STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

I wonder if the CIA have read Our Man In Havana?

Looks like that chap would be better off designing the ShoulderShaver ™!

[MIKA27]

Audio Pioneer Amar Bose Dies

Dr Amar Bose, the man who founded one of the best-recognised consumer audio equipment brands in the United States has died at the age of 83. The MIT-trained Electrical Engineer, professor and entrepreneur significantly altered the way people think about consumer audio, especially over the last few years as audio technology has become increasingly small and portable.

Dr Bose was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, and holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He also served on the MIT faculty for 45 years. There, he was widely recognised for his excellent teaching as well as his pioneering research in acoustics and loudspeaker design.

And it was this research that lead Bose to found his famous audio company in 1964. Indeed, the company’s slogan is “better sound through research”. Bose’s original product was the odd Bose 2201 speakers which each featured 22-full-range drivers installed into a box-shaped like an eighth of a sphere. The idea was that with a pair placed in the corners of a room, you could achieve “sound realism”. The product only lasted one year.

Over the years, Bose moved towards what we recognise as mainstream products for personal and car audio. Though Bose wasn’t always the first to market with products, it frequently made gear with the right combination industrial design and audio quality. Bose products satisfy a market of affluent consumers who aren’t exacting audiophile nerds.

While Bose certainly wasn’t the first company to try to make expensive audio products for very large numbers of people, it’s hard to think of any company that had more to do with mainstreaming $500 clock radios (the precursors to iPod docks) and $300 headphones (long before Beats ever got there).

As Bose grew into one of the largest audio brands in the world — its revenues in 2011 were reportedly $US2.8 billion — the company has been criticised for producing overpriced kit. We’ll leave that discussion to another time and only note that the company’s noise-canceling headphones are amongst the best you can buy for the money.

Beyond his contribution to consumer electronics, Bose helped usher-in a new era for research in audio technology. It’s now very common for university professors who do research in acoustics to start companies based on their research. Amongst the descendents of Bose’s approach are Audessy, an audio company founded by USC professors who do wrote the best processing algorithms to optimise sound out of small-speakers.

In 2011, Dr Bose donated a majority of the stock of the company to MIT as a kind of endowment. The university doesn’t participate in the management of the company, it can’t sell the shares, and it must use the dividends to advance MIT’s educational mission. Not a bad way to make sure that the knowledge behind the sound keeps moving forward.

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Bremont's Codebreaker Watch Pays Homage To WWII's Enigma Crackers

The allied victory in World War II can be as much credited to the brave men and women who fought with weapons as it can the scientists and mathematicians who successfully broke the secret codes used by the Germans, including the famous Enigma machine. And to commemorate that accomplishment, Bremont has created a limited edition timepiece called the Codebreaker that incorporates elements of Britain’s code-breaking efforts.

During the war, a facility called Bletchley Park was converted into the allies code-breaking HQ, and Bremont’s watch actually incorporates elements from that now historical landmark. The Codebreaker’s crown is inlayed with pine taken from Hut 6, the building where Alan Turing cracked the Enigma machine, and the watch’s automatic movement’s counterbalance is made from parts of an actual Enigma device.

Available in just 240 pieces with a steel finish, and 50 crafted from rose gold, even the limited edition numbering appearing on the side of the watch is fashioned from actual printed punchcards used during the war. So as you can expect, the watch doesn’t come cheap. The steel version comes in at just under $19,000, while the rose gold option is a bit more pricey at $34,000. But all of the proceeds are being donated by Bremont towards the restoration and preservation of Bletchley Park, so at least your small fortune is going to a good cause.

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Massive ice sheets melting 'at rate of 300bn tonnes a year', climate satellite shows

The Grace satellite measures tiny fluctuations of the Earth’s gravity field resulting from the loss of ice into the sea

A satellite that measures gravity fluctuations on Earth due to changes in the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica has detected a rapid acceleration in the melting of glacier ice over the past decade, which could have a dramatic impact on sea levels around the world.

The sheets are losing around 300 billion tonnes of ice a year, the research indicates.

However, scientists have warned that the measurements gathered since 2002 by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) flying in space are still too short-term for accurate predictions of how much ice will be lost in the coming decades, and therefore how rapidly sea levels will rise.

“In the course of the mission, it has become apparent that ice sheets are losing substantial amounts of ice – about 300 billion tonnes a year – and that the rate at which these losses occurs is increasing,” said Bert Wouters of Bristol University’s Glaciology Centre.

“Compared to the first few years of the Grace mission, the ice sheets’ contribution to sea-level rise has almost doubled in recent years,” added Dr Wouters, the lead author of the study published in the Earth sciences journal Nature Geoscience.

The Grace satellite measures tiny fluctuations of the Earth’s gravity field resulting from the loss of ice into the sea, but it cannot yet point to a long-term trend. Ice sheets also melt because of variations in the weather due to shifting ocean currents or decade-long oscillations in the weather systems of the North Atlantic Ocean.

A few more years of observations would be needed for the Grace experiment to point to whether global warming rather than natural variability is behind the loss of ice in the Antarctic, while it could take another 10 years of data to demonstrate a link with the loss of ice in Greenland, Dr Wouters said.

At the moment, the ice loss detected by the Grace satellite is larger than what would be expected from just natural fluctuations, but the acceleration in ice loss over the last few years is not, the scientists said.

Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds said that less than a decade of satellite data from the Grace experiment is too short to establish with confidence whether the ice sheet losses are truly accelerating.

“Fortunately, we can appeal to data from other, longer satellite missions to get a long-term perspective, and our own analysis of their data confirms that the rate of ice sheet losses has indeed accelerated over the past 20 years,” Professor Shepherd said.

