We here at Techland have a love/hate relationship with machines. And by “hate” I mean sometimes we hyperbolize the thought of machines one day becoming our robotic masters.
Close your eyes and quietly repeat after me: “Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum…” Feel anything unusual? You know, like a magnetic chill down your spine?
As far as moneymaking schemes go, the New York Post‘s attempt to up sales of its iPad app seems like a great idea… in theory.
When it comes to interstellar smackdowns, I’d generally say bet on stars. But when it comes to stars versus black holes, you’ll probably want to bet on the infinitely dense singularity from which nothing—not even light—can escape.
NASA’s Mercury-bound Messenger spacecraft dropped into orbit around the tiny, orbitally eccentric planet just a few months ago, and it’s already sent back enough data to notably alter our take on the first rock from the sun.
Occasionally supermassive and always super-ominous, light-devouring black holes may be the most spectacular byproduct of our Newtonian universe, and now we know a little more about how long they’ve been out there and what they’re up to, thanks to NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
You know what they say about a leopard not changing its spots, but when it comes to our sun, change is all but guaranteed. In fact new research suggests the sun may be on the verge of changing its sunspots in a way that could significantly alter weather patterns for the long haul, both on [...]
The comic book industry may be undergoing a sea change right now—what with the second largest publisher relaunching its entire line and making them all digitally available on the day of print release—but luckily one hero is about to emerge to bring some stability to the world of four-color funnies:
It’s another startling picture of our very own Sun that might pass for a CGI still from a summer disaster flick. You know, right before our backyard star reaches across the void with fingers of fire and gobbles us up. But don’t worry, it’ll only strike us a “glancing blow,” says NASA.
It’s one of those shots that makes you go “holy word-I-can’t-say-here”: A space shuttle hanging from the International Space Station like a bird caught midflight, or a high diver reaching around about to leap backwards off a diving board. It’s also the first photograph of a shuttle—the very vehicle that helped assemble the space station [...]
Okay, so antimatter’s nothing like lightning, really, but bottling it in a kind of containment field? Doesn’t sound like the safest gig. More like something you’d catch Geordi La Forge trying during some wild hair zero-sum Star Trek plotline involving aliens, the Holodeck, rerouting power from life support, and a self-destruct sequence.
