New Dubai Skyscraper Will Shift Shape Dynamically

Look up in the sky, its a bird, its a plane, its a... really weird looking skyscraper

A new and bizarre building is coming to the skyscraper bejeweled landscape of Dubai.  In Dubai, home to one of the world's most impressive skylines and many of the world's tallest skyscrapers (Emirates Towers, the Burj Dubai, the Palm Islands and the world's tallest, and most expensive hotel, the Burj Al Arab), big buildings are not unusual.  However, the dynamic tower is anything but your average big building.

Architects from the New York-based architect David Fisher's Dynamic Group have announced plans for the new tower in Dubai.  The tower will be 420 m tall at its time of completion making it among the tallest projects in the world it will also be 80 stories tall.

While those stats are impressive but not unusual, the construction approach is where things start to get weird.  First the building is composed of a series of prefabricated units.  Between each floor are arrays of wind turbines.  The energy from these turbines is used to allow each unit to rotate on whim, creating an organic design in motion.

Explains Fischer, "You can adjust the shape the way you like every given moment.  It's not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that's it. It remains forever. It's designed by life, shaped by time."

If the tower's unique design attracts you, perhaps the sky-high price tag may turn you off.  If you want to buy an apartment in the tower, you will pay $3,000 per square foot, making the apartments range from $4M USD to $40M USD.

The tower will be completed in 2010 according to plans.  Those looking to experience the rotating design may soon find it coming to their own content.  Fischer claims to be in advanced talks to place a second similar tower in Moscow, Russia, and says he plans to put one in New York.  He also claims Canada, Europe and South Korea have all expressed interest in the design.

Some are critical of Fischer's plans.  While he is a well-respected architect, he has never built a skyscraper before.  They wonder if his Roarkian quest can really succeed, despite his experienced staff of engineers and architects from the United Kingdom and India.
Fischer has received a development license from Dubai, but is being secretive about the construction site.  The Moscow mayor's office says it is considering the project and that no official decision has been made.

The architecture style of Fischer is truly radical -- he advertises prefabricated architecture as the "future of architecture".  Prefab architecture allows for faster, more environmentally friendly construction, allowing a floor to be put up in only 7 days, much faster than normal.
He said that the method will allow him to cut the construction crew from the typical 2,000 or more members to a modest 600 workers and 80 technicians.  Fischer states on the Dynamic website, "It is unbelievable that real estate and construction, which is the leading sector of the world economy, is also the most primitive."

"Most workers throughout the world still regularly use trowels that was first used by the Egyptians and then by the Romans. Buildings should not be different than any other product, and from now on they will be manufactured in a production facility."

The new project should provide an intriguing look at one vision of the future of architecture.  If it succeeds, it will be one more crown jewel for Dubai, which has the world's largest mall, the world's largest snow park, and soon to the be the world's largest hotel (and temporarily the world's largest building) when the Burj is complete in 2009.  Dubai has strong oil profits, large international investment, and strong immigration to thank for this good fortune.

DailyTech - New Dubai Skyscraper Will Shift Shape Dynamically

Soul Calibur Hits XBLA Wednesday

Namco's re-release of the Dreamcast and arcade fighting classic Soul Calibur will arrive as one of the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade downloads this Wednesday, July 2.

Priced at 800 Microsoft Points ($10), the game runs in high-definition and, according to Namco, features "no major additions or subtractions" from the Dreamcast edition. To see the port in motion, check out Shackvideo.

Though Soul Calibur includes online leaderboards, it does not sport online multiplayer. That feature is reserved for the upcoming full-fledged sequel, Soul Calibur IV, which hits PS3 and 360 on July 29.

Soul Calibur Hits XBLA Wednesday - Shacknews

US Calls for Moratorium on Solar...WHA?!

The world is such a strange place. Faced with the burgeoning demand sunny land in the southwest United States, the Bureau of Land Management (the US agency that controls government-owned lands that aren't forests) has decided to put a two-year moratorium new solar power plants. During this period, they're going to be doing studies on the impact that solar power plants have on desert habitat and wildlife.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of environmental assessments, and solar power projects do have significant impacts on sensitive lands. Some of the areas for proposed solar power, I'm sure, are going to be inappropriate for that use. Roads have to be built, concrete is laid down, and electrical transmission lines have to be built.

But solar power projects have significantly less environmental impact than, say, oil and gas exploration or cattle grazing. Those happen to be the two most common uses of BLM lands. Yet, somehow they haven't called for a moratorium on new oil and gas development. How odd...

What we're seeing here is yet another example (like the 600 year waiting list for wind power permits) of a government that is extremely slow to adapt to new circumstances. The BLM has no idea how to properly conduct an environmental assessment for a solar project. So, instead of figuring it out as they permit them, they're simply stopping all development.

This simply can't be allowed. The permits that the BLM is working through could power more than 10% of the households in the United States. This is the first opportunity we've ever had to make renewable energy a significant part of the energy mix in America.

Solar stocks are down significantly on this news. The BLM's lands are crucial to making solar power mainstream. This break could be deadly to many young solar companies. If anyone in our government is paying attention, they need to increase the BLM's funding so they can deal with this influx without having to take a two year break. And it has to be done now.

EcoGeek - Technology for the Environment

Arctic Ice: Going, Going...

There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says.

The weather and ocean conditions in the next couple of weeks will determine how much of the sea ice will melt, and early signs are not good, said Mark Serreze. He's a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo.

The chances for a total meltdown at the pole are higher than ever because the layer of ice coating the sea is thinner than ever, he said.

"A large area at the North Pole and surrounding the North Pole is first-year ice," Serreze said. "That's the stuff that tends to melt out in the summer because it's thin."

Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said Friday. He thinks there is slightly less than a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free.

Last year was a record year for ice melt all over the Arctic and the ice band surrounding the North Pole is even thinner now.

There is nothing scientifically significant about the North Pole, Serreze said. But there is a cultural and symbolic importance. It's home to Santa Claus, after all. Last August, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation for the first time in memory.

A more conservative ice scientist, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington, put the odds of a North Pole without ice closer to 1 in 4. Even that is far worse than climate models had predicted, which was 1 in 70 sometime in the next decade, she said.

But both she and Serreze agree it's just a matter of time.

"I would guess within the next 10 year it would happen at least once," Bitz said.

Already, figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show sea ice in the Arctic as a whole at about the same level now as it was at its low point last year in late June and early July.

The explanation is a warming climate and a weather phenomenon, scientists said.

For the last couple of decades, there has been a steady melt of Arctic sea ice -- which covers only the ocean and which thins during summer and refreezes in winter. In recent years, it has gradually become thinner because more of it has been melting as the Earth's temperature rises.

Then, this past winter, there was a natural weather shift called the Arctic Oscillation, sort of a cold weather cousin to El Nino. That oscillation caused a change in winds and ocean that accelerated a normal flushing of sea ice in the Arctic. That pushed the older thicker sea ice that had been over the North Pole south toward Greenland and eventually out of the Arctic, Serreze said. That left just a thin one-year layer of ice that previously covered part of Siberia.

Arctic Ice: Going, Going... : Discovery News : Discovery Channel

Rock Band 2 to come out before Guitar Hero: World Tour

Electronic Arts announced details about Rock Band 2 today. The big news is that it will be out in September, which will beat its main competitor, Guitar Hero: World Tour, to the market. IGN got the news up first here. They've also got an interview here with a designer who's careful not to release any details before E3, and to sound like a practiced PR guy in the process. He also manages to plug his band and point out how the game improved his real world performance.

