A British-led team of astronomers using The University of Manchester’s Lovell Telescope in Cheshire have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter ‘ the first ever detected.
A dark galaxy is an area in the universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. Without any stars to give light, it could only be found using radio telescopes.
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[/.] bryanthompson writes “The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer took off from the Salina Municipal Airport this evening at about 6:47 CST. The Salina Airport was chosen for its central location, and the fact that it is one of the few air strips long enough for the flyer to take off successfully. The trip around the world is expected to take about 80 hours, with speeds averaging 285 mph. The craft was designed for Sir Richard Branson by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, who also designed SpaceShipOne.” Steve Fossett is piloting the craft, intended (as reader aallan puts it), “to be the first solo non-stop flight around the world without refuelling.”

Slashdot | GlobalFlyer ‘Round The World Solo Flight Takes Off

[/.] GerritHoll points out an article in Nature according to which “researchers at the University of Pennsylvania ’say that a “plasmonic cover” could render objects “nearly invisible to an observer.’ Earlier attempts at invisibility worked by colouring a screen to match its background, like a chameleon. The described technique is new, because it works by the concept of reducing light scattering. It is not a ‘magic cloak,’ however, because it will not work for the full range of visible light and needs to be adjusted precisely for the shape of the object. However, the concept could find an application in stealth technology.”

Slashdot | Engineers Devise Invisibility Shield

[/.] LE UI Guy writes “A Denver Post article examines the Internet ‘horrors’ Windows, Mac and Linux users face simply being connected to the Internet with only an out-of-box configuration. Over the course of a single week the machines were scanned 46,255 times. The test didn’t look into additional security threats caused by surfing the web or reading e-mail, just the connection itself.”

Slashdot | Is Your OS Tough Enough?

[/.] SilentBob4 writes “There haven’t been many reviews of the recent Solaris 10 release from Sun Microsytems, and even those which are available are thin at best… until now. Mad Penguin, normally a Linux-only site, has release the most comprehensive and well-written review of the OS to date.”

Slashdot | Take A Look At Solaris 10