Free Download: Google Earth 5.0 Ocean Edition

The amazing Google Earth software has just got even better, Google has released a new version of Google

Earth having capabilities of going underwater, it will let you dive beneath the surface and witness underwater terrains that would otherwise would not be possible for a average human. It even sports a historical imagery feature by which you go back in time to see changes taking place on the Earth over time because of human influences, It also has a touring feature by which you can record your actions and places you visit to play them later.

The new version is called Google Earth for Oceans and ocean feature is turned on by default, zooming in on Ocean surface will let you dive beneath the surface where you can navigate 3D underwater sea floor terrain. It has 20 layers of content information contributed by ocean explorers, scientists and researchers having photos, videos and information that i am sure will surprise you.

50-Terabytes of Data on DVDs?!

Prof. Renugopalakrishnan and his team at Harvard Medical School in Boston have discovered a unique protein that could possibly be used to store up to 50,000-gigabytes (50-terabytes) of data onto medium the size of our DVDs.

Well, I’ve covered ferroelectricity technology that promises more than a thousand times greater storage space than this. But both technologies are just as out-of-reach right now.

The light-activated protein is found in the membrane of a salt marsh microbe Halobacterium salinarum and is also known as bacteriorhodopsin (bR). It captures and stores sunlight to convert it to chemical energy. When light shines on bR, it is converted to a series of intermediate molecules each with a unique shape and colour before returning to its ‘ground state’.

As the intermediates only lasts for hours or days, the professor had to modify the DNA that produces this protein to extend it up to several years. Not quite enough I would say. After all, do you really want to re-backup that 50-terabytes every couple of years?

But ferroelectricity or proteins, we don’t really care. Just give us our next-gen uber-large storage technology before our storerooms are decked full of DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD backups. Blame it on BitTorrent.