Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by abgsiddiq

Windows Phone 7 Is Done

abgsiddiq — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:40:57 +0800

QUOTE

Microsoft's releasing Windows Phone 7 to manufacturing today—in other words, it's done. Final. Complete. Microsoft managed to add a few new bits before shrink-wrapping it, too.

What RTM means is hardware makers and carriers can start finalizing their own plans for Windows Phone 7—tweaking drivers, preparing carrier-specific services for integration, that kind of thing. Gettings things ready to go. What that doesn't mean, however, is that Microsoft is telling us when Windows Phone 7 will actually land in our grippy hands. Octoberish, as previously rumored, still seems like the safe bet.

Microsoft had time to add a handful of new things to the final build, based on feedback from the version I had a chance to review. Nothing monumental—like multitasking, or to some people, copy and paste—but helpful. There's a handful of UI tweaks, to make stuff like search more obvious in the UI. "Discoverable" is Microsoft's word. Aaaaand there's a couple of Facebook add-ons: You can filter out Facebook contacts from your main contact list, ridding it of Facebook contact pollution; you can post to people's walls from their contact card in the People hub; and of course, you can now "Like" things.

What's still missing that we hope we'd see? Built-in Twitter support. The official word now is that it'll have to come from apps. Kind of a letdown. But hey, at least this thing is done. [Microsoft]

HOPEFULLY WINDOWS PHONE 7 DOESNT DISAPPOINT ME!

When a Bullet Slices Through a Water Droplet

abgsiddiq — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:34:17 +0800

QUOTE

For some reason I expected a bit more explosion (thanks, Hollywood!), but these high speed photography shots capture the fantastic moment when a bullet passes through a drop of water, slicing it in half with a bit of a splash.

http://gizmodo.com/5627988/what-it-looks-l...a-water-droplet

The Race to Stellar Formation. Space got Race 2.

abgsiddiq — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:26:57 +0800

QUOTE

Racing is rarely the term that comes to mind when one considers astronomy. However, many events are a race to reach stability before a system flies apart or implodes. The formation of stars from gigantic interstellar clouds is just such a race in which stars struggle to form before the cloud is dispersed. Although a rough estimation of the requirements for collapse are discussed in introductory astrophysics classes (See: Jeans Mass Criterion) this formulation leaves out several elements that come into play in the real universe. Unfortunately for astronomers, these effects can be subtle but significant but untangling them is the subject of a recent paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server.

The Jeans Mass Criterion only takes into consideration a gas cloud in isolation. Whether or not it will collapse will depend on whether or not the density is sufficiently high. But as we know, stars don't form in isolation; They form in stellar nurseries which form hundreds to thousands of stars. These forming stars contract under self gravity, and in doing so, heat up. This increases the local pressure and slows contraction as well as giving off additional radiation that also effects the cloud at large. Similarly, solar winds (particles streaming from the surface of formed stars) and supernovae can also disrupt further formation. These feedback mechanisms are the target of a new study by a group of astronomers led by Laura Lopez from the University of California Santa Cruz.

To investigate how each feedback mechanism operated, the group selected the Tarantula Nebula (aka, 30 Doradus or NGC 2070), one of the largest star forming regions easily accessible to astronomers since it resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region was selected due to it's large angular size which allowed the team to have good spatial resolutions (down to scales smaller than a parsec) as well as being well above the plane of our own galaxy to minimize interference from gas sources in our own galaxy.

To conduct their study, Lopez's team broke 30 Dor into 441 individual regions to assess how each feedback mechanism worked in different portions of the nebula. Each "box" consisted of a column slicing through the nebula that was a mere 8 parsecs to a side to ensure sufficient quality of the data across the entire spectrum since observations were used from radio telescopes to X-ray and used data from Spitzer and Hubble.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team found that different feedback mechanisms played varying roles in different places. Close the the central star cluster (<50 parsecs), radiation pressure dominated the effects on the gas. Further out, pressure from the gas itself played the stronger role. Another potential feedback mechanism was that of "hot" gas being excited by X-ray emission. What the team uncovered is that, although there is a significant amount of this material, the nebula's density is insufficient to entrap it and allow it to have a large effect on the overall pressure. Rather, they described this portion as "leaking out of the pores".

