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Space Spin » Bully galaxy rules the neighbourhood
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:57:34 -0800
In general, galaxies can be thought of as "social" -- hanging out in groups and frequently interacting. However, this recent Hubble Space Telescope image highlights how some galaxies appear to be hungry loners. These cosmic oddities have set astronomers on the "case of the missing neighbour galaxies"....

Space Spin » Winds of change: How black holes may shape galaxies
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:50:51 -0800
New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provide evidence for powerful winds blowing away from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. This discovery indicates that "average" supermassive black holes may play an important role in the evolution of the galaxies in which they reside. For years, astronomers have kn...

Space Spin » Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter speeds past data milestone
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:42:32 -0800
NASA's newest Mars orbiter, completing its fourth year at the Red Planet this week, has just passed a data-volume milestone unimaginable a generation ago and still difficult to fathom: 100 terabits. That 100 trillion bits of information is more data than in 35 hours of uncompressed high-definition video. It's also more than three times the amount...

Space Spin » Radar map of buried martian ice adds to climate record
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:39:20 -0800
Extensive radar mapping of the middle-latitude region of northern Mars shows that thick masses of buried ice are quite common beneath protective coverings of rubble. The ability of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to continue charting the locations of these hidden glaciers and ice-filled valleys -- first confirmed by radar two years ago -- adds...

Space Spin » Fermi probes 'dragons' of the gamma-ray sky
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:32:41 -0800
One of the pleasures of perusing ancient maps is locating regions so poorly explored that mapmakers warned of dragons and sea monsters. Now, astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope find themselves in the same situation as cartographers of old. A new study of the ever-present fog of gamma rays from sources outside our galaxy shows...

Space Spin » Mini-SAR finds ice deposits at moon's north pole; Additional evidence of water activity on moon
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:21:59 -0800
Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the to...

Space Spin » Mars Odyssey still hears nothing from Phoenix
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:03:27 -0800
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed no sign during February that it has revived itself after the northern Mars winter. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will check again in early April. The solar-powered Phoenix lander operated for two months longer than its planned three-month mission in the Martian arctic in 2008. It was not designed to withstand winte...

Space Spin » HiRISE images for February 24 and March 3, 2010
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:48:54 -0800
The following new captioned and spotlight images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft are now available: DTM: Channels from Hale Crater Geologists who study Earth's surface have several advantages over those who study other planets: they can often walk up to the units they ...

Space Spin » Cassini ISS images - February 22-March 5, 2010
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:45:52 -0800
The following new images taken by the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on the Cassini spacecraft are now available: Balancing It Out (Released 22 February 2010) Two small but stately moons appear above and below the rings on the left of this image, serving to visually offset the dominance of Saturn on the picture's right. Shadow from the Gap (Rele...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Unbelievably spectacular flight through Candor Chasma
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:53:05 -0800
This is one of the things that came out during LPSC last week and all I could do at the time was Tweet it, which doesn't serve most of my readers, I realize. So here it is in blog form: the most unbelievably spectacular 3D animation of a bit of Mars I've seen yet, produced by Adrian Lark. The flight takes us through part of Candor Chasma, one of th...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Joint replacement operation takes Goldstone 70-meter dish offline until at least November
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:37:22 -0800
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced yesterday that the venerable 70-meter dish at the Goldstone Deep Space Network station is being taken offline so that major surgery can be performed. Part of its "hydrostatic bearing assembly," which allows the enormous dish to rotate horizontally, is being replaced, for the first time since the antenna was b...

Docking@Home » D@H resumes distribution
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:29:00 -0800
Docking@Home is slowly back to normal. Due to storage sortage we will distribute a slightly lower amout of workunits but all the daemons are back...

SF Signal » Free Fiction: 'The Hambleton Affair' by George Mann (A Sir Maurice Newbury Story)
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:29:00 -0800
If you're not familiar with George Mann's Newbury and Hobbes stories, you should be. They combine the mystery of Sherlock Holmes and the flavor of steampunk. The first novel in which Sir Maurice Newbury (Special Agent to Queen Victoria and specialist in the occult sciences) and Victoria Hobbes (his able assistant) were introduced was The Affinity...

