Really Rocket Science

Every Halloween, I have grand plans for pumpkin carving. I make sketches. I pick out the perfect pumpkin with all the right proportions. And, inevitably, it ends up looking like a kindergartener's craft project. Well, not this year! Why, you ask? One word: Robots.

For a more traditional pumpkin, you can take the lead of the robotics experts at the Detroit Science Center, who made the cut at extremepumpkins.com thanks to their innovations in halloween hardware. (I have to note their tagline here: "Pumpkin carving has been reborn. This time it is a little bit deformed."...maybe this IS the perfect site to showcase my skills...)

If you're going for something a bit more advanced - with a kind of headless horseman vibe - check out this guy's robot, which he used to carve a rather disturbing likeness of himself.

Of course, if you're looking for more of a chill-out-on-the-couch-while-eating-candy-and-pretend-not-to-hear-the-trick-or-treaters-at-the-door kind of Halloween, virtual pumpkin carving might be more your speed.

To illustrate the extent of my artistic skills, here's my creation:

Happy Halloween!

Sirius Satellite Radio subscribers have the priviledge to listen via Internet audio streams. It was only a matter of time before an iPhone app was created: uSirius.

Follow the discussion on Sirius Backstage.

Boring commute and a weekend to spend in the shop? Try your hand at building your own self-balancing Segway.

Or, if you aren't exactly Dean Kamen, try this slightly scaled down version built, along with a couple LEGO motors, on the open-source Arduino platform. Using relatively simple programming techniques, a huge community of enthusiasts, and a generous selection of tutorials and info, this little guy—dubbed "Arduway"—is one of the community's newest creations.

Feeling ambitious? Check out these projects from the guys at MIT and the University of Minnesota.

MIT set out to build their Segway clone for less than $1,000 and to weigh around 50 lbs. They ended up with a finished product that is functionally identical to a genuine Segway and even includes cupholders!

The Segway folks are even billing the real thing, which comes in around $5,000, as the green alternative to fuel-powered automobiles (segway.com/nogas), citing the fractional cost of ownership and maintenance compared to cars.

Finally, if your DIY juices are really flowing, channel visions of Marty McFly as you take a look at Minnesota's Segskate project—described simply as, "like Segway but it is a skateboard." The video speaks for itself.

Fascinating story, first posted to PhysOrg.com (and since garnering quite a few Diggs) Well, leave it to Doug Lung to draw some interesting conclusions:

What if you could design a satellite dish or microwave antenna with the feed horn behind the reflector instead of in front of it? That may be possible, thanks to research by Cesar Monzon, a senior scientist at Enig Associates presented in the paper Anomalous Power Flow and 'Ghost' Sources published in Physical Review Letters (payment required to view the full paper).

The abstract describes the effect this way:

"It is demonstrated that EM radiation from complex sources can result in real power in restricted regions of space flowing back towards the sources, thereby mimicking 'ghost' sources. This counterintuitive mechanism of radiation does not rely on backward waves, as ordinary waves carry the power. Ways to harness the effect by making it directional are presented, together with selected applications, of which deception is a prime example due to the nature of the phenomenon."

It goes on to say that this concept could be to such areas as mechanics, acoustics and others with technology that is already available.

The article In radiation 'ventriloquism,' electromagnetic waves travel backwards on Physorg.com describes how the waves are generated and listed some of the possible applications. Obviously hiding transmitters and radar emitters is desirable in military environments.

Physorg.com quotes Monzon describing how the technology could be used with dish antennas: "On the case of satellite antenna feeds, the theory indicates it may be possible to build these behind the main reflector dish, which will offer a clear field of view without blocking or the disadvantages derived from feed offsetting. The same principle applies to both transmit and receive antennas."

I recall a paper from the mid-80s published in the Ukrainian Physics Journal (by O.S. Ilenko of the Kyivskii Politekhnicheskii Institut). The abstract, translated from the original Russian:

The diffusion of cylindrical electromagnetic waves and electromagnetic energy oscillations in the near field of a radiator is analyzed based on the physical principles of Huygens (1935). It is shown that the surface of a moving electromagnetic wave which conforms to the Huygens principle will be either spherical or planar in free space. Deviations from the planar or spherical forms can lead to the development of reverse electromagnetic waves. The geometry of the wave surfaces is illustrated.

Via MSNBC:

A major problem during a test run in Wilmington, N.C., was the inability of over-the-air viewers to receive new digital signals, according to figures collected after the test.

Commercial broadcasters in the North Carolina city volunteered to cease analog programming on Sept. 8, well before the rest of the nation. Of the 1,828 people who complained to the Federal Communications Commission in the first five days, slightly more than half were unable to tune in one or more channels.

All full-power television stations must turn off their analog signals by Feb. 18. Viewers who receive programming through an antenna and do not own newer-model digital TV sets by the time of the changeover must buy a converter box. The government is providing two $40 coupons per household to help defray the cost.

The largest number of calls to the FCC from Wilmington were from viewers of the NBC affiliate, WECT-TV. That station's analog broadcast covers far more ground than its digital signal, meaning some viewers could watch that channel before the switchover but not afterward. A total of 553 complaints were attributed to that issue.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said a smaller digital footprint may affect as many as 15 percent of television markets in the U.S.