This research is some of the first to observationally explore, on a large scale, many of the mechanisms that have been proposed by theorists in the past. Although such research may seem inconsequential, these feedback mechanisms will have large effects on the distribution of distribution of stellar masses (known as the Initial Mass Function). This distribution determines which the relative amounts of massive stars which help to create heavy elements and drive the chemical evolution of galaxies as a whole.

http://www.universetoday.com/72540/the-rac...llar-formation/

Zambry anggap DAP terdesak

abgsiddiq — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:45:19 +0800

QUOTE

IPOH 1 Sept. – DAP semakin terdesak untuk mengalihkan perhatian rakyat daripada isu penyalahgunaan kepala surat dan cop rasmi milik Exco Selangor, Ronnie Liu dengan mendakwa perkara sama berlaku dalam pentadbiran di Perak.

Menteri Besar, Datuk Seri Dr. Zambry Abd. Kadir berkata, kepala surat dan cop rasmi kerajaan negeri digunakan oleh Pejabat Menteri Besar atau Exco untuk memanjangkan pelbagai surat permohonan rakyat kepada agensi berkaitan untuk diambil tindakan.

Bagaimanapun jelasnya, tiada surat sokongan dikeluarkan untuk permohonan balak dan tanah.

Katanya, perkara itu menjadi amalan di semua pejabat kerajaan termasuk di zaman pakatan pembangkang berkuasa di Perak dan ia bukan penyalahgunaan kepala surat dan cop rasmi kerajaan negeri.

“Ini semua permainan politik Pengerusi DAP Perak, Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham untuk mengaburi mata rakyat dan menutup kesalahan Ronnie di Selangor sehingga menimbulkan krisis besar dalam DAP.

‘‘Saya harap mereka tidak memainkan isu ini kerana adalah menjadi tanggungjawab kita termasuk Exco untuk memanjangkan surat daripada rakyat kepada agensi kerajaan berkenaan untuk diambil tindakan,” katanya selepas mempengerusikan mesyuarat Exco kerajaan negeri di sini hari ini.

Zambry mengulas tindakan Koo Ham mendakwa ada pembantu khas beliau menggunakan kepala surat dan cop rasmi Menteri Besar Perak untuk menyokong kroni mendapatkan tanah.

Ronnie Liu baru-baru ini membuat laporan polis terhadap penyalahgunaan kepala surat dan cop rasminya dengan tujuan menyokong kontraktor untuk memperolehi projek di Selangor.

Pada sidang akhbar itu, Zambry turut mendedahkan surat-surat yang dikeluarkan oleh Pejabat Menteri Besar Perak semasa zaman pemerintahan pakatan pembangkang.

Mengulas lanjut, Zambry menjelaskan, surat yang dikeluarkan oleh Pejabat Menteri Besar Perak atau Exco adalah menggunakan tajuk sama seperti surat permohonan oleh rakyat yang turut dikepilkan bersama.

‘‘Pada setiap Selasa saya berjumpa dengan rakyat dan ada yang menghulurkan pelbagai jenis surat permohonan dan surat itu akan dipanjangkan ke jabatan-jabatan kerajaan untuk diselesaikan.

‘‘Bagi masalah tiada elektrik dan air, saya akan keluarkan arahan segera untuk menyediakan kemudahan tersebut,” katanya.

Dalam pada itu, Zambry mengarahkan sebuah syarikat yang ingin membangunkan kilang simen di atas tanah seluas 272 hektar di Kota Bharu, Gopeng dan Malim Nawar supaya memberi penjelasan kepada penduduk mengenai projek tersebut yang mendapat bantahan sebahagian daripada mereka.

Ditanya kesan projek tersebut terhadap pekebun-pekebun haram di kawasan itu, beliau berkata perkara berkenaan akan dikaji.

‘‘Saya tahu ada pihak tertentu yang mahu menjadi jaguh dalam hal ini tetapi mereka juga yang mempertahankan projek itu semasa mentadbir negeri ini dahulu,” katanya.

http://utusan.com.my/utusan/info.asp?y=201...ik&pg=po_08.htm

Indonesian volcano erupts again

abgsiddiq — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:45:33 +0800

QUOTE

A volcano on the Indonesian island Sumatra that had been dormant for more than four centuries has erupted for the second day in a row.

