Image via Wikipedia

In pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999, the motion of M87’s jet was measured at four to six times the speed of light.

The outburst is coming from a blob of matter, called HST-1, embedded in the jet, a powerful narrow beam of hot gas produced by a supermassive black hole residing in the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. HST-1 is so bright that it is outshining even M87’s brilliant core, whose monster black hole is one of the most massive yet discovered.

The glowing gas clump has taken astronomers on a rollercoaster ride of suspense. Astronomers watched HST-1 brighten steadily for several years, then fade, and then brighten again. They say it’s hard to predict what will happen next.

M87_jet NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been following the surprising activity for seven years, providing the most detailed ultraviolet-light view of the event. Other telescopes have been monitoring HST-1 in other wavelengths, including radio and X-rays. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was the first to report the brightening in 2000. HST-1 was first discovered and named by Hubble astronomers in 1999. The gas knot is 214 light-years from the galaxy’s core.

The flare-up may provide insights into the variability of black hole jets in distant galaxies, which are difficult to study because they are too far away. M87 is located 54 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster, a region of the nearby universe with the highest density of galaxies.

“I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by accretion onto a black hole to increase in brightness in the way that this jet does,” says astronomer Juan Madrid of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, [ed note: Local boy!!!!] who conducted the Hubble study. “It grew 90 times brighter than normal. But the question is, does this happen to every single jet or active nucleus, or are we seeing some odd behavior from M87?”

Read more here

Hat tip Space Future’s awesome twitter feed.

Popularity: 16% [?]

This is why I use Copernic for my desktop search needs rather than Google:

If a consumer chooses to use it, the new “Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.

“Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn’t even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants—your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever—could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files.”

Boy Judas Priest is starting to sound more and more prophetic every day:

You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time

I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean

via Slashdot

Technorati Tags: Judas Priest, Electric Eye, Google, Copernic, EFF, privacy

Popularity: 4% [?]

CBC Watch has an excellent collection of links regarding the sudden allowance of Howard Stern on Canadian airways. In particular a good piece by Andrew Coyne.

I’m not sure I subscribe to the “Harper is a libertarian” so Stern is now allowed theory. My conspiracy antennae are quivering with the idea that perhaps the CBC and CRTC are aware of Stern’s well publicized wars with religious types in the US and figure this to be a stick in the eye of the new govt which they believe to be infested with social conservative rednecks.

Either way my plans to get satellite are suddenly back on front burner again.

Technorati Tags: CBC, CRTC, Canada, Sirius, Howard Stern, Radio, Satellite radio, Stephen Harper,

Popularity: 7% [?]

… is there anything they can’t do?

Scientists at the University of Kentucky have built tiny pipes that move water 10,000 times as fast as the conventional laws of fluid flow allow, mimicking for the first time the seamless way fluids progress through our cells. They’ve also found a way to control which molecules can pass through the pipes, a discovery that could yield safer, more efficient skin patches to deliver medicine into the body. The pipes are made of carbon nanotubes, thin sheets of graphite rolled into cylinders just seven billionths of a meter in diameter. The scientists poured a polymer between them to create a fine membrane that can embed 65 billion pipes per square inch. Lead researcher Bruce Hinds attributes the tremendous speed of the water flow (3.3 feet a second) to the nearly friction-free carbon nanotube walls. To keep out unwanted molecules, Hinds placed chemical receptors at the entrances to each tube, so that only those proteins that match the receptors are allowed passage

Via digdot.us

Popularity: 4% [?]

I wrote enthusiastically about Pandora earlier this month. For those who missed it Pandora is a Web 2.0 enabled site that selects music for you based on an artist you like. It then builds a streaming “radio station” for you which allows you to discover music and artists you may not have heard of before.

For the most part it is good but with some limitations. I find it does better with obscure folk blues than it does with various styles of rock.

Now I have just heard of another service called Last.FM which uses social networking to pick songs for you. I haven’t tried last.fm because it asks you to install to sw programs (pandora doesn’t require any) and one of them just asked me to close all my programs and I hate having to do that. . But Steve Krause has an interesting comparison of both services here.

I’ll let you know if I try last.fm and what I think. Meantime feel free to try it yourself and leave a comment.

