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Highly Anticipated Bombing of Moon Decidedly Unspectacular

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:06:48 -0500

NASA just crashed two probes into the moon. Don’t worry though, they totally meant to do it. The two probes were slammed into the lunar surface at over 5000 miles per hour in order to throw up a plume of debris that could be analyzed for signs of water ice. Those non-science types watching online were hoping for a visible plume of dust from the impacts. They were disappointed.

The expected 6-mile plume of debris didn’t materialize, but according to NASA scientists it went just fine on their end. LCROSS principal investigator Tony Colaprete said, “I saw variations in the spectra. I'm thrilled—that's a very good sign. The spectra is where the science is."

The Centaur probe hit the surface first, while being monitored by the LCROSS probe. The LCROSS then took the plunge itself. The area of impact was selected because the craters near the South Pole are never completely illuminated by the sun, meaning ice could be present. Colaprete said in the press conference, “If there's water there, or anything else interesting, we'll find it."

Flexible LED Technology Breakthrough Allows Giant Displays

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:38:22 -0500

Ford’s quest for contour-hugging brake lights has led to a major breakthrough in the development of flexible LEDs. A group of international scientists has developed a new process for manufacturing ultrathin, flexible LEDs. The inorganic LEDs developed using this technique are not only slender and flexible like their organic counterparts, but just as durable and bright as inorganic LEDs are expected to be. Ford, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy jointly provided funds for this project.

The team behind this project consists of researchers from institutions in the US, Singapore and China. The new LEDs, though fully inorganic, possess qualities associated with both organic and inorganic LEDs. "We wanted to see if we could use inorganic LEDs in ways that exploit some of the processing advantages of organic LEDs,” John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois, told the journal Science.

LEDs can be made to be almost transparent using the new technique in which LEDs are placed at a considerable distance from each other. The technique can be used to make figure-hugging LEDs to be fitted onto buses. It could also make it possible to weave optical electronics into textiles.

Image Credit: Science

Exclusive: Behind the Scenes at the World's Most Technologically Advanced Planetarium!

Norman Chan — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:00:00 -0600

We’ve heard the phrase “visual computing” being used a lot lately – it refers to the use of computers and graphical environments to interact with and manipulate heady data sets and other textbookish content. Well, we’ve encountered one of the most visually stunning and impressive examples of visual computing in San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, the new $20 million dollar facility that’s a part of the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences. This isn’t your daddy’s planetarium (nor is it Barack Obama’s famous $3 million dollar star charter, either).

The Morrison Planetarium is a technological marvel, enabling astronomers not only to show traditional star charts, but to guide visitors through an immersive fly-through of our universe – realistically rendered in real-time. We were fortunate enough to be invited for a private screening of the new exhibit, and went behind to scenes to check out exactly what PC hardware drives this modern stellar cartography lab. And before you ask – yes, the system can play Quake.

We'll guide you through a tour of the planetarium, show you what visitors get to experience in the amazing digital presentation, and then walk you behind the scenes for an exclusive look at how the tech gods who built the whole system make it work. Trust us, you'll be impressed.

First, some details about the physical facility. Walking into the Academy of Sciences building, you can't miss the giant Morrison Planetarium dome sitting right in the middle of the building. The actual planetarium is a 75-ft diameter dome housed in a 90-ft diameter shell, making it the largest planetarium in North America, and one of the biggest in the world. The room accommodates 300 visitors, and unlike most planetariums, seating is sloped at a 30 degree angle so patrons aren't hurting their necks looking up into space, but feel like they're watching a wholly immersive IMAX movie.

While the original Morrison Planetarium, built in 1952, wowed audiences with its custom-made star projector, the modern version does away with lasers and fills its 75-diameter screen with six high-resolution professional-grade projectors. This makes the Morrison Planetarium not only the largest digital planetarium in the world, but also the largest digital theater as well.

A cut-out view of the Morrison Planetarium. This massive building puts Star Trek's astrometrics lab to shame.

Ryan Wyatt, the director of the Morrison Planetarium, introduces the Fragile Planet program before a group of journalists on the Academy of Science's press preview day. Presenters are able to take direct control of the program and manually "drive" through the galaxy using PDAs.

The change in background color isn't due to our camera's exposure settings. A ring of thousands of LED lights run along the rim of the dome. The RGB LEDs themselves are very programmable, and could be their own light show.

