The latest object to shoot high-def video from the edge of space is…an arm chair. To promote its REGZA SV LCD TVs (LED backlight, local dimming), Toshiba trekked into the Black Rock Desert with a helium balloon. Watch the result:
This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year.
This Philips non-spherical-biosphere is a self-contained farm for that produces hundreds of calories of various food sources a day. Its five-level design breaks down like this:
Levels 1 and 2: Plants
Level 3: Algae
Level 4: Fish and Shrimp
Level 5: Organic Waste
From what we can tell, the system is designed to cascade nutrients from the top to the bottom (back to the top). Optical fibers capture and redirect light to the plants during the day, while methane capture from organic waste can power lights at night. The algae create oxygen for the fish.
Le Petit Prince or Little Prince is a robotic greenhouse concept that is specially designed to help the future exploration and expanding population in the Mars. This intelligent robot can carry and take well care of a plant inside its glass container, which is functionally mounted on its four-legged pod.
The robot is designed to learn the optimal process of searching for nutrients in order to keep the plant in a good condition. Moreover, it can send reports of its movements and developments to its fellow greenhouse robots through wireless communication, making it possible to learn from each other.
This newly-released image shows the sun rising over Spaceport America. It hasn’t been built yet, but construction starts this Friday. It will be the beginning of the real future, the stuff dreams are made of.
Spaceport America will be the first spaceport in history, and it will host commercial operations by private space travel companies, like Virgin Galactic.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is now a nearly a year into its extended mission, called Cassini Equinox (after its initial 4-year mission ended in June, 2008). The spacecraft continues to operate in good health, returning amazing images of Saturn, its ring system and moons, and providing new information and science on a regular basis.
Click read more to see more pictures…
An interesting way to see where power is coming from and going to in the USA. There are a collection of ways to view this data.
How many years do we have left if the world consumes at the current rate? How about if we consume at half the current US rate? The answers are sobering.
Click read more to see the graph…
The idea of harnessing solar power from space has been around for a while; Asimov included it in at least two of his stories that I remember—but may finally be a reality come 2016.
These spectacular photographs, taken from Spaceweather.com, capture the beauty of the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis.
The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it’s slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.
And it’s kinda creepy… (FF to 1:17)
Moixa is awarded a patent on its apple sized multi-touch sphere that can be used to display the world (e.g. Google Earth), browse web pages or control interactive games.
ENESS’ appropriately named Humble Telescope is an interactive installation that presents a 3D simulation of our entire known universe to anyone who dares peer in. Viewers simply point the “telescope” in any direction, and instantaneously they’re presented with what exists in that specific area of space.
Sony fuel cell battery can also be power by sugar, yes! you can even use coca-cola to power up this thing. The future is coming!
The ISS looked this way—with the fourth and final solar panel truss—as the space shuttle Discovery undocked yesterday. It’s almost as big as a Corellian corvette, but there’s still a long to do list
In a composite of images taken by the La Silla Paranal Observatory in Chile, the newest picture of the Carina nebula reveals glowing dust and brilliant star clusters in stunning detail. Carina sits about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of the same name. The nebula gets its red and purple hues from hot hydrogen gas…
If you had $15.6 septillion and 94 cents in your account, would you save the world from the economic crisis or build a Death Star, destroy the world, and move on to invade the galaxy?
This oddball vertical airship is designed to stay in the air for a whopping two weeks without landing. It’s powered by a crew of 2-4 people pedaling, presumably in an ironic nod to The Flintstones.
Believe it or not, there’s a company in New Mexico that has serious plans on the table to shoot this space tourist fishbowl into the sky by 2010. The design is a concept for now, but Armadillo Aerospace, with the blessing of the New Mexico government, hopes to build a working prototype by 2009.
We are so used to the International Space Station that we don’t give its massive scale a second thought. I, for one, took it for granted until a newly-released NASA photograph reminded me that this thing is huge. So huge that I fired up Photoshop and did an illustration comparing it to several sci-fi ships…
The AirTraffic team presents this fascinating visualization of global air traffic simulated over 24 hours.
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