popular science

Among the many little-known-yet-completely-awesome things that Google has done over the years is their partnering with Popular Science magazine to make the publication's complete 137-year archive available online for free. And to help provide would-be PopSci archeologists with a starting point, they've grouped similar articles into a collection of fascinating "Archive Galleries."

I've only scratched the surface of those archives, but wanted to draw your attention to the Vintage Robots Archive Gallery, which features pictures of 21 groundbreaking, important, and strange robots from the past. Each picture contains a short write-up and then a link to the entire article. For example, you can read the April 1933 article associated with the terrifying mantis/horse monstrosity shown above by clicking here.

Really great stuff. I can't wait to keep digging through these archives.

Do Asteroids collide? It seems like a safe assumption, but until recently, we've had no proof. But among the many things Hubble is doing for us lately is taking pictures of as yet unproven events that are enticing the science geeks, such as an unfamiliar debris field pattern, according to a Pop-Sci article.

A comet-like object about 90 million miles from Earth was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program at the beginning of the year. The debris field was wrong, and the usual gases detected in a comet's debris trail were missing. And the pattern in the debris field has a distinct "x" pattern that is making NASA scientists speculate that the debris is from the collision of two asteroids. With an estimated impact speed of around 11,000 miles per hour, the collision is described as "energetic" which clearly is an understatement.

It may seem like a mundane thing we should assume, but the beauty of science is it requires proof outside of assumption. This small step towards actually knowing our universe makes it simultaneously feel smaller, and much more interesting.

French scientists seem to have created an artificial synapse in a computer transistor. What synapses do for the human brain, transistors do for computers; both rely on electrical impulses. So it's a short leap to see the value of creating a transistor that works like a synapse.

Research teams replicated a biological synapse by using gold nanoparticles along with an insulation layer and an organic semiconductor transistor made of pentacene. Voltage spikes similar to neurotransmitters were imitated by using pulsed voltages. The researchers could even adjust the time delay for each spike.

Now, I read this on Popular Science, which culled the details from Physicsworld.com. I thought about doing more detailed research there, but the PopSci piece made my brain hurt enough, especially when they mentioned that there are probably 100 billion neurons, which have about 10,000 times that number of synapses.

These researchers have a goal of creating a "wet" computer, one based on a chemical version of neurons. While that may be a long way off, still, it's not just a room full of bulky computers replicating a cat or mouse brain. We've come a long way from the first transistor back in 1947. We're getting closer and closer to Blade Runner territory.

The entire known universe has been recreated. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Apparently a new video at the Hayden Planetarium does just that.

Entitled "Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe," it shows our own little star and solar system from one light year out. The video was created for the new Rubin Art Museum in New York City, and it uses data collected over a decade. This Digital Universe Atlas includes the precise location of every object ever observed in the sky. That mind boggling collection includes quasars, pulsars, black holes and nebulas.

The video, after the jump, is a sampling of the new exhibit. With the observable universe spanning 13.7 billion light years, there's a whole lot we still haven't seen, but this is enough to whet just about anyone's imagination. Just imagine the future astronomers inspired by this simulation, maybe a real Ellie Arroway or maybe the successor to David Charbonneau.

Even if it just inspires more stories like this year's abundance of science fiction films, I'll be happy. The exhibit runs through May 10th.

How Stuff Works has taken on Stingray Sam, an episodic space musical that features an all-male planet, Fredward. Stingray Sam is coerced into a mission on Fredward, where male pregnancy and gender-determining pills have made women extinct.

While the technology for gender-determinant pills isn't currently available, How Stuff Works points out that according to the Oxford Journal of Reproduction, sperm separation technology does exist. It's a medical technology used in other science fiction as a premise to discuss gender issues and the potentially devastating results of choosing one gender over another instead of relying on natural selection.

On planet Fredward, with a male only population, the only way to reproduce is male impregnation. Today, few species involve males in hosting the developing young, such as male seahorses. According to Popular Science, Robert Winston insisted the technology was only 20 years off as of 1999. Winston detailed a method involving in-vitro fertilization and implanting the embryo implanted in the wall of his peritoneum.

How long before Geordi LaForge's visor is real? They're not that far off, it seems.

I had my annual eye exam last week, and the great news was that I didn't need progressive lenses. I love my glasses, but the idea of progressives was daunting. That got me thinking about the technology behind glasses, and progressives in particular.

You're probably familiar with Benjamin Franklin and his bifocals from back in the 1760s. Spectacles have changed a lot since then, and that's a good thing; while there are actual high index lenses made of glass, they don't meet US safety standards, according to my optometrist. She also mentioned that even in the last year or so the new progressives have significantly reduced the amount of peripheral distortion.

While researching the topic, I stumbled across a New York Times article about TruFocals, which use three layers of lenses, including a clear liquid middle lens that can be adjusted. So that nerdy finger to the bridge may not be to push the frames up, but to adjust focus with the tiny slider on the bridge. The same NYT article mentions that Pixel Optics is pursuing a technology that will embed LCD technology in conventional lenses. Things have changed since my grandmother's bifocals.

But that's not all; German scientists have invented glasses with interactive display systems that use a chip small to fit on the hinge of the glasses, according to a monstersandcritics.com article.

We've already seen the advent of visor readouts, similar to Geordi's visor in Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as programs like The 10 Million Dollar Man, the Terminator franchise, and more, but they're now a lot closer to becoming reality outside of military application.

[photo: trufocals.com]

I swear, I wasn't planning on a cat kick, but this was too good not to share. IBM has a supercomputer that model's a cat's brain.

According to a Popular Science article, the IBM Blue Gene, the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world to date, uses 144 terabytes of ram to simulate a cat's cerebral cortex, which is based on 1 billion neurons and 1 trillian synapses. They had previously simulated a full rat brain in 2007, but have only simulated 1% of the human cerebral cortex.

With the simulated cat brain running about 100 times slower than the real thing, I don't think we're in danger of a Terminator cat any time soon. But just wait til it learns how to use it's "soliciting purr."

However, there is another team of researchers working on the Blue Brain project, according to the same article, which has a digital rat's brain's creating self-organizing neurological patterns. So maybe the first Terminator will be a rat.

I poke around the Popular Science site every once in a while because it has good articles explaining technology. Today I stumbled upon an article that would be of interest to the Bionic Man. Or Woman, if her show wasn't canceled.

Apparently the "fastest man on no legs" and his prosthetics are at the center of a sporting controversy because of a study that states sprinters' prosthetics can shave 10 seconds or more from a runner's 400-meter time.

Two research teams analyzed the same data about Oscar Pistorious, a South African Paralympian who uses Ossur's Cheetah prosthetic legs. Pistorius was denied eligibility in the 2008 summer Olympics because the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) used findings to determine he had an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes, although that decision was later overturned.

Does Pistorius and athletes like him have an unfair advantage? That's the question, and two sets of researchers have come to two very different conclusions as outlined in the Popular Science article.