Some salient details:

* You can use your Rock Band instruments, although there will be improved or enhanced instruments shipping with Rock Band 2. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a working Stratocaster at the very least.

* The Xbox 360 gets Rock Band 2 exclusively in September. The PS3 and any other platforms will have to wait until an unspecified time. Ouch.

* You'll be able to skew random setlists to not include certain prohibitively difficult songs. Phew.

* Songs you've purchased online for Rock Band will carry over. Double phew.

* Rock Band 2 will include at least two of the following bands: Agent Orange, The Beatles, Built to Spill, The Buzzcocks, Journey, Led Zeppelin, Modest Mouse, Pavement, The Replacements, or Tool. Here's hoping it's not just Agent Orange and Built to Spill. No offense if you're a member of either of those bands.

Rock Band 2 to come out before Guitar Hero: World Tour | Fidgit

Highlights from Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational 2008

Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational is now officially over! In case you missed all of the excitement this weekend (or just want a handy recap), here are the highlights:

Diablo 3
Yes, it's really official. Here's everything there is to know about the game so far:

• Blizzard introduces Diablo 3
• Watch Diablo 3 teaser and gameplay footage
• Here are the first Diablo 3 screenshots
• Highlights from the Diablo 3 FAQ
• Diablo 3 information overload
• Joystiq chats with Jay Wilson on Diablo 3
• Poll: What classes would you like to see return in Diablo 3?
• WWI08: Diablo 3 design fundamentals
• WWI08: Lore and art in Diablo 3

Starcraft 2
There was only one Starcraft 2 design panel, but boy was it a doozie.

• Part 1: Zerg
• Part 2: Protoss
• Part 3: Terran
• Part 4: Q&A with Rob Pardo

World of Warcraft
Let's not forget about the MMO behemoth, whose presence comprised about 80% of the WWI.

• Blizzard's WWI 2008 costume and dance contest
• All World of Warcraft classes dissected at WWI 2008
• WWI08: New WoW arenas, nonlinear dungeons and goodie bags
• A lot more information can be found at WoW Insider

Highlights from Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational 2008 - Joystiq

Call of Duty 4 Patch 1.7 Released

The latest patch for the PC edition of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is now available, updating the game to version 1.7.

According to publisher Activision, the 39mb download includes the following changes:

• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to access certain console dvars during multi-player matches.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when a Chinatown Sabotage match would go into over-time.
• Fixed a bug where the MP icons (Bomb, Defend, Capture, etc) were always showing up as English regardless of the install language.

Call of Duty 4 Patch 1.7 Released

Rock Band DLC: Entire 'Who's Next' Album Nixed, Best-of Who Compilation Coming July 15

A 12-track compilation of The Who songs will be released as downloadable content for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions of Harmonix's Rock Band the week of July 15.

The upcoming bundle replaces the promised debut of The Who's entire "Who's Next" album, which proved impossible after several master tracks turned up missing. Only 2 of the pack's 12 tracks--"My Generation" and "Who Are You"--have been revealed.

Each song will sell individually for $1.99, with the whole shebang going for $19.99.

"We were trying to release 'Who's Next' in its entirety, but we were unable to locate all the masters," Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told The Associated Press. "In the face of that, [surviving band members] Pete [Townshend] and Roger [Daltrey] helped curate this best-of soundtrack of everything we were able to find."

Compatible with the fall release of Rock Band 2, the compilation will be available to Xbox 360 gamers on Tuesday, July 15, with the PlayStation 3 edition following on Thursday, July 17.

Rock Band DLC: Entire 'Who's Next' Album Nixed, Best-of Who Compilation Coming July 15

NASA's Hyperwall 2 is a 23 foot by 10 foot display that puts your TV to shame

NASA just unveiled its Hyperwall 2, the world's highest resolution visualization system. What's that mean? Well, it's a 128-screen display that covers an entire wall, capable of rendering a quarter billion pixel graphics. It's 23 feet wide and 10 feet tall. Yeah, it's big and it's awesome.

Unfortunately, they won't be playing Crysis on it anytime soon. Instead, it'll be used to "view, analyze, and communicate results from NASA’s high-fidelity modeling and simulation projects supporting the safety of new space exploration vehicle designs, atmospheric re-entry analysis for the space shuttle, earthquakes, climate change, global weather and black hole collisions." OK, that sounds pretty neat and everything, but seriously, NASA: let them hook an Xbox 360 up to that thing on the off hours. It'll be totally worth it, I swear.

DVICE: NASA's Hyperwall 2 is a 23 foot by 10 foot display that puts your TV to shame

Microsoft fixes 360 DRM with license tool—over a year late

There are a few different reasons you might not be playing on the same Xbox 360 system that you originally bought. You might have upgraded to an Elite system for the bigger hard drive and black HDMI. More likely, your original system died and you were forced to have it replaced. Gamers who received new systems were in for an unpleasant surprise when they redownloaded their Arcade games or hooked up their old hard drive: the games they paid for would only work when connected to the Internet. No network connection, and they all reverted to demo versions. Microsoft has just released a tool that allows you to move those licenses over to a new console, but the question remains: what took so long?

The online tool is dead simple to use, and there is a video to walk you through it if you need help. Simply sign into the page with the Windows Live ID that's attached to your Xbox Live Account, click on "start the license transfer now" button, look at the number of licenses you have if you'd like, and then click next. Sign into Xbox Live on the console you'd like to move your licenses to, and click confirm on your PC. Then go to download history in the account management tab on your 360, and re-download the licenses. Now even when offline, the full versions of the games will play. 

You can only use the tool once every 12 months, so you can't change your licenses over to a friend's system for a weekend and then move them back. Still, this is a great solution for gamers who have had to swap Xbox systems and were frustrated by the DRM attached to te titles they had purchased. With the 360's high defect rate, that's a huge number of customers who were burned by this particular form of DRM. "Yes, we know the licensing isn't perfect. We know that, we're working on it," Microsoft's Larry Hryb, the Xbox Live Director of Programming, said on his podcast, sounding rather annoyed at the situation. That was April 29, 2007. 

The good news is that the system in place now is simple and easy to use, and if you send your Xbox system into Microsoft to have it repaired the licenses will now be fixed as well, but it's inexcusable that it took this long to get a process in place to fix the broken DRM. It's one thing to ask your customers to have to deal with multiple broken systems, but then forcing them to put up with broken DRM on their games on the replacement units is annoying; anyone who has traveled with their 360 even next door and watched as their games reverted to demo form without an Internet connection knows how much of a pain this is. Before this tool was released, it was possible to get Microsoft to refund your points so you could re-download the content onto your system, but that often entailed talking to many people on the phone for a few hours and then going through an annoyingly long process of redownloading the content. 

Hopefully the issue is now fixed, and will remain that way moving forward. Sony side-stepped the issue entirely by putting less restrictive DRM on its downloadable games for the PlayStation 3. While on the Xbox 360 content is tied to both your Live account and specific system, on the PlayStation 3 the DRM is tied to the profile only; playing your games on another system is as easy as logging in with your account and then downloading the title again. The game will then work whether there is an Internet connection present or not. While this raises some possibilities for abuse, it's a much better system from a consumer's point of view. 

