Friday, January 4, 2013 - 3:45pm
When the apocalypse comes, you'll be scrambling to power all your flashlights for zombie deterrence, and this clever model from Panasonic makes it easy.
Stories by Author
Evan Ackerman
editor
Friday, January 4, 2013 - 12:26pm
Do you remember the world before GPS? Soon, not having indoor positioning systems will seem just as crazy.
Thursday, January 3, 2013 - 7:11pm
Diving is a very safe sport, as long as you follow all the rules. DARPA wants to use technology to help Navy divers turn into Aquamen.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 12:45am
Tobii has new fancy gaze-tracking glasses. Say hello to the REX.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 1:47pm
It's been discovered that panda blood contains an antibiotic compound that's vastly more powerful than anything we've got right now.
Monday, December 31, 2012 - 7:39pm
They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. What they don't say is that it's because it's damn loud up there. Astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the ambient noise aboard the International Space Station and sent it back down to Earth to give us all a sense of what it's like.
Monday, December 31, 2012 - 6:09pm
When humans produce energy, we do it very inefficiently. Usually what happens is that we make something very hot (like a car engine), use a tiny bit of that energy to do work, and then spend even more energy getting rid of all the waste heat. Panasonic has developed a new thermoelectric material that can get a chunk of that energy back.
Thursday, December 27, 2012 - 3:37pm
Russia has been sending Soyuz capsules into space since the late 1960s. As spaceships go, they're simple, cheap, and dead nuts reliable, but the design is old enough that taking a Soyuz capsule much beyond Earth orbit isn't really an option. We've just heard that Russia has finalized the design for a new spacecraft that will be able to take humans all the way to the Moon.
Thursday, December 27, 2012 - 11:29am
You won't get much thrust out of an ion thruster: compared to a chemical rocket engine, they're not all that impressive. What makes ion thrusters so great is their ability to put out small amounts of thrust very efficiently and for a very long time, and NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster has now been operating for 43,000 hours. That's nearly five years straight.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 4:45pm
Getting a blood test is a huge pain in the arm. Not only is it a literal pain in the arm, but your blood has to be sent off to a lab somewhere and processed and analyzed and computerized, which is expensive and takes forever. This card, called the V-Chip, can run 50 different blood tests in seconds right before your very eyes, for just $10.
