BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Private plane breaks sound speed
The sound barrier has been breached by a privately built rocket-plane, the first time it has been done without government help.
Scientific American: Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy
Gradually, though, it has become clear that the Milky Way is not a finished work but rather a body that is still forming. Like the earlier discoveries, this realization has relied heavily on observing other galaxies and bringing the lessons back home. Most galaxies are now assumed to result from the merging of smaller precursors, and in the case of the Milky Way, we can observe the final stages of this process. Our galaxy is tearing apart small satellite galaxies and incorporating their stars. Meanwhile gas clouds are continually arriving from intergalactic space. No longer can researchers speak of galaxy formation in the past tense.
World's most mysterious book may be a hoax: The Voynich manuscript may be elegant gibberish.
But this complexity could have been produced easily, Rugg demonstrates, with an encryption device invented around 1550 called a Cardan grille. This is a table of characters. Moving a piece of card with holes cut in it over the table makes words. Gaps in the table ensure different-length words.
Using such grilles on table of Voynichese syllables, Rugg has produced a language with many, although not all, of the manuscript's features. About three months' work would have been enough to produce the entire book, he says.