Mars Had an Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere 4 Billion Years Ago

Though chances are Curiosity is going to come up empty-handed as far as living, potentially breathing Martians are concerned, four billion years ago might have told a very different tale. After recently examining meteorites and rocks from Mars, scientists have discovered that not only did Mars once have an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but it was developed over one billion years before Earth's.

Some of the rocks in question actually came from NASA's Spirit Mars rover, which scientists compared to Martian meteorites that had crash landed on Earth. Spirit's rocks, which came from a 3.7 billion-year-old section of the planet, show signs of early exposure to oxygen before they sank back into the terrain. The Martian meteorites, though, came from deep within the surface, which is why they appear virtually unaffected by any sort of oxygen-containing atmosphere.

Most exciting about this discovery, though, is the fact that an oxygen-rich environment is a very strong indicator for life. On Earth, we know that oxygen levels slowly increased thanks to photosynthesizing microbes, which just as well may have been the case on Mars. According to Professor Bernard Wood of Oxford University:

As oxidation is what gives Mars its distinctive colour, it is likely that the 'red planet' was wet, warm, and rusty billions of years before Earth's atmosphere became oxygen-rich.

Though it may still be mostly speculative at this point, there's a decent chance that all those wonderful pictures Curiosity beams down could actually be a peek into our planet's red, dusty future. More here.

Hidden iOS 7 Settings Reveal What Apple Is Working On

How to actually access the hidden settings is unclear as it doesn't appear to be readily available to everyone with the beta. The above video shows a handful of nice-to-have tweaks like the ability to nest folders within folders now that iOS 7 has pages within folders. You can even hide pre-installed apps!

Other hidden gems include gestures that are activated from corners or swipes from the edge. The latter of which can already be found in Mail and Safari, for instance. As 9to5Mac points out, we could see these new-to-iOS gestures for quicker app switching later on but not much else, as the settings are hidden and likely only for internal use. More here.

Why Haven't Mugs Told Us the Coffee's Temperature Until Now?

If you've got $38 to spare and a few weeks to wait for delivery, Brando's got a new temperature sensing travel mug that guarantees you'll never again burn your mouth on scalding hot coffee—or accidentally sip a stale brew that's gone cold.

A built-in thermometer lets the insulated mug report back how hot or cold its contents are via a two-digit LCD display on the outside. But if you can't make hide nor hare of the metric system mumbo jumbo it uses to display the temperature, the mug also has a heart on its side that glows blue, orange, or red, visually indicating how hot or cold your beverage is. Just don't expect your lawsuit against McDonald's to hold up when you're holding indisputable evidence your coffee was too hot to drink. More here.

They've Invented a Twist-Off Wine Cork and Life Will Never Be the Same

Just when you thought that mankind's genius could go no further, four years of research has given birth to a new apex in cork innovation. Please say hello to your newest wine-stopper, the Helix cork.

The product of a collaboration beween the industrious lushes at cork manufacturer Amorim and those at bottle-making company O-I, the new threaded, resealable design (and matching threaded bottle neck) is aimed at the "popular premium" wine market, which includes bottles that retail for between $8-$15, roughly. And while four years of research may seem a tad excessive, much of that time was spent waiting... and waiting... and waiting some more, allowing them to see whether or not the new cork had any effect on taste, aroma, or color. (Spoiler: it didn't.)

This kind of testing was necessary because the agglomerated type of cork used in the Helix is atypical of wine manufacturing. Since cork is cellular in nature, the presence of open spaces in a common, straight cork stopper is ideal—it allows the wine to fill those spaces, expand the cork, and form a tight seal. However, agglomerated cork is more granular, meaning fewer open spaces and less room for expansion. This would be a problem with a normal stopper, but the threaded design of the Helix creates its own tight seal, meaning oxygen can't escape on the sides while the density of the stopper prevents oxygen from escaping through the cork itself.

And its resealability is a major plus in the eyes of consumers, who want the convenience of a resealable container but still prefer cork to other methods of wine stoppering such as screw tops. According to Erik Bouts, O-I Europe president:

Cork is still by far the preferred stopper. Our research has found that at least 80% of consumers prefer the cork and glass combination for their wine. It has the highest-quality image in the market and now we have made it easier to use. And it is still the most sustainable option.

The Helix cork is being unveiled at Vinexpo in Bordeaux today, although its creators say it may still be two years before we start seeing it on shelves. So if you must have your fancy corks, until the day comes that we can leave the cork screws behind and securely reseal wine with ease, it seems your best option is to just finish the bottle. No one said being classy came easy. More here.

Origami-Inspired Clocks So Attention-Grabbing, You'll Never Run Late

Sometimes a piece of design is so interesting, it's hard not to drop everything and pay attention to it. Dressed in bright, bold colors, with sharp, tessellated forms, these origami clocks from U.K. firm Raw Dezign definitely fits the bill.

