May 2009 - Tech Tips Daily

An oddly shaped space boulder that appears to show eye sockets, nose and mouth, has led alien-spotters to wonder if it is actually the skull of a dead Martian.

The picture was taken by a camera on the US Spirit robot Mars rover, and has led to one detailed analysis that claims, "The skull is 15 cm with binocular eyes 5 cm apart. The cranial capacity is approximately 1400 cc. There appears to be a narrow pointed small mouth, so this creature most likely is a carnivore."

Don't forget that a 'Face' on Mars was imaged by the Viking 1 spacecraft in 1976. When photographed again under different lighting conditions 22 years later, it turned out that a trick of the light had made an ordinary hill look like a giant sculpture.

The TECHNIXZONE take? Well, much as we'd like to find aliens on Mars, the skull looks unlikely to say the least, but maybe... just maybe".

But keep on looking, Mars watchers. Evidence for alien life is what we'd like to see.

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Posted By: David Jefferis - Category: No Category

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SEVEN SIGNIFICANT STEPS: HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

May 5th 2009 14:48

In just four decades, the internet has gone from zero to linking the entire planet. Here are some keystone markers along the way.

1969
The earliest form of internet is created by the US Department of Defense (DoD), by networking together computer systems at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, called ARPAnet.

1974
TA commercial version of ARPAnet is opened, called Telnet, following experimental international 40-machine linkups two years before.

1980
Bill Gates makes a deal to include a Microsoft OS (Operating System) on IBM computers. This paves the way for the later Windows OS and our present-day near-universal computer use.

1984
Apple launches the first successful Graphical User Interface (GUI) computer interface using on-screen graphics that represent files and folders. Also featured are drop-down menus and the first computer mouse, for control in addition to a keyboard.

1989
Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web (www), with browsers, pages and links to make communication between computers linked by the internet quick and easy.

1996
Google begins as a research project at Stanford University, US. The company is formally founded two years later by Sergey Brin and Larry Page - today Google’s search facilities make it a master of the internet, and a massive company, valued at near the $130 billion mark.

2009
British scientist Dr Stephen Wolfram launches Wolfram Alpha (WA), a search engine that provides conceptual relationships in its results. WA may prove to be the ‘next step’ in the evolution of the internet.

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Doomsday 2012 – are we all really doomed?

May 3rd 2009 15:26

According to the Doomsday Scenario, the year 2012 is THE END... with forecasts that range from killer meteors hitting the Earth to a takeover by super-beings from another universe.

Bearing in mind that apocalypse predictions have been going strong for hundreds, if not thousands of years, how likely on the TechnixZone DSR or DOOM SCALE REGISTER (1-5, with 1 being 'nothing will happen' to 5 being 'game over') does the year 2012 rank?

Bearing in mind that this blog is titled TechnixZone, we'll leave aside some of the more outlandish ideas and concentrate on a few that we can look at from a technical standpoint. The 2012 Doomsday prediction itself is a cultural MEME – an idea passed by word of mouth and media sources – that proposes that cataclysmic and apocalyptic events will happen in the year 2012.

The 2012 DOOMSDAY FORECAST seems to be based mostly on the end-date of the Mesoamerican (central America including the Mayans) Long Count calendar. This has lasted 5125 years and comes to an end on December 21, 2012.

So what are the predictions? Well, there's Global Warming of course, which could well generate mass extinctions, though whether such events are likely in just three years is a matter of debate. DSR, let's say 3.

The nearest large SPACE OBJECT we know about is the asteroid Eros, a chunk of rock some 34 km long, but its nearest pass in 2012 will be much further away than the Moon, so we can cross that off the danger list. DSR, perhaps 1.5.

Another theory suggests that an object 20 times bigger than the planet Jupiter is on the way. However, there's no evidence as yet, so for the moment the DSR on this one is another 1.5.

However it's a fascinating theory – and TechnixZone will put it under the microscope very soon.

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