Suicidal planet defies the astronomy rulebook

Astronomers are hoping a recently discovered planet is on a rare suicidal orbit around its parent star. If it isn’t, the entire basis on which they make calculations about orbits may have to be rewritten.

WASP-18b is around 325 light years away from Earth: though that’s 1,885 trillion miles, it effectively makes it a close neighbor in the context of space as a whole. It takes its name from from the Wide Angle Search for Planets project which discovered it; the project’s cameras are pictured right.

The planet is only 1.9 million miles from its star, WASP-18, less than a twentieth of the distance between our Sun and its closest planet, Mercury. WASP-18b orbits in the equivalent of 22.5 hours (Earth time), quicker than the time it takes the planet to spin round. That means that by all astronomic logic, it should be moving closer and closer to its parent star.

However, given that WASP-18b being so close to the star means it must be around 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and taking into account that it is ten times the size of our solar system’s largest planet (Jupiter), its lifespan should only have been about a million years before being burned up. As WASP-18 is around a billion years old, and planets usually form around the same time as parent stars, something is amiss.

Douglas Hamilton, an astronomer who wrote a commentary on the report into the planet, told the LA Times that even the main possible explanations have flaws. It could be that WASP-18 has much less energy than assumed, causing less orbital drag; however, that would mean astronomers had overestimated the energy by a factor of a thousand, raising serious questions about standard assumptions.

It may also be that the planet has only recently been knocked into its current position, though in the big picture that would make it an amazing coincidence that astronomers spotted it before it met its doom.

According to Hamilton, that may leave one other explanation: “Perhaps we really are missing some key bit of physics.”



Easily Retrieve your License Keys With LicenseCrawler

LicenseCrawler is a free, portable tool to retrieve license keys and serial numbers from the depths of your hard drive. And while most of us keep our precious offline installation documentation in a “safe place,” so that we can “always find it,” having all these CD-keys available in a file is very convenient. Oh sure, you could crawl your registry manually to extract all the info yourself, but why bother when LicenseCrawler is there to do it for you?

Do you know of any other similar tools? Let’s hear about them in the comments!

[LicenseCrawler (Windows only)| Via MUO]

Google uses map app customers as traffic reporters

No longer is Google Maps merely a tool for your cellphone. Now your cellphone is a tool for Google Maps.

The firm says it now has enough users that it can give a good picture of traffic conditions by tracking the movements of their cellphones. If a large number of cellphones are in the same area and moving at a slow pace, that’s a pretty good indication there’s a traffic jam. (Similar technology is already used by some traffic data firms through devices fitted to cars.)

The system only tracks movements once a user specifically notes they are on a car journey, meaning it won’t get confused by people parked at home, or pedestrians who’ve gathered in a crowd for an event.

Because of the added data, Google is now expanding its live traffic maps from major highways to key arterial routes such as state highways and major inner-city roads.

Clearly there will be some privacy concerns, so Google has made it possible to opt out of the program (see http://google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81875 for details.) However, it’s at a price: those who don’t agree to their data being gathered won’t be able to use the My Location feature which is pretty much key to using the maps for driving. Where Google does gather data, it will permanently delete any record of user’s start and end locations once their journey is complete.

The mapping system is automatically turned on for users of the Palm Pre and the MyTouch 3G phones, while users of other phones can install it. However, the firm isn’t collecting data from people using the system on iPhones, likely thanks to restrictions on companies other than Apple collecting GPS data from the handsets.

Google notes in its blog that people stuck in traffic might not only want to warn friends of jams, but to “tell your city government that they might want to change the timing of that traffic light at the highway on-ramp.” It doesn’t say if there are any plans to share the traffic data with local authorities in such situations, though it would be a great PR move to do so.



Rethinking How People Run Businesses

In the following video, career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

The Lazy Geek Way of Rocking your Baby to Sleep

Using Ubuntu Linux and Open Source DVR MythTV, YouTube user macjonesnz scripted his CD-ROM tray to open and close at regular intervals. He then tied a string from the tray to his baby’s car seat, making it the perfect lazy geek way of putting a newborn to sleep. Brilliant or pathetic? I’ll let you guys decide.

[Via Neatorama]

Visual Effects: 100 Years of Inspiration

This 5-minute clip, (made as an educational video for use as an introduction to classroom lecture), shows the history 100 years of visual effects as seen in some of the most notable movies of the past century. Can you identify them all?

DJing 2.0 With Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc.

Yesterday’s DJs used scratch tables to perform. Today’s are using digital media consoles. Here’s a brief view into what DJing may soon become.

I only have one thing to say after watching this: “Holy crap, this this awesome!”

The Net’s Deadliest Celebrities

Jessica Biel

Apparently Jessica Biel could kill your computer. According to McAfee’s annual report on the riskiest celebs to search for, the 27-year-old actress’ name poses the biggest threat when it comes to viruses, spyware, and other online threats popping up in search results. Search terms like “Jessica Biel photos” and “Jessica Biel screensavers” have a 1 in 5 chance of landing you somewhere you don’t want to be. (Though on the other hand, you also have a 4 in 5 chance of landing on somewhere you do want to be, like naked photos from Powder Blue.)

Biel ousted Brad Pitt from the top position from last year; I wonder if this indicates a shifting demographic for spammers? Pitt is now at #10, and the rest rounding out that list…

  1. Jessica Biel
  2. Beyonce
  3. Jennifer Anniston
  4. Tom Brady
  5. Jessica Simpson
  6. Gisele Bundchen
  7. Miley Cyrus
  8. Megan Fox AND Angelina Jolie (I assume this is a tie rather than representing a dual search term, though I can see that, too…)
  9. Ashely Tisdale
  10. Brad Pitt

McAfee also noted that the Obamas are only in the bottom third of this year’s results.

Hmmmm.  I suppose now I have to go do a search for “Jessica Biel photos” to find one to accompany this post.  Batten down the hatches!

[Picture Source: Flickr (CC)]

Madden NFL 10 becomes the perfect rainy day game

Electronic Arts has found a creative way to make its latest incarnation of the Madden NFL series even more realistic: live weather updates.

Thanks to a hook-up with the Weather Channel, players who have their consoles connected to the internet will have the option to play under the conditions which are currently happening in the real world in the chosen stadium.

Perhaps more usefully, the game also draws on three years of meteorological data so that play during a season mode will better reflect the likelihood of particular conditions at a venue given the fictional point in the season. Visit Green Bay during the play-offs and you’ve got a fair chance of snow, while wind is more of a major factor at Soldier Field, to the detriment of field goal kickers.

Some of the effects are purely visual, with more mud on player uniforms when playing on grass in rain, and there are even psychological effects with snowy games given a blue tint to give the sense of coldness. But gameplay itself is also affected: tropical storms will make fumbles more likely as players slip, while extreme heat will see players tire more quickly.

EA has also included the Weather Channel hook-up in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010. In that case it’s arguably more of a novelty feature as the game allows play during extreme wind and rain conditions during which play would not be possible in the real world. (No word yet on whether tour mode players can be hit by lightning and find their ‘season’ coming to an immediate end.)

It’ll be interesting to see if EA extends this technology to its other sports games. One obvious example would be its cricket series in which the temperature and rainfall have a major effect on the game, particularly for players deciding whether to bat or bowl first.

Of course, live weather updates aren’t new to the world of video games: Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series has had such an option since 2000.

Office Camouflage 101

Yeah, we know, the video is in Russian, but fortunately, you don’t really need to understand anything being said to enjoy these people’s camouflage techniques!

[Via Gizmodo]