The Hubble Deep Field, with the location of galaxy HDF 805.1 marked. This galaxy, completely invisible in visible light, formed 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. STScI/NASA, F. Walter (MPIA) In 1996, the Hubble Space Telescope took a set of long-exposure images of a single tiny patch of the sky. This Hubble Deep Field (HDF) survey obtained data on over 1,500 galaxies stretching back to the earliest days of the Universe, in a wide range of wavelengths of light. The HDF has provided riches for astronomers but also an enduring mystery in the form of HDF 805.1—the brightest object in the infrared part of the spectrum. The wavelength in which HDF 805.1 is brightest corresponds to dust surrounding strong star formation, but the object is invisible in other types of light. Without other data, astronomers couldn't determine the size of, or distance to HDF 805.1. Now a research team using the Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI) in the French Alps and the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico have detected HDF 805.1 in submillimeter radio light. As Fabian Walter et al. report in Nature, the location of HDF 805.1 corresponds to a bright source about 12.6 billion light-years away, meaning the object formed only 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. The light measured from the HDF and PdBI together suggests a galaxy about 130 billion times the mass of the Sun (comparable in mass to the Milky Way) with a high rate of star formation. This discovery is surprising for two reasons: the star formation rate is higher than predicted for a galaxy that early in the Universe's history, and the amount of dust required to hide it completely in visible light is larger than expected. HDF 805.1 is one of a class of objects known as submillimeter galaxies (SMGs), not because they are tiny, but because they emit light primarily at submillimeter wavelengths. By the spectrum of light they emit, we know SMGs produce new stars at a rapid rate. But the environment of the star formation is very dusty, blocking almost all the visible light. Without that spectral information, it is difficult to measure their distance, as well as the size of the galaxy. However, SMGs are potentially valuable in mapping the history of galaxies and star formation in the Universe, so astronomers have tried since 1996 to solve the riddle of HDF 805.1.Read more | Comments
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Flickr user 'inhisgrace' These days we're all supposed to be multitaskers—juggling e-mail, IM, Twitter, the TV on in the background, and more. This is despite a seemingly constant stream of evidence that, as humans, we're really not that good at doing more than one thing (and certainly more than two) at once. OK, for accuracy's sake, it seems about two and a half percent (paywall) of us are actually able to multitask effectively. Unfortunately, the odds are not good that you are among that minority. A lot of multitasking research seems to look at trying to do something else while driving. This is perhaps unsurprising: you're much more likely to kill someone texting and driving than juggling multiple applications and windows at your desk (with the possible exception of armed drone pilots). Still, many of us choose to ignore the data and continue to use our phones while controlling thousands of pounds of metal. Given that this is the case, Sarah Donohue at Duke University and her colleagues set out to ask, "are there any specific groups out there that can multitask?" They set their eyes on gamers. A lot of prior research has shown that avid players of action games tend to have greater visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, better ability to track multiple moving objects, and possibly better top-down cognitive control compared to those of us who haven't racked up the hours, weeks, and months in Counterstrike/Doom/Call of Duty. Donohue's study, published online last week in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, aimed to find out if action game devotees could use those abilities to effectively multitask better than the rest of us.Read more | Comments
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Art can be interpreted many ways. For instance, that orange pillar could represent the PlayStation 3, and the flying figures could represent thatgamecompany. thatgamecompany / Sony At this point, the only valid excuse for not immersing yourself in thatgamecompany's (TGC) abstract, artistic, heart-rendingly beautiful games like Flower and Journey is not owning a PlayStation 3. You won't be able to use this excuse going forward, though, since an investment of $5.5 million in Series A funding will let the developer release future games independently on multiple platforms. The new funding comes as TGC ends a three-game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America and its Santa Monica studio. In announcing the move, TGC co-founder Jenova Chen writes that he's "extremely grateful to Sony and the many players who put their faith in us," but also eager to expand to other platforms in order to "provide our players the highest quality experience at every point of contact." Benchmark Capital's Mitch Lasky will join TGC's board of directors as a result of the funding. "The intent of the investment is to provide the resources for TGC to remain independent, so they can innovate with complete autonomy from the pressures of platforms and publishers," Lasky wrote on his blog. "In the modern, hyper-connected games market, we believe TGC can reach the broadest possible audience if [its] vision can be fully controlled by the company."Read more | Comments