SF Signal » 2010 SF Hall of Fame Inductees
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:28:00 -0800
The Science Fiction Museum and SF Hall of Fame announced that this year's Hall of Fame inductees: Octavia E. Butler Roger Zelazny Douglas Trumbull Richard Matheson Winners were selected by a jury cosnisting of Robin Wayne Bailey, Gavin Grant, Leslie Howle, Therese Littleton, George R.R. Martin, Brooks Peck, Robert Silverberg, Frank Wu. The Hall of...

SF Signal » TRAILER: Tron Legacy
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:51:14 -0800
We've had just a taste and a tease of Disney's upcoming Tron sequel, until today.Thanks to some enterprising fans who have been hard at work on the Tron Legacy viral site Flynn Lives we have the official trailer. [H/T to FirstShowing.Net] But please, by all that's holy, watch it in HD. I love the look of the new computer world, I love the light ...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Phobos has gravity!
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:43:35 -0800
Last week Mars Express had its closest-ever flyby of Mars' larger, inner moon Phobos. They used the close encounter for radio science, to attempt to probe the inner structure of the little potato. It'll be a few weeks at least before they have any kind of reportable results on what that data tells them, but one thing that they can already report is...

PrimeGrid » The Ides of March Challenge
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:15:00 -0800
Less than one week till it's the end for some prime wannabe's. A 24 hour (15-16 March) Challenge is being offered on PrimeGrid's Prime Sierpinski Project/Seventeen or Bust (Sieve) application. Come join us as we quicken the demise for some unlucky k/n pairs.Application builds are available for MacIntel, Linux, and Windows – with a 64 bit advan...

SF Signal » Avatar Fans Blue Over Oscar Loss
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:28:00 -0800
The Academy Awards have come and gone, leaving in their wake the usual amount of discussion and arguing over why movie X should have won Y award. It's no different this year, and the science fiction genre has lost out on its chance to take home the gold, with Avatar losing out on Best Picture and Best Director to Kathryn Bigalow's Iraq War film, Th...

SF Signal » AUDIO REVIEW: Raven's Flight by Gav Thorpe
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:25:00 -0800
REVIEW SUMMARY: More incentive to dive into a Warhammer 40K book. MY RATING: BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Lord Corax and the Raven Guard are stranded without backup on the hostile planet Isstvan V. MY REVIEW: PROS: Exciting military sf action; engrossing story; excellent production quality. CONS: Predictable ending was somewhat of a letdown after all the good...

SF Signal » How To Design A Book Cover in Under 2 Minutes
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:12:00 -0800
From Orbit Books' cover designer Lauren Panepinto shares this highly-cool high-speed video that shows the creation of the book cover for Changeless by Gail Carriger... ...

SF Signal » TOC: Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, May/June 2010
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:11:00 -0800
Here is the table of contents for the May/June 2010 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, which goes on sale on May 4th, 2010: Novelettes:"Why that Crazy Old Lady Goes up the Mountain" by Michael Libling"Thief of Shadows" by Fred Chappell"Dr. Death vs. the Vampire" by Aaron Schutz"The Crocodiles" by Steven PopkesShort Stories:"A History of C...

SF Signal » SF Tidbits for 3/9/10
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:05:00 -0800
Interviews/ProfilesThe Agony Column interviews Joe Hill (podcast).Book Nook interviews Erin Evans (video).The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast interviews Tom Rogers.Ben Peek interviews Kaaron Warren. (via Tansy Rayner Roberts)SF Signal Irregular Derek Johnson interviews Peter Straub at Strange Horizons.NewsFlurb Issue #9 is out.Save on Book View ...

Einstein@Home » Project News March 9, 2010
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:00:00 -0800
The latest radio pulsar re-discoveries are available here. Our count is now at 59 detections of 40 different known radio pulsars. The latest improvements of the search workflow increased the average processing rate to about 200% of the Arecibo data taking rate. This means we're now able to process the available backlog of data - thanks to our volun...