The agency is still calculating what impact that may have nationwide.

Some Wilmington callers were able to watch NBC programming from another market. But an undetermined number could not, an issue generating concern at the FCC and Congress.

It's not certain what — if anything — the FCC or broadcasters can do for these viewers, short of recommending that they buy a bigger antenna.

Martin told members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Tuesday that a possible solution would be for broadcasters to erect special "repeater" antennas to expand their reach.

"Our goal is to ensure that all viewers in the Wilmington area and the country have access to the same television signals that they did prior to the transition," he said.

Nielsen Media Research said as of July that there are about 13.4 million television households in the U.S. that receive their programming over the air only, about 12 percent of all homes with TVs. In Wilmington, the total is 15,110, or 8.4 percent.

If the Wilmington complaint rate were applied nationally, there would be more than 1.1 million calls to the FCC in the first five days after the change.

Or not.

Wilmington broadcasters transmitted an informational crawl over an analog signal that included the hot line number. Federal law makes no such allowances after Feb. 17 — all full-power analog signals must cease, so viewers may not know where to turn with problems.

Committee Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said he was concerned that "even with a Herculean investment of time and resources" in Wilmington, there was still a large number of calls.

"On a national level, this may translate to millions of calls," he said. "Unless more is done, Feb. 17, and 18, and 19 will be very long days indeed."

There are also concerns that Wilmington was not representative. Citizens were subjected to an intense public education campaign. The terrain is relatively flat, and as a percentage, fewer viewers rely on over-the-air broadcasting than the nation as a whole.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who recommended the test-market idea, wants the agency to conduct more field tests, ramp up the agency's call center and find a way to broadcast an analog message to consumers following the transition.

Thank you, Japanese taxpayers, for subsidizing the development of what we'll expect to see in about ten years. 16 times better than today's HDTV.

NHK's Super Hi-Vision provides 7,680 x 4,320 pixel (32 million pixels) images at 60 progressive frames a second, with 22.2 channel immersive audio. By contrast, today's HDTV offers 2 million pixels in 1,920 x 1,080 scanning system.

They had a live feed from London to the IBC show in Amsterdam earlier this week. What was the reaction? "Dude, I need a bigger wall!" The Hollywood Reporter used the word "agog" in their headline:

NHK's developing Super Hi-Vision system was the subject of a stunning demonstration Monday at the IBC. SHV offers 8K resolution -- 16 times that of HDTV -- with a 22.2 channel surround sound system.

Delegates waited in long lines for a glimpse at the scenic images, which were broadcast to Amsterdam's RAI Convention Center in two ways: From a live camera in London over a fiber connection and from a server in Torino, Italy, via satellite.

What kind of set-up/config are we talking here? Big broadband, accoriding to EE Times:

In London, the camera and audio mixing is operated by SIS Live (formerly BBC Outside Broadcasts).  Siemens IT Solutions and Services, the BBC's technology partner, has built a control room that includes a bank of 16 MPEG-2 encoder channels which compress the native 24Gb/s of Super Hi-Vision to 600 Mb/s.

Siemens carries this, without any modulation, together with data, communications and reverse video and audio feeds, to Cable&Wireless, which is providing a gigabit Ethernet fiber connection from London to Amsterdam.

Besides the output of a live camera and microphone array in London transmitted over fiber optics connection, the BTF group is also showing content from a local server located in Torino, delivered to Amsterdam live over satellite.

RAI and Eutelsat provided Super Hi-Vision material live, using DVB-S2 modulation with "a channel efficiency that approaches closely theoretical limits," according to the group.

The Super Hi-Vision video and the 22.2 multichannel audio are coded using H.264 and AAC respectively. The 140 Mbits per second coded signal is then carried over two satellite transponders, using 8PSK 5/6 modulation.

Two transponders? Cool. Maybe they'll start using the Kizuna satellite for these broadcasts.

Japan Inc. magazine gives a unique perspective, noting HD in Japan is nothing new:

“The public and private sector cooperation has been such that ordinary Japanese people don’t necessarily think of HDTV as anything special,” says NHK engineer Kenji Terada, noting that 93% of Japanese households already receive HDTV broadcast signals, thanks mainly to the country’s BS satellite service (BS-hi), which came online in 2000. The One-Seg system for mobile receivers (cell phones and car navigation systems, and so on) has been up since 2006.

Here's a video with good background on the topic:

You'll love this video, "Large Hadron Rap," explaining CERN's large hadron collider in Switzerland...

What it is:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the higher energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm.

CERN had the world's first Web site, and today's "firing up" was a success, via Science Daily:

An international collaboration of scientists today sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the world’s most powerful particle accelerator—the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested a total $531 million in the construction of the accelerator and its detectors, which scientists believe could help unlock extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe.
 
Celebrations across the U.S. and around the world mark the LHC’s first circulating beam, an occasion more than 15 years in the making. An estimated 10,000 people from 60 countries have helped design and build the accelerator and its massive particle detectors, including more than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94 U.S. universities and laboratories supported by DOE’s Office of Science and NSF.