The clocks come in turquoise, yellow, and cream, and you can pick from gold, black, or silver hands. Each one is cast in resin, and the tickers are hand molded to give each clock face its own custom look. They go for $78 and ship in two to three weeks (because, you know how custom work goes). They're eye-catching, one-of-a-kind, and infinitely more interesting than clock of the run-of-the-mill cuckoo variety. More here.

These Stash Coins Are a Fantastic Way to Lose Your SD Card

The Man has his hand in your inbox, cops are intimidating citizens who film them beating other citizens, it's only logical to want to keep the private contents of your SD card, well, private. The Covert Coin from CCS Spy Gear is a precision-machined piece of retired US currency that are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing when closed. Which is great, until you accidentally deposit 16GB of files into a parking meter. More here.

Scientists Have Found the Ancient Secret of Indestructible Concrete

For the most part, we humans are better at things than we were thousands of years ago. But there are some things the ancients had down pat. Roman concrete, for instance, is just way better than anything we can whip up today. Finally, after some 2,000 years, modern-day scientists have figured it out. And it's a secret worth knowing.

Concrete, while often not exactly pretty, is a super important tool of city-building today. We've been using Portland cement (an ingredient in concrete) as a binder for nearly 200 years as a building block of modern architecture, but it just can't hold a candle to that old Roman stuff. There are concrete harbors in Italy that are still doing pretty well after thousands of years. Meanwhile, a modern-day Portland cement structure is lucky to last 50 years when exposed to saltwater.

Now, after years of research in labs across the US and Europe, scientists have figured out that the most robust Roman concrete is a specific mixture of lime and volcanic rock, the details of which have been published in this month's issues of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and American Mineralogist.

The researchers described it this way in a press release on the subject:

The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.

And it gets even better. Portland cement is environmentally messy to produce, accounting for some seven percent of the C02 modern industry produces. Roman concrete? Much, much greener. There's still a lot of work to be done in adapting traditional Roman construction techniques to today's needs. But the recipe is as good as ever. We just have to get cookin'. More here.

While solar power promises a lot, it's only ever going to help satisfy our energy needs if it becomes efficient enough. Fortunately, Sharp has just made the world's most efficient solar cell, which converts a staggering 44.4 percent of incident light into electricity. Take that, fossil fuels.

The cell uses a special lens-based concentrator system, which focuses sunlight onto the cell to help improve the efficiency Once the light's focussed, a stack of three photo-absorption layers convert it into electricity. Even then it's no mean feat to squeeze out an efficiency of 44.4 percent, and the process saw Sharp invest a huge amount of time in tuning the device's dimensions to focus the light properly and reduce losses between layers.

While it's impressive, you probably won't see one strapped to the roof of a house any time soon. Devices this exotic are more likely to end up on a spacecraft in the first instance, where efficiency trumps cost every time. That's not to say it won't ever make it to the domestic market—it might just take a little time. More here.

Microsoft Office for iOS: Complete Video Walkthrough and Hands On

A Two-Pound Cast Iron Tape Dispenser Guarantees One-Handed Operation

Any task requiring the use of clear tape would be a lot easier if you could snatch a strip of the sticky stuff with just one hand. And while there have been many complicated contraptions that promise exactly that functionality, Black+Blum have found a simpler approach that takes advantage of that perpetual force known as gravity.

For starters, the On a Roll tape dispenser is made from cast iron, and weighs in at a hefty 2.3 pounds. So no matter how hard you pull and yank on a strip of tape, its weight and grippy rubber feet guarantee the tape will break before the dispenser budges. And further taking advantage of gravity, the angled support keeps the roll in place without requiring additional components. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and if you want a tape dispenser that could probably survive a nuclear blast, this would be $44 well spent. More here.

Garbage Can That Looks Like the Mac Pro Is a Hot Item in Japan

Amazon Japan's official Twitter account even jokingly tweeted that the Ideaco garbage can "was not the new Mac Pro".

The gag worked. That tweet was retweeted over thirteen thousand times and favorited nearly three thousand times. And currently, this garbage can is ranked number deux in the online retailer's interior furniture best sellers. It's also Amazon Japan's best selling garbage can.

There are also the inevitable funny Amazon reviews, with people "warning" that this was in fact a garbage can and pointing out that it could not run Thunderbolt 2. There was even a wry worry about how the black cylinder could show dust.

But as one Amazon Japan reviewer noted, "It does have the innovative ability to hide the plastic bag by a concealing cover." Shame it can't run Thunderbolt, though! More here.

