Fox has greenlighted Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, a 13-part docu-series from Family Guy creator MacFarlane and late Sagan's original collaborators – his widow, writer/producer Ann Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter. Envisioned as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original 13-part program, which was hosted by Sagan, the new Cosmos series will be hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Yes, Robots are awesome. It's just too bad that they will inevitably turn on us and kill us all, terminator style.
Until that happens though, we can enjoy their cute robot ways and learn what we can about them. In fact, someone's even gone to the effort and made this handy dandy infographic all about Robots. It's filled with all sorts of fun facts about their history. For example, did you know that robots have already killed people? It's true. The first robot to ever murder someone happened back in 1979?
And people wonder why I fear the future.
To check out the full infographic, click HERE.
(Via Geekologie)
Nearly 300 St. Edmund's Elementary School students stomped and cheered at the school's sendoff celebration for the so-called Nerd Herd, five child prodigies who will represent the city at an international robot competition.
"I'm so pumped up," exclaimed team member Simon Shkreli, 12, pointing to the crowd. "Look at this - it's amazing."
Cheerleaders waved their pompoms and the students formed an aisle down the middle of the gymnasium.
"Nerd Herd, Nerd Herd!" they chanted over and over as the high school's band played Survivor's thumping "Eye of the Tiger," the herd's unofficial theme song.
Simon, along with team members Benjamin Kelk and Gregory Chin, both 12, ran down the aisle, high-fiving their screaming fans, like they were playing in an all-star game or something.
The school presented the robot fanatics with an "I Love New York" banner to take to the Robotics World Festival next weekend in Atlanta.
The camera will record anything and anyone that enters Spence's field of vision and relay the footage back to a computer. That video will provide a unique perspective on the way video surveillance is becoming more popular in western societies, he told New Scientist.
Our brain isn’t the hard drive of a computer, and our memories aren’t hard coded and unchangeable. Every time you recall a memory it may become subtly altered and associated with what ever it was that triggered that old memory. If this trigger happens repeatedly, then you’re adding new layer of interpretation that will be recalled automatically with the old memory next time it’s called up.
A great example of this in action that also demonstrates fluid nostalgia, is the backlash against George Lucas. A large portion of 70’s and 80’s children had grown up owning Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader figures and playing in the backyard pretending sticks were light sabers. Fond childhood memories.
When the first abysmal Star Wars Prequel was released the strong feelings against the film weren’t just those of disappointment at a bad movie. If it were that simple, we should also feel the same way about Police Academy 7.
The reaction can be partly explained by the sense of attack on our previously fond feelings. Watching the new movie automatically calls up memories from the previous series and all the pleasant childhood playtime memories associated with it. But recalling these fond memories in the context of a negative experience begins the process of re-coding, or modifying our old memories. This is an undesirable outcome for nostalgia as it is usually such a pleasant feeling. Naturally there is some resistance and cognitive dissonance when this happens and the brain will try to avoid it like any other unpleasant experience.
Stuff of Life is the first in a series dedicated to the hard sciences. The author is Mark Schultz, a DC Comics veteran and creator of the postapocalyptic classic Xenozoic Tales. The 160-page work, illustrated by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (improbably, no genetic relation), covers the regenerative processes of DNA, human migratory patterns, cloned apples, and stem cells. In a rapidly changing field, it's as up-to-date and accurate as possible.
Schultz, like Zimmerman, was attracted by the possibilities of using comics as an educational medium. "It's not prose, and it's not documentary film," Schultz says. "It's kind of its own animal." And the graphic novel market is drawing in different readers than he's accustomed to at DC. "The manga phenomenon," he notes as one example, "is attracting new demographics, like younger women, who weren't picking up on traditional comics."
The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed two of the most massive stars in our galaxy as never before. Located 7,500 light years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula, these stars are rare ultra-hot, super-bright stars that emit primarily ultraviolet radiation, that gives them a blue hue.
WR25, the brightest of the stars near the center of the image, is actually a large star 50 times the size of our sun with another star half that size orbiting around it. To the upper left of WR25, the third brightest star in this image is really a triple star cluster. Two are so close together that telescopes with less resolution can't resolve them. The third star may take hundreds of thousands of years to orbit around them.
The second brightest star, to the left in the image, is actually a less massive star that appears bright because it is much closer to earth than the others.
Using the Gemini North telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, researchers observed in infrared light three planets orbiting around a star about 130 light-years away from Earth, called HR 8799. The discovery, published today in Science Express, is a step forward in the hunt for planets, and life, beyond Earth.
The alien system is supersized compared to our own: All three planets are gas giants, weighing roughly 10, 10 and 7 times the mass of Jupiter, circling a parent star 1.5 times the mass of our sun, and 5 times as bright. The giant bodies (two of which are pictured above) are orbiting at roughly 25, 40, and 70 times the distance between Earth and our sun. If there are Earth-sized planets present, they are too small to see with current technology.
This is an amazing moment in history. Photographic proof that we are not the only solar system in the universe. And if there are planets around other stars, then there could possibly be life out there somewhere too.
Goddamn, science is awesome!!!
After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.
The entire spectacle was broadcast live from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft showed our planet shrinking in the distance and the empty first stage engine falling back to Earth.
As the rocket ascended, cheers rang out during every crucial step of the launch sequence, and at the final stage their headquarters in Hawthorne, California erupted in excitement.
The tensest moment came just before stage separation. At that critical juncture, the third launch attempt had failed. This time, it worked out perfectly.
Eight minutes after leaving the ground, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station.
"I don't know what to say... because my mind is just blown," said Musk, during a brief address to his staff after the successful launch. "This is just the first step of many."
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.
The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.
The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications , including military ones.
