The inner core of our planet is roughly as big as the Moon, and we can only guess what’s going on deep inside our planet. We might now have an answer…and it’s even more volatile and weird than we thought. More
A new test set to hit the market in Britain in the next year aims to tell patients how long they have to live, and naturally that’s not happening without controversy. The test measures a person’s telomeres, those structures found on the tips of chromosomes. The length of telomeres apparently correlates with how fast a person is aging biologically, and hence researchers want to offer individuals some insight into just how much longer their bodies can hold up. More
Hundreds of billions of planets the size of Jupiter are floating alone in space, or are so very far from their host stars that those stars aren’t easily identifiable as associated with the planets. From the NY Times:
“It’s a bit of a surprise,” said David Bennett, a Notre Dame astronomer, who was part of the team. Before this research, it was thought that only about 10 or 20 percent of stars harbored Jupiter-mass planets. Now it seems as if the planets outnumber the stars…
Planetary astronomers said the results would allow them to tap into a whole new unsuspected realm of exoplanets — as planets outside our own solar system are called — causing scientists to re-evaluate how many there are, where they are and how they are created, even as astronomers immediately began to ponder whether the new planets in question are in fact floating free or just far from their stars, at distances comparable to those of Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.
“Either there is a large population of Jupiter-mass planets far from their star, or, yes, there are a lot of lonely planets out there,” said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Billions of Lonely Planets, Adrift in Space” (Thanks, Jody Radzik!)
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Billions of planets, alone in space?
Ah, so it’s all coming together now. Following a report on Warner Music inking a cloud-streaming deal with Apple, CNET has followed up with fresh information that sees three more major record companies jumping on board. Citing “multiple music industry sources,” we’re told that EMI Music is the latest addition to Apple’s cloud music portfolio, while Universal Music and Sony Music are close to sealing the deal to permit this rumored iCloud service. If true, such endorsement will no doubt add pressure on Google and Amazon over their cheeky, license-free cloud streaming offerings — not a bad way to fend off competition, though it’s not clear how much money’s involved. Guess we’ll know more at WWDC next month.
Apple gets cozy with EMI, Universal, and Sony over cloud music licensing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 May 2011 23:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’ve seen flexible OLEDs and OLED lighting solutions before, but none of them conjured our sweaty club-hopping fantasies quite like this concept from Universal Display Corporation (UDC). The flexible OLED makers weren’t particularly forthcoming on the specs for this color-changing apparatus, but we can tell you that it uncoils and recoils with the help of a motion sensor, and requires very little energy to power — note that tiny wire supplying 100 percent of the required juice. UDC used this flashy lamp specifically to show off its own brand of low-energy flexible white OLED lighting, which means you won’t see it popping up in B.E.D. anytime soon (if ever), but it certainly has us thinking of new ways to light up our nights. Gratuitous amounts of bouncing and beaming can be found after the break.
Continue reading UDC shows off serpentine OLED lamp concept at SID 2011 (video)
UDC shows off serpentine OLED lamp concept at SID 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 May 2011 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Whether or not D-Wave has actually built a quantum computer is still a matter of debate (though, a study authored by the company and published in Nature claims to prove its success) but, whatever it is these crafty Canadians have created, you can order one now and start crunching qubits with abandon. The D-Wave One is the first commercially available quantum computer and, while its 128-qubit processor can only handle very specific tasks and is easily outperformed by traditional CPUs, it could represent a revolution in the field of supercomputing. As D-Wave scales up to thousands or tens-of-thousands of qubits, complex number theory problems and advanced cryptographic systems could crumble before the mighty power of quantum annealing… or at least give us faster Google searches. Just out of curiosity, we contacted D-Wave to see how much we’d have to cough up for a quantum desktop of our own, but we’ve yet to hear back.
Update: Joseph passed along an e-mail from the company with a little more information, including a price: $10,000,000. Yep, ten large, and we’re not sure that includes the liquid helium required to keep it cooled.
D-Wave One claims mantle of first commercial quantum computer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 May 2011 16:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Life’s Good gang warned us with the written word about its super fantastic, ultra-high resolution Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching (AH-IPS) displays. Of course, written resolution claims merely provide verisimilitude; viewing is the only way to discern their veracity. We saw the screens, ranging from a petite 3.5 inches to a prodigious 84-inch panel, at SID 2011 and were impressed enough to begin scheming ways to get a wall of these for Engadget HQ. Unfortunately, we don’t know how many dollars LG wants for its plethora of panels or when they’ll go on sale, but you can bet we’ll keep you posted. If our impressions and that mouthful of a moniker haven’t sold you on the awesomeness of AH-IPS, then take a gander at the gallery and let the pixel-packed pics persuade you.
LG’s new ultra-high resolution AH-IPS displays, simply stunning at any size originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 May 2011 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
These days, most “hacks” are more about an attacker’s ability to exploit your download habits, as opposed to exploiting holes in your firewall. In a review of Internet Explorer’s feedback reports, Microsoft found that 1 in every 14 programs downloaded are in some way malicious. The software giant also warned that more often than not, it’s the hacker’s mind-games that cause a malware attack rather than the software’s own vulnerabilities.
“Social-engineering attacks, like tricking a user into running a malicious program, are far more common than attacks on security vulnerabilities, “said Jeb Haber, program manager for Microsoft SmartScreen in a blog post. Since the release of Internet Explorer 8 in March of 2009, SmartScreen technology has prevented over 1.5 million malware attacks.
Haber added that the problem of user-downloaded malware is a “huge” one, and “getting bigger.” The most recent version of Internet Explorer, IE9, double-checks the reputation of each site visited and notifies the user if they happen to be hanging out in questionable/unknown territories.
“Most people would be cautious about buying something online from a complete stranger,” Haber said. “Using reputation software helps protect users from newly released malware programs – pretending to be legitimate software programs – that are not yet detected by existing defense mechanisms,” he said.
[via AFP]
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Microsoft: 1 In 14 Downloaded Programs Is Masked Malware Attack
Amazon’s trade-in program, which was previously only for a few items like books, video games, and DVDs, now includes electronics as well. If you have an old cellphone, camera, or other gadget that you aren’t using anymore, you can send it off to Amazon and they’ll credit your account (which, frankly, is almost as good as cash). They’ll even pay the shipping fees for you. Head on over to their trade-in page to see if your gadgets are eligible (or to buy some discounted, pre-owned gadgets yourself), and hit the link to read more. [Amazon via Mashable] More
Virgin Atlantic has tested the return capabilities of their SpaceShipTwo spacecraft for the first time. The video of its first feathered flight is just too beautiful and elegant to describe. Just watch it: More
