Freshly Discovered Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Nearby Star Could Be the First Truly Habitable Exoplanet
Posted by admin in Space on 30. Sep, 2010 | 0 Comments
Gliese 581 Digital Sky Survey/ESO A couple of math geeks recently calculated that the discovery of the first “habitable” exoplanet would be announced in May of next year — but a few stargazers from UC Santa Cruz and their colleagues simply couldn’t wait that long. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, the astronomers [...]
DARPA Wants Roving ‘Smart Cameras’ That Understand What They See
Posted by admin in Electronics on 18. Mar, 2010 | 0 Comments
The problem with surveillance cameras is that they can see but they can’t think, which means there always has to be a human on the other end making cognitive sense of what’s right in front of the camera. But if we meshed machine vision with visual intelligence, DARPA argues in a solicitation for its new [...]
An Autonomous ‘Bot that Burrows Underground to Deliver Deadly Payloads
Posted by admin in Design, Robots on 16. Mar, 2010 | 0 Comments
Something big is happening underground. The Mole There’s been a lot of talk lately about what’s happening underground, from DARPA’s Transparent Earth program to subterranean navigation systems (for real). Not to be out-DARPA’d by DARPA, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is seeking a “one-time use, air-delivered, highly mobile vehicle” that can tunnel into the earth [...]
This Tiny Crustacean Menace Could Fuel the World
Posted by admin in Science on 13. Mar, 2010 | 0 Comments
They don’t exactly look like the saviors of our energy economy, but that’s exactly what some researchers think they could be. Gribbles — tiny crustacean pests with a knack for digesting wood — have long been considered a marine parasite for the destruction they cause to wooden hulls and piers. But the enzymes gribbles use [...]
A Computer That Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light
Posted by admin in Computers on 10. Mar, 2010 | 0 Comments
Pushing the Limits of Physics Exceeding the speed of light opens one up to all kinds of theoretical problems, but two Austrian researchers claim there’s no reason we can’t build a computer that processes information at superluminal speeds. How fast is too fast? According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a [...]
