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Galactic Views (28)

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Hubble Views Grand Star-Forming Region
NASA – This massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in the Milky Way Galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are 100 times more massive than our sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.

The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible and red light by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars’ birth and evolution.

The brilliant stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, and hurricane-force stellar winds (streams of charged particles), which are etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. The image reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys, as well as a dark region in the center that roughly looks like the outline of a holiday tree. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, the brilliant stars can also help create a successive generation of offspring. When the winds hit dense walls of gas, they create shocks, which may be generating a new wave of star birth.

These observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee

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Galactic Views (27)

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SPACE WATCH

Firestorm of Star Birth in Galaxy Centaurus A
NASA – Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A.

Hubble’s panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust.

The warped shape of Centaurus A’s disk of gas and dust is evidence for a past collision and merger with another galaxy. The resulting shockwaves cause hydrogen gas clouds to compress, triggering a firestorm of new star formation. These are visible in the red patches in this Hubble close-up.

At a distance of just over 11 million light-years, Centaurus A contains the closest active galactic nucleus to Earth. The center is home for a supermassive black hole that ejects jets of high-speed gas into space, but neither the supermassive black hole or the jets are visible in this image.

This image was taken in July 2010 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O’Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

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Jessica Simpson: Naked and pregnant in Elle!

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For some reason, today is apparently “pregnant celebrities on the cover of magazines” day, so here comes Jessica Simpson pulling a Demi Moore for Elle magazine by baring it all. From Today:

Heavily pregnant Simpson, 31, poses nude on the April cover of Elle magazine; Demi Moore, 49, did the same for the cover of Vanity Fair in August 1991 when she was pregnant with daughter Scout LaRue. That’s not the only news-making tidbit the first-time mom-to-be has in store — Simpson also reveals to the mag that she’s having a baby girl! “She,” Simpson, engaged to former NFL pro Eric Johnson, says of the baby.

While I would just hate to disagree with the many internet assholes saying that Jessica is fat or she was photoshopped, I have to give her credit: she looks great. Get it, gurl!

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Source: PopBytes

Galactic Views (27)

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SPACE WATCH

Firestorm of Star Birth in Galaxy Centaurus A
NASA – Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A.

Hubble’s panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust.

The warped shape of Centaurus A’s disk of gas and dust is evidence for a past collision and merger with another galaxy. The resulting shockwaves cause hydrogen gas clouds to compress, triggering a firestorm of new star formation. These are visible in the red patches in this Hubble close-up.

At a distance of just over 11 million light-years, Centaurus A contains the closest active galactic nucleus to Earth. The center is home for a supermassive black hole that ejects jets of high-speed gas into space, but neither the supermassive black hole or the jets are visible in this image.

This image was taken in July 2010 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O’Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

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Lady Gaga the First to Hit 20 Million Twitter Followers

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Lady Gaga has become the first person to attract 20 million followers on Twitter, blasting through that landmark number on Saturday.

Gaga topped fellow pop icon Britney Spears in August of 2010 to become the most-followed person on Twitter.  Currently, Spears has 13.5 million Twitter followers — roughly 6.5 million less than Gaga.  

While Spears occasionally posts personal tweets, her account is largely maintained by her management team.  Gaga has claimed to personally maintain her Twitter account and regularly uses it to interact with fans, share original pictures and make announcements. After passing Spears, Gaga then dubbed herself the “Queen of Twitter,” and has retained the title ever since.

The top 5 most-followed people on Twitter are all musicians.  Lady Gaga (20 million followers), Justin Bieber ( 18 million followers), Katy Perry (15.7 million followers), Shakira (14.5 million followers) and Rihanna (14.4 million followers) top the Twitter charts.

While Bieber tweets much more often than Gaga does, statistics from twittercounter.com suggest Gaga’s Twitter crown isn’t in any immediate danger of being overtaken by Bieber. Gaga’s daily Twitter growth rate is consistently higher than Bieber’s — keeping her lead safe.


In addition to her 20 million Twitter followers, Lady Gaga has 48.8 million fans on Facebook and is in approximately 830,000 circles on Google+.  

Do you think Gaga will retain her self-styled title as “Queen of Twitter?”

BONUS GALLERY: Gaga turns “Walk This Way” into a marketing spectacle:

Image courtesy of Interscope Records/YouTube

Source: Mashable!

Mercedes Rolls Out Invisible Car [VIDEO]

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When Mercedes wanted to promote its new fuel cell vehicle, instead of placing it squarely in front of everyone in the world, the company decided to make the car invisible. We have video.

In this clever publicity stunt, Mercedes wanted to emphasize that its F-Cell vehicle has no omissions, making it virtually invisible to the environment. If you take a look at the gallery below, you’ll see how these clever dudes did it: by placing a mat of LEDs across one side of the vehicle and mounting a video-shooting Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera on the other side.

We saw a Halloween costume like this once. Mount an iPad on your belly, surround it with costuming that looks like a hole, place a webcam on your back shooting backward, and then feed that video into the iPad. Voilà! It looks like you have a gory hole going all the way through you:

Mercedes is doing basically the same trick. As you can see in the Mercedes video, even though people could still tell there was a car going by, they seemed impressed by the “invisible” fuel-cell vehicle.