A view from the top: The planetarium has 300 seats, arranged in a 30-degree slope like a movie theater. This is probably the only time you'll see it look empty -- every showing has been packed and sold out since the Academy of Sciences opened its doors earlier this month.

Next, the Fragile Planet presentation

We were given a private screening of the standard show presentation, an production called Fragile Planet that was produced in-house at the Academy. Narrated by Sigourney Weaver (who also did the voice-over for the awesome Planet Earth Discovery Channel mini-series), the 25-minute show lifted us out of our seats and propelled us in a incredible journey through space. It's difficult to understand exactly how amazing the show is unless you're actually sitting in the planetarium. The domed display filled our entire peripheral vision -- the effect was so encompassing that at times we forgot where we were.

Flying through the solar system at near-light speed, soaring down over the landscape of the Moon and Mars, and then warping out to the outer reaches of the galaxy -- this is as close to being an astronaut as most of us are going to get. Even more trippy though was the optical illusion created by the dome's curvature. Even though the planetarium show isn't projected in stereoscopic 3D (though it's technically possible), the concave construction of the dome made some of the images look like they were popping out of the screen (like the illusion you see when looking at the front of a spoon).

The Academy has plans to bring a DVD and High-def version of the presentation to market, but hasn't announced a release schedule yet.

The show starts off with the planetarium's walls "disappearing" around you, so you can see the surrounding Academy exhibits. You're then lifted up through the ceiling, where you begin a superman-esque flight around the San Francisco Bay Area before zooming off into space.

Above and Below: the computer rendition of the Academy's "living roof", compared to the actual roof exhibit, where 1.7 million native plants and wildlife flourish.

As we fly faster toward space, the curve of the horizon begins to appear. You just can't get the same experience with Google Earth.

Near real-time scientific data acquired through research networks (like CineGrid) can be fed into the program and overlaid on top of the presentation's 3D models. The planetarium staff plans to incorporatethese feeds into future productions to bring awareness to environmental concerns.

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." - Carl Sagan

Next, the hardware behind the show

After being thoroughly stunned by the presentation, we were taken back stage by Jon Britton, the Academy's Senior Systems Engineer, to take a look at the computers that actually power the show. Deep in the basement of the facility, we were shown the server room, which houses three separate playback systems that play different roles in bringing the stars to life.

The first is DigitalSky, a software system developed by a company called Sky-Skan. This is the more traditional constellation projection system, which usually plays as visitors are getting seated before the show. Astronomical bodies can be highlighted and zoomed into view with a press of a button, and presenters can use a joystick or mouse to navigate around the stars in real-time. When projected onto the dome, DigitalSky can effectively replace the night sky -- astronomy professors have used it on foggy nights to teach students.

The second software system is called Global Immersion, which is the hardware that powers the main presentation playback. The video is stored in a proprietary Pixar format, and packs the 30fps video over a string of files that require significant hardware muscle to process. They're not just playing a large AVI file here. A combination of software and hardware blending is also required to align the six projectors so that the video is perfectly synced and aspected to look like one giant display.

Finally, the last system is the Uniview cluster, which runs the real-time 3D software developed by a Swedish company called SCISS AB. This is the most important computer system in the facility, as it's the software platform where main presentations can be scripted, pre-visualized, recorded, rendered, or played back in real time. It essentially is a computer gaming environment, and can actually be navigated with an Xbox 360 controller.

Each of these playback systems is powered by seven computers, one for each projector channel in addition to a master system. The Uniview cluster is run on HP XW8600 workstations, each running dual-core Xeons and Nvidia Quadro FX5600 video cards.

All of the video is funneled through dual-link DVI cables into a Black Diamond DVI matrix, which then feeds through the network to the six projectors surrounding the dome. A fiber-based ThinkLogical KVM is also used so engineers can access any of the systems remotely from the planetarium's main control area.

DigitalSky's control panel. Zooming into Jupiter or labeling it in sky can be done with one click.

Yep, the planetarium software all runs on Windows XP, with no plans to upgrade to Vista.

All of the high-resolution video is fed through this Black Diamond DVI Matrix

The academy staff is hooked up to a 10Gbit fiber network that retrieves scientific data from other institutions and research facilities to incorporate into the presentations.

The HP workstations that run the show in real-time. Note that there are six of each machines, one for each projector and another that syncs them up.

