Science

A new technique employed by a University of Washington astronomer uses Earth’s interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.

Sarah Ballard, a post-doctoral researcher at the UW, is using the technique, known as “characterization by proxy,” to infer the properties of small, relatively cool stars too distant for measurement, by comparing them to closer stars that now can be directly observed.

Governments must start working urgently to remove orbital debris, which could become a catastrophic problem for satellites a few decades from now, a space science conference heard on Thursday.

Since 1978, the total of junk items whizzing around the planet has tripled, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office.

“There is a wide and strong expert consensus on the pressing need to act now to begin debris removal activities,” he said in an ESA press release at the end of a four-day conference in Darmstadt, Germany.

A celestial body 20 metres in diameter will pass dangerously close — 8,620 km — to the Earth’s surface in 13 years, an Italian astronomer has said.

The flyby of the asteroid 2013 GM3 on April 14, 2026, may bring it within 15,000 km of the Earth’s centre, or 8,620 km from the planet’s surface, said astronomer Francesco Manca of the Sormano Astronomical Observatory near Milan.

The latter figure is slightly more than one radius of the planet, and within the geostationary orbit of 35,700 km.

Beijing, Apr. 25 (Xinhua-ANI): Samsung Electronics said Thursday that it will roll out its new flagship smartphone model Galaxy S4 in Seoul this Friday for the first time across the globe.

The latest version of Samsung”s Galaxy series will be available for sale to South Korean customers from Friday through three local mobile operators, including SK Telecom, KT Corp. and LG Uplus, according to an e-mailed statement.

The smartphone giant planned to launch the Galaxy smartphone via 327 wireless carriers, including AT&T, Vodafone and Telefonica, in 155 countries during the second quarter.

Seattle, Apr. 25 (ANI): Microsoft has signed a patent deal with China’s smart phones maker ZTE linked to its use of the Android and Chrome operating systems

However, both Android and chrome operating systems is Google’s brainchild. Microsoft possesses intellectual property rights to some of the software’s underlying technologies, the BBC reports.

The deal comes weeks after Microsoft had signed a similar deal with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn.

The Redmond-based firm has paid out more than 2.6 billion pounds (4billion dollars) as patent rights in the last decade.

London, Apr. 25 (ANI): Microsoft will unveil the successor to Xbox 360 video game on May 21.

Xbox spokesperson Major Nelson on his official blog promised to give a real taste of the future with the launch of Xbox.

According to The Guardian, much is not known about the new console, not even its name. Gamers have been referring to it as Xbox 720.

It is also probable that the device will support a range of payment methods for content, including in-game micro-transactions and subscription services offering access to a range of content for a monthly fee, the report said.

The first of the three lunar eclipses of the year will occur tomorrow, giving astro enthusiasts all over the country an opportunity to witness the celestial event.

A tiny sliver of the Moon will be covered by the Earth’s umbral shadow at maximum of the partial lunar eclipse, N Sri Raghunandan Kumar of Planetary Society of India said.

This is the third shortest partial eclipse of the Moon for the 21st century, lasting just 27 minutes.

According to NASA, the shortest partial lunar eclipse of the 21st century will be on February 13, 2082, lasting only 25.5 minutes.

A self-proclaimed leader of the LulzSec international hacking group has been arrested in Australia, police said, charging him with attacking and defacing a government website.

The 24-year-old IT professional, who went by the online identity “ozshock”, was seized at his office in a town 76 kilometres (47 miles) north of Sydney on Tuesday.

“The man is a self-proclaimed leader of the group Lulz Security (LulzSec), a computer hacking group that has existed since 2011,” the Australian Federal Police said, adding that he was known to international police forces.

Internet search giant Google may soon revamp its iconic homepage, personalising it for each user by adding relevant information about weather, traffic conditions and even your favourite stocks.

The current Google homepage comprises a white screen, a search box and a pretty logo.

Google is reportedly working on bringing ‘Google Now’, its personalised homepage feature of its Android phones to the web and to its search page.

The tech giant is testing ‘Google Now’ for its homepage, according to website, Google System.

A collection of 36 mummies belonging to Guanajuato, a city in central Mexico, has been sent back from the US, officials told EFE.

The “traveling mummies”, as they are known in Guanajuato, arrived at the Mexico City airport from Chicago Sunday under “extremely tight security to ensure their perfect state of preservation”, an airport spokesman said.

Guanajuato’s Mummy Museum signed a deal in 2009 with a businessman who planned to exhibit the mummies at museums in the US.

The roving coralgrouper, a predator fish of the tropical reef, uses sign language to advise fellow hunters of hiding prey, according to a study published on Tuesday.