Wireless Pillow Speakers Put a Personal Home Theater In Your Bed

You may have spent a small fortune on the impressive home theater setup in your living room, but when you're watching TV in bed, are you really going to settle for the crappy sound coming from its tiny speakers? Of course not. But skip the redundant bedroom surround sound setup and go with these SoftSound pillows which feature a wireless set of stereo speakers built right in.

Instead of opting for Bluetooth, which most TVs don't have built-in anyways, the pillow gets a wireless audio feed from an included RF transmitter that connects to and sits atop your TV. Because the audio out connection on your TV isn't controlled by its remote, the $130pillow comes with its own soft remote that won't hurt if you accidentally roll over onto it, plus a sleep timer to ensure you don't wake up at four in the morning with it blaring in your ears.

Now all we need is someone to develop a sub-woofer mattress for the experience to be complete. More here.

Yep, That's a Helicopter Bicycle

OK, so none of us probably have any use for a flying bike, but it's alright to want one. It's perfectly natural. So just let the wild envy wash over you as this Frankenstein machine takes flight.

Developed by three Czech companies working in unison, the bike was demoed for the first time in Prague today, where it underwent a remote-controlled five-minute flight. The 209-pound rig with its four battery-powered propeller pods isn't quite capable of carrying around a real human being yet, so instead a dummy got the inaugural ride. Hope he enjoyed it.

Clever Trunk Dividers Stop Your Groceries From Taking a Wild Ride

It's all but guaranteed that the most hair-raising drives you'll have will be immediately after you fill the trunk with groceries, plants, and anything else you don't want to topple. But with these $13 Stayhold trunk dividers, you can hand your keys to a Hollywood stuntman and not have to worry about the bread being crushed by a jug of milk.

The solid plastic shields grips your trunks carpeting to keep whatever it's butt-up against securely in place. It can handle cargo as heavy as a toolbox or a suitcase, and unless you're putting air between the tires and the road, everything will be exactly as you organized it when you get to your destination. Now if only they made a version for kids. More here.

There Was Drinkable Water On Mars According To Opportunity

Opportunity, aka The Little Rover That Could, is still making important discoveries 10 years into its Martian jaunt. After the devastating loss of twin rover Spirit in 2011, Opportunity rallied and kept trekking, only to recently discover a fascinating rock near Endurance Crater.

One of the oldest rocks ever analyzed, the specimen shows that drinkable water once existed on Mars. Opportunity identified a type of clay mineral on the rock that is only formed in neutral water, like the water found on Earth. Steve Squyres, the principle Opportunity researcher, noted that Opportunity has found other liquids that could chemically be described as water in the past, but these samples were all closer to sulphuric acid. Curiosity recently found similar evidence of neutral water at Gale Crater. Squyres said:

It is really striking to me, how similar the stories are for the rocks at Gale and Endeavour crater.

Though the desert conditions on Mars have made other Martian water acidic, the findings contribute to theories that Mars may once have been habitable. Nice hustle, Opportunity. Way to be. More here.

All the New iOS Features Your Old iPhone Won't Get

As expected and widely reported ahead of today's keynote, Apple introduced a completely revamped iOS at WWDC. Not only did they ditch the skeuomorphic design scheme in favor of something a little more colorful and fun, the company added a handful of neat new features—some old, some new. But as with any major update to the mobile OS, there are a handful of features that won't be coming to older generation iOS devices. (Hint: It's because Apple wants you to upgrade.) 

Now, according to Apple "features are subject to change" and "not all features are available on all devices." Here's what you're getting and not getting based on each device. (And in some instances some services will be limited to 10 devices.)

AirDrop (which requires an iCloud account): iPhone 5, iPad(4th generation), iPad mini, iPod touch (5th generation)

Siri: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad (Retina and newer), iPad mini, iPod touch (5th generation)

Panorama: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (fifth generation)

Square and video formats and swipe to capture: iPhone 4 and newer, iPad 3rd generation and newer, iPad mini, iPod touch (fifth generation)

Filters in Camera: iPhone 5, iPod touch (fifth generation)

Filters in Photos: iPhone 4 and up, iPad (3rd generation and newer)

This Papercraft BBQ Will Make You Hungry Enough to Eat a Notebook

Summertime is upon us, and that means it's grilling season. You could go down to the store to pick up everything you need for a tasty BBQ, or you could just make do with what you can find on your desk. That second option is remarkably nice-lookin' but probably not the most delicious.

This drool-worthy yet stylized piece of art was put together by the French creative team zim & zou, and inspired by some illustrations that lept off the page but not quite into anyone's mouths. They wouldn't do too well on the grill either. Now if you'll excuse me I REALLY have to go get dinner. More here.

What Happens When You Use a Giant Construction Drill on a Car?

