Corkscrew snowmobile

Take a look at this interesting video. It shows a tractor/snowmobile driven by screw-type drums, which resemble a corkscrew. These drums function as an" Archimedes screw" (see one in operation in the picture at right).

The vehicle in question is the 1926 Fordson Snow Devil.



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Weapons of Mass Destruction - a Visual Perspective

The expression "weapons of mass destruction" has become part of our vocabulary, but it remains an abstraction for many of us. The photographer Martin Miller has created a retrospective gallery of these weapons; most are from the Cold War era.

These two images are the Trinity (above, the first nuclear device) and the Fat Man bomb (below - that's the Nagasaki bomb). To view the other images use this LINK.




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The French Aérotrain

The Aérotrain was a hovercraft train developed in France in 1965. The goal of the Aérotrain was similar to that of the magnetic levitation train: to suspend the train above the tracks so the only resistance is that of air resistance. Consequently the Aérotrain could travel at very high speeds with reasonable energy consumption and noise levels, but without the technical complexity and expensive tracks of magnetic levitation.

In these images you see one of the prototypes, the #02 (five prototypes were built: #01, #02, S44, I-80 and I-80 HV).

The #02 was equipped with a Pratt & Whitney JT12 jet engine plus an auxiliary rocket. A monorail was built between Paris and Orleans, France (130Km or 80 miles in length) to test this prototype.

This project was abandoned in 1977 due to lack of funding, the death of Jean Bertin (the leading engineer), and the adoption of TGV by the French government as its high-speed ground transport solution.

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Bell/Boeing Quad TiltRotor

Bell/Boeing came up with this new concept of rotorcraft which resembles to the V-22 Osprey, but with four tilt rotors and significantly bigger (the project envisages cargo capacity similar to the C-130 Hercules): The Bell/Boeing Quad TiltRotor.

The animation below is a demonstration of concept of employment of such VTOL aircraft (and it is interesting to see that they also consider its use by civilian operators...).

Via the dew line


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Moon buggy

Probably you've seen a documentary about the old moon buggy used by astronauts from the Apollo missions (above). This jalopy is now in the past: the vehicles to be used in the forthcoming visits to the Moon are more like hi-tech vans. See the new generation of moon buggies on the video below...

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Pole dancing robots

Interesting and weirdly captivating...

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Elder-care robot

The University of Tokyo, one of Japan's leading robot developers, recently unveiled a prototype elder-care bot called Mamoru that is designed to keep tabs on those prone to having senior moments.


The prestigious Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative (IRT) unveiled a slightly creepy granny robot called Mamoru ("to protect") that reminds forgetful users where they left their glasses or the remote control, or when to take their medicine.

The system makes use of a wide-angle camera and image-recognition software to monitor the locations of objects that have been registered by the user.

Toyota Motor, Fujitsu and other major firms helped out in the project, which aims at commercialization within 10 years.



Via loving the machine

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Have you seen this? Google's first storage system

This image shows the first Google storage system. In 1996 Google had its headquarters in one of the founders' dorm.

At that time 4 GigaByte hard disks were the largest available, so they assembled 10 of these drives into a low-cost LEGO cabinet.

More images after the jump.





The equipment is currently on display at Stanford University (LINK).

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Multiple Kill Vehicle

Lockheed Martin Corporation announced last week that its team successfully conducted a free-flight hover test of the Multiple Kill Vehicle-L.

Conducted Dec. 2 at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., the test met all objectives. The full-scale prototype flew at an altitude of approximately 23 feet (7 meters) for 20 seconds, maneuvering while simultaneously tracking a target.

See the video for this hover test after the jump.

"This test demonstrated the integrated operation of the MKV-L in near-earth flight," said Rick Reginato, Multiple Kill Vehicle program director, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. "This represents a major step forward for the earliest operational payload designed to destroy multiple threat objects with a single missile defense interceptor."

Via the dew line

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A nuke in your city

This is interesting - and scary.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city?

With Google's Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome.

And it does not look good.

Just insert the name of your city (or your address - or the address of your boss!) and nuke it.


