Hasta La Gadget!

After much excitement, the Force has not been found. But don’t be sad, my fellow nerds. Scientists may have not found evidence of the Higgs boson yet, but they have discovered “tantalizing hints” that may indicate its presence. More »

How fast can your camera shoot photos? 60 frames per second? Pah. 1,000 fps? Puh-lease. What’s that? You have a Phantom camera that’ll shoot one million fps? Whatever. MIT’s new camera will shoot one trillion frames per second.

Let’s put that in some perspective. One trillion seconds is over 31,688 years. So if you shot one second of footage on this camera, and played it back at 30fps, it’d still take you over 1,000 years to watch it. That’s one boring-ass home movie.

Of course, the “camera” can’t be taken on vacation, and even if it could, there wouldn’t be enough light on even the sunniest beach to support shooting so fast. What MIT’s device (designed by Professor Ramesh Raskar and team) does is to use “femtosecond laser illumination, picosecond-accurate detectors and mathematical reconstruction techniques” to illuminate a scene and then capture the pulses of laser light. And like all good magic, the kit also uses mirrors: in this case to move the view of the camera.

Nor does the camera run for a full second. The movies are 480 frames long, and show a slice in time of just 1.71 picoseconds.

The result is a movie of an advancing wave of light. The individual frames can also be colorized to show a rainbow of wavefronts:

If your jaw isn’t on the ground right now, then shame on you. If you want to see more, you should head the team’s project page at MIT where you can see such wonders as a single pulse of light traveling the length of a soda bottle in one billionth of a second, and wavefronts rippling over still-life setups as if they were waves of water lapping at a beach.

Visualizing Photons in Motion at a Trillion Frames Per Second [MIT Camera Culture]

Dry-aged meat is crazy expensive. But oh man is it delicious. The dean of food science writers, Harold McGee, writes in Lucky Peach Issue 2 about what makes it taste so good—and what makes other things taste, well, not so good. More »

Fully functional LightSabre aside, a tractor beam has to be high on most geek wish-lists; lucky for you NASA has started working on one. Before you drop your sandwich (or whatever that object in your left hand is), this won’t be for sucking up star cruisers, but the more modest task of sample and space dust collection. The basic concept has already been proven, but now NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist has given boffins $100,000 to make the dream a reality. Three potential methods are already on the table, which in lay-terms resemble laser tweezers, a light vortex and a conceptual rippling beam. Once developed, it could signal the end of traditional mechanical sample collecting — and just plain luck — consigning robotic arms to the history books. Check the video after the break for science-tastic mock up of how it might work.

Continue reading NASA developing tractor beams, no plans for Death Star… yet (video)

NASA developing tractor beams, no plans for Death Star… yet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Forbes  |  NASA  | Email this | Comments

Transistors of all shapes and sizes form the foundation of just about every electronic gadget under the sun, and similarly, cotton clothing is a key component of a well-rounded wardrobe. It was only a matter of time before these two got together to form a fashion-forward future, and an international team of scientists have accomplished the trick by creating a transistor using fibers of cotton. Now, this isn’t the first organic transistor, but cotton’s plentiful, cheap, lightweight and sustainable nature make it a great choice for use as a substrate in carbon-based transistors. To get the fluffy white stuff ready to amplify and switch electric signals, it was conformally coated (to cover all the fiber’s irregularities) with gold nanoparticles, semiconductive and conductive polymers in a super thin layer to preserve its wearability flexibility. The result was an active transistor that can be used in integrated circuits sewn into your shirt, socks, or even pantaloons, if you like. The future of fashion is right around the corner, folks, and in that future your pants are the PC.

The touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our… transistors originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 01:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Cornell University  | Email this | Comments