Science & TechnologyS


Bulb

Music File Compressed 1,000 Times Smaller than MP3


University of Rochester
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:34 UTC
Researchers at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file.

The music, a 20-second clarinet solo, is encoded in less than a single kilobyte, and is made possible by two innovations: recreating in a computer both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

The achievement, announced today at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing held in Las Vegas, is not yet a flawless reproduction of an original performance, but the researchers say it's getting close.
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Telescope

Astronomers see 'youngest planet'

Paul Rincon
BBC
Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:02 UTC
An embryonic planet detected outside our Solar System could be less than 2,000 years old, astronomers say.

HLTau
©BBC
Radio emissions from the HLTau system show the planet (top right)

The ball of dust and gas, which is in the process of turning into a Jupiter-like giant, was detected around the star HL Tau, by a UK team.

Research leader Dr Jane Greaves said the planet's growth may have been kickstarted when another young star passed the system 1,600 years ago.

Details were presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.

The scientists studied a disc of gas and rocky particles around HL Tau, which is 520 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus and thought to be less than 100,000 years old.
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Telescope

The Belfast camera snapping planets across the universe


Belfast Telegraph
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:51 UTC
Ten new planets have been discovered by astronomers at Queen's University, it can be revealed today.

The extra-solar planets were spotted by high-tech "WASP" cameras on the Canary Islands and South Africa during a six month period.

Don Pollaco
©Unknown
Queen's scientist Dr Don Pollacco says the Belfast-built cameras have sparked a planet-finding production line
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Rocket

NASA's GLAST Satellite Gets Twin Solar Panels In Prep For Launch


ScienceDaily
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:24 UTC
Preparations for launching NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) satellite are underway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla. NASA KSC's "NASA Expendable Launch Vehicle Status Report" on March 20, noted that GLAST's twin solar panels have been attached. The panels will provide electrical power for GLAST after its launch into earth orbit.

GLAST
©NASA
At the Astrotech payload processing facility, General Dynamics technicians check GLAST before the installation of the solar arrays, as an overhead crane is lowered over it.
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Magnet

Smallest black hole ever discovered has amazing tidal force


ScienceDaily
Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:01 UTC
Using a new technique, two NASA scientists have identified the lightest known black hole. With a mass only about 3.8 times greater than our Sun and a diameter of only 15 miles, the black hole lies very close to the minimum size predicted for black holes that originate from dying stars.

black hole
NASA
In this top-down illustration of a black hole and its surrounding disk, gas spiraling toward the black hole piles up just outside it, creating a traffic jam. The traffic jam is closer in for smaller black holes, so X-rays are emitted on a shorter timescale.
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Target

Mysterious Crater Widens to Antarctica

Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:51 UTC
A new report of tiny beads of meteor impact glass strewn high in Antarctica's Transantarctic Mountains may expand a debris field to a tenth of Earth's surface -- despite no sign of the crater which spewed out the molten rock 800,000 years ago.
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Display

Transparent Computer Monitors? Engineers Make First 'Active Matrix' Display Using Nanowires


ScienceDaily
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:11 UTC
Engineers have created the first "active matrix" display using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, flexible color monitors and "heads-up" displays in car windshields.
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Star

Shooting Star Shower Spotted on Mars

Dave Mosher
Space.com
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:42 UTC
A shower of shooting stars has been recorded by instruments on Mars for the first time, astronomers say.

Meteors have been spotted before by the Mars rovers, but no device has ever detected a full shower until now.

United Kingdom astronomers predicted the event by tracking a comet's path near Mars, then comparing their forecast with Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) satellite data of the red planet's ionosphere - the upper reaches of atmosphere teeming with charged particles.
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Monkey Wrench

British team makes mixed human animal embryos

Mark Henderson
The Times
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:38 UTC


Human Embryo
©Unknown
The Newcastle cybrids lived for three days
and the largest grew to contain 32 cells

Embryos containing both human and animal material have been created in Britain for the first time, a month before the House of Commons is to vote on new laws to regulate the controversial research.

A team at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne announced tonight that it had successfully generated "admixed embryos" by adding human DNA to empty cow eggs, in the first experiment of its kind in the UK.
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Info

Hypercubes Could Be Building Blocks of Nanocomputers

Lisa Zyga
Physorg.com
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:13 UTC
Multi-dimensional structures called hypercubes may act as the building blocks for tomorrow's nanocomputers - machines made of such tiny elements that they are dominated not by forces that we're familiar with every day, but by quantum properties.

hypercubes
©Wikipedia
Hypercubes in two, three, four, and five dimensions
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