Star Wars droid R2-D2 made a cameo in the 2009 Star Trek movie, which left some fans wondering if the little guy made it into Star Trek Into Darkness. Now that the film is out on home media, R2-D2 has been spotted. Hi there!
Reader Rafael Oca passed along this screen shot, from somewhere around the one hour, 17-minute mark. After the Vengeance fires on the Enterprise while the ships are in warp, poor R2 gets sucked out of the ship with other members of the crew. I'm sure this plucky fellow will find a way back into the next film, though. More here.
The power of 1,000 suns? Pfft. That ain't nuthin'. A recent breakthrough in solar panel connections has allowed scientists to create arrays of solar cells that can stand strong under the blazing glare of 70,000 suns. Not that they'd ever have to, but still.
Stacked solar cells—which are exactly what they sound like—are some of the most efficient solar-sucking power generators on the market today. In general, they can turn just less than half of the sunlight they absorb into pure power. But stacked cell is only as strong as its weakest part; you have to connect the stacked cells in such a way that the energy doesn't get wasted in the connections. That gets especially hard under a lot of light.
Scientists at North Carolina State University recently discovered that a thin film of gallium arsenide in the solar cell junctions can stop virtually all voltage loss, and let the cells work efficiently under the power of 70,000 suns. Yeah, we only have one sun, but thanks to lenses we can beef that up to at least a few thousand in concentrated power.
Dr. Salah Bedair, a senior author of the study, described the accomplishment to PhysOrgthis way:[It] is more than sufficient for practical purposes, since concentrating lenses are unlikely to create more than 4,000 or 5,000 suns worth of energy. ...This should reduce overall costs for the energy industry because, rather than creating large, expensive solar cells, you can use much smaller cells that produce just as much electricity by absorbing intensified solar energy from concentrating lenses. More here.
Well, that's different. The next major iteration of Android will be called Kit Kat, it seems. We know this because Android boss Sundar Pichai just tweeted a photo of a gigantic Android robot made of Kit Kats.
Apparently that's going to come along with a promo campaign in Kit Kats to win a free Nexus 7 or Google Play credit, which is a strange and probably unnecessary bit of advertising, but fine. Your operating system is a supermarket aisle ad now is all.
For the uninitiated, major releases of Android get dessert names, and they've been progressing in alphabetical order. So Ice Cream Sandwich was succeeded by Jelly Bean, and now Kit Kat. Our dumb but prescient guess in 2010 was Krispy Kreme.
Beyond the goofy name, this does have actual bearing on Android. The new name implies a major refresh to the operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) was released back in 2011 with a major redesign, and since then we've had three versions of Jelly Bean (now on 4.3). Kit Kat will be version 4.4, so we probably won't need to wait too long for it, but the advancement to a new name should mean we get some substantial updates. Or it could be the groundskeeper at Google got bored. Anyone's guess, really.
It wasn't that long ago that the radio was kind of a big deal. Even a young'un like me is old enough to remember inexpertly dodging commercials for local car dealerships while recording embarrassing mix-tapes. But the times have changed. A lot. Do you ever listen to the radio anymore? Is there any reason to, at all? More here.
With its new Freshness Center refrigerator, Siemens wants you to get rid of that freezer bag sealing contraption on your counter. In addition to the standard fridge and freezer compartments, the KG38QAL30 has a third drawer with a section that vacuum seals itself, preserving fresh foods like vegetables and meats up to five times longer.
With the drawer closed, a simple button push sucks the oxygen out, reducing the air pressure by 300 millibars. So we're not talking the vacuum of space here, or enough to implode the fridge, but more than enough to discourage bacteria and other parasite growth. The Freshness Center is destined for a release in the Netherlands and Germany first, and if consumers are cool with the $2,000 price tag, Siemens might roll it out in other parts of the world later on. More here.
Optical illusions are fun because you literally can't believe your eyes. But isn't it a little troubling that your eyes can get fooled like that? Why don't they show you the visual truth? How can you ever trust them if they don't?
Well that's not their job. You can't handle the truth. As ASAP Science explains, your peepers have painstakingly evolved to show you what you need to know in a way you can understand it. If you saw everything, you'd drown in the noise. Optical illusions are just a window into exactly how your eyes and brain team up to try and show you the world in context, in a way that makes immediate sense.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the latest round of touchscreen timepieces like the Galaxy Gear, not the least of which being the fact that you'll apparently even be able to get a faux-leather stitched case for it. Guh.