Mercedes says its hydrogen-powered drive system is “ready for series production,” but other reports have its commercialization set for 2014. However, fuel-cell technology is still notoriously expensive, partly because hydrogen is a difficult fuel to store and transport. The materials needed to create a viable fuel-cell are still hovering in the pricey stratosphere.

Practicality aside, we applaud Mercedes and its efforts to create a vehicle with zero emissions and less impact on the environment, and admire the lengths to which these artists went to bring home that point.

By the way, with all the ultra-cool cars in the Mercedes stable, why did the company pick a minivan for this showy demo? Oh, we get it: more surface area to mount that video screen.

Source: Mashable!

Galactic Views (26)

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Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520
NASA – This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.

The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.

Superimposed on the image are “false-colored” maps showing the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. Starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, is colored orange. The green-tinted regions show hot gas, as detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe’s mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster of galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.

The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision.

Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)

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Apple Inc., Made In America

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There are two sayings on the back of every Apple product: Designed By Apple in California and Assembled in China. These statements attempt to say that even though the products might be assembled in a different country, Apple is an American company — a fact Apple proclaimed loudly today with a new web page titled Creating jobs through innovation.

Apple has been under fire lately regarding its overseas manufacturing partners. Apple hired the Fair Labor Association to conduct voluntary audits of the final assembly partners, including Foxconn’s massive Asian facilities. But consumers and activists alike aren’t buying it. It’s a smokescreen, they say. Foxconn will just hide the children and give everyone a new pillow prior to inspector’s arrival. This has rightly put Apple on the defensive.

To a growing minority Apple is viewed as just another unethical company employing cheap overseas labor to assemble its wares while filling its coffers with the savings. Groups are calling for radical but compassionate actions to improve the working conditions in China and abroad. Apple will not deny its products are assembled by Foxconn and others, but it’s still an American company and responsible for a large chunk of jobs in America. Apple is essentially stating today that even though your iPhone was made in China, the company supports American households as well.

The page launched by Apple today breaks down employment numbers. There are 47,000 people employed directly by Apple in the U.S. There are Apple employees in all 50 states. iOS developers account for 210,000 jobs in the U.S., Apple says.

There are also 257,000 employees in support roles at different companies. As Apple notes, this number is comprised of many jobs, including employees at Corning making the iPhone glass, and the FedEx man delivering your MacBook Air. Apple also includes third party consumer sales staff, transportation professionals and healthcare associates in this estimate (don’t forget about the bloggers!). This estimate no doubt came from a standard employment multiplier applied to Apple’s base employment and U.S. expenditures.

Apple goes on to state that there are 27,350 Apple Store employees in 44 states, 9,700 U.S.-based AppleCare Advisors with 2,000 of them working out of their homes. As Apple says, they directly and indirectly employ a lot of Americans. But they should. They’re the most valuable company in the world with more cash on hand than many entire countries.

I’m not part of the pitchfork-wielding mob randomly shouting outside Apple Stores. Apple doesn’t employ the people that build its products; Foxconn and others pay those people’s wages. I think the idea of an ethically-built iPhone is a pipe dream — but I am also glad there are people naive enough to believe in it.

Massive entities like Apple need accountability. Unyielding affection leads to corruption. Fanboys need haters to bring the conversation back to reasonable territory. For every MG Siegler, there needs to be a Mike Daisey. The call to build an ethical iPhone will fail, but it will also improve the working conditions and wages for hundreds of thousands of assembly workers. In fact, Foxconn raised the base worker’s salary just days before the first inspectors arrived last month.

There’s a movement in America to bring the country back to its manufacturing roots and Apple is one of the prime examples, thanks to its recent success. Let’s get Americans to build products used by Americans, the movement’s activists yell. But that’s not how a global company like Apple, General Motors, IBM, or Nike survives. The same plants contracted by Apple are also used by HP, Dell, Sony, Amazon and nearly every other consumer electronic brand. Apple will never build a manufacturing facility in America’s heartland to manufacture and assemble iPhones. Chinese factory-cities have a head start of decades and billions in investment, and America isn’t going to catch up by putting up a few poky facilities here and there.

Apple is on the defensive. This page proves it. But the company is also one of America’s greatest success stories. Three guys started Apple 35 years ago and it is now the world’s most valuable company. Apple added 7,800 jobs in 2011. It’s growing and helping Americans grow as well. The point they are trying to make is that while iPhones may not be made in America, Apple was, and though it has to rely on China to get you your iPhone for less than a grand, it’s still giving back to the country that made the company possible.

The Future Of Foxconn

Our own John Biggs spent several days at Foxconn’s massive Shenzhen campus. Read about his experience here. It’s worth your time.

April 1, 1976


March 3, 1980, NASDAQ:AAPL

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007.

Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with…

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Source: TechCrunch

Galactic Views (26)

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SPACE WATCH

Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520
NASA – This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.

The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.

Superimposed on the image are “false-colored” maps showing the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. Starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, is colored orange. The green-tinted regions show hot gas, as detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe’s mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster of galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.

The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision.

Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)

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