Cutting Edge

Election Day freneticism is the norm for the likes of candidates, journalists, poll workers, campaign staffers, and commentators. But this time around, an unlikely tech entrepreneur and his employees entered the fray.

Jeff Han demonstrates his company's multitouch system.

(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)

Jeff Han is the man behind CNN's "Magic Wall" multitouch electronic wall map, the one reporter John King has been using all campaign season to illustrate election information and that was the target of a recent Saturday Night Live spoof (embedded at the end of this post). Han's company, New York-based Perceptive Pixel, has also provided its technology to Fox News Channel (Bill Hemmer's "Bill-board") and to ABC News, which unveiled its version of the map Tuesday night.

Han--a crowd favorite at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in 2006 and 2007--even equipped, trained, and collaborated with SNL staff for the spoof skit in which cast member Fred Armisen gets carried away drawing a green cat over the country and moving Minnesota on top of Virginia.

CNN's John King shows off his "Magic Wall" election map that's built on Perceptive Pixel's multitouch system.

(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)

"It was a ton of fun to be there and to work with creative people," he said of his time at SNL.

The TED show "was the launch of this whole thing," he said, noting that a video of his 2006 presentation quickly spread around the Web. That, of course was before the launches of Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's Surface, both of which also take advantage of touch technology.

Another key moment in Han's company's 2.5-year timeline was a military trade show where CNN executive producer David Bohrman just happened to be walking the floors. He took notice of Han's technology, which unlike traditional touch screens allows you to use more than one finger--or the fingers of multiple users--at a time.

A demo of Perceptive Pixel's multitouch screen using two hands.

(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)

"He saw the technology in a different way than anyone else had," said Han, 32, who never conceived of his product's application in television news. "I hadn't thought of it that way, but I wasn't disagreeing," he said.

The result, in the case of CNN's map anyway, has been the ability to zoom in and out of states, change them to different shades of blue or red, quickly tally electoral votes under different scenarios, and more.

Han's employees were stationed at CNN, Fox, and ABC Tuesday night to help their graphics departments make sure things ran smoothly. But amid the frenzy of the day he said he was confident it would all go well--they had been working long and hard with the TV networks in preparation for the big night.

The applications for Perceptive Pixel's technology run the gamut--from defense and government to private companies--depending upon how the software toolkit is used. The TV news applications are actually a small fraction of the current uses, Han said, although they are the most challenging and have the highest visibility.

Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han

(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)

With his background in computer graphics, Han said at one point it hit him that what he liked about the field was not so much the pretty, photo-realistic presentation of information, but interacting with the information, manipulating it, and moving things around. That's what led Han--who conducted research for and is still associated with New York University's computer science department--to start working on his multitouch system about six years ago.

So far, Han said his company is weathering the economic downturn and its user base continues to grow. He wants all new clients to see the SNL skit, which he said relays the important message that technology is just that. What matters is using it appropriately. Same for multitouch specifically, he said; there are times when it's the perfect solution. There are also times when other technologies are more appropriate.

"In the wrong hands, it doesn't work," he said, thankful that King was the one presenting his technology for the first time to much of the world.

Professor Peter Higgs will have to wait at least a few additional seasons to find out whether his long-held theory on how matter has mass is right.

That's because officials announced Tuesday that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which could confirm the existence of a theoretical particle name after Higgs, will remain shut down until at least early spring.

Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.

(Credit: Maximilien Brice for CERN)

The LHC, the world's largest particle collider, is located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN), it promises to push forward theories of particle physics, such as the Higgs Boson, and the fundamental building blocks of all things.

The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. However, it hit a major glitch last week when a mechanical failure triggered a helium leak and forced a shutdown for what was initially reported to be at least two months.

Now it looks like the investigation and repairs won't be finished in time to restart the LHC before CERN's obligatory winter maintenance period, pushing the restart date back to early spring 2009, officials said.

CERN Director General Robert Aymar said in a press release that the delay was "undoubtedly a psychological blow," but added that the success with the first beam operation was testimony to the years of preparation and the skills of teams involved. "I have no doubt that we will overcome this setback with the same degree or rigor and application."

It appears the helium link was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. But the magnets involved can't even be opened up for investigation until the sector is brought to room temperature, which will take three or four weeks, CERN said.

Peter Limon, who was responsible for commissioning the Tevatron superconducting accelerator in the U.S., offered perspective by adding that such problems are to be expected given the size and complexity of the LHC.

"Events occur from time to time that temporarily stop operations, for shorter or longer periods, especially during the early phases," he said in the press statement.

The LHC experiments involve accelerating two beams of subatomic particles--called hadrons--in opposite directions to more than 99.9 percent the speed of light. Smashing the beams together will create showers of new particles for physicists to study using special detectors. On a microscale, it will re-create conditions that existed during the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Space Shuttle Endeavour is on standby (in the background) in case something happens on Atlantis' mission to fix the Hubble telescope.

(Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller )

It's not just a pretty picture. This NASA photo from Kennedy Space Center shows how, for the first time since July 2001, two shuttles are on launch pads at the same time. Atlantis is in the foreground on Launch Pad A, and Endeavour is behind it on Launch Pad B.

Endeavour was moved into position Friday so it could be on standby in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is necessary for the Atlantis' planned October 10 mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the agency said.

Once Endeavour is cleared from its rescue spacecraft duty, it's scheduled to move to Launch Pad A for planned November 12 mission to the International Space Station.

What makes the Hubble repair mission particularly dangerous is that if Atlantis gets seriously damaged during flight, the seven astronauts would be stranded--they couldn't just hang out at the International Space Station waiting for a ride.

Plus, as the Associated Press points out, Atlantis "faces an estimated 1-in-185 chance that a piece of space junk or a micrometeoroid will cause catastrophic damage to their ship." Those odds are greater than for a typical shuttle flight because of Hubble's unusually high and debris-filled orbit.

The world's largest particle collider has been shut down for at least two months due to a large helium leak stemming from an incident Friday, officials said.

The Large Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle accelerator located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.

Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.

(Credit: Maximilien Brice for CERN)

The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. On the heels of an earlier malfunction due to a faulty transformer, CERN said Friday's incident was most likely caused "by a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure." At no time was there any risk to people, CERN added.

Although a full investigation is still under way, CERN announced Saturday that the section of the tunnel will have to be "warmed up" for repairs, which means the LHC will be down for at least two months.

The LHC experiments involve accelerating two beams of subatomic particles--called hadrons--in opposite directions to more than 99.9 percent the speed of light. Smashing the beams together will create showers of new particles for physicists to study using special detectors.

The result is expected to push forward theories of particle physics and the fundamental building blocks of all things. The LHC was designed primarily as an attempt to product the "Higgs boson," a hypothetical particle whose observation would help confirm some of the predictions in the Standard Model of physics. Other currently theoretical particles may also be observed for the first time, including microscopic black holes.

Some have theorized that the black hole experiments could go wrong with catastrophic results, but CERN has done extensive safety analysis and has repeatedly denied any such threat.