And now time for today’s space weather report: Big sunspot 798 exploded twice yesterday, August 22nd, and hurled a pair of coronal mass ejections apparently toward Earth. Geomagnetic storms are possible when the clouds arrive. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras during the nights of August 23rd and 24th. High latitudes are favored: e.g., …
“Discovery is Demated,” says the headline to this story. Nothing too special about the story, except…is “demated” a word now? If so, it seems to me it would be a fine alternative to “divorced,” which, after all, sounds a bit harsh, and we all know how important it is not to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities …
How often have you said to yourself, “You know, I sure wish someone would build a robotic bat head.” What? Never? In fact, you say, the whole idea sounds…well, batty? Not too surprising, I suppose. After all, bats have suffered a serious image problem throughout most of western history. (In the Orient, they are often …
Technovelgy.com writes about a fascinating free-roaming clockwork mechanism by artist Theo Jansen that will walk the main square of Linz, Austria as part of the Ars Electronic Festival. Far out. And I mean that in a good way.
The Speculist finds that the pace of scientific discovery is leaving technological prognosticators in the dust. And be sure to read the whole story about converting ordinary skin cells to embryonic stem cells.
OK, I confess I’m blogging this item just so I can use the phrase “robotic bat head,” which appeals to my 10-year-old inner geek.
I should really link to the Carnival of Tomorrow every time it goes up, but whether I remember to do so in the future or not, here’s this week’s Carnival, a good way to introduce yourself to the realm of futurist-related blogs.
They’ve done it in England by pumping stored warm water through a network of pipes underneath a road when the temperature drops to 2 degrees Celsius. Somehow I doubt it works when the temperature drops to -35…and doesn’t climb above -25 for a week, so no joy for Saskatchewan, I’m guessing.
Night Balloon 2 Originally uploaded by Edward Willett. We stood in line for an hour and a half the other night at the Family Festival of the Canada Summer Games so Alice and Margaret Anne could take a short tethered hot-air balloon ride…only to have the rides cut off just before it was our turn. …
alicelookingup Originally uploaded by Edward Willett. Here’s my daughter Alice, with a helium-filled balloon, at the Canada Summer Games Family Festival site last night.
A new Japanese robot named R Daneel (from a robot character in several books by Isaac Asimov) has the impressive ability (for a robot) of being able to get back on its feet after a fall. There’s a video of it in action here.
Synthetic biologists are mixing and matching DNA’s chemical components to create new forms of life from scratch.