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Alex Eylar Though the new 15" Retina MacBook Pro has probably garnered the most attention this week, Apple did refresh its existing MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines. If you're in the market for a 13" model, it may be tough to decide between the Air or Pro, especially since prices for both start at $1199. We dug deep into the specs to analyze the pros and cons for each model, and came away finding that the 13" MacBook Pro still has a lot to offer for the money. If you're willing to lug around the extra pound and a half, you'll end up with a machine that's arguably a better value for the money—with potential longevity extended by future storage and RAM upgrade options. The contenders For much of our discussion, we'll consider the base $1199 model of Apple's latest 13" MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook Air. Both machines have additional CPU, RAM, and storage options, and we'll discuss some of those later on.Read more | Comments
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Whatever it ends up costing, don't forget you're also getting a TV remote control for your money! Nintendo Amidst all the talk of the Wii U and its unique, touchscreen-equipped GamePad at this year's E3, one of the major specifications missing from the discussion was the massive controller's price. The mystery surrounding that pricing remains a major concern for those considering a purchase of the system, and according to Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, it was also a major concern for the company while the system was still in the design phase. "Sometime during that final discussion [of the system's design], we almost gave up on the idea of the additional screen," Iwata said in an interview with London's Telegraph newspaper. "This was due to our concern over the expected high cost; it may not have been feasible to create this and sell it at a reasonable price point for the consumers." The Telegraph interview goes on to suggest that Nintendo eventually figured the cost situation out, suggesting that it will be able to offer the controller for that "reasonable price point" at launch (for Nintendo's definition of reasonable, at least). That price could be more important than ever, as Nintendo announced at E3 that the Wii U would be able to support games that use two GamePads at once, though no such games will be available at launch.Read more | Comments
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Browsing Ars Technica in the new version of Opera The Opera Web browser got a boost today with the release of version 12. The update brings a number of new features, improved performance, and enhanced support for modern Web standards. It also offers a preview of several experimental features, such as full hardware-accelerated rendering. Opera 12 has a lot to offer Web developers. The new version includes preliminary support for WebRTC, an emerging standard that is being drafted by the W3C Web Real-Time Communications Working Group. WebRTC will eventually enable standards-based audio and video chat in Web applications. There is also support for the WebRTC media capture APIs, which allow Web content to capture live media streams from the user’s microphone and webcam. As some readers might recall, we first wrote about that functionality last year when it arrived in the Chrome developer channel. The WebRTC getUserMedia API works out of the box in Opera 12 and can be used by any website. Due to the potential privacy and security implications, the user is automatically prompted by the browser before the feature is allowed to be activated. All we had to do to get it to work with our standard getUserMedia demo (which had previously only been tested in Chrome) was remove the WebKit prefix on the API call.Read more | Comments
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Abraham David Sofaer Abraham David Sofaer Abraham David Sofaer, a former New York federal judge, recently was presenting a paper at the National Academy of Sciences about deterring cyberattacks when he learned the feds had shut down Megaupload, seizing its domain names, in a criminal copyright infringement case. Troubling him more than his paper on global cybersecurity (PDF) was learning that the government had seized the files of 66.6 million customers as part of its prosecution of the file-sharing site’s top officers, and was refusing to give any of the data back to its owners. “It’s really quite outrageous, frankly,” the 74-year-old President Jimmy Carter appointee said in a recent telephone interview. “I was thinking the government hadn’t learned to be discreet in its conduct in the digital world. This is a perfect example on how they are failing to apply traditional standards in the new context.”Read more | Comments
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bid to have the UK Supreme Court reopen his extradition case was denied today. As a result, extradition proceedings to send Assange to Sweden over accusations of rape and sexual assault may go forward this month. The UK Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that Sweden's European Arrest Warrant for Assange's capture and return was valid. Assange, who has been under house arrest in the UK since December 2010, had one last chance to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the seven-judge panel dismissed his move today as "without merit," the BBC reported. Assange's appeal and the Supreme Court rejection can also be found on the "Justice for Assange" website. The controversial founder of a group that leaked secret government documents stands accused of assaulting two Swedish women. Britain's top court gave Assange a two-week grace period before extradition proceedings can begin, but after that wraps up, Assange is to be flown to Sweden within 10 days, the BBC also said. However, Assange may still appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.Read more | Comments
