The famous physicist has taken his explorations of space one step further: he didn't go in space!
Flying on a parabolic arc on NASA's Vomit Comet, Mr. Hawking was weightless for several dozen seconds. A video of his cartwheels can be seen below.
After expressing interest in a real space flight. Mr. Hawking has been offered a place on one of the first Virgin Galactic flights into suborbital space. Although his handlers worry for his health, epsecially if he were to endure the 3-G ascent into the void, Mr. Hawking himself has no reserves.
Although his disease is steadily worsening, as can be seen in the video, his mind is still fully intact. He has recently reversed his theory about black holes destroying matter, and ironically lost a bet that was several decades old, more information about which can be found here.
Yes, I have finally found out how to post YouTube videos to the blog. This will make it much easier to provide videos.
Anyway, on to the topic of the title, I have only recently become aware of the projects awaiting Dubai, in their own way far grander than even Burj Dubai itself. Nakheel, the company developing most all of the Dubai waterfront, has begun construction on part of it's most ambitious project yet, under the umbrella of the "New Waterfront".
The new main waterfront is composed of 6 primary projects, one of which is completed, two of which are under construction, and three of which are fully approved and ready to be built. I will detail them individually, expect for the 3 Palm projects, which are grouped:
The Palm Projects: The Palm is the original famous man-made island, the largest of it's kind in the world. It alone adds 75km (they don't happily convert into Imperial measurements) to the Dubai shoreline, and offers resorts, housing, and all sorts of amenities. The "trunk" of The Palm alone is several blocks wide, and it will be christened the 8th Wonder of the World upon the completion of the last few residential areas.
However, the concept of the Palm doesn't stop there. A second Palm is being constructed, along with a third, much larger version that is in the works, which will be four times the size of the first palms. When these are all completed, they will have added 450km onto the shoreline of the metropolitan area of Dubai. (Again, sorry for the metric measurements.)
The World: Truly one of the examples of the massive amounts of wealth in the area, Nakheel is creating a map of the world with 300 man-made islands making up the 7 continents. The various islands will include zones for estates, medium-density housing, high-density housing, resorts, and commercial use, and anyone can connect two or more islands by further filling in the space between them, provided that they own the islands to be connected, or all the owners concerned are in agreement about filling in the spaces.
Although the houses on the islands will be only reachable by air or water, Nakheel expects that to present no problem, as many of the owners will either be rich enough to use helicopters anyway or will just traverse the islands by boat. Nakheel says that it will become possible for a person to live out their entire life just in the area of The World, although they don't recommend it.
The New Downtown: As the video nearest to the top of this post identifies, Nakheel also plans to build a giant community of multiple large man-made islands, the centerpiece of which will be the AL Burj. The Al Burj is the only building planned to be built so far that may be higher than the Burj Dubai, though some speculate that it may even be the first building to be more than a kilometer tall. Regardless, the design has been assured to be massive.
Of course, don't let any of this distract you from Burj Dubai. They are interesting, but many of them will not be finished for a couple of years after Burj Dubai is finished.
The Bugatti Veyron has long been in the making, and was released about a year ago (I forgot to make a post about it.) The car is the fastest production vehicle ever made; the 1,000 cars made will be sold to whoever can cough up the weighty sum of over $1,000,000.
However, those who have that kindof money certainly may see that as a good imnvestment. The Veyron is not a traditional spoortscar--it does not sacrifice weight for speed like many of it's kin. Instead, it pushes itself up to the speed of 262 miles per hour (nearly 50 MPH faster than the previous fastest car) with a engine that cranks out 1001 horsepower.
It would seem that every company has a parent company. In a great example of this, Nike, Mattel, Procter & Gamble, and several more totally unrelated companies, are owned by a company known as "Inventables"(www.inventables.com)--however, as you may have guessed, this company doesn't exist solely to manage it's acquisitions; the company is, in fact, a research firm, and sells it's inventions to the companies it owns, as well as others.
Among it's amazing inventions are:
Suction tape: The tape is lined with suction cups too small to see, and can stick it surfaces
"Strange Matter": I don't really know the name of this stuff, but as long as they keep it in water, it stays a solid. As they expose it to air, however, it becomes a liquid. Dump the liquid in the water, and it becomes a solid again!
Conductive Velcro: Just think, attach the flashlight to the wall, and it completes the circuit and starts charging again!
Magnetic Spraypaint: I don't even need to list the myriad uses for this.
Collapseable wall: It may form a 10x10 foot plus honeycomb-framed wall, but it collapses into a small metal booklet.
Self-inflating structures: Whack the pocket-sized packet with your hand, and watch it inflate by itself!