“As the largest and most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the LHC represents a monumental technical achievement,” said U.S. Department of Energy Undersecretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach. “I congratulate the world's scientists and engineers who have made contributions to the construction of the accelerator for reaching this milestone. We now eagerly await the results that will emerge from operation of this extraordinary machine.”

This really is big news. I found Stephen Hawking's opinion interesting:

"Together they [the LHC and the space program] cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race can not afford that, then it doesn't deserve the epithet 'human'."

Here's the AP video, with good background...

And here's the Reuters clip of the joyous moment...

On reading that title, you might be asking yourself “why in the world would I need to predict space weather?” Well, I’ll tell you. Space weather – the range of high-energy radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays, that constantly bombard the Earth's atmosphere – affects the performance of some of your favorite gadgets, like GPS and satellite TV.

With this camera, scientists can predict changes is space weather, allowing for communications companies to compensate for electromagnetic interruptions to their signals. Never again will your Planet of the Apes marathon be spoiled by a bad signal. Oh, and it’ll help the military predict and plan for interruptions in their communications too.

The project – the Global-Scale Observations of the Limb and Disk – is known by a catchy acronym: GOLD.

The GOLD Camera will fly on an SES AMERICOM satellite. Physicist Richard Eastes, who leads the GOLD project, says this is the first time that a NASA instrument has flown on a commercial communications satellite.

This is the second “hosted” payload for an AMERICOM spacecraft just this month. The other was for the Air Force’s CHIRP (Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload).

It’s another lazy, hot summer weekend…what to do to pass the time?

Crochet a new bathing suit? Nah.

Make a beaded pull for the ceiling fan? No thanks.

Craft some sunglasses out of popsicle sticks and tinted saran wrap? Maybe next week.

I’m looking for something a bit more bold to shake up the summer doldrums: A SOLAR DEATH RAY.

You may have seen the “#1 solar death ray on the Internet” here. But that model was so 2006.

Yes, the competitive world of solar death ray construction has moved well beyond that.

This guy, inspired by the success of the original, bought himself a c-band antenna and made a device capable of generating 13,000 watts. He calls it the “light sharpener” and you can find full instructions on his site to make your own.

The only question is, to what end will you direct the power of your very own light sharpener? The answer, clearly, is remaking the classic American cook-out.

Of course, Really Rocket Science was ahead of the curve on this one…but we have to admit that his is bigger.

Rocky Mountain Tracking's device is accurate. So good, in fact, it beat a police radar in court:

Eighteen-year-old Shaun Malone has a few people to thank for being able to plead "Not Guilty" to a speeding offence - his parents, who installed a GPS device in his car, and Rocky Mountain Tracking, the service provider of that device.
 
"Because of our GPS tracking data, Malone and his parents can protest the imposition of an unfair speeding ticket," says Brad Borst, Founder and President of Rocky Mountain Tracking, and who is also a former Police Officer.

A police radar had found Malone driving at 62 mph in a 45-mph zone. However, Malone's parents, who had installed the Rocky Mountain Tracking GPS device in his car to monitor his driving, found that the device tracked him driving at, and not above, the speed limit.

The most telling testament to the accuracy of the Rocky Mountain Tracking Rover GPS tracking device came, ironically, from a GPS expert who originally helped find Malone guilty in a trial-by-affidavit. Dr. Stephen Heppe, the expert, had written a report affirming that, going by the GPS data, Malone had to have been traveling faster than 45 mph.

Read their blog for more detail. And Hot Hardware gets more from the expert:

While the police clocked him going 62-mph, the GPS's data in fact showed him driving at the 45-mph speed limit. In an initial trial-by-affidavit, Malone was found guilty of speeding. GPS expert, Dr. Stephen Heppe wrote a report that essentially said that the GPS data was not accurate enough to contest the accuracy of the radar gun. Malone appealed the decision and had his day in court. At trial, things played out differently:

"However, when he took the stand to begin his testimony, Dr. Heppe corrected that written report, saying that the Rocky Mountain Tracking device was "very" accurate, to within a couple of meters on location and to within 1 mph on speed. Dr. Heppe also pointed out that the GPS device released instantaneous data, and not data averaged over a distance."

Needless to say, with Dr. Heppe's revised testimony, Malone was found innocent of speeding.

Teenagers. Some learn about the danger of speeding the hard way, some know better before they start driving. Check out this kid in Kentucky:

Landon Wilburn, 11, grew tired of speeders zipping through his subdivision, so after growing hoarse shouting at them, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

The youngster, who used to shout at speeders to slow down as they drove through the Stone Lakes subdivision in Louisville, now has taken matters into his own hands.

Dressed in a reflective vest, wearing a bicycle helmet and armed with an orange Hot Wheels brand radar gun, he points and records the actual speed of passing traffic.

Landon also carries a flashlight with a built-in siren.

"When I saw it happening, I got the biggest kick out of it," said resident George Ayers, 61. "People were locking up their brakes when they saw him."

You can hack these toy radar guns, or you could really have some fun as-is.