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EA / Crytek Crytek CEO and founder Cevat Yerli has a lot to be proud of. In just over a decade, his company has gone from a personal hobby to a major player in the game industry. Not only have its first-person franchises like Far Cry and Crysis become synonymous with top-of-the-line graphics, but its CryEngine 3 is being licensed for major upcoming projects including MechWarrior Online and the next game from Left 4 Dead developer Turtle Rock. The company is also investing heavily in the growing free-to-play first-person shooter market with Warface. But Crytek faces significant challenges as well. While CryEngine 3 continues to be licensed by high-profile games, architectural firms and even the United States Army, the Unreal Engine has much deeper penetration in the video game space, and drew considerable attention with the recent reveal of Unreal Engine 4. And while Warface is successful abroad, it is untested in the North American market. Yet when I talked to Yerli at E3, he came across as one of the most relaxed people at the entire show. Perhaps it was just exhaustion, but he wore a consistent smile, laughed readily, and didn't seem at all like someone facing down threats from all sides.Read more | Comments
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A British man with ties to LulzSec was indicted on conspiracy and hacking charges for attacking websites operated by Fox, PBS, and Sony. Twenty-year-old Ryan Cleary was indicted Tuesday in US District Court in Los Angeles, but he is already in custody in England because he faces similar charges there for running botnets and mounting DDoS attacks. "Federal authorities allege that between April 2011 through June 2011, Cleary conspired with LulzSec members to intentionally cause damage to the computer systems of Fox Entertainment Group in Los Angeles and stole confidential information including data relating to people auditioning for 'The X-Factor,'" the Los Angeles Times reported. "The indictment also alleges Cleary hacked into and defaced the PBS NewsHour website and created a separate website where he and others published confidential information stolen from entertainment company systems."Read more | Comments
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The Brookings Institute On Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill in the United States Senate that would prohibit the domestic warrantless use of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly identified as “drones.” Specifically, the bill states that other than given exceptions involving border patrol, “exigent circumstances,” and “high risk” of terrorist attack as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security, “a person or entity acting under the authority, or funded in whole or in part by, the Government of the United States shall not use a drone to gather evidence or other information pertaining to criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a statute or regulation except to the extent authorized in a warrant that satisfies the requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” As usual, the bill will need to be met by its legislative counterpart in the House and signed by the president before it becomes law. The introduction of the “Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012” came the same day that Public Intelligence, a nonprofit advocacy group, released a map showing 64 current and 22 planned military drone bases around the United States.Read more | Comments
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FBI In most papers we at Ars cover, we'll be pleasantly surprised to find a single clever turn of phrase that has survived multiple rounds of editing and peer review. So it was an unexpected surprise to come across a paper where the authors, all professors of economics, have spent the entire text with tongues so firmly planted in their cheeks that they threatened to burst out, alien-style. It surprised me even more to find it in a journal that is produced on behalf of the Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. Credit to the statisticians, though, for the journal's clever name: Significance. What topic allowed the economists to cut loose? Bank robberies—or more specifically, the finances thereof. The UK's banking trade organization decided it wanted an analysis of the economic effectiveness of adding security measures to bank branches. The professors did that, but in the process, they also did an analysis that looked at the economics of bank robbery from the thieves' perspective. The results were not pretty. For guidance on the appropriateness of knocking over a bank, the authors first suggest that a would-be robber might check with a vicar or police officer, but "[f]or the statistics, look no further. We can help. We can tell you exactly why robbing banks is a bad idea."Read more | Comments
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The Unity language implemented on a Prentke Romich AAC device Prentke Romich Company Few apps available for the iPad sell for $300—and even fewer are considered a bargain at the price. But "Speak for Yourself" turned consumer-grade tablets into sophisticated Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices for those struggling to speak due to issues like autism; standalone hardware offering the same capabilities goes for up to $15,000. The software changed lives. Dana Nieder's daughter Maya was unable to speak on her own, and the recent Speak for Yourself app proved intuitive enough that the four-year old could use it almost immediately. The results amazed Nieder, who wrote about them on her blog: Maya can speak to us, clearly, for the first time in her life. We are hanging on her every word. We’ve learned that she loves talking about the days of the week, is weirdly interested in the weather, and likes to pretend that her toy princesses are driving the bus to school (sometimes) and to work (other times). This app has not only allowed her to communicate her needs, but her thoughts as well. It’s given us the gift of getting to know our child on a totally different level.Read more | Comments
