NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, has a lot of time on its hands these days--so naturally it's spending a lot of time on Twitter.
The $2.5 billion science laboratory on wheels is in the middle of a 352-million mile trip to the Red Planet with an anticipated arrival date of August 5, 2012. If you're wondering exactly how fast that means Curiosity is traveling through space right now, well... you could just ask it, like @KristineKisky did, eliciting this response that's sure to confuse all non-space nerd-type people:
Curiosity has been actively tweeting and answering fan tweets since before its launch at the end of November. It's even developed a fairly sophisticated--if incredibly geeky--sense of humor and pop culture sensibility, with gems like Super Bowl weekend's "Think Brady & Manning throw long spirals? I'll go 352+ million miles to "touchdown" in Gale Crater." Or "30 Seconds to Mars? More like 241 days to go!"
I need to reprioritize the items in my Hurricane Irene Go Bag. How do I know this? Because this a.m. I found myself struggling to decide which toy my cat would prefer should we be forced to evacuate our home early tomorrow morning.
And if you do live in one of the affected areas, you can download apps for both iOS and Android devices that show Doppler radar info, detailed maps, and ongoing weather warnings and satellite images for up-to-date news on the storm. But what should you pack in your emergency "Go Bag"?
For centuries now, horses have been passed up by technology--forced to live in the shadows of manmade monstrosities like the train or the motorcar that add insult to injury by co-opting the name of their equine forebears with twisted phrases like "Iron Horse," "horsepower," and "Mustang GT."
Those dark times are coming to an end; the age of the bionic horse is upon us.
A miniature horse born sans much of his right leg was recently fitted with a nifty new prosthesis that makes him able to run like some sort of Lee Majors/Seabiscuit hybrid, except, uh...smaller.
When we first heard about this story, we naturally all had the same reaction: "We've gotta get on whatever health insurance plan that tiny horse has!"
I hope you're sitting down, because I have some information that might be earth-shattering for some of you. Others will give a collective "meh," and nobody would really blame you. But here it is: due to one scientist's offhanded comments, the Internet says you might no longer be the astrological sign you always thought you were.
You see, the ancient Babylonians made up the first zodiac systems thousands of years ago, and astrologically minded people have been using the same systems, more or less unchanged, since then. The problem, though, is that the Earth's tilt on its axis has shifted significantly since then. If you remap the zodiac using Earth's current position, you get a different telling of who's an Aries, Leo, and so on--including a newish sign called Ophiuchus.
Imagine it like this: If you spin something, the direction of the axis tends to wobble. The Earth's axis in its orbit does the same thing because of a phenomenon called precession, and is now facing a different star than it did 5,000 years ago. That means that the constellations that made up the Babylonian zodiac are not the constellations the sun currently passes through. So, according to many stories online today, a new zodiac could be devised. And that has believers in a frenzy.
Turning up their noses at modern handheld devices, British researchers are rebuilding a 60-year-old, room-size computer that used 5-foot-long tubes of mercury as memory.
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was first built at Cambridge University. It's recognized as the world's first practical electronic stored-program computer, and unlike earlier program-controlled computers, none of its wiring or switches had to be changed to perform a new calculation.
Programs were fed into the machine on a punched tape. The first was run on May 6, 1949, computing a set of square numbers.
Here's some fodder for discussion at the next Passover seder. Moses might have gotten some serious help from the wind when he parted the Red Sea as chronicled in the Old Testament.
According to a new computer-modeling study, wind patterns at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea are such that they could have pushed the waters back and created a temporary land crossing.
The researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder made their discovery as part of a larger study of wind's impact on water depths and reported their findings in a recent issue of the online peer-review journal PLoS One. They used archaeological records, satellite measurements, and current maps to reconstruct the likely locations and depths of Nile delta waterways, which have shifted considerably since Moses' time more than 3,000 years ago.
The biblical Exodus account, famously and dramatically presented in the 1956 movie "The Ten Commandments," describes Moses leading the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to eventual safety.
In what is often recounted as a divine miracle, an east wind blows the waters of the Red Sea back, creating a passageway that enables the fleeing Israelities to safely pass through to the other shore. Then, the story goes, the waters engulf and drown Pharoah's pursuing army.
The researchers say this story can possibly be explained by "wind setdown," a phenomenon in which strong offshore winds can temporarily lower water levels in shallow coastal areas.