The melting of the world’s two great ice sheets is one of the greatest unknowns in climate-change science. Together, the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contain about 99.5 per cent of the Earth’s glacier ice, which could increase average sea levels by 63 metres if they were ever to melt completely – an event that would in any case take many centuries.

Trying to predict how much they are likely to contribute to sea-level rise over the coming century has been notoriously difficult because of a lack of reliable and widespread ground observations from these remote and inaccessible places.

An estimate published earlier this year suggested that the ice sheets together, combined with mountain glaciers, could contribute anywhere between 3.5cm and 36.8cm to average sea levels by the year 2100, which would be in addition to the smaller sea-level rise due to the thermal expansion of the warmer oceans.

In its last report in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that average sea levels are rising by about 2 millimetres a year. But, other scientists calculated last year that the true rate is about 3.2mm a year – about 60 per cent faster.

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Massive ice sheets melting 'at rate of 300bn tonnes a year', climate satellite shows

So, one day my house in the Hills district will become beachfront property? Score!

[MIKA27]

After Asiana 214, Examining the Intricacies and Perils of Landing a Modern Airliner

Much of the speculation about why Asiana Airlines flight 214 crashed-landed in San Francisco, killing two people and injuring scores more, is focusing on the pilot’s experience and the equipment used. Information released by investigators thus far raises several questions, the biggest being why the Boeing 777 slowed so dramatically in the final minute of its approach. We won’t have definitive answers for some time, but we can break down how Saturday’s approach transpired and explain exactly how a modern airliner makes it to the ground — and what could go wrong.

There were four pilots on board the 777, which is not unusual for a transoceanic flight. Typically, one pair will sleep or relax in the crew rest bunks just behind the cockpit while the other is flying. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot at the controls was a captain in training with 43 hours in a 777 but nearly 10,000 hours in other airliners, including the Boeing 747. In addition to the flight experience, the pilot, identified as Lee Kang-kook by Asiana Airlines, also would have undergone many hours of transition training in a 777 simulator.

While it might sound unusual that a pilot with just 43 hours of experience would be landing the plane, it is normal, and of course necessary for pilots to fly an airplane new to them with relatively low experience in a particular type. It was first officer Jeff Skiles’ first day in an Airbus A320 when he and Captain Sully Sullenberger performed the “Miracle on the Hudson” by successfully landing in the Hudson River in 2009.

And the captain sitting in the left seat of Flight 214 has more than 3,000 hours of experience flying 777s, and more than 12,000 hours of total experience. Crew resource management is another factor to consider, which includes the delegation of duties in the cockpit and often includes one pilot flying, while the other pilot reads out critical information including airspeed and altitude.

But under normal circumstances any pilot who has passed the exam and has a license should be able to make a visual approach and determine whether or not they are likely to land short of the runway and adjust accordingly. This will clearly be a focal point of the investigation of Asiana 214.

During a normal flight, the pilots will configure an airplane like the 777 for a stabilized approach well before landing. In a stable approach the aircraft’s configuration including the flaps, power setting, speed brakes, and landing gear are selected as necessary and appropriate during the descent. The airspeed and rate of descent are ideally stable, or at least within an acceptable range that will result in the preferred speeds during the final phase of the approach. Occasionally an air traffic controller will ask for a non-standard approach. One example is referred to a “slam dunk” approach when an aircraft might be kept at a higher than normal altitude early in the approach phase, and then perform an expedited descent to the final phase before landing. These are not unusual under visual conditions, and according to many airline pilots they are common at SFO. Such an expedited descent can lead to an approach that is not a standard stabilized approach, at least during the early phase and would require extra attention.

According to the NTSB, Asiana flight 214 was cleared for a visual approach for runway 28L. This allows the pilots to fly using only their eyes to guide them to the runway. This is a normal type of approach when the skies are clear and there are no adverse weather conditions to deal with — as was the case on Saturday, a picture-perfect day in San Francisco.

In cloudy weather when the visibility is worse, pilots can use different equipment to guide them to the airport well before they can see the runway outside the window. Today, GPS is used regularly, but a common type of approach for an airliner is an instrument landing system, or ILS. An ILS approach has two principal components, a localizer transmitter which provides a radio signal guiding the aircraft laterally, and a glide slope transmitter that provides a signal that guides the aircraft vertically. These signals can provide extremely precise guidance for an airplane, and the most advanced types allow it to touchdown on the center line of the runway, in the landing zone, with zero visibility outside the window.

The glide slope transmitter for the ILS approach on runway 28L at SFO has been out of service since June 1. This means an ILS approach would not be used for that runway if the weather was bad. There are other types of instrument approaches that can be used for 28L, including a GPS-based RNAV approach that offers nearly identical “minimums,” meaning it can be used in almost the same kind of conditions as the ILS.

Even on a day like Saturday, when the pilot is cleared for a visual approach, a pilot may use the ILS or other instrument approach as a source of guidance, but it is not required and all licensed pilots are capable of making a visual approach to landing without using the navigation instruments. Since they were cleared for a visual approach, the pilots of Asiana 214 would use other tools to guide them to the proper glide slope for runway 28L.

For a visual approach there are several aides for pilots to guide them to touchdown on the runway. The first is simply basic pilot training where they learn to judge whether they are above or below a path that will take them to their intended touchdown point. The changing perspective of the runway during approach gives the pilot a chance to estimate whether or not they are high or low, indicating whether they will land long or short of their intended touchdown point. This technique is used commonly on smaller airports, including grass runways where there are no other tools available to the pilot.

