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Juno sends back an unfamiliar view of Jupiter’s north pole

When someone mentions the planet Jupiter, you probably think of the image we’re all familiar with: that one with a view of its equator, bands and the Great Red Spot. That’s why the photos above and below the fold might look like an alien world, when in reality, they’re snapshots of the gas giant from a different angle. NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured the planet’s north polar region on cam two hours before its closest approach in late August. It was 120, 000 miles away when the JunoCam took these pics, but it got as close as 2, 600 miles above Jupiter’s surface. The last time we caught a glimpse of the gas giant’s polar region was back in 1974 when the Pioneer 11 probe passed by. Besides sending back new images of the planet, Juno has also beamed back radio emissions associated with its dramatic auroras . NASA had to shift the emissions’ audio rendition to a lower register since they’re way above the range our ears can hear. The whole thing still sounds shrill, but if you want to hear Jupiter’s auroras sing , hit play on the video below. Source: NASA (1) , (2)

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Juno sends back an unfamiliar view of Jupiter’s north pole

New Carbon Nanotube Chip Outperforms Silicon Semiconductors

“Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are the first to have fabricated carbon nanotube transistors (CNTs) that outperform the current-density of conventional semiconductors like silicon and gallium arsenide, ” reports NanotechWeb. Slashdot reader wasteoid shares the site’s interview with one of the researchers: “When the transistors are turned on to the conductive state (meaning that current is able to pass through the CNT channel) the amount of current traveling through each CNT in the array approaches the fundamental quantum limit, ” he tells nanotechweb.org. “Since the CNTs conduct in parallel, and the packing density and conductance per tube are very high, the overall current density is very high too — at nearly twice that of silicon’s. The result is that these CNT array FETs have a conductance that is seven times higher than any previous reported CNT array field-effect transistor.” The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army and Air Force, as well as the National Science Foundation. “The implication here is that by replacing silicon with a CNT channel, it should be possible for us to make either a higher performing device or one that works at lower power.” In other news, Fujitsu announced this week that it’s joining an effort to release a 256-megabyte 55-nanometer carbon nanotube-based NRAM by 2018. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fancy Burning Man Camp Ransacked by Vandals

The White Ocean camp at Burning Man says that it’s made up of “dreamers that blur the lines between reality and the impossible.” Unfortunately for White Ocean, however, “reality” recently meant getting its shit fucked up by a bunch of vandals. Read more…

Police Seize Two ‘Perfect Privacy’ VPN Servers

An anonymous reader writes from a report via TorrentFreak: VPN provider Perfect Privacy has informed its customers that two of its servers had been seized by the police in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Torrent Freak reports: “The authorities went directly to the hosting company I3D and the VPN provider itself wasn’t contacted by law enforcement. ‘Currently we have no further information since the responsible law enforcement agency did not get in touch with us directly, we were merely informed by our hoster, ‘ Perfect Privacy says. Despite losing control over two servers, Perfect Privacy assures its customers that no personally identifiable data is present on the seized hardware. Like many other VPNs, the company maintains a strict no-logging policy. ‘Since we are not logging any data there is currently no reason to believe that any user data was compromised, ‘ the VPN provider says. ‘When the Dutch police contact us with a subpoena, we work with them in a professional manner and ensure their request and our responses are in compliance with the Dutch law, ‘ I3D informs us. ‘We think with the affected customer as well, for example by making temporary capacity available so the customer does not suffer extended downtime during the investigation.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Police Seize Two ‘Perfect Privacy’ VPN Servers

NASA’s Impossible Propulsion EmDrive Is Heading to Space

An anonymous reader writes:The EmDrive, a hypothetical miracle propulsion system for outer space, has been sparking heated arguments for years. Now, Guido Fetta plans to settle the argument about reactionless space drives for once and for all by sending one into space to prove that it really generates thrust without exhaust. Even if mainstream scientists say this is impossible. Fetta is CEO of Cannae Inc, and inventor of the Cannae Drive. His creation is related to the EmDrive first demonstrated by British engineer Roger Shawyer in 2003. Both are closed systems filled with microwaves with no exhaust, yet which the inventors claim do produce thrust. There is no accepted theory of how this might work. Shawyer claims that relativistic effects produce different radiation pressures at the two ends of the drive, leading to a net force. Fetta pursues a similar idea involving Lorentz (electromagnetic) forces. NASA researchers have suggested that the drive is actually pushing against “quantum vacuum virtual plasma” of particles that shift in and out of existence. Most physicists believe these far-out systems cannot work and that their potential benefits, such as getting to Mars in ten weeks, are illusory. After all, the law of conservation of momentum says that a rocket cannot accelerate forward without some form of exhaust ejected backwards. Yet the drumbeat goes on. Just last month, Jose Rodal claimed on the NASA Spaceflight forum that a NASA paper, “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum” has finally been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but this cannot be confirmed yet. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NASA’s Impossible Propulsion EmDrive Is Heading to Space