It's surprising that the issue of moving downloadable games to a new system has caught Microsoft completely flat-footed; the company was one of the first to push downloadable games as a mainstream method of distribution for consoles, and has repeatedly stressed its dedication to downloadable movies instead of Blu-ray support for the Xbox 360. Hybb warns us, of course, to watch any movies we have on our old system before moving licenses; the rights for movie rentals won't transfer over. 

Gaming is going digital, and Microsoft is going to have to learn to respond to DRM problems faster than this, especially with Sony's more gamer-friendly approach to DRM.

Microsoft fixes 360 DRM with license tool—over a year late

Spray-on Skin, AFIRM's Research Leading Regenerative Medicine

Advances in regenerative medicine and stem cell research will help wounded soldiers and civilians alike.

AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, has some lofty, but important goals. As covered by DailyTech previously, the goal of the Army-led organization is to help and heal our wounded fighting men and women, allowing them to return to the productive lives they gave to their country. Some of the current goals, limb regeneration especially, may seem lofty, but such things rarely stand in the way of human determination for long.

Some of the stem cell research done by AFIRM members is already showing promising results. Stephen Badylak, a pathologist at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh's announcement last year that a magical pixie dust, created from pig bladders, regrew the severed fingertips of two patients left a mark in the medical community. The dust contains molecules that signal growth factors, overriding the typical scar tissue response when a limb is severed. In just six weeks, the fingertips grew back completely, fingernails included. Badylak is presently doing further research into regrowing more complicated extremities such as arms and legs.

Anthony Atala, a Wake Forest University tissue engineer, has developed an ink jet printer capable of printing entire organs, one layer of cells at a time. The special printer uses cartridges filled with a mix of tissue types, growth factors and nutrients. He has already successfully printed a rat heart, and plans to have a portable model developed in the next five years that can print skin tissue directly onto flesh wounds in battlefield hospitals.

The newest development in progress by AFIRM is nothing less than spray-on skin. The process involves harvesting cells known as keratinocytes from a patient's own skin. Keratinocytes are immature skin cells, which the body constantly produces to create new skin tissue as surface tissue dies. The cells are put into a solution which is then sprayed over a wound.

Clinical trials with the process involved 16 burn patients and showed extremely promising results. Not only did the cells promote growth in the wounds, the recovery time was similar to skin grafting, the standard approach to burn repairs, but without the complications or aesthetic scarring involved.

While the $250 million project is aimed at helping our military men and women, the results of the hard work by AFIRM members will no doubt spill over into civilian medicine, much the way most military technology eventually does. If doctors can print new organs and skin in the battlefield, they can do it at accident scenes on domestic soil. AFIRM may enable one of the most significant leaps in regenerative medicine in history, all thanks to stem cells of various construction and the human desire to help those who have helped and protected us.

DailyTech - Spray-on Skin, AFIRM's Research Leading Regenerative Medicine

Microsoft fixes 360 DRM with license tool—over a year late

There are a few different reasons you might not be playing on the same
Xbox 360 system that you originally bought. You might have upgraded to
an Elite system for the bigger hard drive and black HDMI. More likely,
your original system died and you were forced to have it replaced.
Gamers who received new systems were in for an unpleasant surprise when
they redownloaded their Arcade games or hooked up their old hard drive:
the games they paid for would only work when connected to the Internet.
No network connection, and they all reverted to demo versions.
Microsoft has just released a tool that allows you to move those
licenses over to a new console, but the question remains: what took so
long?

The online tool is dead simple to use, and there is a video to walk you through it
if you need help. Simply sign into the page with the Windows Live ID
that's attached to your Xbox Live Account, click on "start the license
transfer now" button, look at the number of licenses you have if you'd
like, and then click next. Sign into Xbox Live on the console you'd
like to move your licenses to, and click confirm on your PC. Then go to
download history in the account management tab on your 360, and
re-download the licenses. Now even when offline, the full versions of
the games will play.

You can only use the tool once every 12 months, so you can't change
your licenses over to a friend's system for a weekend and then move
them back. Still, this is a great solution for gamers who have had to
swap Xbox systems and were frustrated by the DRM attached to te titles they had purchased. With the 360's high defect rate, that's a huge number
of customers who were burned by this particular form of DRM. "Yes, we
know the licensing isn't perfect. We know that, we're working on it,"
Microsoft's Larry Hryb, the Xbox Live Director of Programming, said on his podcast, sounding rather annoyed at the situation. That was April 29, 2007.

The good news is that the system in place now is simple and easy to
use, and if you send your Xbox system into Microsoft to have it
repaired the licenses will now be fixed as well, but it's inexcusable
that it took this long
to get a process in place to fix the broken DRM. It's one thing to ask
your customers to have to deal with multiple broken systems, but then
forcing them to put up with broken DRM on their games on the
replacement units is annoying; anyone who has traveled with their 360
even next door and watched as their games reverted to demo form without
an Internet connection knows how much of a pain this is. Before this
tool was released, it was possible to get Microsoft to refund your
points so you could re-download the content onto your system, but that
often entailed talking to many people on the phone for a few hours and
then going through an annoyingly long process of redownloading the
content.

Hopefully
the issue is now fixed, and will remain that way moving forward. Sony
side-stepped the issue entirely by putting less restrictive DRM on its
downloadable games for the PlayStation 3. While on the Xbox 360 content
is tied to both your Live account and specific system, on the
PlayStation 3 the DRM is tied to the profile only; playing your games
on another system is as easy as logging in with your account and then
downloading the title again. The game will then work whether there is
an Internet connection present or not. While this raises some
possibilities for abuse, it's a much better system from a consumer's
point of view.

It's surprising that the issue of moving downloadable games to a new
system has caught Microsoft completely flat-footed; the company was one
of the first to push downloadable games as a mainstream method of
distribution for consoles, and has repeatedly stressed its dedication
to downloadable movies instead of Blu-ray support for the Xbox 360.
Hybb warns us, of course, to watch any movies we have on our old system
before moving licenses; the rights for movie rentals won't transfer
over.

Gaming is going digital, and Microsoft is going to have to learn to
respond to DRM problems faster than this, especially with Sony's more
gamer-friendly approach to DRM.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080627-more-than-a-year-too-late-microsoft-fixes-360-drm-with-license-tool.html

Minerals Needed for Life Found on Mars

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence of mineral
nutrients essential to life in Martian dirt, mission scientists announced Thursday.

After performing the first
wet chemistry experiment ever done on another planet, Phoenix
discovered that a sample it dug of Martian dirt contained several soluble
minerals, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. Though the data is
preliminary, the results are very exciting, scientists said.

"We basically have found what appears to be the
requirements for nutrients to support life," said Phoenix's wet chemistry
lab lead, Sam Kounaves of Tufts University. "This is the type of soil
you'd probably have in your backyard. You might be able to grow asparagus
pretty well, but probably not strawberries."

Asparagus, which thrives in alkaline soil, would like the
Martian dirt, which Phoenix measured to have a very alkaline pH of between
eight to nine. Strawberries, meanwhile, like acidic soil, he said.

The finding comes a week after the lander discovered water
ice in the same dirt.