It's quite simple really, the car gets completely destroyed, screwed and mangled in every which way possible. The TR-150 construction drill completely eats the car alive to the point where it can no longer drill it anymore, it has to smash and pulverize it. Using construction tools for destruction is a beautiful thing.

Leaked Windows Phone Screenshots Finally Show a Notification Center

Windows Phone 8 is pretty, and there's a lot of things to like about it. But for every one of those there's also a glaring absence. Hopefully one of those is soon to disappear, leaked screenshots of an internal build of the OS shows that there's finally a notification center, presumably coming soon.

The screenshots were shared by a Redditor who bought a 920 off Ebay and found that it was running a peculiar OS: an internal beta. In addition to the notification center, there seem to be some improvements to multitasking as well, including the ability to close applications in that view.

As with any leak, there's always the possibility it's just a big fake, but there's nothing about this set of screenshots to make it wildly suspicious. On top of that, we know Microsoft's pushing out a Windows 8.1 update soon, and when an update comes to Windows Phone 8, you'd hope it would include something so basic as a notification center. Here's to hoping. More here.

Amazon Has a 3D Printer Section Now

3D printers just got a little more mainstream. Amazon has now opened its own 3D Printer page for the sale of printers and filaments so you can get all that jazz shipped right to your door with the greatest of ease.

Amazon is peddling the MakerBot Replicator 2, Afinia 3D Printer H-Series, 3D Systems' Cubify (not available), fabbster 3D Printer, Airwolf3D, and a couple of Chinese models as well as well as filament—both ABS and PLA varieties. You can also pick up books, CAD software, and other assorted parts there too.

It's just one small step to bigger 3d printer adoption; this doesn't make them any cheaper. But it's never been easier to pick one up if you're in the market. More here.

A Lego Segway Is as Ridiculously Wonderful as You'd Expect

Lego whisperer Simon Burfield has a knack for taking the plastic building toy well past the limits of what it was intended for. His specialty is building rideable creations including a full-sized wheelchair, and now a rather brilliant Segway clone.


It can easily support his weight, and even turns with a pivoting handle. The current version doesn't self-balance—yet—but that's totally within his grasp since the 'Legway' already has four Mindstorm NXT control modules on board. And Burfield claims he's already started construction on a larger version that promises to be even more amazing. Can you imagine the size of the box these sets would come in? The building instructions would be as thick as a phone book.

A Simple Design Tweak Makes Sleeping Bags Less Like Straitjackets

A tapering mummy-style sleeping bag is easier to travel with since they can be compressed extremely compact. But if you suffer from even a smidgen of claustrophobia, spending a night in one can be like sleeping in a straitjacket. To make them more comfortable and compatible with those of us who toss and turn, Nemo has created a spoon-shaped sleeping bag which provides extra space where it's needed, without sacrificing portability.

The $230 Rhythm 40 bulges at the knees and elbows to allow the occupant to easily roll over during the night, or strike a more comfortable sleeping pose that doesn't have them just lying on their back. The sleeping bag's also waterproof, for unanticipated leaks and floods in the night, and has a pocket in the hood for stashing a pillow. Suddenly, camping seems a bit less like roughing it. More here.

Intel's Prototype Thunderbolt Flash Drive Is the World's Fastest

You can officially stop bragging about how fast your fancy new USB 3.0 flash drive is. At the Computex show in Taipei Intel was showing off this hacked together prototype of adedicated Thunderbolt 128GB flash drive boasting data transfer speeds of 10 Gbit/s, or about twice as fast as USB 3.0's max. And now that Thunderbolt 2 has been introduced, waiting around for large files to copy to your flash drive could be a thing of the past.

Of course Intel had no word on when consumers could get their hands on the Thunderbolt flash drive, if ever. But there was plenty of interest in it, and as the protocol becomes more popular, it's safe to assume at some point these will move past the prototype stage—hopefully with that adorably compact form factor still intact. More here.

Sonar Could Let Your Body Talk to Machines Better

Sonar. Subs use it. Dolphins use it. And someday your own body might use it to detect and treat what ails you. Echolocation unlocking the quantified self.

Given that the human body is mostly water—about 60 percent—researchers at the University of Buffalo are currently developing miniaturized sensors that use ultrasounds to communicate with other embedded devices, like pacemakers, in the body to figure out what's going on under all that flesh.

What's different about this type of "body area network" is that it isn't relying on a series of sensors that use electromagnetic radio frequency waves but instead uses ultrasound, which Tommaso Melodia, PhD, UB associate professor of electrical engineering, says is far more efficient given the body's mostly liquid composition. Radio waves, you see, have a hard time penetrating through the human body, much less water. A cluster of devices sending radio waves back and forth to each other also generates a significant amount of heat, which isn't really something you want happening inside your body. Melodia's theory has garnered a five year, $449,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to further investigate this idea.

