Visualized
Latest
Visualized: Space hurricane! NASA's Cassini records super cyclone on Saturn (video)
If the crashing sound of lightning striking Saturn wasn't enough to excite your inner-meteorologist, then perhaps footage of a raging extraterrestrial hurricane will win you over. After orbiting the ringed planet for nine years, NASA's Cassini probe has managed to snag video of a super storm on the celestial body's north pole. Cloaked by the darkness of winter, the hurricane's eye became visible as Saturn's northern hemisphere transitioned into spring. Unlike the tropical cyclones of Earth (see: Hurricane Katrina, Sandy and Irene), this furious typhoon has been spinning for several years and has winds that flow at speeds exceeding 300MPH. Further differentiating itself from our world's whirlwinds, this alien cyclone is locked to its planet's north pole and is fueled by small amounts of water vapor instead of an actual ocean. Completely in a category of its own, the hurricane's eye measures about 1,250 miles wide and is surrounded by fluffy white clouds the size of Texas. To see this Saturnian fury in all its glory, check out the video after the break and feel free to leave your gratuitous hurricane names in the comments below.
Visualized: Boeing supersonic airliner concept soars in a wind tunnel, quietly
No, you're not looking at an early preview of Star Wars Episode VII -- it just might represent the future of air transport, though. Boeing has spent years developing a truly quiet supersonic airliner concept, the Icon II, and what you see is an aerodynamics test of a mockup in a vaguely Death Star-like wind tunnel at NASA's Glenn Research Center. The starfighter design is for more than just show, as you'd suspect. Its V-tail design moves sonic booms further back, reducing the chance that shockwaves will reach the ground (and our ears) intact, while the top-mounted engines isolate engine noise. Boeing and NASA are ultimately hoping for production passenger aircraft discreet enough to fly over land at supersonic speeds, although we can't help but think that the sci-fi look is a convenient bonus.
Visualized: Facebook Home's assortment of abodes
As you may have heard, Facebook Home has finally made its way to a select number of devices from HTC and Samsung. While the initial rollout was a little shaky, we were able to grab the social network's latest mobile triumph on every device that officially supports it. What you see above is the full spread of devices that are listed as candidates for the downloadable APK's launch (the HTC First excepted, which we have unfortunately already shipped away): from left to right, you'll see the Samsung Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III, HTC One X+, One X and the One. For folks who already have access to it, the One isn't officially supported yet, but it's been announced and it should be coming soon. We've already gone into painstaking detail of Facebook Home in our review of the HTC First, so we won't dwell too much on the downloadable version. In short, as we expected, the interface seems quite a bit more quiet than our experience on the First simply because it doesn't offer the same system-level integration; in other words, the devices shown in the above image are only able to display notifications related to Facebook services. You can still access your usual suite of alerts through the status bar at the top of the screen, but just make sure to go into Home settings to enable this functionality. Aside from the difference in notifications, the downloadable APK differs from the First's pre-loaded version in that no Google search bar sits upon the top of Home's app menu. Other than that, you'll be hard-pressed to find any major variances in Cover Feed, chat heads or the app launcher. If you're curious to see exactly what it looks like on a Samsung Galaxy S III, check out our gallery of screenshots below. Note: To ensure that everything works the way it should on your phone, make sure the official Facebook and Messenger apps are installed and completely up-to-date. %Gallery-185472%
Visualized: Sergey Brin rides pink Teslamobile Model S, complete with Chromed out rims
Hello Kitty must be so jealous.
Visualized: Seattle Mariners unveil 'largest screen in Major League Baseball'
This week, the Seattle Mariners showed off a new 3,840 x 1,080, surface-mount LED display at Safeco Field -- one the team's PR department touts as the "largest in Major League Baseball and among the largest in all of sports." At 201.5 feet wide by 56.7 feet tall, its surface area of 11,425 square feet places it behind massive screens at Charlotte Motor Speedway (16,000 square feet) and Cowboys Stadium (11,520 square feet). That's good enough, the team said, to rank as the third-largest sports-venue display in North America and surpasses Kauffman Stadium's HD scoreboard as the largest in baseball. Roughly 1,200 individual panels make up the screen, offering a total of 4,147,200 pixels -- more pixels than the 2.6-megapixel Cowboys Stadium display, the team pointed out. To feed their new HD beast, the team revamped its video control room and upgraded to high-def cameras throughout the stadium. A 64-bit operating system called VisionSOFT allows the team to mix in multiple video sources, from in-house animations and HD video feeds to out-of-town footage from broadcast partners. All told, the HD upgrade required about 3,000 feet each of power, video coax and Cat5 cables. Along with showing ads, stats and replays, the team will take advantage of the HD resolution to display social media updates from fans during games via Twitter, Google+ and other sources. You can check out more shots of the new screen in action after the break.
