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The bad luck o' the Irish: Apostrophes can confuse computers

Sean ODriscoll
Associated Press
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:29 UTC
It can stop you from voting, destroy your dental appointments, make it difficult to rent a car or book a flight, even interfere with your college exams.

More than 50 years into the Information Age, computers in the U.S. are still getting confused by the apostrophe. It is a problem familiar to O'Connors, D'Angelos, N'Dours and D'Artagnans across America.
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Einstein

Big Bang Busted! (The Black Hole, the Big Bang, and Modern Physics)

Stephen J. Crothers.
Thunderblog
Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:54 UTC
There has been a deliberate suppression of important scientific papers by the community of physicists and astronomers concerning the black hole, beginning with the original paper by Karl Schwarzschild of 1916, evidently for vainglory, money and self-aggrandisement. I bring you free access to those papers, and others of relevance, in the hope that this fraud can be exposed and physics restored to a rational search for knowledge. The black hole has no foundation in theory whatsoever. Neither Newton's theory nor Einstein's theory predict it. In fact, both theories preclude it, contrary to what the orthodox relativists claim.


Comment: We do not support the content of this article. Not because the subject is controversial, but because of the links with AIAS:

"The international forum of scientists has also posted this document to the website of the Alpha Institute for Advanced Study"

There is one unfortunate fact, namely that "Alpha Institute for Advanced Study", in short AIAS - is a fraudulent institution, as has been documented all over the net, starting with Bearden's "not so real" PhD and ending with Evans, who pretends to be the new Einstein, but who writes mathematical nonsense. See HERE

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Telescope

Powerful Explosions Suggest Neutron Star Missing Link

Robert Naeye
NASA
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:30 UTC


magnetar
©Sky & Telescope, Gregg Dinderman.
This artist rendering depicts how a magnetar might appear if we could travel to one and view it up close, something that would not be advisable.

Observations from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have revealed that the youngest known pulsing neutron star has thrown a temper tantrum. The collapsed star occasionally unleashes powerful bursts of X-rays, which are forcing astronomers to rethink the life cycle of neutron stars.
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Star

Enceladus: New theory sheds light on space enigma


University of Leicester
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:37 UTC
An enormous plume of dust and water spurts violently into space from the south pole of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon. This raging eruption has intrigued scientists ever since the Cassini spacecraft provided dramatic images of the phenomenon.

Now, physicist Nikolai Brilliantov, at the University of Leicester, and colleagues in Germany, have revealed why the dust particles in the plume emerge more slowly than the water vapour escaping from the moon's icy crust.

Image
©Michael Carroll, www.stock-space-images.com
Geyser on Enceladus.

Enceladus orbits in Saturn's outermost "E" ring. It is one of only three outer solar system bodies that produce active eruptions of dust and water vapour. Moreover, aside from the Earth, Mars, and Jupiter's moon Europa, it is one of the only places in the solar system for which astronomers have direct evidence of the presence of water.
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Bulb

Cosmic coincidence spotted: An absurdly large number could hold the key to universal mysteries

Philip Ball
Nature
Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:43 UTC
The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10122. Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number - which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe - keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined1. This 'coincidence', he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes.

The number first turned up when, more than a decade ago, physicists discovered that the expanding Universe is accelerating. This implies that there is a force that opposes gravity on very large scales, which physicists call dark energy. It is quantified by a parameter called the cosmological constant.

One interpretation of dark energy is that it results from the energy of empty space, called vacuum energy. The laws of quantum physics imply that empty space is not empty at all, but filled with particles popping in and out of existence. This particle 'fizz' should push objects apart, just as dark energy seems to require. But the theoretical value of this energy is immense - so huge that it should blow atoms apart, rather than just causing the Universe to accelerate.
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Sherlock

Geologists find buried volcano inside Panmure Basin


GNS
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:29 UTC
Geologists have found a buried volcano inside Panmure Basin, which is the mouth of a volcano that erupted about 28,000 years ago. It is extremely rare for two eruptions to have occurred at the same site in the Auckland Volcanic Field.

The discovery was made by a group of geologists from government-owned research and consultancy company GNS Science and The University of Auckland as they drilled into the basin from a barge this week to find out more about the volcanic history of volcanoes in the upper North Island.
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Cow Skull

'Promising' tests on FBI software to put faces on skulls

James Randerson
The Guardian
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:26 UTC
The FBI has developed sophisticated new software for reconstructing a person's face from their skull. The software is designed to help police identify partially decomposed or burned bodies.

At present, reconstructing a face from a skull takes a specialist artist up to two weeks and can cost up to $2,000 (£1,020).
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Star

Meteorites from Mercury?

Ken Croswell
Sky and Telescope
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:20 UTC
Meteorites from the Moon and Mars give earthbound scientists free rock samples from other worlds. Now Brett Gladman and Jaime Coffey (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) say we should expect a few meteorites from Mercury too.

Gladman and Coffey conducted computer simulations of what happens after asteroids and comets slam into the innermost planet and kick debris into space. Past studies assumed that rocks knocked off Mercury weren't getting away with much more than its escape velocity of 2.6 miles (4.2 km) per second. That's too slow to climb away from the Sun and make it out to Earth.

Image
©NASA / JHU-APL / Carnegie Inst. of Washington
Taken by Messenger on January 14, 2008, from about 17,000 miles away, this view of a gibbous Mercury shows about half of the area not photographed by Mariner 10 in 1974 - 75. The heavily cratered landscape is reminiscent of other areas previously seen. The broad circular plain toward upper right, appearing brighter than its surroundings in this red-light view, marks the interior of Caloris basin, a huge impact scar more than 800 miles across.
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Telescope

Who's Orbiting the Moon?

Dauna Coulter
science.nasa.gov
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:30 UTC
The space around Earth is a busy place, as teeming with traffic as a roundabout. More than 500 active satellites are bustling about up there right now. Some are transmitting radio, television, and telephone signals; others are gathering information about Earth's atmosphere and weather; still others are helping people navigate down here; and the rest are conducting space research.
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Bizarro Earth

Journey to the center of the Earth -- Imperial scientists explain tectonic plate motions

Colin Smith
Imperial College London
Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:23 UTC
The first direct evidence of how and when tectonic plates move into the deepest reaches of the Earth is published in Nature today. Scientists hope their description of how plates collide with one sliding below the other into the rocky mantle could potentially improve their ability to assess earthquake risks.
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