We're glad to know that with the real computation work, the engineers here turn to PCs. All of the other exhibits in the Academy are actually run on Mac Minis

Next, we scrutinize the actual dome, projectors, and sound system

Jon then took us back to the planetarium dome, where we were able to examine the screen up close and walk in the space behind its shell. The actual dome is constructed with an aluminum "nanoseam" , a new technology from Spitz, Inc, the leading producer of planetarium dome screens. The nanoseam panels are completely flush with no overlapping panels or exposed rivets to create a seamless, smooth, and highly reflective display. These panels are attached to a tilted steel frame made of 100% recycled steel, to be as green as possible.

In between the dome and its outer fiberglass shell is a narrow work area, which houses an impressive speaker setup worthy of any IMAX theater. The presentation is broadcast with 5.1 surround sound, which is delivered by a ring of Meyer Sound speakers at the dome's zenith. This array of speakers is backed by an imposing set of subwoofers on the floor, which provided the thundering bass we heard as we were hurled through space. Jon told us that the sound system was specially spec'd by Meyer engineers for optimal placement during the planetarium's construction.

The projectors are from Projection Design, a Norwegian projector manufacturer, and were arranged in conjunction with Visual Acuity, a technical visualization design consultant group. Specifically, the planetarium uses six F30 sx+ projectors, which are the world's first WUXGA projector (able to project at 1920x1200). Currently these six DLP projectors operate at 1400x1050 resolution, but there are plans in place to upgrade to 4K projectors (with a max resolution of 4096x2160 for each projector). There are a few pixels lost due to overlap between projectors, but the current setup projects roughly 8 million pixels on the dome!

A ring of LED lights surrounds the base of the dome, providing colorful ambient lighting before the show. These LEDs can be programmed to light up in any color, though the planetarium has opted for a comforting earthy glow during downtime.

A closer look at the nanoseam panels of the dome. From about 10 feet back, the panels blend together so you can't see the seams.

Two sets of Meyer Sound subwoofers housed behind the dome, carefully arranged for optimal sound quality. Below, you can see one set of speakers mounted on the side of the dome wall. The dome exterior has ladders that allow technicians to climb all the way to the top for maintenance.

One of the six Projection Design F30 projectors in its alcove. This projector actually projects (an inverse image) to a mirror that reflects the video to the dome wall. We were warned not to accidentally touch the mirror, which has to remain smudge free and perfectly aligned.

In addition to softwad and hardware blending, the projectors each have custom-made physical frames that create the right aspect ratio for their images to seamlessly overlap.

A series of ventilation holes flank the side of the dome to provide positive pressure for patrons, which helps alleviate motion sickness.

Next, we get our hands on the planetarium show controls!

Finally, we were allowed to enter the main control room behind the planetarium seating to check out how the real-time navigation works. Surprisingly, the controls for the Uniview program worked much like navigating through a game of Sins of the Solar Empire! We used the mouse to pan and rotate around, holding down Ctrl to alternate between orbiting and panning. The WASD keys functioned just like they would in any first-person shooter we've played, except this time, our actions were being projected on the biggest screen we've ever seen--essentially an IMAX-size screen wrapped around a 75-foot diameter dome. The Uniview program runs on OpenGL, and we were able to confirm that Quake would definitely work -- though the engineers wouldn't admit to actually running it.

In addition to desktop controls, the presenters can drive the system with a Xbox 360 controller (so rad!) or Windows Mobile-based PDAs to pilot while fielding questions from the audience. The software team is also working on an SDK that'll allow iPhone control, so you could fly around using either the multi-touch screen or accelerometer sensors!

Watching the show, examining the hardware, and actually getting hands-on with the software was an incredible experience. We want to thank Jon Britton and Ryan Wyatt for this behind-the-scenes opportunity, and want to encourage any Bay Area locals to check out the exhibit. PC computing doesn't get much more Maximum than this.

From this terminal, the planetarium's pilot can access controls for all three of the rendering systems using a combination of remote desktop and fancy fiber KVMs.When the show's running, the desk is lit with small red lights, which don't interfere with the show or destroy anyone's night vision.

This remote controls the transitions from one rendering system to another, as well as the planetarium's house lights.

In this scene, the blue highlights on the screen represent planets in our galaxy that we've discovered. To date, we've only found 322.