Odor-sensing paper: It changes colors when exposed to certain odors. In fact, thety have already found a niche for this: milk cartons that turn crimson when their contents sour.
Color changing shoes: They change patterns with a push of a hidden button!
What fascinating research this company does. They also do research for you, if you somehow have a need for their services.
Having made my essay on the writing styles of Mark Twain, and promptly forgetting about it again, I can now finally post it to my blog. It's not perfect, but I would say it's pretty good considering how quickly most of it was put together.
Lileks.com: "Where the past is brought back to life, and promptly beaten back to death again!"
Hankering for something funny? Well, I have the perfect site for you. James Lileks runs Lileks.com, where he reviews things that have come from the past, generally from about 1920-1970, and deftly makes sarcastic comments on them that have me in double most of the time. Of course, he also reviews the history of his own home town of Fargo, and that of others, but he does that more out of his own interest rather than for the humor.
Perhaps one of the most memorable things on the site for me was a section on meats in the Gallery of Regrettable food. Out of all the strange "futuristic" foods being passed around at the time, Mr. Lileks had found a recipe for "Meatballs in Pink Sauce"--his comment is below:
"I’ve
been doing this since 1996, and I’m still stunned at some of the things
I see. Meatballs in Pink Sauce. Good Lord. It’s the diluted chili sauce
that gives the dish its regrettable hue, I think. If you really wanted
to freak people out, you’d serve a whipped Jell-O with an identical
color for dessert."
Why make baking soda and vinegar volcanoes when I can make a railgun? Okay, okay, other than the safety concerns.
If I did want to make a railgun, there would several levels which I should progress up in order to learn about railguns. However, for safety purposes, it would be best for me to start with a coil gun.
Coil Gun: One of the most simple magnetic launchers, it uses a single copper coil, powered by a camera flash battery, to launch ferrous metal a short distance though a tube. This type of railgun is unique in that it is generally non-lethal (the flash battery is only very painful if mishandled.) Read a brief manual.
I think that while the coil gun maybe rather low-powered compared to something like, say, a gauss cannon, it certainly still will be fun, cool, and, of course, nonlethal.
Videoconferencing will never have been easier. HP has unveiled it's new "Halo" videoconferencing prototype rooms, made for seamless networking between people.
A single Halo room is half of a circular curved table, much like half of a real conference table. On the wall, three 60" LCD screens sit, showing the other half of the conference table. While they may function and look exactly as a window into another room past the wall would, due to seamless data transfer speeds on the closed system and incredibly high definition counts, they are actually showing another Halo room somewhere else in the world.
Videoconferencing may not be as prolific as it may likely become yet, this will certainly be the way to boost it along. Rather than having a blurry, delayed image squeezed on to your desktop monitor, out of sync with it's words, you can have the entire wall be your life-sized network with the rest of the planet.
Popular Science was able to take a tour of HP's secret project to create a "perfect" apex of the videoconferencing concept. Walking into a room with a semicircular table jutting out from the wall, and the rest of the wall covered with a 20+ foot long projector screen, Popsci was able to watch as the future was demonstrated. All of the sudden, the wall lit up with several windows desktop screens, and then seemed to disappear. Using a combination of LCD projectors and hemispherical video receptors, an almost perfect recreation of the room somewhere else was created. It turned out that, for added realism, the projector screen had been painted with a special reflective coating, to make it subtly 3D without having to wear the glasses. The result was unnoticeable, but it played a major part in how realistic the projection was. The sound system was also so advanced that multiple conversations could be carried across the "table" and be understood, much like a real table.
Finally, in the other room on the projection screen, a man came in and sat down. With the heightened technology of the HP conference room, he was able to make what no other videoconferencing system could do: eye contact. As his eyes swept from person to person, each person stood up and raised their hand. The video system was that advanced.
How might you surprise your environmentally-conscious loved one this year? Carbon Debits!
The opposite of Carbon Credits, Carbon Debits are certificates purchased in order to negate others' Carbon Credits. Grind a tree down into pulp in your wife's name!
I have so far only seen one website that offers this, carboncreditkillers.com, because it is such a small industry...but then again, who knows. There may be more out there.
What happens when you weld a thin beryllium sheet into the space between the lens and the rest of a camera? You get an X-ray camera!
Beryllium may be metallic and solid to the naked eye, but X-rays pass easily through it. In addition, the beryllium effectively "focuses" the rays, so they can be easily picked up by a camera. Naturally, the beryllium window needed to make the camera will be relatively expensive, but not past the 3 digits.
Popsci showed how to make the camera here and here, and believe me, it's not an April Fools joke.
