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The storm as wide as the Earth. wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/tempest-hell-seen ... 17740.html



Imagine being caught in a thunderstorm as wide as the Earth with discharges of lightning 10,000 times more powerful than normal, flashing 10 times per second at its peak.

Now imagine that this storm is still unfolding, eight months later.

One of the most violent weather events in the Solar System began to erupt on Saturn last December and is still enthralling astronomers, the British journal Nature reported on Wednesday.

Two studies draw on observations by professional and amateur astronomers using a broad range of gear, from relatively small ground-based telescopes to NASA's magnificent scoutcraft, Cassini.

Saturn, like Jupiter, is no stranger to convective storms.

It too is a "gas giant," or planet comprising layers of thick, roiling gases rather than a rock, like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

The difference, though, is that jovian mega-storms tend to erupt unexpectedly, but the lord of the rings gives birth to a monster almost periodically.

It occurs on average once every Saturnian year -- nearly 29.5 Earth years -- and appears to be linked to the summer solstice, when the planet's orbit brings it a bit closer to the Sun and its atmosphere warms a little.

The event is known as the "Great White Spot" (a counterpart to the swirling "Great Red Spot" on Jupiter) because of the mass of brilliant white storm clouds that erupt in the upper atmosphere.

The show is so big that it can be visible by telescopes from distant Earth. Five have been observed in the last 130 years. The last occurred in 1990.

But the current Great White Spot is proving to be a dazzling spectacle, revealed by an unprecedented array of observational power at hand.

Events began at 2105 GMT on December 5, when ground-based telescopes detected a "barely visible white point" on a normally unblemished and hazy part of Saturn's northern hemisphere, at around latitude 35 degrees north.

At the same time, Cassini turned its "ears" towards the target, listening in to radio emissions from the storm via an onboard plasma-wave instrument.

These signals are the telltales of lightning. Lightning cannot be seen visually on Saturn at night because of interference from sunlight scattered from the planet's ring system, which comprises billions of shiny particles.

Within a few weeks, the point had ballooned into a storm system that was some 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) across, roughly comparable with the diameter of the Earth, and after two months the clouds had almost encircled the entire planet.

Analysis of the data suggests that the "spot" is in fact a cluster of super-storms, produced by upwelling of heat, moisture and ammonia from water clouds from lower down in the Saturnian atmosphere, where the pressure is high.

As this mix rises into a cooler atmospheric layer called the tropopause, bright, white clouds of ammonia start to spread horizontally into a tail, sculpted by eastward jets of wind.

Astronomers are especially intrigued by the current Great White Spot.

The observational history of this phenomenon is sketchy. But evidence suggests the present spot is exceptionally intense and rather premature, for it was still spring on Saturn when the storm brewed.

Tawmis wrote:How much do you love Harry Potter?

Boy, those 3DS sales sure fell off a cliff. So much so that Nintendo has instituted one of the swiftest and deepest price cuts for a handheld in recent memory.

The 3DS only went on sale earlier this year for $249, but as of August 12, it'll be slashed all the way down to $169.99. That's...wow.

In addition to the price cut for new consumers, those who bought/buy a 3DS before the August 12 markdown will be able to download 20 free games from the 3DS eShop. That offer comes in the form of ten NES Virtual Console games (including classics like Zelda and Super Mario Bros.), which will be available after September 1, and ten Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games (like Yoshi's Island and Metroid Fusion), which will be available a little later.

Yes, you read that right. In addition to original Game Boy games already available there will also be a Game Boy Advance Virtual Console and a NES Virtual Console for the 3DS.

Until now, the Nintendo 3DS's eShop has only offered Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Soon, that will change.

Today, Nintendo revealed that it would be giving those who purchased the 3DS before the August 12 markdown the chance to download 20 free games (either NES or GBA Virtual Console) via the 3DS eShop.

Wait, what? That's right, the 3DS eShop is getting NES Virtual Console games like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and The Legend of Zelda.

Early 3DS adaptors get the games...early and for free. The titles are slated to become paid downloads for everyone else, and you'll become automatically enrolled in the program starting September 1.

Also, ten Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games are headed to the 3DS—games like Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

According to Nintendo, "Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future."

audiodane wrote:That said, I really enjoy the tactile feel of buttons, which smartphones for the most part (as far as I know- I still have a Nokia 1100!) -- lack.

audiodane wrote:That motion control will move from the casual to the hardcore gamer (as the technology improves) and the causal game will get back to casual- no needing to tilt and shake, just push buttons.

DeadPoolX wrote:

audiodane wrote:That said, I really enjoy the tactile feel of buttons, which smartphones for the most part (as far as I know- I still have a Nokia 1100!) -- lack.

Every smartphone I know of uses a touchscreen interface except the Xperia PLAY. It was designed by Sony, so it's basically a PSP that has all the same functions a normal Android-powered smartphone has as well.

I've played games on two different smartphones and I prefer using a touchscreen. With the possible exception of the Xperia, using buttons on a smartphone is too unwieldy.

audiodane wrote:That motion control will move from the casual to the hardcore gamer (as the technology improves) and the causal game will get back to casual- no needing to tilt and shake, just push buttons.

Unless playing a sports game or racing, using motion controls is a real pain in the ass. Motion controls just don't translate well to most genres.

audiodane wrote:Everything's a fad until someone can find the "killer app" for it. The application that "makes it stick." I don't think gaming is the killer app for much of anything but wasting time. Now with that said, it's one of the best ways to give technology early life. And if they can use gyros and 3D technology effectively for things like medicine, office productivity improvements, safety systems, etc, that would be fantastic.

(almost) Anything's possible if you put enough resources into it; just have to find the right application that justifies butting that many resources into it.

..dane

Tawmis wrote:But now, a satellite has spotted a particularly chill Y dwarf that holds the new record for the coolest star at just 80 degree Fahrenheit.

(Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.

In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."