On June 25, the probe placed a cubic centimeter sample of
Martian dirt in its onboard wet chemistry laboratory for the first time. The
lab, part of Phoenix's
suite of instruments called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and
Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, was designed to test Mars' dirt for salts,
acidity, minerals and conductivity.

After mixing the dirt with water Phoenix brought from Earth
in one of MECA's teacup-sized beakers, the instrument measured various
characteristics of the solution to learn about the properties of the dirt.

MECA includes four beakers, each of which can be used only
once. The inside of each beaker contains 26 sensors designed to study red
planet material, NASA officials have said.

"We're making mud, we're stirring it up, we're
measuring it with sensors," said Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist
Michael Hecht, lead of the MECA instrument.

Habitable world

The new findings help fulfill Phoenix's main purpose: to
search for signs that the red planet's northern polar regions could have been
habitable to life. The probe landed in the arctic plains of Mars May 25 to
begin what is now a planned four-month mission. It is not equipped to find life
itself.

The soluble mineral nutrients it found, and the dirt's hospitable
pH level, are both promising signs. However the MECA instrument is not able to
test for organic compounds, such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, which are also
necessary for life as we know it.

"We did find basically that there's nothing about [the
dirt] that would preclude life," Kounaves said. "In fact it seems
very friendly."

Though the dirt itself seems to be hospitable, Kounaves
pointed out that the very top layer at the surface is exposed to high levels of
harsh UV light that is damaging to organic compounds, so may not be able to
support life.

"There could be microbes living meters and meters
underground," he said. "They would be very happy."

Water ice

Phoenix also recently found another promising sign that this
Mars environment could be habitable to life. In a major success last week, the
probe photographed what scientists say must
be water ice: a few bright crumbs that evaporated over four days from a
trench in the ground. The scientists think it's water, and not some other
material such as carbon dioxide, because of the time frame over which it
vaporized. The local temperatures are too warm for carbon dioxide to remain
frozen for even one day, scientists said.

Launched in August 2007, Phoenix includes cameras, a
scoop-tipped robotic arm, weather station and ovens in addition to its wet
chemistry lab.

The probe's oven instrument, the Thermal and Evolved Gas
Analyzer (TEGA), also recently completed an experiment in which it heated up a
sample of Martian dirt to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit).
When the sample was heated, the instrument measured signs of water, which
researchers think was probably emitted when minerals melted that contained chemically-bound
water. This water would have been bonded to other molecules in the minerals,
rather than existing on its own in the dirt.

"This is the first time anybody's ever heated up part
of a planet to such high temperatures," said William Boynton of the
University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "When we heated up the
sample we got some modest amounts of water vapor. This is what we were hoping
to see."

Though further analysis is needed to determine the source of
the water vapor for sure, "what we can say now is that the soil clearly
has interacted with water in the past," he said.

The results of both the TEGA and MECA tests are showing
scientists that it's possible Mars may indeed have hosted, or be hosting, some
form of life.

"Over time I've come to the conclusion that the amazing
thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world but that it's actually very Earth-like,"
Kounaves said.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080626-phoenix-update.html

Rumor: Microsoft green-lights 360s from other companies

EGM's Quartermann has been in the business of rumor mongering for 20-odd years, but his latest tip-off has to be one of the more interesting we've seen yet. According to the Q-Man's most recent EGM column, Microsoft is set to announce that it will be licensing the core Xbox 360 tech to other companies. Meaning that they can then build their own 360 consoles, or other home electronics (TVs, Blu-ray Disc players) with "360 inside."

In setting up their E3 appointment with MS, New Zealand gaming blog Geekpulp reports that the company listed time on the itinerary to discuss two "surprise games" and one "surprise thing." That last one could be anything – 360 avatars, motion-tracking controllers, a scent-emitting peripheral – but the Geekpulp gang reckons it could be the hardware licensing deal.

If true, this wouldn't be the first time console makers have allowed other companies access to their technology. We've seen Aiwa's Mega Drive (Genesis) / Mega CD / boom box combo, a Pioneer Laserdisc player that ran TurboGrafx-16 games, and arcade machines that accepted Neo-Geo cartridges. Oh wait ... that was something totally different.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/26/rumor-microsoft-green-lights-360s-from-other-companies/

DARPA Outlines Plans for Vulcan Hypersonic Engine

Two methods can be used to achieve the Vulcan hypersonic engine

DARPA held an industry day where it outlined some of its plans for hypersonic aircraft of the future. The program being shown off at the industry day was the DARPA Vulcan project. The project centers around developing an aircraft that uses a constant volume combustion (CVC) engine capable of flight at speeds from a standstill to Mach 4 and over.

Aviation Week’s Ares blog reports that the first part of the program was an introduction to the problem the program faces -- how exactly to accelerate an aircraft from a stop to speeds fast enough to activate a supersonic-combustion ramjet.

The program has some interesting slides and information (PDF) from the famed Lockheed Skunk Works HTV-3X flight demonstration vehicle that was conceived as part of the DARPA Falcon program. One of the slides gives an idea of the size of the HTV-3X vehicle by comparing it to the Have Blue aircraft that ended up being about 60% of the F-117 stealth fighter.

The Lockheed HTV-3X vehicle itself has been superseded by the DARPA Blackswift hypersonic program DailyTech has covered before. The engine that DARPA envisions for the Vulcan project is a CVC and turbojet combination.

According to Ares two methods can be used to achieve this type of engine. In one method a common air inlet would be used for both the turbojet engine that is to carry the aircraft from a stop to Mach 4 and higher speeds and the CVC that would take over at propel the aircraft to Mach 6 and over. This method is called turbine-based combined cycle.

The second method to achieve the engine needed is called an annular approach and would embed a turbojet inside a CVC ramjet engine. The big challenge here is that the turbojet would have to be cocooned when the CVC is active to protect it from the high heat produced inside the Vulcan engine over Mach 2.

Because a turbojet capable of propelling a aircraft over Mach 4 would be large and expensive to develop, DARPA instead wants to take a conventional Mach 2 turbojet and combine it with a CVC to get an engine capable of high Mach speeds, but at much cheaper development costs.

DailyTech - DARPA Outlines Plans for Vulcan Hypersonic Engine

Life Survived Catastrophic Space Rock Impact

The true impact of an asteroid or comet crashing near the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago has been examined in detail for the first time. The analysis reveals the resilience of life in the aftermath of disaster.

The impact crater, which is buried under 400 to 1,200 feet (120 to 365 meters) of sand, silt and clay, spans twice the length of Manhattan. The sprawling depression helped create what would eventually become Chesapeake Bay. About 10,000 years ago, ice sheets began to melt and once-dry river valleys filled with water. The rivers of the Chesapeake region converged directly over the buried crater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Gregory Gohn of the USGS and his colleagues analyzed samples from two deep holes drilled into the crater near its center.

"I think what we wanted to do is drill into the central part of the crater and get as long of a section as we could and understand the processes that put them in the order we found them," Gohn told SPACE.com.

Within seconds of the object's touchdown, rocks were flung high into the air. The force of the impact carved a colossal cavity and caused temperatures to skyrocket, turning brittle rocks into taffy. Then, material along the cavity's rim surged downhill into the bowl-shaped depression like an avalanche.