Popularity: 6% [?]

100-downloads.com | Top-100 essential downloads of free software & freeware for Windows XP

Technorati Tags: free software, freeware, shareware, Windows XP, downloads

Popularity: 4% [?]

Boy, living in the “land of the free” is hard sometimes:

You might have some vague memory from childhood, and perhaps it returns when visiting someone who lives in an old home. You turn on the shower and the water washes over your whole self as if you are standing under a warm-spring waterfall. It is generous and therapeutic. The spray is heavy and hard, enough even to work muscle cramps out of your back, enough to wash the conditioner out of your hair, enough to leave you feeling wholly renewed — enough to get you completely clean.

But you buy and buy, and in the end, they disappoint. It’s just water, and it never seems like enough.

Most manufacturers adhere to the regulations. But savvy consumers know how to get around the problem.

Warning: The following section is for information purposes only; I am not advocating egregious violations of federal law as some trouble-making rebel might. Do not endanger your status as a law-abiding citizen who takes wimpy showers.

Those interested in shower hacking can read the entire thing here.

Technorati Tags: shower, hacks, lifehack, DIY, how-to,

Popularity: 5% [?]

Just doing this test makes you a geek if you ask me.

For the record I am 16% geeky.

Technorati Tags: geek test, geek

Popularity: 4% [?]

I love Firefox. I especially love the extensions that you can add to it. My two faves at this point are the del.icio.us extension that allows you to quickly tag pages and postings to del.icio.us and Scrapbook which allows you to capture webpages easily. Scrapbook is excellent for saving newspaper articles and columns that tend to disappear from sites in about 14 days. Very powerful for blogging.

Now Download.com has a list of the top Firefox extensions for 2005. I haven’t tried any yet but they seem to be worth investigating.

Update: Techcrunch says that Allpeers is the killer app extension for Firefox.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Edmund Blackadder: … He has patented a machine called “The Ravelling Nancy”.

Edmund Blackadder: That I cannot say sir. I am one of these people who are quite happy to wear cotton, but have no idea how it works.

I don’t know what exactly Web 2.0 is. I can point to some 2.0 sites like del.icio.us but damned if I can explain how they work. However I am content to use them because they are so bloody interesting. Two bloggers who are more technically literate than me by far have come up with some lists of the best 2.0 apps/sites out there.

Techcrunch’s Web 2.0 companies I couldn’t live without points to an absolutely fabulous site called Pandora. This one is a music site that will create radio streams based on your tastes. You tell it an artist or song you like and it will create a playlist of similar artists. Great if you have a hankering for acoustic blues or obscure punk - at least for me. You absolutely must try it. It is just that friggin’ cool. Ann Althouse agrees with me btw.

And you also must read the whole article for some cool apps that you mightn’t have heard of.

Also Dion Hinchliff who has a blog totally devoted to Web 2.0 has a post up entitled: The Best Web 2.0 SW of 2005 and he manages to point me to some interesting filtering and blog reading sites like Diggdot which combines del.icio.us popular tags with digg’slatest stories andslashdot’s content - all in one page baby! Or memorandum which compiles blog content as does topix.net and blogniscient

Great stuff - the only problem? You will spend way too much time with your computer after this.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I love the idea of satellite radio. The idea. Not the product in its current form. I seriously considered getting it recently and was going to spend some Christmas gift card money on the XM version (has hockey and better -imho- music stations) that can be a ghetto blaster, walkman, car radio all in one. A very neat idea.

However I held off for a number of reasons. One is that the talk radio selection in Canada is noticeably weak compared to the U.S - Air America and a Conservative talk radio station are available in the US but not here). Sirius has more channels (20) and offers a lifetime membership for only 550.00 but won’t be carrying Stern up here and what if you buy a lifetime membership and they go bust?

Debbie Schlussel has found another reason to take a pass - censorship in the form of left-wing bias.

I recorded my pilot the day after Peter Jennings died, and my comments about his liberal and pro-Palestinian bias offended her. So did my comments about women with tattoos, fat women, and pretty much everything else.