Mount Sinabung was again spewing out towering clouds of ash on Monday, forcing the evacuation of more than 21,000 people. Some aircraft had to be diverted because of poor visibility.

Villagers living along the slopes of the Sinabung in North Sumatra province have packed up their belongings and headed to emergency shelters, mosques and churches, Andi Arief, a presidential adviser on disasters, said.

Their abandoned homes and crops were blanketed in heavy, grey soot, and the air was thick with the smell of sulphur.

Eruption pattern unknown

Sinabung last erupted in 1600, so observers do not know its eruption pattern and admitted over the weekend that they had not been monitoring it closely before it started rumbling days ago in the lead-up to Sunday's first, less-powerful blast.

The island of Sumatra lies on the fault line of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates that have been pushing against each other for millions of years.

Like other volcanoes along the Sumatra fault line, the Sinabung has the potential to be very destructive, Erick Ridzky, a disaster researcher, said.

A larger blast has the potential to darken skies across the region, he said, affecting air traffic in nearby Singapore and Malaysia.

Already, several domestic flights heading to the provincial capital of Medan had to be diverted, according to Bambang Ervan, spokesman for the transportation ministry.

"The eruptions are very difficult to predict. We don’t have enough data on the volcano," Surono, a government volcanologist who uses only one name, told Al Jazeera.

"We don't know what set it off, how long it will continue or whether we should expect pyroclastic flows or more powerful eruptions."

Thousands evacuated

So far, 21,000 people have been evacuated, Arief said, and food, emergency tents, and medicine were on the way to the scene.

The government also has set up public kitchens for refugees and handed out more than 17,000 respiratory masks.

"The government has done a very good job in evacuating the population around the foot of the volcano," Wayne Ulrich, a Red Cross disaster management co-ordinator, told Al Jazeera.

"These people are being housed in function halls and public buildings. When these people can go home depends on the ash cloud and the volcano’s activity."

Indonesia is spread across 17,500 islands and is prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes because of its location within the so-called Ring of Fire, a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.

It is also home to some of the largest eruptions in recorded history.

The 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa island under searing ash, gas and rock, killing an estimated 88,000 people.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pac...8361474436.html

Venus - Earth Evil Twin

abgsiddiq — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:53:34 +0800

QUOTE

1. Venus really is the Earth's twin.
Well, perhaps you could consider it the Earth's evil twin. Earth and Venus have very similar size and mass, and they orbit the Sun close to the Sun in very similar orbits. The size of Venus is only 650 km less than the size of Earth, and the mass of Venus is 81.5% the mass of the Earth.

But that's where the similarities end. The atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with a runaway greenhouse effect that raises temperatures to 461Â° C. The intense pressure would crush you if you tried to walk on the surface of the planet.

2. Venus can be so bright it casts shadows
Astronomers measure the brightness of objects in the night sky by their magnitude. Only the Sun and the Moon are brighter than Venus. Its brightness can range between -3.8 to -4.6 magnitude, but it's always brighter than the brightest stars in the sky.

It can be so bright that it actually casts shadows. Find a dark night, when the Moon isn't in the sky, and check it out for yourself.

3. The atmosphere is very hostile
As we said earlier above, Venus is like the Earth's evil twin. Although it's similar in size and mass to the Earth, the atmosphere of Venus sets it apart. The mass of the atmosphere is 93 times that of the Earth's atmosphere. If you could stand on the surface of Venus, you would experience 92 times the pressure you have on Earth. This is the same as going nearly a kilometer underneath the surface of the ocean.

And if the pressure doesn't kill you, the heat and toxic chemicals certainly will. Temperatures on Venus can rise to 460Â° C. And there are thick clouds of sulfur dioxide on Venus that rain down sulfuric acid. It really is a hellish place to be.

4. Venus rotates backwards compared to the other planets
Venus rotates very slowly. While a day on Earth takes just 24 hours to complete, a day on Venus is 243 of our Earth days. Even stranger, Venus rotates backwards compared to all the other planets in the Solar System. If you could fly up above the Solar System and then look down at the planets, all of them are turning in a counter-clockwise direction. Except Venus. It's rotating in a clockwise direction.