The extreme heat, the researchers say, killed off most life. However, they found abundant microbes living today in the deepest parts of the crater. Some of the ancient bacteria would have survived the impact, the researchers say, because their little hideouts didn't feel the brunt of the heat. The rest of the abundant and newly discovered microbial life is thought to have recolonized the zapped area possibly tens of thousands of years following the impact when temperatures dropped to habitable levels. 

"The impact broke up and disaggregated all of these blocks of rock," said researcher Mary Voytek, a microbiologist at the USGS, "and that actually creates space for [the microbes] to colonize and it also creates new routes for water and material to move though, which is always good for bugs."

So a catastrophic event like this could actually be a boon to microbes, at least in the long-run, Voytek said. The impact breaks up compacted rock to create nooks and crannies for bacteria to reside in, and it also brings in a fresh supply of food.

"It's somewhat analogous to whale falls," when a whale carcass eventually settles on the sea floor, Voytek said. "All of a sudden it's a restaurant for these bugs."

Understanding the biological effects of this asteroid impact will shed light on the potential for life deep underground during Earth's Archaean period, 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, when impacts were more frequent than today. The results also have implications for predicting life in the deep biosphere on Mars.

"If we're going to find life [on Mars], everyone agrees a good place to look is in the subsurface," Voytek said.

The project, which is detailed in the June 27 issue of the journal Science, was funded by the USGS, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Austrian Science Foundation and DOSECC Inc.

SPACE.com -- Life Survived Catastrophic Space Rock Impact

Never talk on family vacations again: Chrysler's in-car WiFi

Chrysler announced today that in-car Internet hotspots would be available as an option on all new models for around $500. The service, offered through Autonet Mobile, combines a cellular EVDO modem with a WiFi hotspot to offer constant conductivity within a 100 foot radius of the vehicle—making it "convenient to access the Internet at a soccer field or family picnic," according to the announcement.

Chrysler calls the new system UConnect Web and says it will be available in August. The best part seems to be the price, which is $29 a month for apparently unlimited data use (though if you already pay for an EVDO card, you'll have to cough up again to get the service in the car).

Chrysler promises speeds of 400-800Kbps on average when downloading, consistent with our own findings when using EVDO networks. The downside for families on trips is that EVDO service can get spotty between cities, especially out West, so listening to that streaming audio version of This American Life might become a rage-inducing exercise. (The system can also access slower networks.)

The system offers connectivity to any WiFi device including PSPs, PDAs, smartphones, and more, and encrypts the signal with WEP, which as we all know is highly secure (the technically-inclined may want to use the optional MAC filtering). How long will it be until we see the first court case involving a tailgating vehicle that has hacked into to the WiFi connection of the minivan up ahead? I picture a band of nerds following a Chrysler in their Priuses and Metros, trying to jockey close enough to get a signal, Road Warrior style.

You can see a video of the system in action on Chrysler's official blog, but be warned: it looks a lot like a dude sitting in the back of a car, typing on an Eee keyboard.

When I was a kid, my apparently insane parents used to stuff three kids and a batch of suitcases into a non-air-conditioned Chevy Celebrity and drive from Chicago to Florida for a bit of time on the beach. While the constant connectivity of today's world can sometimes make it hard for families to tear their collective eyes away from laptop screens, iPods, and Nintendo DS handhelds in order to engage in face-to-face communication, the long hours spent in that station wagon have convinced me that a bit of electronic distraction isn't a wholly bad thing. It's certainly preferable to lengthy poking fights with your brother and/or sister, and it definitely beats listening to a Weird Al cassette on repeat or playing the "alphabet game" for the 27th time.

In the future, road trip dialogues might look more like this:

Kid: "Are we almost there yet?"
Dad: "No."
Kid: "Great."

And then Little Timmy's back to Twittering about the New Mexico landscape out his window and uploading photos of it to his Facebook page.

Mom, meanwhile, is hunched over in the passenger seat, unable to stop obsessively editing the Perkins report for work, while Timmy's older brother is in the back seat, a jacket over his head, looking at women in bikinis. Family road trips may never be the same.

Never talk on family vacations again: Chrysler's in-car WiFi

RCA debuts flat antenna to match your HDTV

In case you didn't know, the absolute best picture you can possibly get for your HDTV (outside of Blu-ray) is from an off-air broadcast HD signal. In the airwaves, signals generally don't have to compete for bandwidth like they do in cable and satellite systems, where they're always compressed (sometimes excessively), which can lead to a degraded picture. So hooking up an antenna to your high-def set is a great idea, even if you have cable.

If there's any problem, it's that your sleek, modern flat panel is going to look mighty kitschy with a pair of rabbit ears on top of it. That's where RCA's Digital Flat Antennas come in. The first one in the line, the ANT1500, is basically a white square that's less than an inch thick. You can hide it underneath, beside, or behind your set, and it's wall mountable, too.

While the antenna's aimed at people who have old TVs that'll be near-useless after the analog switch-off next year, this is just the kind of antenna you want if you have an HD set without an antenna. For $60 (admittedly a chunk more than most antennas), it'll raise the game of a few of your HD stations (mainly the networks), plus you'll get all those digital subchannels you never see on cable. And you won't have to hide any rabbit ears next time you throw a dinner party.

DVICE: RCA debuts flat antenna to match your HDTV

Three Ways to Make Solar Cheaper than Coal

Solar power is magnificently exciting. Just lay down a sheet or a panel and every day, for the life of the device, you get free power. There are no fuel costs. No one is ever going to start charging $4 per gallon of sunlight. But, unfortunately, the size of the initial investment keeps the cost of solar generated power higher than the cost of coal.

It's worth noting that, if you take into account the environmental costs of burning coal, solar power is already slightly more economically sound (according to an analysis by the IPCC.) But we're not taxing carbon (yet) so we've got to make solar power cheaper.

There are thousands of people working on that right now. But here are three of the finest examples of companies that are working to bring solar power to grid parity.

Concentrate on the Silicon
The most expensive part of a traditional photovoltaic array is the silicon wafers. It's the same stuff that microchips are made out of, and it's in short supply. The solar industry eats up every ounce of the stuff that's being produced today, and so prices are skyrocketing. To solve this problem (and also the problem of the environmentally wasteful process of creating the silicon crystals) several people, including IBM and a small startup called Sunrgi are concentrating the sunlight thousands of times onto a extremely small solar panel. They decrease the amount of solar material needed by thousands of times, and produce just as much power.

The result is solar power that is nearly as cheap (if not as cheap) as coal and a VERY HOT piece of silicon. Thus the big problem with this technology. You have to keep the silicon cool, even with sunlight magnified 2000x on it. Otherwise the silicon will melt, and it's all over. Both IBM and Sunrgi are using techniques learned from the microprocessor industry to keep their silicon cells cool. Both have working prototypes already and are hoping to go commercial in the coming year.

Beyond Silicon
Another solution to the problem of limited and expensive crystalline silicon is to just not use it. Which is why there are so many solar startups right now working on solar technology using non-crystalline silicon or other thin-film solutions. The real champion of the thin-film startups is Nanosolar, which has already broken out of the lab and into manufacturing.

Nanosolar prints it's mixture of several elements in precise proportions onto a metal film. The production is fast, simple and cheap, at least for now. Some fear that shortages in indium will bring a halt to nanosolar's cheap printing days. But if that fate can be avoided, Nanosolar, and other thin film manufacturers are already pretty far down the path to grid parity. Though they make some efficiency sacrifices when compared to crystalline silicon, they are so much cheaper to produce that they might soon even beat coal in cost per watt.