Visualized: JetBlue and ViaSat test Fly-Fi in-flight WiFi... from the ground
Gogo's ground-to-air transmitters typically mandate evaluating service while jetting around the country above 10,000 feet. Sure, you don't need to waste fuel flying around an empty airliner, but even the company's small jet can burn through quite a bit of cash. ViaSat, on the other hand, can do much of its service testing on the ground, using that fairly ordinary Ford van pictured just above. The reason, of course, relates to the location of the company's transmitter -- namely, the ViaSat-1 satellite, positioned some 22,000 miles above the ground. In the air, planes will actually be nearer to the orbiting device, rather than farther away, and assuming a line-of-sight link from the road, the truck can work out kinks at a fraction of the cost. That white dome atop the van, which is similar to the device that'll soon be mounted on JetBlue's fleet, maintains a constant connection by rotating instantly as the van moves -- if the vehicle's heading changes, the antenna array will turn, too, so it's always pointed directly at the sat in the sky. You may have seen ViaSat's van driving down Southern California's freeways, but the rig has just arrived in Orlando, for some additional testing a few degrees away from the company's Carlsbad home. Assuming all goes well here, you'll be shooting around the web courtesy of Fly-Fi in no time at all.
Visualized: step inside CERN's particle-detecting Compact Muon Solenoid
It's spring maintenance time over at the Large Hadron Collider, and the folks at CERN have seen fit to crack open the Compact Muon Solenoid to get at some of its loose connectors. You see, after three years, 99-percent of the the lead tungstate-based electromagnetic calorimeter's channels are currently operational -- but its keepers think it can do better, working on a less than reliable connection that has the preshower down to a paltry 97-percent. Naturally, they've cracked the thing open and thankfully given us a peek inside the beast.
Visualized: Microsoft's homegrown 120-inch 4K television
Samsung's $40k work of art has nothing on Redmond's non-existent TV division: Microsoft has built a 120-inch 4K display. Don't start pinching pennies, though -- this TV was created strictly for demo purposes, and won't be coming coming to stores any time soon. Check out Pocket-lint for all the details.
Visualized: Shepard Fairey's mission patch for CASIS ARK 1 (video)
Remember those old-school NASA mission patches that spacefarers would proudly wear upon their shoulders as they bounced around the great beyond? CASIS, the agency's newly-minted non-profit wanted to commemorate its first experiment being put on the International Space Station, and so enlisted the talents of Shepard Fairey, the graphic designer behind the Obama "Hope" campaign and those Obey T-shirts. We've snagged one of the patches for our own homemade astronaut jacket, but if you aren't here at Fort Mason, you can watch the design process in the video after the break.
Visualized: Engadget Expand's pier of arcade
There are very few things on this Earth that can make a view of the San Francisco Bay even more gorgeous than it already is, and a pier with 67 arcade games lined up side-by-side certainly qualifies as one of them. This stockpile of amusement will soon be making its way into our exhibit hall at Fort Mason for the Engadget Expand afterparty, and we captured this glorious vista fresh off the delivery truck. The usual suspects are here: NBA Jam, Street Fighter, Tetris, Tron, Pac-man, Qbert and even Donkey Kong, along with a litany of other classics. Take a quick break this evening and have yourself a good long look at our gallery of goodies below, as well as a video showing the setup in all its glory. %Gallery-183029%
Visualized: 3D Systems' 3D-printed guitar, the Americana
Yep, the crazy looking guitar you see above from 3D Systems (being manhandled by our own Andy Bowen) was printed. Not created by machines or people, but pieced together by a 3D printer -- at least the body, that is. The neck, strings, and various jacks / knobs are all fabricated via other methods, but the body is all printed. That includes the many America-centric icons seen throughout the body, from the Statute of Liberty to the Brooklyn Bridge -- okay, okay, it's rather New York-centric, but 3D Systems head Avi Reichental tells us that 3D Systems used iconic New York locations as a representation for the "Americana" the guitar is supposed to embody. He says -- and we can't help but agree, many of us being New Yorkers -- that New York is an "emotional" symbol for the USA. Join us for a visual tour of the Americana, set to the backdrop of the San Francisco Bay, won't you?%Gallery-183020%
Visualized: Sonos' speaker-building, light-showing, neon-couching SXSW house
House parties are really the rule, not the exception here at SXSW -- it's an outgrowth of the show's Austin roots. But Sonos has gone a ways toward providing a unique experience for visitors to its Studios space. For one thing, there's a room with a custom-built light show that utilizes a Sonos soundbar, several projectors and a Kinect camera, generating a dynamic light show based on the music and user movement. Even cooler is the speaker-building workshop created in partnership with Moog, which features boxes and Sonos Play:3 components. Also on-site is a neon living room designed for an add with rodent-headed DJ, DeadMau5 and a museum of cool analog instruments (as Mike Love will happily tell you, playing a theremin is a lot harder than it looks). And since this is SXSW, after all, there's a beer fountain and a stage featuring the likes of Surfer Blood and Thurston Moore.%Gallery-181296%
Visualized: First photo using ISS-mounted ISERV Pathfinder zooms in on Panama
It's been a while since we last heard of the ISERV Pathfinder, an imaging instrument that consists of a camera, telescope and pointing system that was sent up to the International Space Station last July. Now it appears it's safely installed inside the Destiny module on the ISS and has captured its first ever image, seen above, a few weeks ago on February 16th. The high-resolution picture is of the Rio San Pablo, an ecological transition zone that's marked as a protected area by the National Environment Authority of Panama. Captured at three to seven frames per second with about 100 images per pass, photos like these are designed to transmit details of natural disasters and environmental mishaps to developing nations. Even though NASA Marshall in Huntsville, Alabama is at the helm, it's in cahoots with researchers in Central America, East Africa and the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region to carry out its goal. Of course, they're still in the starting stages at the moment -- a few outstanding issues include the amount of sunlight needed and if the geometry of the ISS window affects the image -- but NASA hopes to open up the ISERV to other scientists in a few months once it has all its kinks worked out. To check out the stunning "first light" picture above in its full resolution, head on over to the source below.
