Planets hurtling near the speed of light? It's possible, study says.

Scientists want to know if planets can form near the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy. If so, the black hole could fling them out into space at enormous speeds that, from our vantage point, could appear to approach the speed of light.?

Deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole lurks, conditions are so chaotic that planets ? and perhaps life ? can't form: Or can they?

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A small team of astronomers suggests one way to answer the question, at least as it relates to planets: Monitor the Milky Way's rejects ? stars that the galaxy's central black hole has kicked toward intergalactic space ? for signs of planets.

Such planets ? orbiting a star or traveling alone ? so far are hypothetical. The center of the galaxy is so shrouded in dust that planet-hunting as it's practiced in our galactic neighborhood is futile.

But individual ejected stars, dubbed hypervelocity stars because they are ejected at such great speeds, are anything but hypothetical. The first stellar speedster was reported to be leaving the galaxy in 2005. Since then, the total has grown to at least 16 hypervelocity stars reported.

Hunting for more in the galaxy's halo, where they are most obvious, then monitoring them for the signature of a planet's transit across the star's face, would help settle the question of whether the center of the galaxy is hospitable for planet formation, explains Avi Loeb, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

He is one of the co-authors of a paper set for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain that looks at the ejection mechanism and how one might go about the hunt.

With planet-hunting efforts such as NASA's Kepler mission finding hundreds of confirmed planets, with at least 2,000 candidates waiting in the wings for confirmation, the notion that stars at the galactic center also host planets would seem reasonable.

But several factors could weigh against planet-making there, Dr. Loeb explains.

The broader region around the black hole is a hotbed of star formation. Stars are roughly a million times more densely packed there than the stars in the sun's neighborhood. At the galactic center, the stars that form generally are more massive than the sun, burn hotter, and flit about the galactic center at speeds of more than 2 million miles an hour, compared with roughly half a million miles an hour for the sun.

Under those cramped, turbulent conditions, it would be hard for a star's disk of dust and gas to hang together long enough to allow planets form.

Still some observations hint that planets might form close to the Milky Way's center.

For instance, researchers have noted intriguing flare-like events as material gets heated, compressed, then swallowed via the black hole's extraordinary gravitational tug. Evidence suggests that the material might not be a star but?asteroids ? planetary building blocks.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/ugPofbYxtVg/Planets-hurtling-near-the-speed-of-light-It-s-possible-study-says

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Get the feng shui in your new home right

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Originating in China many thousands of years ago, feng shui is a sophisticated art with some religious influences. However, despite these minor religious influences it still predominantly uses physics and architecture to bring about prosperity and a better sense of well being. The phrase ?feng shui? translates into wind and water, which the Chinese believe are associated with good luck. Also, the art involves positioning the five elements (though really there are technically more than five) wind, water, fire, earth and metal so that the energies within a structure come to balance.

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Essentially, feng shui is an understanding of nature and the earth being alive; everything has its own energy and balancing them all efficiently means you can live a healthy and balanced life.

Each of the five elements has a colour that is associated with them and they each interact with one another in different ways, either positively or negatively. For the basics of feng shui all that is needed is a compass and an octagonal grid containing the relevant symbols for each of the elements.

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To create a good energy in your home you must plot your ?ba gua? and balance the energies. Once you have balanced the energies you can then see what sections of your home are related to specific areas of your life. Feng shui provides nine different areas of your life including your career, relationships, family and ancestors, wealth, supportive friends, health, travel, creativity, and finally, your aspirations.

A useful tip for when you?re starting out is to free your home of clutter, as it confuses the positive energies leading to a chaotic life. Also, opening a window in your home at least once a day allows fresh chi to come in.

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Each of the elements represents different bearings and aspects of your life. Wood represents east or southeast, and the colours that represent wood are browns and greens, so therefore these colours would be used to bring out health, vitality and growth in the correct areas of your house. Metal represents clarity and precision, so by decorating the west and northwest of your home in white or grey you will bring out such qualities.

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Water represents the north, east, and southeast areas of your home, its colour is blue or black and it is associated with abundance. Generally, water is used to harness other positive energy in the house; however it must be correctly placed in an effective way. Fire represents passion and high energy, use reds, oranges, and yellows in the south, northeast or southwest areas of your home. Finally, beige and other earthy or sandy colours are used to represent earth ? use these colours in the northwest and southeast areas of your home and they will promote stability and protection.

Source: http://lifestyle.ezinemark.com/get-the-feng-shui-in-your-new-home-right-7d350f15fb72.html

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Windows Phone?struggles to break catch-22 as app makers hold off

(Reuters) - Apps, apps, apps! That is the main challenge that Microsoft and Nokia, who are?trying to claw back market share from Apple Inc's iPhone and Google's Android in the red hot smartphone market, face now.

And so far the going does not look too good for the challengers and their warhorse Windows Phone platform.

