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01/28/2016: Monstrous cloud boomerangs back to our galaxy
Though hundreds of enormous high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, this so-called “Smith Cloud” is unique because its trajectory is well known. Hubble Space Telescope astronomers are finding that the old adage, “What goes up, must come down” even applies to an immense cloud of hydrogen gas outside our Milky Way…
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01/28/2016: Colossal Cloud Ejected From Milky Way 70 Million Years Ago –Plummeting Back!
Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. Astronomers have now determined that the cloud contains elements similar to our sun, which means the cloud originated in the Milky Way’s outer edges…
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01/26/2016: Green Bank, the City of the No Signal Mobile, Wi-Fi, Radio and Television
Green Bank, in Pocahontas County in West Virginia, USA, is one of the quiet residential place on earth. Here there is absolutely no cell phone signal, no Wi-Fi signal, even here there is no radio and television waves that can be captured. But Green Bank instead of lagging behind in technology. Instead, this area is…
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01/25/2016: Werner Herzog’s internet doc Lo and Behold is a must-see for anyone on social networks
A group of scientists at Carnegie Mellon believe that by the year 2050, robots designed to play soccer will surpass their professional human counterparts. This juicy nugget of techno-speculation materializes in the middle of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, a new documentary broadly about the internet from Werner Herzog. Sporty robot prototypes,…
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01/11/2016: Tabby’s mystery – Something 20 times Jupiter’s size may be orbiting a nearby star
The graph made astronomer Tabetha “Tabby” Boyajian sit up at her desk at Yale University. Something was definitely strange — the line was mostly flat but had two sharp dips resembling stalactites hanging from the ceiling of a cave. The dips implied that light coming from the star KIC 8462852, more than 1,400 light years away,…
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01/06/2016: How residents of a tiny West Virginia community live without any kind of modern technology
In West Virginia, just 200 miles away from Washington, DC, you’ll find a community of roughly 8,000 people who live completely off the grid. In the 13,000-square-mile “National Radio Quiet Zone,” all cell phone, Wi-Fi, microwaves, and even some vacuum use are all banned by law. The restrictions were put in place because of the 11…
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01/04/2016: Watch this space: Telescope releases mass of data
Astronomers in China working with one of world’s largest optical telescopes released a huge collection of data over the new year holiday, increasing the chances of “significant findings” in space exploration, experts say. The latest update to the National Astronomical Observatories’ sky survey, conducted using the LAMOST telescope, includes some 4.62 million spectral data relating…
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NPR: Enter the Quiet Zone
There are no physical signs you’ve entered the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area that covers the eastern half of West Virginia. But the silence gives you a signal. Somewhere around the Virginia-West Virginia state line, the periodic buzzes and pings of our smartphones stopped. “Zero [service]. Searching,” said photographer John Poole, who traveled…