The Case for Extreme Heat
While the first two options provide the most efficient path to solar electricity, but converting photons directly into electrons, a less efficient, though simpler, option might turn out to be the real coal-killer.

Simply by focusing hundreds or even thousands of mirrors onto a single point, several startups are hoping to create the kind of heat necessary to run a coal fired power plant...but without the coal. The heat would boil water which would then be used to turn turbines. The advantage of such a system is that there are already lots of steam turbines being produced for traditional power plants, and the rest of the technology just involves shiny objects and concrete.

One problem does present itself, however, when you start to try and make these things too hot. The material holding the boiler has to be able to withstand the extreme heat that these installations can produce. That kind of material, that won't melt or degrade under such extreme heat, can be quite expensive.

Nonetheless, Google-funded startup, eSolar, is saying that by modularizing the construction of these "concentrating solar thermal" power plants, they could be cheaper than coal today.

If Not Today...Then Tomorrow
As coal and gas have remained extremely cheap over the last fifty years, there's been very little pressure to innovate and move beyond that technology. But now, with natural gas prices increasing along with concerns about global warming, we're finally ready to innovate. And expansions in materials and nanotechnology are making the change even more interesting.

It's no longer a question in my mind of if we can get solar cheaper than coal, it's simply when, and whether another renewable energy, like geothermal or wind, will beat solar to the punch.

EcoGeek - Technology for the Environment

Fallen Empire: Legions Beta Now Open

Fallen Empire: Legions

, the ad-supported, browser-based, spiritual successor to the revered Tribes first-person shooter series, has just entered open beta over at creator GarageGames' InstantAction.com.

Features are currently scant -- only two classes, two maps and the deathmatch and capture the flag mode are available -- but presumably the game's list of accouterments will grow over time.

If you're interested in signing up for the beta, head over to InstantAction.com and register for an account. The whole process is free of charge, and it also gives you access to GarageGames' other titles (for instance, the PC version of Xbox Live darling Marble Blast Ultra).

Image courtesy GarageGames

Instant Action [Instant Action]

Fallen Empire: Legions Beta Now Open | Game | Life from Wired.com

Phoenix Lander Prepares to Taste Martian Dirt

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is gearing up to perform its first taste test of the red planet's arctic dirt.

Scientists plan to use the spacecraft's wet chemistry lab, part of Phoenix's suite of tools called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, to test Mars' dirt for salts, acidity, minerals and conductivity.

In preparation for the experiment Phoenix melted some ice it brought from earth into liquid water.

"We are good to go," said lead MECA scientist Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We made liquid water on Mars for the first time for our test."

Over the next few days, mission scientists plan to tell the probe to dissolve samples of Mars' dirt in water inside beakers the size of teacups. After soaking and stirring, Phoenix will measure various characteristics of the solution to learn about the properties of the dirt.

Phoenix carries four beakers, each of which can be used only once, to study Martian dirt. The inside of each beaker is coated with 26 sensors and is designed as a sort of "electronic tongue" to taste red planet material, NASA officials have said.

"The water in the wet-chemistry cell is frozen, and before we do an experiment we have to make sure that it's totally thawed," Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, wet chemistry laboratory lead, said. "It's like pouring a known amount of water from a beaker when you're doing a chemistry experiment — you have to use all the water for your experiment to work."

Launched in August 2007, Phoenix landed in the northern polar regions of Mars on May 25 to begin what is now a planned four-month mission to hunt for buried water ice and determine if the area could have once been habitable for primitive life. The probe carries cameras, a scoop-tipped robotic arm, weather station and ovens in addition to its wet chemistry lab.

Last week, mission scientists announced that Phoenix's cameras caught a glimpse of water ice evaporating over a series of days in a trench carved by the probe's robotic arm.

Phoenix is slated to spend today analyzing a scoop of Martian dirt from a set of trenches, which scientists have christened "Snow White," under its optical microscope.

SPACE.com -- Phoenix Lander Prepares to Taste Martian Dirt

Massive Offshore Wind Park to Power Delaware Homes by 2012

In the quest to make wind power less obtrusive, some companies are deploying their products in creative new ways.

The push for wind power is gaining almost as much momentum as the solar power push.  The key challenge to wind power is location.  While some efforts, such as billionaire T. Boone Picken's new wind farm merely look to build on sparsely populated areas, others have looked to place mini windmills on buildings or elsewhere.

Now one Delaware utility company is fostering a bold new idea to solve wind power location complaints for sea-bordering states -- put the turbines off shore.  On Monday, Delmarva Power, a major Delaware utility, announced that it was entering into a contract with Bluewater Wind to produce the nation's first offshore wind farm.

According to Bluewater spokesman Jim Lanard, once installed there will be 150 turbines in total.  Cumulatively they will provide 16 percent of the utility's power output.  The turbines will be securely anchored dozens of miles off Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

However, Bluewater isn't stopping there.  Delmarva will only use approximately half the projected generating capacity of the farm.  The remainder of the new wind farm's juice will be sold off to other utilities. 

The price tag on this incredible adventure is a cool $1.6B USD.

Construction will begin immediately pending regulatory inspection and approval.  This may become a lengthy process, though.  Bluewater is hoping to push it through as quickly as possible, as it hopes to have the plant operational within four years.

Bluewater has a 25-year contract with Delmarva, which is slated to begin in 2012.  Says Lanard, "[With the wind farm's power] Delmarva Power will be able to light about 50,000 homes a year, every year."

The benefits will be passed on to the consumer, says Lanard, who will be protected against instability in energy costs.  The wind power is sold at a locked in rate per kilowatt hour.

Bluewater brings to the table experience from its successful establishment of an offshore plant in Denmark.  At the Delaware plant, the turbines will rest in 75-feet deep water, and will rise 250 feet above the water line.  Hurricanes should be no problem for them as they are engineered to withstand the brunt of a hurricane.  Each turbine has three blades, 150 feet long a piece.

Only on extremely clear days will the park be visible from shore.  Vacationers travelling to Rehoboth Beach in the summer will rarely see the park.  Says Lanard, "If they can see them at all, the turbine blades would cover about the size of your thumbnail, and the poles would be about the width of a toothpick."

With a lot of excitement floating around this idea, it would not be surprising to see other green-centric states like California and Oregon jumping on the offshore wind-farm trend in coming years.  Bluewater also has pending proposals with utilities and government entities in New York, Rhode Island, and New Jersey as well.

DailyTech - Massive Offshore Wind Park to Power Delaware Homes by 2012

Rumor: StarCraft II in December

What would be the perfect Christmas gift for fans of real-time strategy games? How about StarCraft II?

1up.com points out that three retailers -- Best Buy, Circuit City, and Gamestop -- have added a December 3 release date to their listings for the upcoming PC game. If it was only one store, we probably wouldn't think much of it, but for the three to put up the same date at the same time? It's just too suspicious.

It shouldn't take very long to confirm the news, since Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational in Paris happens to be just around the corner, from June 28-29.

Image: Blizzard

Rumor: StarCraft II in December | Game | Life from Wired.com

DICE currently working on 5 Battlefield games

Though gravelly voiced soldiers are always keen to point out the many ways in which war has changed, it certainly hasn't ceased being profitable, least of all in the realm of video games. DICE, developer of EA's popular Battlefield franchise, has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that it currently has five related titles in development. Executive producer for DICE, Ben Cousins, was quite right when he said that's "more than you expect."