Using 14 computer models, they found that 63mph winds, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back waters estimated to be 6 feet deep. This would have exposed mud flats for 4 hours, creating a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide. The water would have been pushed back into a surrounding lake and river channel, creating water barriers on both sides of the exposed mud flats and thus creating a land bridge people could have possibly walked across.
People working on low-cost technology solutions to the challenges of life in developing countries gathered last month in Colorado to exchange ideas, and two of them addressed some of the most basic needs--light and clean water--for people in India.
One project discussed at the conference is the Sollys solar lamp. Like the Nokero solar bulb, it can replace polluting, ineffective kerosene lamps used at night in poor rural villages with little or no electricity. Some residents walk for hours every month to obtain kerosene and carry it home to mountain communities.
Volunteer group Avani manufactures and distributes Sollys in part of the Indian Himalayas in Uttarakhand state. It says there are no other solar lamps available in the region, where far-flung communities are not connected to electricity grids.
Avani trains locals to manufacture the lamps out of parts sourced from Indian companies. Sollys consists of a solar panel connected to a battery-operated fluorescent lantern. One model costs $45 and can be purchased through a partner microcredit loan for about $2 a month, which is what many families spend on kerosene oil. The price includes two years of maintenance, something Avani says distinguishes Sollys from competitors.
The group says its Sollys lights can operate for three days without a charge, which comes in handy during the monsoon season and its overcast skies. Avani sells about 500 lights per year, and aims to reach 1,000 families in 2011.
Deriq is not your typical Internet star. He often hides out of view and one of his pastimes is taking apart his Mr. Potato Head. Perhaps the most exciting thing he does is eat--underwater.
But that's all perfectly normal behavior for the most popular resident at the visitor center at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. Deriq, a giant Pacific octopus, can now be seen by even bigger crowds thanks to a submersible Webcam recently installed in his tank.
The OctoCam's live 24-hour video stream takes viewers underwater and inside the octopus tank, which is also populated by sea stars and sea anemones. At first glance, all might appear to be quiet. But then the tip of a tentacle comes into view. Suddenly, more tentacles unfurl and appear to be coming straight for you, causing you instinctively to lean back just a little--even though the show isn't in 3D.
The submersible Webcam is a Lorex CVS 1000, which has infrared capability and allows images to be transmitted even when lighting is low. (The best viewing times are during the center's business hours, when the lights outside the tank are on.)
Installing the camera in the tank was no easy task. Octopuses, as you might guess, are adept at taking things apart. But the OctoCam team also had to consider how best to protect the octopus from the camera. Most of the hardware available commercially is out because it's made of metals that break down in sea water.
So the team had to design their own housing. They used a stainless-steel electrical box and applied a special marine-grade powder coating to prevent zinc contamination. Also, they smoothed all the edges of the nontoxic nylon bolts that hold the camera box together so the octopus couldn't unscrew them.
One of the best things about this job is getting to share stories that are often totally friggin' awesome. This is one of those stories.
It doesn't start happily, though. Motala is a 48-year old former working elephant from Thailand (she moved large trees for a living). In 1999, while wandering in the forest looking for food on her lunch break, she accidentally stepped on a land mine left over from the Burmese-Thai war. The mine destroyed her left front foot and most of the leg.
Though her owners tried to save the leg, it was eventually amputated below the knee. In 2006, she got a temporary prothesis to help her learn to walk on what would be a more permanent artificial leg.
This week, Motala was fitted for that leg in Thailand, according to the conservation group Friends of the Asian Elephant. It's a state-of-the-art upgrade to the temporary prothesis she's had for the last three years. Early reports show she's taking to it well, which is fantastic (watch the video after the jump). Here's hoping Motala lives a normal, long life in her retirement.
It all started when a free, unsolicited copy of Cycling '74's Max/MSP 5 hit my desk. How, or why, the holy grail of interactive audio/video authoring software found its way to me is still a mystery, but I'm glad it did. In fact, I felt so grateful I knew I had to return the kindness by creating something ambitious with it. That's when I e-mailed Matt.
My friend Matt Ganucheau is a guru when it comes to Max/MSP. Because this particular piece of software is so adaptable, he's used it to program robots, create video DJ software, author plug-in effects for music applications, and give life to busty mannequins (he hates when I bring that up). With my motivation and Matt's know-how, I was sure we could come up with something interesting.
Editor's note: The following video gets nerdy and very loud. If DIY and electronic arts projects don't interest you, you probably won't be interested in this video or the remainder of this article.
