As the guy who always has to fix your computer, I can attest that every single word of this is true.
Allow me to geek out for a minute. The image above is an artist rendering of of a carbon nanotube/TiO2 structure cultivated by a custom-designed virus. This structure, in large quantities, boosts the output of a cheap, low-efficiency solar cell by 30%. The result is still too inefficient to revolutionize our energy production or anything like that, but think about the underlying technology for a minute:
It’s a useful nano-device.
Built by a virus.
That we made.
How fucking cool is that!? Sure, we’ve been able to create nano-scale mechanisms for a while, but we have to use huge SEMs and do it one atom at a time. A virus can be made to do it all at once, and trillions of individual virii can be cultivated in a matter of hours. When you can make (essentially) designer molecules mechanically instead of chemically, there are no limits. This particular breakthrough won’t change much, but this sort of thing will change the world more than anything else we’ve come up with so far.
It’s shit like this, science. It’s shit like this that makes me love you.
NERDS OF AMERICA:
We were once a country that made things: giantmetal cars, Hoover Dams, non-AutoTuned popular music.
But now we are stuck in an economy in limbo, surrounded by our Internets, our hipsters and our arguing politicians.
Nerds, I have a great idea to make America great…
I don’t see how this could possibly fail.
Nearly all of the 3D and motion control tech that’s come out in the last couple years has been nothing more than hokey gimmicks, worthless for anything besides its “gee wiz” factor.
This isn’t.
Microsoft of all companies is developing the first useful, usable implementation of 3D display/motion tracking that I’ve seen. The underlying wedge lens technology is interesting, but skip to the 2:50 mark to see how they’re making the first glassesless, position-independent 3D display. Like a true hologram, this technique actually allows you to look around objects in 3d space, to a certain extent.
It’s not particularly useable in a living room, but it’s immensely useful for a computer monitor. Expect this tech to be built into most monitors within about 5 years.
(Source: youtube.com)
Sorry for the dearth of posts lately, but full-time employment has really cut into my wandering-the-intarwub time. Hope this video makes up for it.
It may seem like a silly gimmick, but a computer that can understand and answer jeopardy questions is a Really Big Deal. If the exponential technological improvement curve from the last five decades continues, then cutting-edge software running on the worlds most powerful supercomputer today will be on everybody’s cell phones in 5 years. Get ready for common electronic devices with which you can hold a normal conversation.
Although construction started a couple years earlier, 10/2/2000 was the date that the first astronauts stepped aboard the ISS. It’s been continuously occupied ever since. Click the link for NASA’s retrospective of the first decade of this incredible international project.
Remember when camcorders were huge? It wasn’t all that long ago when they were 15lb behemoths that sat on your shoulder, ate full-size VHS tapes and cost more than a used car. Well, we’ve come a long way baby.
I just got one of these nifty keychain cameras specifically for the purpose of taping to the top of my RC cars. Not only is it tiny and light, the built-in battery is good for about an hour of recording, and that will run out before you fill a 2GB microSD card. And the price for this miracle of modern science? A whopping $13. How cool is that? Everything you could ever want to know about these little guys can be found here.
Remember the opposed-piston engine video I posted last year? Well Bill Gates must have seen my post because he’s just invested a bunch of money into its development. This design shows a lot of promise, and it’s good to see heavy hitters like Gates throwing their support behind it. (via Digg)
Science Kicks Nature’s Ass, Creates New Species From Scratch
No, that isn’t the plot of a new sci-fi movie. It actually happened. A group of scientists at the JC Venter Institute have successfully designed a complete genome for a living, self-replicating creature and brought it to life in a lab. Luckily, it is not the shark-bear-octopus pictured above, but a lowly bacteria. Still, this is an entire new species of bacteria, designed on a computer and brought to life. This has never been done before, and is a big fucking deal. Designer micro-organisms are now real, and the implications for this breakthrough are staggering. For better or worse, shit is about to get interesting.
Southwest Airlines The Making of Florida One
Now this is just cool. A two and a half minute time-lapse video of the making of a Boeing 737, complete with a custom paint job. (via Digg)