Oops, I blew the lid off ultra-liberal Amy Reyer. “That’s very irresponsible,” she said, visibly irked. “I hope you will be more responsible than that on the air,” implying that my comments would immediately hypnotize millions of girls not listening to her women’s channel to become skin and bones. Right.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Slacker Manager has posted an excellent article on del.icio.us called The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users. It is full of excellent tips for those who use the bookmarking utility. Except for this one:

If you have a blog, you can export your links a number of ways. You can have a list of each day’s bookmarks auto-posted to your blog by going into the settings section and clicking on the ‘daily blog posting’ link in the experimental section. There isn’t much documentation on this, but if you’re using Typepad look here, if you’re using MovableType look here (note the Blogger instructions in the comments), and Wordpress folks look here

I have tried to make the “thingy” work using the Wordpress instructions he links to as well as others that I have found around the net. But it never works for me. Anyone with any ideas feel free to let me know.

If you don’t use del.icio.us now might be the time to start.

Popularity: 5% [?]

My wife casually mentioned last night that she was thinking of getting me a satellite radio for Christmas but decided against it due to the fact that Howard Stern won’t be available in Canada.

Silly wife, I want satellite radio for more than Stern and since Stern is not on our Canadian menu I would be more likely to go with XM which seems to have more channels. Although a cursory pass through their Canadian website seems to indicate that they wont be carrying all the channels they are in the US.

For example XM Us has Air America and Sean Hannity. XM Canada appears to have neither.

Then there is the fact that I don’t commute every day and since my work includes a lot of talking to clients on the phone I wouldn’t have the radio blaring in the background either.

But it is hard not to love the concept of satellite radio. It appeals to the gadget geek in me as well as the old punk rocker who has always hated commercial radio formats.

Speaking of commercial my gut tells me that the commercial free concept will not last. After all I remember when cable TV came in it was commercial free because it was subscriber paid. We all know what happened there.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece about the satellite radio wars and the “Howard Stern” effect.

Anne Althouse feels that Stern doesn’t epitomize satellite radio, Bob Dylan does :

In a sense, Bob Dylan really does beat Howard Stern. That is the programming strategy represented by Bob Dylan beats the programming strategy represented by Howard Stern. Unlike broadcast radio, satellite radio doesn’t need a dominant radio personality to hold the listeners in one place for hours. We’ve already bought the radio and the subscription, and one company owns all the many channels. The ideal strategy is to have lots of channels serving lots of distinct niches and impressing the customers with all the cool stops along the spectrum.

The Superficial disagrees:

Is XM this hard up for hosts that they have to get a guy who can’t be understood for love or money? What’s next? Pam Anderson teaches a class on safe sex? Michael Jackson moonlights as a financial adviser? Ashlee Simpson becomes a singer?

Myles Krolikowski points us to some good news: Stern might be coming to Sirus Canada after all.

The move to exclude Stern on the Canadian network will likely cause dedicated Canadian Howard Stern fans to purchase US subscriptions and receivers. That’s not a “Good Thing” for the Canadian service when the main event with all its hype is blocked

Gee, ya think?

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’m always suspicious of technology that is touted by the geek brigade for no other reason than hatred for Microsoft. But last year I took a chance and tried Firefox, the internet browser.

I must say I was skeptical at first but I totally love Firefox and never use Explorer at all any more. The big reason is tabbed browsing which allows the user to view multiple sites without having multiple windows open. Also there are tons of cool extensions that make the Internet experience much more enjoyable. Like this one which is great for bloggers.

The only downside (which you will hear very few people discussing) is it has something called a “memory leak” sometimes if you leave it running while doing other computing things it seems to suck all the available ram from your computer.

But that is easily fixed.

Firefox has just released version1.5 and it is completely free. Try it.

Update: Pajamas Media has more.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The folks over at artechnica have put together a wish list of how they would design a “God Box“.

In other words if you were building a PC and money was no object what would you put into it?

Well how about two AMD Operton processors (US$1,3892.95 each). A whopping 8 gig of ram and Two NVIDIA evga Geforce 7800Gtx video cards for starters?

Total cost of their dream system: US$13,138.88

They also have a other more cheaper options if you want to settle for second best.

Popularity: 4% [?]