5. Many probes have landed on the surface of Venus
For such a hellish world, you would think that it would be impossible to land anything on its surface. And you're partly right. During the height of the space race, the Soviet Union launched a series of Venera spacecraft to attempt landings on the surface of Venus. But they underestimated just how nasty the atmosphere can be.

The early spacecraft were crushed as they passed down through the atmosphere. But finally Venera 8 was the first spacecraft to land on the surface of Venus and sent pictures back to Earth. Further missions lasted longer, and even returned the first color images of the surface of Venus.

6. People used to think Venus was tropical
Until the Americans and Soviets sent their first spacecraft to study Venus up close, nobody really knew what was down under the planet's thick clouds. Science fiction writers dreamed up lush tropical jungles. The hellish temperatures and dense atmospheres surprised everyone.

7. Venus has no moons
Once again, Venus looks less and less like our twin. Unlike the Earth, Venus has no moons. Mars has moons, and even Pluto has moons. But Venus… no moons.

8. Venus has phases
Although Venus just looks like a really bright star in the sky, if you can see it with a telescope, you'll see something much different. When looking through a telescope, you can see that Venus goes through phases, like the Moon. When Venus is closest, at its brightest, it actually makes a thin crescent. And then, when Venus is dimmest and furthest away, you see more of a circle.

9. The surface of Venus has few impact craters
While the surface of Mercury, Mars and the Moon are pounded with impact craters, the surface of Venus has relatively few craters. Planetary scientists estimate that the surface of Venus is only half a billion years old. The constant volcanism reshapes the surface, covering over any impact craters regularly.

10. There's a spacecraft there right now.
Many spacecraft have traveled to Venus, but one of the most sophisticated is there right now: Venus Express. The mission was sent by the European Space Agency, and arrived at Venus on April 11, 2006. It will perform a detailed study of the Venusian atmosphere and clouds and will map the planet's plasma environment and its surface.

There you go, I hope you enjoyed these fun facts about Venus.

http://www.universetoday.com/14070/interes...ts-about-venus/

New Underwater Species Off Indonesia!

abgsiddiq — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:37:43 +0800

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JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Scientists using cutting-edge technology to explore waters off Indonesia were wowed by colorful and diverse images of marine life on the ocean floor -- including plate-sized sea spiders and flower-like sponges that appear to be carnivorous.

They predicted Thursday that as many as 40 new plant and animal species may have been discovered during the three-week expedition that ended Aug. 14.

More than 100 hours of video and 100,000 photographs, captured using a robotic vehicle with high-definition cameras, were piped to shore in real-time by satellite and high-speed Internet.

Verena Tunnicliffe, a professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, said the images provided an extraordinary glimpse into one of the globe's most complex and little-known marine ecosystems.

"Stalked sea lilies once covered the ocean, shallow and deep, but now are rare," she said in a written statement. "I've only seen a few in my career. But on this expedition, I was amazed to see them in great diversity."

Likewise, Tunnicliffe has also seen sea spiders before, but those were tiny in comparison, all around one-inch (2.5 centimeters) long: "The sea spiders ... on this mission were huge. Eight-inches (20-centimeters) or more across."

One animal captured on video looks like a flower, covered with glasslike needles, but scientists think it is probably a carnivorous sponge. The spikes, covered with sticky tissue, appear to capture food as it passes by.

Scientists used powerful sonar mapping system and the robotic vehicle to explore nearly 21,000 square miles (54,000 sq. kilometers) of sea floor off northern Indonesia, at depths ranging from 800 feet (240 meters) to over two miles (1.6 kilometers).

The mission was carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ship, the Okeanos Explorer. An Indonesian vessel, the Baruna Jaya IV, also took part, collecting specimens that, together with all rights for future use, will remain in the country.

Confirmation that a species is new involves a scientific peer review and other steps and can take years.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/08/26/...cies-indonesia/

the world is just amazing

M$ Is Dumping "Billions" Of Dollars Into Winmo7

abgsiddiq — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:30:24 +0800

QUOTE

Microsoft seems to be investing quite a bit of cash into the Windows Phone 7 project. In fact, based on what TechCrunch is hearing, they're sinking billions of dollars into the first year for marketing and development.

