Buzz Briefs: Now You See Me...; Jet Engines Cool Servers

Now You See Me ...

Have you ever just wanted to disappear for awhile? Thanks to cell phones, buzzing BlackBerrys and IM with presence, it's harder than ever for IT pros to get some private time.

That may change. A theoretical physicist has announced that invisibility may actually be possible. Dr. Ulf Leonhardt, of St. Andrews University in Scotland, has published research in the New Journal of Physics that lays out the physics necessary for theoretical devices to bend light waves around objects or persons, rendering them invisible.

Unfortunately, no such devices yet exist. In the meantime, you can always fall back on a decidedly untechnological form of invisibility--hiding under your desk. --Andrew Conry-Murray, [email protected]

Jet Engines Cool ServersIt's a serendipitous union of a serious research lab and a hobby shop: Engineers at Hewlett-Packard are building servers cooled by modified versions of the jet engines used to propel radio-controlled airplanes. HP adapted the blades of the engine's propeller to create a fan that produces pressure to push heated air past the heat sinks.

Heat is a critical issue in data centers, so the project is more than just a neat hardware hack. The modified fans are smaller than normal computer fans and also more energy-efficient, allowing the designers to pack more servers into the same amount of space. The new fans, which HP has dubbed the Active Cool Fan, are used in the company's BladeSystem c-Class racks and servers. We can assume they don't also fly. --Andrew Conry-Murray, [email protected]

FYI

Symantec's Norton Antivirus software mistakenly identified parts of a sermon-writing software program as spyware and deleted it, earning the wrath (and perhaps a few curses?) of UK. vicars.

Source: ZDNet UK, zdnet.co.uk0