Month: November 2016

Enlarge

For the first time, politics impact everything you do. Football Manager 2017 not only encourages you to think about how popular sports are impacted by wider political ideals, but also how sport simply can't exist without a surrounding society and culture. This is a game that doesn't just entertain, but makes a political statement too.

There are no prizes for guessing which political topic Football Manager 2017 tackles. Brexit, the UK's favourite national pastime, is here, warts and all, ready to rain on your managerial parade. Of course, no one really knows for sure the exact impact Brexit will have on the UK, especially when it comes to football, and so it takes on a number of different forms. At a randomised point over the course of your first few seasons, you're informed of the type of Brexit the British government has managed to negotiate with the EU, and what that means for your squad.

The "soft" Brexit scenario sees free movement of workers remain and, therefore, bringing in EU players remains as straightforward as it is today. A "hard" Brexit means EU players are subject to the same work permit regulations governing the signing of non-EU nationals, so a player must have already proven themselves as a top professional before they're granted working rights by the government. For example, players are more likely to be given a work permit if they have won a number of caps for a top national team (Germany, Brazil, Argentina etc), if they are one of the highest earners at their current club, or if their transfer fee is especially high.

Enlarge (credit: Defence Images)

The UK government has promised to spend nearly £2 billion over the next five years to try to tackle the growing problem of cyber attacks in the country.

Recent research suggested that Britain is particularly susceptible to data breaches involving compromised employee account data. Nonetheless, chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond claimed on Tuesday that the country is "an acknowledged global leader in cyber security."

Number 11's occupant crowed that the previous Tory-led coalition government had chucked £860 million at the problem, but Hammond then undermined himself somewhat by adding that "we must now keep up with the scale and pace of the threats we face." Which underlines the fact that the government is playing catch-up in its race against cybercrims.

Two of the telescopes comprising ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile. (credit: Iztok Bončina/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))

If you look at one of the points of light in the night sky, chances are good it’s not a star—it’s likely two or more stars, so close together they look like one from far away. These binary, trinary, and more complex star systems formed together out of a single cloud of gas and dust.

This formation process is hard to observe because protostars have not yet begun nuclear fusion and are thus very dim. Furthermore, in many of these systems, the protostars are so close together that only an extremely sensitive instrument could resolve their separation. Fortunately, a very sensitive instrument now exists. A team of researchers turned to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and imaged a multi-star system during its formation. The team’s observations shed light on the mechanisms that create these systems.

Researchers have proposed two main mechanisms by which multiple-star systems might form. Both mechanisms may account for some of these systems, though it’s not known what percentage each mechanism is responsible for. The first mechanism is a fragmentation of a nebula’s gas over large scales, which happens due to turbulence in the gas. The second mechanism is the gas fragmenting at smaller scales. When this happens, the fragmentation occurs due to gravitational instabilities in the spinning disk that forms the star and any planets.