This mapplet shows the thermal damage caused by a nuclear explosion.

Search for a place, pick a suitable weapon and press "Nuke It!" Then click the center to see the physical effects.

And since we are talking about bombs, take a look at our article about the Tsar Bomba (one of the nukes you can use in the mapplet): LINK.

Developed by Carlos Labs


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Google knows everything about you

How much Google knows about you, about what you like/do/want?

This list was provided by a reader (you are welcome to send tips - and if you do so you should inform the address of your website/blog, for credit/link).

Let's see the list (more after the jump):

If you use Adwords, they know your marketing plan and they know your purchasing patterns.
If you use Adsense, they know which of your sites makes money (though we know nothing sadly), they know how to target which ads to your site, they know how much to payout and how much to keep.
If you use Alerts, they know what topics are important to you.


If you use Analytics, they know which sites you control and/or monitor, how those sites are doing and every trend possible.
If you use Blogger, they know what you write about. Every word, every phrase, every out and in link.
If you use Calendar, they know where you have been, are, and plan to be.
If you use Catalog search/Product Search, they know what items are of interest to you and which items you actually purchase.
If you use Checkout, they know all of your personal information: name, address, phone, credit card, ccid.
If you use Chrome, they know everything they didn't already know about your browsing.
If you use Desktop, they know what you have on your PC.
If you use Docs and Spreadsheets, they know that you are writing a paper on 13th century france, and your checking account is $30 overdrawn.
If you use Earth, they know where on the planet you desire to research.
If you use FeedBurner, they know all about your readers and your readership levels.
If you use Finance, they know what stocks (and other instruments) you own, which you monitor, and which trends you follow.
If you use Gmail, they know everything. Yep, everything.
If you use Groups, they know you have a fetish for rare steaks and love art from Paris.
If you use Image search, they know that you like Britney Spears and you have a craving for chocolate babaka and cat photos.
If you use Local search, they know where you are now, and what you are interested in.
If you use Maps, they know where you might be, where you might be going, where you have been. And as noted above, if you have GPS, they know where you are at this exact moment.
If you use Reader, they know what you are interested in.
If you use Search (any Google search), Google knows every search you have ever made.
If you use Talk, they know who your buddies are.
If you use Toolbar, they know every web site you visit.
If you use Translate, they know that you are learning German.
If you use Video, the same applies as for YouTube.
If you use YouTube, they know every video you have watched, what genres you like, which naughty videos you have watched, which ones you commented/favorited on, and the videos you have uploaded.

Oh, and don't forget that satellite...

Source: Center Networks


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Rough seas

Do you know that the structure of a ship should be flexible, otherwise the vessel would break due to the movement of the waves?

Even knowing that it's amazing to see (from the inside) a huge ship serpenting as if made of gelatin...

This video shows a 300m-long ship (4500TEU Container Vessel) navigating japanese waters during a strong storm.

From 15" to 30" and from 01'00" to 01'14" you will see the structure moving from the inside.

Really interesting.

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Levitating water

Interesting effect done with stroboscopic lights and water. It gives you the impression that the water is levitating - or moving backwards.

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Slow-motion Tilt-Shift

Australian photographer Keith Loutit used tilt-shift camera lens to take pictures of people and objects and make them appear like miniature figurines. He then assembled the shots to build some pretty fantastic-looking time-lapse videos.

There are four amazing clips: the one below and three more after the jump.

Via geeks are sexy

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Aerocar at eBay

This flying car isn't exactly modern... It was made in 1956! But it works and flies like a small airplane when the wings are connected (see the fantastic video at the end of this post).


This one is being auctioned at eBay (only $3.500.000): LINK.

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The International Space Station turns 10

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first launched module of the International Space Station (ISS). Boston Globe's Big Picture created a splendid gallery of images to celebrate: LINK.


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Robot jockey

A robot jockey is commonly used on camels in camel racing as a replacement for human jockeys. Developed beginning in 2004, the robotic jockeys are slowly phasing out the use of human jockeys, which, in the case of camel racing in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, often employs small children who reportedly suffer repeated systemic human rights abuses. In response to international condemnation of such abuses, the nation of Qatar and UAE has banned the use of human jockeys in favor of robots.

