Snworld

THE TOP 5 BIGGEST HACKS IN RECENT MEMORY MACRON EMAIL LEAK Just 48 hours before the run-off poll between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, a 9GB cache of emails from Macron’s En Marche! party was posted on PasteBin, a filesharing platform. They were spread to WikiLeaks. “The attacks were so simple and generic that it could have been practically anyone,” France’s cybersecurity chief said. BANGLADESH BANK HEIST In February 2016, hackers got the login credentials used by Bangladesh Central Bank for the international banking transfer system SWIFT. They tried to transfer $951m to accounts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Most transactions were flagged, but $101m was removed. A Trojan known as Dridex was used, which hides in MS Word or Excel attachments. WANNACRY ATTACK On May 12, 2017, a global ransomware attack affected more than 2,30,000 computers, including PCs in the NHS, FedEx and Deutsche Bahn. The malware was leaked from the NSA, and targeted machines running Wi...

TYPES OF HACK VIRUSES AND WORMS Most malware tends to be either a virus or a worm. The difference comes down to the software’s ability to propagate. Like their biological namesakes, computer viruses require a host body, whereas worms can spread from one machine to the next unaided. DDOS Short for distributed denial of service, a DDOS attack is basic yet effective. It works on the principle that, if a website’s DNS server can be overwhelmed by traffic requests, the site will crash. Hackers run botnets – networks of zombie computers or devices – to besiege a server from multiple fronts simultaneously. TROJANS As its name suggests, a Trojan is a form of malware that sneaks into your computer under an innocuous guise (like an email attachment). Its cargo can be any form of malware. A Trojan’s specific ability is getting in, then leaving a backdoor open for others to follow undetected. RANSOMWARE This subset of malware made the headlines for the WannaCry atta...

Hyperloop One has announced its Vision For Europe – a series of proposed routes for Hyperloop transportation systems in mainland Europe and the UK. First proposed by Elon Musk in 2012, Hyperloop is a hybrid electric/maglev system designed to shift people and cargo long distances at very high speeds, by placing them in pressurised pods that travel through tubes in which a partial vacuum is maintained. There are several companies and teams of scientists and engineers working worldwide to develop Hyperloop systems, including Hyperloop One, Hyperloop Transport Technologies and TransPod. Citing the success of Eurostar trains in capturing 70 per cent of cross-Channel traffic in just a few years, Hyperloop’s Vision For Europe proposes routes linking Corsica to Sardinia, Spain to Morocco, and Estonia to Finland. There are also suggested routes in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, plus three in the UK. One of these routes would link Cardiff and Glasgow, via Bristol, Oxford, London, ...

At the recent Paris Air Show, Airbus was showing off its new Racer concept helicopter, which has both a main rotor and a pair of propellersporting wings. Racer (an acronym for ‘RApid “Destroy all mosquitoes!” and Cost-Effective Rotorcraft’) would take off and land vertically, just like a normal helicopter, but would boast a top speed of 400km/h (250mph), which is nippier than traditional choppers. If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu here, that’s because the Racer is essentially an updated take on the X3 concept that Eurocopter (now Airbus) took to the Paris Air Show in 2011. The craft is designed for the operation of high-speed passenger services, particularly between urban centres (such as London and Berlin) where its vertical takeoff and landing capabilities eliminate the need to travel to and from airports. But it could also find a role in military or search-and-rescue operations. Airbus hopes to have a commercial craft based on the Racer concept available by 2020.

Farmers under pressure to reduce chemical pesticides can take heart from the news that the US Department of Agriculture is about to start trialling a device that can kill insects with a laser. Developed by Seattle company Intellectual Ventures Lab (IVL), the ‘Photonic Fence’ isn’t really a fence at all, but a small box containing lasers, cameras and an AI computer system. The cameras scan the air around the device for 100 metres, and the AI system measures the shape, speed, acceleration and wingbeat frequency of any bugs detected, to establish which are potentially harmful. Any insects identified as a threat can be zapped by the lasers, with a ‘kill rate’ of up to 20 insects per second. By deploying several such devices, farmers could effectively create a virtual fence around their crops that kills harmful pests but leaves bees and other beneficial or harmless insects unharmed. As well as protecting crops, it’s hoped the Photonic Fence could also prove useful in the fight agai...

