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Hubble discovers that dwarf planet Makemake has a moon

The Hubble telescope has spotted a shadowy moon with a charcoal black surface orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake. Astronomers first observed Makemake in 2005, but since it’s the second brightest icy dwarf planet after Pluto , it took some time to see a satellite that’s 1, 300 times fainter than the celestial body it’s orbiting. Also, it’s positively tiny with a diameter measuring 100 miles across, making it but a fraction of our own moon that has a diameter measuring 2, 159.2 miles. The Hubble team used the telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the same technique that found Pluto’s satellite’s in 2005, 2011 and 2012 to discover Makemake’s companion that has been christened “MK 2.” NASA says its presence can tell us more about the dwarf planet, including its density. “Makemake is in the class of rare Pluto-like objects, so finding a companion is important, ” Southwest Research Institute’s Alex Parker said. “The discovery of this moon has given us an opportunity to study Makemake in far greater detail than we ever would have been able to without the companion.” Astronomers plan to look more closely into the satellite to find out if it’s the “warm region” they’ve been seeing on Makemake’s surface, which is inconsistent with its icy shell. They also intend to observe its movements: a tight orbit means it’s the product of a collision, while a wide one means it was captured from the Kuiper belt. Either way, MK 2 — just like our Earth’s own satellite — has been orbiting Makemake for billions of years. Via: Space Source: Space Telescope Science Institute , NASA

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Hubble discovers that dwarf planet Makemake has a moon

iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years

Apple’s record-setting growth has finally come to an end. During the company’s first quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Apple reported its first year-over-year decline since 2003. Apple reported revenues of $50.6 billion, down from about $58 billion during the same period last year. Read more…

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iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years

Dropbox will soon show all your cloud-based files right in the desktop

If you’re one of the 500 million people who’ve used Dropbox at some point over the last few years, you know what you’re getting in to. It’s a reliable way to back up all the files on your computer, sync them across multiple devices and share them with friends, family or coworkers. It’s fast, it works and Dropbox has added a decent set of collaboration features over the years (like its strong Microsoft Office integration) — but by and large, its core “sync and share” features have remained largely the same. But today at the Dropbox Open event in London, the company is previewing an intriguing new feature called Project Infinite. In a nutshell, it looks to close the divide between our ever-increasing cloud storage vaults like Dropbox and the corresponding decrease in hard drive sizes. Back when Dropbox first launched, plenty of computers came with 500GB (or larger) hard drives, while paid Dropbox accounts only offered 50GB of space. However, since then, things have flip-flopped a bit — $10 a month gets you 1TB of Dropbox space, while the rise of SSD means that most computers have much smaller hard drives than that. And Dropbox for Business offers essentially limitless storage space, which means you’ll have to jump back and forth between files stored on your computer and Dropbox’s web interface to see everything you might want to access. Put simply, Project Infinite lets you see everything you have access to in Dropbox via your computer’s native interface (the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer). As before, files locally stored on your computer that are synced to Dropbox will have a green checkmark next to them, but everything else you might have access to will be visible as well. Those cloud-stored files will have a cloud icon next to them, but they’ll otherwise appear in your filesystem as if they’re stored on your hard drive. And if you want to open up those cloud files, you can just double-click. Dropbox will then download and open the file as if it was on your local storage, and any changes will be synced back to the cloud. It certainly sounds like it’ll be useful, as users will be able to store most of their digital materials in Dropbox and see it all on their computer without having to jump into Dropbox’s web interface. But there are some questions we have that are yet to be answered. It’s not clear if Project Infinite will be available to those paying $10 a month for Dropbox Pro or if it’ll only be available for business users. The Dropbox press release made it sound fairly focused on businesses, but hopefully consumers will also have access to the feature when it’s ready. There’s also no word on when the feature will be available. Dropbox says it’s testing Project Infinite with “a select number of sponsor customers” and says it’ll have more updates throughout the year, but there’s no word yet on when it’ll be widely available.

