Results tagged “cool” from 60 Second Science

Actually they're red blood cells treated with an antibiotic. But isn't my description just so much more delicious?

via Wired

From our friends at

There's been a huge upsurge in cool prosthetic technology recently, thanks to a mysterious increase in the number of first world otherwise-healthy citizens who are suddenly stumbling around the place missing a limb or two. But while advances like bluetooth-controlled legs are undeniably awesome, they're only half of the equation needed before the Detroit crime rate is cut by someone part man, part machine but All Cop. Mechanical parts and squishy human brains have a bit of dysfunctional relationship at the moment - while machines can learn how to interpret the desires of twitching muscles, the gooey nervous system tends to get annoyed or dead when the machine tries to inject signals back.

Continue reading 'Birth of the iHead?' >

China won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics after overcoming political worries, environmental concerns and a knockdown-drag-out fight with Paris. China declared of Paris that "certain urban areas leave something to be desired when it comes to cleanliness. In particular, errant dogs and rabid dogs are increasingly numerous." Claude Bebear, the head of the Paris Olympic bid committee, shot back with "dogs are dogs...they do the same thing everywhere... It's just that there are no dogs in China - because they eat them." BURN!

So after that flame war, there's no way in hell China's going to let a little thing like water ruin the opening-day festivities: They've had some success in preventing light rain, as we've previously reported.

But at the same time that China is attempting to stop H2O from falling from the sky, they've also constructed a groundbreaking structure inspired by water bubbles (pictured above). The Beijing National Aquatics Center, or Water Cube, as it's affectionately called, is covered in 100,000 square meters of iridescent, Teflon-like plastic called ETFE. ETFE is only 0.08 of an inch think, but it can hold up to 300 times its weight. The Water Cube is said to mimic nature's way of filling space most efficiently — with bubbles — while also absorbing solar heat to warm the building and the pool. It's said to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the increasingly environmentally-aware China, who want to look good for the world come August.

Check a video of the building after the jump:

Continue reading 'China simultaneously in love and at war with water before 2008 Olympics' >

See that sweetness to the right? It's an actual image of the precise structure of a bridge of atoms that links two gold crystals. It was captured by one of the world's most powerful transmission electron microscopes, called TEAM 0.5 for short, and it was installed yesterday at the University of California-Berkeley.

TEAM can deliver crisp, clear, color-rich images of objects less than half the diameter of a hydrogen atom (that's half a ten-billionth of a meter). It can produce such high-quality images because the beam of energy sent down the column is bolstered by brand new error-correcting technology that allows the user to adjust focus atom by atom. This effectively cuts down on the image noise generally associated with electron microscopes.

(Check out a pic of TEAM after the jump)

Continue reading ''Best. Microscope. Evarrrrrrrr.' captures atomic structures' >

We told you we'd post up pics when they came back from Messenger, and here they are — just click for hi-res:

Sure it looks kind of like the moon, but already a few unique things are coming out from this picture. The topography of the Caloris Basin, one of the largest impact areas in the solar system, is revealed in full. We can also see bands or cliffs called "rupes" that score some of the craters. These are places where tectonic uplift occurred after crater impact, showing that Mercury still may have geological compression going on.

We'll keep you posted on any other Mercurial developments.

Today's Giftology item is guaranteed to make you the most popular person ever at your local cafe, bookstore or street corner: The Wi-Fi Detector Shirt features an animated design on front with signal bars that actually glow blue as the signal strength increases. You'll be like the infallible Johnny Depp/Scarlett Johansson of horn-rimmed glassed-chicks/dudes everywhere you go!

The $29.99 shirt runs "for hours" on 3 AAA batteries and is machine washable, though you'll have to disassemble the glowing, animated decal, battery pack and all the other glitchy components. If you're contemplating wearing a Wi-Fi shirt, I think you can handle it.

Continue reading '60 S.S. Giftology: Wi-Fi Detector Shirt!' >

I've been playing a lot of Super Mario Galaxy lately — it's sort of what happens when you're supposed to be "blogging" all day long. The gravity tricks employed by the game's engine are the best part; since you play on these tiny planetoids, you can often use gravity to maximize a jump, Jupiter-boost style, and you can even jump through holes in the center of certain planets and end up on the other side. Here's a quick example of some of the goofy fun:

I often wonder if you could pull this off in real life, theoretically speaking. Our know-it-all, bossy big brother took time time to answer the "fall-through-the-earth" question, and I'm pleased to announce the answer is "yes."

Continue reading 'Could you fall all the way through a hole in the earth? Short answer: Yes' >

As a kid, I was always terrible with the whole "Magic Eye" drawing thing. I used to sit at the little kiosk in the mall, guessing wrong answers until I drew a crowd. Once I couldn't hear my guesses over the laughter, I ran away to cry under the dress rack in Dillard's.