So, for example, if you're a diabetic and have embedded insulin pumps that are connected to a blood glucose monitor, the two could communicate via ultrasound to regulate insulin levels in real time.

We're obviously still years away from Melodia's ultrasound network becoming a reality but it's this type of wearable technology that will one day make the quantified self a reality. the NSF grant will allow Melodia and his team to begin modeling and experiment with an array of ultrasonic, wireless body sensors. More here.

Can We Invent Technology to Record Our Dreams?

Do you remember the dream you had last night? Last week? Last month? Probably not. Our sleepy imagination just vanishes without a trace. But... what if we could record our dreams? Like invent some sort of dream DVR. Then we would never forget.

AsapSCIENCE delves into the mysterious world of dreaming to answer the question of whether or not we can invent technology and software to translate our dreaming brain into actual recordings. It's sort of mind blowing how close we already are.

Watch Every Single Version of Windows Ever in One Exhaustive Video

A very patient soul spent hours and hours of his life installing each version of Windows from 1.0 to 8.0 Pro, then sped up the footage. The result? The entire history of the operating system condensed into just over an hour. Bonus points: Daft Punk's Random Access Memories as the soundtrack.

It's fun to see how antiquated Windows 1.0 looks against Windows 8's clean, Metro design, and the hour-long ride gives you a nice, big picture look at how far Windows has come (with a quick break for Doom and Reversi). More here.

The World's Thinnest 1TB Hard Drive Is Just 7mm Thick

If you're in the market for slimline storage, Western Digital has just the hard drive for you: it's latest offering, WD Blue, crams 1TB into a case that's just 7mm thick.

Small enough, in fact, to make it the world's thinnest 1TB hard drive right now. The small frame doesn't mean it skimps on features, though: it has motor shafts at each end to reduce vibration and improve tracking, secure parking to keep the heads away from the plates during shocks, and both electromagnetic and piezo actuators for more precise movement.

For $140 with a two year warranty, it seems like a pretty sweet deal—and should help all those exciting new Haswell ultrabooks stay as slim and slinky as possible. It's available as of today, for both OEMs and consumer alike. More here.

Vine for Android Is Finally Here

Vine, the very popular way to splice together six-second video vignettes, is now available for Android. Here's the Google Play link, which is live for your video-sharing enjoyment right now—after some initial delays, it looks like the download link is finally operational.

Twitter purchased Vine when it was still just a nothing startup late last year, and launched . Despite some early controversy, and questions about how fun/useful Vine actually is, the service has really blossomed over the last half-year into something both fun and useful, dragging millions upon millions of regular users into it's whirlpool of erratic filmstrips. (Vine claims it's got some 13 million users in tow.)

A Lamp Made of 200 Traffic Cones Is the World's Craziest Hazard Light

The minds behind "Planet: Under Construction" (PUC), on the other hand, put some 200 cones to a use that's awesome.

Made from a big, spherical metal frame work with a high-powered lamp in the middle and the 200 cones bungie corded on around the outside, PUC was created by the international architecture firm Woods Bagot for Vivid Sydney. It'll mark the entrance point to the festival at large until June 10th, suspended in the air by cables like some construction-working sun. Beats a shirtless dude waving an orange flag any day. More here.

Electrified Wolverine Claws Are Fabulously Ill-Advised

I think it's safe to say that we all want Wolverine claws. Sure, working out some of the logistics would be tough at first, but come on. You would feel invincible! And you could open plastic packaging really easily. To this end, Master James made a set of great looking claws at a machine shop. But they weren't awesome enough. So he electrified them.

Inspired by "Thor's Hammer," a Hack A Day project, James hooked his claws to the transformer from a salvaged oil furnace and let the sparks fly. He notes that he has no sense of how high the voltage is, which just makes the whole thing stupid amazing. Safety and the internet have never really mixed and this makes it all worth it. More here.

Unique Photo Shows the Ridiculous Size of America's First Spaceships

One of the things that always shocks me when I go to the Kennedy Space Center is the tiny size of the Mercury (left) and Gemini (right) capsules—the missions that jumpstarted the American space exploration program. This unique photo clearly shows how ridiculous these tin cans are.

It also shows how big the astronauts' gonads were. Look at them! These guys were actually strapping themselves to oversized photo booths attached to metal cylinders full of a few tons of explosive fuel. Even Gemini—designed to carry two humans and rendezvous in orbit—looks stupidly small. More here.

How Big Would an iPhone Be If You Combined All the iPhones Ever Sold

Very, very big. Like way bigger than the new World Trade Center big. Like almost double the world's tallest tower big. If you combined all the iPhones ever sold into a single gigantic monolith of a phone, it'd be 5,059 feet tall and 2,846 feet across. Ridiculous!