With Battlefield: Bad Company out this week and the free-to-play Battlefield: Heroes already impressing industry pundits, we're left speculating about three (maybe more?) additional titles. According to Cousin's comments made at GDC Paris, one will be a traditional game for consoles, while another will be a joint effort with Neowiz, aimed at Korea. As for the third title? We're predicting Battlefield: Field of Battle, a turn-based card game for the iPhone. What say you?

DICE currently working on 5 Battlefield games - Joystiq

Astronomers on Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.

Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.

"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C. 

Since the early 1990s, when the first planets outside of our solar system were detected orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257, astronomers have identified nearly 300 such worlds. However, most of them are gas giants called hot Jupiters that orbit close to their stars because, simply, they are easier to find.

"So far we've found Jupiters and Saturns, and now our technology is becoming good enough to detect planets smaller, more like the size of Uranus and Neptune, and even smaller," said one of the top planet hunters on this world, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.

Marcy, Boss and other scientists are optimistic that within the next five or so years headlines will be splashed with news of a near twin of Earth in another star system.

"What is amazing to me is that for thousands of years humans have gazed at the stars, wondering if there might be another Earth out there somewhere," Boss told SPACE.com. "Now we know enough to say that Earth-like planets are indeed orbiting many of those stars, unseen perhaps, but there nevertheless."

Seeing tiny planets

Two techniques are now standard for spotting other worlds. Most of the planets noted to date have been discovered using the radial velocity method, in which astronomers look for slight wobbles in a star's motion due to the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. This favors detection of very massive planets that are very close to their host stars.

With the transit method, astronomers watch for a dimming of light when a planet passes in front of its host star. Though more haphazard, this approach works when telescopes scan the light from hundreds or thousands of stars at once.

Both methods are limited by their ability to block out the overshadowing light of the host star. For instance, the sun is 100 times larger, 300,000 times more massive and up to 10 billion times brighter than Earth. "Detecting Earth in reflected light is like searching for a firefly six feet from a searchlight that is 2,400 miles distant," writes a panel of astronomers recently in their final report of the Exoplanet Task Force.

With upgrades in spectrometers and digital cameras attached to telescopes, astronomers' eyes have become more sensitive to relatively tiny stellar wobbles (measured by changes in certain wavelengths of light) and dips in starlight from ever smaller planets.

The discovery of super-Earths announced last week reflects this technological leap.

"I think why astronomers are really excited [about the super-Earth discovery] is it just shows that technology has really matured and so they're able to see these very subtle wobbles due to these low-mass planets," said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. "Those were fairly massive stars. If they were able to get the same precision on a lower-mass star, they would be able to look at even lower-mass planets and so those really would be analogs of the Earth."

The fast track

To eek out even more sensitivity from current technologies, Charbonneau suggests astronomers look for worlds around small stars.

He and other astronomers are in fact probing the universe for transiting planets orbiting M dwarfs, or red dwarfs, which are about 50 percent dimmer than the sun and much less massive. Red dwarfs are also considered the most common star type in the universe.

"I think the real opportunity there is to study low-mass stars, and that's because we're looking for very small planets," Charbonneau said. "The difficulty is the ratio between the planet's mass and the star's mass or the planet's size and the star's size depending on how you want to find it."

The low mass and luminosity means any changes to the star due to an Earth-mass planet are much more likely to be detected.

"A late M star is about 10 times smaller than the sun," said Penn State's James Kasting, who studies planetary atmospheres and the habitable zones of exoplanets. "So Earth going in front of an M star would give a 1 percent signal. That's like Jupiter going in front of the sun." Kasting added, "We could conceivably find an Earth analog planet by this method within the next five or ten years."

Other teams are gearing up to look for Earth-like worlds orbiting massive stars like the sun. NASA's Kepler observatory is scheduled for launch in February 2009, after which the high-powered telescope will monitor about 100,000 stars in the Milky Way looking for periodic dimming of starlight due to a planet's transit in front of the star.

The French COROT mission is already up in space working in a similar fashion.

Good hunting

The ultimate goal of planet-hunting projects is to find Earth twins.

"We are looking for twins of the Earth, analogs that walk and talk and smell like our own Earth," Marcy said during a telephone interview. He is currently looking for super-Earths using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Such a twin would be rocky, with a similar chemical composition to Earth, and would orbit within the habitable zone of its star.

The habitable zone defines the distance at which a planet must orbit from its star for liquid water to exist on its surface — not too hot like Venus, not too cold like Neptune or Pluto.

Astronomers have found planets orbiting pretty close to the habitable zone, but none so far within it.

"I suspect there are Earth-like planets with lakes and rivers and waterfalls and deep glacial gorges and that are spectacularly beautiful," Marcy said.

Life beyond Earth

Finding a planet in the habitable zone is the first step toward finding alien life.

"When we say it's a habitable world, all we're doing is saying it potentially could hold life," Boss said. "To go beyond that to say, 'Here's a habitable world; is it inhabited,' then you need to start studying the atmosphere of the planet."

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch in 2013, could do just that.

"There might be a signal in the atmosphere that could be a smoking gun and would suggest that plate tectonics is there," said earth and planetary scientist Diana Valencia of Harvard University.

Her computer models have shown that plate tectonics, the forces that move continents and lift gigantic mountain ranges, are key to life on Earth as we know it, and possibly to life on other worlds. That's because as the rocky plates that form the planet's outer shell move about, they also recycle carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas keeps our planet's temperature balmy, but not too hot. And the telltale signal would be certain levels of carbon dioxide, suggesting that just as on Earth, this other world relies on plate tectonics to cycle carbon.

But first things first. "There's no doubt that other Earths exist, simply due to the sheer vast numbers of other stars and galaxies in our universe," Marcy said. "There's a deeper question — how common are Earth-like planets? Are Earth-like planets a dime a dozen, or are they quite rare, quirky precious planets that are one in a thousand or one in a million?"

SPACE.com -- Astronomers on Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

NBC Olympics on the Go download service is Vista only

NBC announced two significant technology partnerships with Microsoft and Wavexpress today to provide 2008 Olympics coverage over the web. The new initiatives embody a natural evolution for Olympics coverage considering the times—but they're available only to users of Vista or Silverlight.

Powered by Wavexpress' TVTonic Internet video service and client, NBC Olympics on the Go will allow owners of Media-Center-capable Windows Vista PCs (that's Home Premium and Ultimate) to download "up-to-HD" coverage on a sport-by-sport basis. Users can chose from a number of channels in Wavexpress' TVTonic client that NBC's coverage of the Beijing Games will be categorized into, and the NBC Olympics on the Go client will be able to access event coverage roughly 12 hours after an event ends. Ars Technica confirmed with Wavexpress that users will not be able to keep downloaded coverage indefinitely, though videos will remain playable at least for the duration of the games.

In addition to going Vista-only for this downloadable Olympics coverage, NBC will be cross-promoting the MSN brand on NBCOlympics.com and featuring Olympics coverage prominently on MSN.com. As Bill Gates announced at CES back in January, all video at the NBC Olympics site requires Silverlight, Microsoft's rich web application and video streaming technology that competes with Adobe's market-dominant Flash. Microsoft's been pushing Silverlight pretty hard lately, and if a lot of consumers don't have a reason to install it yet, the Beijing Games in August should be a good a reason as any.

