In a growning and disconcerting trend among hardware manufacturers, TI has released a new version of it’s OS for the TI-Nspire series, that blocks off a whole load of its’ user base from using the machine the way they want to.
I guess Apple, Android, TI, et al are afraid that the community will program something so awesome for their hardware that they’ll never upgrade again?
Nspire 2.1 out, don’t install it!.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA would like to announce that we have confirmed the successful acceleration of the Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator “IKAROS” by photon 1 in the course of determining its precise orbit after its sail deployment. The IKAROS was launched by JAXA on May 21 2010 Japan Standard time and all the following time and dates are JST unless noted otherwise and has been under operation since then. The thrust by solar light pressure is 1.12 mili-Newton 2 which is the expected value. With this confirmation the IKAROS was proved to generate the biggest acceleration through photon during interplanetary flight in history.
via JAXA | Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator ‘IKAROS’ Confirmation of Photon Acceleration.
An upper layer of Earth s atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads NASA announced Thursday.
The layer of gas – called the thermosphere – is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare but its magnitude shocked scientists.
“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years ” said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “It s a Space Age record.”
The collapse occurred during a period of relative solar inactivity – called a solar minimum from 2008 to 2009. These minimums are known to cool and contract the thermosphere however the recent collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.
“Something is going on that we do not understand ” Emmert said.
via SPACE.com — Record Collapse of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Puzzles Scientists.