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Bloomberg reports that Facebook is planning to launch a service that will create a “spot” market for targeted advertising, allowing advertisers to bid on access to specific Facebook users based on specific data about their browsing history. The service, called Facebook Exchange, will use partnerships with other companies to track users as they visit other sites using tracking “cookies” placed on those sites, and allow advertisers to bid “in real time” to display ads based on the interests the browsing history represents. The system, which Facebook says it will deploy within the next few weeks, is similar to Google’s AdWords’ “interest categories,” which use information collected on a browser user based on visits to sites. Google’s system works by tracking browser users as they visit sites with AdWords advertisements, and collecting history data based on Google’s own tracking cookies. While Facebook Exchange won’t allow advertisers to see specific browser history for Facebook users, it will give them enough information to set specific thresholds to bid for a chance to serve up an advertisement to them. The real-time nature of the bidding system means that advertisers can target ads based on both recent behavior of Facebook users and real-world events. For example, people who have a Web history related to following a specific Olympic event could get offers based on the outcome of that event.Read more | Comments
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The Chrome OS management console can enable zero-touch deployment for Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. For an operating system to be successful in an enterprise environment, it needs to be easily managed. System administrators don't want to spend a lot of time tweaking each new system on their network by hand, and users want the computers they use every day to work reliably and predictably. This means administrators need to be able to manage applications and updates behind-the-scenes without interrupting users' work. All major operating systems, from Windows to OS X to iOS to Android, are all fully customizable and manageable using either first- or third-party tools. Google's Chrome OS is no exception. As part of our ongoing check-in with the revamped operating system and new, more robust Chrome hardware, today we'll be spending some time with the Chrome OS management console, looking at whether it makes Chrome OS a viable choice for businesses. "Zero-touch" Chrome OS management To get some background on the management console’s development and features, we spoke to Glenn Wilson, a product manager on the Chrome OS team who has also worked on the Chrome browser’s enterprise features.Read more | Comments
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The Sony Xperia Ion, complete with Sony Ericsson's signature green bubble Sony's Xperia Ion will arrive June 24, the company announced Thursday. The 4.6-inch phone will have a 1280x720 display and a 12-megapixel camera, but sadly, it will launch running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. We first saw the Xperia Ion at CES in January, where it impressed us on some counts. This is the second phone Sony is launching on its own since it bought out the mobile division of Ericsson, the first being the Xperia S that launched in Europe in March. The Xperia Ion's specs are pretty run-of-the-mill by now: 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and 16GB of storage expandable by up to 32GB via microSD. But there are a couple of bright spots, like the front-facing 720p camera. Sony boasts that the phone can go from standby to first camera shot in 1.5 seconds, with a shot-to-shot time of less than one second. Sony says it plans to upgrade the phone to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich eventually, but provides no concrete dates for the upgrade.Read more | Comments
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Titan, under the smog. The methane sea known as Kraken Mare is the dark smuge at the top of the image. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Only two bodies in the Solar System are known to have persistent surface liquid: Earth and Saturn's moon Titan. Unlike Earth, Titan's liquid is methane rather than water, and most of the methane is in the moon's thick atmosphere instead of on the surface. Therefore, instead of large oceans, Titan possesses smaller, shallower seas in the polar regions. The equatorial region is marked by sand dunes, similar to fields found on Earth. Studies of Titan's atmosphere show the tropics to be free of precipitation, making it drier than the driest desert on Earth. However, analysis of Cassini space probe data from 2004 through 2008 may have found as many as five tropical lakes on Titan. Spectral analysis by Caitlin A. Griffith et al. revealed an oval region that absorbs infrared light, an effect consistent with a small lake of liquid methane at least 2 meters deep. They also identified four other candidate lakes, but the data was far less clear. In the absence of rain, the authors suggest the most likely source for these lakes is subsurface—making them desert oases. Mapping Titan's surface is complicated by the moon's thick atmosphere, which is opaque to many wavelengths of light. While Earth's atmosphere has many broad "windows"—ranges of wavelengths that can penetrate to the surface, including visible and radio light—Titan has much narrower windows in the infrared and radio portions of the spectrum. The Cassini probe and the associated Huygens lander performed detailed chemical analysis of the atmosphere; they found the opacity is due to methane and other hydrocarbons, compounds of hydrogen and carbon responsible for smog on Earth.Read more | Comments