To kick off the ‘Summer of Mars’ events programme at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA recently unveiled an 8.5m-long concept Martian rover that wouldn’t look out of place in the Batcave. The vehicle consists of a detachable rear section housing a science laboratory, and a front section that’s equipped with radio and GPS. Sadly, it is only a concept: according to the latest information on NASA’s website, the actual rover used in the Mars 2020 mission is likely to be similar in size and appearance to Curiosity, the 3m-long rover that’s been busy exploring the Red Planet’s surface since 2012.

Do video games affect behaviour? Video games are likely able to affect the way we behave in a number of ways. For instance, there’s concern about whether violence in games makes young people more violent. It’s not uncommon for news outlets to blame games every time a crime happens, but how true is that claim? This is controversial even within the scientific community. Yes, exposure to violence seems to affect the brain, but studies have also found that we’re good at distinguishing between real and virtual violence, and aggressive behaviour is better explained by other, mainly socio-economic factors. Numerous studies about the effects of games on the brain had been published, but all that information had not been put together until now. How did you review the research?  We gathered all scientific articles to date and compared results. In total, we found 116 experiments, the first from the 1980s. Many compared regular video game players with people who had never played; other...

IS THERE A TENTH PLANET? It seems the Solar System may be a little more crowded than we thought: a planet around the size of Mars could be hidden among its outer fringes. A team from the University of Arizona has discovered a mysterious mass, dubbed Planet Ten, that appears to be tugging at the orbits of a population of space rocks known as the Kuiper Belt in the icy outskirts of the Solar System. The Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune and extends to a few hundred Astronomical Units (AU), with one AU representing the distance between Earth and the Sun. The Earth and the other major planets all orbit the Sun in roughly the same plane. However, Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are far enough away from the gravitational attraction of the gas giants to be tilted away from this plane, and are affected by interactions with one another. This angle, known as the inclination, can be calculated. If the observed angle differs from the one calculated, then it’s possible that the smalle...

The relationship between trees and air pollution is a complicated one. Particulate matter suspended in polluted air tends to settle onto leaves, and certain gases including nitrous dioxide (NO2) are absorbed by leaves’ stomata, filtering the air and reducing pollution levels slightly. But trees and other vegetation also restrict airflow in their immediate vicinity, preventing pollution from being diluted by currents of cleaner air. In particular, tall trees with thick canopies planted alongside busy roads can act like a roof, trapping pockets of polluted air at ground level. To reliably improve air quality, city planners need to give careful consideration to how trees are placed.

Stars die because they exhaust their nuclear fuel. The events at the end of a star’s life depend on its mass. Really massive stars use up their hydrogen fuel quickly, but are hot enough to fuse heavier elements such as helium and carbon. Once there is no fuel left, the star collapses and the outer layers explode as a ‘supernova’. What’s left over after a supernova explosion is a ‘neutron star’ – the collapsed core of the star – or, if there’s sufficient mass, a black hole. Average-sized stars (up to about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun) will die less dramatically. As their hydrogen is used up, they swell to become red giants, fusing helium in their cores, before shedding their outer layers, often forming a ‘planetary nebula’. The star’s core remains as a ‘white dwarf’, which cools off over billions of years. The tiniest stars, known as ‘red dwarfs’, burn their nuclear fuel so slowly that they might live to be 100 billion years old – much older than the current age of the Universe....

That’s the temperature of your core. Your skin is usually around 34°C, and your face, fingers and toes can be much colder. The receptors in your skin react to differences in temperature, so, when you put your hand on your bare stomach, your hand registers warmth but your belly shrieks ‘cold!’, even though both are ‘skin temperature’. Similarly, the inside of your mouth feels warm to your finger, but not to your tongue.

It won’t make you stronger in the sense of building muscle in your heart or diaphragm, but holding your breath while training for certain sports has been shown to improve the ability of your muscles to cope with short, intense exertions. This works by increasing the concentration of bicarbonate in the blood, which helps to neutralise the lactic acid produced during anaerobic exercise. For this technique to work, you need to exhale normally and hold your breath when your lungs are empty, rather than taking a big breath in and holding that. There are significant risks, though. A 2009 study found that free divers who regularly held their breath for several minutes had elevated levels of a protein called S100B in their blood, which is an indication of long-term brain damage.

