Binary star system found right under our noses In a day when we have examined astronomical objects shining forth from a time shortly after the Big Bang, one would think astronomers have a pretty good handle on what is in the immediate vicinity of the Solar System. That's why the recent report of a binary star lying only 6.5 light-years away came as rather a surprise to the astronomical community. The pair, called WISE J1049-5319 A and B, are brown dwarf stars and only two star systems – the triple star Alpha Centauri, and Barnard's Star – lie closer to our Sun. In December of 2009, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was launched into a polar orbit at an altitude of 525 km (326 miles) back in 2009. Brown dwarf stars are stars that have too little mass to fuse hydrogen (although deuterium is likely to fuse for a brief period). Prof. WISE J1049-5319 was one of the objects selected by Luhman's search of the WISE database. Sources: Pennsylvania State University
A beginner’s guide to building botnets—with little assembly required Have a plan to steal millions from banks and their customers but can't write a line of code? Want to get rich quick off advertising click fraud but "quick" doesn't include time to learn how to do it? No problem. Building successful malware is an expensive business. In the process, these big botnet platforms have created a whole ecosystem of software and services in an underground market catering to criminals without the skills to build it themselves. The customers of these services often plan more for the short term than the long game played by the big cyber-crime rings. So how easy is it to get into the botnet business? To assemble your list for some of the simplest get-rich-quick schemes, all you need is about $600, a little spare time, and no compunctions about breaking laws to make a profit. It looks like you’re trying to build a botnet… Of course, that price is for a particular type of botnet. With my rough estimate in place, it was time to actually start some research of my own.
New Study Challenges Planck Results cosmic microwave backgroundA new view of the cosmic microwave background, as seen over the whole sky with the Planck satellite. Although analyses of this image indicate complete agreement with the simple model of a big bang inflation, a new paper suggests the agreement is so perfect that it is very unlikely the inflation model is actually the correct one. Credit: ESA/Planck A new study from researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics challenges the inflation model, arguing that the new Planck results are actually too good. The universe was created about fourteen billion years ago in a blaze of light known as the big bang. The CMBR was discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1964. According to models of inflation proposed in the 1980’s, based on concepts in elementary particle physics, the early universe underwent a dramatic and exponential growth spurt, swelling in size a trillion trillion trillion times. Or maybe not. Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
BOLIDES - Visualizing meteorites 20 Awesome Resources for Twitter Bootstrap Lovers Generators Bootstrap Custom Build Before diving into great third party Bootstrap resources, it’s worth pointing out a great little tool right from Twitter that allows you to completely customize an impressive range of Boostrap features so that you can create a custom build that’s perfect for your project. If you haven’t checked out Bootstrap in a while, you should give this a look because it’s new with Twitter Bootstrap 2.0. Not only can you use it to take an overweight download and transform it into something lean, you can also save yourself a lot of CSS work by customizing colors, fonts etc. before you even initiate the download. StyleBootstrap.info As with Twitter’s own tool above, this tool allows you to use a simple interface to customize various aspects of Bootstrap. The app itself is also more visual than Twitter’s generator and allows you to see what your styles will look like before you hit that download button. Beautiful Buttons for Twitter Bootstrappers Theming BootstrapStyler
Mapping the Chemistry Needed for Life at Europa This color composite view combines violet, green, and infrared images of Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa, for a view of the moon in natural color (left) and in enhanced color designed to bring out subtle color differences in the surface (right). The bright white and bluish part of Europa's surface is composed mostly of water ice, with very few non-ice materials. In contrast, the brownish mottled regions on the right side of the image may be covered by hydrated salts and an unknown red component. The yellowish mottled terrain on the left side of the image is caused by some other unknown component. A new paper led by a NASA researcher shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The paper, co-authored by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, analyzed data in the near-infrared range of light from Europa, using the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, over four nights in September 2011.
