Cosmic Bling: Astronomers Find Planet Made of Diamond

An international team of astronomers, led by Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology professor Matthew Bailes, has discovered a planet made of diamond crystals, in our own Milky Way galaxy.The planet is relatively small at around 60,000 km in diameter (still, it’s five times the size of Earth). But despite its diminutive stature, this crystal space rock has more mass than the solar system’s gas giant Jupiter.

Radio telescope data shows that it orbits its star at a distance of 600,000 km, making years on planet diamond just two hours long. Any closer and it would be ripped to shreds by the star’s gravitational tug. Putting together its immense mass and close orbit, researchers can reveal the planet’s unique makeup.

It’s “likely to be largely carbon and oxygen,” said Michael Keith, one of the research team members, in a press release. Lighter elements, “like hydrogen and helium would be too big to fit the measured orbiting times”. The object’s density means that the material is certain to be crystalline, meaning a large part of the planet may be similar to a diamond.

While the planet is an exciting find, it’s parental star is also quite interesting as well. It’s a pulsar (with the catchy name PSR J1719-1438), which are small spinning stars about 20 km in diameter — around the same size as London.

It’s also a very fast spinning pulsar (called a millisecond pulsar), rotating more than 10,000 times per minute. Like its companion planet, its mass far outweighs its minuscule size — it has a mass of about 1.4 times that of our Sun.

Astronomers believe that the diamond planet was once a star of its own, but the pulsar ripped off its outer layers and siphoned off 99.9 percent of its mass. The transferred matter is what caused the pulsar to spin at such a frenzied pace.

Researchers from institutions in the UK, Australia, Germany, Italy and the USA used a variety of radio telescopes — including the Australian Parkes CSIRO, the Lovell in Cheshire and the Keck in Hawaii — and 200,000 Gigabytes of celestial data to find the distant pulsar and its nifty diamond-esque planet.

England complete 4-0 whitewash against India

LONDON: England sealed a 4-0 series rout of India with an innings and eight-run victory at The Oval here on Monday as Sachin Tendulkar fell just short of an unprecedented 100th international hundred.

India, who needed 291 runs to make the hosts bat again, frustrated England during a fourth-wicket partnership of 144 between Tendulkar, who made 91, and Amit Mishra.

But when Mishra was out for a Test-best 84, it was the start of a collapse that saw India lose seven wickets for 21 runs on the way to 283 all out. 

HP TouchPad now £89!

After HP's shock announcement that it is no longer selling tablets, PC's and mobiles, the cost of the TouchPad has been slashed to £89 in the UK from today.

Mark Webb, head of media relations for Dixons Retail, tweeted that it would go on sale on Dixons.co.uk "later today" and at Currys and PC World tomorrow morning. The company has since confirmed they will go on sale at all three stores online from 6pm, and in store tomorrow morning.

The 16GB version will be £89, down from £349, while the 32GB version will be £115, down from £429. He stressed there would be "limited stock".

Webb also added the company would be offering refunds to those who paid the full price.

The TouchPad has also been massively discounted in the US, Australia and Canada.

Skype 5.3 for Mac

The  latest version 5.3 is optimized for Mac OS X Lion and includes support for high definition (HD) video calls.

The company said: "With Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X, you'll also be able to send and receive HD quality video when talking to your friends and family."

For an extra cost, the software include features like group video calling or group screen sharing. Also, Skype made a deal  with Facebook to offer video chat to the social networking service.

In May, Skype was acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. The Windows version is 5.5
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HTC unlocks its smartphones, but probably not just to irk Google

HTC, which just announced it would stick with Google and keep running Android on its best smartphones even though Google just bought one of HTC's main competitors, continues the trend started by Samsung this week of needling Google by doing things that make it easier for people to mess with Android.

Samsung hired the founder and chief developer of the most popular developer of Android-modification firmware to work on its smartphone OS development team with the goal, he said in a Facebook update, of "making Android more awesome."

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Google has been trying to lock Android down more, lately, in addition to buying Motorola for reasons that are cloudy but might include the need to stave off potential patent-trolling from Motorola if Google didn't come through with some love.

The acquisition is expected to produce a huge shift in the smartphone market, though no one is quite sure what that effect will be.

Google to buy Motorola in £7.7 billion deal

Google has announced a deal to buy out Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion (£7.7 billion).

Both the boards for both companies unanimously approved the deal which is due for completion by the end of this year or early next.

Earlier this year, Motorola split into two separate companies, Mobility, which develops and manufactures mobile phones, and Motorola Solutions, which covers wider technologies for corporate customers and governments.

Shares in Motorola jumped 56% by the close of trading in New York yesterday to $38.13.

IBM produces first 'brain chips'

IBM's processors replicate the system of synaptic
connections found in the human brain

IBM has developed a microprocessor which it claims comes closer than ever to replicating the human brain.

The system is capable of "rewiring" its connections as it encounters new information, similar to the way biological synapses work.

Researchers believe that by replicating that feature, the technology could start to learn.

Cognitive computers may eventually be used for understanding human behaviour as well as environmental monitoring.

Dharmendra Modha, IBM's project leader, explained that they were trying to recreate aspects of the mind such as emotion, perception, sensation and cognition by "reverse engineering the brain."

The SyNAPSE system uses two prototype "neurosynaptic computing chips". Both have 256 computational cores, which the scientists described as the electronic equivalent of neurons.

One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other contains 65,536 learning synapses

Firefox 6 released

Mozilla has released its Firefox 6 version just 2 months after the launch of Firefox 5.

Although Firefox 6 is not a major overhaul, there are a few noteworthy changes from the older version.

Briefly, these are;

Site-specific permissions, enhanced site identity block, faster tab groups, improved Firefox sync, a new Android version and several developer tweeks

HP to wave farewell to PC's and WebOS

Hewlett Packard has shocked the IT world with the announcement that it is to spin off it's PC business.

HP confirmed plans that it is to stop making PC's, tablets and phones in order to refocus on software.

Even more surprising came the announcement that HP is also going to discontinue operations for WebOS devices which means the end of its just launched HP TouchPad, only six weeks after it went on sale.

In the official press release detailing its preliminary Q3 2011 financial results the company said;

HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.