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Black holes cheat on the Eddington limit to export extra energy

The shocked gasses of the micro quasar are structured in the same way as those of this actual quasar. NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Black holes got their name because they have such intense gravity that, once inside their event horizons, not even light can escape. Somewhat ironically, they’re also some of the brightest objects in the Universe. That’s entirely because of things that happen outside of the event horizon. There, the hole’s intense gravity draws matter into a disk and raises it to very high energies. The disk emits lots of light on its own and sends out jets of high energy particles that emit even more as they interact with the surrounding interstellar material. But this process has a limit—literally called the Eddington limit. At some point, the radiation emitted by the black hole starts driving off the surrounding matter, effectively cutting off its own food supply. You can view the Eddington limit as the point where matter intake is optimal; below it, the hole can swallow more than the environment’s feeding it, while above, matter is being driven off before it can be eaten. Now, thanks to new observations of a black hole in the Southern Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 83), researchers have found that the Eddington limit isn’t an absolute cap on the amount of energy a black hole can emit out into its surroundings. Their observations suggest that this particular black hole sends out almost as much energy in the form of accelerated particles. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The day the Mario Kart died: Nintendo’s kill switch and the future of online consoles

flickr user: Andrew Huff Nintendo fans, mark your calendars for May 20, 2014. As Nintendo announced yesterday , that’s the last day you’ll be able to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to play hundreds of online games on the Wii and Nintendo DS. Single-player modes for those games will still work, of course, but any parts of the games that require an Internet connection will be completely non-functional in a matter of months. The shutdown will affect some of both systems’ most popular games, some of the best-selling games of all time. Suddenly, over 34 million copies of Mario Kart Wii and 23 million copies of Mario Kart DS will be severely diminished. The tens of millions of people who own the DS Pokemon games will no longer be able to trade their beasts or battle online. Animal Crossing: Wild World and Super Smash Bros. Brawl will be less functional for over 11 million players each. Sure, as a practical matter, relatively few of these tens of millions of players are still making regular use of online servers for games that are sometimes pushing nine years old. If they were, Nintendo would probably have more interest in continuing to maintain those servers on the theory that it would lead to some more very-long-tail sales for its online-enabled games. On the other hand, Nintendo could be more interested in trying to force more players off its “legacy systems” and on to the Wii U and 3DS, which of course still have active online support. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, shuts down

Mt. Gox As of late Monday evening, the embattled Bitcoin site Mt. Gox appears to have pulled the plug entirely in the wake of sustained DDOS attacks and the “transaction malleability” problem that has plagued other websites. The site is gone and the company’s Twitter account appears to have been erased entirely. Ars’ requests to Mt. Gox for comment were not immediately returned. Bitcoin’s trading price has been steadily declining since the beginning of 2014, and as of this writing is hovering around $470 and falling . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Artificial muscles made with fishing line

Fishing line of different diameters, formed into the coiled-coils used in these experiments. Science/AAAS Take a rubber band and twist it. Keep twisting it until it starts to collapse onto itself and form larger loops—it’s something you can do with almost any strand-like structure. Now, scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson are taking advantage of this property in everyday materials such as fishing line and sewing thread and using it to make artificial muscles. The scientists took pieces of fiber that were a few hundred micrometers long and twisted them until they began to coil. As the pieces coiled, the twisted fibers became shorter and thicker; once tightly coiled, the scientists heat-treated them to prevent the fibers from unfolding. If heat is applied to the finished coil after this procedure, the individual fibers try to untwist. The untwisting causes the coils to expand in volume as they shorten in length, just like a muscle. The researchers found that if they made the fiber form larger coils in the same direction as the initial twists, the fibers contracted. If the fibers were made to coil in the opposite direction from the twist, the fibers expanded. By combining large quantities of these twisted fibers, the team could produce artificial muscles with above-average characteristics. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Artificial muscles made with fishing line

Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money

Anthony Fine The battle over who should pay to carry Netflix traffic is heating up again, and one of the main players blames Verizon’s greed for the poor performance that many consumers see when trying to watch streaming video. Cogent Communications CEO Dave Schaeffer made his case in an interview with Ars yesterday, saying Verizon is refusing to upgrade the infrastructure that carries Internet traffic from one network to another unless outrageous demands for payment are met. The network connections between Cogent and Verizon, crucial for carrying streaming video and other content to Verizon’s home Internet customers, “are full,” Schaeffer said. “They are more than full. They are so full that today a significant amount of packets are being dropped between the networks.” Read 39 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money

