Hasta La Gadget!

NASA is trying to bring it’s equipment into the 21st century and that includes updating its spacesuits. Scientists and engineers at NASA have been working to develop the new prototype called the Z-1. This is the new spacesuit that is being developed to replace the twenty-year old model that was first put into service in 1992. Is it just me or does this look like Buzz Lightyear’s suit?


Right now it is undergoing heavy testing. The Z-1 prototype spacesuit and portable life support system has its own airlock. With this new design, an astronaut crawls into the suit from the back, near the top. This is done through an airtight hatch that can latch on to a docking terminal or other vehicle such as a smaller spacecraft or rover unit. This design of course has many possibilities that the previous suits didn’t have. It is also more flexible and cuts down the amount of oxygen that an astronaut uses while in the suit.

I’m not sure why they are bothering since we don’t seem to want to send humans anywhere in space other than space stations, but hey, at least we have new suits if we change our minds. You can find a more detailed image of the Z-1 spacesuitover at Popular Mechanics.

[via Gizmag via Geek]

Despite early hiccups Apple’s latest OS X release was downloaded more than 3 million times during its first 4 days of availability. The $20 upgrade brings a host of new features to compatible Macs including Airplay Mirroring, Game Center, system-wide sharing, and beefed-up iCloud integration, which now syncs iWork documents, notes, and reminders.

While Apple doesn’t speculate the reason for the huge download numbers, several factors likely led to the quick adoption rate. First, Apple priced OS X 10.8 to move. At only $20 the new operating system is a rather good bargain even if it doesn’t boast a lot of new features. Apple also made upgrading to Mountain Lion rather easy, which also likely led to more users jumping onto the system.

Thanks to the Mac App Store, upgrading to OS X 10.8 is downright easy. Users simply buy the new OS as if it was another application. From there, the update downloads in the background and prompts users to restart the system when its ready to install. It’s as painless as a system update.

“Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said in a released statement today.

Mountain Lion was released last Wednesday on the Mac App Store for just $19.99. Read our review here.

Suidobashi Heavy Industries has put the finishing touches to its latest project, the 4.4-ton Kuratas. Mobile suit obsessives around the world can thank artist Kogoro Kurata and robotics expert Wataru Yoshizaki for the robot frame, which has space to house a pilot inside. The mech’s touchscreen UI even includes a Kinect-based movement interface and the shudder-inducing “smile-activated” twin BB gatling guns. You can customize your own diesel-powered beast in the dystopian gang colors of your choosing, but be advised: the $1.35 million price tag doesn’t include further customization options like a faux leather interior, cup holder or phone cubby. The Kuratas does, however, come with the ability to make phone calls direct from the cockpit, so you can tell your enemies that you’re coming for them.

Continue reading Kuratas, the 13-foot mech: unleashes your inner Ripley, costs $1.35 million (video)

Filed under: Robots

Kuratas, the 13-foot mech: unleashes your inner Ripley, costs $1.35 million (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturn’s moon Iapetus certainly isn’t one of the more common celestial bodies for most of us, but the moon is very interesting. One of the most interesting things about the moon is that it has a ridge of mountains around its equator giving it the look of a plastic ball or walnut. Planetary scientist Kelsi Singer was studying images of the icy moon and found something very interesting and unexpected, massive ice avalanches.

Half of Iapetus is always in the sunlight, and half of the moon surface is always in the dark. The mountains on the surface of the icy moon are 12 miles high, twice as tall as Mount Everest. While the surface of the moon is peculiar indeed, Singer says that the ice avalanches were something that the team never expected to discover. Singer discovered the massive ice avalanches on the surface of the moon while studying images of the moon’s surface.

According to the scientists, the icy landslides are similar to landslides that happen on earth known as sturtzstorms. This sort of landslide can travel a distance across the surface of the earth equal to 20 to 30 times the height it fell from. Singer believes that the landslides on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon were likely triggered by objects hitting the moon’s surface.

The scientists don’t agree at this point on what mechanism might allow this type of landslide to travel so far on earth. There are several hypotheses including that the landslide may ride on a cushion of trapped air, slide on ground water or mud under the surface, slide on ice, or the cause could be strong acoustic vibrations. Singer believes that on the surface of Iapetus, which has no atmosphere and no groundwater, the landslides occurred by the frictional heating of the ice. Singer and her team believe that the reduced friction that allowed the landslides on Saturn’s moon to be so long compared to the height they fell from is “flash heating” of the ice until it was slippery enough to allow sliding without melting.

[via Wired]

Saturn’s moon Iapetus has mysterious giant ice avalanches is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If Doctor Evil ever lowered his lofty goal of sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads to something more manageable, such as lasers on frickin’ tadpoles, the world’s smallest laser might serve him well. Physicists from the University of Texas at Austin working with colleagues in Taiwan and China have created what they claim to be the world’s smallest laser. The laser is so small that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

The laser is the world’s smallest semiconductor laser and is hailed as a breakthrough in the theoretical miniaturization of photonics technology. The researchers believe that the breakthrough could have applications for a number of real-world uses, including computing and medicine. The laser is made using gallium nitride on a nanoscale. The breakthrough called, subdiffraction nanolaser, based on surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, was detailed in the July 27 issue of Science.

The laser breakthrough has great potential to usher in a new era for electronics, in particular. The miniaturization of the semiconductor laser could lead to the development of faster, smaller, and lower energy photon-based electronics such as incredibly fast computer chips and medical sensors for detecting disease. The laser also has the potential for being used in communications.

“We have developed a nanolaser device that operates well below the 3-D diffraction limit,” says Chih-Kang “Ken” Shih, physics professor at The University of Texas at Austin. “We believe our research could have a large impact on nanoscale technologies.” The researcher’s breakthrough is the first continuous-wave low threshold laser below the 3-D diffraction limit, and the laser emits a green light. The laser is constructed of a gallium nitride nano-rod that is partially filled with indium gallium nitride, which are both alloys commonly used in the production of LEDs.

[via Techfragments]

Gallium nitride nano-scale laser is the world’s smallest is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.