That number is particularly huge when compared to the $100 million which Jonathan Goldberg, a telecommunications analyst at Deutsche Bank, estimates"that Verizon, Motorola and Google collectively spent on marketing helped turn the Droid line of phones into a serious stable of competitors against the iPhone."

Microsoft has a lot riding on this project, so let's hope all the spending works out well for it.

http://gizmodo.com/5623139/microsoft-is-du...windows-phone-7

Im hoping for the best!

WindowsPhone7 FTW!

Colliding Galaxies Created the First Black Holes

abgsiddiq — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:18:46 +0800

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How were the Universe’s first supermassive black holes formed? A new model of the evolution of galaxies and black holes show collisions show that colliding galaxies likely spawned black holes that formed about 13 billion years ago. The discovery fills in a missing chapter of our universe's early history, and could help write the next chapter — in which scientists better understand how gravity and dark matter formed the universe as we know it.

Following the recent discovery that galaxies formed much earlier in the Universe’s history than previously thought, Stelios Kazantzidis from The Ohio State University and his team created new computer simulations that show the first-ever super-massive black holes were likely born when those early galaxies collided and merged together. This likely happened during the first few billion years after the Big Bang.

"Our results add a new milestone to the important realization of how structure forms in the universe," Kazantzidis said.

Previously, astronomers thought galaxies evolved hierarchically, where gravity drew small bits of matter together first, and those small bits gradually came together to form larger structures.

But the the new models turn that notion on its head.

"Together with these other discoveries, our result shows that big structures — both galaxies and massive black holes — build up quickly in the history of the universe," he said. "Amazingly, this is contrary to hierarchical structure formation. The paradox is resolved once one realizes that dark matter grows hierarchically, but ordinary matter doesn't. The normal matter that makes up visible galaxies and super-massive black holes collapses more efficiently, and this was true also when the universe was very young, giving rise to anti-hierarchical formation of galaxies and black holes."

So, that means that big galaxies and super-massive black holes come together quickly, and smaller bits like our own Milky Way galaxy — and the comparatively small black hole at its center — form more slowly. The galaxies that formed those first super-massive black holes are still around, Kazantzidis said.
The new simulations done on supercomputers were able to resolve features that were 100 times smaller, and revealed details in the heart of the merged galaxies on a scale of less than a light year.

Because of this, the astronomers were able to see two things: First, gas and dust in the center of the galaxies condensed to form a tight nuclear disk. Then the disk became unstable, and the gas and dust contracted again, to form an even denser cloud that eventually spawned a super-massive black hole.

The implications for cosmology are far-reaching, Kazantzidis said.

"For example, the standard idea — that a galaxy's properties and the mass of its central black hole are related because the two grow in parallel — will have to be revised. In our model, the black hole grows much faster than the galaxy. So it could be that the black hole is not regulated at all by the growth of the galaxy. It could be that the galaxy is regulated by the growth of the black hole."

NOW YOU KNOW

North Korea Joins Facebook, Twitter & Youtube

abgsiddiq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:59:17 +0800

QUOTE

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – North Korea appears to have added Facebook to other social networking sites it recently joined to ramp up its propaganda war against South Korea and the U.S.

The account opened late Thursday under the Korean username "uriminzokkiri," meaning "on our own as a nation," an official at South Korea's Communications Standards Commission said Friday.

The account opened hours after the commission blocked North Korea's 1-week-old Twitter account from being accessed in the South for containing information that is illegal under South Korean security laws, the official said.

North Korea's government-run website, Uriminzokkiri, announced last week that it has a Twitter account and a YouTube channel created in July.

The Twitter account, under the name uriminzok ("our nation" in Korean), gained more than 8,500 followers in a week though it posted just 30 tweets linking to reports praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and lambasting South Korea and the U.S. over ongoing joint military drills.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/20/no...utube-accounts/

hahahaha

Mexico drug war blog

abgsiddiq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:45:17 +0800

QUOTE

MEXICO CITY - AN ANONYMOUS, twenty-something blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere - an inside view of their country's raging drug war.

Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story.

Many postings, including warnings and a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to military or police.

The undifferentiated content suggests that all sides are using the blog - drug gangs to project their power, law enforcement to show that it too can play rough, and the public to learn about incidents that the mainstream media are forced to ignore or play down.