So that's how Samsung plans to finally endear these devices to us? By embracing a side effect of the iPhone's popularity? That's obviously why Apple was able to make such a dent in the cellphone market; thousands and thousands of cheap-looking case options. At least the pleather industry has something to look forward to. More here.
The biggest volcano ever found on Earth—one of the biggest we know of in the solar system—has been hidden for ages. But now scientists have found it, just chillin' beneath the sea. It's a monster.
Tamu Massif sits on the floor of the Pacific off the east coast of Japan and occupies 119,000 square miles at its base, just slightly smaller than the entire state of New Mexico. And even though it doesn't come close to the breaching the ocean's surface, its peak is 2.2 miles high.
While Tamu Massif is a bit more squat than the the 12 mile-high Martian mammoth Olympus Mons—the largest known volcano in our solar system—its overall volume is only 25 percent less.
It's hard for something that gargantuan to go unnoticed, and scientists had an idea that something was down there. But they assumed it was a giant system of multiple volcanoes until a research team at Texas A&M University discovered that it's actually just one and had their findings published in Nature Geoscience. Oh and the name Tamu? That's no mythic Kaiju; it's just short for Texas A&M University.
Fortunately, Tamu Massif is probably long dead. The eruptions that helped it grow to its massive size happened 114 million years ago, and things have been quiet ever since. Hopefully things stay that way.
There could be other sleeping giants lurking out there too; the ocean is a big place. But until we find some other ancient colossus lurking in the depths, Tamu Massif is a pretty impressive reigning king. More here.
We heard rumors about a mysterious "Xperia i1" a while back, but now it showed up for real. Sony's new Xperia z1 is the biggest Xperia yet at 5 inches, but more importantly, it's got a killer 20.7 MP camera on it too.
The Z1 packs its blazing 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 brain, 1080p display (exactresolution unknown), 3,000mAh battery, and 20.7 megapixel camera all into a slim waterproof (up to 5 feet!) body, made out of one piece of aluminum. The Xperia Z1 will launch with Android 4.2.2, complete with Sony's typical UI slathered on top.
The camera boasts a 1/2.3-inch sensor, roughly on par with the one in the Galaxy S4 Zoom. It's no Nokia 1020, but then that's a high bar to jump. Still, it's one of the beefiest cameras we've even seen on an Android phone. And it's got some fun features too, including a burst option which lets you fire off 30 shots with a single press of a button. More here.
Now that it's September, you probably want to soak up as much of the summer as possible. And nothing says summer like watermelon. YouTube's favorite hacker Mark Rober just posted a video showing you how to make a watermelon smoothie in under two minutes. Get it while you can.
As is often the case, Apple has infused its invite with a not so subtle clue about what we can expect. The colorful dots are likely the palette that the iPhone 5C will come in, and they should "brighten everyone's day" because they are, er, colorful. Or it's a reference to the glittering gold champagne iPhone 5S that's coming down the pike. Or there's some sort of iFlashlight that's going to revolutionize the... flashlight... industry?
The event will be held at Apple's Cupertino headquarters instead of its usual Yerba Buena Center fête; that's not entirely out of the blue, though, as Apple last played a home game for the similarly iterative iPhone 4S. You can expect preorders to come soon after, with shipments arriving on Sept 20th.
Otherwise, the details of what we're expecting haven't changed much since AllThingsD first reported that Sept 10th would be the day of the big reveal. The only thing that's certain? There won't be many surprises. More here.
Good news if you're tired of your personal fitness trainer's constant nagging you about eating healthy and staying active. You can just replace them with this bathroom scale that not only tells you how much you weigh, but also what kind of activities you can do to maintain your current physique.
For starters it's just $100, way cheaper than any personal trainer, and on those days when you feel like being lazy, you can just stash it under the sink and ignore. Try that with a human and, well, you remember how that trial went. Using your personal information and the Harris-Benedict Equation—which determines a person's ideal calorie intake—the scale suggests one of 157 different activities to stay in shape, and how much of each you need to do. More here.
