TechSpot
Found: This robot solves a Rubik's Cube in the blink of an eye - TechSpot
Found: This robot solves a Rubik's Cube in the blink of an eye
I’ve never been any good at solving a Rubik’s Cube but I do know some people that are. During my last trip to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, I set up an impromptu face-off between the two gurus. It lasted about 20 some-odd seconds and that was that.
That said, neither of those guys would be any match for the robot used in the video you see above. This machine is able to solve the cube in about one second… well, sort of. I suppose the correct term would be that it can implement a solution in that amount of time as it actually takes a bit longer for the robot to scan the cube to work out the correct twists and turns necessary to match all sides.
Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web.
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