Walmart Is Cutting 7,000 Jobs Due To Automation

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: The clairvoyant folks over at the World Economic Forum warned of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” involving the rise of the machine in the workforce, and the latest company to lend credence to that claim is none other than Walmart, which is planning on cutting 7, 000 jobs on account of automation. But the Walmart decision may be a bit more alarming for those in the workforce. As the Wall Street Journal reports (Warning: may be paywalled), the most concerning aspect of America’s largest private employer might be that the eliminated positions are largely in the accounting and invoicing sectors of the company. These jobs are typically held by some of the longest tenured employees, who also happen to take home higher hourly wages. Now, those coveted positions are being automated. The Journal reports that beginning in 2017, much of this work will be addressed by “a central office or new money-counting ‘cash recycler’ machines in stores.” Earlier this year, the company tested this change across some 500 locations. “We’ve seen many make smooth transitions during the pilot, ” said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A tiny space pebble just put a huge dent in an ESA satellite

The European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite has new 40cm dent on one of its solar wings — and it was caused by a tiny millimetre-size piece of space debris. The impact was discovered with the Sentinal-1A reported a slight power reduction last month. Onboard cameras quickly found the micrometeoroid impact, pictured above. Don’t worry, the ESA says the satellite is fine, but the impact serves as a reminder: at orbital velocity, tiny objects can cause major damage. This is a problem for the Breakthrough Starshot project , which aims to launch a laser powered nanocraft that travels at 1/5th the speed of light. That project hopes to reach the next solar system over in about 20 years. “Erosion of solid surfaces will be a severe problem at these speeds, ” says Ian Crawford of Birkbeck, University of London. “It’s possible that the wafersats won’t even be able to complete the journey.” For engineers, this isn’t news — NASA and other space agencies have been combating space derbies for decades — but it does mean that teams need to think of new ways to protect fast moving crafts. The faster a craft goes, the more dangerous tiny objects can be. At the speed Breakthrough Starshot is designed to reach, even microscopic space dust could be dangerous. Source: New Scientist , ESA

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A tiny space pebble just put a huge dent in an ESA satellite

NASA Spacecraft Catches a Rare Glimpse Dwarf Planet Quaoar

New Horizons is currently making its way to the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt en route to a distant destination beyond Pluto. Along the way, the intrepid spacecraft has captured unprecedented images of a distant object called Quaoar—a dwarf planet about half the size of Pluto. Read more…

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NASA Spacecraft Catches a Rare Glimpse Dwarf Planet Quaoar

Bizarre ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

Taken in 2014, this picture shows the partly blocked entrance to the Soviet-era bunker system in Poland. In the background, pine-spruce forest overgrowing the hillock was built to camouflage the structure. Wojciech Stephan For the past several years, a group of researchers has been observing a seemingly impossible wood ant colony living in an abandoned nuclear weapons bunker in Templewo, Poland, near the German border. Completely isolated from the outside world, these members of the species Formica polyctena have created an ant society unlike anything we’ve seen before. The Soviets built the bunker during the Cold War to store nuclear weapons, sinking it below ground and planting trees on top as camouflage. Eventually a massive colony of wood ants took up residence in the soil over the bunker. There was just one problem: the ants built their nest directly over a vertical ventilation pipe that leads into the bunker. When the metal covering on the pipe finally rusted away, it left a dangerous, open hole. Every year when the nest expands, thousands of worker ants fall down the pipe and cannot climb back out. The survivors have nevertheless carried on for years underground, building a nest from soil and maintaining it in typical wood ant fashion. Except, of course, that this situation is far from normal. Polish Academy of Sciences zoologist Wojciech Czechowski and his colleagues discovered the nest after a group of other zoologists found that bats were living in the bunker. Though it was technically not legal to go inside, the bat researchers figured out a way to squeeze into the small, confined space and observe the animals inside. Czechowski’s team followed suit when they heard that the place was swarming with ants. What they found, over two seasons of observation, was a group of almost a million worker ants whose lives are so strange that they hesitate to call them a “colony” in the observations they just published in The Journal of Hymenoptera . Because conditions in the bunker are so harsh, constantly cold, and mostly barren, the ants seem to live in a state of near-starvation. They produce no queens, no males, and no offspring. The massive group tending the nest is entirely composed of non-reproductive female workers, supplemented every year by a new rain of unfortunate ants falling down the ventilation shaft. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bizarre ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

Falcon 9 Explodes On Pad

Reader Mysticalfruit writes: NPR is reporting that a Falcon9 carrying the AMOS-6 satellite that was supposed to launch on Sat exploded during it’s scheduled static fire. No injuries are reported. They’re reporting that this was going to be the first reflown first stage. The Verge adds:SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, meant to launch a satellite this weekend, exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning. The explosion occurred during the preparation for the static fire test of the rocket’s engines, NASA told the Associated Press. The blast reportedly shook buildings “several miles away.” The company confirmed to The Verge the loss of the Falcon 9 an hour later: “SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today’s static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Falcon 9 Explodes On Pad

Ken May

Author: kenmay