Return of the video cassette?

Way back in the mists of not all that long ago, the video cassette revolutionised the movie industry, allowing you to watch what you wanted, when you wanted. For the benefit of younger readers, with the exception of the convenience, tape technology was inescapably terrible - poor picture quality that degraded the more you watched it, machines that would damage or destroy your tapes with alarming frequency, and you had to rewind the tape at the end (which never happened, leading to 100% of family arguments in the 1980s). It may come as a surprise then that Sony have pushed on with cassette research with some astounding results.

The latest Sony prototype cassette can hold a remarkable 185TB of data (equivalent to over 3775 dual-layer Blu-ray discs). The production process also sounds pretty cool, involving "shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate, which produces layers of magnetic crystal particles." No lasers though, I do love a laser.


Sadly even this is unlikely to see a return of video cassettes to the home. They would still suffer from the same problems as old cassettes, and you would still have to fast-forward through the entire tape to find the thing you wanted to watch (tiresome enough when it was one TV episode, let alone 3775 movies!). The tapes are, however, likely to be welcomed into the much less interesting data archiving industry.

Original story: IT World

Exploding whale threatens Canadian town

I really wish that headline was exaggerated somehow. Sadly, no.

A dead blue whale has washed up in the small Newfoundland town of Trout River (seriously Canada, name your towns better!), attracting a wave of tourism. Unfortunately the small town isn't really geared up to dispose of a 25-metre whale carcass, and it's starting to get a little pungent.


never, ever type 'exploding whale'
 into a google image search

More alarmingly, the corpse is now beginning to bloat, sparking fears of an internal gas explosion (still not exaggerating). Currently refused any government assistance, the town population of 688 are now faced with a battle aginst the clock to somehow remove the carcass before things get... messy.


Original story: Escapist

Physics students (sort of) learn how to throw a fireball

Sometimes I can't help but think that scientists have way too much time on their hands. Especially three physics students from the University of Leicester, who have been investigating how an ordinary human being might throw a fireball without any additional source of combustion. The solution is simple - just hurl a gasoline soaked volleyball at a constant speed of 93mph or higher. The viscous drag forces would ignite the gasoline and hey presto, fireball.

Picture credit: Nintendo

The slight problem is that the fastest recorded volleyball throw is 66mph, and the ball would start to slow as soon as it left the hand. This would make igniting the ball impossible for an unaided human, which is presumably a relief considering the proximity of the thrower's gasoline soaked hands. Besides, I'm still holding out for someone discovering how to set things on fire by glaring at them...

Source: Escapist Magazine

Earth-like planet found

I am not ashamed to admit that I am a big fan of Sid Meier's Civilization games (even if he can't spell Civilisation). For me, the most satisfying victory has always been to send a spaceship packed with eager colonists soaring into the heavens, bound for a new life in Alpha Centauri. What I never quite understood was what the colonists hoped to achieve once they got there - given that Alpha Centauri is a binary (or even tertiary) star system, there really wasn't much hope of them surviving. Oh well, maybe they should have thought that one through a little better.

Fortunately for aspiring colonists everywhere, NASA takes these things a tad more seriously. The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 specifically to find Earth-like planets that may hold the potential to support human (or any) life. It has to date discovered 961 planets orbiting 76 different stars. Finally, with Keplar 186f, it may have struck pay dirt.

Picture credit: NASA

Kepler 186f is a planet slightly larger than Earth, and crucially lies with the habitable zone where water can exist in a liquid state. This doesn't guarantee there is any water, of course, or an atmosphere or any of that kind of luxury that might make a place seem homely. In fact the small size of the planet's star likely means it would be a radioactive hellhole. Still, beats being torn apart by warring gravitational forces, am I right?

Source: BBC News