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lightspeed

Near-lightspeed space travel: Not as cool-looking as you think

You're onboard the Millennium Falcon. You give the command to jump to lightspeed. The stars outside turn into long streaks of light and you're off. It's one of the most memorable images of sci-fi space travel ever created. It's also likely to be pretty far from reality, according to a study by a group of students from the U.K.'s University of Leicester.

The study, titled "Relativistic Optics Strikes Back," was published in the University of Leicester's Journal of Physics Special Topics. You can indulge in all the delicious physics equations in the abstract.

The physics students started by imagining that the Millennium Falcon has accidentally wandered into our solar system, on a direct course for our sun. If it then engaged in near-lightspeed travel, the stars around it wouldn't appear to stretch out. Instead, it would look more like a disc of light.… Read more

Full speed ahead!

Prepare to blast your way through numerous starscapes with Lightspeed Screen Saver, a 3D screen saver that flies you through a virtual universe loaded with up to 32,000 stars.

This free software's interface is minimal, to say the least. However, anything more complicated would be extraneous. A handful of buttons let us change the screen saver modules, adjust global settings, and create our own module, as well as get help. As for creating modules, the interface is overly complicated and even a bit overwhelming. But since Lightspeed Screen Saver offers a large number of modules to choose from, … Read more

Storage start-up Tintri launches with $17 million

Tintri this week is coming out of stealth mode with a new storage system designed to solve the unique storage problems of virtual machines (VMs). Founded by the former head of VMware R&D, the company is also announcing it raised $17 million from venture firms NEA and Lightspeed Partners.

Storage has long been a lucrative market, heavily dominated by just a few players. The introduction of a virtualization-oriented solution brings new blood and a new approach to a rather stagnant industry. And, considering the enormous growth of virtualization, an approach that IT staff should certainly be interested in. … Read more