Originally posted: 2008-10-22 12:00:0

New Paper Technology is 500 Times Stronger Than Steel

Alex Castle — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:21:29 -0500

Image Credit: Wikipedia

These days it seems like “nanotube” is sort of a magic word. Scientists will say something crazy like “We’re building an elevator to space” and everyone else asks “How you gonna do that, scientists?” and they just say “carbon nanotubes,” and we’re like “oh, cool.” So go ahead and guess how scientists have created a kind of paper that’s 500 times as strong as steel and only weighs a tenth as much.

That’s right, it’s nanotubes. The paper, called “buckypaper,” is flexible in single sheets, and can be layered to form rigid plates. It’s being rapidly developed for commercial production, for use in everything from armor to laptops to fuel cells.

Ben Wang, one of the professors leading the charge to commercialize buckypaper, explains that the strength of the paper comes from nanotubes’ enormous surface area, saying “If you take a gram of nanotubes, just one gram, and if you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field.”

What do you all think? How might we use this super-strong paper in the future? Hit the jump and let us know.

Study: Googling Good for the Brain, Better Than Reading Archaic Book Technology

Alex Castle — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:09:48 -0500

Image Credit: Google, Wikipedia

Providing yet another reason to sit in front of your computer all day, a study out of UCLA has shown that searching the web may be good for your brain.

The study used an MRI to measure the brain activity of a group of seniors while they performed simulated internet search tasks, and also as they read a book. According to Dr. Gary Small, the tests showed that “when older people read a simulated book page, we see areas of the brain activated… When they search on the Internet, they use the same areas, but there was much greater activation particularly in the front part, which controls decision-making and complex reasoning.”

Of course, greater brain activity is good for keeping sharp (hence the popularity of Nintendo’s Brain Age series of games) so this study means that searching the net could help keep you firing on all cognitive cylinders as you age. However, the increased activity was only found in those who had experience with searching the internet, so if you have any older relatives who are still net-illiterate, it might be time to give them a few lessons in the fine art of Googling.

Moore’s Law Lives Another Day With Maskless Lithography Trick

Alex Castle — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:49:51 -0500

Image Credit: Wikipedia

When it comes to Moore’s law these days, it seems like everyone’s a cynic. However, now there’s one more reason to be optimistic about the future of miniaturization, as researchers have published a paper describing a lithography technique which may provide a new means of producing chip features smaller than 32nm.

The technique involves the use of quasiparticles called plasmons to focus light at an incredibly high resolution. Chris Lee at Ars Technica describes the technology: “A lens, based on plasmons, can be created by a set of concentric metal rings. The fields from the plasmons in each ring act in such a way as to create a tightly focused spot of light. In principle, these lenses could focus light tightly enough to create features about five to ten nanometers in size.”

The problem with plasmon lenses is that they must be positioned at just 20 nm away from the wafer. The scientists claim to have overcome this hurdle with their new technique, which uses air pressure to control the lens’s distance from the wafer.

Significantly, the new technique eliminates the need to create a new photomask for each revision to the chip, potentially lowering costs and speeding up development.

Quantum Encryption System Deemed Unbreakable, Won't Send You Hurling Through Time

Alex Castle — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:25:22 -0500

ImageSource: US Air Force

In what may be the biggest thing to happen to cryptography in a very long time, the world’s first computer network built with working quantum encryption technology has been demonstrated in Vienna. The network connects six locations with a total 200 km of fiber optic cable and the encryption system is said to be completely unbreakable, according to the BBC.

The network transmits a stream of millions of individual photons a second through the cable, and can detect if anyone has attempted to listen in on the stream.

Gilles Brassard, of Montreal University explained to the BBC how the system can be unbreakable: “All quantum security schemes are based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, on the fact that you cannot measure quantum information without disturbing it. Because of that, one can have a communications channel between two users on which it’s impossible to eavesdrop without creating a disturbance. An eavesdropper would create a mark on it.”

If an intrusion is detected, the data transfer is immediately rerouted through different nodes.

Pretty cool, huh? Let us know what you think of this new technology after the break.

Everything You Need to Know About Photovoltaic Cells

Michael Brown — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:49:11 -0500

In one second, the nuclear fusion process taking place inside the sun produces enough energy to satisfy the needs of the earth’s population for nearly 500,000 years. Photovoltaic cells are capable of capturing some of that energy and converting it into usable electricity; unfortunately, today’s technology can’t do this very efficiently.

