It’s not uncommon to hear bibliophiles and pedants waxing poetic about the wonderful and incomparable "old book smell," but tiresome as these tirades may be, it turns out they might actually be on to something. Thanks to a recent scientific study, that same, vanilla-tinged aroma wafting off the pages of old tomes is now the most efficient way to flavor our ice cream.
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If you like space exploration, you’ll want to get used to these eight faces — odds are that you’ll see at least some of them again. They represent NASA’s 2013 astronaut candidate class, and they’ll start training in August for a chance at going on missions to the International Space Station, asteroids and even Mars. The trainee pool is more eclectic than usual this time around. Half the picks are women, while three of the candidates come from non-military outfits such as Harvard Medical School and NOAA. Check out the full roster after the break.
Filed under: Transportation, Science, Alt
Via: Space Travel
Source: NASA
Two teams of physicists have stumbled across a weird new subatomic particle that’s unlike anything else we’ve ever seen—and it could rewrite the rules of matter as we know them.
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You’ve probably heard people—including us—banging on about quantum computers for a long ol’ time. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you know exactly how they work. Fortunately this video is here to help.
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We’ve seen NASA‘s Mars Curiosity rover bore into Martian rock with a small drill multiple times, but the robot has just taken things to the next level: lasers. Specifically, the rover got to bore a small hole into Martian rock by blasting it with a laser repeatedly, causing a hole a few millimeters in diameter,
So remember about a month ago
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Familiar political tools like petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns now have online equivalents. But what about protest tactics like street marches, picket lines, sit-ins, and occupations? Where is the room on the internet for civil disobedience?
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As predicted, Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-2 (also known as the Milky Way-2) has now been crowned the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Arriving years ahead of schedule, and packing 32,000 Xeon processors alongside 48,000 Xeon Phi accelerator processors, the supercomputer can manage a quadrillion mathematical calculations per second (33.85 petaflops), double that of last year’s king (and closest rival), the Titan. In this year’s results, 80 percent of the Top 500 used Intel processors, while 67 percent had processors with eight or more cores — as clock speeds stall, supercomputer development has now focused on processors running in parallel. Top 500 editor Jack Dongarra adds that “most of the features of the [Tianhe-2] system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part,” meaning that you can expect to see more Chinese entrants (and possibly champions) over the next few years. For now, however, the US still claims the majority of the Top 500, with 253 top-ranking supercomputers.
Via: CNET
Source: Top 500
NASA has picked its next eight astronaut trainees, the so-called “NASA Class of 2013″ selected from more than 6,000 applications, and the first time equal positions have been given to male and female candidates. The space agency threw open the virtual gates to would-be space explorers 18 months ago, with the promise of potential inclusion
Someone call MIT’s researchers and tell them their terrifying cheetah robot has a long-lost teensy sibling in Switzerland. Developed in the laboratories of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the “cheetah-cub robot” is a four-legged metallic critter modeled after a house cat. The scientists focused on designing legs that can move like our feline friends’, paying particular attention to their stability while moving on uneven surfaces. While it has a long way to go before it becomes a graceful daredevil, it’s a fast little bugger that can run seven times its body length in one second. The researchers hope their creation gives rise to more robots for exploration and search-and-rescue missions in the future — a far more noble goal than some cat-owners’ dream to have their pets’ pictures land on the front page of Reddit.
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