At larger airports, there markings on the runway that indicate the touchdown zone as well as an aiming point. The touchdown zone markings are spaced every 500 feet at each end of a runway, while the aiming point markings are solid rectangles located 1,000 feet from the end of the runway. Based on the tire marks left behind on runway 28L in the picture above, it appears that airliners typically land between 1,000 to 2,500 feet down the 11,381-foot-long runway 28L at SFO.

An image from a 777 simulator flight done at Boeing’s flight research facility shows a high final approach to runway 19L at SFO. The four horizontal lights to the left of the runway are the PAPI lights indicating the high approach.

There are also visual indicators located to the side of the runway to help guide pilots on the proper glide slope. Runway 28L at SFO uses a precision approach path indicator (PAPI) which consists of four bright lights that can be seen up to five miles away during the day. If all four of the horizontally placed lights are white as in the image above, the aircraft is too high and will land beyond the touchdown zone unless changes are made to the approach. If one light is red, the aircraft is slightly high. If there are two red lights and two white lights, the aircraft is on the proper three-degree glide slope and will land in the touchdown zone. Three red lights means you’re slightly low, and four red lights means you’re well below the glide path and will land short of the touchdown zone.

Saturday’s crash damaged the PAPI lights and they were subsequently placed on a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM list for the airport and listed as out of service.

Because Asiana 214 was cleared for the visual approach, and there was an inoperable glide slope, under normal circumstances the pilots would use the runway markings as aiming points, and the PAPI lights to place them on the correct glide slope. It is not yet known why this system did not work and is a question the NTSB is seeking to answer.

The airplane was flying on autopilot during the initial part of the approach. This is a typical procedure for most airlines and the autopilot is treated as a third crew member by most airline pilots. With the autopilot engaged, the pilots are still responsible for adjusting things such as the flap settings as well as lowering the landing gear.

At 1,600 feet and 82 seconds before the crash, the autopilot was disengaged. Nine seconds later the airplane was at 1,400 feet and the airspeed was 170 knots (196 mph). The speed the pilots wanted to fly during the final portion of the approach is known as the “reference speed”, or Vref. Based on the weight and configuration of the 777-200ER on Saturday, the Vref speed was 137 knots.

According to the NTSB there was no discussion of any aircraft anomalies by the pilots and the engines appeared to be working normally.

At 1,000 feet and 54 seconds before impact, the airplane had slowed to 149 knots. Even though the pilots would not be using the ILS navigation information displayed in the cockpit, they would still be using other instruments displaying the their airspeed, altitude, rate of descent as well as engine information. In addition, there is normally an audible reading of the altitude as the airplane makes the approach with a voice reading out key altitudes. The NTSB says they are still reviewing the glide slope information, and hope to release the details of when the aircraft departed the proper glide slope that caused it to impact the ground short of the touchdown zone.

At 500 feet and just 34 seconds before impact, the airspeed slowed to 134 knots, three knots below the Vref speed which is clearly indicated on the speed tape — a vertical display bar showing the airplane’s airspeed on a glass display in the cockpit. There is also a visual warning on the speed tape as the airplane slows below Vref, and more visual warnings as the speed continues to decrease.

There’s been a lot of talk about “stall speed” and the Vref is not the stall speed. First, a stall is an aerodynamic situation where the wing exceeds a critical angle with reference to the oncoming air, the angle of attack. When the critical angle of attack is exceeded, the airflow begins to detach from the wing which is no longer able to generate sufficient lift to keep the airplane flying. The stall speed is the airspeed based on the weight and configuration of the airplane where the critical angle of attack would occur under normal flight conditions. Vref is an approach speed above the stall speed, giving the pilots a margin of safety during the approach.

Traveling a few knots below the Vref speed, while not ideal, is not going to cause an immediate problem. It is however an indication to a pilot that it is time to change the configuration of the airplane by either pitching the nose down or adding power — or both — to get back to the Vref speed while maintaining the proper glide slope.

According to the NTSB it doesn’t appear the necessary changes were made, and at 200 feet the airspeed had slowed to 118 knots.

Eight seconds later the throttles began moving forward according to the NTSB. It is not clear if the pilots realized they needed to boost their speed and/or adjust their rate of descent, or if the automatic “wake up” mode that automatically adds more power as the stall speed is approached had engaged. In either case, one of the challenges of flying a jet-powered aircraft is that unlike a car or even a propeller airplane, there is a significant delay between the moment you apply power with the levers, and when the engines produce the thrust you are requesting. The throttles began moving forward just eight seconds before impact at 125 feet above the water and at an airspeed of just 112 knots.

At this point the 777 is approaching its stall speed and four seconds before impact the “stick shaker” can be heard according to the NTSB’s analysis of the cockpit audio recording. The airplane has a device that measures the angle of attack of the airplane and as the critical angle of a stall nears, the control yoke shakes in the pilots hands, providing the pilots a final vibrating indicator that a stall is imminent if nothing changes.

Three seconds prior to impact the airplane reached its lowest speed of 103 knots with the engines at 50 percent power and increasing, according to the NTSB. Moments later, at 1.5 seconds before impact, the NTSB says the pilot called for a “go-around”.

This means the pilots wanted to abandon the approach and climb again to make another attempt. A go around in a 777 is typically executed by pushing a switch known as the TOGA (take-off, go-around) located on the throttle levers. When the switch is pushed, the airplane automatically goes to a power setting for a 2,000 foot per minute climb, and a second push provides full take off power.

But again, the engines take time to “spool up” and deliver the requested thrust.

In the case of Asiana 214, the NTSB did not say whether or not the go-around function was engaged or not in the 1.5 seconds between the call for a go-around and the impact. The 777 impacted the ground at 106 knots — 122 mph — and at least several hundred feet shy of the runway touchdown zone.

Investigators in Washington D.C. are completing a more thorough examination of both the cockpit and flight data recorders. The four pilots are being also being interviewed and should be able to provide valuable information into the cause of the accident.