In at least one case Blog del Narco may have led to a major arrest - of a prison warden after a video posting detailed her alleged system of setting inmates free at night to carry out killings for a drug cartel.

The mysterious blogger hides his identity behind an elaborate cyber-screen. The Associated Press wrote to the blog's e-mail address, and the blogger called back from a disguised phone number. He said he is a student in northern Mexico majoring in computer security, that he launched the blog in March as a 'hobby,' but it now has grown to hundreds of postings a day and 3 million hits a week. -- AP

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/W...ory_565886.html

Image samples:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

http://www.blogdelnarco.com/

Gay marriage ban lifted

abgsiddiq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:34:06 +0800

QUOTE

SAN FRANCISCO - A US federal judge on Thursday ruled that marriages of same-sex couples may resume next week in California, pending the appeal of his earlier decision that overturned a voter-approved ban on gay matrimony.

The order to allow gay marriage will take effect at 5pm.

The delay was intended to give an appeals court time to consider 'in an orderly manner' whether the ban, known as Proposition 8, should be left intact while it considers the merits of the overall case.

Thursday's ruling left neither side completely happy.

'I think they should have lifted the stay today,' said James Olivera, 58, a gay marriage supporter on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, where couples wishing to wed and their supporters had gathered in anticipation of the ruling.

'God's Holy law has been trampled on by one person,'responded Viktor Choban, 27, a supporter of the ban.

In a ruling that has implications for nearly 40 US states with similar laws on their books, Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled last week that Prop 8 violates due-process and equal-protection rights under the US Constitution. -- REUTERS

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/W...ory_565679.html

FOUR former Bosnian Serb charged over 800 deaths

abgsiddiq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:29:41 +0800

QUOTE

SARAJEVO (Bosnia-Herzegovina) - FOUR former Bosnian Serb army soldiers have been charged with genocide over the killing of at least 800 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in 1995, Bosnia's war crimes court said on Friday.

Franc Kos, Stanko Kojic, Vlastimir Golijan and Zoran Goronja all served with the Bosnian Serb army's 10th commando unit. They have been detained since their arrest earlier this year.

In a statement, the court alleged the accused 'took part in the execution of more than 800 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys from the UN safe area of Srebrenica, who were transported to the execution site at Branjevo Farm'.

Kos, who was born in Slovenia but also had Bosnian citizenship, led the 10th commando unit's First Bijeljina Platoon, and the other three were regular soldiers.

'The ... accused are charged that as co-perpetrators they participated in the killing of Bosnian men and inflicted on them severe physical and mental injuries, all with the aim of destroying, in whole or in part, the national, ethnic and religious group of Bosniaks,' the court statement said.

Bosnian Serb troops killed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys after capturing the UN-protected eastern enclave of Srebrenica in Europe's most serious atrocity since World War Two. -- REUTERS

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/W...ory_565985.html

Jupiter Bombed By Another Meteor

abgsiddiq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:17:04 +0800

QUOTE

Jupiter, our colorfully spotted gas giant neighbor was hit, again, by a meteor on Friday. The brief flash, which astronomers now think may happen a bit more frequently than previously thought, was captured on film by amatuer astronomer Masayuki Tashikawa:

Follow-up observations by Hubble, et al, have determined this is most likely a legit impact, albeit one that will not leave a blackened scar like the well-documented impact from July 2009.

Further observations may be necessary to confirm beyond a doubt that this was indeed an impact and not some earth-bound satellite reflecting sunlight, but for now astronomers—professonal, amateur or otherwise—are fairly optimistic that is was.

[YOUTUBE]jIkr86xKcwQ[/YOUTUBE]

Survey, need help. scarlett vs zoey

abgsiddiq — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:28:06 +0800

which one? help.

