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Submission + - Tatooine was likely orbiting in the same plane as its twin suns

The Bad Astronomer writes: A new study by astronomers of binary stars shows that exoplanets orbiting them (circumbinary planets) will orbit in the same plane as the stars if the two stars are relatively close together. If the stars are farther apart, the planets may have a perpendicular (polar) orbit around them. This study looked at the protoplanetary disks of dust and gas around binaries to draw this conclusion. Extrapolating to fiction, this means Tatooine in Star Wars was coplanar with its host stars.

Submission + - Remember that 70-solar-mass black hole announced last week? Yeah, not so much.

The Bad Astronomer writes: Last week, scientists announced the discovery of a stellar-mass black hole with 70 times the Sun's mass, far heftier than theory predicts they can get. Within days, though, four separate papers have come out casting extreme doubt on the claim. They show that the data weren't processed correctly, and that the black hole is closer to Earth than first assumed, which changes the calculations and makes it a more normal 5 — 20 solar mass object.

Comment It's too late for nuclear... (Score 1) 569

The biggest issue with nuclear isn't safety (at least in the G20). The biggest issue is development and deployment time. If we started a massive nuclear plant building program, the first plants would be coming on-line in 15 to 20 years. In the meantime we will have had to build solar, wind, and hydro to fill in the gap. Long term, nuclear can be part of the mix. But energy solutions need to arrive faster than nuclear can.

Submission + - Nearby star is Sun's long-lost sibling

The Bad Astronomer writes: A nearby star, HD 186302, was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas the Sun was 4.6 billion years ago. Astronomers have found it has an almost identical chemical composition as the Sun, is on a similar orbit around the Milky Way, and has the same age (within uncertainties). Interestingly, it's only 184 light years away, implying statistically many more such stars are waiting to be discovered.

Submission + - Supermassive black hole rocketing out of distant galaxy at 5 million mph

The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a supermassive black hole barreling out of its home galaxy at 5 million mph. The 3 billion solar mass behemoth formed from the merger of two slightly smaller black holes after two galaxies collided and themselves merged. The resulting blast of gravitational waves is thought to have been asymmetric, causing a rocket effect which launched the resulting black hole away. It's currently 40,000 light years from the galaxy's core.

Comment Re:About time NASA gets back to Fundamentals... (Score 0) 667

So exactly who is paying you Anonymous Cowards to claim it will just be moved to NOAA? There's no evidence to that effect, and plenty of statements from Lord Trump and his mouthpieces to indicate that no money will be spent on climate change research in the future.

Comment Re:HAHAHAH (Score -1, Flamebait) 667

You apparently didn't notice that Trump was elected by a minority of the voters, the Republicans in the House of Representatives were elected by a minority of the voters, and the Republicans in the Senate were elected by a minority of the voters.

It's not surprising. Authoritarians rarely have much regard for the will of the majority. But minority rule can't last for long. The real majority will have its way, one way or another.

Welcome to permanent minority status, white man. You'd better hope the majority doesn't treat you as badly as you treated them when you had power

Comment Re:HAHAHAH (Score 3, Informative) 667

You do realize that most of what you posted is a lie, right? Of course you do. Lying is what you do.

The earth has been cooler for the entire period during which anything resembling human beings evolved. Antarctica wasn't in its current position when it was warmer than it is now. And, without human carbon releases the planet maintains a relatively temperate climate over long periods of time through the action of the carbonate-silicate cycle. Of course when you dig up half a billion years worth of stored organic carbon and burn in in a century, the carbonate-silicate cycle ain't gonna fix that.

And of course, continuing to release more CO2, that's your fault, not mine.

NASA is doing climate research because 4 decades of political leaders decided NASA should be doing climate research. If you are deluded enough to think Trump is just going to move things around to NOAA rather than eliminating inconvenient research, you deserve what you get. Good luck with that.

Comment This isn't a victory for Behring-Breivik. (Score 3, Insightful) 491

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

Submission + - Names That Break Computers (bbc.com)

Thelasko writes: The BBC has a story about people with names that break computer databases.

When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again.

These people are real life Bobby Tables.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to deal with persistent and incessant port scanner

jetkins writes: What would you do if your firewall was being persistently targeted by port scans from a specific group of machines from one particular company?

I run a Sophos UTM9 software firewall appliance on my home network. Works great, and the free Home Use license provides a bunch of really nice features normally only found on commercial-grade gear. One of those is the ability to detect, block, and report port scans, and under normal circumstances I only get the occasional alert when some script kiddie comes a-knocking at my door.

But in recent months I have been getting flooded with alerts of scans from one particular company. I initially reported it to my own ISP's (RoadRunner's) abuse desk, on the assumption that if they're scanning me then they're probably scanning a bunch of my neighbors as well, and any responsible ISP would probably want to block this BS, but all I ever got back was an automated acknowledgement and zero action.

So I used DNS lookup and WHOIS to find their phone number, and spoke with someone there; it appears that they're a small outfit, and I was assured that they had a good idea where it was coming from and that they would make it stop. Indeed, it did stop a few days later but then it was back again, unabated, after another week or so. So last week I called them again, and was once again assured of a resolution. No dice, the scans continue to pour in.

I've already blocked their subnet at my firewall, but the UTM apparently does attack detection before filtering, so that didn't stop the alerts. And although I *could* disable port scan alerts, it's an all-or-nothing thing and I'm not prepared to turn them off completely.

This afternoon I forwarded the twenty-something alerts that I've received so far today, to their abuse@ address with an appeal for a Christmas Miracle, but frankly I'm not holding out much hope that it will have any effect.

So, Slashdotters, what should I do if this continues into the new year? Start automatically bouncing every report to their abuse address? Sic Anonymous on them? Start calling them every time? I'm open to suggestions.

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