Camel racing has been around for thousands of years. "The Sport of Sheiks" almost exclusively utilized small children, usually boys around the age of four, to ride and direct the camels. Often, the boys would be starved to be as light as possible. Many of the boys used for the races were often sold to race organizers or camel owners, and there was an active child slave trade for camel jockeys, involving victims of kidnapping or the children of destitute families who sold them into servitude. The children were rarely schooled, and were sometimes the victims of sexual abuse



The government of Qatar initiated development of the robots beginning in 2004. A Swiss robotics firm named K-Team designed the robots. Part of the initial problems faced by the design team included that the camels were conditioned to the use of human jockeys. Early designs confused or frightened the camels.

The designs were modified to include more human-like features, including a mannequin-like face, sunglasses, hats, racing silks, and even traditional perfumes used with human jockeys. Other issues included the conditions that the robots and the computers would be put under: usually high temperatures in dusty environments, atop a fast moving and turbulent ride.

The robots are small, light weight, and are remote controlled, usually by operators paralleling the race in SUVs. The robots, which are aluminum-framed with a "thorax" about the size of a large book, contain small hinged arms that control the whip and the reins. The robot can also monitor and transmit the speed and heart rate of the camel.

Source: wikipedia


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Angel Wings (flares)

Nothing to do with new age stuff... Angel wings are smoking formations that are created when an aircraft releases (decoy) flares to avoid enemy missiles.

A (decoy) flare is an aerial infrared countermeasure to counter an infrared homing (”heat seeking”) surface-to-air missile (SAM) or air-to-air missile (AAM). The aim is to make the infrared-guided missile seek out the heat signature from the flare rather than the aircraft’s engines.

Watch a video and check out more beautiful images of 'angel wings' after the jump...

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Flying with one wing

Maybe you've seen this amazing video of an incredible landing by a pilot whose wing snaps off in flight.

That's a viral video promoting a website, and there was some buzz about it being real. It's not real but in fact flying without a wing is possible in some cases - and there's serious research about it.

In the image below you can see exactly one of these tests, in which a scaled model of a F-18 loose 60% of a wing, and keeps flying normally.




This scaled model was used by Rockwell Collins to demonstrate that a plane that loose significant portions of a wing can still keep the flight with the help of a computer.

The computer succeeded where many human pilots would undoubtedly fail because it was able to react to the wing damage about 20 milliseconds after it occurred - and a human pilot, if he's very sharp and very ready, can react in about 200 milliseconds.

In that time, the computer made 10 more adjustments to keep the F/A-18 from falling out of the sky.

The experiment was called Damage Tolerant Controls project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

There are rare examples in which human pilots have been able to nurse critically damaged aircraft safely to the ground. In 1983, an Israeli pilot landed his F-15 after a midair collision tore one wing off. But such incidents are famous because there are so few...

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Billions of particles of anti-matter created in laboratory

According to a press release issued this week by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, announcing the production of 'billions of particles of anti-matter':

"Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma 'jet.'

This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts."

The press release doesn't characterize the laser used in this experiment, but according to the guys at slashdot it may have been this one.



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The Matrix Runs on Windows

Via s&h



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The Most Powerful Bomb Ever Constructed

Tsar Bomba was the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, this hydrogen bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT; however that was reduced by half in order to limit the amount of nuclear fallout that would result.

It detonated at 11:32 on October 30, 1961 over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range, north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea.

Even at half strength, the Tsar was a hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons. This is equivalent to TEN times the amount of ALL the explosives used in World War II combined, including the Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.


The explosion:

The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen and felt almost 1,000 km (621 miles) from ground zero. The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 miles) away from ground zero.

The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 km (40 miles) high (nearly seven times higher than Mount Everest) and 40 km (25 miles) wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth. Its Richter magnitude was about 5 to 5.25.



