Science Archive

  • Video: System for data transmission via visible light

    Video: System for data transmission via visible light

    Posted on June 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Transmitting data via light is hardly anything new, but what about sending and receiving information via visible light? Tokyo-based start-up Outstanding Technology is currently working on a system that uses visible LED light for the transmission of data and audio signals.

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  • Yes, these are the Southern Lights as seen from Space

    Yes, these are the Southern Lights as seen from Space

    Posted on June 21, 2010 | No Comments
    Interrupting your busy Monday (ha!) with a pretty crazy photo. You know the Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis? Well these are the Southern Lights… as seen from Space! Just think: you’re quite literally looking at the Solar Wind smash into the magnetosphere, without which the planet would have no atmosphere and would subsequently have no life. [...]

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  • Allen Kurzweil takes on the science of potato chips

    Allen Kurzweil takes on the science of potato chips

    Posted on June 16, 2010 | No Comments
    If you have a wee one with an interest in science (face it, you’re reading CG and TC, your procreative material is pre-disposed to nerdity) then check out Allen Kurzweil’s latest project, a science kit in a potato chip bag. Potato Chip Science, available now for pre-order and shipping in September, lets you learn science through [...]

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  • Is life nothing more than a fancy computer simulation?

    Is life nothing more than a fancy computer simulation?

    Posted on June 10, 2010 | No Comments
    The Science Channel has a new series that debuted last night called "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman." The first episode discussed the idea of the creator. That is, how did all this stuff (people and all the other life on Earth, stars, planets, etc.) get here? Is there some nice, wise old man in the sky sitting on a heavenly La-Z-Boy orchestrating everything around us, or is something else at work? One of the more fun suggestions: perhaps we're all merely a fancy computer simulation of Future People? Maybe we're merely some Future Kid's science experiment on his PlayStation 200?

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  • Bigelow Aerospace building first private space station

    Bigelow Aerospace building first private space station

    Posted on June 8, 2010 | No Comments
    The federal government can't be bothered with space exploration anymore (which is terribly disappointing, by the way), so private industry has to pick up the slack. A company by the name of Bigelow Aerospace plans to put an entire space station in orbit within the next four years.

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  • Is the Sun about to destroy every single piece of electronics you own?

    Is the Sun about to destroy every single piece of electronics you own?

    Posted on June 7, 2010 | No Comments
    We, and by "we" I mean all life on Planet Earth, owe our very existence to the Sun. It's nothing more than a typical star, really, but without it, this planet would be as barren as the day is long. (CG: Your home for old-timey phrases.) With that in mind, here's what could become a pretty important story as we move forward. NASA now believes that, for much of the modern era, the Sun has been, for lack of a better term, "asleep." What happens, then, to our electricity-based infrastructure when the Sun "wakes up"? The Solar Wind has already blown away the atmospheres of planets lacking a magnetosphere, so what else does the Sun have up its sleeve?

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  • Voyager 2 likely suffering from “flipped bit syndrome”

    Voyager 2 likely suffering from “flipped bit syndrome”

    Posted on May 19, 2010 | No Comments
    The Voyager 2 transmission hiccup appears to have been identified. The problem? "A value in a single memory location was changed from a 0 to a 1," said JPL’s Veronia McGregor. As I've said countless times to end users complaining about "computer problems": computers are all ones and zeroes inside, and who can tell what will happen when a one unexpectedly becomes a zero, or vice versa? Kudos to everyone at NASA for identifying the problem, and making plans to reset Voyager's memory so that its on-going mission may continue!

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  • They don’t make ‘em like they used to: Voyager 2 repairs underway

    They don’t make ‘em like they used to: Voyager 2 repairs underway

    Posted on May 10, 2010 | No Comments
    Our Gadgets of Days Gone By series is over, and it focused pretty much on consumer goods that made our lives more entertaining or more bearable. But there's an awful lot of technology from decades past still in use today. Take for example the Voyager spacecraft from NASA. Launched more than 30 years ago, Voyager 2 completed its primary mission in 1989 but has continued to provide invaluable scientific data and shows little signs of obsolescence. With something as useful and irreplaceable as Voyager 2, a small glitch in communications is not cause to scrap the program, but instead a reason to scramble the brightest folks available to resolve the problem -- no easy feat when communications with the probe take more than half a day to reach their target!

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  • New NEC technology detects pirated online videos “in seconds”

    New NEC technology detects pirated online videos “in seconds”

    Posted on May 7, 2010 | No Comments
    Software that helps to detect "illegal" video content on the web automatically isn't really new, but NEC claims its technology has two selling points that sets it apart from similar solutions: speed and accuracy. The company says its system can identify pirated video material in a "matter of seconds", with a detection rate of 96% and at a false alarm rate of just five in one million cases.

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  • Scitable: a social network for science research and education

    Scitable: a social network for science research and education

    Posted on May 6, 2010 | No Comments
    Social networks are a dime a dozen. Many of them focus on the social, or the networking, independent of other aspects that might bring people together. It's no big surprise that many of these social networks fail, or only reach specific niche audiences. As such, it was with a bit of skepticism that I approached Scitable.com, a social network for science research and education from the folks at Nature Publishing Group. A quick examination of the site reveals a vibrant community of educators and learners. I had the opportunity to speak with Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group, who is currently spearheading the Scitable.com initiative, to learn more about it.

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  • New solar cells printed on paper

    New solar cells printed on paper

    Posted on May 5, 2010 | No Comments
    Everyone loves the idea of solar energy. The three big challenges are that solar cells are expensive to produce, they're not very efficient, and you need some means to store the energy collected. I'd heard of solar shingles before, which are basically roofing shingles with solar cells in them, but now word is coming out of solar cells printed on paper. As usual, the technology is still years away from a marketable product, but it's an interesting development.

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  • World’s largest telescope to open in Chile

    World’s largest telescope to open in Chile

    Posted on April 29, 2010 | No Comments
    The European Southern Observatory will construct the world's largest telescope in Chile. They're calling it the European Extremely Large Telescope, and it's being constructed in Chile because the night sky there is totally clear some 320 days per year.

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  • Japanese government believes in future full of mind-reading devices

    Japanese government believes in future full of mind-reading devices

    Posted on April 27, 2010 | No Comments
    Mind-reading devices are nothing really new, but Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) apparently sees a huge potential for that market in the near future. The MIC will join forces with selected private tech companies to develop and commercialize robots and consumer electronics that can be controlled through thought. The project kicks off this fiscal year and is supposed to end by 2020.

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  • Video: No-touch, mid-air 3D input interface for mobile devices

    Video: No-touch, mid-air 3D input interface for mobile devices

    Posted on April 26, 2010 | No Comments
    A lot of sophisticated, portable gadgets nowadays have a touchscreen, but what if you could operate those gadgets with your fingers - without touching the display or any part of the device itself? A research team led by Masatoshi Ishikawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo, has developed a way to operate mobile devices by moving your fingers in mid-air.

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  • Hyper Telescope: Bandai’s new “science toy” for kids

    Hyper Telescope: Bandai’s new “science toy” for kids

    Posted on April 15, 2010 | No Comments
    Major toymaker Bandai yesterday announced the Hyper Telescope [JP], which is being marketed as a "science toy" for kids. It's the ideal gadget if you want your kid to become an astronomer, as it allows users to observe the sky and view relevant information on connected displays or within the device itself. All that needs to be done is to specify one's location on earth and the current time.

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