Astrophysicist John Dubinski has been running simulations on his supercomputer of galaxies forming, colliding into each other, and otherwise moving around as they are wont to do. Last year he compiled nine animations onto a DVD, wrapped them up with "the soundworlds of renaissance and baroque counterpoint, free improvisation, Middle-Eastern music, minimalism, techno and electronica to create a musical feast that crosses time and dimension," and sold Gravitas.
As of this week, he's begun giving the DVD away for free via torrent, but he's posted the series of animations on YouTube, making my day far, far happier than otherwise possible.
OK, fine, I have a problem, I admit it: I'm in love with fire. It was forged when my pyromaniac father regaled me of his youth burning things he shouldn't. Luckily, I didn't have a chemistry teacher like Mr. Sully to nurture it even further. But man, do I wish I did.
Some high school chemistry teachers will go so far as to set one thing on fire, but Mr. Sully positively pwns all of them with his rainbow display:
Now we just need somebody to try it out and report back. I'd do it myself, but ever since that arson conviction, I can't go near flames....pretty, pretty flames....[licks lips]
UPDATE: Some comment forums on the Innarwebs have started claiming this is a either a) a hoax, or b) very difficult to pull off without seriously injuring yourself.
From what we can glean from the drooling rabble, it might not be a hoax, but playing with fire and lighter fluid is apt to get most fools burned. It's probably wise to keep this trick out of the kitchen and leave this one to the professionals...professional idiots.
It's no secret that I've always wanted Terminator eyes — you know, the kind where a head-up display pops into your field of vision, updating you about your surroundings via head-up display and instructing you how to say things like a normal human, and not a killing machine.
Screw CES: Force-feedback vests and tableputers are fine and all, but Carnegie Mellon researcher Johnny Lee has them all beat with his homemade, Wii-based virtual reality headtracking system. Are you ready for a mind explosion?
Ah, the good ol' Google Earth Zoom. Fun for the whole family. But imagine if you didn't have satellite imagery and warehouse-sized databases to pull all that sciencey eye candy from. What if you had to do it all by hand?
Check out the first and last few minutes of "Cosmic Zoom," an animated short from 1968. It's sorta cool, in a clunky, Newton-as-precursor-to-iPhone kind of way.
We've already talked about how superparamagnetic nanoparticles are being used to fight cancer, but Japanese artists Sachiko Kodama and Yasushi Miyajima used them to create this beautiful, alien sculpture piece called "Morpho Towers." The artwork, which uses ferrofluids controlled by magnetic fields, looks so sweet I don't know whether to be excited or frightened:
Everything I need to know in life I learned from video games. Among other pearls of wisdom, I learned that 1) all plumbers are Italian and will try to go down your toilet, 2) the alien menace is real and should be shot down with heavy firearms, and 3) no one can beat you in a fight until your health bar goes down. I'm still looking for an extra life in the shape of my head, though. That could come in handy.
Speaking of handy, Crayon Physics Deluxe by Kloonigames is a game for tablet PCs that might teach you a little something about physics. The object is to get the ball to the star by drawing whatever you want in the universe. Most simple objects correspond with basic laws of physics, it seems.
It's no secret that I've always wanted 