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Nintendo Nintendo spent a good portion of this year's E3 press conference stressing how the touchscreen-equipped GamePad that comes with the Wii U will revolutionize all sorts of familiar gaming experiences, and lead to entirely new types of gameplay as well. I tried a few Wii U games at the show that did just that, but more often they seemed to use the new controller in ways that got in the way of the gameplay. Here, in no particular order, are my impression of what the GamePad brings to the table in some of the Wii U's most important games. New Super Mario Bros. U While you can use the GamePad to play the single-player mode of this 2D side-scroller without using the TV, you only get the benefit of the game's stunning HD graphics while playing on the big screen. The more interesting use for the GamePad is the two-player "boost mode," where one player uses a standard Wii Remote to move Mario on the TV screen and another taps a live image on the GamePad to place temporary blocks on the playfield, or to briefly stun enemies. In theory, two coordinated players could use "boost mode" to create some amazing shortcuts through difficult parts of a level, resulting in some epic speed runs. In practice, during my short E3 demo I ended up accidentally getting in my partner's way at least as often as I helped him. Dedicated players willing to put in the practice may find themselves exploiting this mode for all it's worth, but I think it's a lot more likely that antagonistic players will end up trying to screw over their partners.Read more | Comments
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Windows 8 Release Preview Like XP or Vista: how will businesses treat Windows 8? Ditching Zune for Xbox: a new look at Windows 8 media apps Hands-on: Windows 8's SkyDrive Windows 8's built-in antivirus will put third-party products first Hands-on: News, Sports, and Travel go Metro in Windows 8 Release Preview Many new PCs were shown off at last week’s Computex trade show in Taiwan, and while designs and approaches sometimes varied wildly, touch support was a common theme. Windows 8’s final release is still a few months off, but it’s already casting a long shadow over PC hardware makers hoping that the new OS will drive sales of their products. The Metro interface is a big (and sometimes awkward) overhaul for PCs, and hardware makers are responding with correspondingly large changes to their hardware. Ultrabooks, convertibles, and other laptops The first generation of Ultrabooks consisted of a more-or-less homogenous batch of thin-and-light 11” and 13” laptops that earned plenty of (often unfavorable) comparisons to Apple’s successful MacBook Air. Less than a year later, most hardware makers are having their second or third crack at an Ultrabook design, and while the wide variety of approaches has quickly sapped the Ultrabook moniker of nearly all meaning, it has produced a more noteworthy crop of PCs. Some manufacturers are beginning to put dedicated graphics chips in their Ultrabooks to boost their graphics power and gain gaming as a marketing bullet point. Some, like Toshiba, are using oddball screen sizes to turn heads. Most, however, are integrating touch support in one way or another.Read more | Comments
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This bonobo has managed to grab a bite to eat without being distracted by sex. Dirk Byler/USFWS Ask any biologist who our closest relative is, and they'll almost certainly say the chimpanzee. However, there is another species of great ape, the bonobo, that we're just as closely related to. This lack of recognition may have something to do with the fact that bonobos only exist as a relatively small population within an isolated pocket of the Congo and were the last of the great apes to be discovered. Or it may be because bonobos have a habit that would probably make them a nightmare for anyone involved in public relations at a place like a zoo: they tend to defuse conflicts by having sex, often with members of the same sex. And primates in the wild have a lot of situations that can potentially create conflicts. At this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, primatologist Frans de Waal showed how, after having a load of food delivered, a group of bonobos quickly split up into couples and started having sex (including one male that kept on eating while coupling). It's hard to imagine a sharper contrast with the aggressive, territorial chimpanzees. Yet bonobos and chimps shared a common ancestor less than two million years ago. And, now that we've sequenced the bonobo genome, we've confirmed something that earlier studies have hinted at: from the DNA perspective, we'd have never recognized bonobos as a separate species if we hadn't seen the behavioral differences.Read more | Comments
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Back in February, AMD raised the possibility that future processors from the company might include ARM cores. The assumption at the time was that these ARM cores would be used for computation. The company has revealed its first plans for chips combining x86 and ARM cores, but it turns out they won't be used for computing at all: the embedded ARM cores will be used to provide security services. From next year, AMD will have APUs that include x86 cores, a GPU, and a Cortex-A5 ARM core. Cortex-A5 is a low-power, simple ARM design supporting the ARMv7 instruction set (the same instruction set as is supported by the more powerful Cortex A8 and A9 designs popular in smartphones). AMD wants to take advantage of an ARM feature called TrustZone. TrustZone allows the processor to run in two modes: "normal world," which is used to run the operating system and user software, and "secure world," which runs a secure operating system, trusted applications, and a system monitor. While the secure world software can inspect and verify the integrity of normal world software, the reverse isn't true. Normal world can't tamper with anything running in secure world.Read more | Comments
