India Demands Research In Motion Assist In Cracking Encrypted Messages

The Government of India is demanding that Research In Motion (RIM) provide it with the company's master encryption key so that it can decrypt suspicious text messages sent via Blackberries. RIM is quoted in the Times of India as saying "The Blackberry security architecture for enterprise customers is purposefully designed to exclude the capability for Research in Motion (RIM) or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances," According to this BBC report " The country has only about 115,000 Blackberry customers at the moment, but it is a rapidly growing market." Indian authorities are said to have been reluctant to allow the widespread use of Blackberries in the country for fear that militant and criminal elements will take advantage of the secure system. This is likely a concern in many countries where the government is challenged by threat of violence however the company has a responsibility to it's customers as well, where exactly does it make sense to cross this fine line?

Images From Mars

The University of Arizona, a partner with NASA on the Phoenix Mars Mission has a great website with the first images sent home from Phoenix. Check it out here. Very detailed, but only black and white, so far.

Phoenix Touches Down

A Signal relayed via the Mars Odyssey orbiter has indicated to NASA that the Phoenix Mars Lander has touched down on the red planet's polar region. The landing of Phoenix was a huge relief for scientists as Mars has a reputation of devouring space craft, the successful landing means they are now batting .500 with 6 of 12 attempts a success. The initial signal only indicated a touchdown however and news of condition of the craft would have to wait for subsequent passes of the orbiter over the landing site.

The Phoenix is a robotic science lab on a 90-day mission to dig into the ice-rich soil and study the planet's frozen water for evidence of carbon-containing chemicals. It is also designed to monitor the planet's arctic-region weather from the surface.

Congratulations Phoenix team on surviving the "7 minutes of terror"! We look forward to the images you send back to us on the blue planet.

CBC story here.

The Biggest Drawing In The World

One of the things that I love, and hate, about the web is the odd destinations that you end up at when you start out looking for something completely different. Today I happened upon biggestdrawingintheworld.com a sight that chronicles the delivery of a brief case filled with a gps unit that, according to the story, was handed off to DHL with explicit delivery instructions that when plotted on the map creates a self portrait image of the artist Erik Nordenankar. I'm not sure whether or not to truly believe this, but I suppose stranger things have happened in the name of art, you can judge for yourself. It just seems to me that the path, particularly over water, seems a bit sketchy... pardon the pun. It's quite the feat if indeed it happened as told...

An Interesting Read - Insight Into Phoenix Mission

As the Phoenix Mars Lander readies for the final approach and "7 minutes of terror" the geek in me needs to know more... surfed on over to NASA and the mission website to find some great images and a video walk through of the seven minutes, it's easy to see why the engineers are so concerned. A great find however is the Phoenix landing blog that started May 19th and has been updated by mission specialists ever since. The blog is a first had account of what is going on inside the project team and what's been happening with the vehicle as it approaches Mars and readies for landing. Consider this, it takes a signal from Mars 10 minutes to reach earth, the landing is over in 7 minutes, therefore the vehicle must be able to make all of it's own decisions regarding it's decent... it's on it's own. Good luck Phoenix!

Detecting Concussions At Time Of Impact On The Football Field

The University of Minnesota is employing a new sensing device inside the helmets of players to detect forces that are great enough to induce concussions. Known as the Head Impact Telemetry System or HITS, the technology uses sensors in the helmets to page coaches and trainers when a high impact hit occurs, sending the player's jersey number and G-force of the impact. The data is not only being used to alert team staff to potential injury but is being captured and sent to the helmet manufacturer to aid in future design consideration. The system cost about $1000 per helmet. Check out this Discovery Channel video...

Phoenix Mars Lander To Touch Down Sunday

The Phoenix Mars Lander has nearly five million more kilometres to travel but is said to be on track and on time to land on the red planet on Sunday. "All systems are nominal and stable," said Ed Sedivy, program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, which built the spacecraft. "We have plenty of propellant, the temperatures look good and the batteries are fully charged." The craft which has a Canadian made weather station on board, will land in Mars' arctic and dig down into the ice-rich soil, to study the frozen water for evidence of carbon-containing chemicals.

At about 7:45 ET on Sunday, Phoenix will use superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of retrorockets to make it's touchdown on the surface, in what NASA officials call "seven minutes of terror," because only 5 of 11 previous attempts to land spacecrafts on Mars have been successful. Let's cross our fingers!

CBC story here.

You've Probably Heard Of Crop Circles, But How About Forest Rings?

The boreal forests of northern Ontario are dotted with as many as 8000 "forest rings". Discovered on aerial photographs about 50 years ago, the rings have baffled biologists, geologists and foresters ever since. Stew Hamilton, a Sudbury-based geochemist with the Sedimentary Geoscience Section of the Ontario Geological Survey says "We have been working on the rings since 1998, and there have been many developments, but there are still many unanswered questions," Speaking to the CBC Hamilton explained that he theorizes "the forest rings are caused by giant, naturally occurring electrochemical cells — big centres of negative charges (called reduced chimneys) that are frequently situated over metal or mineral deposits or methane (a natural gas source)." Check out the CBC story for more detail and a couple of interesting photos of the phenomenon.

Get Rid Of That Old Fridge, Save Money, Save The World

Well, not quite... but CNN and This Old House have some interesting statistics that provide plenty of incentive for tossing that out dated (pre 1993) refrigerator. For instance, "If every American home replaced its pre-1993 fridge with an Energy Star model, we would prevent annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 8.3 million cars." or how about this amazing fact, "Refrigerators qualified under the new Energy Star guidelines use less energy than a 75-watt light bulb left on full time".

Not convinced? The US Department of Energy has created a site, RecycleMyOldFridge.com, to aid you in determining how much your inefficient current fridge is costing you, comparing those costs to an Energy Star appliance, and finding a recycling program in your area. What are you waiting for?

Astronomers Witness The Death Of A Star

On January 9th of this year, astronomers using a NASA X-ray satellite to spy on a star considered to be near death, observed another star in the same galaxy as it started to explode. "A star exploded right before my eyes," lead author Alicia Soderberg, an astrophysics researcher at Princeton University, said Wednesday in a teleconference. She compared the event to "winning the astronomy lottery. We caught the whole thing from start-to-finish on tape." According to the researchers less than one percent of all stars will end their life in supernova. "As much energy is released in one second by the death of a star as by all of the other stars you can see in the visible universe," said University of California at Berkeley astronomy professor Alex Filippenko. The outburst was 100 billion times brighter than Earth's sun, so bright it flooded the satellite's instrument, giving it a picture akin to "pointing your digital camera at the sun," Soderberg said. CNN has more here.