Nasa Discoveries Spark Hopes Of Alien Life

Nasa's planet-hunting deep space observatory has found hundreds of new potential planets, sparking hopes of finding other worlds similar to Earth.

The objects were found in Nasa's Kepler Mission, a space observatory designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Its massive telescope monitors the brightness of over 145,000 stars in a fixed field of view in three constellations in the Milky Way.

A 95-megapixel camera records and analyses the passage of planets around those stars by measuring the changes in light radiation.

The findings show 140 of the new discoveries could be similar in size to Earth.

"From the orbital size and the temperature of the star, the planet's characteristic temperature can be calculated," Nasa explains on the mission's website.

"From this the question of whether or not the planet is habitable (not necessarily inhabited) can be answered."

Scientists say the results contradict older theories that had suggested small and Earth-like planets would be less frequent.

An astronomer on the Kepler mission, Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, revealed the findings in a conference in Oxford earlier this month.

He said the next step would be to determine whether the suspected planets would indeed be habitable.

"The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way, will contain 100 million habitable planets," he said.

"With our own little telescope just in the next two years we will able to identify at least 60 of them.

"There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear, and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."

Google Unveils Nexus One 'Superphone'

Google has unveiled its new smartphone in a direct challenge to the Apple iPhone.

The internet giant billed the Nexus One as a "superphone" and the next step in the evolution of its Android software.
Google worked with Taiwanese electronics firm HTC to make the touch-screen device.

"I think you will see it pushes the limits of what's possible on a smart phone," HTC chief executive Peter Chou said.

"It is very thin and feels good in your hand."

Google engineer Erick Tseng said the Nexus One handsets are no thicker than pencils and no heavier than a Swiss Army knife keyring.

"It is a great marriage of form and function. It is really light," he said.
Tseng added that the new phones are built on the same Android 2.1 software that runs Droid smartphones but feature innovations such as 3D graphics and speech recognition. Though it is worth mentioning that the Nexus one phone does not ahve as many apps as the iPhone and it is slightly more expensive at the moment.

Google said it is also launching its own online store, from which the Nexus One can be bought "unlocked" for $529 (£330).

It will ship devices to buyers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Britain, it said.

But if customers in the US buy the handset with a two-year T-Mobile contract, the price starts at $179 (£111).
Google said its European customers should be able to use a Nexus One with a Vodafone contract by the middle of the year.

Spot the planet

For as long as humans have looked at the night sky we have speculated on the possibility that other planets harbour intelligent life. Now that we are capable of sophisticated scientific probing of the universe, the search for such planets is on in earnest. Nasa launched the Kepler telescope in March 2009 to search for potential life-supporting Earth-sized planets around other stars (kepler.nasa.gov).

The Kepler telescope orbits the sun in an Earth-trailing orbit so that its view of the stars is not blocked periodically by the Earth, moon or sun. The telescope looks fixedly at a star field in our region of the Milky Way in an effort to detect associated planets that are one-half to twice the size of Earth, particularly planets that orbit their stars in the “habitable zone”, where liquid water could exist and where life as we know it might reside.
The Kepler telescope is a special 0.95m-diameter light-meter called a photometer. It has a very large field of view (105 sq degrees) for an astronomical telescope – most telescopes have a field of view of less than one sq degree. Kepler needs to be this big in order to look at a large number of stars simultaneously. It will stare at the same star field for the duration of its entire mission (at least 3.5 years), monitoring the brightness of more than 100,000 stars.
Kepler will use the transit method to detect planets. When a planet passes (“transits”) in front of its star, it prevents a small fraction of light from reaching Kepler. Transits by Earth-sized planets will dim a planet’s detected brightness by one part in 10,000, over a period of two to 16 hours. For a signal to be attributed to a planet, it must be absolutely periodic, it must cause the same change in brightness each time and last the same length of time. In order to achieve reliability, four observations must be made. The time between transits for habitable-zone planets will be about one year and so the mission must last at least 3.5 years in order to make four transit measurements.
The Kepler telescope is fantastically sensitive. Detection of the transit of an Earth-sized planet is a feat equivalent to detecting the dimming effect of a fly crawling across a car headlamp on full beam when observed from a distance of many kilometres. In order to achieve this power and precision, the telescope must be based in space. Earth-based observations would be degraded by atmospheric perturbations, the effects of day and night cycles, and so on. Once detected, the planet’s size can be determined from the extent of the brightness change. The size of the planet’s orbit and its temperature can be determined from the time between transits. This data will tell whether or not life is possible on the planet. Assuming that planets are common around stars such as our sun, Nasa expects that Kepler will detect about 50 Earth-sized planets.
Science takes the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe very seriously. It would be surprising if microbiological life-forms did not exist elsewhere, and we may yet discover them in our own solar system, on Mars, Europa or Titan. But the really exciting prospect is that intelligent self-conscious aliens live elsewhere in the universe and that, some day, we will contact them. The possibility of intelligent alien life has important philosophical and theological implications.
This time around the Vatican, mindful of the Galileo affair and public perceptions about Giordano Bruno, is not going to be caught napping. The church held a five-day conference in Rome in early November to hear scientific experts discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life and to ponder its implications for the church. In an article in the official Vatican newspaper entitled “Aliens are my brother”, Fr Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, said that the existence of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. Some witty reporters entitled their covering pieces “ET phone Rome”.
Incidentally, the Catholic Church is often accused of burning Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) at the stake because he taught that the universe is teeming with planets that harbour alien intelligent life. But, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia , this was not the charge on which Bruno was convicted by the Inquisition. He was convicted for preaching theological errors, such as denying the divinity of Jesus, claiming that the Devil can be saved, and more. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not defending the burning of the unfortunate Bruno, just trying to present an accurate record. Burning for either reason would be equally wrong and horrible.

