Author: matt

Plastic light bulbs

Scientists at Wake Forest University have developed what appears to be the ultimate light bulb.  Made from plastic, it’s shatterproof, as efficient as LED bulbs, are completely quiet (no humming like some CFL), no hazardous chemicals, and they produce a light of comparable color to natural sunlight.  They accomplish this by running electricity through a conductive ploymer that’s been doped with carbon nanotubes.  They’re expected to be cheap to make, and if all goes well, will hit store shelves sometime in 2013.

More on this over at Extremetech.

DNA photographed

Using some cool trickery with silicon nanopillars and an electron microscope, scientists in Italy managed to photograph and actual strand of DNA, including the closeup image below where you can start to make out the double helix structure.  Impressive work!

You can read more about it in The Atlantic.

NASA finds plastic on Mars ( UPDATE:hoax)

NASA has just issued a press release where they state that the Curiosity rover has found PLASTIC on Mars! It’s in the form of small, eighth inch diameter plastic spheres, of a type of plastic that, as far as we know at least, can only be formed using petrochemicals. This suggests there could possibly be a source of oil on Mars…and the oil that would produce this sort of plastic is only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials like zooplankton and algae. So this raises all sorts of questions…where did the oil come from…does that mean there was once life on Mars…and how was it turned into plastic? It’s amazing what we’re learning from one solitary robot cruising the surface of Mars with limited scientific capability…there’s so much more to learn from that planet!

UPDATE: well that’s embarrassing…it looks like I fell for a hoax, this story is not true.

Cool bicycling lights

If you’re biking on the roads in the dark, you might be interested in these lighting solutions which dramatically enhance your visibility.  The first, pictured here, is not a shipping product yet, just a concept…but looks interesting.  It uses a laser to project a ‘safety zone’ on the ground around you to increase your visibility to drivers, and also to signal turns.  Read more about it here.

I saved the best for last though.  Shipping now (for $250) is a wheel-mounted LED lightning solution from Revolights that is somewhat reminiscent of the Tron light cycles. Each wheel gets 8 LEDs, but those LEDs are switch off and on, depending on the wheel position…with the next result being a band of red LEDs on the back of the rear wheel, and a band of white LEDs at the front of the front wheel.  Check out the video below to see these in action.

Burger-making machine

Watch out, burger flippers of the world…Momentum Machines is looking to put you out of work with their new hamburger-making machine.  It slices the toppings on demand, offers custom meat grinds (mixing multiple meats, for example), and can produce around six burgers per minute.  This photo here is of an actual burger produced by the machine, and you know what?  It looks like the promotional pictures restaurants use for their burgers…you know, the pictures that look NOTHING LIKE the actual burger they serve you.  After the horrible experience I had at McDonald’s over the weekend (see the picture below)…I think this is the coolest machine ever made.  Read more about it over at Gizmag.

This was half of the Angus burger McDonald’s served me over the weekend. Sloppy construction. Giant glob of mayo (not shown). A couple slices of onions (when I has specifically asked for NO ONIONS).  If this is the best humans can do, I’d rather have a machine-made burger!

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