Gliese 581g, Mono Lake and the Drake Equation

In September 2010, scientists discovered a new extrasolor planet, Gliese 581g, that is to date the planet the most similar to earth that we found. It is in the Gliese 581 star system, only 20 Light-years from us, and orbits its sun at the right distance to have liquid water, so it is not too warm and not too cold. It has a gravity similar to earth (between 1.1 and 1.7 G) strong enough to maintain a thick atmosphere.

New Black Ops Map Pack

Treyarch is releasing a Map Pack for Call Of Duty: Black Ops. It will include a Berlin Wall map, Kowloon map, Stadium and Arctic research station maps as well as a new Zombie map called Ascension.

Cats in Space!

Oh, this is hilarious. This is part of a series of experiments made by the US Air Force to study the effects of Zero G on humans and animals. 



Now I'm gonna dream of Molly and Delilah fighting in zero G... Thanks io9.com for the clip.

This is the car we will all be driving in 2020

       

Forget about the fancy $30,000+ gas-guzzlers showcased at the Detroit Auto Show, the Indian made Tata Nano is the kind of car we will be driving 10 years from now. It weighs only 1,300 lb, has a 624cc, 35hp gas engine, it does 62mpg and it costs only $2,200. That's one-tenth the price of a baseline Toyota Prius.

When gas will cost $10 a gallon and with ever dwindling resources and incomes, i believe this will be the only kind of car that will make sense - or the only one that we'll be able to afford.

Battle: Los Angeles

Check out the trailer for the new Battle: Los Angeles movie starring Aaron Eckhart. I don't care if it's yet another Aliens-Invade-Earth-Hollywood-Blockbuster, it looks awesome. It's got Marines battling Aliens. I'm gonna love it. It's coming out March 11th.

Sprint finally turns on 4G in San Francisco

At last, I can use the ridiculously superior speeds of the 4G network on my HTC EVO! Sprint turned on the service in San Francisco on December 28th, but for some reason it took a few days before was actually able to connect. I did some tests and was able to consistently get from 8 to 11 Mb/s download speeds in the Mission (Valencia/Mission streets, from 18th to 25th streets).

That's outside in the streets, tho. Inside buildings, the signal strength is very weak and i am lucky if i get 3 Mb/s, when i get a connection at all. So indoors, it usually falls back on 3G. WiMax technology, sprint's choice for its 4G network, is notorious for having poor indoor coverage. Also the coverage map shows quite a few blind spots in the City.

There are technological solutions out there to address these issues, but they are expensive for operators. Lets hope Sprint will be willing to foot the bill and improve coverage in the future.

Sprint 4G Coverage in SF

So now, i actually have a faster internet connection on my phone than on my DSL at home... Isn't that great? ;)

New Giant Planet in our solar system?

Scientists analyzing the trajectory of comets coming from the far reaches of our solar system have come to the conclusion that those comets have probably been hurled towards us by the gravitational pull of a giant planet four times the size of Jupiter (!!) orbiting our sun in the Oort Cloud, some 2,800 Billion miles away.

The WISE space telescope, launched last year, will soon be able to confirm (or infer) the presence of that new planet, named Tyche.

Four times the size of Jupiter! Now if that isn't the 9th planet, what is??...