The process that links separate telescopes together is known as interferometry.
In this mode, the VLT becomes the biggest ground-based optical telescope on earth.
Besides creating a gigantic virtual mirror, interferometry also greatly improves the telescope’s spatial resolution and zooming capabilities.
via BBC News – Four telescope link-up creates world’s largest mirror.
The Makani Airborne Wind Turbines, which resemble a fleet of mini airplanes, are launched when wind speeds reach 3.5 meters per second. Rotors on each blade help propel it into orbit, and double as turbines once airborne. The blades are tethered to the ground with a cord that delivers power to throw them into the sky and receives energy generated by the turbines to be sent to the grid-connected ground station.
via Kite-Like Turbines Harness Wind Power At Altitude | TechCrunch.
MIT to open up some courses to global audience — free, online
The program, called MITx, will represent the next evolution in online offerings, extending the university’s already well-established OpenCourseWare, which provides materials on about 2,100 courses that has been accessed by more than 100 million people. OpenCourseWare will continue, but MITx will be more interactive and provide a greater virtual classroom experience, providing access to online laboratories, student-to-student discussions, and greater interactivity. MIT also expects that MITx will eventually host a virtual community of millions of learners around the world.
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The emerging consensus among mathematicians at a conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on 7 January was that McGuire’s proof is probably valid and an important advance in the growing field of Sudoku maths.
via Mathematician claims breakthrough in Sudoku puzzle : Nature News & Comment.
NASA’s twin Grail probes are designed to map the moon’s gravity field like no other spacecraft before. The $496 million mission will use the ultra-precise moon gravity maps to help scientists better understand the moon’s composition and structure, as well as how the moon evolved during its formation. Learn how the Grail mission works in the SPACE.com infographic above.
Stanford.
For this reason, education is among the primary missions of the Parallel Computing Institute. With offerings ranging from complete curricula in parallel computing through the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in Computer Science, to just-in-time workshops and seminars, PCI offers a broad selection of options for students and professionals and collaborates with organizations such as the CUDA Center of Excellence, the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center, the Cloud Computing Testbed, and NCSA, among others, to make their offerings widely available.
In the near term, though, garnet-on-silicon chips are likely to be used in networking — first in backbone routers, which are physically huge and very power hungry because of the current size of optical switching hardware, and then hopefully at home and in the office (100Gbps home networks!) Then, once the size of MIT’s diode for light is scaled down — it’s currently around 400nm long, some 20 times larger than a transistor — we might begin to see photonic circuits in computers.
via MIT creates diode for light, makes photonic silicon chips possible | ExtremeTech.
The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated, Nov. 2011 » Data Center Knowledge.
The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here’s a look at the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released Monday, November 15, 2011 at the SC11 conference in Seattle.
Super computer porn.