Two years ago, Paul McCarthy began searching for an inexpensive yet functional prosthetic hand for his son Leon, who was born without fingers on one of his hands.
McCarthy came across a video online with detailed instruction on how to use a 3-D printer to make a prosthetic hand for his son.
Michelle Miller reports.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGSo_I86_lQ
Here’s a first look at the SR-71 successor, Lockheed Martin’s SR-72 Blackbird. Unlike its predecessor, this one will use a new hypersonic engine design that combines turbines and ramjets, making the unmanned SR-72 twice as fast as its predecessor with a cruising speed of Mach 6.
According to Leland, a Mach 6 platform would not only leave very little time for an enemy to respond, but it also be a very effective way to launch hypersonic missiles.
Since these wouldn’t need a booster rocket when launched at six times the speed of sound, they can be of much lighter and simpler construction. The key to the SR-72 is what Lockheed calls Turbine-Based Combined Cycle Propulsion, which incorporates Lockheed’s experience in building the HTV-2 hypersonic demonstrator that flew at Mach 20 (15,224 mph, 24,501 km/h) in tests.
In this new system, the twin engines of the SR-72 are actually two engines in one.
Official Source: http://www.gizmag.com/lockeheed-martin-sr-72-blackbird/29634/
Did you know that there’s a real-life Tatooine planet, complete with two suns? Kepler-16b is a Saturn-mass planet consisting of half gas and half rock and ice, and it orbits a binary star, Kepler-16, with a period of 229 days. „[It] is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet – a planet orbiting not one, but two stars,“ said Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, one of the discovery team.
The large quasar group (LQG) is a collection of quasars (a form of supermassive black hole active galactic nuclei) that form what are believed to constitute the largest astronomical structures in the known universe. LQGs are thought to be precursors to the sheets, walls and filaments of galaxies found in the relatively nearby universe. On January 11, 2013, the discovery of the Huge-LQG was announced by the University of Central Lancashire, as the largest known structure in the universe by far. It comprises seventy-three quasars, with a minimum diameter of 1.4 billion light-years, but over four billion light-years at its widest point. According to researcher and author, Roger Clowes, the existence of structures of the magnitude of large quasar clusters was believed theoretically impossible. Cosmological structures had been believed to have a size limit of approximately 1.2 billion light-years.
You may not believe this, but two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever found in the universe. This water supply is 12-billion light years away, and holds at least 140 trillion times the amount of water in all the Earth’s oceans combined. It’s hidden in the distant APM 08279+5255 quasar, which holds a black hole that’s 20 billion times more massive than the sun, as water vapor.
Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) are stars with velocities that are substantially different from that expected for a star belonging to the normal distribution of stars in the galaxy. Such stars may have velocities so great that they exceed the escape velocity of the galaxy. Ordinary stars in the galaxy have velocities on the order of 100 km/s, while hypervelocity stars (especially those near the center of the galaxy, which is where most are thought to be produced), have velocities on the order of 1000 km/s.
55 Cancri e is a solid planet made of carbon-rich material rather than the oxygen-rich material that makes up the terrestrial planets in our solar system. Roughly a third of the planet’s mass would be carbon, much of which may be in the form of diamond as a result of the temperatures and pressures in the planet’s interior.
Himiko is a large gas cloud found at redshift of z=6.6 that predates similar Lyman-alpha blobs. Researchers say it „may represent the most massive object ever discovered in the early universe.“ It is 55,000 light years across (half the diameter of our galaxy), but is said to „hold more than 10 times as much mass as the next largest object found in the early universe, or roughly the equivalent mass of 40 billion suns“, making it the most massive object in the known universe.
Official Source: http://listverse.com/
The most notable claim is that the six manned landings (1969-1972) were faked and that the twelve Apollo astronauts did not walk on the Moon. Conspiracy theorists (henceforth conspiracists) base their claims on the notion that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence; including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, rock samples, and even some key witnesses.
Immediately after photographs of the moon landings were released, conspiracy theorists were quick to note an unexplainable object inside the reflection of an Apollo 12 astronaut’s helmet. The object definitely seems to be hanging from a rope or wire and has no reason for being there by any means, leading several to suggest it truly is a spotlight typically used by film companies.
One particular compelling argument for the moon landing hoax is the total lack associated with stars in any of the photographic / video evidence. There are no clouds for the moon, so stars tend to be perpetually visible as well as significantly brighter than that which you see through the particular filter of Earth’s environment. The argument here is that NASA might have found it impossible to map out the locations of all stars for the hoax without becoming rumbled, and therefore eventually left them out.