The Planetary Society Weblog » LPSC: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter results
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:17:28 -0800
A week later and I am finally getting to the mountains of notes I took on Moon-related talks I saw at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) held in Houston last week. Unlike previous years at LPSC, the Moon was really the leader, with the most talks and posters, even more than Mars, which has never, to my knowledge, happened in the year...

SF Signal » [Guest Post] Part 1: A Manifesto of Imaginative Literature by Justin Allen
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:00:00 -0800
For the Love of Pete, Don't Mix Your Genres; Or... The New York Times Book Review Hates YOU, but I Don't; Or... Why Where Your Book Gets Shelved Determines Your Intelligence, Work-Ethic and Value to Society That's a longish title I'll admit, and while I generally don't go in for such larded vessels, in this case I'm willing to make an exception. Mo...

SF Signal » TOC: 'The Living Dead 2' edited by John Joseph Adams
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:59:00 -0800
John Joseph Adams has posted the table of contents for his sequel zombie anthology The Living Dead 2: "Alone, Together" by Robert Kirkman"Danger Word" by Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due"Zombieville" by Paula Stiles"The Anteroom" by Adam-Troy Castro"When the Zombies Win" by Karina Sumner-Smith"Mouja" by Matt London"Category Five" by Marc Paoletti"Liv...

SF Signal » New Iron Man 2 Trailer
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:57:00 -0800
Looks fun! [via mashable]...

SF Signal » Catching Up On SF Movies (JP Edition, Part Deux)
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:20:00 -0800
Ink (2009) - Ink is the one of the best movies you've never seen, most likely because it never hit the theaters. Ink is an indie production that was shot for $250k. It's amazing what a limited budget will do for your creativity. Ink is bascially a story about one battle in the war between Good and Evil, where the battlefield is our dreams. I...

SF Signal » Amelia Beamer is Serializing her Debut Zombie-Comedy-Romance Novel 'The Loving Dead'
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:18:00 -0800
Although the book won't be published until July, Amelia Beamer is serializing her debut novel, The Loving Dead, at her website beginning today with the first four chapters. Every week, a new chapter will be posted online until the whole book is available. What's it about? It's a zombie-comedy-romance novel described thusly:Girls! Zombies! Zeppelin...

SF Signal » TOC: The Best of Larry Niven
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:15:00 -0800
Subterranean Pres has posted the table of contents for The Best of Larry Niven edited by Jonathan Strahan:"Becalmed in Hell""Bordered in Black""Neutron Star""The Soft Weapon""The Jigsaw Man""The Deadlier Weapon""All the Myriad Ways""Not Long Before the End""Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex""Inconstant Moon""Rammer""Cloak of Anarchy""The Fourth Profes...

SF Signal » Books Received: March 8, 2010
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:11:00 -0800
In the interest of full disclosure, here are the books and stuff we received this week. ...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Stephen Hawking Receives Cosmos Award
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:20:30 -0800
by Louis D. Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society The Planetary Society presented the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science to Stephen Hawking in Cambridge England on February 27. Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow and collaborator, Neil deGrasse Tyson and I presented the award, a beautiful glass sculpture of Satur...

The Planetary Society Weblog » WISE's weekly featured image
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:30:27 -0800
Every space mission has its own style of public outreach; you never know quite what you're going to get until it launches and is in the full swing of operations. So I'm pleased to point out that the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission (WISE) has started an "image of the week" feature on its website. It's a survey mission, systematically cap...

Docking@Home » D@H temporarily suspends work generation
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:20:00 -0800
Docking@Home will interrupt the distribution of new workunits until the storage pressure is released. This means that tomorrow (March 08), or the day after tomorrow at most (March 09) we will resume with the normal distribution activity. Thank you for your patience!!...

Docking@Home » D@H temporarily suspends work generation
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:49:00 -0800
We temporarily suspended the generation of new jobs while investigating some issues with the charmm script. Stay tuned .....

