Hasta La Gadget!

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

Most mornings, we wake up with little to no idea what happened the day before, let alone last week. Fortunately, they don’t let us run important scientific research projects. Or maybe they do, and we just forgot? This week (and most others as it goes) we definitely leave it to the pros, as we get some insightful glimpses at some important origins. Ball Lightning, the moon and even us humans are the benefactors of those tireless scientists, who work hard to explain where it all comes from. There’s also a planet with four stars that sees the first few paragraphs of its origin story excitedly written out. One thing we never forget, however, is that this is alt-week.

Continue reading Alt-week 20.10.12: our oldest primate ancestor, the birth of the moon and a planet with four stars

Filed under: Alt

Alt-week 20.10.12: our oldest primate ancestor, the birth of the moon and a planet with four stars originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Water on the moon is nothing particularly revelatory. But a new study suggests that H20 on the surface of the Earth’s nearest neighbor comes from a most unlikely place: the Sun. More »

The Polaris rover may look a little punk rock, but that mohawk is no fashion statement. It’s for catching solar rays which shine almost horizontally at the Moon’s north pole, a location Polaris is due to explore before 2016. Built by Astrobotic Technology, it’ll be ferried aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to our celestial companion, where it’ll drill into the surface in search of ice. The company, spun out of the Carnegie Mellon University, hopes to identify resources at a depth of up to four feet that could be used to support manned Moon expeditions in the future. The plan is to complete the mission during a 10-day window of sunlight, digging at up to 100 sites over a three-mile stretch. However, if it can live through the harsh two-week-long nights, then it may continue to operate “indefinitely.” NASA is backing the project, providing ice-prospecting gear and money, although Astrobotic hopes to get more cash for its work — over $20 million from Google’s Lunar X Prize. Right now, Polaris is a flight prototype and there are still improvements to be made, mainly on the software side, before it tackles the rough terrain. Check out the short video of its public unveiling below, although we don’t think the soundtrack quite matches the hairdo.

Continue reading Polaris rover will travel to the Moon in search of polar resources, try to survive the long lunar night

Filed under: Robots, Science, Alt

Polaris rover will travel to the Moon in search of polar resources, try to survive the long lunar night originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmag  |   | Email this | Comments

I’m not particularly fond of sweets but I’m willing to make an exception for Häagen-Dazs’ Ice Moon Ice Cream Cakes that are coming this Christmas. Who knew ice cream could be done up artistically?

What you see above looks like the moon (or a sculpture of it) but it’s actually Häagen-Dazs’ Ice Moon dessert. These ice cream cakes might look simple on the outside, but they’re just brimming with flavor and delightful fillings on the inside.

The white moon consists of a pistachio biscuit base, layers of macadamia nut ice cream and meringue and a coating of raspberry ice cream. The orange moon has crunchy chocolate at the bottom, layers of nutty ice cream and salted caramel and a coating of vanilla ice cream.

The Ice Moon is a result of the efforts of Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien of Doshi Levien after the ice cream giant hired them to create the ice cream cakes for this Christmas season. I think they did a marvelous job at incorporating the jolly flavors of the holidays with the Ice Moon.

Here’s a look inside the orange Ice Moon:

As to why they chose the moon, Doshi Levien explained:

We imagined the shape and texture of an ice cream scoop being like the moon as in a famous childhood Bollywood song. We were reminded of the stop frame movie Le Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès. We were inspired by Armenian surrealist Léon Tutundjian’s relief work of 1929. We found some early examples of the ‘Bombes’ ice-cream that are near spherical.

[via Dezeen via Laughing Squid]

The only thing better than ice cream is ice cream with a gimmick. And since ice cream trucks are all actually sort of drugs vans in disguise (right?), and those Pikachu-faced Popsicles aren’t even that tasty, please direct your attention to this new and very wonderful upgrade, coming straight from the guys who know how to make ice cream best: Häagen-Dazs. More »