Science & Technology
Jeremy Hsu
Space.comWed, 09 Apr 2008 06:50 UTC
A $205 million upgrade will allow a laser-wielding observatory to monitor tens of thousands of galaxies for mysterious gravitational waves.
Leading investigators are confident that the Advanced LIGO
(Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories) Project will be able for the first time to detect gravitational waves from neutron stars and black holes, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
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| ©LIGO Laboratory
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| An aerial view of the Hanford, Washington interferometer, part of the LIGO observatory that is receiving an upgrade.
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A new £10 million research institute dedicated to studying the fundamental science behind shock waves, high velocity collisions and extremes of pressure and heat is announced today by Imperial College London.
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| ©Unknown
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| The new Insitute for Shock Physics will shed new light on the conditions under which tsunamis are formed
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Geologists in eastern Turkmenistan have discovered more than one hundred fossilized dinosaur footprints, believed to be some 145 million years old, national media said on Wednesday.
A whole 'field' of three-toed footprints, possibly made by plant-eating dinosaurs, was found at a height of 800 meters (2,600 feet) in the country's mountainous Gaurdak region.
Wolfgang Gruener
TG DailyTue, 08 Apr 2008 13:28 UTC
The reason why you cannot reach a specific web site at any given time can be very simple. Server and hosting issues, maintenance or the plain fact that a site has been discontinued are the most likely explanations why a site just won't load. But there is another, more mysterious possibility: Black holes. A team at the University of Washington (UW) has begun mapping scenarios where information packets on the Internet simply disappear.
"There's an assumption that if you have a working Internet connection then you have access to all of the Internet," said Ethan Katz-Bassett, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. "We found that's not the case."
Katz-Bassett has been working on a project called Hubble, a system that apparently is able to track what he refers to as information black holes. These are situations where a path between two computers does exist, but messages - a request to visit a Web site or an outgoing e-mail - get lost along the way. Katz-Bassett has published a Hubble map that enables users to
monitor such black holes worldwide or simply type in a network address to check its status.
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| ©Unknown
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The US government is to shut thousands of points from which outsiders can access federal computer networks to about 50, Homeland security chief Michael Chertoff revealed today (Tuesday).
In a keynote at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Chertoff outlined the government's plans to protect itself from cyber attack. he even compared this to a digital "Manhattan Project" in terms of impact and importance. So no lack of ambition there.
Five years after the birth of President Bush's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, the time's is ripe for a "quantum leap forward", according to Chertoff.
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| ©Dan Sprawson/ZSL
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There's something fishy in London, and it's not the city's trademark fish and chips.
Short-snouted seahorses have set up residence in the recovering River Thames, conservationists announced today.
The fish - pictured above in the London Zoo aquarium - were found in recent surveys that assessed the health of the once heavily polluted river.
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| ©Suthep Kritsanavarin
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| Children pose with a Mekong giant catfish caught at Khone Falls in Laos, near the border with Cambodia, in August 2007. A dam planned on the Mekong River in Laos will threaten the migration of the critically endangered fish, according to Zeb Hogan, who heads the National Geographic Society's Megafishes Project.
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In the swift currents of the Mekong River in northern Cambodia, fishers expertly navigate their longboats past rock outcroppings and fallen logs.
But soon these wild waters may be tamed. Plans for the construction of a large hydroelectric dam just across the border, at Khone Falls in Laos, would permanently alter one of the most pristine areas in Southeast Asia.
Negotiations lead to first agreement on region's archaeological riches
Israelis and Palestinians may not be able to agree right now on their present or future, but, if a pair of Los Angeles archaeologists have their way, they soon will see eye to eye on their past.
Working tirelessly for the past five years, Ran Boytner, a University of California, Los Angeles archaeologist and Lynn Swartz Dodd, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California, have guided a team of prominent Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists to arrive at the first-ever agreement on the disposition of the region's archaeological treasures following the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
"Israelis and Palestinians never previously had sat down to achieve a structured, balanced agreement to govern the region's archaeological heritage," said Dodd, a lecturer in religion and curator of USC's Archaeological Research Collection. "Our group got together with the vision of a future when people wouldn't be at each other's throats and archaeology would need to be protected, irrespective of which side of the border it falls on."
The Indiana Asteroid Program began with a borrowed lens and a bet over a chocolate ice cream cone. Almost 60 years later, its final chapter was written with the naming of a heavenly body after one of the most dedicated staff members Indiana University Bloomington's Department of Astronomy has ever seen.
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| ©Bengt A Lundberg
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| A photo shows many of the 472 recently found silver coins that make up Sweden's earliest known Viking hoard. The cache of Middle Eastern coins suggests Vikings were trading extensively overseas earlier than previously believed.
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Hundreds of ancient coins unearthed last week close to Sweden's main international airport suggests the Vikings were bringing home foreign currency earlier than previously thought, archaeologists say.
Buried some 1,150 years ago, the treasure trove is made up mainly of Arabic coins and represents the largest early Viking hoard ever discovered in Sweden.
