Dec 03
Every year, GE Healthcare runs a competition to find the best microscopic cell images of the year—and here are some of our favorites from the shortlist.
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Dec 03
Astronomers ranging from the professional level down to the amateur sky watcher are all disappointed with comet ISON. The comet had the potential to be the brightest in hundreds of years and was called the comet of the century by some. Unfortunately, the comet didn’t make it around the sun intact. NASA says that the […]
Dec 03
In May 1972 in a uranium enrichment plant in France, scientists examining ore from a mine in Gabon, West Africa, discovered that a natural nuclear reactor had spontaneously manifested in that region in the Earth’s primordial past, churning out approximately 100 Kw worth of energy continuously for a few hundred thousand years about 1.7 billion years ago.
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Dec 02
Last month, at a two-day event in London, U.S.-based nonprofit CyArk announced its goal to digitally preserve 500 heritage sites in just five years. It’s an ambitious plan to ensure that future generations can explore the world’s most at-risk heritage sites for centuries to come—but, in reality, the future of preserving the past is actually all about you.
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Dec 02
NASA may have a very tight budget for space travel and exploration, but it is still thinking big. NASA has outlined its plan to put astronauts on the far side of the moon by 2028. NASA also has plans to put spacecraft into orbit at the earth-moon L2 Lagrange point. That Lagrange point is 60,000 […]
Dec 02
The job of undersea archaeologists just got a whole lot easier. A team of Estonian engineers today unveiled a small, pill-shaped turtle robot dubbed U-CAT. Equipped with four flippers and an on-board camera, U-CAT is designed to make the job of exploring deep-sea shipwrecks both easier and considerably more affordable.
Dec 01
China has successfully launched the Chang’e-3 probe slated to put a lander and rover on the moon. The pair are equipped with seven scientific instruments for observing outer space and gathering data about the lunar surface. The launch took place today at 5:30PM UTC using a Long March 3B rocket at the LC2 Launch Complex […]
Dec 01
A researcher has developed a turtle-like robot for undersea archaeology. The robot, currently dubbed U-CAT, is small, pill-shaped, and equipped with four swiveling flippers or paddles for hover-class maneuverability. By flipping its flippers, the U-CAT can inch forward, backward, up, down, left or right, capturing video all the while. The U-CAT was conceived by Taavi […]
Nov 30
Beer and brick have both been essential to humanity for thousands of years, dual pillars that helped us build the societies we know today. Now, scientists have combined them, fortifying bricks with grains left over from breweries to create bricks that keep a building better insulated. Turns out beer really can keep you warm on a cold day.
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Nov 30
Recommended Reading: Stuxnet’s more dangerous precursor, fake memories and more
Posted in: Today's ChiliRecommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
Stuxnet’s Secret Twin (4,176 words)
by Ralph Langner, Foreign Policy
Stuxnet is a pretty nasty nasty customer, especially if you happen to be a centrifuge used in the enrichment of uranium. Amazingly, the story of the first publicly acknowledged cyber weapon keeps getting more and more interesting. Ralph Langner has spent the last several years poring over code and other details of Stuxnet’s history and discovered there was an earlier version of the virus, that was even more destructive than the one unleashed on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead of putting the centrifuge’s motors in overdrive, it over pressurized them by closing valves designed to allow gas out. It sounds like a perfectly logical avenue of attack, until you realize that the potential for truly catastrophic failure would have quickly blown Stuxnet’s cover.
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