Apps, short for applications, are small pieces of software that do useful or fun things on cellphones. The huge number and variety of apps in Apple and Google? stores?are a?key factor that has helped the companies emerge as dominant players in the lucrative smartphone market.

On Monday, Microsoft and Nokia said they would invest a total of 18 million euros ($23.9 million) into a new mobile application development program, AppCampus, at Helsinki's Aalto University during the next three years.

The move underscores the seriousness with which the two companies view the problem.

Most popular global apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Evernote?are available on the Windows Phone platform, but makers of many niche or local apps have shied away.

The number of apps available in the Windows Phone Marketplace now exceeds 65,000, surpassing those at another rival Research in Motion's?BlackBerry store. But that is still far short of?around?half a million apps available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to app researcher Distimo.

Worse still, only 37 percent of developers are keen to make apps for Windows Phone,?showed?the latest IDC/Appcelerator survey. That number, slightly down from the previous survey, compared with the 89 percent interested in iPhone and 79 percent in Android phones.

"Mobile developers' interest for the Windows platform has been for the least very lukewarm over the last two years, with no sign of improvement," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said.

Microsoft launched its latest Windows?Phone?7.5 operating system, Mango, last year to good reviews. And Nokia, struggling to reclaim smartphone handset marketshare from nimbler rivals such as Apple and Samsung Electronics, launched its Lumia line of phones running on Mango late last year.

Lumia phones look sleek and spiffy, with live, tiled icons that automatically update news, weather, pictures and social feeds. But the fewer number of apps and their quality are hobbling the phones' appeal to customers.

Finn Christian Lindholm, a Helsinki-based partner at digital design agency Fjord, believes the latest Windows Phones are interesting enough to challenge the iPhone.

The key to both companies' strategy to gain in the smartphone market would be how they break out of the vicious cycle -- the low sales of the Windows phones holding back app makers, and consumers shunning the phones for lack of the apps they are accustomed to.

"They need to break the Catch-22 before there is enough volume and natural pull," Lindholm said.

SHRINKING MARKETSHARE

Monday's announcement by Microsoft and Nokia is an attempt to find new solutions?to the problem, in addition to paying third-party developers for the apps.

They hope the program, which will provide support, coaching and also funding for app makers, will boost the number of?unique and outstanding?apps on Windows Phone.

It's an uphill road for a new platform.?Microsoft's share of the smartphone market fell to just 2 percent last quarter, from 3 percent a year ago and 13 percent four years earlier, according to Strategy Analytics.

Last month, Windows Phone lost also its highly respected?chief of developer relations, Brandon Watson, who left for?Amazon.com Inc, which is taking on established players in the mobile devices market with its Kindle e-readers.

Apart from Nokia, which has a lot riding on the platform, Microsoft has little support from other handset makers, such as Samsung, which are clearly focused on their Android offerings.

That is not surprising as the other handset makers are struggling to sell their Windows Phone models. They, unlike Nokia, can only dream of payments from Microsoft?for promoting and supporting its software. Last quarter,?Microsoft paid?$250 million?to Nokia on this account.

NO TALKING TOM CAT

On Friday, Rovio, the maker of the wildly popular Angry Birds game, created a scare when media reports said the latest version of the game -- Angry Birds Space -- will skip the Windows platform.

Rovio Chief Executive Mikael Hed later told Reuters that the company is working toward getting the game to Windows Phone but did not specify when it will be available.

Showing how difficult a task that Microsoft and Nokia face, many small app developers, such as Outfit7 -- maker of the popular Talking Tom Cat app -- and Joby -- which makes a camera app -- said they have no plans to be on Windows Phone either.

Pioneers in augmented reality -- a technology that combines the digital and real worlds,?and is one of the hottest areas of wireless -- are also holding back.

"We have enough work in keeping Android and iPhone apps up to date, as well as in enhancing our augmented reality capabilities on them," said Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald, co-founder of Dutch-based augmented reality firm Layar.

Jeff Janer, co-founder and CEO of Springpad, which makes the namesake app that allows users to store, organize and share content, raised the main concern of the app makers: Will the hard work to move to a new platform pay off?

"When considering a new platform, we look to balance cost of development and support against potential return in terms of market opportunity and the ability to cost-effectively reach the market," said Janer, who currently has no plans to develop an app for Windows Phone.

For many small developers, it is a question of cost and how fast they can recoup the investment.

It would probably take six man-months to build an app for Windows phone and if that was contract work it would be $60,000 or more, said Adam Saltsman, co-founder of Semi Secret Software, which makes the Wurdle word game.

The small customer base for Windows Phone is forcing developers to charge more for the apps, turning off customers further. Most apps that are available for 99 cents on Google Play cost $2.99 on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Andreas Bernstrom, CEO of Rebtel,?one of the?most popular Internet-based calling applications on iPhone and Android, said the company has Windows Phone on its development roadmap for later this year but has not yet started work.