If the thought of drifting off in a sleeping bag, only to wake up in the middle of the night all twisted and constricted, leaves you feeling anxious and claustrophobic, Sierra Designs wants to help. With its new Backcountry Bed 800 sleeping bag it's banished constricting zippers, instead opting for a double layered design that feels more like sleeping in your comfy bed.
The bag's outer layer is packed with 800-fill down that's been treated with a water-resistant chemical called DriDown so the feathers don't clump together if they get damp. In other words, it will keep you plenty warm. But instead of completely sealing you inside with a zipper, the bag's inner layer works more like a duvet, letting you pull it up to keep warm, or kick it off in the middle of the night to cool off. Brilliant.
At $400 for a 15 degrees version, and $350 for a 30 degrees one, it's not considerably expensive, at least compared to other ultralight but ultrawarm sleeping bag options. But for those of us who cringe at the thought of crawling into a sleeping bag, it's worth every penny. More here.
According to VentureBeat, the Gear is a beefy machine. The screen is a relatively large (for a wrist) 3-inch OLED display but the clunky exterior packs a whole lot of features that would make it useful even without being paired to a smartphone. With Wi-Fi, the watch is apparently able to function on its own for email, social media, and whathaveyou. And there's a camera and speakers in there. It's practically one data connection short of being an actual phone.
It's not clear what kind of operating system the watch runs, but VentureBeat claims it comes pre-loaded with actual Android apps of some sort. Presumably they are massively modified ones, for both CPU and UI reasons. Don't expect to get everything on your wrist (like you would even want to). As for other specs, VentureBeat is detailing a 10+ hour battery life and the ability to be used as a hands-free device on calls.
The Gear is intended to work best with other Samsung devices (of course) but will be able to connect to any Android device. There aren't any details on whether or not there's an accelerometer or other fitness-tracking-type hardware inside, but it looks like Samsung is going whole-hog with features, so it seems likely there is. Why skimp there? And if that's the case, the Gear won't only be making a play as a phone-companion, but also a fitness-tracker replacement.
This is a leak, of course, so nothing is certain. While VentureBeat claims to have had hands-on time with an actual unit, the photos come from a internal video which show a prototype version. Things may have changed on the way to the actual announcement, especially the outward appearance. It'd be pretty incredible if they hadn't.
We'll have to wait until the (almost certain) September 4th reveal to get an official look at the finished product, but we wouldn't be surprised if this is a pretty accurate feature run-down. More here.
This beautifully bright, light-year-long heap of gas and dust particles was caught by the Hubble telescope hurtling through space on its way to becoming a star some 4,500-odd light years away. And this little cosmic caterpillar-that-could is all the more incredible when you know what it's fighting against.
Located in what's called the Cygnus OB2 association, the pummeling streak of celestial goodness (named IRAS 20324+4057—catchy) is still very much in the process of collection the debris and gas around so that, one day, it can grow up to be a big, strong star—a star potentially 10 times the size of our own sun, at that. Unfortunately for our fetal friend, the other residents of Cygnus OB2 include 65 radiation-blasting, dust-corroding O-type stars, the hottest and brightest stars known to man, in addition to 500 smaller, though also highly luminous B-type stars. These bright stars send out massive amounts of radiation that erodes protostars like the one above and sculpt it into that long, lovely shape.
So once good ol' IRAS 20324+4057 actually does finish forming, there's a decent chance we'll have a light-weight star on our hands. As of now, though, this particular flaming space monster is still very young and could go either way. More here.
According to GigaOM, Google bought WIMM Labs last year to help develop its upcoming Android smartwatch. WIMM Labs was the maker of the WIMM One, a smart watch released a few years ago that ran a modified version of Android.
Makes sense for the company behind Android to snatch up an Android smart watch maker for its own Android smart watch, right? The WIMM One, which was released in late 2011, also had its own micro app store with apps like a calculator, compass, photo gallery and an app that could act as a remote control of sorts for your Android phone. More here.
To watch collectors and aficionados, mechanical movements are particularly desirable since they best represent the fine craftsmanship and precise engineering that has gone into watch and clock making for centuries. But ironically, even with today's technology, mechanical movements don't keep perfect time. They gain and lose seconds as they lose power, soUrwerk has created a watch that's smart enough to know when it's not accurate, letting you make adjustments as needed.
