Month: April 2011

World’s most powerful rocket

Just announced, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket. This is a beast of a launch vehicle. Launch price is $80 million to $125 million, but “Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.” From SpaceX:

With the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (117,000 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Falcon Heavy can lift nearly twice the payload of the next closest vehicle, the US Space Shuttle, and more than twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy.

Falcon Heavy Overview (via @arielwaldman)


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World’s most powerful rocket

Dell to trial mushroom-based packaging on servers, hugs IT hippies

We’ve already seen Dell embracing the bamboo woods to package its products, so what’s next for Round Rock’s green fingers? Mushrooms, apparently. Unveiled at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference yesterday is a biodegradable cushioning tray, which is grown — yes, grown — out of a mold stuffed with old cotton hulls, mushroom spawn, and nutritious agricultural waste. While it does take about five to ten days for the mycelium (aka mushroom root) to form the desired shape, the merit of such process is that all the energy required for the manufacture is provided by the recycled waste, thus reducing other energy dependencies. What’s more, this fungal packaging has already passed Dell’s extensive lab tests “like a champ,” and it’ll soon be trialed on Multipack packaging shipments for the PowerEdge R710 servers. If you want to thank Michael, he’ll be in his usual tree house.

Dell to trial mushroom-based packaging on servers, hugs IT hippies originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your Mac Outlook Calendar Will Sync With iOS Soon [Blip]

For those of you with enough of a schedule and social life to necessitate a calendar—you lucky jerks—good news ahead: Outlook for Mac will be able to sync calendars, notes, and tasks with iOS with the release of Office for Mac 2011 SP1 next week. Calendars and tasks won’t, though, sync with MobileMe because of some recent changes made on Apple’s end. [Ars Technica] More

10,000 Shipping Containers Lost At Sea Each Year

kkleiner writes “Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year. This month the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container that was lost in the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004. What’s happened to the sunken shipment in the past seven years? It’s become a warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor, providing a new habitat for species that might otherwise not be attracted to the area.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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10,000 Shipping Containers Lost At Sea Each Year

Raining worms in Scotland

Wikipedia Commons A Ae Gravure De Pluie De Poissons

A shower of worms fell on a class of kids playing football at Scotland’s Galashiels Academy. (For more on weird “animal falls,” check out Charles Fort’s 1919 classic The Book of the Damned. Above, a 1555 engraving of a “fish fall.”) From Scotsman.com:

(Teacher David) Crichton said the children had just completed their warm-up when they began to hear “soft thudding” on the ground.

The class then looked to the cloudless sky – and saw worms falling on to them.
The incident in Galashiels is believed to have been caused by freak weather over a nearby river lifting water and worms and dumping it over the road…

Similar events were recorded in 1872 in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1877 in Christiana, Norway, and in 1924 in Halmstad, Sweden.

In July 2007 a woman was crossing a road in Louisiana when large clumps of tangled worms dropped from above.

“Never mind cats and dogs – school hit by worm rain” (via Fortean Times)


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Raining worms in Scotland

Toshiba’s Satellite L Series continues its world tour, adds 2D-to-3D conversion

Back at CES, Toshiba unveiled a batch of low-cost Satellite L Series laptops in the US, and now it’s taking its show on the road, with new models on tap for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. These include the 13.3-inch L730 and L735, the 15.6-inch L750 and L755, and, if you’re hankering for a desktop replacement, the hulking 17.3-inch L770 and L775. This latest spin on the L Series boasts 3D support, connecting to 3DTVs over HDMI and, in some cases, converting 2D content to 3D. As in the States, shoppers abroad can add up to 8GB of RAM, and will get their choice of Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors and various AMD CPUs, including triple- and quad-core options. Also look for multitouch trackpads, 5,400RPM hard drives as large as 750GB, 1.3 megapixel webcams, a mix of USB 3.0 and sleep-and-charge USB 2.0 ports, and a choice of integrated Intel HD graphics or a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 315M card with up to 1GB of video memory. No word yet on when they’ll go on sale or how much they’ll cost, but those curious for more can hit the source link for the full spill.

Toshiba’s Satellite L Series continues its world tour, adds 2D-to-3D conversion originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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