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Dropbox will soon show all your cloud-based files right in the desktop

The creators of ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’ reveal a new sci-fi shooter

John Romero and Adrian Carmack helped found id Software in 1991, and by 1993 the studio had changed the video game world forever. That’s when id released Doom , a genre-defining first-person shooter, and it was followed by Quake , another classic FPS, in 1996. Today, Romero and Carmack are back with Blackroom , a new FPS set in a future where lifelike holographic reality is the norm, but it’s being overrun with sinister visions. The game stars Dr. Santiago Sonora, an engineer at the massive holographic company, Hoxar, as he investigates irregularities in the Blackroom military training system. Blackroom is an action-heavy game, with rocket jumping and strafing, and there’s no limit on how many weapons you can carry (you’re in a holographic environment, after all). It features a single-player or co-op campaign, plus arena and one-on-one deathmatch modes. The game will be fully moddable and players will be able to run their own dedicated servers. Blackroom is in development for PC and Mac only, and it’s scheduled to release in winter 2018. Romero and Carmack launched a $700, 000 Kickstarter campaign today, and if they hit that goal, they’ll start development immediately and work with investors to secure the rest of the funding. Just because Blackroom is set in a world of touchable, lifelike virtual realities, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a VR game. “I don’t know if this game would work really well in VR, ” Romero said during a livestream today . He worries that VR makes people sick and that the tech isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. “If there is any VR, it’ll have to be later, ” he said. The same goes for potential console versions of Blackroom — for now, the focus is PC and Mac only. Romero teased us about his new shooter back in 2014 during the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany. “I haven’t made a shooter since 2000, ” he said . “So I’m basically starting to work on another one.” Coming from the man who helped make Doom , Quake and Wolfenstein , the news was infinitely intriguing — and two years later, it’s wonderful to see Romero’s promise come to fruition as a futuristic, sci-fi shooter with a classic edge. Source: Blackroom

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The creators of ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’ reveal a new sci-fi shooter

Solar Impulse 2 completes its flight across the Pacific

After months of delays and days of flying , Solar Impulse 2 has finished crossing the Pacific . The sunlight-powered aircraft arrived in San Francisco Bay on the night of April 23rd, with an expected touchdown at Moffett Field (as of this writing) around 3AM Eastern on the 24th. This isn’t the toughest stint to date (that honor goes to the 5, 061-mile trip from Japan to Hawaii), but it was no mean feat. Pilot Bertrand Piccard had to travel 2, 717 miles between Hawaii and San Francisco, with only short naps allowed during the 3-day expedition. As daunting as this and the eight previous legs of the trip have been, the tough part isn’t over yet. While flying over the US will be a relative cakewalk (Solar Impulse 2 should reach New York by early June), the aircraft will then have to travel 3, 566 miles to Europe. That’s a straight 5 days in the air, folks. After that, the plane will complete its around-the-world mission by heading to Abu Dhabi. This hasn’t been the quickest adventure given that the aircraft took off back in March 2015. However, speed isn’t really the point. Solar Impulse 2 and its namesake technology are meant to show that green energy can accomplish as spectacular a feat as flying across the planet. If the flight encourages anyone to embrace clean power, it accomplishes its goal. Source: Solar Impulse , YouTube

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Solar Impulse 2 completes its flight across the Pacific

There’s a Gigantic Reef Surrounding the Amazon River and Nobody Noticed

It’s incredible that it escaped notice for so long, but scientists have just discovered a massive, 9, 500 square-kilometer reef system at the mouth of the Amazon river. And it’s home to some truly bizarre life forms. Read more…

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There’s a Gigantic Reef Surrounding the Amazon River and Nobody Noticed

You’ll Never Forget Your Password When It’s the Sound Your Skull Makes

Lacking a decent keyboard for password entry, it’s tricky to secure a wearable computer so that someone else can’t just put it on and access your private files. But researchers have come up with a better alternative , by listening to the unique sound of the wearer’s skull. Read more…

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You’ll Never Forget Your Password When It’s the Sound Your Skull Makes

Australian researchers developed a blood test for Parkinson’s

By the time Parkinson’s disease makes itself known in humans, it’s already too late for treatment. But La Trobe University in Australia has developed a test that detects a biomarker present in blood cells in folks with the disease. The school describes the test as a means of detecting problems within cell mitochondria that cause an energy-and-stress-sensing protein, dubbed AMPK, to permanently activate and start damaging cells. The research is being bankrolled in part by Parkinson’s perhaps highest-profile patient, Michael J. Fox. Well, his foundation dedicated to further research on the debilitating malady , that is. The downside is that even with Fox’s Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the Shake It Up Australia Foundation’s $640, 000 grant to La Trobe, more money is still needed for the test to be ready for the public. And beyond that, it’d still take five years to hit the market with additional funding. For now, the school is increasing the amount of testing it’s doing, going from a group of 38 people to 70. According to The Guardian , the ultimate goal is to do a longitudinal study with “thousands” of people in their 40s prior to them being at risk for the disease and before they start showing physical symptoms. From there, the researchers could test beyond Parkinson’s and see if the same method could be used to diagnose other neurological disorders, like Alzheimer’s, as well. Via: Popular Science Source: La Trobe University

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Australian researchers developed a blood test for Parkinson’s