The Planetary Society Weblog » Cassini's Helene flyby
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:05:49 -0800
I was much anticipating Cassini's encounter with Helene on Wednesday. It looks like there was a problem with the pointing of the spacecraft, something that used to happen much more frequently on Cassini, but I don't see it much anymore, so that Helene falls off of the edges of many of the images. When I say "problem" I don't mean there's anything w...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Pretty picture: Io, labeled
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:20:34 -0800
Jason Perry just posted this lovely labeled image of Io over at his blog, the Gish Bar Times. It's a nice image for providing context whenever any of the named volcanoes are discussed, so I thought I'd toss it in our image library and post it here!Click to enlarge >Io, labeledThe images for this full-disk color view of Io were acquired by Galile...

The Planetary Society Weblog » LPSC, Day 3: Opportunity, and what the heck is Marquette?
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:40:11 -0800
I wrote earlier about some results from Spirit reported at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas; here are the rest of my notes on rover-related talks, from Opportunity's site on the opposite side of Mars. And now that I'm at home and in front of my big screen, I can toss in some eye candy to help you work your way th...

The Planetary Society Weblog » Join the Fight for NASA's Future!
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:56:52 -0800
by Louis D. Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society The U.S. Administration's request for the 2011 NASA budget calls for a bold recasting of the agency's path for human space exploration. With the new plan NASA will receive more funding for science and technology missions, both robotic and human, and join forces with private industry ...

QMC@HOME » Project News Mar 4, 2010
Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800
Our new application QASINO is ready to run!...

malariacontrol.net » Project News 2010-03-04
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:00 -0800
We have submitted some work-units for a follow-up experiment....

PrimeGrid » Tour de Primes 2010 has ended!!!
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:35:00 -0800
A very productive month for the Tour de Primes. 309 "Top 5000" primes were discovered, easily surpassing last year's mark of 212. lennart SM5YMT of Sweden and the PrimeSearchTeam once again topped the leader boards winning his second yellow jersey in a row. He also picked up the green jersey for the first time. [SG]marodeur6 of Germany and team SET...

PrimeGrid » BEWARE the Ides of March!!!
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:40:00 -0800
PrimeGrid's Challenge series continues with the Ides of March Challenge. Once again we observe Caesar's demise by finding factors that will bring some k/n pairs to their demise. A 24 hour (15-16 March) Challenge is being offered on PrimeGrid's Prime Sierpinski Project/Seventeen or Bust (Sieve) application. For more information, please see this foru...

SIMAP » New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of March 1
Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:54:38 -0800
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of February, will start in the evening (UTC) of March 1....

malariacontrol.net » Project News 2010-02-27
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:00:00 -0800
malariacontrol.net will stop sending out new workunits for a few weeks starting Mon March 1st. Please read this and this for more information....

malariacontrol.net » Project News 2010-02-26
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:00:00 -0800
Status update and outlook...

PrimeGrid » New AP25 Found
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:00:00 -0800
A new AP25 (Arithmetic Progression of 25 primes) has been found. It is the 13th discovered. The finder is Keith Pattenden (KWSN - Sir Brian - err sorry - wrong film!) of the United Kingdom. He is a member of the The Knights Who Say Ni! team.The AP25 progression is written as 42592855872841649+19093314*23#*n for n=0..24. It was found by an NVIDIA Ge...

PrimeGrid » New AP25 Found
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:30:00 -0800
A new AP25 (Arithmetic Progression of 25 primes) has been found. It is the 12th discovered. The finder is Bryan Little (mfl0p) of the United States. He is a member of the [H]ard|OC team.The AP25 progression is written as 58555890166091939+10416756*23#*n for n=0..24. It was found by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 in an Intel Core2 Quad @ 2.40GHz running ...

Space Spin » Cassini finds plethora of plumes, hotspots at Enceladus
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:31:30 -0800
Newly released images from last November's swoop over Saturn's icy moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a forest of new jets spraying from prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yield the most detailed temperature map to date of one fracture. The new images from the imaging science subsystem and the composite infrar...

Space Spin » No signal heard during first day of resumed listening for Phoenix
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:10:05 -0800
Mars Odyssey began a second campaign Monday to check on whether the Phoenix Mars Lander has revived itself after the northern Martian winter. The orbiter received no signal from the lander during the first 10 overflights of this campaign. Odyssey will listen for Phoenix during 50 additional overflights, through Feb. 26, during the current campaig...