In Animal's very silly series Stupid Calculations, Josh Orter figured out the size of a ginormous iPhone by doing simple math with a lot of numbers. It's delicious arithmetic, to be honest. Here's a tasty sampling:

305,160,600 older models x 5.65 square inches=1,724,157,390² inches
51,131,400 iPhone 5’s x 6.83 square inches= 349,227,462² inches
TOTAL 2,073,384,852 square inches (14,398,506 sq ft or 330.54 acres or 0.516 square miles)

That was the calculations to figure out the area of the beastphone but to calculate the dimensions, he needed to jump through more hoops. Comparatively speaking, the giant iPhone would be wider than Central Park (2,846 feet vs 2,640 feet) and its surface area would dwarf the new World Trade Center (330.54 acres vs 23 acres).

Hell, if you wanted to pave a standard highway with all the iPhones ever sold, you could do so for 227 straight miles. Read the rest of the fascinatingly (but admittedly useless) report  here.

Radiation Makes a Manned Trip to Mars Impossible with Current Tech

Though Curiosity the rover can explore and see Mars up close, curious men and women of Earth will have to wait a bit longer. NASA reports that a manned trip to Mars is likely impossible with current technology because of radiation.

Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) was able to measure the radiation of Mars from inside the spacecraft and found data that makes NASA reconsider the effectiveness of current radiation shielding. Specifically:

The findings, which are published in the May 31 edition of the journal Science, indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA's career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.

Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system. The other is solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun.

Right now, spacecrafts do a better job at shielding against SEPs than they do GCRs. GCRs are highly energetic and penetrate the shielding on current spacecrafts. In order to protect astronauts from being exposed to radiation, NASA might have to invent better shielding. Or invent better something.

Exposure to radiation, which is measured in units of Sievert (Sv), increases the risk of cancer. We know that. Exposure to 1 Sv over time is associated with a five percent increase in risk of developing cancer. NASA's acceptable limit for its astronauts is a three percent increase in risk. Curiosity's RAD instruments measured an average of 1.8milliSv per day on its trip to Mars. The accumulated dose of the trip, according to Cary Zeitlin, lead paper in the findings and a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, would be equivalent to "getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days". Yeah, that's too much.

But knowing this doesn't prevent a manned trip to Mars from ever happening. Knowing this helps protect the men and women who will take that manned trip to Mars. More here.

Loop Tea Strainer Reduces Dirty Dishes in Your House

Multifunctional tools can help in reducing the amount of dirty dishes in your house, checkout this Loop Tea Strainer. This tool allows you to have smart tea preparation, no spoon is required and this stick-shaped tea strainer can be used as a scoop. Open the sliding mesh lid and fill with tea leaves, close it, and place it in the hot water in your tea cup.

Nowadays, we’ve been trying to reduce dirty dishes in any way, from eating directly from the container to using paper plate. This product is a smart way to serve a cup of tea. More here.

Clever Mug Catches Coffee Drips Before They Become Stains

Harnessing the complex hydrodynamic properties of surface tension, this brilliantly re-engineered mug features a strategically engineered reservoir running around the circumference of the vessel's outer wall. Or, in other words, designer Kim Keun Ae added a groove that cleverly catches drips before they hit the table.

Cleaning the mug takes a little extra effort to get that groove sparkling, but otherwise it's a simple innovation that goes a long way to improving the coffee experience, particularly if you hate coasters. And while you can't buy one just yet, it won't be terribly difficult for someone to implement this simple improvement. More here.

Leaked Windows 8.1 Screenshot: Oh, Hello, Start Button

Over on the Windows SuperSite, Thurott has dumped a few, choice screenshots from the upcoming, free update to the operating system. And chief among them is that one featuring everybody's favorite Start Button. It should go without saying that this button launches you to the Metro Modern UI Start Screen, and not into some sort of Start Menu, but the button's back. Interestingly, there seems to be no way to turn it off either. Not that you'd really want to.

Along with the start button, Thurrott's reporting that 8.1 also comes with a Boot To Desktop option (disabled by default) and the ability to use the desktop wallpaper of your choice as the background on the Start Screen.

And, of course, while this seems like a pretty credible leak, it's still a leak. But it's seeming more than ever like the real deal. More here.

Heatsink Coasters Cool Hot Beverages While Protecting Your Furniture

If they're good enough to keep temperatures under control inside your electronics, it only makes sense that a simple aluminum heatsink would be just as effective at taming a piping hot cup of coffee. Not to mention providing plenty of tiny channels for condensation to collect instead of dripping onto your furniture and leaving unsightly rings.