Visualized: MyMultitouch's 84-inch, 4K touchscreen (video)
Museum owners, public officials and design studio heads are just the sort who would have an excuse to splash out on one of MyMultitouch's displays. The 84-inch PixelSense-esque table is designed to be used by up to 32 fingers at once, letting groups paw around interactive exhibits on a large scale. This one, in particular, comes with a 3,840 x 2,160 UHD display, infrared-based multitouch and a steel stand that lets you mount it at a wide variety of angles. Since it's driven by any PC with a 4K-outputting graphics card, you could even use it as your own desktop display, although you'd need to drop €33,000 ($43,100), plus whatever an 84-inch desk would set you back.%Gallery-180766%
Visualized: Nokia's product smorgasbord at MWC 2013
What you see in the shot above (and the gallery below) is a display containing almost every Lumia handset and accessory currently manufactured by Nokia -- all arranged buffet-style for your viewing pleasure. These photos, captured during a special event at MWC 2013, include the Lumia 920, 820, 720, 620 and 520, PlayUp speaker, Purity HD stereo headset and Luna Bluetooth headset (among others). %Gallery-180172%
Visualized: A table full of space elevator robot prototypes
It's not every day you come across this sort of thing -- well, not unless your friends are the sort of folks who take it upon themselves to transform space travel as we know it. We popped into Liftport's workspace, during a recent visit to the Pacific Northwest, to check in on the progress of the Kickstarter-funded space company. Much of Liftport's innovation is occurring in a garage loaded with arcade cabinets, pinball machines in various states of disrepair and an army of cats with various levels of polydactylism. Above, you'll find prototypes of the company's various space elevator-climbing robots, which can be explored in more detail in the gallery below. We'll have more on our visit with Liftport soon.
Visualized: a fish brain lights up while on the prowl (video)
Ever wonder what's going through a fish's mind? While we won't develop underwater telepathy anytime soon, Saitama University can now show us the raw activity. Researchers have learned that injecting zebrafish larvae with green fluorescent protein puts on a light show whenever their neurons fire, illustrating very clearly just which brain regions are active in a given situation, such as chasing down a paramecium for food. The method is more effective and longer-lasting than using dye, and also provides further insight: scientists can clearly spot the neural path when the zebrafish spots and reacts to its prey. As the protein is relevant to humans as well, its longevity could lead to better, longer-term drug testing that shows the cause-and-effect link. Just don't expect as much in the way of mental fireworks.
Visualized: On Mars, rivers are deep, mountains remain high
Mars Express' mooch around the red planet has yielded another set of snaps it felt worthy of adding to its Facebook wall. It's spent some time looking at the Reull Valliss, a dry river that runs for the better part of 932 miles (1,500km) through the Promethei Terra highlands -- and in some places is over 4.3 miles (7km) wide and nearly 1,000 feet (300m deep). Scientists think that at some point, there was plenty of water in the area, as the landscape shows signs of glaciation. Fancy a short game of amateur topographer? Check out the gallery we've got for you. [Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU, G. Neukum]
Visualized: Hello Kitty paints CES 2013 pink
Massive TVs, check. Slim laptops, check. Hello Kitty gadgets galore, check. So goes the typical CES checklist, and 2013 isn't any different. Several of the feline-adorned paraphernalia we saw on the show floor were repeats from last year, but we did manage to find a few new Kitty-branded appliances and accessories that are sure to give you an insulin shock. From toasters to Bluetooth speakers, go ahead and peruse the gallery after the break for probably the most amount of pink you'll ever see at an electronics trade show.
Visualized: HP takes the Ultrabook moniker a bit too literally
Hunt-and-peck typing only, please.
