The work of photographer Mark Willis combines advanced imaging and fabrication technologies with archaeological exploration, often producing breath-taking images, 3D models, and highly accurate virtual environments from ancient sites in the U.S. Southwest. Read more…
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36-Gigapixel Image Captures Ancient Petroglyphs in Texas
The Spanish scientists who developed it are calling it the ‘Terminator’ Polymer — and for good reason. Like the T-1000 blown to bits, it can spontaneously and independently repair itself without any outside intervention. Read more…
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An incredible new polymer that heals itself to 97% efficiency
The Walking Dead was a massive success, so it makes sense the AMC is hoping to squeeze out another post apocalyptic money maker. So Robert Kirkman and Gale Anne Hurd are planning a spinoff series. Read more…
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AMC plans a Walking Dead spinoff series
symbolset writes “Discovery News is covering a project by two engineers from the University of Michigan to pair cubesats with tiny ion engines for inexpensive interplanetary exploration. The tiny plasma drive called the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster (CAT) will ionize water and use it as propellant with power provided by solar cells. In addition to scaling down the size of ion engines they hope to bring down the whole cost of development and launch to under $200, 000.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Tiny Ion Engine Runs On Water
We’ve found hundreds of planets outside the solar system, but taking a picture of one is still something quite special. Read more…
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This could be the lightest alien planet ever captured on camera
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes “The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since it’s discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already perform 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore
An anonymous reader sends news that Disney is closing LucasArts. The game studio has been around since 1982, and brought us classics such as Labyrinth, The Secret of Monkey Island, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Star Wars: Battlefront. They also published Star Wars: Galaxies, Knights of the Old Republic, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The company held a meeting today informing employees of the layoffs. “In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company’s core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. … LucasArt’s other big franchise, Indiana Jones, has failed to make much of a dent in games in recent years, with the exception of Traveller’s Tales LEGO Indiana Jones series that, once again, was not developed by LucasArts. Meanwhile, series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which are both heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones films, have thrived.” If only they hadn’t abandoned the X-Wing series of games. I would have bought a new one of those in a heartbeat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Disney Closes LucasArts
The last time Zuck overhauled the website you check all day every day was two years ago. Two! You’ve probably changed a decent amount since then, but Facebook hasn’t in a way that’s done anything but make us cringe—until today. Enter the clutter killer. Here’s how you’ll be stalking the universe now. More »
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Facebook’s New News Feed: The Biggest Change In Years
Back in 1988, Magnus Magnusson (best name ever) somehow managed to bring three of the 20th Century’s most fascinating personalities together to discuss God, the Universe, and Everything Else . In the hour-long program, the three talked about the Big Bang theory, the connection between science and scifi, the rise of computer science, extraterrestrial intelligence, and the puzzle that is human existence. More »
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Imagine Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke together in conversation. It happened.
Hugh Pickens writes writes “Science Daily Headlines reports that researchers have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure the polarization states of light overcoming some important challenges of Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle and demonstrating that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as ‘conjugate’ variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. Such direct measurements of the wave-function had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle — the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. ‘The reason it wasn’t thought possible to measure two conjugate variables directly was because measuring one would destroy the wave-function before the other one could be measured,’ says co-author Jonathan Leach. The direct measurement technique employs a ‘trick’ to measure the first property in such a way that the system is not disturbed significantly and information about the second property can still be obtained. This careful measurement relies on the ‘weak measurement’ of the first property followed by a ‘strong measurement’ of the second property. First described 25 years ago, weak measurement requires that the coupling between the system and what is used to measure it be, as its name suggests, ‘weak,’ which means that the system is barely disturbed in the measurement process. The downside of this type of measurement is that a single measurement only provides a small amount of information, and to get an accurate readout, the process has to be repeated multiple times and the average taken. Researchers passed polarized light through two crystals of differing thicknesses: the first, a very thin crystal that ‘weakly’ measures the horizontal and vertical polarization state; the second, a much thicker crystal that ‘strongly’ measures the diagonal and anti-diagonal polarization state. As the first measurement was performed weakly, the system is not significantly disturbed, and therefore, information gained from the second measurement was still valid. This process is repeated several times to build up accurate statistics. Putting all of this together gives a full, direct characterization of the polarization states of the light.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Physicists Discover a Way Around Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle