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Mars Science Laboratory – interactive graphic | Science. NASA’s New Mars Rover Launches Successfully | Wired Science. NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory lifted off from the launch pad at 10:02 a.m. EST today. The one-ton Mini Cooper-sized rover, which is the largest machine NASA can currently put down on the Martian surface, will now look forward to an eight-month cruise to the Red Planet, arriving in August 2012.

The probe will survey the Martian landscape with HD cameras, search for signs of habitability and life past or present, and drill inside rocks to examine the planet’s composition. After a shaky history on Earth, MSL will have to worry about one last event when it gets to Mars: its nail-biting landing procedure, the sky crane. The rover is tucked inside a saucer-like platform that will need to fire rockets 25 feet above the ground and hover as MSL is carefully lowered down on wires. Such a procedure has never been tried before, though landing system has undergone extensive testing prior to launch.

Still, the track record with probes to Mars has not been great. Images:1) NASA. 2) MSL Launches. STAR WARS Fan Builds Incredible LEGO Millennium Falcon Docking Bay Scene. German LEGO builder David Wagner has created this awesomely impressive LEGO sculpture showing us a classic scene from Star Wars. He built the scene that takes place at the Millennium Falcon parking spot on Docking Bay 327 where Obi-Wan and Darth Vader face off with each other. The detailed LEGO sculpture measures 90cm x 100cm, and required roughly 10,500 bricks, four months, and 1,000 € to complete it. It also comes complete with LED lighting.

Check out the images below and tell us what you think! S Lab-Tested, Muppet-Vetted Formulas for Smartifying Your Life | Magazine. Swat flies! Swat flies! Photo: Art Streiber; set stylist: NickTortorici.com .betterliving-h3-cont { background-color:#CC6633; padding:10px; margin-bottom:5px; .better-living-white { color:#fff; .better-living-orange { color:#cc6633; .old_guys { border-bottom:12px solid #000000; margin-bottom:40px; padding-bottom:12px; font-size:12px; color:#000; /*font-family:"periodico-display-1","periodico-display-2",Helvetica,Arial,Verdana; font-weight: 500;*/ font-style:italic; line-height:1.4; .circle_quote_cont { border-bottom:12px solid #000000; margin-bottom:40px; color:#000000; font-size:.9em; line-height:1.7em; padding-bottom:12px; /*font-family:"periodico-display-1","periodico-display-2",Helvetica,Arial,Verdana; font-weight: 500;*/ Swat Flies Flies are like little ninjas, dodging even the most skillfully wielded rolled-up magazine.

Method #1 From the front If the crushing blow approaches head-on, the fly shifts its middle legs forward so it can push backward. Method #2 From behind Get in Shape. Silicon Valley, Seattle … Chattanooga? Tennessee’s ‘Gig City’ Woos Geeks | Epicenter  The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is dangling wads of cash in front of nerdy innovators everywhere. A mix of local and national investors have partnered to launch the Gig City Gig Tank and are offering $300,000 of cold, hard, start-up cash and prizes to be split among entrepreneurs and students with the best ideas for how to create the fastest internet in the world. The catch: To claim the prize, you have to go to Chattanooga. When we think of American tech innovation, places like the Silicon Valley and Seattle tend to come to mind more readily than Chattanooga. But maybe we should give Tennessee’s fourth largest city a bit more credit. Last year, the city-owned Electric Power Board (EPB) brought the country’s first gigabit-per-second fiber optic network to more than 150,000 households and businesses in a 600-square-mile radius.

But there are some major kinks to be ironed out. And there’s still money in it for you even if you’re not the next Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey. Helveticards : approche minimaliste pour un jeu de cartes. Des chercheurs ont mis au point le matériau le plus léger au monde. Des scientifiques viennent de mettre au point le matériau le plus léger au monde. Il s'agirait d'un métal composé à 99.99% d'air. Sa particularité : sa structure est comparable à celle de la tour Eiffel. La masse volumique du micro lattice serait de 0.9mg/cm3 (ou 0.9kg/m3). A titre de comparaison, celle de l'aluminium est de 2 700 kg/m3. Le projet est à l'initiative du DARPA (agence du département de la Défense américain) et le matériau a été développé par l'Université de Californie située à Irvine, le California Institute of Technology (Caltech) et les HRL Laboratories. Sa structure se compose de tubes épais de 100 nanomètres en nickel-phosphore interconnectés les uns aux autres en treillis.

Composé essentiellement d'air, il peut être comprimé à 50% de sa taille et retrouver sa taille initiale après cela. Il pourrait être utilisé pour fabriquer des électrodes de batteries mais trouverait aussi des applications pour absorber des vibrations comme le son. [sciencemag via gizmag] How Many Neutrinos Does It Take to Screw Up Einstein? | Wired Science.

Results from a second experiment uphold the observation that neutrinos are moving faster than the speed of light. The OPERA collaboration, which first reported the superluminal neutrinos in September, has rerun the experiment and detected 20 new neutrinos breaking Einstein’s theoretical limit. The findings are heartening to anyone hoping to see a major physics revolution in their lifetime. But scientists, as ever, are being cautious, and it will take an independent replication of the results by another team to even begin convincing many of them. “This eliminates one major class of systematic errors, and it’s impressive for the OPERA team to have mounted in a short period of time,” said physicist Robert Plunkett of Fermilab National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. Neutrinos are subatomic particles with hardly any mass that are able to fly through most matter as if it weren’t there.

But a great deal of scrutiny remains. Image: OPERA collaboration Go Back to Top. Généalogie des jeux vidéos[Infographie] 9 Gadgets That Prove You’re a Hard-Core Early Adopter | Gadget Lab. Sélection arbitraire de consoles videos au Game Story du Grand Palais