My God, it's full of stars...

...but in one trillion (a million millions, or a thousand billions) years time (alien) astronomers won't be able to see much beyond our own local galaxy, according to this interesting article from PhysOrg.com.

As time goes on, and the universe continues to expand much of the evidence that lead to our own conclusion that the universe began about 13 billion years ago in a Big Bang will become undetectable. From the hypothetical point of view of our hypothetical astronomers the universe will appear static.

The article notes that this could mean that there are crucial things about our own universe that we don't know about.

I've always found this aspect of science, that there are probably huge, fundamental and profound unanswered questions that we don't even know we should be asking. It seems every generation or so someone says "we basically know everything, we just need to fill in the details" then something turns up that changes everything.

I'm rather looking forward to the next time such an event occurs.

Interesting news from The War on Viruses: a new sort of software that analyses potential viruses on the basis of their predicted behaviour, rather than from the software's memory of what viruses look like.

It is reassuring that the conflict between virus-makers and antivirus software-makers has resulted in an essential standstill, or equilibrium. I have never experienced a particularly destructive, targeted virus, so I can only assume that the viruses are being held at bay.

Hooray for superconducting electric motors, coming (in a long while) to a Prius near you.