It deserves noting that there were a total of 307 people on board the 777, including passengers and crew. The high survival rate is a testament to the safety of modern airliners and the training of the crew. The aircraft structure is more crash-worthy than early airliner designs and the design of the passenger seats are capable of absorbing loads 16 times the force of gravity. Add in the cabin crew’s ability of evacuating the passengers from the burning jumbo jet in a short period of time, and the result is hundreds of lives saved and a surprisingly low amount of injuries and — especially — fatalities.

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Pictures: Slave Shackle, More Found On Blackbeard's Ship

Shackled

This 18th-century iron shackle was recently recovered from the wreck of theQueen Anne's Revenge, which belonged to the infamous Caribbean pirate Blackbeard.

Archaeologists with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources discovered the ship, which sank in 1718, just off of Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1995, though it wasn't confirmed as Blackbeard's until 2011. For more than a decade the team has been recovering artifacts from the shipwreck and painstakingly restoring them at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

Such shackles were used to imprison people, such as slaves en route to the New World, prisoners being held for ransom, or unruly sailors being punished for misdeeds. The shackle was wrapped in rope to prevent chaffing on the wrists and ankles of the imprisoned person.

This instrument is likely from Queen Anne's Revenge's pre-piracy days, when she was a French slave ship called Le Concorde.

Blackbeard captured Le Concorde in 1717, renamed her, and used her to terrorize seas from the Caribbean to the coast of colonial America.

Pirate of the Caribbean

After a brief but lucrative career as a pirate, Blackbeard died in a fierce battle with the British Navy off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. That battle is depicted in this painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

Blackbeard—whose real name may have been Edward Teach or Edward Thatch—served as a sailor in the War of Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1714. After the war, he joined the crew of pirate Benjamin Hornigold. Eventually, he commanded a fleet of several pirate ships that included the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Blackbeard was as skilled at marketing his image as he was at snatching loot from terrified shippers. After he'd grown the long beard that gave him his memorable name, he sometimes braided it and decorated it with ribbons. Before attacking a ship, he stuck lighted fuses into his hat to add to his terrifying appearance.

Despite his demonic appearance and fearsome reputation, historians don't think that Blackbeard made a habit of killing people.

Swashbuckler

A conservator at East Carolina University holds a sword handle recovered from the Queen Anne's Revenge and announced in 2011.

The unusual gilded handle contains both organic material—deer antler—and metal. The antler was preserved during the handle's nearly 300-year stay on the bottom of the ocean because it was safely buried in sand and silt in an oxygen-free environment where it didn't deteriorate.

The metal butt of the handle is decorated with irises—also known as fleurs-des-lis—which are the royal emblem of France.

Queen Anne's Revenge was a French vessel used for slave trading before being stolen by Blackbeard.

Bottle and Cork

This bottle fragment and cork was recently recovered from the Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck—among the thousands of artifacts, large and small, that have been found by archaeologists.

Perhaps Blackbeard's crew didn't have a corkscrew to remove this cork from a wine bottle, and so opened it by breaking off the bottle's neck.

Or maybe the bottle was broken after the ship ran aground near Beaufort, North Carolina, in the summer of 1718.

Lead Pellet

Conservator Kimberly Kenyon points to a lead pellet that would have been fired from an early 18th-century musket. Kenyon found the pellet recently when she sifted sand and debris from the ocean floor through fine-mesh screens looking for such tiny artifacts from the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Experts also have found gold dust by examining sand under a microscope. The gold was discovered among lead pellets like the one above, suggesting that a French sailor hastily dumped the gold dust into a barrel of lead shot to hide it from the pirates capturing Le Concorde, which would become Queen Anne's Revenge.

Ammunition

Blackbeard's pirates fired lead shot such as these recently found in the wreck ofQueen Anne's Revenge—during battles at sea.

The larger chunks in the bowl are lead pellets that have not been removed from the concretions that formed around them during the nearly three centuries that they rested on the seafloor.

Anchor's Away

Bartosz Dajnowski sprays water on an anchor to keep it wet while a conservation tank is filled at East Carolina University in 2011.

The anchor, which weighs several tons, was recovered from Blackbeard's shipQueen Anne's Revenge, which ran aground off Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1718.

The anchor and other artifacts are being treated for long-term preservation, a process that can take years to complete. If the anchor was not submerged, it would dry out and quickly deteriorate and crumble.

When the time comes, conservators will use a chemical bath to remove the concretions that formed around the anchor during the nearly three centuries it lay on the ocean floor. Then they will begin a process to remove salt from the artifact.

Civilized Pirates

Archaeologists excavating the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, got a glimpse of how pirates dined in the early 18th century when they recently recovered these pewter plates and a spoon.

The three smaller plates—including the one that has been bent (top right)—were used for dining. The larger plate in the upper left corner of the photo, which is broken into several pieces, was used for serving.

Conservators were able to identify marks put on the plates by the artisans who made them, and determined that the flatware was manufactured in Europe.

The small plastic bags contain unidentified animal bones found in the wreckage.

Deep Clean

Conservator Terry Williams uses an air-powered tool known as an airscribe to carefully clean a bar shot—a type of ammunition—recently recovered from the wreck of Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Williams was working on the artifact at a conservation lab at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where artifacts from the Queen Anne's Revenge are undergoing a lengthy conservation treatment.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, bar shot was fired from cannons and used against sailing ships. After a bar shot left a cannon's muzzle, it would whirl toward its target like an airborne saw. It could take down ships' masts and tear huge holes in sails, rendering opponents helpless.

Blackbeard's Sword?

Could this partly gilded hilt have held Blackbeard's sword? There's no way to know for sure, though it was found amid the North Carolina wreck of theQueen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the infamous 18th-century pirate.

Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating the Queen Anne's Revenge. The sword hilt—found in pieces but reassembled for this picture—is among their latest finds and was revealed to the public this month.

After running aground on a sandbar in 1718 near the town of Beaufort the ship was abandoned but likely remained intact and partly above water for as long as a year before collapsing and disintegrating, according to archaeologist David Moore of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

"In any event," he said, "the pirates would have had ample opportunity to take anything that they thought valuable." The newfound hilt may have been left behind because it was unwanted, or it may have been inaccessible, according to Moore's colleague Wendy Welsh, a conservator on the project.

Blackbeard’s brief career as a pirate lasted only about two years, but during that time he became one of history's most feared outlaws. Operating in the West Indies and off the coast of colonial America, he struck terror into the hearts of commercial ships' captains and once held the entire city of Charleston, South Carolina, hostage.

[Fuzz]

After Asiana 214, Examining the Intricacies and Perils of Landing a Modern Airliner

Going just off this, it looks more and more like pilot error than a mechanical problem.

[MIKA27]

Going just off this, it looks more and more like pilot error than a mechanical problem.

We'll find out on an episode of Air Crash investigations!!

[MIKA27]

How Big Is The Universe? How Australian Scientists Are Measuring The Impossible

How many electrons are there in the universe? That may seem nigh on impossible to calculate — let alone comprehend — but the discovery of a new population of astrophysical events called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), published in Science by my colleagues and I, could help provide a solution to this fundamental cosmological question.

The FRBs, discovered with the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, confirm the validity of the amazing “Lorimer burst“, a mysterious event that occurred in 2001 and has until now been quite controversial.

The techniques for finding FRBs closely mirror those used to discover pulsars, sources of radio emission emitted in lighthouse-like beams first discovered in 1967 by the Northern-Irish astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell.

Though we don’t yet know for sure, it’s worth pointing out that FRBs are probably caused by some catastrophic event in the distant universe. They almost certainly occur in galaxies and probably involve relativistic objects such as black holes or neutron stars.

Some candidates are millisecond-duration explosions on the surface of ultra-magnetic neutron stars known as magnetars, coalescing neutron stars or supernova explosions.

Keeping It In The Family: Gamma Ray Bursts

One of the greatest discoveries of the modern astrophysical era were the gamma ray bursts, or GRBs. GRBs are associated with exploding stars and have allowed astronomers to see back until the universe was only a small fraction of its current age. They are short (few second) bursts of gamma-rays that occur infrequently and appear to be randomly distributed on the sky.

The first GRBs were found by satellites designed to detect nuclear tests during the Cold War, and to the shock of the engineers involved, seemed to indicate that nuclear tests were being conducted in space!

It took more than 20 years for astronomers to ascertain what the GRBs were, but the mystery was eventually (at least partially) solved when a nearby GRB was associated with a supernova explosion. This led to their correct interpretation and their extreme luminosity has enabled astronomers to learn not only about what the GRBs are, but also about the evolution of the universe.

Getting To Know You

The FRBs are not (yet) associated with GRBs, but have some similarities.

They are short duration (a few milliseconds) bursts of radio emission that arrive first at high frequencies and then progressively sweep to lower frequencies before disappearing completely and not recurring. The sweep from high radio frequencies to low is called “pulse dispersion“, and has a characteristic form.

On their approximately 10-billion-year intergalactic voyage, every time the radio waves pass an electron they are delayed in a frequency-dependent manner that ultimately amounts to about a one second difference across our observing frequency range. This delay, shown in the figures below, allows us to “count” the number of electrons between us and the burst.

The beautiful sweep and pulse shape of the radiation obeys the theoretically-predicted relation for a burst of radio waves that has propagated across the universe.

Since we think most of the atoms in the universe have lost their electrons, counting them gives us a fundamental insight into the amount of normal or “baryonic” matter in it. Like the GRBs before them, at present we have no solitary idea of what the FRBs are, and like the GRBs they appear to come from great distances, such as halfway across the observable universe.

A population of FRBs at different stages of the universe’s age would be an invaluable resource, allowing us to map the evolution of the mass distribution. They’re potentially a cosmological gold mine!

But the history of the FRBs has not been without controversy. The first example of an FRB was the famous “Lorimer burst”, mentioned at the outset of this article and reported in Science in 2007 by astrophysicist Dunc Lorimer and colleagues.

The ‘waterfall plot’ of the famous ‘Lorimer burst’ showing the characteristic dispersion sweep expected from extragalactic pulses of radio radiation that have travelled cosmological distances. The inset shows the pulse after adding all of the frequency channels and correcting for the sweep.

Unlike most controversial results, the Lorimer burst’s problem was not that it was too weak, but rather that it was too bright! Fainter, more distant analogues should be seen, and none were, despite large international efforts.

Interest in the subject waned — until last year.

The High Time Resolution Universe Surveys

Since most pulsars live in our galaxy, pulsar astronomers invariably hunt for them in the plane of the Milky Way; once this area is exhausted they reluctantly move to high galactic latitudes.

The surveys our international team have been conducting at the Parkes 64-metre telescope were no exception.

In mid 2012, University of Manchester PhD student Dan Thornton started looking intensively through the results of the relatively boring “off plane” regions for pulsars, rotating radio transients (short radio pulses), and just maybe, Lorimer bursts.

Dan was somewhat daunted by the presence of radio interference, and his supervisor Ben Stappers suggested he just “set a high threshold” and see if there was anything interesting in his data.

Shortly afterwards he discovered the first burst – FRB 110220 shown below – an amazingly bright pulse and with a dispersion delay some three times that of the Lorimer burst!

