Putting it into perspective: Megaupload had 25 petabytes of data residing on more than 1,000 servers. One petabyte of data, according to Gizmodo, equals 13.3 years of high definition television content. If our math is correct, that’s 332.5 years worth of HDTV content stored on Megaupload’s servers.
but not quite ..
Tuesday is going to be pretty funny.
-Joe
But who would want to look at them?
Why Does Our Universe Appear To Have 3 Dimensions?
by Jennifer Ouellette
Why does our universe look the way it does? In particular, why do we only experience three spatial dimensions in our universe, when superstring theory, for instance, claims that there are ten dimensions — nine spatial dimensions and a tenth dimension of time?
Japanese scientists think they may have an explanation for how a three-dimensional universe emerged from the original nine dimensions of space. They describe their new supercomputer calculations simulating the birth of our universe in a forthcoming paper in Physical Review Letters.
Before we delve into the mind-bending specifics, it’s helpful to have a bit of background… The Big Bang theory of how the universe was born has been bolstered by some pretty compelling observational evidence, including the measurement of the cosmic microwave background and the relative abundance of elements. But while cosmologists can gaze back in time to within a few seconds of the Big Bang, at the actual moment it came into existence, when the whole universe was just a tiny point — well, at that point, the physics we know and love breaks down. We need a new kind of theory, one that combines relativity with quantum mechanics, to make sense of that moment…
(read more: Live Science)
(image: Calabi-Yau manifold by Lunch @ Wikimedia Commons)
Welcome Trust Blog: Monogamy Is Easy
by Fiona Lethbridge
It’s hard enough having to spread yourself thinly during your normal daily activities – work, sustenance, childcare, rest, the list goes on. Luckily for us monogamous types, our efforts in the bedroom are most often directed towards one individual. Imagine, though, the dilemma of having to divide your reproductive resources between many partners. If you were a male seed beetle (Callosobruchus maculatus), you might face this very problem. You would have a limited supply of ejaculate, numerous females of differing ages and reproductive states, lots of rival males, and about a week to live. To fulfil your evolutionary potential and achieve reproductive success you need to prioritise your sexual encounters – do you allocate a little of your seed to several different females, which may offer fairly decent returns, or do you use up all your sperm on one ripe, virgin female in the hope of fertilising each one of her hundreds of eggs?
Sperm is not a limitless resource. Males often have to use it economically to maximise their lifetime reproductive success. In many insects the situation is complex because females store sperm internally from several different mates, much of which is surplus to requirement, so not all males that achieve copulation can be guaranteed paternity. However, males can sometimes bolster their chances, by adopting certain strategies to overcome this sperm competition.
As a promiscuous insect it is essential to assess your surroundings. For example, if you were a male cricket (Gryllus veletis) you might want to allocate lots of sperm when copulating if there is another male waiting his turn with the female, in attempt to father a greater share of the resultant clutch than he does. If there are ten rival males around, you’d probably be better holding onto your ejaculate for now and saving your sperm for other, less competitive situations…
(read more: Welcome Trust Blog)
(image: male Spring Field Cricket, Gryllus veletis, by Kurt Andreas)
Shame, 2011
A Bucket of Blood, 1959
“men can blow up buildings and they can be nowhere near the crime scene, but we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. our labs here can recreate out of the most microscopic detail the motivation and circumstance to almost any murder. right down to a killer’s attitude towards his mother and that he was a bed-wetter. but in the case of a woman, my sister, who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene? we can’t even put together enough to keep anybody interested.”
Scully looks so hot when she’s angry… And all the time.
