You just have to wonder that with today's technology and vast knowledge that we'd have robots in place everywhere, exactly as we were promised 30 years ago. Most attempts at designing and developing robots that emulate human or animal like movements have been, well, let's say, not so human or animal like...

Until I saw BigDog: incredibly beautiful and creepy at the same time. The project is funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency), you know the same folks that brought you the Internet... 

Make sure to check out 0:37...the immediate response is simply incredible and behaves so realisticly that I think I even felt a bit sorry for the steel beast.  

Their website is not much to look at and painfully slow, but check out their other robots...

"So we all know how planes fly, right? The top of the wing is rounded and the bottom of the wing is straighter. Air takes longer to travel over the top of the wing, which means there’s less air pressure there relative to the bottom of the wing.

That means there’s more air pressure on the bottom — hence the lift. Right?

Nope."

Read more: http://dmiessler.com/...

"Survival of the fittest is a phrase which is a shorthand for a concept relating to competition for survival or predominance. Originally applied by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, Spencer drew parallels to his ideas of economics with Charles Darwin's theories of evolution by what Darwin termed natural selection. [wikipedia]"

Now, we know this well established concept is applied to everyday living organisms. But what about the not so obvious ones...? What about M & M's?

Read more: http://www.laughbreak.com/stories/

With less than $5 and it is incredibly simple. I had known about the technology, but thought it involved a more sensitive and expensive equipment. It turns out you can make yourself a simple Laser Microsphone with a $2 laser and the light sensor from a nightlight...

The technology involves around the fact that sounds [of your voice] are simply waves that cause vibrations in the air. The windows in any room will vibrate accordingly when impacted with these vibrations. If you point a laser light at the window and capture the reflected light on a sensor, any vibration on the window will be reflected and captured in your sensor. It is just a matter of translating the vibrations back to sound with software and any laptop with Windows will do that for you.

Read more: [via LifeHacker] http://lifehacker.com/...

Snow is truly a magical natural phenomena. Countless of snowflakes fall from the sky during a snowfall and each one of them is truly unique. Some people hate the winters and snow, others, like myself, just love it. It adds a sense of undisturbed beauty and calm to any landscape. But there is much more beneath a layer of snow.

This site explains and shows everything you wanted to know about snowflakes. If that is not enough make sure you check out the 36,000x magnification of a snowflake.

Truly amazing stuff...

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow

Somehow I stumbled upon this site and found it quite interesting, especially the decent amount of (free) software in each of the specializations. If you have an interest in any of the fields of science, check it out...

"The OpenScience project is dedicated to writing and releasing free and Open Source scientific software. We are a group of scientists, mathematicians and engineers who want to encourage a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world."

Read more: http://www.openscience.org/

Very clever way to multiply any numbers by using lines, single digit numbers and their intersections.

It is quite interesting and easy to use.

It will make you wonder, how did they do that and why didn't anyone think of this before?

Read more: http://www.glumbert.com/...

Google Mars allows you to view Mars three ways, by elevation, by "visible" and by infrared. Google has plotted points by Regions, Mountains, Plains Spacecraft, Canyons, Ridges, Stories, Dunes, and Craters.

They have plans to add a Google Earth like desktop feature for Mars in the future.

Read more: http://www.google.com/mars/

World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data to experience Earth terrain (or any planet with the data) in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there. Virtually visit anyplace in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps or along the African Sahara.

The download of this phenomenal software is free, but is quite large at around 250Mb. You will also need a fast computer with plenty of memory and compatible 3D graphics acceleration. If that wasn't enough, you must also have broadband (I would not try this with anything less than that). The software allows you to set the detail of resolution. The whole planet can bee seen with a resolution detail of 7 meters (1 pixel == 7 square meters), whereas all of the US can be seen with 1 meter resolution. Some urban areas like Washington D.C., Fort Worth, Seattle and Orlando have a (color) resolution of .25 meters! That means that you can pinpoint a person walking on a sidewalk.

Download here: http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/ or check out the unofficial enthusiast website with user-submitted captures of interesting sites of our planet.

The Einstein Archives Online Website provides the first online access to Albert Einstein's scientific and non-scientific manuscripts.

The site allows viewing and browsing of approximately 3,000 high-quality digitized images of Einstein’s writings and direct access to approx. 43,000 records of Einstein and Einstein related documents. The records published in this online version pertain to Albert Einstein’s scientific and non-scientific writings, his professional and personal correspondence, notebooks, travel diaries, personal documents, and third-party items contained in the original collection of Einstein’s personal papers.

read more: http://www.alberteinstein.info/

By now should have heard the news that Voyager has reached the edge of the solar system, although many scientist dispute that statement. In any case, you may also know about the golden records that are onboard each one of the Voyagers (I and II). I had known about the records and their purpose, but never really researched the actual content.....untill now.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has this Flash presentation displaying the contents of the records. I will keep the details of my opinion to myself but I think the Voyager needs to be recalled immediately, before anyone out there happens to find it...

I am from this world, and believe have half a brain and I am not sure I would be able to figure out, by looking solely at the engravings, that the needle placed on the spinning disk would produce some sort of visible images. And then the images they picked....! But then again, I am just a sofware developer...what do I know?.

Check out the links:
www.jpl.nasa.gov/flash/voyager_record/index_voyager.htm
www.jpl.nasa.gov/flash/voyager_record/gold_record.html