The cameras as used during the moon landings had many cross-hairs to assist with scaling along with direction. These are imprinted outrageous of all images. Some of your images, however, clearly show your cross-hairs behind objects inside the scene, implying that photographs had been edited or doctored following being taken.
The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon. This suggests that it was filmed on Earth and a breeze caused the flag to flutter. Sibrel said that it may have been caused by indoor fans used to cool the astronauts, since their spacesuit cooling systems would have been too heavy on Earth.
There are identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart. This suggests that a painted background was used.
Official Source: http://listverse.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhLSY5Kr7hA&feature=player_embedded#t=0
A group of explorers have reportedly discovered strange man-made ancient pyramids in Antarctica. For those who don’t already know, „when life first came onto the land, Antarctica was one of the continental landmasses to be covered in forests and animals. Much of the fossil record of the Antarctic landmass is under the ice, but fossils, including those of dinosaurs, can be found in the Antarctic mountains.“
The team is made up of 8 explorers from America and several European countries. Two of the pyramid structures were found approximately 10 miles inland while the third one was very close to the coastline. The team is currently planning an expedition to physically reach at least one of the pyramids to determine if it is natural or artificial. No time frame was given as to when this expedition will be taking place though.
Official Source: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/man-made-ancient-pyramids-found-on-antarctica-scienceray-2461764.html
A British company has unveiled Shreddies, flatulence-filtering underwear that works by using an „activated carbon back panel made from Zorflex.
This material is highly porous, so (the company claims) the odor vapors from the farts become trapped and neutralized before they reach the olfactory glands of any innocent bystanders in close proximity to the offending flatulence.“
We’ve already seen a similar product named 4SKINS, while the same technology can be found in the Better Marriage Blanket. Still, you can never have too much protection against the menace of smelly emissions.
Both the men’s and women’s Shreddies come in a range of different styles and start at US$40 and $30 respectively … which is surely a small price to pay for the pleasure of farting without fear.
Official Source: http://www.gizmag.com/shreddies-underwear-filters-farts/29509/
For $75000, you’ll soon be able to take trips to the edge of space in this special balloon.
Developed by World View, the flight would take 90 minutes to go up at about 1,000 feet a minute, set sail up high for 2 hours with an emphasis on smooth riding, hit an altitude of 19 miles and then come back down in 40 minutes, Poynter said.
Seeing the Earth hanging in the ink-black void of space will help people realize our connection to our home planet and to the universe around us, and will surely offer a transformative experience to our customers.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxif3w55Phk&feature=player_embedded#t=0
You read that right, a team of University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University researchers successfully performed a series of experiments that showed they could send electrical signals directly to the brains of monkeys and that they were able to interpret the signals as touches on different parts of their hands. Plus, „another series of experiments showed rhesus macaques could interpret different direct-to-brain signals as touches of varying pressure.“
What this means is that they were able to convert direct-to-brain electrical signals into the sense of touch.
There was one especially cool thing the Chicago-Johns Hopkins team demonstrated.
While it’s impossible to know exactly what the monkeys feel when they get electrical buzzes to their brains, one series of experiments showed the animals were quickly able to interpret electrical brain stimulation as analogues to physical touches.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk-Az8U7Qdk&feature=player_embedded#t=0
We had the chance to get our hands on the Cyberith VR movement panel, and also the Oculus Rift Glasses. This Guys are amazing.
This is the first time you can really move like you are moving, only that the movement is beeing tracked into the video game!
We had the chance to play a part of HALF LIFE 2 with Oculus Rift and the Cyberith Panel and we had to say it was amazing.
This is something completly new, it is also not the final build by now, so we gonna keep in touch and get you informed more and more about the status of this cool new gaming invention!
Thanks for wathcing.
BLOG.Dot TV
The Virtualizer enables walking as well as running forwards, backwards and sidewards. This can be done in all directions, because there is no preferred direction at all. Furthermore the device enables you to turn around, to jump and to crouch. In combination with a usual controller of a game console (like Wiimote or Razor-Hydra) and an adequate device for video output (like the Oculus-Rift, which allows 3D output and headtracking) the Virtualizer makes you feel the game in a much more realistic way. Instead of controlling the character on a monitor by keyboard and mouse, you feel like you were in the game because of the natural motion of your body.
The Virtualizer uses the principle of low friction to enable motion. We have created a surface, through carefully selected materials, that allows your feet to effortlessly glide back without being too slippery.
