Scientists Create Billions of Particles of Anti-Matter in Lab

By Stephanie Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Opening the door to a new understanding of the physics underlying astrophysical phenomena like black holes and gamma ray bursts, scientists recently figured out how to create billions of particles of anti-matter in a laboratory. They took a gold sample the size of a head of a push pin, shot a laser through it and a cone-shaped plasma ‘jet’ of more than 100 billion positrons appeared.

The discovery will also give scientists new avenues of anti-matter research, which could reveal why more matter than anti-matter survived the Big Bang at the start of the universe.

“We’ve detected far more anti-matter than anyone else has ever measured in a laser experiment,” said Hui Chen, a Livermore researcher who led the experiment. “We’ve demonstrated the creation of a significant number of positrons using a short-pulse laser.” Chen and her colleagues used a short, ultra-intense laser to irradiate a millimeter-thick gold target. “Previously, we concentrated on making positrons using paper-thin targets,” said Scott Wilks, who designed and modeled the experiment using computer codes. “But recent simulations showed that millimeter-thick gold would produce far more positrons. We were very excited to see so many of them.”

Though laser production of anti-matter isn’t entirely new, researchers have never been able to produce so many particles of it before. Now, physicists envision a center for antimatter research that will use lasers as cheaper anti-matter factories.

How many Star Trek fans out there right now are trying to calculate just how much closer we just got to creating a real warp drive?

Via Physorg



Epic Voltron Painting Took a Year to Complete

We recently had a piece here on [GAS] featuring various geeky fan art, and had we known about what you’re about to see, we would have surely included it with the bunch.

This amazing time-lapse video shows the work of Robert Burden while he’s painting one of the most incredibly detailed pieces of geeky art ever created. Believe it or not, this 132″ by 82″ Voltron painting took a whole year to complete, over 900 hours of work. Once you’re done reading this post, be sure to head over to Robert’s site and check out the rest of this artwork.

[Via BoingBoing]

New display technology breathes new life into still pictures

Thanks to a partnership between the Max Planck institute and MITs Media Lab, a whole new, revolutionary, zero-power display technology has been unveiled. The technology allows a picture of a still object to react to a light source just as it would in the real world. Check it out:

Now, try to imaine the possibilities of this technology when applied to giant bill boards and other forms of advertisement. As the sun moves across the sky, the object of an ad could slowly change to reflect the time of the day. The researchers involved in the project are currently looking at ways to improve the technology’s 3D effect so that if you move around a picture of a face, its eyes would stare at you–no matter where you are.

[Via Gizmodo]



Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It’s not as if it’s a new idea, but the expansion of Rock-Paper-Scissors that includes a poisonous reptile and a logical Vulcan may become more popular thanks to the newest episode of The Big Bang Theory. And it really does make a lot of sense, considering the limited number of outcomes in the original version. If you are unfamiliar with the expansion’s rules, let me break it down for you:

Scissors cut paper.
Paper covers rock.
Rock crushes lizard.
Lizard poisons Spock.
Spock smashes scissors.
Scissors decapitate lizard.
Lizard eats paper.
Paper disproves Spock.
Spock vaporizes rock.
Rock crushes scissors.

As a bonus, it kind of rhymes.  Ready to try it out? Play it online first!

Of course, what I don’t understand about their problem in the last scene is why someone didn’t choose lizard. After all, if everyone else is putting up Spock, then the best choices are Lizard (which poisons Spock) or Paper (which disproves Spock), and Lizard also beats Paper (by eating it). Is loyalty to your favorite Vulcan really more important than winning?


President-Elect Obama forced to give up his Blackberry

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Out of all the things I’ve wondered about in life, one of them is whether Presidents, Prime Ministers and other heads of State can do private email and correspond privately with friends and family online.    Putting aside whether they have the time to do it, the bigger questions are the practical, security, legal and logistical concerns.    But this New York Times article is an excellent overview of the whole situation concerning what President-Elect Obama is facing when he takes office on January 20th.

Obama, apparently a big Blackberry fan, is going to have to give up his device because of the Presidential Records Act and of concerns over email security.   He instead hopes to become the first US president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office (what operating system will it have?  Windows or Linux?!)

As the NYT article points out, President Bush stopped corresponding by private email because he was concerned that his private email correspondence might fall into the wrong hands and cause embarrassment.  You only have to look at how a hacker broke into Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account to know how much embarrassment can be brought upon a political figure with the contents of their email account.   So as a politician (such as Obama) scales the vast political heights into the White House, ordinary things such as sending an email becomes an increasingly impossible task.