The titanium and steel EMC is a sight to behold, but as usual it's what's inside that will appeal to most collectors. Watchmakers use a tool known as a Witschi that listens to a mechanical watch's internal movements and calculates how much time it gains or loses in 24 hours. And the EMC—or Electro Mechanical Control—has a Witschi built in so at any point the wearer can determine how accurate the piece keeps time.
What's unique about the design is that the EMC's Witschi runs on power that's produced by a tiny hand-cranked generator that folds out from the side of the watch. A few slow cranks generates enough juice for a three-second reading of how the watch's internals are performing, and the results are displayed by a series of gauges on the EMC's face.
If the timing is found to be off, there's a tiny screw on the back of the watch that can be used to adjust its rate so the EMC stays as accurate as possible. At this point Urwerk hasn't disclosed pricing or availability, but the watch is expected to eventually makes its way into the hands of lucky—and presumably very wealthy—collectors in the coming months. More here.
They're a cheap and easy way to add some extra sleeping space to your apartment, but futons are a sure sign that you're either in college, just graduated from college, or can't stop reliving college. If you're looking for a slightly more sophisticated way to accommodate guests, like an adult, this incredibly comfy-looking Figo lounger transforms into a bed for one—in style.
You don't even need to sacrifice one of the pillows from your bed, because the Figo has one built-in that doubles as a headrest when it's not prepped for sleeping. At $550 it's nowhere near as cheap as an air mattress, but buying nicer things is all part of that whole growing up thing. More here.
How far away is your nearest grocery store? If you live out west, probably much further than the rest of the country, as shown by this visualization of America's "food deserts," where the closest grocery is miles away.
Flowing Data put together this look at the kind of access Americans have to food, using data from Google Maps. When you look at the map, you see a series of red lines of varying lengths. They start at towns and end at the nearest grocery stores. In places like the population-dense metropolitan area stretching from Washington, D.C. to New York City, where there are grocery stores every couple of blocks, the lines are just about undetectable. However in rural West Texas, where stores are few and far between, the lines resemble miniature explosions.
And long distances to Kroger or Publix seem to be pretty normal for a huge chunk of Americans. Flowing Data shows that for 36 percent of the country, the closest store is more than ten miles away, and the median distance is seven miles. The map looks about like what you'd expect—in rural areas there are fewer stores, whereas in urban areas there are a lot of choices. Of course, easy access to food is an important thing to have. So next time you complain about how hard it is for you to drive five minutes or walk a few blocks to get some milk, think about how the other half lives. More here.
For decades, we've been waiting for oh-so-futuristic hologram technology to make the leap from Star Wars movies to our living rooms, and it hasn't. It sounds like it's right around the corner, though, after Skype announced that it had developed 3D video chat technology in the lab.
The Microsoft executive responsible for Skype recently disclosed the milestone in an interview with the BBC, but he did so with a healthy dose of realism. Indeed, Skype is making progress in its stated mission to project a "realistic physical 'body double'" during a Skype call. Despite the fact that many top-of-the-line displays now offer 3D capabilities, however, it will take a few years before Skype can offer the feature to the mass market due to limitations in widely available capturing tools.
"The capture devices are not yet there," Microsoft's corporate vice president for Skype Mark Gillett told the BBC. "As we work with that kind of technology you have to add multiple cameras to your computer, precisely calibrate them and point them at the right angle." He added, "We have it in the lab, we know how to make it work and we're looking at the ecosystem of devices and their capability to support it in order to make a decision when we might think about bringing something like that to market."
Skype isn't the only one working on making holographic video chats a reality. Earlier this year, holographic technology startup Provision 3D Media launched a Kickstarter projectaimed at making the Princess Leia effect a reality for the average consumer. However, after Provision's Kickstarter page got taken down over a copyright dispute, it's become increasingly clear that this might be a job for the pros—more specifically, their deep corporate coffers.
Speed bumps and skepticism aside, all signs point to progress in the realm of futuristic video chats. Researchers recently developed a way to reorient faces in Skype calls so that you're always looking at the camera, and an IBM survey found that most researchers believed the capability for full-on 3D video chats would arrive by 2015. Well, it's already here. The only question now is when Skype will let us have it. More here.
