Hasta La Gadget!

The Curiosity Rover snapped pictures of Martian eclipses recently that NASA believes will help scientists better understand the interior structure and composition of Mars. Curiosity took pictures of the tiny moon Phobos last week as the moon eclipsed the sun. Curiosity also took photos of other partial lunar eclipses caused by Phobos and Deimos.

NASA says that scientists will use the photos taken to confirm details on the orbits of Phobos and Deimos precisely and to determine how much those orbits have changed over the years. Details gleaned about the orbits from these photographs could help scientists discover details on the interior of Mars, which is largely unknown at this time. Phobos is a tiny moon that averages only 14-miles wide on average with Deimos even smaller than that.

Scientists believe that both of Mars’ moons are asteroids that were captured by the planet’s gravity long ago. Neither moon has a stable orbit currently. Deimos orbits Mars every 30 hours and is speeding up. Phobos, on the other hand, has an orbit that takes eight hours to make its way around Mars, and its orbit is slowing down. NASA scientists believe Phobos will likely be destroyed by gravity in the next 10 to 15 million years.

Gravitational tidal forces are expected to break Phobos up in orbit before it starts to touch the Martian atmosphere. The breakup of the tiny moon could leave Mars with rings for a brief time. Curiosity is currently getting ready to study a newly discovered pyramid-shaped rock dubbed “Jake Matijevic.”

[via Alaska Dispatch]

Curiosity snaps pictures of Martian eclipses is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hey, you know what would be a nice, cathartic response to the tsunami of iPhone 5 coverage? Shooting it with a giant ass Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. More »

It is safe to assume that Apple’s own take on Maps has left much to be desired, especially since they decided to remove Google Maps in the process. Well if you were hoping to get Google Maps back, you can thanks to developer Ryan Petrich who has managed to hack Google Maps as an overlay on top of Apple’s Maps app. Obviously this is not for the average iOS user and will require the user to jailbreak their device in order to gain access to this. Unfortunately it seems that the app is not ready for release yet as according to its developer, it crashes often and is not fit for public consumption just yet. On the bright side it seems that everything is working, at least for the most part, so it might not be too long before we will see this released. If you don’t plan on jailbreaking your device, we guess you will have to rely on Apple’s Maps for now, but for those who are willing, this is a tweak we guess many will be looking forward to. In the meantime you can check out the demo of the app in the video above.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPhone 5 possibly jailbroken on first day, LiveClock jailbreak tweak now compatible with iOS 5,

Intel’s first LTE-capable Medfield smartphone chips are in the pipeline, along with multicore versions of the processor, with the first examples due before the end of 2012. Intel will be “shipping some LTE products later this year and ramping into 2013″ director of product marketing Sumeet Syal told TechCrunch, and in the meantime the company is working on fettling more Android apps to suit the x86 architecture.

That software hiccup could be a headache to Intel and its manufacturer partners, with devices like the freshly announced Motorola RAZR i unable to run certain software available through Google’s Play store. Google’s own Chrome browser, for instance, currently won’t work on the RAZR i, though Motorola has confirmed it should be functional by the time the midrange smartphone actually reaches the market.

“We’re not quoting any numbers” Syal says, “but the majority of all the apps we’ve tested work just fine.” The company’s team responsible for software has been working “constantly round the clock to make sure that all these apps work” and the number of compatible titles increases every day.

As for multicore, initially that will mean dualcore Medfield, with Intel not ready to talk about quadcore Atom processors for phones as yet. Intel, though, is in no great rush Syal insists, content with its hyper threading system that milks two threads out of a single core.

“You have to take a look at how many instructions per clock can the architecture handle — our belief is that others are throwing cores at the issue in terms  of getting more performance.  We make that determination based on our architecture so we felt very comfortable coming out with a single core dual-threaded for our first product, and as we’re able to get more and more performance in the right implementation of the architecture we believe putting in dual-core would be the right thing for our next generation product” Sumeet Syal, Intel

Timelines for the dualcore Medfield versions have not been revealed yet, and nor has Intel disclosed when the first Atom-based smartphones might arrive in the US.

Intel: LTE Medfield by end of 2012 plus dualcore incoming is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Have you ever wondered whether you would do well in an alternate career such as, say, a Ghostbuster? Unfortunate, Egon and gang are nowhere to be found, which is why you might want to get started off first yourself, with the £29.99 Ghost Hunt being a good way to get off on the right footing. The entire objective of Ghost Hunt would be to shoot down the spooky suckers using not some sort of paranormal chanting or spells brewed by a witch, but rather, using a laser gun.

Yes sir, the supernatural and undead, too, are affected by modern day technologies such as lasers. You are able to control not only the speed as well as randomness of the projected poltergeists through the settings, while it comes accompanied by a rechargeable 6-shooter which is what will help you keep track of your score. Heck, Billy the ghost will even let out a scream whenever you are accurate enough to score a direct hit.

[ Ghost Hunt helps you hunt down the faux supernatural copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]