"Over the past 20 years, we have continually expanded our coverage of the Olympics to new platforms as they have become available, and the Beijing Games will mark another milestone," said Gary Zenkel, President, NBC Olympics, in a press release. "By teaming up with MSN and Microsoft, we can give both the core fan and casual consumer of the Olympic Games an amazing online experience, combining high-quality video with the storytelling and analysis that we're known for. We chose to partner with MSN and Microsoft," Zenkel continues, "because technologies such as Silverlight help us deliver the kind of next-generation online viewing experience that will change the way the Olympics is experienced for millions of fans in 2008."

Providing summer Olympics coverage in a downloadable format like this is a natural evolution for NBC. For the 2004 Olympics, all the buzz was about the sheer amount of coverage NBC would be broadcasting (over 1,200 hours in total), as well as the introduction of over 300 hours of HD coverage from NBC and its affiliates. With NBC Olympics on the Go, consumers will have a convenient new option for bringing Olympics video footage with them, though the coverage will be sandboxed to PCs—and then just the ones running compatible versions of Vista.

As far as portable media players are concerned, "We are not addressing portable players with this service," Wavexpress told Ars Technica. "NBC has other distribution outlets for other platforms and types of experiences." NBC has yet to make any announcements for those hoping to bring 2008 Olympics footage in something more portable like an iPod, Zune, or PlaysForSure-compatible device.

NBC Olympics on the Go download service is Vista only

Call of Duty: World at War co-op multiplayer detailed

There are times when going at it alone just isn't enough, and you want a buddy by your side to help make it through to the day, not to mention help soak up enemy bullets. For this, Activision has revealed how co-op multiplayer will be handled in Call of Duty: World at War, in which players will lace up in the military boots of either U.S. Marines or Russian soldiers in both the South Pacific and European theaters of war.

Specifically, the Treyarch-developed shooter will include four-player online co-op for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, while the console versions will also allow soldiers to pair up offline for local split-screen gameplay, with "a unique co-op mode for two players" reserved for soldiers waggling on the Wii. However, the game's online focus won't end with simply gunning down enemy soldiers and offering moral support to buddies trying to make it through the game's "darker themes." Activision notes that Call of Duty: World at War will shell out persistent experience points to players participating in both competitive and cooperative online battles, as well as a difficulty curve that will scale depending on "a player's experience rank and rank of the player's friends."

Call of Duty: World at War co-op multiplayer detailed - Joystiq

Phoenix Lander Finds Mars Ice

 

Scientists believe NASA's Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission's principal investigator said Thursday.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement.

"These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice," Smith said. "There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

Phoenix Mars is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable. The probe is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples, and scientists hope it will find frozen water.

However, an initial soil sample heated in a science instrument failed to yield evidence of water.

The bright material was seen in the bottom of a trench dubbed "Dodo-Goldilocks" that Phoenix enlarged on June 15. Several of the bright crumbs were gone when the spacecraft looked into the trench again early Thursday, NASA said.

Phoenix's arm, meanwhile, encountered a hard surface while digging another trench Thursday and scientists were hopeful of uncovering an icy layer, the space agency said. That trench is called "Snow White 2."

The arm went into a "holding position" after three attempts to dig further, which is expected when it the reaches a hard surface, NASA said.

Scientists have been using names from fairy tales and mythology to designate geologic features around Phoenix and the trenches it has been digging.

In 2002, the orbiting Mars Odyssey detected hints of a vast store of ice below the surface of Mars' polar regions. The arctic terrain where Phoenix touched down has polygon shapes in the ground similar to those found in Earth's permafrost regions. The patterns on Earth are caused by seasonal expansion and shrinking of underground ice.

Engineers also have prepared a software patch to send up to Phoenix to fix a problem that surfaced Tuesday in the use of its flash memory. NASA said that because Phoenix generated a large amount of duplicative file-maintenance data that day, the mission team has been avoiding storing science data in the flash memory and is instead transmitting it to Earth at the end of each day.

"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole on May 25. The $420 million mission is planned to last 90 days.

Phoenix Lander Finds Mars Ice: Discovery News : Discovery Channel

GE Says Renewable Tax Credits Pay for Themselves

For the last two years, the renewable energy sector has been fighting to renew the "investment tax credit (ITC)." This little bit of legislation lets companies write-off a portion of money spent on building renewable energy projects. It's been fairly successful, spurring growth in solar and wind in America.

But now a huge number of renewable energy projects are on hold, because no one knows whether these tax credits are going to be extended. Bills containing the ITC have gone through the House and Senate almost a dozen times in the last few years and every time it's been denied. SunPower has said that it might leave the American market completely if the ITC is not renewed.

Almost everyone supports the ITC, of course, but no one can figure out how, in our ailing economy, to pay for it. Democrats tried to take subsidies away from oil and gas companies, but the Bush administration threatened to veto any such legislation. And so we're at a standstill, with gigawatts of new power generation just waiting on the news.

General Electric has entered the game, with their political savvy, and has decided that the ITC, in fact, pays for itself. It's no surprise that GE wants this passed. They're the US's largest producer of wind turbines, and they've got some exciting solar technology as well. They say that the taxable revenues generated by these projects, once they go online, more than offset the ITC. And since, without the ITC, they won't be built, they are in fact revenue positive for the treasury.

A financial stickler might note that the revenues would be generated by coal power plants that would be built (without subsidies) in place of the renewable plants. And that would be significantly more revenue positive than renewable energy. But, really, is that the road we want to stay on?

Hopefully, GE's foray into this mess will mark a change in the wind, and we won't have to deal with a lapse in the only big steps the U.S. government has yet made to promote renewable energy.

EcoGeek - Technology for the Environment

Rumor: MadCatz Rock Band controllers arriving soon

January 2008 was the last time we heard anything about Mad Catz's Rock Band controllers. This week, Amazon reportedly posted listings for the third-party controllers, and Rock Band Mods has the reported product descriptions, dates and prices, including:

• Wired bass guitar with a split strum bar (for two-finger playing) for $70. Xbox 360 version coming June 22, PlayStation 3 on July 15, Wii on August 1. A wireless version for Xbox 360 was listed for September 15. Modeled after Fender P-Bass.
• Wired microphone with built-in d-pad and face buttons for $60. Reportedly already out for Xbox 360, coming July 15 for PS3.
• Wired guitar modeled after Fender Telecaster for $80. From the picture, it looks like it also has the split strum bar. Listed only for Xbox 360, release date not shown.
• Portable drum kit with small quiet pads and foam tip drumsticks. Coming July 15 for Xbox 360 and August 15 for PS3 and Wii for $50.
• Premium drum kit based on "authentic electronic drum kit" with added hi-hat and foot pedal, a crash cymbal and fully adjustable toms. Due out August 1 for Xbox 360 and PS3, August 15 for Wii. $150.

All the listings have since been pulled (including the "already available" Xbox 360 mic). While we're content with our current instruments, if MadCatz somehow makes a drum set compatible with Rock Band and the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour, we'll be first to pre-order.

Rumor: MadCatz Rock Band controllers arriving soon - Joystiq