Magus Theme (Chrono Trigger) Metal Cover [Video]

Another awesome metal cover from [GaS] Friend Ferdk16. Enjoy!

[Ferdk16]



Amazing Fan-Made Trailer for “The Adventures of Tintin” [Video]

Unofficial title sequence for ‘The Adventures of Tintin’, featuring elements from each of the 24 books.

[James Curran]



Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Result of GPS Movement

So, remember about three weeks ago, when some neutrinos traveling between Geneva and the Gran Sasso Lab in Italy arrived about sixty nanoseconds quicker than the speed of light? That was weird. However, on the 14th, Ronald van Elburg at the University of Groningen at the Netherlands seems to have figured it out.  His team calculated the distance between the two stations, then factored in the relativistic motion of the GPS satellites involved.

Although the speed of light is does not depend on the the frame of reference, the time of flight does. In this case, there are two frames of reference: the experiment on the ground and the clocks in orbit. If these are moving relative to each other, then this needs to be factored in.

So what is the satellites’ motion with respect to the OPERA experiment? These probes orbit from West to East in a plane inclined at 55 degrees to the equator. Significantly, that’s roughly in line with the neutrino flight path. Their relative motion is then easy to calculate.

So from the point of view of a clock on board a GPS satellite, the positions of the neutrino source and detector are changing. “From the perspective of the clock, the detector is moving towards the source and consequently the distance travelled by the particles as observed from the clock is shorter,” says van Elburg.

By this he means shorter than the distance measured in the reference frame on the ground.

The OPERA team overlooks this because it thinks of the clocks as on the ground not in orbit.

How big is this effect? Van Elburg calculates that it should cause the neutrinos to arrive 32 nanoseconds early. But this must be doubled because the same error occurs at each end of the experiment. So the total correction is 64 nanoseconds, almost exactly what the OPERA team observes.

Cool! Well done, Van Elburg!

via Technology Review

Three Days Without Service? There’s an App for That.

The good news for BlackBerry owners is that they’ll be getting more than $100 of compensation for the recent outages.

The bad news is that it isn’t in the form of cash or credit, but rather a selection of apps. And customers don’t even get a choice of apps. Instead they’ll be able to download any or all of the following for a month starting this Wednesday:

  • Bejeweled (game)
  • Bubble Bash 2 (game)
  • DriveSafe.ly Pro (reads texts and e-mails out loud while you drive)
  • Drive Safe.ly Enterprise (same as Pro but with encryption, compatible with BlackBerry enterprise servers)
  • iSpeech Translator Pro (translator with voice recognition)
  • N.O.V.A. (game)
  • Nobex Radio™ Premium (internet radio – Premium version includes international stations and no ads from the app)
  • Photo Editor Ultimate (additional filters and effects)
  • SIMS 3 (game)
  • Texas Hold’em Poker 2 (game)
  • Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant (voice recognition system)

Further apps will be added later.

Enterprise customers will also get one month’s trial technical support; those who already have support contracts will get a one month extension. This won’t be automatic and customers will need to register at www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.

The announcement of the new deal from Research In Motion came with a formal acknowledgement of what customers already knew: that service was somewhere between patchy and dead in the US for a day, in the rest of the Americas for a day and a half, and in the rest of the world for three days.

Officially RIM has only said a “core switch failure” was the problem, though reports suggest a faulty router in a UK facility was to blame. (The operator is presumably very very tired of “have you tried turning it off and turning it on again” gags right now.) That’s one of only four mail routing facilities, which is why the blip was so dramatic.

It’s also said work was still underway on a back-up centre, meaning automated failsafe systems didn’t work as a designed. That led to a lengthy process of trying to fix the problems without the backed-up data becoming so overwhelming that data was lost rather than delayed.

Whether the apps offer will satisfy customers remains to be seen. The tactic seems to be to highlight the $100 figure, which far exceeds the actual financial losses of most users, and hope most people don’t bother to download the apps.

The Walken Dead [Video]

A virus that destroys every part of the brain except for basic motor functions, and also the part that stores Christopher Walken quotes? Horrible.

[Via Io9]

Geektastic Hall of Justice Birthday Cake [Pic]

[GAS] Reader Ray just sent in this pretty epic Hall of Justice cake he received for his birthday, complete with cupcakes bearing emplems of the JLA members. Check it out:

Thanks Ray!