Aug 09
Hey nerds, get some fresh air this weekend: there’s gonna be hunks of burning rock falling from the sky.
Image courtesy of Roberto Porto
Source: Wired
Aug 09
This image, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, depicts the Magellanic Stream: a long ribbon of gas which stretches nearly halfway around our galaxy. But it also solves a 40-year mystery of where the damn thing came from, too.
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Aug 08
Lunar Landing Cake: That’s One Small Step for Chocolate, One Giant Leap for Buttercream
Posted in: Today's ChiliWe’ve already seen an intricate cake that replicates Jupiter, but here’s a space-inspired cake that lands a little closer to home. This lunar landing cake needs to fly off of its orbit around Earth and crash land on my dinner table.
This Moon cake was made a couple of years ago by Deborah over at It’s a piece of cake for her son’s 10th birthday. Lucky kid. The cake does a great job simulating the cratered surface of the natural satellite, and has a couple of little astronauts there ready to plant the American flag and to collect some buttercream frosting samples. Unlike our actual moon, this one is filled with chocolate fudge cake with white chocolate chips. I consider that a major improvement over rock.
So much for my low carb diet. I’m running out to buy a cake tonight.
[via It’s a piece of cake]
Aug 07
When you stare at the sun it just looks like pain. But when the New Solar Telescope (NST) does, it can catch glimpses of truly mesmerizing solar activity, and all without going blind. Here, for example, is the most precise picture of a sunspot ever taken, in all its flaming glory. It’s like a solar black hole in a field of molten stained glass.
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Aug 07
Gamers and game developers alike are excited about the potential of the Oculus Rift headset and the Virtuix Omni walking surface. But these virtual reality devices have applications beyond gaming. The Human Interfaces Group of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used both devices to make simulations of space environments.
In an interview with Engadget, Human Interfaces Engineer Victor Luo said that they used a stereoscopic 360º panorama of Mars taken by Curiosity, satellite imagery of the red planet and development kits of the Rift and Omni to create an immersive virtual tour of Mars (or at least part of it). They also made a similar experiment for the interior of the International Space Station, but they used the Rift by itself to emphasize the feeling of floating in zero gravity.
While the experiment showed the potential of VR, Luo also said that they needed devices that had more sensors built-in before they can consider actually using them as tools. At the very least, I think their experiments can inspire a couple of VR games. Watch out for Curiosity Simulator and Dead Space: ISS. Oh wait, we already have the first one.
[via Engadget via Destructoid]
Aug 07
Mattel is finally jumping aboard the mission to Mars with a new astronaut Barbie. This Mars Explorer edition features everything America’s favorite anatomically impossible wonderdoll would need to survive in space (except… gloves? no matter!), and that striped and sparkly hot pink suit sure looks snappy/gender-normative. But… Barbie? We’ve got some bad news.
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Aug 07
In the 1980s, the US Air Force only knew about roughly 5,000 pieces of space debris orbiting our planet. By 2010, that number had tripled to 15,639 objects. And our current space trash tracking system can’t even detect some of the smaller bits zipping around up there. That’s why the USAF is developing a new iteration of the venerable "Space Fence" that’s both more precise and more cost effective than its predecessor.
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Aug 07
Where tectonic plates meet, there’s trouble—we all know that from grade school—but you might not realise just how much movement they cause when earthquakes aren’t happening. This GIF shows in centimeter accuracy just how dramatic their effects can be.
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Aug 06
As you may know, yesterday was Curiosity’s one-year anniversary
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Aug 06
Technologically inclined Barbie’s aren’t exactly new, but a Mars Explorer Barbie? Yeah, that’s worth mentioning. In cooperation with NASA, the “Career of the Year Mars Explorer Barbie” is being “launched”… presumably right into Ken’s ever-loving heart. We’re told that she’s ready to “add her signature pink splash to the red planet,” and should be hitting Earthly shelves now for $12.99. The best part? Curiosity won’t have to sing a birthday song alone ever again.
Filed under: Internet
Via: CNET
Source: Barbie Media
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