June 2013

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer

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The novel “And Another Thing…” by Eoin Colfer was published for the first time in 2009. It’s the sequel of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams, in particular of the novel “Mostly harmless”.

The Earth is about to be destroyed by the Vogons when Zaphod Beeblebrox arrives with the starship “Heart of Gold” and rescues his old friends, who discover that the onboard computer was replaced by Zaphod’s second head. Accidentally, Ford Prefect freezes the head and things seem to go wrong when Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged arrives and saves them again.

Artistic concept of a spacecraft capturing an asteroid (Image NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab)

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Yesterday NASA announced the start of a “Grand Challenge”, an ambitious goal at a global level, in this case the detection of all the asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth. It’s a project that is supposed to involve other government agencies as well as international partners, scientific institutions, private companies and even amateur astronomers.

Part of the Tianhe-2 supercomputer (Photo courtesy Top500. All rights reserved)

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The Tianhe-2 supercomputer, developed by the National University of Defense Technology in China, has been recognized as the world’s most powerful in the Top500 ranking updated on June 2013. By the end of the year it’s expected to be installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China. With its 33,862.7 TFlop/s, it nearly doubled the computing power of Titan, the former king of supercomputers. Its computing power peak can in theory reach 54,902.4 TFlop/s.

Doctor Who - Invasion of the Dinosaurs

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“Invasion of the Dinosaurs” is an adventure of the eleventh season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1974 featuring the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. It follows “The Time Warrior” and it’s a six parts adventure written by Malcolm Hulke and directed by Paddy Russell.