Found: The oldest flying insect fossil [Fossils]

This fossil was found in the sandstones of southern Massachusetts, and is the oldest known full-body impression of a flying bug. It’s there on the left, and you can see the distinct impressions made by its six legs, as it struggled to escape from the mud it got stuck in before being fossilized. Formed approximately 300 million years ago, this cast is the most ancient evidence of the Pterygota subclass of insects, and is thought to be the distant antecedent of the mayfly. More

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