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Staring at the Sun
Welcome to Roque de los Muchaches, one of the Island of La Palma in the Canaries. This mountain is littered with the eerie domes of astronomical telescopes. But amid the white domes, another unworldly structure rises on seemingly fragile metal legs. It is the Dutch Open Telescopes (DOT), a relatively small instrument designed to observe the seating disc of the sun, which has always been a difficult task to achieve. DOT's unearthly shape raging heat that creates extreme turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere and thus makes good observations from the ground a near-impossible feat. The DOT will produce images that can rival those obtained by much larger instruments, and that too, at a fraction of their cost. You too, can reach for the Sun if you visit the official DOT Website at http://www.tys.run.nl/~rutten/dot.

It's a steel
Iron and steel were vital to the Victorian age as the Internet is to ours. Henry Bessemer, who revolutionised steel-making and died a century ago is well represented on the Net. Bessemer was prolific inventor, who met Napoleon III and was tried - and acquitted - for espionage in Germany. Bessemer met the emperor while he was showing off his newly-invented artillery shells to the French army. Although the army was interested in using these shells to replace the cannonballs, Bessemer did not get the contract as the generals fear that their cast-iron guns would not be strong enough. This set Bessemer looking for a way top make iron stronger, and in 1856, he perfected the process that now bears his name, and the converter that made mass production of steel possible. For an explanation of how the converter functions and information about the various dangers involved during its early trials, make a beeline for http://www.exnet.com/1995/09/27/science/science/html.

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