NASA successfully tests engine that violates the law of physics, uses no fuel

This is great news. NASA has successfully tested a space drive that uses no fuel and so does not use propellant. The drive called 'Cannae Drive' is apparently based on the work of a British scientist named Roger Shawyer called the EMDrive. It is said to work by bouncing microwaves in an enclosed chamber and thus creating thrust.

According to NASA :

"Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma."

Earliest human species found in Ethiopia

An ancient jawbone fragment is the oldest human fossil discovered yet, a bone potentially from a new species that reveals the human family may have arose a half million years earlier than previously thought, researchers say.

This find also sheds light on the kind of landscape where humans first originated, scientists added.

For decades, scientists have been searching Africa for signs of the earliest phases of the human family, during the shift from more apelike Australopithecus species to more human early Homo species. Until now, the earliest credible fossil evidence of the genus Homo was dated to about 2.3 million or 2.4 million years ago.

Now researchers have found a human fossil in Ethiopia about 2.8 million years old. 

Line Following Robot

Beehive that Automatically Extracts Honey

The Flow Hive is a new beehive invention that promises to eliminate the more laborious aspects of collecting honey from a beehive with a novel spigot system that taps into specially designed honeycomb frames. Invented over the last decade by father and son beekeepers Stuart and Cedar Anderson, the system eliminates the traditional process of honey extraction where frames are removed from beehives, opened with hot knives, and loaded into a machine that uses centrifugal force to get the honey out.

A Solar panel on your arm (To monitor your vitals !!)

How wonderful !!

A team of engineers has developed a solar-powered, plastic armband that measures the wearer’s body temperature. You can set a threshold temperature for the device, so that an alarm goes off when your temperature rises too high. It works both inside and outside of clothing. The armband could be adapted to detect other vital signs, too, such as heart rate, the armband’s lead engineer, University of Tokyo professor Takao Someya, said in a statement.

Earthquake in Indonesia: India withdraws tsunami warning

Courtesy : NDTV

India has withdrawn the tsunami warning issued after the massive earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale in Indonesia this afternoon, Press Trust of India reports.

A second round of tremors was felt in India in cities like Kolkata and Chennai at 4.25 pm, but there was no tsunami threat from these aftershocks. India's Nicobar Islands, closest to the epicentre of the quake, is still on alert.

The original earthquake struck Indonesia at 2.08 pm, and first reports said it measured 8.9 on the Richter scale. It spurred warnings of a possible tsunami. The quake was later downgraded to 8.6 magnitude.

A little over two hours after the first earthquake, Indonesia reported an aftershock that hovered around 8.2 on the Richter scale.

Officials in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are prepped for emergency processes. People have been asked to move away from the coast and the government evacuated some people from South Andaman as a precaution.

The Indian Air Force has kept ready for relief ops; six teams of 40 people each from the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) have been positioned at Hindon near Delhi, and at Chennai and two C-130 J heavy-lift aircrafts of the Indian Air Force are leaving for Port Blair with NDRF teams and 10 tonnes of relief material.

Before the strong aftershocks, the Home Secretary RK Singh said, "As of now there are no signs of a tsunami." But he said the union government was in constant touch with officials in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Odisha.

The minutes after the first quake saw emergency drills in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. On the beaches at Chennai, policemen used megaphones to ask people to leave, with little effect. Mobile phone networks were jammed in the city till 4 pm. In Andhra Pradesh, fishermen were asked to return from sea. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, civilians were asked to move to higher ground. In Kolkata, metro trains were stopped at 2.40 pm for nearly an hour; as a precaution, passengers were evacuated.

The quake was felt in Singapore, Thailand and India. High-rise apartments and offices on Malaysia's west coast shook for at least a minute.

In India, tremors were reported in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and the southern part of Chennai. The tremors lasted for a few seconds. In Bhubaneshwar, people were seen running out of their homes and offices. No damage has been reported so far.

NDTV viewer AG Kalidass emailed from Bangalore to say, "We were feeling our building shaking." Another viewer Shyam Agarwal writes, "I am from Kolkata. Just now a few minutes back heavy stroke of earthquake has been observed here."

Indonesia's disaster management agency said power was down in Aceh province and people were gathering on high ground as sirens warned of the danger.

"The electricity is down, there are traffic jams to access higher ground. Sirens and Koran recitals from mosques are everywhere," said Sutopo, spokesman for the agency.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the powerful quake was centred 20 miles (33 kilometres) beneath the ocean floor around 308 miles (495 kilometres) from Aceh's provincial capital.

Indonesia straddles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to volcanic and seismic activity.

A giant 9.1-magnitude quake off the country on December 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people in 13 Indian Ocean countries, including Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.

Facebook purchases Instagram for $1million

Facebook has bought the Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram is one of the most popular social networking photos sharing application for iOS and Android. It has more than 30 million fans. This news came straightly from the Press release by the Mark Zeckburg, CEO of the world’s largest social networking website, Facebook and the CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom.

According to the press release, Instagram will remain as standalone app and service but Facebook may add some features to the Facebook App from Instagram. Here’s the complete press release:

“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that compliment each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features in our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone fro Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.”

Instagram has done tremendous progress since last year. This app has more than 27 million Apple fans while 5 million photos are shared per day.