Science

Hewlett-Packard has been hard at work creating glasses-free 3D technology for mobile devices. That's right, no silly glasses.

Publishing their findings in the science journal Nature today, HP researchers say that this type of technology could transform data visualization, medical training, and entertainment.

The effect is "much like you'd see in the movie `Star Wars' with the hologram of Princess Leia," lead author of the paper David Fattal told the Associated Press today.

Creating 3D for mobile devices is far different than for movies, however. According to Nature, this technology would look like a hologram but … Read more

A year after discovering rockets from the Apollo 11 moon mission on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, Bezos Expeditions has recovered "many prime pieces" of the engines, Jeff Bezos blogged today.

Amazon's billionaire founder and chief executive wrote that the crew of the ship Seabed Worker spent three weeks at sea, working almost three miles below the surface to pull up the various piece of the engines.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland -- an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves … Read more

Two cryptography scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won the 2012 Turing Award for pioneering ways to make online transactions secure, the Association for Computing Machinery announced today.

Scientists Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali were recognized for laying the "foundations of modern theoretical cryptography," which lead to the development of technology that is now standard in security, like encryption and digital signatures, according to ACM.

The prestigious award, named after British mathematician Alan M. Turing, comes with a $250,000 cash prize provided by Intel and Google. Turing is known as a pioneer of modern computing … Read more

To observers of the papal conclave, one part of the process will probably stand out as the most visible and exciting. Today, all 115 cardinals will isolate themselves from the rest of the world, their only contact with the outside world being smoke signals.

What the fumes indicate is simple: black smoke means there has been no decision on a new pontiff. But if the "fumata bianca," or white smoke, flows out of the chimney, then the world knows there is a new Bishop of Rome. The color has to be just right, or millions of onlookers will be fooled.

But just how does the smoke get its color? … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas -- SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk wowed a capacity SXSW crowd here today with the first public showing of a video of a rocket capable of blasting off and then returning safely and gently to the ground. And he later added he hopes to one day travel (perhaps one-way) to Mars.

The video of the company's Grasshopper rocket, filmed just about a day-and-a-half ago, demonstrates one of SpaceX's key propositions: That it can develop reusable rockets at a fraction of the cost of a traditional NASA mission, and that it can bring them back down … Read more

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution to create an academic competition that would encourage students to build mobile and computer apps. The Academic Competition Resolution of 2013 is a bi-partisan effort led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who represents much of Silicon Valley.

The competition, according to the resolution, "will evolve over time and will challenge students in specialized areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to ensure maximum participation." The resolution states: "Because of the importance of computer science it would be appropriate to initially challenge students … Read more

It's not news that cell phones harbor bacteria, but there's a difference between knowing that about your device and seeing the germs up close in all their furry, florid glory.

Molecular biology undergraduates at the U.K.'s University of Surrey recently got a stark view of just how much bacteria crawls on their phones when instructor Simon Park had them imprint their devices onto petri dishes filled with a bacteriological growth medium and wait a few days to see what bloomed. … Read more

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--I'm standing behind Leo Villareal, watching the well-known artist calibrate settings in the software running on his screen. Each time he moves a slider, one of the world's largest art installations -- mounted on one of the world's most-famous landmarks -- changes in an instant.

It's a gorgeous evening on the Embarcadero, San Francisco's eastern waterfront, with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge dominating the landscape in front of us, and a near-full moon doing its best to overcome the typical evening fog cover. Lights from the city, and from Oakland on the other side of the bay reflect brilliantly in the water. And with just the most subtle adjustments in his custom-designed software, Villareal makes thousands of LEDs strung out over the 1.8 mile-long western span of the bridge almost instantaneously change what they're doing, and how they're interacting with each other. … Read more