"I don't know what the market will be like in six months, maybe we need to focus on tablets or something else," he said.

Jeffrey Glueck, chief executive of?Skyfire Labs Inc, which?makes the eponymous mobile Web browser, said?the main driver for developing on Windows Phone will be carrier requests. "So far, we're only getting requests around Android and iPhone."

That is one more challenge for Microsoft and Nokia.

($1 = 0.7540 euros)

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki in Helsinki and Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Unnikrishnan Nair)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/windows-phone-struggles-break-catch-22-app-makers-061213960.html

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Divers look for Ark. boy, 3, missing in Scout camp

Caleb Linn is seen in this undated photo provided by the Arkansas State Police. Rescue crews are searching for the 3-year-old boy who went missing Saturday, March 24, 2012 from a Boy Scout camp in northeastern Arkansas. (AP Photo/Arkansas State Police)

Caleb Linn is seen in this undated photo provided by the Arkansas State Police. Rescue crews are searching for the 3-year-old boy who went missing Saturday, March 24, 2012 from a Boy Scout camp in northeastern Arkansas. (AP Photo/Arkansas State Police)

HARDY, Ark. (AP) ? Police and volunteers were searching in and along a northeastern Arkansas river on Monday for a 3-year-old boy who went missing from a Boy Scout camp over the weekend.

Caleb Linn, whose fourth birthday is next month, was among 11 children working on a cleanup project Saturday at a bridge in the Kia Kima Boy Scout Camp in Fulton County, about 120 miles northeast of Little Rock.

The children were not affiliated with the Boy Scouts but were staying at the main campsite about half a mile from the bridge. When five children left to return to their cabins before noon, Caleb asked if he could try to catch up with them, and he hasn't been seen since, state police said.

Dive teams were searching the Spring River for a second day on Monday, and police and volunteers were combing through the surrounding wilderness.

Sheriff Buck Foley said crews were clearing a log jam in the river Monday near where Caleb was last seen.

"He was on the concrete slab of the bridge at the last place they saw him," Foley said.

Authorities also set a net downstream that could catch the boy's body if he did fall into the river, but it's possible the body could have passed that point before the net was put up, said Major Todd Smith, the assistant chief of enforcement for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

"It's like looking for a needle in the haystack," Smith said. "There's no way to search the whole river."

Smith said the river is clear but moving swiftly, with water temperatures in the lower 60s.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-03-26-Missing%20Boy-Arkansas/id-e321823479dc45bc909aa127c20b38cf

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NASA's Kepler Discovers 11 Systems Hosting 26 Planets

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form."

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/N73_zJrCxpM/nasas-kepler-discovers-11-systems-hosting-26-planets

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Ahmadinejad urges unity against 'aggression'

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ahmadinejad-urges-unity-against-aggression-165423205.html

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Astronomers put forward new theory on size of black holes

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Astronomers have put forward a new theory about why black holes become so hugely massive ? claiming some of them have no 'table manners', and tip their 'food' directly into their mouths, eating more than one course simultaneously.

Researchers from the UK and Australia investigated how some black holes grow so fast that they are billions of times heavier than the sun.

The team from the University of Leicester (UK) and Monash University in Australia sought to establish how black holes got so big so fast. Their research is due to published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The research was funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Professor Andrew King from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, said: "Almost every galaxy has an enormously massive black hole in its centre. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has one about four million times heavier than the sun. But some galaxies have black holes a thousand times heavier still. We know they grew very quickly after the Big Bang.''

"These hugely massive black holes were already full--grown when the universe was very young, less than a tenth of its present age."

Black holes grow by sucking in gas. This forms a disc around the hole and spirals in, but usually so slowly that the holes could not have grown to these huge masses in the entire age of the universe. `We needed a faster mechanism,' says Chris Nixon, also at Leicester, "so we wondered what would happen if gas came in from different directions."

Nixon, King and their colleague Daniel Price in Australia made a computer simulation of two gas discs orbiting a black hole at different angles. After a short time the discs spread and collide, and large amounts of gas fall into the hole. According to their calculations black holes can grow 1,000 times faster when this happens.

"If two guys ride motorbikes on a Wall of Death and they collide, they lose the centrifugal force holding them to the walls and fall," says King. The same thing happens to the gas in these discs, and it falls in towards the hole.

This may explain how these black holes got so big so fast. "We don't know exactly how gas flows inside galaxies in the early universe," said King, "but I think it is very promising that if the flows are chaotic it is very easy for the black hole to feed."

The two biggest black holes ever discovered are each about ten billion times bigger than the Sun.

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University of Leicester: http://www.leicester.ac.uk

Thanks to University of Leicester for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/118693/Astronomers_put_forward_new_theory_on_size_of_black_holes

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