These Fin Coasters feature a thin cork underlay further protecting the surface of your tables from scratches and excess heat. And since this is a highly engineered way to deal with hot beverages, it only makes sense that a set of two—available in silver or black finishes—will set you back $65. A tad bit pricey, but your furniture will thank you for splurging. More here.

Finally, A Wrinkle Reducer That Is Also The Embodiment Of Evil

Our superficial, beauty-obsessed culture is pretty scary. People starve themselves or have serious surgeries so they can look a certain way. But for better or worse (definitely worse) we're all pretty used to hearing about those beauty interventions. Which is why it's unusual to see a new wrinkle-reducer and immediately want to shit your pants or run away. Or both. But behold.

The Facewaver Exercise Mask uses stretching and tightening action for "kneading out wrinkles, lines and sag." The site recommends you use it for five minutes a day to get younger-looking skin. The problem is that during those five minutes you will send anyone you encounter into cardiac arrest as a result of their general shock and terror. Or you yourself will be killed because people will assume that you are a zombie. And frankly, if you choose to wear this they won't be totally wrong.

Some products from the Japan Trend Shop can be very soothing, but this just isn't one of them. It's scary enough to see someone wearing one of those green face masks before bed or even just using a Shake Weight. When will the madness end? More here.

Fight Bad Breath and Bathroom Clutter With This Toothbrush Cup

Counter clutter can be even worse in a bathroom which is typically a lot smaller than a kitchen. And if you find yourself constantly battling to find room to store things around the sink, you'll immediately see the genius behind this flippable cup that doubles as a way to rinse your mouth and a convenient spot to store a toothbrush.

Available in a small selection of decor-friendly colors, the $11 Flip Cup also features a contoured rim that allows air to get in when flipped upside-down so it dries quickly preventing germs and bacteria from finding a home. So say goodbye to halitosis and goodbye to awkwardly trying to rinse your mouth directly from the faucet. More here.

Listen To Music Through Your Cheekbones While You Swim Laps

It's hard to listen to music while you're swimming because even waterproof earbuds that actually stay on try to conduct sound through air to reach your eardrums, and there's not a lot of air underwater. The FINIS Neptune works on this issue by sending sound waves straight into your face. Total bombardment. In a good way.

The Neptune speakers rest on your cheek and make the bone vibrate so that the vibrations can be relayed to your cochlea, allowing you to hear music. The process is called "bone conduction," and is also used by some marine mammals. Since the music is going straight into your head, you don't have to deal with anything in your ears while you're trying to swim.

The Neptune is an updated version of FINIS's years-old SwiMP3, which had 128MB of memory and sold for $180. Now at 4GB, the Neptune costs $160. A quick PSA, though: Just because you feel the music in your bones, does not mean you should engage in any type of swim-singing or swim-dancing unless you are totally sure no one is watching. More here.

A Working Apple I Computer Just Sold For $671,400 at Auction

The Apple 1 is a little piece of history, the first in a lineage that's taken the world by storm since its birth in 1976. And that piece of history is worth a lot. An anonymous collector just picked up a still functioning(!) one of the suckers at auction for a cool $671,400. And you thought gaming PCs were expensive.

The recent sale—which just closed today—beats out a record of $640,000 that was set in the same Cologne, Germany auction house just last year, and a record of $374,500 just a few months before that; these have got to be some of the few electronics that are going up in value as they age.

Not much is known about the purchaser except that he/she is "a wealthy entrepreneur from the Far East" according to the New York Times. I'll bet you wish you had that much cash to throw down on a seriously antiquated piece of hardware. And though it might be a bit of an increase over the machines initial $666.66 launch-price (some $2,700 in current-day dollars), it's priceless in its own way. But most of us would probably just be better off with an iPad. More here.

What's the First Thing You Can Remember Doing on the Internet?

There's no denying the global connectivity literally changed the world, and most of us are lucky enough to have been alive and conscious when that paradigm shift was rolling out. You might not remember your first real interaction with the digital behemoth, but you have to have a first recollection. What is it?

It's worth noting that the Internet and the World Wide Web are technically different things, and depending on what kind of person you are, you might have some distinctly different first memories of both. Either way, it's story time. Who's got a good one?

Tomorrow's Galactic Explorers Could Use Pulsars as Interstellar GPS

Space is so ludicrously vast that keeping a precise fix on our spacecraft—even within the solar system—is really tough. So rather than track them from afar, a team of researchers want spacecraft to govern themselves—using pulsars.

For every astronomical unit (AU) between the Earth and the craft, ground control loses 4km of tracking accuracy. That means we can only guess a satellite's location orbiting around Pluto, about 50 AU, within a radius of 200km. You're not going to catch an asteroid with that level of inaccuracy.

