A new planet

taken from:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060125_smallest_planet.html

Astronomers announced today the discovery of what is possibly the smallest planet known outside our solar system orbiting a normal star.

Its orbit is farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun. Most known extrasolar planets reside inside the equivalent of Mercury’s orbit.

The planet is estimated to be about five and a half times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away. Red dwarfs are about one-fifth as massive as the Sun and up to fifty times fainter. But they are among the most common stars in the universe.

"The team has discovered the most Earth-like planet yet,” said Michael Turner, assistant director for the mathematical and physical sciences directorate at the National Science Foundation, which supported the work.


Prior to this discovery, the smallest extrasolar planet found around a normal star was about seven and a half times earths mass . Earth-sized planets have been detected, but only around dying neutron stars

The newfound planet, named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is probably too cold to support life as we know it, astronomers said. It has a temperature of -364 degrees ferenheit, nearly as cold as pluto.

The planet and star are separated by roughly 2.5 Astronomical Units. One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Until now, no small planet had been found farther than 0.15 au from its parent star.

The finding means planet hunters are one step closer to detecting their "Holy Grail": a habitable Earth-like planet that can sustain liquid water and support life.

"We may predict with reasonable probability that microlensing will discover planets with masses like that of Earth at a similar distance from their stars and with comparable surface temperature," said study co-author Bohdan Paczynski from Princeton University.


Of the more than 150 planets have been discovered so far, most were found using the Doppler technique, in which astronomers look for wobbles in a star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet. This method has found dozens of huge worlds but cannot spot small planets that are far from their stars.

Happy Birthday Virus

This month is the 20th anniversary of the PC virus! The Brain Virus was the first PC virus created. It was not a very common virus because it was only transmitted through floppy discs
No one can tell exactly when the Brain virus was created, but the the most commin theory is that it was created by two engineers, named Basit and Amjad, at a software firm in Pakistan.
The virus reportedly replaced the executable code on a bootable floppy disk with the Brain code designed to infect each floppy subsequently opened on the PC.

In 1983 Fred Cohen, a computer scientist first used the phrase "computer virus".
He defined it as "a computer program that can affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly evolved) copy of itself."
In 1990, Symantec launched Norton Antivirus, one of the first antivirus programs ever developed by a major software company. The move by Symantec spawned a new industry. In 1992, some 1,300 new viruses were created, a 420 percent increase from December 1990.
Between 1990 and 1998, the computer world suffered from all kinds of new viruses, even those that could change their appearance with each new infection to thwart antivirus software. This era also saw the birth of e-mail-borne malware and Microsoft Word viruses. Currently, there are some 150,000 viruses circulating in the wild.
"In 20 years, viruses have moved from floppy disks to file viruses, to e-mail viruses, to Internet worms, to targeted Trojan-horse attacks," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos.
Evolving Threat
In the 1990s, viruses amounted mostly to electronic graffiti. Occasionally, the virus would cause some financial harm, but only with regard to damage to computers. Today, viruses have become the bread and butter for a new breed of criminals and crime syndicates.

An FBI computer crime survey of 2,000 public and private organizations released last week found that, in 2005, nine out of 10 organizations experienced "computer security incidents."
Viruses topped the list of attacks with nearly 84 percent of respondents saying that they had been adversely affected, with spyware coming in second at just under 80 percent. The financial impact of attacks from viruses and worms accounted for some $12 million in losses out of total losses of $32 million.

My oppinion:

Why in the hell would anyone be stupid enough to create computer viruses? I mean really. If you want to annoy someone do it in a more creative and less evil way. Sure even the average joe can create a virus nowadays with even microsoft word. But why would you want to?Cyberterrorist's annoy me.The FBI survey was insane. 12 million dollars of losses??? wow thats insane. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRAIN VIRUS!!!

The botnet hacker!

taken from: http://www.techworld.com/networking/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5225


A computer hacker responsible for a botnet army of compromised machines has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in LA.( the internet, The next war frontier?)


Jeanson James Ancheta pleaded guilty to four felony charges and could face between five and 25 years in prison (that bites), said James Aquilina, assistant US attorney with the cyber and intellectual property crimes section.
The case is the first time in the US that a hacker has been convicted not only for creating and spreading malicious code but also for making money from it, Aquilina said.