The advantage of this principle is the easy and in relation to existing systems, which use complex systems of conveyor bands or very large hallow spheres, cheap production of the devices. This allows us to offer a well working virtual reality device for a price, which is affordable for as much computer users as possible. We don’t only want the Virtualizer to be seen in Institutes for Informatics, but in the living rooms of this world.
Demonstrating the Virtualizer Prototype at the Game-City in Vienna!
It was an amazing experience and a great convention!!!
More Infos: http://www.cyberith.com/index.php?menu=virtualizer
To keep things a bit more on the geeky side, we’ll start things off with a fascinating look (yet non-award-winning photo) at the black dragonfish, which lives in the deep parts of the Atlantic Ocean beyond where any plant life grows or light reaches.
Official Source: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/index.jsp
http://www.boredpanda.com/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2013-winners/
Above, we see KOI 172.02, the most Earth-like planet found yet, and it’s actually about 1.5 times bigger than our blue planet, so it’s classed as a ’super-Earth‘. The planet is also following an orbit that is well within the habitable zone of a star that is rather similar to our Sun – means that the planet could feature liquid water and potentially oceans on its surface
Official Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/
Stefan Klein, an automobile designer / engineer from the Slovak Republic, has successfully completed the first flight of his Aeromobil Version 2.5.
About 20-years in the making, this flying car prototype boasts a unique design with folding wings and a propeller in the tail.
The aviation aspects seem to be prominent in the design, with a streamlined cockpit, super light weight, and sleek tail fins in the back.
Propulsion is provided by a 100 hp Rotax 912 water cooled engine mounted behind the seats, with drive shafts leading both aft to the propeller and forward to the two front wheels for driving.
The Aeromobil fits into a standard parking space and can be refueled at the same gas station as all the other cars. The structure is a steel tube frame with a carbon fiber composite shell, a configuration familiar to fans of racing cars.
Official Source: http://www.gizmag.com/klein-flying-car-first-flight/29448/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow6ybXBF9AU&feature=player_embedded#t=0
In a feature about future technologies, UK newspaper The Sun shows a picture of a cybernetic eyeball, saying that it is the kind of thing that will be commonplace with future generations.
However, the eyeball is clearly labelled with the name of Sarif Industries, which -as you may know- is a fictitious company in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution game.
Official Source: http://www.bitterwallet.com/the-sun-mistakes-company-from-video-game-as-real/69128
We have seen the future of humanoid robots, and it begins with Frank. He a six-foot-tall robot is made up of artificial body parts, has 200 processors and is covered in over a million sensors.
Frank boasts a functioning circulatory system fitted with a beating heart.
The heart and other organs in the circulatory system were built by Alex Seifalian, a professor of Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine at University College London, using a specially-designed polymer that builds implantable organs of any shape.
The skin of the robot features over one million sensors that can detect touch and changes in temperature.
Official Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2465853/Meet-Frank-worlds-walking-talking-bionic-man-complete-artificial-limbs-beating-HEART.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x97XNUvw3Nc&feature=player_embedded#t=0
Watch the full length Red Bull Stratos documentary only on Rdio:http://bit.ly/18T82Pd
See through the eyes of Felix Baumgartner as he completes his world record breaking jump from the stratosphere!
The purpose of the Red Bull Stratos mission is to transcend human limits. Supported by a team of experts Felix Baumgartner ascended to 128,100 feet in a stratospheric balloon and made a freefall jump rushing toward earth at supersonic speeds before parachuting to the ground. His successful feat on Oct. 14, 2012 holds the potential to provide valuable medical and scientific research data for future pioneers.
The Red Bull Stratos team brings together the world’s leading minds in aerospace medicine, engineering, pressure suit development, capsule creation and balloon fabrication. Retired United States Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger, previously held the record jump from 102,800 ft in 1960. This was during a time when no one knew if a human could survive a jump from the edge of space. Joe was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force and had already taken a balloon to 97,000 feet in Project ManHigh and survived a drogue mishap during a jump from 76,400 feet in Excelsior I. The Excelsior III mission was his 33rd parachute jump.
Although researching extremes was part of the program’s goals, setting records wasn’t the mission’s purpose. Joe ascended in helium balloon launched from the back of a truck. He wore a pressurized suit on the way up in an open, unpressurized gondola. Scientific data captured from Joe’s jump was shared with U.S. research personnel for development of the space program. Today Felix and his specialized team want to take what was learned from Joe’s jumps more than 50 years ago, and combine that with data aquired during Felix’s supersonic freefall.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raiFrxbHxV0#t=102
http://www.redbullstratos.com/
http://stratos.rdioexclusives.com
UCSD (Uiversity of California, San Diego) have created a 3D-printed metal rocket engine using techniques previously only known to NASA, and successfully fired it at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry launch site in California’s Mojave Desert. Gizmag says that it is the „first such test of a printed liquid-fueled, metal rocket engine by any university in the world and the first designed and printed outside of NASA.“
The Tri-D rocket engine, as it’s called, was designed and built with the cooperation of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center as part of an effort to explore the feasibility of printed rocket components.
