Stories by Author

Evan Ackerman

editor

Evan Ackerman is a native Oregonian who now lives, somewhat unwillingly, in San Francisco. He has a background in creative writing and astrogeology, neither of which are necessarily appropriate for someone who is now a full-time blogger. Evan also writes for IEEE Spectrum's robotics blog, and when he's not parked at his computer with his eyes glazed over, you can find him getting injured on a soccer field or playing bagpipes excellently.

Company claims creation of Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak

Evan Ackerman
Saturday, December 15, 2012 - 9:24am
 
A Canadian company called Hyperstealth says that it's developed a wearable cloak that uses "Quantum Stealth" technology to provides complete invisibility across the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet spectrum by bending light around objects. We're pretty sure that this is mostly or entirely not true, so stick with us while we explain why we're so skeptical.

Pair of NASA spacecraft to suicide into lunar mountain on Monday

Evan Ackerman
Friday, December 14, 2012 - 5:22pm
 
For the past year, two spacecraft the size of washing machines have been orbiting the Moon in formation, mapping out gravitational anomalies by precisely measuring the distance between them. Now they're all done, and to celebrate, NASA is about to slam 'em both into a lunar mountain at a couple thousand miles an hour.

Vector-based video could kill off pixels in five years

Evan Ackerman
Friday, December 14, 2012 - 1:17pm
 
Most things that we see are made of shapes. You can think of shapes as made up of either a whole bunch of pixels in a grid, or as a few lines and curves. The former is what most digital images are stored as, but the latter is a much better way to go. A new video codec that relies on vector-based images might be killing off the pixel completely in five years.

New image shows 200 mile-long liquid river on Titan

Evan Ackerman
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - 6:33pm
 
Planetary scientists have suspected for quite a while that Titan, one of Saturn's moons, has a 'methane cycle' that's much like the water cycle we have here on Earth. New pictures from Cassini suggests that the similarity between Titan and Earth may be even more pronounced, as astronomers have identified a huge, Earth-like river system full of liquid methane.

Pages