Apple releases iOS 7.0.6 and 6.1.6 to patch an SSL problem

Andrew Cunningham Apple has just released iOS 7.0.6, the sixth minor update to iOS 7 . Both it and the new iOS 6.1.6 update “provide a fix for SSL connection verification,” their only documented addition. Unlike iOS 7.0.5 , which applied only to a few international iPhone 5S and 5C models, the version 7.0.6 update applies to all devices that can run iOS 7. iOS 6.1.6 applies to the iPhone 3GS and fourth-generation iPod touch. The update to iOS 6 is marginally more interesting than the iOS 7 update, just because Apple has so rarely patched old iOS versions after they’ve been replaced. The company also released version 6.1.5 for the fourth-generation iPod touch to correct a FaceTime connectivity issue. It’s possible that Apple is trying to provide critical security updates to older devices dropped by newer iOS updates, something it also does for older OS X versions for a while after they’re superseded by newer software. The next major iOS 7 update is iOS 7.1, currently in its fifth developer beta. Current rumors suggest it will be released to the public in early or mid-March, and it should include more significant fixes than the six minor updates we’ve seen since September. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Apple releases iOS 7.0.6 and 6.1.6 to patch an SSL problem

Facebook buys WhatsApp for $16 billion

According to an early report from Bloomberg News reporter Sarah Frier, Facebook is set to buy WhatsApp for $16 billion. An SEC filing confirms the acquisition for $4 billion in cash to WhatsApp’s security holders, along with $12 billion in Facebook stock and an additional $3 billion in Facebook stock that will vest over four years. WhatsApp has been one of a handful of booming messaging apps that has grown especially large in the last year (GroupMe, WeChat, Kik, and Line are others). In December, the app was reported to have over 400 million monthly users, and Facebook now reports that the service has 450 million. Meanwhile, Facebook maintains roughly 1.2 billion as of last October. Facebook has yet to release usage numbers for either its messaging feature on the whole or its dedicated Messenger app. The Verge noted in December that it was “telling” that few other messaging apps release their usage numbers like WhatsApp does, which suggests its user base dwarfs its competitors. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Lync-Skype video chat shown for the first time, coming later this year

Ever since Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, one of the biggest questions has been how the company would integrate the voice and video messaging service with its other voice and video messaging software: Lync. Last year, the company integrated the two systems for voice calling, allowing Lync users to talk to, and see the online status of, Skype users. This year, the company will take another big step toward bringing the systems together, with cross-network video calling. The company demonstrated Lync-to-Skype video calling at its Lync Conference today. The feature will go into a limited beta in summer or fall. In addition to improved interoperability with Skype, the company is also adding native interoperability with Cisco/Tandberg video conferencing systems. Joining its existing Lync clients for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and Android phones, Microsoft says that it will have a Lync client for Android tablets available in the Google Play store by the end of June. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Lync-Skype video chat shown for the first time, coming later this year

US team to switch speed skating suits due to poor physics

Shani Davis wearing the Under Armour suit in question, in the race that placed him eighth overall. NBC The Under Armor speed skating suits meant to help US Olympic team members win may have actually been slowing them down, writes the Wall Street Journal in a report . A “design flaw” meant to aid with one element of the skaters’ physics may be hurting them in another way, resulting in no US skaters finishing higher than seventh place despite high rankings going in. The US requested a change on Thursday, and in the early hours of Saturday it was decided that the team could revert to the suits they used in previous World cup events, also made by Under Armour. The suits were designed with a vent on the back that is supposed to allow heat to escape. But the WSJ now suggests that the same vent may be letting air into the suit, creating drag and affecting skaters’ low stance. Kevin Haley, senior vice president of Under Armour, already copped to the problem, telling the WSJ “we’ll move heaven and earth to make them better.” Long-track team coach Ryan Shimabukuro refused to criticize the suits, but skater and 1,000-meter world-record holder Shani Davis claimed to have had his fastest start ever in the 1,000 meter race Wednesday while wearing the suit. An NBC commentator speaking over the event’s delayed broadcast in the US also asserted that the start was “the fastest [he’d] seen [Davis] open up this year.” Still, he finished eighth. Heather Richardson, the top-ranked women’s skater, finished seventh in the 1000m event; Brittany Bowe, the world record-holder for the same event, finished eighth. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US team to switch speed skating suits due to poor physics

Giant leap for nuclear fusion as scientists get more energy out than fuel put in

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratroy Researchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature , scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy than the fuel put into an experiment. The use of fusion as a source of energy remains a long way off, but the latest development is an important step toward that goal. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun and billions of other stars in the universe. If mastered, it could provide an unlimited source of clean energy because the raw materials are plentiful and the operation produces no carbon emissions. During the fusion process, smaller atoms fuse into larger ones releasing huge amounts of energy. To achieve this on Earth, scientists have to create conditions similar to those at the center of the sun. This involves creating very high pressures and temperatures. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Giant leap for nuclear fusion as scientists get more energy out than fuel put in

Ken May

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