For purposes of the exercise, it was designed to power the third stage of a Nanosat launcher, that is, one capable of launching satellites that weigh less than 1.33 kg (2.93 lb).
Official Source: http://www.gizmag.com/3d-printed-rocket-seds/29306/
A group of physicists have just published a description of a quantum black hole, which uses loop quantum gravity where the predictions of physics-ending singularities vanish, and are replaced by bridges to another universe.
In other words, in place of the black hole is something that resembles an entry point to another universe.
According to Sci Tech Daily, „in this new model, the gravitational field still increases as you near the black hole’s core. But unlike previous models, this doesn’t end in a singularity. Instead gravity eventually reduces, as if you’ve come out the other end of the black hole and landed either in another region of our universe, or another universe altogether. Despite only holding for a simple model of a black hole, the researchers believe the theory may banish singularities from real black holes too.
Official Source: http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-black-holes-singularity/29242/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsbZT9bJ1s4&feature=player_embedded#t=0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDAOCkagSjk&feature=player_embedded#t=0
According to a group of scientists, lead by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Kevin Baines, both of our solar system’s largest gas giants are home to conditions favorable to the creation of solid diamonds. That’s right, „about a thousand tons of diamonds per year.“
Here’s how it works:
Massive lightning storms which cut across the gas giants‘ atmosphere, posit Baines and his co-authors, begin the process by shredding methane molecules into carbon. This carbon, in the form of soot, then begins to sink deeper into the gaseous layers of the planet, where it is exposed to higher pressures. First converted into graphite, these bits of soot are eventually exposed to pressures strong enough to compress them into solid diamonds.
Official Source: http://www.dvice.com/2013-10-10/jupiter-and-saturn-could-be-stuffed-diamonds
The multiverse theory essentially refers to the hypothetical set of infinite or finite possible universes (including the historical universe we consistently experience) that together comprise everything that exists and can exist: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them. In one of these universes, you are Batman, or so we’d like to think.
Official Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/
Did you know that if an extraterrestrial from a galaxy 65-million-light-years away, viewed Earth through an extremely powerful telescope right now, they’d see dinosaurs. We have rounded up twenty-five more fascinating things you may not have known about the world and beyond.
Official Source: http://list25.com/
Ian Tibbetts, a 43-year-old man from Britain, damaged his eye in an industrial accident when scrap metal ripped his cornea in six places, and you won’t believe how doctors managed to restore his sight using a tooth. That’s right, it’s a two-part procedure called osteo-odonto-keratoprothesis: first, the tooth and part of the jaw are removed, and a lens is inserted into the tooth using a drill. According to News.com.au, „the tooth and lens are then implanted under the eye socket. After a few months, once the tooth has grown tissues and developed a blood supply, comes the second step: part of the cornea is sliced open and removed and the tooth is stitched into the eye socket. Since the tooth is the patient’s own tissue, the body does not reject it.“
Once the bandages were removed, Tibbetts‘ sight gradually returned, and he saw his sons‘ faces for the first time. He says, „I just cried, gave them a big hug and a kiss. They were totally different than what I’d pictured in my mind. They were just shapes. I couldn’t make them out. I had to actually learn to tell them apart by their voices.“
Official Source: http://laughingsquid.com/blind-man-regains-sight-by-having-his-tooth-implanted-in-his-eye/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwepJT3IGl0&feature=player_embedded
Boston Dynamics unveils its latest creation, and it’s definitely no slouch. Called the WildCat, this robotic mule WildCat can probably be considered the cheetah of its pack, and it’s capable of untethered speeds of up to 16 MPH thus far. Previously, the company’s Cheetah robot hit a record 29.3 MPH while tethered.
Remember that WildCat is doing all this without any tethers or supports. WildCat might not actually top out at 16 MPH either: that’s just the fastest it’s gotten up to thus far.
It’s hard not to think of the WildCat as a living thing once it gets going. When galloping, it really does resemble some sort of horse.
Official Source: http://geekologie.com/2013/10/game-over-man-wildcat-darpas-16-mph-unte.php
http://www.dvice.com/2013-10-4/wildcat-speedy-new-galloping-robot-boston-dynamics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g&feature=player_embedded#t=0