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Online attackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows them to execute malicious code on computers that visit booby-trapped websites, researchers said in an advisory that underscores the importance of installing a Microsoft patch as soon as possible. The exploit of a critical IE bug, reported by researchers from antivirus provider McAfee, means there are two newly disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft products under attack. On Tuesday, Microsoft warned of a separate vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows that was also actively being exploited. The most immediate significance of the McAfee report is this: If you run Windows and haven't installed Tuesday's batch of security fixes, you should stop whatever else you're doing and run them now.Read more | Comments
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Can you spot the ad in this Skype call? Hint: it's the giant thing on the right. Skype Skype has provided a great service for years, keeping us connected with friends and family. But there's always been one thing missing—marketers interrupting calls with giant display ads. Skype is finally fixing that problem, with today's launch of so-called "Conversation Ads" that will appear within the calling window during audio calls. Why are they called Conversation Ads? Because Skype is actually hoping users will discuss the content of the ads during phone calls. In other words, Skype (now owned by Microsoft) is hoping to interrupt the normal flow of human conversation, with advertisements targeted at users based on their location, gender, and age. "While on a 1:1 audio call, users will see content that could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences," Skype's Sandhya Venkatachalam wrote on the company blog. "So, you should think of Conversation Ads as a way for Skype to generate fun interactivity between your circle of friends and family and the brands you care about. Ultimately, we believe this will help make Skype a more engaging and useful place to have your conversations each and every day."Read more | Comments
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The disk of the Milky Way may be full of small terrestrial planets, based on a new study. Low-mass planets are less finicky about the environment in which they form than their high-mass cousins. ESO/S. Brunier Thanks to the Kepler planet-hunting mission and other surveys, the number of potential exoplanets—planets orbiting other stars—has grown. Of the 1,235 possible planets in the 2011 Kepler catalog, over half are smaller in size than Neptune. This indicates at least some may be rocky, similar in some respects to the terrestrial planets in the Solar System. While confirming and characterizing the individual planets is ongoing work, enough candidates are available that astronomers can perform statistical analyses on the worlds and their host star systems. In particular, a new study published in Nature examined the relationship between the host star's chemistry and the size of the planets in orbit. The presence of chemical elements heavier than helium—which astronomers perversely refer to as metals—in a star's spectrum is a measure of the environment of planet formation. As described by authors Lars A. Buchhave et al., no strong correlation exists between the metal content of the host star and the presence of low-mass planets. This is in stark contrast to higher-mass planets (comparable to Jupiter), which preferentially orbit high-metal stars. In other words, terrestrial planets may orbit a higher fraction of stars in the galaxy, since they don't require a metal-rich environment for formation. The widely accepted model of planet formation involves a disk of gas and dust surrounding the newborn star, known as the protoplanetary disk. As the name suggests, the protoplanetary disk gives rise to planets, but it also deposits material onto the star. The chemical composition of the material becomes part of the star's spectrum, which can be measured. The relative abundance of metals (compared to the base amount of hydrogen, which comprises most of any star's makeup) is known as the metallicity.Read more | Comments
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Artist The Oatmeal's rendition of Carreon's mother attempting to bed a bear. The Oatmeal/Matthew Inman The lawyer representing FunnyJunk, a site suing The Oatmeal for $20,000 for defamation, has expressed bewilderment at the Internet's negative reaction to FunnyJunk's case. "I really did not expect that [The Oatmeal] would marshal an army of people who would besiege my website and send me a string of obscene e-mails," Charles Carreon, FunnyJunk's legal representative, told MSNBC. The Oatmeal is the site of Internet cartoonist Matthew Inman. Inman wrote in 2011 about his frustrations with FunnyJunk, saying the humor site hosted his content without attribution. FunnyJunk allegedly removed the offending material. One year later, Inman received a letter from Carreon, demanding that he produce a check for $20,000 payable to the order of FunnyJunk, LLC for defaming its operation. While Inman set out to collect that $20,000 (and redirect it to a pair of causes, bears and cancer), Internet users set about finding Carreon's online contact information and shaming him for his actions. The attorney, who successfully litigated the sex.com case in November 2000, said to MSNBC, "I'm completely unfamiliar really with this style of responding to a legal threat—I've never really seen it before... I don't like seeing anyone referring to my mother as a sexual deviant." (Carreon is referring to Inman's drawing of Carreon's mother seducing a Kodiak bear, shown above).Read more | Comments
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