16 Sep

Posted at 20:43h in Scoop.it

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the most detailed map of the Milky Way to date after cataloging the precise positions and brightness of more than 1.1 billion stars.
 
The 3D map released Wednesday, is based on observations from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, which was launched in 2013 with the express purpose of charting the most detailed map ever of the stars in our galaxy.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.rt.com

10 Sep

Posted at 11:43h in Scoop.it

China is preparing to unveil the world’s largest telescope which is due to be put into operation at the end of September.  Construction of the Five Hundred Meter Apeture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, has entered its final phase in Pingtang County, China’s Guizhou province, reports the People’s Daily Online.  The giant dish, which took five years to build, is the size of 30 football fields, measuring 1,640 feet in diameter. The Chinese authority relocated 8,000 residents from the area to make room for the ambitious equipment, built to boost the global hunt for extra-terrestrial life.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.dailymail.co.uk

09 Sep

Posted at 13:48h in Scoop.it

Modern archiving technology cannot keep up with the growing tsunami of bits. But nature may hold an answer to that problem already.

 

For Nick Goldman, the idea of encoding data in DNA started out as a joke. It was Wednesday 16 February 2011, and Goldman was at a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, talking with some of his fellow bioinformaticians about how they could afford to store the reams of genome sequences and other data the world was throwing at them. He remembers the scientists getting so frustrated by the expense and limitations of conventional computing technology that they started kidding about sci-fi alternatives. “We thought, ‘What’s to stop us using DNA to store information?’”

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.nature.com

02 Sep

Posted at 15:58h in Scoop.it

Marc Riboud died yesterday. In fact, the last recent years Marc was not living in the same world as we are. Marc was one of the living legend of Magnum and the Golden Age of the Photojournalism. He has now in Perpignan for Visa pour L’image a beautiful exhibition ; here it is. Later this fall we will devote one day of l’Oeil de la photographie to his incredible life and work.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.loeildelaphotographie.com