::ZScape 3D Holographic Prints.

As the video above shows, Zebra Imaging's so called ZScape prints pull off some pretty amazing 3D visual effects despite being based on old school hologram technology. These prints are made using a variety of 3D data sources -- think AutoCad and the like -- that are then rendered as thousands of holographic elements by recording laser light onto a single film-based material. The resulting images are easily viewed without glasses or spinning mirrors, and just require a run-of-the-mill halogen or LED light source to reveal 360-degree, full color representations -- akin to what a physical model might look like. Fancier versions can also be made using overlays and layering techniques to show more information. To date, over 8,000 ZScapes have already been developed for the US military, but surprisingly their prices range between $1,500 for a 12- x 18-inch version to $3,500 for the largest 2- x 3-foot size, making them relatively obtainable for those not on Defense Department tabs. If the video of Seattle pulling anInception above didn't impress you enough, be sure to check another embedded video after the break.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Zebra Imaging.

::R3dXpl0it Autopost test0.

this is the test post of R3dXpl0it autoblogger, a custom blogging script which runs on host and searches for something worthwhile to post using topicbots and adds tags and user metadata.


post0.softcode.loaded.sphweb2


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, R3dXpl0it.

::Generator the Size of a Pencil Head.

Japanese researchers have cooked up a minuscule kinetic battery capable of generating more energy than anything of its kind. Through only the slightest vibrations, the tiny device cranks out 22 milliwatts—20 times more than anything similar before it.

comparison.

Twenty two milliwatts might not sound like terribly much—certainly a long way from powering your PS3—but could revolutionize the way we use smaller, button-sized batteries—just imagine a tiny way to store and generate power that could be tucked away anywhere. Devices that suck small amounts of juice could power themselves just by being in your pocket.

the kinetic generator.

The secret behind the microgenerator lies in its use of Galfenol, a magnetic material developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory in 1998—it's super tough, and can take temperatures over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. The tech is still the stuff of lab work at Kanazawa University, but the possibilities for this little wonder—once it gets out of academia and into my pocket—are exciting.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Tech-On.

::NASA Finds New Life.

NASA has discovered a new life form—called GFAJ-1—that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. It's capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything. Updated.

NASA is saying that this is "life as we do not know it". The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

In a surprising discovery, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism—called GFAJ-1 and found in Mono Lake, California—uses the poisonous arsenic for its building blocks.

The new life forms up close, at five micrometers.

According to Wolfe Simon, they knew that "some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new—building parts of itself out of arsenic." The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. Like NASA's Ed Weiler says: "The definition of life has just expanded."

Even closer, showing their internal structure.

Talking at the NASA conference, Wolfe Simon said that the important thing here is that this breaks our ideas on how life can be created and grow, pointing out that scientists will now be looking for new types of organisms and metabolism that not only uses arsenic, but other elements as well. She says that she's working on a few possibilities herself.

NASA's geobiologist Pamela Conrad thinks that the discovery is huge and "phenomenal," comparing it to the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can't be detected with tricorders because it wasn't carbon-based. It's like saying that we may be looking for new life in the wrong places with the wrong methods. Indeed, NASA tweeted that this discovery "will change how we search for life elsewhere in the Universe."

This is a big find as there are trillions of stars with planets that may or may not harbor alien life. Now its just a matter of time.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, NASA.

blogsite is back online, upgrades were done to the main servers and handlers, and OS updates were done accordingly, new font is in use, more spacing has been made default to make reading the site easier. We will soon be testing new layout also. 

Thank You for your patience,

Admin I

Mohandas Amesh, Hackney, London, U.K.

::Server and Website Upgrades.

Server and website upgrades are being done, so new posts will be delayed for some time, tc till we get back.
admin II.
Juan Flores.

::Antimatter Trapped for the First Time, Warp Drives Here We Come...!!!

Get ready for that warp drive spaceship, because we are now one step closer to it. After creating antihydrogen in their antiproton decelerator, scientists at CERN have been able to trap antimatter for the first time in history.

This a big step. First, it gets humanity closer to understand one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe: What happened to all the antimatter that was created during the Big Bang? In theory, matter and antimatter were created in equal parts during the Big Bang. However, the latter disappeared shortly thereafter. Or at least, we can't seem to find it. The spokesman for CERN's ALPHA experiment—Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, Denmark—says that trapping these atoms was a bit of an overwhelming experience:

What's new about Alpha is that now we've managed to hold on to those atoms. We have a magnetic bowl, kind of a bottle, that holds the antihydrogen [...] For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter. It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter.

CERN created the first nine atoms of antihydrogen in 1995, and then started to produce atoms in large quantities in 2002, as part of the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments. This is the first time that scientists have been able to trap antihydrogen atoms for a long enough time to study them, keeping them at 9 degrees kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius), suspended in a magnetic field inside this Ghostbusters-style machine.

The other reason why this is an important step is its potential to solve our need for unlimited energy. When antihydrogen touches matter—as shown in the image above—it releases a huge amount of energy. Many scientists speculate that antimatter may be the key to provide unlimited power capable of driving machines that are unthinkable right now. Eventually, it could be the stuff that could power new engines capable of taking us to the stars at near-light speed.

The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, about 4 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion.

The reaction of 1 kilogram of antimatter with 1 kilogram of matter would produce 180 petajoules of energy or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of 50 megatons, which required the use of hundreds of kilograms of fissile material.Wikipedia

Or maybe we will just manage to destroy the world in a explosion of strawberry and cherry goo. It can go either way.

But fear not, we are not there yet. At this stage, scientists are still trying to comprehend how antimatter works. This is one more—although very important—step in this quest. 

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, CERN.

::Artificial Retina.

Scientists have been working on artificial retinas for years, and while the main focus of research has been to increase the amount of light captured, a study led by Sheila Nirenberg, PhD, has taken a different tack. The new system being devised at Weill Cornell Medical College better mimics frontline photoreceptor cells, making it easier for the ganglion cells to output a more accurate image. "If you want to really restore normal vision, you have to know the retina's code," Nirenberg said. "Once you have that, the door is open to the possibility of restoring normal vision." When researchers performed tests with mice, they found that those with the new system reconstructed more details (the second image, above) than those without (image three, above). "Incorporating the [more accurate] code jumped the system's performance up to normal levels - that is, there was enough information to reconstruct faces, newsprint, landscapes, essentially anything," Nirenberg said. The next step? Coordinating with other researchers to test the technology on human participants.
(testing new font + image sizes for Knowledge Database 3.0).


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, PhysOrg.

::Youngest Ever Black Hole Discovered.

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old object provides a unique opportunity to watch a black hole develop from infancy.

The black hole is a remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100 approximately 50 million light years from Earth. Data from Chandra, NASA’s Swift satellite, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory revealed a bright source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation from 1995 to 2007.

This suggests the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova or a binary companion.

Scientists think SN 1979C, first discovered by an amateur astronomer in 1979, formed when a star about 20 times more massive than the sun collapsed. Many new black holes in the distant universe previously have been detected in the form of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). However, SN 1979C is different. Not only is it closer, but also it belongs a class of supernovas unlikely to produce gamma-ray bursts. According to theory, most new black holes are not announced by a bright GRB.

Although the evidence points to a newly formed black hole in SN 1979C, another intriguing possibility exists: A young, rapidly spinning neutron star with a powerful wind of high energy particles could be responsible for the X-ray emission. This would make the object in SN 1979C the youngest and brightest example of such a “pulsar wind nebula” and the youngest known neutron star.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, NASA.