Back from APEC, and Peru, and before I get into all that I’m going to post the backlog of tech snippets I’d collected before I left… (long post)
Futures
The teaser – what do games look like on a 150″ plasma screen… it weighs 1700 lbs, and burns 7KW.
First photos of planets of other stars:
In scratchy telescope pictures released Thursday in Science Express, the online version of the journal Science, the planets appear as fuzzy dots that move slightly around their star from exposure to exposure… The new planetary systems are anchored by young bright stars more massive than our own Sun and swaddled in large disks of dust, the raw material of worlds. The three planets orbiting HR 8799 are roughly 10, 9 and 6 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbit their star in periods of 450, 180 and 100 years respectively, all counterclockwise. The Fomalhaut planet is about three times as massive as Jupiter, according to Dr. Kalas’s calculations, and is on the inner edge of a huge band of dust, taking roughly 872 years to complete a revolution of its star.
Scientists clone mice from frozen carcasses
Japanese scientists have produced clones of mice that have been dead and frozen for 16 years — a feat that could lead researchers to one day resurrect long-extinct species, such as the mammoth… Researchers at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, used cells from mice that had been frozen for 16 years at -20 Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit). They extracted the nucleus and injected it into eggs whose DNA had been removed.
India launched an unmanned orbiter to the moon.
The Indian mission is scheduled to last two years, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium… India’s ability to put satellites into orbit has already resulted in lucrative deals; for example, Israel has sent up a satellite by means of an Indian launcher…
Segway inventor Dean Kamen is pushing two low-tech ideas for developing economies – a Stirling engine generator and a water purifier.
The Deka Stirling Engine, which he called a “black box,” converts methane gas from cow dung to electricity. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, 21 times as bad for the environment as carbon dioxide… The other black box, Deka’s water purifying machine, is about 3 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet and weighs less than 300 pounds… It doesn’t use any filters, activated charcoal or chemicals and will clean “anything that looks like fluid,” Kamen said. It can serve about 100 people and needs one kilowatt of electricity to operate. Kamen envisions that the generator and water filtration machine would work together.
A Chinese astronaut orbiting the earth lifted himself out of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft and performed the nation’s first spacewalk… After pulling himself fully out of the orbital module and tethering himself to the safety cords, Mr. Zhai waved a small Chinese flag… This was the country’s third human space mission in five years. Before China, only the United States and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, had sent people into space…
Subsequent Shenzhou missions are expected to focus on building a space station. Another programme, which began last October with the launch of a lunar probe called Chang’e, aims to put an unmanned rover on the surface of the moon around 2017 and return it to earth with samples.
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 spacecraft made history as the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach earth orbit from the ground. This was their fourth attempt. Falcon 1 is a 70- foot tall two-stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene powered launch vehicle. It lifted off from Kwajalein Atoll (Omelek Island) in the Pacific Ocean, about 8,000 miles southwest of Los Angeles.
An engine design that has a single piston sliding back and forth along a tube lined with magnets may prove a better generator for hybrids than the standard crankshaft.
Unlike in conventional engines, there is no mechanical connection between the piston and a crankshaft (hence the name free-piston). Since the design allows for improved combustion and less friction, the engines could be far more efficient in generating electricity than either conventional generators or newer fuel-cell technology… What’s more, free-piston engines don’t require expensive materials such as the platinum catalysts needed in fuel cells, so they could be cheaper too.