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NASA

Submission + - Nasa: No Fix Needed for Endevavour's Tiles (cnn.com)

bhmit1 writes: "It looks like everyone but slashdot is reporting that no repairs are needed for Endeavour. From the article:

After meeting for five hours, mission managers opted Thursday night against any risky spacewalk repairs, after receiving the results of one final thermal test. The massive amount of data indicated Endeavour would suffer no serious structural damage during next week's re-entry.

Their worry was not that Endeavour might be destroyed and its seven astronauts killed in a replay of the Columbia disaster — the gouge is too small to be catastrophic. They were concerned that the heat of re-entry could weaken the shuttle's aluminum frame at the damaged spot and result in lengthy postflight repairs.
Godspeed Endeavour!"

Sci-Fi

Submission + - German physicists claim faster-than-light speed (scotsman.com)

Byzanthy writes: Two German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light by using "microwave photons". According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any object at more than 299792458m/s. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they did it by using a phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons — energetic packets of light — travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Of course the consequences, if true (!), could be mind blowing [insert time-travel-joke here].

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