Mercury levels in the oceans have tripled since the Industrial Revolution, thanks to mining and the burning of fossil fuels. All sea creatures absorb some of this heavy metal directly, and, once it’s in the body, there’s no way of getting rid of it. The amount of mercury in fish varies between species. Long-lived predators like tuna and swordfish tend to contain the most, because they also absorb mercury from their prey and they’ve had a long time to accumulate it. The lowest levels are found in short-lived species lower down the food chain, such as oysters and shrimp.

Sleep consists of two radically different physiological states. There is rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). The sleep stages seem to have different functions, but why we sleep is still not completely understood. Babies spend half of their sleep in REM, but this drops to a quarter by the age of two. It is therefore thought that REM sleep is particularly vital for the developing brain. In NREM sleep, brain activity slows and a person woken at this stage may feel groggy. 1. Pituitary gland During non-REM sleep, the pituitary gland produces growth hormone and secretes prolactin. This counteracts dopamine, to lower general arousal levels. 2. Mouth You produce less saliva, which reduces the need to swallow. Five per cent of adults also grind their teeth at night, mostly during the early stages of sleep. 3. Lungs The throat muscles relax so your airway narrows when inhaling. This can cause snoring, or temporarily halt your breathing for a few ...

Humans need to sweat to survive in warm conditions, and that’s only possible if the combination of temperature and humidity – known as the wet-bulb temperature – stays below around 35°C. According to a 2012 study by scientists at MIT, this limit could be reached globally if our planet warms by around 12°C. Fortunately, few scientists think global warming will do this in the foreseeable future.

You can still have a fairly normal life without one of your lungs, a kidney, your spleen, appendix, gall bladder, adenoids, tonsils, plus some of your lymph nodes, the fibula bones from each leg and six of your ribs. Losing your uterus, ovaries and breasts, or your testicles and prostate, is also quite survivable, although you might need hormone therapy to avoid other long-term problems, such as brittle bones. If you allow yourself artificial replacements and medication, we can go further and remove your stomach, colon, pancreas, salivary glands, thyroid, bladder and your other kidney. Still not enough for you? Theoretically, surgeons could amputate all of your limbs, and remove your eyes, nose, ears, larynx, tongue, lower spine and rectum. Supported by machines in an intensive care unit, they could also take away your skull, heart and your remaining lung, at least for a short while. This adds up to a theoretically survivable loss of around 45 per cent of your total body mass. But a...

Even after passing through water treatment plants, small quantities of chemical compounds from cleaning products can find their way into rivers, ponds and lakes and have adverse effects on aquatic life. Phosphates in laundry and dishwasher detergent have a fertilising effect, triggering the widespread growth of algae that saps away the water’s oxygen, reducing biodiversity. By reducing water tension, surfactants allow other pollutants in water bodies to be absorbed more easily by plants and animals. Many other compounds can be toxic to wildlife, or affect growth and reproduction, for instance by mimicking the effects of hormones in mammals and fish

At -269°C, helium gas condenses to become a liquid. Cool it even further and it becomes a state of matter called a superfluid. In this state it has no measurable viscosity and so does some odd things, such as climbing up the walls of a dish, leaking through apparently solid materials and staying motionless while its container is spun. To create the liquid and superfluid states, you cool down helium gas to a few degrees above absolute zero. This is achieved by compressing the gas, and then expelling it through a small nozzle. As the gas expands, it rapidly cools (you’ll have noticed this effect if you’ve ever used an aerosol deodorant). The process is repeated until the gas that rushes out of the nozzle is cold enough to condense to a liquid, then if you repeat the cycle a few more times the helium will become cold enough to turn to a superfluid.