This Waterfall plot of the fast radio burst FRB 110220 discovered by Dan Thornton (University of Manchester). The image shows the power as a function of time (x axis) for more than 800 radio frequency channels (y axis) and shows the characteristic sweep one expects for sources of galactic and extragalactic origin. In the inset the pulse is shown after summing all the channels and correcting for the dispersion ‘sweep’. The fast rise and exponential decay is characteristic of a pulse scattered by free electrons en route to Earth and both the sweep and scatter tail are compelling evidence of the pulse’s extragalactic origins.

Director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Michael Kramer, demonstrated with our new digital equipment the pulse’s dispersion (time delay) sweep could be shown to be perfectly consistent with the theoretically-expected relation, but we still had the problem that we should be seeing other, still weaker, bursts.

Dan soon uncovered two fainter bursts, and then a third, and our confidence in them grew.

The four bursts published in today’s Science paper are certainly consistent with them being part of the same population as the Lorimer burst. The telescope’s observed field of view and event rate suggest that every day, a few thousand similar radio bursts strike Earth; however, we have the instrumentation to detect only one every week or two of observing time, and only when far from the galactic plane.

If we can get more accurate positions, the FRBs will be arguably one of the most important cosmological probes we possess. The combination of a host galaxy redshift and the dispersion time provides the mass of normal matter in the universe in a completely new way.

Origins

From here, astronomers will pursue the joint aims of determining the origin of the bursts and using them to gain new insights into the universe.

Our team now have a real-time burst detector operating at the Parkes telescope and are hoping to refurbish the University of Sydney’s old Molonglo radio telescope near Canberra to be a dedicated FRB finder. Looking further afield, the Square Kilometre Array and its pathfinders should detect these bursts at rapid rates and allow us to determine their host galaxies.

Last night we found a new event, and the hunt for the origin and physical understanding of these new intergalactic messengers is sure to continue at a furious pace.

[MIKA27]

A Swiss Man Was Killed By His Remote-Controlled Helicopter

A 41-year-old man flying a Gaui X7 model helicopter in Lucerne, Switzerland suffered head and arm injuries and died after he was presumably struck by the helicopter. The model weighs 2.2kg, is about 1.3-metres long, and has a rotor diameter of about 1.6-metres.

Though incidents are rare, remote control helicopters have caused other deaths. A remote control aircraft instructor was struck and killed in Texas in 2003 and other fatal accidents have occurred in Korea and Brazil.

The rotor blades on model helicopters can spin at speeds of 257 miles per hour. Gaui helicopters can cost more than $US1,000 and various X7 models are currently selling for around $US900, so there probably aren’t tons of these just lying around people’s houses, but even expensive toys require real safety measures.

[Duxnutz]

After Asiana 214, Examining the Intricacies and Perils of Landing a Modern Airliner

There's an old saying in aviation that by the time you think a go-around might be on the cards, you probably should already be doing one. International standards for a stabilized approach (airspeed, sink rate, pwr settings, flap/gear config) that are within published limits are checked at 1000ft AGL (and should be there way earlier) not in the late stages such as is inferred as happening (there will be a final report) here.

Mind boggling stuff despite the 30+ yr advances in CRM.

[MIKA27]

Report: Apple's Next-Gen Chips Will Be Made By Samsung Again

Apple’s had a turbulent time with Samsung, both in the courtroom and the marketplace — which in part helped inspire Cook and co’s recent move away from Sammy as a chip supplier. But according to a new report Apple is hopping back into the silicon bed with South Korea’s finest.

The Korea Economic Daily reports that Apple has signed a deal with Samsung that will see them work together on future A-series chips for Apple’s iOS devices. Specifically, the agreement appears to be for the production of A9 chips (the iPhone 5 currently uses the A6), which will be based on a new 14-nanometre manufacturing process, and begin production sometime in 2015.

The announcement comes on the back of Apple shunning Samsung in favour of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), who it chose to manufacture the forthcoming A8 chips from 2014. The Korea Economic Daily explains:

Samsung Electronics had supplied the AP [application processor] to Apple since 2007 but lost the contract to supply 20 nano AP A8 chips to Apple to Taiwan’s TSMC last year when it was engaged in patent disputes with Apple. Samsung Electronics developed state-of-the-art 14 nano models ahead of its rival TSMC, regaining the order from Apple.

Some reports have suggested that TSMC had also secured the contract for the A9 chips though — so it’s unclear if Apple will be sourcing silicon from one or both of the chip manufacturers comes 2015.

Apple’s been trying to wean itself off Samsung chips for a while now, and the recent TSMC deal seemed like a milestone; this news, if accurate, feels like somewhat of backwards step. But then when you’re trying to push the limits of what technology can do, petty disagreements clearly can’t stand in the way of cutting-edge guts.

[MIKA27]

Can You Identify These Movies Drawn Out As Treasure Maps?

Illustrator Andrew DeGraff thinks about films differently to you and I: he sees them as giant maps of physical locations, just waiting to be explored. Can you work out which films these wonderful treasure maps drawn by DeGraff are supposed to represent?

Painted in gouache with line drawing to give definition, they look just like vintage treasure maps of iconic movies. You can trace a route round the entire film, seeing the path through the locations which each character took. DeGraff explained.

“I’ve always been a little obsessed with scale models, and I think that feeling of a precious, complete, little recreation is what the maps embody. Taking these big sweeping stories and packaging them into these paintings allows them to be absorbed in a flash, but also to be explored over time. Rather than being like infographics, they end up being much more like toys made from the plot of the films.”

We’ve included four of the maps below; try and work out which film they’re from, then scroll to the bottom for the answers.