French physicist Edmond Becquerel first described the photovoltaic effect in 1839. He discovered that some materials were capable of producing small amounts of electricity when exposed to sunlight. The first photovoltaic cell, however, wasn’t created until 1883, and more than 70 years passed before the next major scientific advance took place, when researchers at Bell Labs developed the first crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell in 1954.

Most modern photovoltaic cells are still manufactured from silicon, the same semiconductor material used to produce GPUs, CPUs, and other integrated circuits. The majority of commercial photovoltaic cells are manufactured from crystalline silicon—either single- or poly-crystal silicon. The latter are less efficient than the former, but their lower manufacturing cost largely makes up for the conversion shortfall.

The bulk of the progress that’s been made since the 1950s stems from the efficiency at which absorbed light is converted into electricity. The Bell Labs product was capable of just 4 percent efficiency; today’s commercial products are approaching 20 percent efficiency.

Photons from the sun pass through the cell’s n-type layer to strike atoms in the p-type layer,
dislodging some of those atoms’ electrons in the process. The freed electrons move up toward the n-layer,
creating an electrical current that can be stored or service an electrical device.

The Photovoltaic Process

A photovoltaic cell is created by sandwiching two silicon wafers: an n-type layer and a p-type layer. The n-type layer exhibits a negative electrical charge and has an excess of electrons, while the p-type layer exhibits a positive electrical charge and has a shortage of electrons. The two layers are separated by an n-p junction. The cell is then attached to a backplane, a layer of metal used to physically reinforce the cell and provide an electrical contact on its bottom. A second electrical contact is placed on the top of the cell to create an electrical circuit. The cell is then treated with an anti-reflective coating to compensate for silicon’s otherwise shiny nature.

As photons—particles of light—hit the photovoltaic cell, they pass through the n-type layer and strike the p-type layer, where they are either absorbed by the silicon atoms, reflected, or pass straight through the material. Absorbed photons knock electrons loose from the silicon atoms, leaving empty “holes,” which are filled by electrons further back in the circuit. The loose electrons flow through the electrical contacts on the p-type layer to the contacts on the n-type layer. This flow of electrons produces an electric current that can be drawn off and stored in a battery or used to power an electrical device.

An array of cells is electrically connected and mounted into a frame to form a photovoltaic module. A narrow metal grid is applied to the top of the module to transport electrical energy, and a sheet of glass or plastic is placed on top to protect the cells from the environment (everything from bad weather to bird droppings and stray baseballs). A group of interconnected modules is known as an array.

Photons contain varying amounts of energy, depending on their wavelength. Within the visible spectrum, red light possesses the least amount of energy while violet light has the most. The same goes for the invisible spectrum: Infrared light possesses very little energy but ultraviolet light contains a great deal of it.

Most modern photovoltaic cells are capable of converting only high-energy photons into electrical current, which explains why mainstream solar panels are so inefficient. One of the most promising ideas for increasing the efficiency of solar energy is to stack cells with different properties on top of one another. This way, high-energy photons can be captured by a cell on the top of the stack, while lower-energy photons pass through to subsequent cells that are better suited to those photons’ wavelengths.

AC/DC

The electrical devices in your home (appliances, computers, air conditioners, lights, and so on) operate on alternating current (AC), but a solar array produces direct current (DC). The solution is to install an inverter that converts the solar array’s DC into AC. Inverters are designed to power off when there isn’t enough electrical current for them to operate, e.g., at night.

Solar panels produce the most power in the presence of direct sunlight, but they’ll produce some energy on cloudy or even rainy days. They can’t produce any juice at night, of course, so you’ll need some means of storing the electricity that they create when the sun is shining. Batteries can provide total independence from your local electric company, enabling you to potentially live “off the grid,” but this solution presents a host of environmental problems, and there’s no guarantee it will provide all the energy you’ll need. The more practical alternative is to tie your system into the electrical grid.

In a grid-tied system, you sell the excess energy your solar array generates to your local utility, and you buy back the electrical power you need for your home. With this method, the utility acts like an unlimited energy-storage system, giving you all the power you need whenever you need it. The inverter is connected to the meter the electric utility uses to measure your consumption, which means your meter will spin backward whenever you generate more than you consume.

For most households, the reward for going solar is more feel-good than financial: It could take a decade or longer to recoup the investment in even a moderate-size system. That situation is changing rapidly as the escalating cost of producing electricity from fossil fuels moves in inverse proportion to the cost of deriving energy from the sun.