Month: December 2020

With the holidays fast approaching, I do not know how many times I will get to post. So I will take the time now to wish you and yours Happy Holidays.

Dips in the light levels of a star can betray the presence of orbiting planets. “Observing planetary auroral radio emission is the most promising method to detect exoplanetary magnetic fields,” explained Cornell University astronomer Jake Turner and colleagues in their new paper, “the knowledge of which will provide valuable insights into the planet’s interior structure,…

Ghost circles in the sky – what’s not to love. Among them, labeled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what it was. A few…

USA Today has mostly positive things to say about the new Mustang entry. The sleek, five-seat newcomer successfully transfers the magic of the Mustang to the vehicle that launches Ford’s transition to electric power. It’s a handsome, tech-rich vehicle. Like the classic Mustang coupe and convertible that created the pony car’s mystique, buyers who want…

For the first time in history manmade materials now likely outweigh all life on Earth, scientists said. While vegetation has gone down… The weight of roads, buildings and other constructed or manufactured materials is doubling roughly every 20 years, and authors of the research said it currently weighed 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion tonnes). For more,…

…that could make interplanetary spaceflight much faster than was previously thought possible. One day, NASA or other space agencies could make use of these superhighways to speed up travel time from the Earth to distant parts of the Solar System, but the team can’t yet say how it would work or how much faster journeys…

…for the first time in 800 years. For the first time in nearly 800 years, a rare Christmas star will light up the sky at the start of this month’s winter solstice, a shiny beacon that will be visible from South Florida without a telescope. For more, check out this Sun Sentinel story.

A high-res image of the sun captured by new solar telescope is being called ‘unprecedented’. The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, a new solar observatory based in Hawaii, has released its first image of the sun, which captures that activity in striking detail. To see the image, check out this CNN story.

When a computer case has a potential fire-hazard, it shouldn’t be ignored. We’ve identified an issue with the H1 case where a short on the PCIe riser cable connection can lead to a potential fire hazard. This issue has currently affected fewer than ten H1 cases. To be extra cautious, we have paused sales on…

A 50-year-old science problem solved and that could mean big things. The discovery stands to accelerate drug discovery by giving scientists more precise information about how proteins function within cells, allowing them to better target those proteins to counteract the mechanisms underlying disease. For more, check out this STAT News story.