fuzzypuzzle

Google Goggles — Amazed (w/ a Side Order of Skeptical)

Contenders For the 2010 James Dyson Design Award

Pretty cool. The bazooka life preserver would make saving people super fun. I'd push a senior citizen off a cruise ship just to get a chance to use that thing.

 

What Would Happen If I Put My Hand In The Large Hadron Collider?

Newly Discovered MetaMaterial, ULTRABLACK, Absorbs Almost All Light

Full story over at New Scientist.

This "blacker than black" stuff is an example of a class of substances known as metamaterials, which exhibit optical properties not normally found in nature.

Metamaterials consist of a regular array of two or more tiny components, each smaller than the wavelengths of the light they interact with. It is this array-like internal structure that gives them their unusual properties.

Evgenii Narimanov of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, realised that it should be possible to design a metamaterial with the right internal structure to absorb virtually all the electromagnetic radiation in a particular range. An object made of such a material would effectively be perfectly black. By contrast, ordinary black objects always reflect a little light.

The primary application will be making equipment invisible to radar.

Boston Dynamics' Big Dog Robot — aka. Nightmare Machine

This thing is inherently creepy to begin with, but wait for about the 1:20 mark, when it slips on ice and recovers it's balance. AAAGGHHHH!!. Still needs a little work on the stealth component though.

Boston Dynamics' Little Dog Robot

Stephen Hawking Says Space Aliens Probably Not Very Nice

So much for the E.T. and Close Encounters scenario.

LONDON (AFP) – Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.

The programmes depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," warned Hawking.

The doomsday scenario is suggested in the series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" on the Discovery Channel, which began airing in the United States on Sunday.

On the probability of alien life existing, he says: "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Glowing squid-like creatures, herds of herbivores that can hang onto a cliff face and bright yellow predators that kill their prey with stinging tails are among the creatures that stalk the scientist's fantastical cosmos. Link.

Vinyl Record Groove at 1000x Magnification

 

Neill Blomkamp (District 9) Talks Aliens at TED Conference

New Mac "Magic Mouse" Has Potential

I've hated all of Apple's dumb-ass mouse designs. No multi-click? No scroll wheel?  And don't even get me started on that i-mac circular mouse. Worst design ever. I've been using a Logitech multi-click, scroll wheel mouse for over a decade now. But these new "magic mice" look promising (with the exception of the silly name, stupid symmetry, and impractical white color scheme)