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Technology Tackles Real-Life Problems
Never forget another anniversary. The Remember Ring is programmed to briefly heat up every hour on a specific date. It powers itself with a “micro thermopile” that turns heat from your hand into stored electricity that runs its internal clock and the heater. Link (via BoingBoing)
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Alien “ID Chart” to Aid Search for Extraterrestrial Life
The search for planets with extraterrestrial life has gotten a new tool: an “ID chart” that scientists will use to compare alien worlds with Earth as it has appeared over the eons. As technology improves to the point where Earthlike planets can be detected, astronomers have created an historical model of the Earth throughout its…
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Earthlike Planets May be Common
Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.Link
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Volunteer to be a Mars Explorer
The Mars Society is looking for a few good men (and women) to spend four months holed up in an artificial igloo or tromping around the Canadian Arctic in bulky faux spacesuits. This won’t be an extended vacation, or a reality-TV plotline. For rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, next year’s exercise…
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A Mildly Creepy Use of Biometrics
Rome City Schools in Rome, GA is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their lunch money accounts. In the past, students had to punch in a PIN numbers.* Students like it because they don’t have to, y’know, remember a number or anything hard like that. Some parents are…
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Supernova Caught Exploding
Teams of international scientists have used observations from NASA’s Swift satellite and other telescopes to witness the evolution of a cosmic blast into a stellar explosion or supernova. It is the second-closest gamma-ray burst ever detected and the first view of a supernova in the act of exploding, according to the astronomers. Link
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Blob is the Largest Object in the Universe
The largest object in the universe (at least, so far) is an enormous blob 200 million light-year wide, made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas, called the Lyman Alpha Blob. Link (via Neatorama)
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Adding/Subtracting Planets
So instead of demoting Pluto to non-planetary status, there’s now a movement afoot to upgrade Charon, Ceres (which used to be considered a planet in the 1800s, then was downgraded), and the object known as 2003 UB313 (informally dubbed Xena). Lore Sjöberg over at Slumbering Lungfish has an amusing take on this: There’s a lot…