THIS IS SCARLETTTTTTTTTTTTT

THIS IS ZOEYYYYYYYYYY

will be closed whithin 6 hours.

thanks for cooperation

Astronomers Now Closer to Udrstndng DARK ENERGY

abgsiddiq — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:21:42 +0800

QUOTE

Understanding something we can’t see has been a problem that astronomers have overcome in the past. Now, a group of scientists believe a new technique will meet the challenge of helping to solve one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology today: understanding the nature of dark energy. Using the strong gravitational lensing method — where a massive galaxy cluster acts as a cosmic magnifying lens, an international team of astronomers have been able to study elusive dark energy for the first time. The team reports that when combined with existing techniques, their results significantly improve current measurements of the mass and energy content of the universe.
Using data taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as well as ground-based telescopes, the team analyzed images of 34 extremely distant galaxies situated behind Abell 1689, one of the biggest and most massive known galaxy clusters in the universe.Through the gravitational lens of Abell 1689, the astronomers, led by Eric Jullo from JPL and Priyamvada Natarajan from Yale University, were able to detect the faint, distant background galaxies—whose light was bent and projected by the cluster's massive gravitational pull—in a similar way that the lens of a magnifying lens distorts an object's image.Using this method, they were able to reduce the overall error in its equation-of-state parameter by 30 percent, when combined with other methods.The way in which the images were distorted gave the astronomers clues as to the geometry of the space that lies between the Earth, the cluster and the distant galaxies. "The content, geometry and fate of the universe are linked, so if you can constrain two of those things, you learn something about the third," Natarajan said.The team was able to narrow the range of current estimates about dark energy's effect on the universe, denoted by the value w, by 30 percent. The team combined their new technique with other methods, including using supernovae, X-ray galaxy clusters and data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) spacecraft, to constrain the value for w."Dark energy is characterized by the relationship between its pressure and its density: this is known as its equation of state," said Jullo. "Our goal was to try to quantify this relationship. It teaches us about the properties of dark energy and how it has affected the development of the Universe."Dark energy is makes up about 72 percent of all the mass and energy in the universe and will ultimately determine its fate. The new results confirm previous findings that the nature of dark energy likely corresponds to a flat universe. In this scenario, the expansion of the universe will continue to accelerate and the universe will expand forever.The astronomers say the real strength of this new result is that it devises a totally new way to extract information about the elusive dark energy, and it offers great promise for future applications.According to the scientists, their method required multiple, meticulous steps to develop. They spent several years developing specialized mathematical models and precise maps of the matter — both dark and "normal" — that together constitute the Abell 1689 cluster.

http://www.universetoday.com/71565/astrono...rgy/#more-71565

DID YOU KNOW THAT?

the darkness in the universe is actually DARK ENERGY

The History Of The Internet

abgsiddiq — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:19:52 +0800

http://gizmodo.com/5616108/the-history-of-...rnet-visualized

Pakistan Flood Images

abgsiddiq — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:16:14 +0800

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/photos/galler...pakistan-flood/

pity them! let give donations!

Giant cow (inb4 slowpoke)

abgsiddiq — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:49:57 +0800

QUOTE

Chilli the giant bullock stands at 6ft 6ins and weighs well over a ton

Despite his grand stature, Chilli only grazes on grass during the day and enjoys the occasional swede as a treat.

The heifer, who is almost as high as he is long, lives at the Ferne Animal Sanctuary in Chard, Somerset, after he was left on their doorstep aged just six-days-old.

Nine years on, Chilli has kept on growing, and staff believe the giant will smash a record for Britain's tallest ever cow.

Naomi Clarke, manager at the sanctuary, said: "As Chilli was growing up we began noticing that he was bigger than our other cows.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...l-elephant.html

Besar gajah ini cow!

Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse

abgsiddiq — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:40:38 +0800

New Design to be released

Old one

QUOTE

Looks like Microsoft's slow reveal of its new "touchy" and "flat" device has been spoiled by a trigger-happy German retailer. Even though no official announcement has been made, notebooksbilliger.de prematurely listed -- and promptly pulled -- the Arc Touch Mouse on its site, complete with details and images of the device itself.

The unconventional looking mouse sports touch-based scrolling, replacing the scroll wheel with a sensor running between the buttons, and like a traditional mouse it can glide over flat surfaces using BlueTrack technology. As its name implies, the device has an arching palm rest to comfortably fit your hand, but the real kicker is that it can also flatten out for easier transportation. There's also a battery level indicatior and ultra-compact nano-transceiver for 2.4GHz wireless connectivity that disappears when not in use in the battery compartment.

http://www.techspot.com/news/39998-microso...aled-early.html

the design is so sleek.