Sentencing has been scheduled for 1 May. Judge R. Gary Klausner is presiding over the case and must approve the plea agreement.
Last November, the FBI arrested 20-year-old Ancheta, whom they believe to be part of a "botmaster underground" that seizes control of computers to and sells those computer armies to people who want to commit cybercrimes (stupid people and their cybercrimes...).
Ancheta pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy, one for selling botnets that were used to launch Internet-based attacks and send spam, and the other for directing botnets to adware servers that downloaded adware surreptitiously to the hijacked systems, Aquilina said.
Ancheta made about a profit of about $3,000 from selling botnets, and about $60,000 from the adware scam( wow I'm in the wrong business), Aquilina said.
Ancheta also pleaded guilty to government intrusion for breaking into computers at both the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, and the Defense Information Systems Agency , a component of the US Department of Defense(wow nice defense system...). The last count in the guilty plea is computer fraud, for accessing computers without authorisation with the intent of profiting from it,( how stupid can you be?) Aquilina said.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Ancheta must surrender more than $58,000 in profits and give up a BMW he purchased with money from illegal activity, as well as computers and other evidence seized in the investigation. (that's it???)
He has also agreed to pay the U.S. government about $20,000 for infecting computers at China Lake and DISA.

Are we ready???

taken from: http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6029652.html

Twenty percent of U.S. college students graduating from 4-year colleges don't have the skills to handle tasks like estimating whether their car has enough gas, or calculating the total cost of ordering office supplies, a new study has found.

A study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts surveyed 1,827 graduating students from eight randomly selected two and four year schools. they tested them on three types of literacy: performing basic computations; understanding documents like job applications; and comprehending news articles or instructional materials.

"The surprisingly weak quantitative literacy ability of many college graduates is troubling," Stephane Baldi, who directed the study, said in a release. "A knowledgeable workforce is vital to cope with the increasing demands of the global marketplace."

This scares me. Are those people not our future? i don't want our country to be run by people who cant even calculate the cost of office supplies. OOPS!!! Too late....

Probe to Pluto

taken from: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060119_pluto_nh_launch.html


NASA sent their first probe bound toward Pluto on thursday, two days later than expected because of bad weather.

A Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 rocket flung the New Horizons spacecraft spaceward at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time sending the probe speeding away from Earth at about 36,250 miles per hour, the fastest ever for a NASA mission. The probe should pass the Moon at 11:00 EST on January 20th for a nine-year trek towards Pluto.

Initail reports show that the probe is in good health. Ground stations got their first signal at around 2.50 EST. this showed that the spacecrafts radioisotope thermoelectric generator is online and preforming as expected. the vehicle is currently where it needs to be.

This probe is scheduled to come back to earth on July 14, 2015. The initial launch was delayed because winds were to strong at the launch pad. On a later day severe storms over Maryland knocked out the power, forcing them again to reschedule yet again. The probe was finally launched at 2:00 on january 20th.

You too can find Stardust

Information taken from
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060110/sc_space/stardusthomeprojectbringscosmicdusttoyourdesktop

At UC Berkeley Researchers are asking internet users for help to join stardust@home. Which is a project to help find small grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA's stardust probe.

Stardust was launched in 1999 and is expected to land in Utah in the early morning of January 5th. They are hoping it will be laden with cometary fragments and interstellar dust grains. The comet and dust samples are trapped within a material named aerogel which researchers will have to pore through to find the miniscule grains.

Scientists hope that these samples will shed new light on composition of distant stars as well as the origions of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago

"These will be the very first contemporary interstellar dust grains every brought back to Earth for study," said Andrew Westphal, the associate director of UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory who developed the technique NASA will use to digitally scan Stardust's aerogel packs, in a statement. "Twenty or 30 years ago, we would have hired a small army of microscopists who would have hunched over microscopes...looking for the tracks of these dust grains."

However, Westphal and his colleagues will rely on an online "virtual microscope" that will allow anyone with an Internet connection to sift through the anticipated 1.5 million aerogel images for interstellar dust tracks. Each image will cover an area smaller than a single grain of salt, researchers said. Dust grain discoverers will get to name their tiny finds

Volunteer scanners must pay close attention to aerogel images to pick out the dust tracks from false signals. They must also first pass an initial test using sample pictures, project officials said.

According to the Stardust@home plan, if two out of four volunteers claim to find a dust track the corresponding image will be sent to 100 more volunteers for verification. Should at least one-fifth of those reviewers affirm the find, the image will be kicked up to a team of UC Berkeley undergraduates trained to spot aerogel dust tracks.

"Stardust is not only the first mission to return samples from a comet, it is the first sample return mission from galaxy," Westphal said.