First pictures of planets outside our solar system

The first pictures of planets outside our solar system have been taken, two groups report in the journal Science.

Visible and infrared images have been snapped of a planet orbiting a star 25 light-years away.

The planet is believed to be the coolest, lowest-mass object ever seen outside our own solar neighbourhood.

In a separate study, an exoplanetary system comprising three planets, has been directly imaged, circling a star in the constellation Pegasus.

The search for exoplanets has up to now depended on detecting either the wobble they induce on their parent star or, if their orbits are side-on to telescopes, watching them dim the star's light as they pass in front of it.

Being able to directly detect the light from these planets will allow astronomers to study their composition and atmospheres in detail.






http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7725584.stm

Not much to look at, but there they are.

Eugenius - I accept your apology

No worries, big guy. We all get carried away now and then. I accept your apology.

Tuesday at Bernie's

When Virgilio Cintron, 66, died at his apartment recently, his roommate and a friend saw an opportunity to cash his $355 check, the police said.

The roommate, James P. O'Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Cintron's body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner Tuesday afternoon, the police said. The men parked the chair with the corpse in front of Pay-O-Matic, a check-cashing business that Cintron had patronized.

They went inside to present the check, but a clerk said Cintron would have to cash it himself, and asked where he was, the police said.

"He is outside," O'Hare said, indicating the body in the chair, according to Browne.

The two men started to bring the chair inside, but it was too late. Their sidewalk procession had already attracted the stares of passers-by who were startled by the sight of the body flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop it up, the police said.

Police officers and an ambulance arrived as the two men were trying to maneuver the corpse and chair into the check-cashing office.

The two men were taken into custody and questioned. The police said they were considering charging them with check-cashing fraud.

The medical examiner's office said its preliminary assessment was that Cintron had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...p;feed=rss.news

Should Storyeum become a shelter?

The city wants to turn the Storyeum in gastown into yet another parking lot. I think that they should use this opportunity to help the homeless.

Sign the petition, if you wish:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/storyeum/

Nerd pickup lines

You're like an exothermic reaction, you spread your hotness everywhere!

I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.

If I was an enzyme, I'd be helicase so I could unzip your genes.

I'm attracted to you so strongly, scientists will have to develop a fifth fundamental force.

Baby, you overclock my processor.

Baby, you make my floppy disk turn into a hard drive.

You make me want to calibrate my joystick without the latest drivers.

Do you think we can make it a step more serious and disable network sharing?

You must be auxin, cause you are causing me to have rapid stem elongation.

Baby, I'll treat you like my homework -- I'll slam you on the table and do you all night long.

What do you say we go back to my room and do some math: Add a bed, subtract our clothes, divide your legs, and multiply

What's your sine? It must be pi/2 because you're the 1.

You know.. it's not the length of the vector that counts ... it's how you apply the force.

If I was an endoplasmic reticulum, how would you want me: smooth or rough?

Let's meet somewhere ... you bring your beaker and I'll bring my stirring rod.

Let's discover our coefficient of friction.

Your name is Leslie? Look, I can spell your name on my calculator!



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