Talking in our heads is referred to by psychologists as ‘inner speech’. It involves some similar processes to ‘overt’ speech – it recruits brain regions involved in language, such as the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and is even accompanied by minute muscle movements in the larynx. However, there are notable differences too, with brain areas useful in inhibiting overt speech playing a greater role in inner speech. The exact brain mechanisms involved may come down to why we are talking in our heads in the first place. For example, when we read a book, brain regions involved in attention may be more active than when we are mentally preparing for a race.

Since the Martian atmosphere is about 100 times less dense than Earth’s, the ‘lift’ a frisbee experiences would also be about 100 times less. But the gravitational force on Mars is about a third of that on Earth, so a frisbee on Mars would act as if it is about 33 times heavier (100/3). Since the lift depends on the size of the frisbee, the angle of attack and the velocity it is thrown (as well as the air density), it would still be possible to make a frisbee glide, but it would require much more effort on the part of the thrower.

Beer typically has around 40 calories per 100ml (one pint = 568ml). To get your daily 2,000 calories just from beer, you’d need to drink 11 pints every day, which is hardly healthy. But the alcohol is the least of your problems. Beer, even real ale or Guinness, contains no fat, almost no protein and – crucially – no vitamin C. Without any source of vitamin C, you’ll experience symptoms of scurvy in two or three months and be dead in six.

The reason of rockets follow parabola Students have long been taught that all projectiles follow a curved path known as a parabola. The explanation is that, as they fly, they cover distance both horizontally and vertically – but only the latter is affected by the force of gravity, which bends the path of the projectile into a parabola. For longrange rockets, things are more complex. For example, air resistance must be taken into account. But, even ignoring that, a projectile doesn’t really follow a parabola – because the Earth isn’t flat. This means that gravity doesn’t simply pull objects straight back down. Instead, it pulls them towards the centre of the Earth, whose direction changes as the projectile moves further down-range, away from the launch site. Detailed calculations then reveal that the true trajectory is not a parabola, but part of an ellipse

Antarctic icefish have colourless blood with no red blood cells and no haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment. This probably comes down to a genetic mutation, and means their blood carries 90 per cent less oxygen than red blood. They survive partly because frigid Antarctic waters are oxygen-rich. Icefish also have enormous hearts that pump huge volumes of blood around their bodies, making sure they get enough oxygen. Antifreeze in their blood stops them from freezing (the salty Southern Ocean gets down to -2°C) but, as they are so well-adapted to the cold, their future in a warming world remains uncertain. 

TEN BIGGEST BANGS ON EARTH Seattle Kingdome demolition  When: 26 March 2000 Holding up to 66,000 sports fans in its 19.821 million m3 capacity, this stadium became the largest building to be demolished by explosives when it was destroyed in 2000. Chicxulub Impact When: 65 million years ago The chicxulub crater in mexico, a staggering 180km wide, was created when a 10km-wide meteorite crashed into earth. the impact is believed to have been a major contributing factor in the extinction of the dinosaurs. Heligoland explosion When: 18 April 1947 The royal navy tried – and failed – to blow up a whole north sea island and the huge German naval base it carried by detonating around 4,000 tonnes of explosives, one of the world’s biggestever single detonations. Despite that, the island remained intact. Mt Toba When: 75,000 years ago When the supervolcano mt toba erupted, it launched at least 2,800km3 of magma and ash into the atmosphere, causing a six-year volcanic win...

TEN MOST EXPENSIVE EXPERIMENTS 01 $150 Billion International Space Station (£92 billion) Weighing nearly 420 tonnes and floating 370km above the earth, the iss has been continuously occupied by astronauts from various countries since the first crew docked on 2 november 2000. 02 $20.6 Billion International Thermonuclear experimental reactor (£12.3 billion) In 2010 construction began in france on what will become the world’s largest tokamak fusion device – a magnetically confined core in which fuel will be heated to temperatures greater than 150,000,000°c. 03 $8 Billion   James Webb Space Telescope (£4.9 billion) Scheduled to launch in 2018, this telescope – a nasa project with input from the european and canadian space Agencies – will investigate how galaxies form by peering out to the farthest reaches of space. 04 $6.65 Billion  International linear collider (£4.1 billion) A planned particle accelerator even bigger than the large Hadron collide...