New Asteroid-Mining Company Aims to Spur Space Settlement A new asteroid-mining company launched Tuesday with the goal of helping humanity expand across the solar system by tapping the vast riches of space rocks. The new firm, called Deep Space Industries, Inc., announced today (Jan. 22) that it plans to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so. Such work could make it possible to build and refuel spacecraft far above our planet's surface, thus helping our species get a foothold in the final frontier. "Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development," Deep Space CEO David Gump said in a statement. Deep Space Industries will hold a press conference today in Santa Monica, Calif., at 10 a.m. "More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year," Gump explained. Deep Space is the second company to jump into the asteroid-mining business. Prospecting spacecraft and asteroid sample-return
Base Need reasons to love Bootstrap? Look no further. By nerds, for nerds. Built at Twitter by @mdo and @fat, Bootstrap utilizes LESS CSS, is compiled via Node, and is managed through GitHub to help nerds do awesome stuff on the web. Made for everyone. Bootstrap was made to not only look and behave great in the latest desktop browsers (as well as IE7!) Review: The Primer Fields From PESWiki Compiled by Sterling D. Allan Pure Energy Systems News January 12, 2013 Ralph Ring referred this video by David Allen LaPoint. Someone in the comments wrote: "This could be the real game changer! Check out some comments on this guy's google+ profile: David LaPoint - Google+" Feel free to leave your comments down below. Official Websites list here Videos The Primer Fields Part 1 "In this video series the currently accepted theories of physics and astrophysics are shaken to the core by a radical new theory of the fundamental forces in all matter. Bizarre Discovery at CERN "Video of magnetic models of the Globe of Science and Innovation at CERN in my vacuum chamber. The Primer Fields Part 2 "The second installment in the Primer Field series" (YouTube / davelapoint777; January 31, 2013) On February 05, 2013 7:43 AM [GMT-7], Steven Kempe wrote: Subject: Primer 1 & 2 by David Lapoint - Make a Vector Equalibrium Device Steve Hello Steve, et all. O_o
Black holes growing faster than expected › News in Science (ABC Science) News in Science Thursday, 17 January 2013 Stuart GaryABC Black hole find Existing theories on the relationship between the size of a galaxy and its central black hole are wrong according to a new Australian study. The discovery by Dr Nicholas Scott and Professor Alister Graham, from Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, found smaller galaxies have far smaller black holes than previously estimated. Central black holes, millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun, reside in the core of most galaxies, and are thought to be integral to galactic formation and evolution. However astronomers are still trying to understand this relationship. Scott and Graham combined data from observatories in Chile, Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope, to develop a data base listing the masses of 77 galaxies and their central supermassive black holes. The astronomers determined the mass of each central black hole by measuring how fast stars are orbiting it. Inconsistency Somewhere in between
Cariadoc's Miscellany: The Perfect Armor [This is an article from Cariadoc's Miscellany. The Miscellany is Copyright (c) by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, 1988, 1990, 1992. For copying details, see the Miscellany Introduction.] [ See also the new version of this article, The Perfect Armor (Improved). ] Suppose you were drawing up specifications for the perfect armor. It would be easy to make from inexpensive materials using commonly available tools. Hardened leather, also known as courbouilli, meets all of those requirements. In this essay, I will describe how to make several pieces of armor out of hardened leather: a bazuband (a medieval Islamic forearm and elbow protector), a klibanion (Byzantine body armor), a gauntlet and a basket hilt. To start, you need some leather. The thickness of leather is defined in ounces per square foot. Before you start making hardened leather armor, let me give you three warnings. The second warning is that wax can burn-which is why it is used to make candles. Figure 1 To Make a Bazuband
Red Square Nebula Not to be confused with a similar nebula, the Red Rectangle Nebula. The Red Square Nebula is a celestial object located in the area of the sky occupied by star MWC 922 in the constellation Serpens. The first images of this bipolar nebula, taken using the Mt. The explanation proposed by Tuthill and his collaborator James Lloyd of Cornell University claims that the square shape arises from two cone shapes placed tip-to-tip, as seen from the side. There is no clear explanation of how the central star could produce the nebula's shape: Towards the end of their lives, many low-mass stars, like the Sun, slough off their outer layers to produce striking 'planetary' nebulae. One possible explanation is that these two outer faint radial spokes are shadows cast by periodic ripples or waves on the surface of an inner disk close to the central star.[1] See also[edit] Red Rectangle Nebula References[edit] Citations[edit] External links[edit] Coordinates: 18h 21m 15.9s, −13° 01′ 27″