That’s right. Less then 2 months until the LHC goes live. According to some folks, the Large Hedron Collider will create a miniature black hole that will destroy the planet and everything in the solar system.
Of course, scientists in charge of the project say that while chances are small that a black hole will be created, but if it does happen, it will be for the briefest of moments and will harm nothing. We’ll see.
Blacklight Power, a company with $60 million in funding from respected funding sources, claims to have built a 50 kw prototype power generation device. They claim that the device will generate power at ten times less cost than the cheapest coal, wind and nuclear power now.
They are expecting to have built a factory for mass producing power generation devices in 2009 and to scale the system up to 3MW or more and down to smaller power levels. However, even more important than solving all energy problems would be that Blacklight Power could then be right about Hydrinos and a fifth physical force and a possible grand theory including gravity.
Just when I thought that I had one of the best video cards on the market, the 8800GT, Nvidia goes and makes it obsolete.
NVIDIA’s new family of GeForce GTX 200 graphics processors - which includes the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 GPUs - include NVIDIA’s CUDA technology and the new CUDA runtime for Windows Vista, which allows programmers to offload the most intensive processing tasks from the CPU to the NVIDIA GPUs. The GPUs also deliver 50% more gaming performance over the Company’s previous NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU with impressive shading horsepower at resolutions as high as 2560 x 1600.
Check out the press release for more information.
The most complex, “mind-boggling” crop circle ever to be seen in Britain has been discovered in a barley field in near Barbury Castle.
The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi. Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: “The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point.
According to this press release issued by the ESO, astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets.
Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. Moreover, looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbours such planets.
Starting at 10am PST, you will be able to download Firefox 3. Some notable changes in this release are:
You can read more in the release notes over @ www.getfirefox.com.
PopSci is reporting that a meteorite in Australia has been found to contain component molecules of DNA.
While no one has established the connection between the development of life on Earth and the molecules’ presence on meteorites, the discovery does shed light on the possibility of life elsewhere in the galaxy. If the basic ingredients are zipping around throughout the cosmos, the likelihood of life taking shape wherever the chemistry is right is most certainly increased.
It’s name is The Emperor and you can see from this picture why it’s being touted as the ultimate geek workstation.
The first thing I noticed when I first saw it was the uncanny resemblance to a scorpion. Anyways, The Emperor features three widescreen monitors, THX Dolby surround sound, air filtering, light therapy, a Web cam, battery backup and many other things. NovelQuest, the company behind the device, will release full specs and price on July 24.
I’m sure I won’t be able to afford it, but since I’ve already got 2 24” Dell 2407WFP-HCs side by side on my desk, along with 5.1 speakers, I don’t really need it.
I’m sure some of you are scratching your head and wondering why I would tell you to turn off the Link Scanner in AVG Antivirus, and I’m going to give you that reason. Two reasons actually:
More information can be gleaned from The Register.
Are you the kind of geek that doesn’t like playing other people’s video games? Think you can make a better video game? Then this ebook is for you. 12 chapters ranging from making your own Hello World! in Chapter 1, all the way to AI Simulation in Chapter 12, anyone can pick up this book and start programming, even if you have zero experience!
I know I haven’t updated this site in like 4 months, so I decided to come back with a new look. I’m going to dedicate myself to posting at least 5 days a week so that I can give you the best in geek news.