Then there’s the time factor.   Presidents probably don’t have the time to do private email after 3.00am phone calls and saving the world.

But Obama is showing everyone that he is determined to change every rule that he encounters.    So he may very well decide to set up [email protected] and start emailing from the Oval Office.   He’s already sending out YouTube video addresses so anything is possible!

RPG Nostalgia: The Realm

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Remember when Sierra ruled the PC world? At least, that’s how it seemed to me in the nineties. Most of the my favorite games were from Roberta Williams (King’s Quest & Laura Bow), and when I was in high school and finally ventured past the white picket fences of AOL, I discovered Acrophobia, and my very first MMORPG… The Realm.

It was one of the first of its kind, beating Ultima Online‘s launch by about a year, but I suspect it was kind of overshadowed after that since you don’t really hear much about it in the history of the genre. The graphics were great for 1996, very cartoon-like, similar to King’s Quest VII. The gameplay was easy and intuitive, combat turn-based, and role-playing actually pretty common. Even from the way that you moved, going east/west/south/north from any given screen, it was basically a graphical MUD. (Random trivia: You could buy dye to change the color of your clothes, which I always thought would be a great improvement to World of Warcraft, where half the characters walk around looking like they were dressed by blind circus clowns.)

Of course, here’s the interesting thing: it’s still around! Twelve years later, the number of accounts has dropped from about 25,000 at its peak to about 3,000, but there are still 100-200 players online at a given time during peak hours. Now run by Norseman Games, the Realm Online website boasts “Dial-Up Friendly” and “Basic System Requirements.” Well, I would hope so, for a 12-year-old game! Of course, that means I can play it on my laptop with no problem (something I can’t say for the newer MMORPGs).

Feeling nostalgic, I signed up for a seven-day free trial, downloaded the game, and played it for a while. It’s exactly as I remember it, if a bit emptier. I’m a little surprised that there haven’t been any improvements made at all, but I suppose that just adds to the “classic” feel. Of course, after that free trial, an account is $6.99 a month. Which, in my opinion, is a bit steep for nostalgia. It might be half the price of WoW or City of Heroes, but it’s also less than half the game.

Still, for those who have dial-up, or less powerful computers, or an even bigger sense of nostalgia than I, The Realm might actually be the perfect MMORPG.

Network Analysis: The Future is Now, and it’s FREE

Anyone in the cyber field that has been involved in a network investigation to determine the source and scope of a compromise knows that the process is time intensive.  Traditionally, such investigations require logfiles from various sources:  routers, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and maybe packet captures from a sniffer if you have one.  Reconstructing the sessions require matching up the timestamps, whiteboarding the data flows, and storing the logs for evidence in case law enforcement is involved.  Only the truly skilled can determine exactly what was stolen from the network.

But along comes the former US Cyber Czar, Amit Yoran, with his company’s flagship product-  Netwitness Investigator.  This tool can reconstruct a network compromise on the fly, and it does so without the need to understand Hexidecimal code or have a protocol analyzer handy.  All sessions are reconstructed so the analyst can see exactly what the attackers did-  Web surfing sessions are rebuilt, emails and their attachments are reconstructed, VOIP is reassembled in an easy-to-listen player, and you can even map out the complete attack using Google Earth!

If you have ever watched 24 and scoffed at the abilities of the CTU cyber team to instantly analyze the sources of internet attacks or communications, scoff no more.  Netwitness’ Investigator would make those tasks possible.  The software, developed as a project for the CIA, is already in use in many government and national law enforcement agencies.

And the tool is now completely free.  You can download it here.  Rich Steinnon of Network World and Threat Chaos said of Investigator here:

This is the first software I have ever installed that comes with links to a YouTube channel for easy to follow training on how to use the product.   There is a registration process but it goes quickly.  Amit assured me that this is not in any way a watered down version of their product. The free version has all of the functionality of the commercial Investigator. It does have limits set on the size of a session that can be recorded of 1 gig.  That should be more than enough for most investigations.

This tool represents a giant leap forward for cyber professionals.  It consolidates many tools that have been around for a decade into an easy-to-use package for network forensics.  And it should be an invaluable weapon in the fight against black hat hackers, ID thieves, and phishers too.

Minority Report Computing Soon to Become Reality

We’ve been talking about how multi-touch technologies would soon make spatial gesture computing a possibility, a bit like what we see happening in Steven Spielberg’s movie, Minority Report. Well folks, it seems that the day when we’ll be able to manipulate data and object in real 3D space isn’t that far off. Dubbed g-speak, Oblong‘s new spatial operating environment is, according to its creators, the first major step in computer interface since 1984. Video after the jump.

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