This Is How Asteroid Mining Will Work [Video]

Yesterday, a group of billionaires, scientists and engineers announced what could become the most important enterprise in human history since Columbus sailed West: an asteroid mining company called Planetary Resources. They want to jump start a completely new industry between the Earth and the Moon, one that will add trillions of dollars to the world economy and ensure our prosperity for centuries to come. More »

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Bulking Up (TIME)

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Sprint scrapes by in Q1 2012 with 1.5 million iPhone sales, sees $863 million net loss

Sprint announced their first quarter results today, seeing an operating loss of $255 million, and a net loss of $863 million, but enjoyed 1.5 million iPhone sales, 44% of which were new customers. Last quarter, Sprint sold 1.8 million iPhones with a similar proportion of new additions.

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Report cites fracking-related activities as potential suspect in minor quakes

The rate of minor earthquakes from Colorado to Ohio has quickened in the past decade. But the report doesn't make a direct link between fracking and quakes, notes an Interior official.

Federal research scientists are linking the deep underground injection of waste water from oil and gas exploration to a major increase in minor earthquakes from Colorado to Ohio.

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A modest increase in such quakes was noticed beginning in 2001 in coal-bed methane fields near the Colorado-New Mexico border. That number accelerated rapidly from 2009 through 2011 and was especially pronounced in the oil and gas fields of northern Arkansas and central and southern Oklahoma, the scientists found.

Across that region, 50 earthquakes were larger than magnitude 3 in 2009. The number rose to 87 quakes in 2010 and reached 134 earthquakes in 2011 ? more than six times the annual average levels recorded from 1970 to 2000.

The large jump is "a remarkable increase" in the rate of minor earthquakes that is "almost certainly manmade," according to the abstract of a new study by US Geological Survey scientists, which is expected to be delivered at a scientific conference next week in San Diego. The full study was unavailable.

In Oklahoma, for instance, the rate of earthquakes larger than magnitude 3 (considered a minor quake) abruptly increased around 2009 ? rising from 1.2 per year over the past half century to more than 25 per year, the study found.

"A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region," the study abstract notes.

Even though the higher frequency indicates that quakes are probably being induced by human activity, "it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production," the abstract says.

In an interview with the online news service Energy Wire, lead study author William Ellsworth, a USGS scientist, called the increase that his team documented "very peculiar."

The soaring number of quakes overlaps with a huge jump in the amount of drilling for natural gas occurring in shale beds ? an approach called "fracking," which produces millions of gallons of waste water. While some fracking waste water is treated aboveground, much of it is injected into deep waste-water wells.

Is that activity inducing man-made earthquakes by lubricating the faces of underground earthquake faults, so that they slip and slide more easily and frequently?

Not according to a senior Department of Interior official, who was quick to note that no link between quakes and fracking has been established ? even if the waste water from the process, when injected, might be behind the quake mystery.

The USGS findings "do not suggest that hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as ?fracking,? causes the increased rate of earthquakes," David Hayes, deputy secretary of Interior, wrote on his blog Wednesday.

While it appears likely that the increased rate of earthquakes is man-made, it's unclear if that is related to changes in production methods or the rate of oil and gas production, he wrote.

"USGS?s scientists have found, however, that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells," he continued. Even so, "[w]e also find that there is no evidence to suggest that hydraulic fracturing itself is the cause of the increased rate of earthquakes."

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Beyonce Named People?s Most Beautiful Woman 2012

Beyonce Named People’s Most Beautiful Woman 2012

Motherhood must agree with singer Beyonce! She was named People’s World’s Most Beautiful Woman 2012. Beyonce, 30, told the magazine, “I feel more beautiful than [...]

Beyonce Named People’s Most Beautiful Woman 2012 Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

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AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology

AMD kicked off 2012 by refreshing its desktop graphics, and now it's back, giving its mobile GPUs the same treatment. The company just announced its third generation of DirectX 11 mobile chips, the Radeon HD 7000 family. All told, the collection includes three 28nm GPUs: the high-end 7900M, the mainstream 7800M and, last but not least, the 7700M, a darling little chip intended for AMD's thin and light Ultrabook competitors. Across the board, the series ushers in a new feature AMD is calling Enduro, a graphics-switching technology that takes direct aim at NVIDIA Optimus. Building on older AMD technologies like PowerXpress, it doesn't require you to close apps, reboot your system or manually specify which apps will trigger the GPU. Additionally, it's designed to work with both Intel CPUs and AMD's own application processing units, so presumably you'll find this inside some Ivy Bridge machines too. With this generation, too, the two higher-end chips support the PCI Express 3.0 interface, and all three make use of AMD's existing ZeroCore Power and Power Gating battery-saving features. That's the abridged version, but we also have a full breakdown of the specs awaiting you past the break.

Continue reading AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology

AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix Doubles Down on European Gambit

Today in international tech news: Netflix vows to increase its European expansion, malware shuts down Iranian oil facilities and government websites, a Chinese company challenges Apple on its use of the name "iPad," Giga OM looks at the roots of the recent YouTube/Germany dispute, and some 38,000 entrants in the London Marathon had their information published publicly.

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