1. “Paths of Empire” based on Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

2. “Paths of Temple” based on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

3. “Path of Shaun” based on Shaun of the Dead

4. “North by Northwest Passage “ based on North by Northwest

[MIKA27]

Report: Apple Hiring Blitz Suggests The iWatch Is A Way Off

A few months ago, a rash of headlines suggested you’d be wearing an iWatch on your wrist by the end of the year. They were almost certainly wrong — and now a Financial Times report suggests we could be in for an even longer wait.

The FT report explains that, according to sources, Apple has been aggressively hiring staff to work on the much-rumoured smartwatch, to add to the “several dozen” already actively working on the project. The newspaper even goes on to warm that Cook and co could yet still scrap the project.

Duh. Of course they could: Apple famously ditches ideas that don’t work. Besides, any technology company worth its salt pours time, money and effort into research and ideas; just because they hit the rumour mill doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily ever be able to buy ‘em.

Interestingly, the newspaper does say that, if the project goes ahead, sources tell it that a watch definitely wouldn’t be ready for retail until the second half of 2014 — which, rightly, tramples all over those rumours from earlier this year. If that’s correct, it will be interesting to see if any other manufacturers — Google, Samsung, Pebble, whoever — can take advantage of the lag over the next 12 months.

[MIKA27]

Give The Gift Of A Gift That Looks Like Raw Meat

There is something so fabulous about this idea. Even though it’s overpriced and probably aesthetically overwrought or something, the idea of wrapping gifts to look like raw meat is just beautiful. It brings the whole joke gift genre to a new level. Or makes people extra excited when their gift turns out to be awesome or even passable. If you’re someone who never wraps gifts this could be the turning point.

Gift Couture is the “creative and innovative wrapping paper company” we have to thank for this marvellous invention. The meat Kickstarter is on the move, and they’ve already produced the now-sold-out cheeseburger wrapping paper below. The standard set is $US15 for two sheets of steak paper and one piece of cutting board paper, and the grade A set also comes with butcher paper, a meat tray, gift tags and twine for $US5 more. But really it’s all about the raw meat. It goes with anything, can be interpreted as genuine or ironic, and really shows the recipient of your gift that you care.

[MIKA27]

This 46.7-Megapixel McLaren Image Is Your New Wallpaper

What you’re looking at is 50 years of British racing history. Half a century of greatness, stuffed into one giant46.7-megapixel image.

It’s a huge panorama taken by McLaren of all the great racing cars it has made over the last five decades. From the most recent McLaren P1 hypercar, down to the McLaren F1 and even the MP4-12C supercar: McLaren know how to put a brilliant machine together.

Click here for the super-large (12000×3888) image.

Enjoy your new wallpaper!

[MIKA27]

FOR KEN: Telstra Reportedly Agreed To Share Telco Data To US Authorities

This whole US-government monitoring thing can’t possibly affect you in Australia, can it? Turns out it probably already has: in 2001, Telstra reportedly signed up to a deal where internet traffic carried between Australia, Asia and the US was monitored. The agreement also reportedly saw Telstra provide US agencies with transactional and “call-associated” metadata, billing info and subscriber information. This was back when the majority shareholder of Telstra was — you guessed it — the Australian government. [Business Insider Australia]

[MIKA27]

12 Cool pools you wish you were swimming in right now:

It’s gone from warm and pleasant weather to hot as hell outside (Except for Melbourne). It’s like slogging through air so thick you need a machete and it’s definitely a-shower-every-time-you-step-outside hot. In times like these, you just want to laze in a pool.

Specifically, in these positively perfect specimens.

While you’re not picky, and you’d probably splash around in any body of water that presented itself, there are some really amazing pools out there, in resorts all over the world. These are some of the most unbelievable:

The Amangiri Resort is located in Canyon Point, Utah, and its pool curves around a giant 165 million-year-old sandstone rock. It looks quite literally like you’re swimming in an oasis.

If you were staying at Uruguay’s Playa Vik Jose Ignacio Hotel, why would you even hassle with the beach when you have this unbelievable infinity pool at your disposal?

The Reethi Rah Resort in the Maldives might have more than 50 pools on the property. But this adults-only lap pool is especially lovely. It’s kind of hard to tell where the pool ends and where the ocean begins.

Orange County’s Portabello Estate has bilevel crazy swimming pool action.

You have to take the elevator all the way to the 57th floor of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Hotel to get to the amazing rooftop pool. Apparently, it’s the highest infinity pool in the world.

Here’s what it looks like from the ground:

This beauty is the Anatara Golden Triangle pool at Chang Rai Thailand. Bonus: there are also elephants there that you can hang out with.

It’s even more idyllic at dusk:

The Library in Koh Samui, Thailand has a pool unlike any we’ve ever seen. Nope, it hasn’t fallen victim to one of the seven plagues. The water looks like blood thanks to red mosaic tiles.

Not all of these cool pools are in hot locations. This bad boy is the water feature of Hotel Villa Honegg in Ennetbuergen, Switzerland.

Hotel Villa Honegg

This pool looks like it’s on the surface of the moon. It’s not. It’s at the Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort in Abu Dhabi.

Here it is during the day:

The Monastero Santa Rosa Hotel & Spa is one of only 39 castle hotels in Italy. It also has the country’s best pool, overlooking the Gulf of Salerno.

The Lucala Hotel is in Fiji, so it already has the scenery going for it. But it also has this series of amazing glass-sided pools that feel like human aquariums.

The Six Senses Yao Noi Resort was once a rubber plantation. Now it’s a luxury getaway that commands ridiculous panoramas of Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay. Plus, the pool has a slide. Who can argue with that?

[MIKA27]

Family Claims iPhone Electrocuted Their Daughter:

The family of a 23-year-old Chinese girl are claiming she was electrocuted by her iPhone, with a post on a local social network suggesting the girl died after answering a call.

