Get out your steel umbrellas or find the nearest basement - the sky is falling. A disabled spy satellite is reportedly out of control and on a collision course with earth. Yahoo reports that officials anonymously reported the top secret information. It sounds like a wild Hollywood movie script, but it is very real.
The satellite may collide with the earth in late February or early March and authorities have no idea where. The spy satellite is reported to weight about 10 tons and is the size of a bus.
A few key questions to be answered before any real panic sets it:
How much damage would it really cause if it where to land in a populated area?
Could it be destroyed or damaged by a missile?
Based on the size of the earth and population densities what percentage of the earth’s surface actual contains civilization that could be harmed by the satellite? I read here that 10 percent of the earths surface is at least ‘lightly populated’. That number sounds pretty hight though.
You think Seattle has it bad. How about a lightning storm that lasts for 10 hours a day, 160 times a year.
This almost permanent storm occurs over the marshlands where the Catatumbo River feeds into Lake Maracaibo and it is considered the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet, judging from the intensity of the cloud-to-cloud discharge and great frequency. The area sees an estimated 1,176,000 electrical discharges per year, with an intensity of up to 400,000 amperes, and visible up to 400 km away. This is the reason why the storm is also known as the Maracaibo Beacon as light has been used for navigation by ships for ages.
New video from the planet Mars shows another mysterious figure that actually looks like the famous image of Bigfoot. Sasquatch on Mars you say? Hey could be. Leading conspiracy theorists speculate that Bigfoot may have actually been captured by the government and send up with the Mars rover. Ok. I made that crap up, but seriously that does look a lot like that famous Bigfoot picture?
Can’t they just drive the Mars rover over and take another picture? The thought that life might be on Mars or any other planet is pretty big news. Hell, who cares about soul samples, chase that thing down already.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is scheduled to make its debut flight in 2009
Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson and Scaled Composites CEO Burt Rutan showed off their new design for SpaceShipTwo. Billed as the worlds firstcommercial suborbital spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo will take travelers to the edge of the universe. Well, not quite the edge of the universe but the edge of outer space. The inaugural flight will contain about 100-200 wealthy travelers who have reserved a $200,000 seat aboard the craft.
SpaceShipTwo has a 42-foot wingspan and a tail height of 15 feet. It’s covered in windows with 18-inch diameters so that Virgin Galactic travelers will be able to have a full view of space and the Earth below them as they experience zero gravity. They’ve paid $200,000 for between four and five minutes of weightlessness, so they’d better have a darned good view.
SpaceShipTwo (in the middle of the picture) will be mounted on its “mother ship,” WhiteKnightTwo. The WhiteKnightTwo aircraft is a high-altitude aircraft that will taxi SpaceShipTwo to the upper atmosphere where it will detach. The process known as an “air launch” is said to be much more “green”per passenger than a typical commercial flight and safer too.
‘The Day for Night: Modular Extensible Reconfigurable’ is a dress made completely out of circuit boards and solar cells. I guess having a long name makes up for being incredibly short. The mini dress is made over 400 little circuit board, some of which contain solar cells. The dresses software can be updated and it also has an RF transmitter so you can send signals to your laptop. I have no idea what you’d be sending other news of severe chaffing.
Wearable tech is quickly becoming popular, and in some cases actually usable. There are a number of backpacks with solar cells on them that provide very usable recharging power for iPods and phones. As for this little dress I’m just left wondering - where do you carry your iPod?
If you missed Howard Stern on the David Letterman show talking about Nodoro, then you’re in luck. Here’s the clip. I’m not sure the product qualifies as a gadget, but it’s too odd not to post. Almost unbelievable but I kid you not, this is a real product for what they claim is a real problem. According to NodorO™, Male Genital Odors (MGO) is a problem that affects approximately 33 million, mostly uncircumcised, American males. The solution: NodorO™, a topical cream with the active ingredient of Clotrimazole that is applied to the “smelly” area. There is a very funny (albeit, I assume serious) FAQ page with questions like, “Will NodorO™ remove odors around my scrotum area?” and “What happens if NodorO™ gets in contact with a woman’s genitals?”. All kidding aside, the product is FDA approved and judging by the customer testimonials work great if you have MGO!
One of our tipsters sent me this link. I know it’s been around, but it was just too cool to a pass up posting on. The video is a Wall Street Journal profile on Richard Nagy, a self-proclaimed technofile and artist who considers himself a ‘retro futurist’. His artwork is part of what’s become known as the Steampunk movement. Essentially it involves taking the latest gadgets, gimzos and technology and making them look old - really old.
Nagy demonstrates how he makes laptops and other tech look like they came from the Victorian age. Not only does he handcraft new casings to go around modern day technology, but he also painstakingly disassembles and reconfigures the inner workings so that they fit right into old, existing frameworks. For example he’s put the inner workings of a bass amp into an old Philco radio cabinet. And the video shows some of the amazing work he’s done by taking apart computer keyboards.
So the next time you’re ready to ditch that outdated mouse, or roll the old Bondi iMac down a hill, think about giving it a new unique life as something really old.
with solar cells on them that provide very usable recharging power for iPods and phones. As for this little dress I’m just left wondering - where do you carry your 
