Technology round-up

Published on Saturday 27 September 2008 19:55

SMART PHONE The first phone to use Google's Android software launched today.

Designed to improve the speed and quality of using the internet on mobile handsets, the T-Mobile G1 will go head to head with Apple's iPhone, the Blackberry and other smartphones.

It has a keyboard behind a slide-out touchscreen to allow users easy navigation and is being touted as a phone with the capability of a hand-held computer.

It will be available from November on the T-Mobile network and will be free on price plans from 40 a month. Other manufacturers are expected to produce their own Google phones over the next 12 months.

MARS MISSION

The ageing Mars rover Opportunity is set to embark on a two-year mission it may never complete – a seven-mile journey to a crater far bigger than one it has called home for two years, Nasa says. The golf-cart-sized robot with a wobbly front wheel climbed out of Victoria crater earlier this month and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are steering the probe toward a crater more than 20 times larger, dubbed Endeavour.

BOMB WARNING

Campaigners have issued a warning about plans for a new generation of intelligent cluster bombs that pick out and chase their targets. The US air force hopes to develop the "guided smart submunitions" according to New Scientist magazine.

US aerospace firms have been asked to submit design proposals for the weapons, to be fitted with sensors capable of locking on to targets up to five kilometres away.

UNIVERSAL FAULT

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva will be out of action until the spring while engineers investigate a fault. A large amount of helium leaked into the tunnel this month, forcing the 3.6bn particle accelerator to be shut down, less than ten days after the start of the project which scientists hope will unravel the secrets of the first moments of the universe.

An initial investigation suggested a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets could be to blame. The collider requires temperatures just above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees C) to allow particles to be steered around the circuit. But as a result of the fault, the temperature of the magnets rose by about 100C.

NASA RAP

A postgraduate student who uses his love of hip hop to make science easier to understand has been commissioned by Nasa to write a rap. Jonathan Chase, from London, was asked to come up with the 'Astrobiology Rap' for the latest edition of Nasa's Astrobiology Magazine European Edition. The song and video has been viewed nearly 10,000 times on YouTube.