The Tsar Bomba (codenamed Ivan) was so powerful that it was completely impractical: much of the explosion's energy radiated upwards into space, and that which didn't was so excessive that using the device on any populated targets world would have resulted in adverse effects on Russian interests. It served as nothing more than a show of force.

Only one (real) unit was built, and a real sized mock bomb is stored in the Russian Nuclear Weapons Museum in Sarov.

Footage from the lauch:

Via corvos de malta, wikipedia

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Tiny Geo-coder

With the Tiny Geo-coder you can easily find latitude and longitude values for any place in the world.

It's simple, fast and free. Click in the image to access.

Via presurfer



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Google Moon, Google Mars

Maybe you don't know but there are two Google Earth-like apps for the Moon and Mars, both from Google.

Images above are from Google Moon (top) and from Google Mars. Click the images to access each website.



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Put a robot underneath you

magine a bicycle seat connected by mechanical frames to a pair of shoes for an idea of how the new wearable assisted-walking gadget from Honda works.

The experimental device, unveiled Friday, is designed to support bodyweight, reduce stress on the knees and help people get up steps and stay in crouching positions.

Honda envisions the device being used by workers at auto or other factories. It showed a video of Honda employees wearing the device and bending to peer underneath vehicles on an assembly line.

Engineer Jun Ashihara also said the machine is useful for people standing in long lines and for people who run around to make deliveries.

To wear it, you put the seat between your legs, put on the shoes and push the on button. Then just start walking around.

The system has a computer, motor, gears, battery and sensors embedded in it so it responds to a person's movements, according to Honda Motor Co.

Via washington post


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R/C flying fish

This beautiful "flying fish" was presented to the public at the 7th International Airship Convention 2008, in Germany.

The 'Fin-Fish' was developed and operated by LaChLuVe Team.



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Blue Angels' Fat Albert

Fat Albert is the C-130 Hercules assigned to the fantastic Blue Angels.

Like any other C-130 this one has 4 turboprops, but Fat Albert has the capability to receive 8 rockets to help it take-off fast and using little runway (JATO - Jet Assisted Take-Off).

See JATO being used in the videos below (three more after the jump).

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17 Gigapixel panorama

This is pretty cool.

A regular picture has 12, 13 megapixel. So you can figure the image quality of a 17 Gigapixel panorama.

Click the image above to access the panorama.

The definition of this picture is so high that you can zoom in until find people walking within the landscape (find HERE some locations - but try to find for yourself too... like in the summit of the mountain, near the center of the image, where you could find at least 12).

This panorama represents the Glacier Point at Yosemite National Park, and was made from 2046 pictures taken from Gerard Maynard, a NY artist, to the "Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project".

At the artist's website (LINK) there are four smaller images with extremely high resolution as well: Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, Taft Point e Washburn Point. Click in anyone and then choose "View in Zoomify" to navegate.

Enjoy...


Via wired via dark roast blend




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Anara Tower (Dubai): topped by a large glass capsule

The Anara Tower, which will be built in Dubai (starting in the end of the next year) will be 2150 feet high and will have an ultra luxurious restaurant at the top - which will be within a large glass capsule.

This glass capsule, sustained by a wind turbine-like structure, is the most impressive element of the project, which will have also around 300 wildly expensive apartments, a 250-rooms hotel and sumptuous gardens at every 27 floors.

Wow...


Via gizmodo




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AC/DC music video using Excel

It's possible to run audio-visual content using Excel, and the first music video using '.xls' files is a AC/DC one, featuring "Rock'N'Roll Train".

Below you have a short demonstration of it, and if you want to see it working in Excel, download the file HERE (the file name is ACDC.xls).

By the way, the music is great.

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Six legs... and it dances

Six legged robot created by HTL Saalfelden (Austria) students. Awesome...

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Lamborghini Gallardo LP560 = police car

I think that being chased by one of these should be the dream of anyone that is running from the cops...

See the pictures (more after the jump) and the video of the most recent acquisition of the Italian police: Lamborghini Gallardo LP560.

Via autoblog

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Low flyby: Sr-71 Blackbird

Amazing footage of a Blackbird in a beautiful low flyby. After the jump, another video showing also the takeoff and the landing.

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