Which sounds rather unlikely, and a clue as to what really happened may come from the explanation given by the relatives. The older sister of the girl says she was electrocuted after answering a call while the phone was charging, so it sounds like this may be more like a case of “Crappy Cheap Mains Charger Electrocutes Person” than anything specific to Apple.

We’ll find out soon enough, as Apple and the local police are now investigating the case. China Daily

[MIKA27]

Cookbook of Unknown Ladies: Historian discovers 300-year-old recipe collection - now, roast sheep’s head, anyone?

If the maxim “know us through our food” still holds water, then not many would care to be on nodding terms with the authors of the Cookbook of Unknown Ladies, given that it’s long on recipes using sheep heads and cow heel and short on things like summer salads or posh burgers. But, then again, we ought to make exceptions, it being 300 years old and all.

The handwritten compendium of recipes, which traverses the years 1690 to 1830, was re-discovered by Judith Finnamore, local studies librarian at Westminster Council’s Archives Centre, who believes she was the first to open it in over a century.

Along with volunteers and food historian Annie Gray, Finnamore is now recreating the recipes – and blogging about it as she goes.

Although a fine and interesting way to explore culinary history, it isn’t without its problems, says Finnamore. “Eggs are a problem. Some of the recipes call for 30 to be used. But obviously eggs are much bigger today, so Annie has had to help adapt what’s written.

“Some of the recipes are ‘challenging’ for our palates – I mean the sheep’s head dish won’t be for everyone.” Other surprises include “mince pies” with calves tongue in them.

There is also a vast 3lb cake, whose inclusion is puzzling given Finnamore doesn’t think this was used by a cook at some great country pile, but rather that it came from a “place like the Bennett house in Pride and Prejudice”. Which leads us to the question:

would Mr Darcy have ever overcome his pride if Elizabeth had been snacking on 3lb cake and calf-tongue mince pies?

[MIKA27]

Motorcycle racer Bill Warner - dubbed fastest man on two wheels - killed attempting to reach 300mph speed record over just a mile

Bill Warner, 44, died after crashing while attempting to be the first man to reach 300mph over the distance of a mile

A motorcycle racer, dubbed the fastest man on two wheels, died yesterday trying to top 300mph on a test track in Maine.

Bill Warner, 44, died after crashing while attempting to be the first man to reach 300mph over the distance of a mile.

It was unclear how fast Mr Warner was travelling when he lost control of the bike but he was clocked at 285mph shortly before the crash.

According to reports Mr Warner was conscious and talking after the crash just before 10am but died about an hour and 15 minutes later in hospital.

Riding his modified turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa, Mr Warner previously hit 311 mph (500 kph) on the same course in 2011, using 1.5 miles of pavement.

That is considered to be the world land speed record for a conventional motorcycle.

"No one will touch Bill's achievements or be the type of racer he was," said Tim Kelly, race director for the Loring Timing Association.

This time he was trying to hit 300 mph using just a mile of track.

Mr Warner crashed during the Maine Event, an annual timed speed event that uses the runway at a former Strategic Air Command base that closed in 1994.

[MIKA27]

Every NSW Speed Camera Fine Might Be Overturned Soon

Been caught speeding in New South Wales recently? Might want to read up on this.

A small group of concerned motorists is taking its case to the High Court, claiming that the state’s speed cameras haven’t passed through a process called “pattern approval”.

Pattern Approval is a process that sees measurement devices go through a testing and measurement procedure at the National Measurement Institute, and according to the SMH, it’s a required process for biological, legal, trade measurement, weiging and hospital equipment.

If the group is successful in its High Court challenge, there’s the potential for the Judge to overturn almost every speeding fine ever recorded on an allegedly untested speed camera in the state.

[MIKA27]

Report: Microsoft Working On Translucent, Aluminium Smartwatch

An iWatch may still be a distant dream, but at least Microsoft fans have a glimmer of hope. According to “sources familiar with Micosoft’s Surface plans”, a translucent, aluminium smart watch could soon be hugging wrists everywhere.

The Surface team is busy engineering the wrist-worn tech, which was originally meant to be a Joule heart rate monitor. There have already been reports that Microsoft’s been sucking up 1.5-inch displays from various manufactures, but The Verge’s source also claims that the new smartwatches will be hitting shelves with removable bands in several different colours.

Separately, AmongTech’s claims, those itty bitty screens will be coming cased in Oxynitride aluminium — a material three times harder than glass. And now that Microsoft is slowly moulding itself into a single, cohesive unit, this little piece of tech will be just another link in the coming autonomous, Windows orgy of an ecosystem.

[MIKA27]

New Apple TV service would reportedly include ad-skipping technology

Rumors have circulated about a future Apple TV that goes beyond what the company's current set-top box offers for years. While most of that speculation has focused on a full-on TV set, we're hearing some rumblings now about what the user experience might be like. According to former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin, Apple's next TV service will include some ad-skipping technology — much like the controversial Dish Hopper DVR.

Lessin reports that talks with networks and cable companies have been going on in "fits and starts" for over a year, but talks have gotten more serious in recent discussions.

This ad-skipping technology would reportedly only show up in a "premium" version of the product — consumers would pay Apple, and the company would then compensate networks for the lost revenue. It sounds similar to Apple's recently-announced iTunes Radio, a free ad-supported service that can also be had without ads if users sign up for iTunes Match. While much of the Apple rumor-mill has focused on the potential for a future iWatch in recent months, it sounds like we might be hearing a lot about the "true" Apple TV set in over the rest of the year — and building in ad-skipping could certainly be the killer feature that it'll need to gain traction in a tough market.