Daily science stuff

[honeybee]

You are correct, JT. The white line is the Milky Way. I think the picture was taken a few million miles from earth - so we might be a teeny weenie bit to the left. But I'm not sure photoshop could make an arrow that small.

[honeybee]

OMG!


Rumors are flying that Fermilab (and not Cern) has found the Higgs Boson.


edited to add: Fermilab is squelching the rumors. They say they have very great new research, but are not calling it the discovery.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

We're running out of internet addresses

[Elessar]

Yeah, glad u posted that..... we ARE. This just keeps chugging along and it's like nobody's doing anything about it. I mean we ARE but we're not going to be ready. I'm not sure what exaclty's going to happen, I suppose we'll patch the solution piece by piece just to keep the internet working but I wouldn't be surprised if huge nodes start going down due to global address conflicts.

For those not really familiar w/ this problem the article gives about the best description u can get - it's like the number of available phone numbers, only the IPv4 scheme only has about 4 billion addresses available. One thing this article doesn't mention is we ALREADY use more than 4 billion but network engineers have worked around the problem thus far with little tricks like Network Address Translation which basically sort of lets us spoof addresses inside 'area codes' so we can have duplicates without address conflicts but... basically running out of patches... If you need to understand how it is we have need for more addresses than there are people on the planet, think about this. Not only does every personal computer need an address, so does every router, sometimes switch, a dozen or so for all the mail servers and domain controllers and DNS servers associated with EVERY small business in the world; multiplied by 10 for every major corporation. On top of that, things like Network DVRs, blu-ray players, SMART PHONES, network storage devices, IP cameras (my bad ), surveillance servers, mechanical servers (they're actually putting HVAC units on networks now so they can be reprogrammed remotely), access control servers (again my bad ), and then the plethora that is the gaming server industry for PC and console gaming (which means every PS3 and Xbox 360 has an IP) and a handful of other expanding device fields now need IP addresses, often times global ones.

The powers that be have been screaming about this for 20 years, basically about as long as IPv6 has been in development but it's just like, the worldwide internet companies like I guess, Level 3, Lucent, Sun, the other big ones... MCI/Worldcom.... just aren't moving over fast enough. Apparently something like 60% of home networking equipment (routers, modems, switches, etc) and a bunch of industrial routers, hops, switches and shit DO NOT support IPv6, only IPv4. So even when the big providers like Microsoft, Motorola, Lucent, Sun, Level 3, Google, etc get switched over, a bunch of people's equipment won't work.

[Enerdhil]

We're running out of internet addresses

For what I know, we are also running out of power to the internet. In some countries the internet electrical energy consumption (routers, switches, servers...) is already a few percent of the total.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

These are cool! Imagine taking these with your own telescope, eh, jT!

Behold the best amateur space pictures of the year!

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

[aadarshinah]

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

I don't know whether to laugh and call the authors of the study quacks or go, "Wow, that's so cool."

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

There was no Big Bang at the start of the universe, says physicist

[aadarshinah]

Ah, I've heard of that before. It's called the "Big Bounce."

[enterprikayak]

Ligers and maybe Humanzees?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zOWYj59BXI&

[honeybee]

humanizees. . .are probably totally possible. Creepy. But possible. *shiver*


Really cool Hubble pic to cleanse that image:

http://gawker.com/5609977/marooned-in-space

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Jupiter became king of the planets by devouring a "Super Earth"

Human ancestors carved meat with stone tools almost a million years earlier than expected

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Neptune will soon complete its first orbit around the sun since its discovery in 1846

Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked

[Alelou]

LOL. And they always looked so damned classy.

Now I see the clear cultural connection to the Tarpon Springs tourist boats and restaurants...