Instead, Werner Becker and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have devised a method for spacecraft to triangulate their own positioning in space based on the relative locations of known pulsars—rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit blasts of high energy radiation in precise intervals. By measuring how long it takes for the emissions of at least three pulsars to reach the craft, compared against their predicted values, the spacecraft should be able to determine its location to within 5 km. This is essentially the same method used by cell towers and the global positioning system, but over massive distances.

There are many technical hurdles that must be overcome before this concept is actually feasible. For one, different pulsars emit radiation at different wavelengths, which can only be received by collecting dishes of a specific size. The 21cm waves that Becker's team is investigating would require an array measuring 150 square meters. This of course leads to the problem of designing and packing a sufficiently large—and, more importantly, sufficiently light—dish into the craft and successfully launching it into space. More here.

A Clever Plastic Brace Turns Long-Stemmed Flowers Into Their Own Vase

Florists around the country, pay attention. If you're looking for a value-added reason for people to buy a dozen roses from your shop, then find a way to get this brilliant Crown Vaseput into production and include one with every bouquet.

Designed by Lambert Rainville, a student at the Royal College of Art, the Crown Vase works as a support allowing flowers to stand via their own stems, like a simple shelter crafted by an experienced outdoors person. A shallow dish or bowl full of water is still needed to keep the flowers alive for more than a day, but when they eventually die everything can be composted and recycled, making cleanup an eco-friendly affair. More here.

Why the HTC One Lacks a Micro SD Slot

According to technical reasons, the version of the HTC One sold in the US lacks an SD card slot due to internal space restrictions. Because of something to do with mobile radio frequencies. That’s what HTC says and we're powerless to argue.

The explanation comes from HTC’s Jeff Gordon, the company’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager. Jeff told Techradar: “Because the Chinese version of the One is designed specifically for the smaller Chinese radio bands, we do have additional space inside the device we were able to use for the microSD slot. That space isn’t available in the global version.” They could, of course, just made it a bit bigger, though. So we’re not entirely sure we believe them. More here.

Microsoft Has Two New Mice for Windows 8 Multitasking

Microsoft has a couple new mice coming out today with some simple features that make using Windows 8 a little bit easier.

First up on the the fancier end is the Sculpt Comfort Mouse, which will be on sale in June. It's $40, connects to your computer or tablet via Bluetooth, and is the first Microsoft mouse with a blue, touch-sensitive Windows button that gives you a couple of shortcuts. Press it and it'll take you directly to the start screen, or use this button to swipe through all the apps you have open.

The more basic model is the Sculpt Mobile Mouse. Available later this month, it costs $30 and features four-way scrolling, meaning you can tilt the scroll wheel up down, left, or right. We played with both of the new mice and found that they were comfy and responsive, giving you that little extra something you want out of an accessory. Plus, they're a nice match to multitasking on Windows 8. More here.

This 1.5TB Laptop Drive Is the Most Memory-Dense You Can Buy

While SSDs are blisteringly fast, they still can't offer the capacities that the humble hard disk provides. Especially this one, because with 1.5 TB squeezed into its tiny little frame, it's the most memory-dense drive you can buy right now.

The 2.5-inch Travelstar 5K1500 is just 9.5mm deep. Packing 1.5TB, that means the drive offers 694Gb per square inch—comfortably making it the densest HDD on the market. It draws just 1.8W, but there is one downside: it only spins at 5,400 rpm, so it's not the fastest drive you'll ever use.

Still, if your laptop's heaving under the weight of video, music and whatever else you choose to fill it up with, then this little guy could provide just the shot in the arm it needs. There's currently no pricing information, but it will be available in June. More here.

China Has Their Own Stealth Drone

This is China's stealth combat drone, an airplane that seems very similar to the American Northrop Grumman X-47B. The unmanned combat air vehicle was photographed while performing taxiing tests. Given the development speed of China's other military airplanes, it wouldn't be surprising to see this in flight in the next few weeks.

According to China Defense Blog, it was initially labeled to be a project by "college students" for the 601 Aircraft Design Institute/Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. Clearly, it's much more than that.

It seems obvious that China's military complex is advancing at a higher pace than many in the West would like to believe. It is not comparable to the United States yet, but the technology matching may be a matter of years and not decades. And it has already happened in the cyber war front. More here.

This Rinsing Bowl Cleverly Includes a Colander

Isn't this an ingenious design? This bowl has a moveable colander piece that folds in and out so you can wash and serve your fruit in the same piece.

The combination strainer/bowl is $15 from Umbra. It rolls two steps of meal prep into one smart kitchen gadget, while solving one of life's most grating—albeit boring—problems. Ever been rinsing off some fresh fruit and dropped a plump strawberry into the nasty depths of your sink's drain?  It's the small things, really. More here.