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Arvisp writes:
As predicted, the a "mega-filament" of solar magnetism erupted on Dec. 6th, producing a blast of epic proportions. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action as the 700,000-km long structure lifted off the stellar surface and--snap!!--hurled itself into space.
The eruption produced a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by the STEREO-A spacecraft: video. Earth was not in the line of fire; the cloud should sail wide of our planet. Earth-effects might be limited to pretty pictures.
Some nice pictures in the article
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Arvisp writes:
British designer Stuart Hughes, 38, of Liverpool, was commissioned to make two of the bespoke handset by a mega-rich Australian businessman.
The handset is wrapped in more than 500 individual flawless cut diamonds totalling 100 carats.
It features two interchangeable diamonds which fit over the 'home' button — a single cut 7.4 carat pink diamond and a rare 8 carat single cut flawless diamond which are together worth more than £4 million.
The back of the phone is plated in rose gold and the Apple logo glitters with 53 diamonds.
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Arvisp writes:
Finally Skype released official android version. Allows calling via 3G and WiFi.
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Arvisp writes:
Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity.
The most recent so-called "solar minimum" occurred in December 2008.
Its drawn-out nature extended the total length of the last solar cycle — the repeating cycle of the Sun's activity — to 12.6 years, making it the longest in almost 200 years. The new research suggests that the longer-than-expected period of weak activity may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun.
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Arvisp writes:
Astronomers at the American Ivy League universities discovered the youngest known star in the Perseus star-forming region, about 800 light-years or more than 4700 trillion miles away from the Milky Way. Despite its tiny size, scientists believe they caught the precise moment the star, called L1448-IRS2E, was formed born. It is the most detailed glimpse of a star’s birth to date.
They took an extraordinary image of it using Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope. It has “just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust” and only detected the faint light after it was emitted by the dust surrounding it.
9526576
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Arvisp writes:
The center would be situated in North East England near Billingham and utilize the glacial wind blowing off of England's North sea to lower temperatures of IT equipment and plant rooms.
The Wynyard takes in the cool air, filters it accordingly and collects it in the management system and is then forced over the front of the server racks before it is exhausted. The result is a hall with a constant temperature of 24C. When the winds become even colder than usual, the exhausted heat is mixed with the outside air to maintain temperatures.
8643432
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Arvisp writes:
A group of international scientists this morning announced that they are moving the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" away from midnight — or the figurative apocalypse — but only by one minute.
The clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was designed to reflect how close civilization is to "catastrophic destruction." First set at seven minutes to midnight, the clock has been moved only 18 times since its creation in 1947.
8352224
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Arvisp writes:
In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight.
For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water.
8327632
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Arvisp writes:
According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year.
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Arvisp writes:
New trove of data from the telescope named Kepler has also turned up space oddities that make astronomers wonder what exactly they're looking at.
One of the five planets announced by William J. Borucki, the top scientist for the telescope, is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam,"
7975838
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Arvisp writes:
Scientists have identified a novel antifreeze molecule in a freeze-tolerant Alaska beetle able to survive temperatures below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unlike all previously described biological antifreezes that contain protein, this new molecule, called xylomannan, has little or no protein. It is composed of a sugar and a fatty acid and may exist in new places within the cells of organisms.