It is the first time that a fish has been known to make “referential gestures,” or specific signs that alert a partner to an object of mutual interest, it said.

Reporting in the journal Nature Communications, a trio of biologists at Switzerland’s University of Neuchatel and Cambridge University in England studied how the coralgrouper works with two hunting pals.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit project Mars One, which opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22, plans to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent human colony on the red planet.

New crews will arrive every two years thereafter, Fox News reported.

Human explorers and their trillions of microbes will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, Mars One officials said, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit project Mars One, which opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22, plans to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent human colony on the Red Planet.

New crews will arrive every two years thereafter, Fox News reported.

Human explorers and their trillions of microbes will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, Mars One officials said, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life.

Washington, April 23 (ANI): Three smartphones destined to become low-cost satellites were flown into space Sunday aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.`s Antares rocket from NASA`s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

The trio of “PhoneSats” is operating in orbit, and may prove to be the lowest-cost satellites ever flown in space. The goal of NASA`s PhoneSat mission is to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics of a capable, yet very inexpensive, satellite.

London, Apr 23 (ANI): Human Rights groups have launched a campaign to put an end to the development of what are called “killer robots,” which they believe should be outlawed along with cluster bombs and land mines.

London, April 23 (ANI): Some satellite orbits will become extremely hazardous over the next 200 years if space debris is not actively tackled, a new study has warned.

The research found that catastrophic space debris collisions would likely occur every five to nine years at the altitudes used principally to observe the Earth.

And the scientists who conducted the study for the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee said that the real outcome would probably be far worse, the BBC reported.

BJP in Uttarakhand today said it will oppose Coca Cola’s proposed bottling plant at Charba village here expressing apprehensions about the harmful effects of the project on the fragile Himalayan ecology.

Terming the MoU recently signed between the multi-national beverage giant and the state government in this regard as an “over-hurried decision”, state BJP chief Tirath Singh Rawat said the party will oppose it tooth and nail.

The mysterious traces of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter came from a comet that smashed into the largest planet of the solar system in 1994, the European Space agency (ESA) has found.

ESA’s Herschel space observatory solved the long-standing mystery as to the origin of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, finding conclusive evidence that it was delivered by the dramatic impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994.

In just two days, the sun erupted with three coronal mass ejections (CME) – a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can affect electronic systems in satellites.

Images of the CMEs were captured by the joint ESA and NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

A CME erupted off the sun on April 20, 2013, at 2:54 a.m. EDT.

The three smartphone satellites sent into space Sunday by the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket are operating normally in orbit, the US space agency NASA said.

Transmissions from all the three PhoneSats, believed to be the lowest-cost satellites ever put in space, have been received at multiple ground stations on the Earth, said NASA in a statement Monday.

Software giant Microsoft is working with manufacturers to produce a line of small touch-screen devices powered by Windows.

Peter Klein, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, told investors and analysts on a conference call that the new devices will be available in coming months at competitive prices.

The new device is apparently intended to compete with 7-inch tablets like the iPad Mini and Amazon Kindle Fire, Fox News reports.

Wild fires not only destroy millions of trees each year but the residue is transported to the sea by rivers which penetrates the carbon cycle, a recent study has revealed.

Team of researchers led by Thorsten Dittgar from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Rudolf Jaffe from Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center in Miami have proved that the earlier theory that the charcoal from wild fires gets decomposed in the soil is invalid.

Russia plans to de-orbit and sink its Pirs docking module at the International Space Station later this year, a top official with space corporation RKK Energia said.

Alexander Kaleri, head of the company’s scientific technical centre, said undocking and de-orbiting Pirs will take place before a new Russian module docks with the station.

RKK Energia’s deputy chief designer Alexander Derechin said in March that the launch of the multirole laboratory module (MLM) was tentatively scheduled for the end of 2013.

Washington, April 19 (ANI): Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a very inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to turn a brute machine into a dextrous manipulator.

Designed by researchers in the Harvard Biorobotics Laboratory at SEAS, the sensor, called TakkTile, is intended to put what would normally be a high-end technology within the grasp of commercial inventors, teachers, and robotics enthusiasts.

IT and software major Microsoft has emerged as India’s most attractive employer for the third straight year in 2013, according to a survey by HR service firm Randstad.

The company was followed by Hewlett Packard and Google India in the second and third positions, respectively.

Others in the top 10 most attractive employer list included — IBM (4th), ONGC (5th), Sony (6th), Larsen & Toubro
(7th), Steel Authority of India (8th), SBI (9th) and Tata Consultancy Services (10th).