TEN CRUCIAL PHYSICS THEORIES Falling objects of different sizes accelerate at the same rate Who: Galileo galilei When: 1589 to disprove Aristotle’s theory of gravity, Galileo dropped two balls of different weights from the top of italy’s leaning tower of Pisa. Everything is composed of atoms Who: Leucippus and Democritus When: 5th century bc Atomism proposes that everything is composed of an infinite variety of indestructible, immutable ‘atoms’ that collide or link up to form clusters. Atoms are composed of smaller particles Who: Joseph John thomson When: 1897 By demonstrating that cathode rays are composed of negatively charged particles, thomson effectively found the electron – the first of the subatomic particles to be discovered. Every event has a natural cause Who: Thales When: c 580BC Greek philosopher thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology. He was among the first to try to identify a substance from which all things ...

TEN BREAKTHROUGHS IN GEOLOGY Deep time  Who: Aristotle When: 4th century BC the Greek philosopher recognised that the earth changes at an indiscernably slow rate, writing: “the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time” – a concept dubbed ‘deep time’. Stratification of the earth’s crust Who: Abraham Werner When: 1774 As the creationist views of early geologists softened, German geologist Werner proposed a system of classification of rocks and divided them into five chronological formations. Geomorphology Who: Shen Kuo When: 11th century Ad chinese scientist shen Kuo (AD 1031–95) made observations of marine fossil shells in mountains far from the ocean, and proposed that the rocks were once on a seashore. He theorised that land formed from uplift and silt deposits, and is gradually eroded. Continental drift  Who: Abraham Ortelius When: 1596 though Alfred Wegener is credited with the idea of continental drift ...

TEN SCIENTISTS WHO EXPERIMENTED ON THEMSELVES Max Joseph von Pettenkofer  1818–1901 in 1992, this Bavarian hygienist drank the diarrhoea of a cholera-stricken man in an attempt to demonstrate that the microbes became harmful only after incubating in the ground. He discovered that he was wrong. William J Harrington 1923–92 the American researcher in autoimmune disorders transfused blood from a patient with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura into himself, showing that the condition causes the body to destroy blood platelets. Horace Wells  1815–48 An American dentist in connecticut, Wells pioneered the use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in dentistry by having one of his own teeth extracted while under anaesthesia. John Paul Stapp 1910–99 the American researcher made a huge contribution to air-crash safety by testing the effects of rapid deceleration on the human body, strapping himself to a rocket sled braking rapidly from up to 1,000km/h. Nicolae Mino...

TEN GAME-HANGING FOSSIL FINDS Marine fossils Discovered: 6th century Bc Where: Greece lived: various periods the Greek philosopher Xenophanes reasoned that the fossils of marine creatures found on land were evidence of sea covering the earth in previous eras. Mosasaurus Discovered: 1764 Where: maastricht, netherlands lived: cretaceous (around 70–65 million years ago) this aquatic reptile was the first to be identified as an extinct species, by Georges cuvier, and the first genus of such an animal to be named, in 1822 by William conybeare. Megalosaurus Discovered: 1676 Where: oxfordshire lived: Jurassic (201–145 million years ago) A fossilised femur from this carnivore (left) was discovered in 1676, but it was nearly 150 years later that William Buckland and colleagues named the ‘huge lizard’ – and recognised it as the first-known dinosaur. Iguanodon Discovered: c1821 Where: sussex lived: early cretaceous (around 125 million years ago) one of three genera inc...

TEN BREAKTHROUGHS IN BIOLOGY Cell division Who: Robert Remak When: 1855 By staining a cell’s membrane, remak was able to prove that new cells are formed by the division of existing cells. He also surmised that tumours grow and are spread in the same manner. Cell biology  Who: Henri dutrochet When: early 19th century the french physiologist pioneered the study of cells as the key units of function in life, and suggested that basic processes of life are similar across all organisms. Homeostasis Who: Claude Bernard When: 1854 Bernard stated that “all the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object: that of preserving constant the conditions of life.” this encapsulates the concept of homeostasis – the maintenance of a constant internal environment, key to most forms of life. Genetic inheritance  Who: Gregor Mendel When: 1865 By studying pea plants, mendel discovered that inheritance of many traits, such as height, could be explained through ...