Maybe that's why I'm so pleased this Motion-Induced Blindness optical illusion works on me. While staring at the center dot, the three other points will simply disappear at different intervals before your eyes.

Continue reading 'Blind-spot optical illusion almost as fun as 'shrooms' >

CERN, which stands for "place where war-losing Frogs and neutral, chocolate-loving Swiss accelerate particles" is currently the largest particle accelerating physics lab. They should revel in their grandiosity while they can, because the title will soon go to the Large Hadron Collider in May 2008, just up the street in Geneva.

But before everyone ditches the tired-ass CERN for the hotter, younger Large Hadron Collider, we should all remember why we fell in love with CERN in the first place. She gave us W and Z bosons, the determination of the number of neutrino families and the creation of antihydrogen atoms. The World Wide Web (now called Innernets) was also created in her superfine computer center in 1990, by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau (sit down, Al).

But times have changed, baby, and we gots to move on. LHC is tighter, younger and may give us a Higgs boson — It's just the way the world works, right? Try to remember the good times, baby.

One more pic after the jump.

Continue reading 'Impressive pics of CERN, the world's largest particle accelerator...for now' >

Every now and then, we come across something consistently wonderful that requires a righteous, 60-Second Science-style pimping. We then give this wonderful thing a seal of approval, which means that a) you can visit said item and be assured of finding something consistently awesome, and b) whoever is in charge of said item is bound to get laid more often after our endorsement.

This week's 60-Second Science Seal of Approval goes to the comic The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Continue reading '60-Second Science Seal of Approval: The Perry Bible Fellowship' >

Oh, Japan -- through your tireless efforts at improving robotics, obstacle course engineering, and tentacle hentai, we'll soon live in a transhuman world where we can transmit data through our bodies. Thanks to work by researchers at Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, large chunks of data, like resumes, emails, and even tentacle hentai can be transmitted through a simple handshake.

Continue reading 'USB, FireWire, or handshake? New tech allows for high-speed data transfer through your freaking body' >

What do Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, and Ryan Reid (60 Second Science's art director) have in common -- besides freaking-coolness? They all threw out their desk chairs and decided to work their trades standing up. If you did the same, says a new study, you'd counteract the "disease-promoting processes" promoted by slouching in your cubicle 40 hours a week.

Yes yes, you retort, we all know that sedentary lifestyles will murder you dead; isn't that why God invented the lunch-hour Crunch sesh?

Not so much. The study also claims --shockingly!-- that those 45 minutes of "strip cardio" aren't enough to offset your 8-plus hours of daily ass-parking. Better to skip the gym and simply spend those hours on your feet. (Or do both.)

“To hold a body that weighs 170 pounds upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles,” Hamilton said. “You can appreciate that our legs are big and strong because they must be used all the time. There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can’t be easily compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes at the gym.”

Here's the release.

[via Lifehacker]

Since it's been quite the audiovisual day from me, I just thought I'd cap it by sharing these impressive, hi-res photos of a recent NASA mission at the International Space Station. Takes me back to the days I used to float upside down in the neighborhood pool, training for my inevitable zero-g trip to space.

Continue reading 'Hi-res NASA mission photos are amazing, vertigo-inducing' >

In my house, you don't cut pizza -- you'll just grab out chunks by the fistful and be glad for it. But if I wasn't a barbarian living in a hovel, there's only one way I would approve of precision-cut pizza, and that's with lasers. You already know I think they're the consummate answer to life's ills, but don't take my word for it:

Continue reading 'Laser cuts pizza, adds unexpected tanginess to mozzarella' >

OK, I'm as sorry at having to write that headline as you are having to read it, but can we all just get past that and celebrate the fact that these Tesla coils rock the heazy? Steve Ward and Jeff Larson showcased the best thing they'll ever do with their lives at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon in Baraboo, WI.

Continue reading '"Shocking" news: Tesla coils play Super Mario Bros. theme' >

Dammit. I guess Pablo 247, my robot made from paper clips, didn't win iRobot's Create Challenge contest, because Danh Trinh's "Personal Home Robot" did. Great name, there, Danh.

Lame name aside (it's no Pablo 247), Personal Home Robot can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take their medication. Unfortunately, it didn't remind Trinh to take his naming creativity pills or use paper clips in his design. But Trinh, of Towson, MD, still gets $5,000 in cash. That's a lot of paper clips.

Continue reading 'Homemade robot wins contest, shames whatever you did this week' >

Ever wake up with that not-so-elementally-fresh feeling? Those days are over thanks to the Periodic Table shower curtain, which enables you to brush up on your lanthanoids and actinoids while lathering up your, um, crotchinoid. Your days of getting laid in the shower are likely over, too — though if you're replacing your old Quantum Physics shower curtain with this one, they likely never happened.

Continue reading 'Periodic Table shower curtain makes you polonium-fully clean!' >