(Image: Esther Hevens)

The multicoloured halo surrounding the peak of this dark cloud looks heavenly, but it’s actually an iridescent pileus cloud, also called a cap cloud. These smooth, round clouds form on top of a puffy cumulus cloud when it rises into higher, colder air.

The pileus cloud is made up of uniformly sized water droplets that diffract sunlight, creating a rainbow of colours. Usually, the effect is outshone by the brightness of the sun, but in this photo taken in Ethiopia, the darker cloud is helpfully blocking the glare to reveal the spectrum of light behind.

NEW SCIENTIST

Large Hadron Collider generated a year’s worth of data in half a year’s time.

LHC has already collected 2.5 inverse femtobarns - the equivalent of 175,000 billion collisions.

“We could discover the Standard Model version of the Higgs Boson or exclude it earlier than expected. Could we discover it by Christmas? In principle, yes,” said LHC spokesman, Professor Guido Tonell

See also interesting charts at:

Quantum Diaries.

A schoolgirl who discovered 22 new asteroids during work experience at an astronomy project has discovered one of them will be named after her.

Hannah Blyth, 18, was using a a remote controlled telescope at the University of Glamorgan’s Faulkes Telescope Project  when she spotted the new asteroids more than 300 million miles away.

Now one of those she found will be named ‘Hannahblyth’ after scientists in America confirmed her unique discovery.

Sixth-former Hannah was on the month-long summer placement when she made the discovery using the robotic telescopes in Australia and on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

She was given co-ordinates to study the sky between Jupiter and Mars and would then direct the telescopes to take photographs of them.

Other astronomers working on the project looked at Hannah’s images and realised she’d found the new asteroids.

The images were then sent to two of the world’s leading asteroid experts, Giovanni Sostero and Ernesto Guido, who confirmed they had never been seen before.

The finds were verified by the Minor Planet Centre at Harvard University in the States who have officially named one of the asteroids after Hannah.

Hannah said: ‘I was not really expecting to be involved with the asteroids never mind finding new ones.

‘It was an extremely exciting moment when we discovered the asteroids, and something to remember.

‘I’m very proud of the fact that I was part of something like that, I had a lot of fun.’

Dr Paul Roche, Head of Astronomy at the University, said: ‘We decided to squeeze this project in to the normally quiet summer months when the telescopes are not being used and it has been an amazing success.’

‘Hannah is very lucky - most amateurs may see one or two of these in their lives so to be involved in spotting 22 while on work experience is fantastic.’

You are hovering some planet in a galaxy far far away, uncertain whether it is made of matter or antimatter and hence whether or not it will be safe to land. The planet is inhabited by friendly aliens with whom you have made radio contact. They are very intelligent and understand you, and being…

There are none so blind…..

blanddiva11:

xunholyx:

Millennium Falcon bed. 

Shouldn’t that be Millennium Virgin bed?

ozonebaby:

~For beginners, meditation made very simple.. there is also a interesting video to listen to.. if you have never seen it before read here:
http://dedroidify.blogspot.com/2008/04/meditation-obstacles-for-beginners.html

Microsoft finds holes in top-secret encryption key

Researchers at Microsoft have discovered flaws in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the cryptographic scheme favoured by the US government for protecting top secret documents and used by ordinary people to encrypt their internet banking, Wi-Fi connections and more.

Andrey Bogdanov, Dmitry Khovratovich, and Christian Rechberger have discovered how to crack AES four times faster than previously thought. While this means it is still safe to use for all practical purposes, their method opens up the possibility that future computers could render AES insecure.

US government secrets, not to mention your bank details, are safe for now.

Russia yesterday announced plans for a hotel in orbit 217 miles up which would house seven guests in four cabins and have huge windows for views of the Earth turning below.

Just getting there will be an adventure in itself – it will take two days aboard a  Soyuz rocket – and it won’t exactly be  a budget holiday: A five-day stay will  cost you £100,000, on top of £500,000 for your journey.

The hotel, or the Commercial Space  Station to give it its proper name, is due to open by 2016 and, according to those behind it, will be ‘far more comfortable’ than the International Space Station used by astronauts and cosmonauts.

Sergei Kostenko, chief executive of Orbital Technologies which will construct the hotel, said: ‘Our planned module inside will not remind you of the International Space Station. A hotel should be comfortable inside, and it will be possible to look at the Earth through large portholes.

‘The hotel will be aimed at wealthy individuals and people working for private companies who want to do research in space.’ 

CERN has just announced its collaboration with the world-renowned cultural organisation Ars Electronica, appropriately themed “Origins”.

Part of the policy is a forthcoming artist residency programme. Seeking out projects that are inspired by the research taking place at the facility, there will be two Collide@CERN residencies in different artistic disciplines in the first year of the programme. The unifying factor will be the calibre of the projects, says Koek. “CERN scientists are selected for their excellence and brilliance. The idea is that we also do some selective arts activity.”

European Space Agency is planning to launch a mission to assess whether it would be possible to save Earth, should we discover that an asteroid is on a collision course with our planet.

if it goes ahead in 2015, will see a satellite fired at break-neck speed into a ‘test’ asteroid to see if its course changes.

The mission, called Don Quijote, will involve sending two spacecraft towards a near-Earth asteroid.

One will be an ‘impactor’, which is fired into the asteroid, the other an orbitor that will analyse data from the experiment.

One potential target is a 1600ft-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which experts say does have a minute chance - around one in 250,000 - of hitting Earth in 2036, so it would be useful target practice.

The 500kg impact craft, which will be called Hidalgo, will ram into the asteroid at a speed of around six miles a second.

The orbitor, called Sancho, will scan the collision and monitor whether the asteroid changes direction at all.

rod42:

Hell yeah…..

Test4Theory@Home allows users to participate in running simulations of high-energy particle physics using their home computers.

The results are submitted to a central database which is used as a common resource by both experimental and theoretical scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hopefully, these explanations can help give an idea of why the computing resources made available by volunteers in this way can be crucial for improving our understanding of what is really happening inside the beam pipe of the Large Hadron Collider.

Therefore, if you like the project and want to collaborate with it: let’s start configuring your computer!