Online Anger As Group Hacks Into Twitter

The internet is abuzz after the hugely popular social media website Twitter was hacked.

A group calling itself the "Iranian Cyber Army" broke through Twitter's defences and managed to divert traffic to its own servers.
There, Twitter users were faced with the group's own logos and images to the site, with a front page that read: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army."
"U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To..."
The ICA's origins are unknown but the online community reacted with shock to what is a major security breach.
"This is unacceptable for one of the world's top 20 most-visited websites," wrote Ben Parr, a blogger on Mashable.
"Nothing compares to what has happened tonight. Twitter was summarily hacked, taken over, and then taken down. Its security protocols were clearly ineffective."

A parody of the Twitter logo
He added, "This is a black eye of epic proportions."
Once the social networking site was back up, one topic dominated the conversation, as "#WhenTwitterWasDown" and "Iranian Cyber Army" quickly became the two most mentioned phrases on the network.
An official message from Twitter on Friday said: "Twitter's (Domain Name System) records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We will update with more information soon."
The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the internet service that ties a domain name to its web servers.
By changing these records, hackers would have been able to redirect visitors to Twitter.com to their own servers.
This could have enabled them to collect Twitter usernames and passwords by using a spoof website. But instead, they appear to have used the opportunity for political ends.
Twitter, whose celebrity fans include Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, is a site where users have 140 characters to write messages on the internet.
Last summer it was heralded as a tool that allowed opposition voices to be heard from Iran during a major crackdown following the disputed presidential election.

The 11th Hour - Part 1

This documentary which can be found in full on youtube is a very well-made documentary about the environment and how much trouble we are in. Watch it and be amazed...

Windows XP Tricks and Tips

** Watch In High Quality **

This video contains a number of useful tricks and tips that you can use with Windows XP. I am not sure if you can use them with Vista or Windows 7. I recorded this with Hypercam Screen Recorder and edited it with Windows Movie Maker. See below the video for instructions.

Enjoy!

1. Microsoft Word Error Message =rand (200,99)

2. Star Wars Command Prompt Text Version -
Go to the start menu and click "Accessories". Choose "Command Prompt". Type in "telnet" without quotes and press enterType in the letter "o" withour quotes and press enter. Type in "towel.blinkenlights.nl" without quotes and press enter.

3. Notepad Error Message msgbox
"whatever",20,"whatever" Save file as "whatever.vbs" without quotes.

Scientology Facing French Ban Over 'Fraud'

The Church of Scientology and seven of its leaders are on trial over an alleged fraud that could lead to the organisation being banned in France.

Known for its Hollywood celebrity followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the Church is in the dock in Paris for the second time in six years.

But French courts have prosecuted several individual Scientologists since 1978.

In the latest case, a woman alleges she was manipulated into handing over 20,000 euros (£17,600) for costly Scientology products, like an "electrometer" to measure mental energy.

Scientologist Tom Cruise
She said she was approached in a Paris street by a Scientologist in late 1998, who offered a free personality test, at a time when she was feeling psychologically fragile.

After being told that her test results were poor, the woman was sold a series of "life-improvement courses", vitamins and other costly products that left her in debt.

Lawyers argue that Scientology resorts to harassment and pressure to rein in victims who all show signs of vulnerability.

The Scientology Celebrity Centre in Paris, its director Alain Rosenberg and six top officials are accused of trying to seize the fortunes of vulnerable would-be followers "by exerting a psychological hold."

The church's spokeswoman in France rejected the accusations. "This is a trial for heresy," said Daniele Gounord, adding that the church was being "hounded" by French courts.

The seven top Scientologists are also charged with illegal practice of pharmaceutical work after plaintiffs said they were given vitamins and concoctions to improve their mental state.

French prosecutors failed to win a conviction in a previous fraud case against the church in 2003.

But this is the first time that the plaintiffs are invoking a 1994 law that could lead to its dismantling.

Under provisions of that legislation, the Scientology Celebrity Centre and a library in Paris could be shut down for failing to live up to their responsibilities as legal entities.

Founded in the United States in 1954 by science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology was officially recognised as a religion there nearly 20 years later.