Supercomputer being described as world’s most powerful becomes operational

October 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have come up with a new index to measure a world's fitness for life, and have decided upon three names that are most likely to harbor life. According to a report in National Geographic News, known as the Standard Microbial Habitability index, the system rates worlds on a scale of 0 to 1 as to how suitable they are for microscopic life-forms like those on Earth.

September 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have warned that increasingly powerful "supertyphoons" will strike Japan if global warming continues to affect weather patterns in the western Pacific Ocean. According to a report in National Geographic News, supercomputer simulations show there will be more typhoons with winds of 179 miles (288 kilometers) per hour-considered an F3 on the five-level Fujita Scale-by 2074.

September 16th, 2009 Worlds oceans warmest on record this summerWASHINGTON — The world's in hot water. Sea-surface temperatures worldwide have been the hottest on record over the last three months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday.

August 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A scientist of Indian origin has created a new supercomputer, called Cystorm, which can carry out 28.16 trillion calculations per second. Cystorm, a Sun Microsystems machine, was developed by Srinivas Aluru from the Iowa State University.

August 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new supercomputer simulation designed to track the fate of the universe's first black holes has found that the mysterious cosmic objects couldn't efficiently gorge themselves on nearby gas, and thus had to keep themselves on a strict diet, starving in the process. "The first stars were much more massive than most stars we see today, upwards of 100 times the mass of our sun," said John Wise, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study's authors.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that the newest supercomputer, which can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, is ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry. The 21.4 million dollar Chinook supercomputer, built by HP, is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the (US) Department of Energy.

July 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer, named Novo-G, has become operational at the University of Florida. Novo-G gets the first part of its name from the Latin term for make anew, change, alter and the second from G for genesis.

July 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The detectors of Planck space observatory's High Frequency Instrument have reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273.05 degrees Celsius, making them the coldest known objects in space. Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230 degree C by radiating heat into space.

June 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The latest Geo-stationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space Saturday after a successful launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The GOES-O spacecraft lifted off at 6:51 p.m.

May 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The world's largest solar telescope, which can capture the Sun's magnetic field better than other telescopes, is now operational. The new 1.6-meter clear aperture solar telescope, the largest of its kind in the world, is housed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey, US.

May 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute is going to launch a project called 'Earth Speaks', which will collect messages online from people around the world, asking them about their questions to an alien civilization. "Earth Speaks invites people to ponder the question, 'What would you say to an extraterrestrial civilization?'," said Thomas Pierson, Chief Executive Officer of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

May 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - What if scientists create self-cleaning walls and fabrics or even micro-scale robots that can walk on water? Well, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Japan's RIKEN institute claim to have moved a step closer to realising such materials. The researchers have revealed that their work is based on a study of a property called super hydrophobia, which is behind how water beads up and rolls off flowers, caterpillars and some insects, and how insects like water striders are able to walk effortlessly on water.

May 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - The US State Department has said that al Qaeda's No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has emerged as the terrorist outfits operational leader, having a similar 25 million dollars prize money on his head as Osama bin Laden. Despite years of the Bush administration claims that Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor turned Osama bin Laden deputy, was on the lam with his boss and unable to exert control, this was not true according to the State Department report.

April 24th, 2009 LONDON - US talk show host Ellen Degeneres has been named the most powerful gay celebrity by American magazine 'Out'. The comedienne, who is married to actress Portia de Rossi, has been named the top showbiz star on the list, reports contactmusic.com.

January 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - HIAPER, one of the most advanced existing research aircraft, will be embarking on a historic mission spanning the globe from pole to pole. The HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) mission will cover more than 38,400 kms as an international team of scientists makes a series of five flights over the next three years, sampling the atmosphere in some of the most inaccessible regions of the world.