physics
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Apple seeks patents for 3D and 'physics metaphor' gesture controls
Deep in the stodgy bowels of the USPTO sits a folder full of Apple patent applications specifically for gesture controls. A few more pages from that expanding tome were just made public, and the concepts unearthed are certainly thought-provoking. The first involves using a proximity sensor in addition to the touch panel to register gestures in 3D. For example, you could use three fingers to mark out the corners of a triangle on the screen and then "pull up" and pinch to create a pyramid for use in a CAD application. The second idea involves gestures based on intuitive "physics metaphors" that are recognized using motion sensors. So instead of navigating menus in order to start a file transfer between an iPhone and iPad, the user could arrange the desired files on the phone's screen and then pretend to "pour" them onto the tablet -- an idea which rather reminds of the funky Project Blox. Oh, did we just make a Cupertino lawyer twitch?
Duke University physicists test first air-based acoustic invisibility cloak
Firmly departing from the Stuff Of Dreams category, Duke University physicists have successfully tested an acoustic cloaking device that fools sound waves while looking nowhere near as scifi as you'd think. Layering nothing more than a bunch of hole-punched plastic sheets -- known as meta-materials, for those curious -- atop a ten centimeter long block of wood, highly-directed sound in the 1 - 4kHz range bounced right off the concealed object none the wiser. The cloaking tech owes some of its origin to the math behind transformation optics -- and maybe to the Duke team, too. Besides allowing defense department bunkers to erupt into silent applause, the research should prove useful in the construction of future concert halls. DIY hobbyists, let us know what you can rig up with some trash bags. [Thanks, Drew]
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Feed Me Oil
I'm going to see what Chillingo has to offer here at E3 later on today, but in the meantime, this recent release on the App Store is gaining some popularity (and has been featured by Apple as iPhone game of the week this week). It's sort of a liquid physics puzzler -- there's oil coming out of a spigot at the top of each level, and you've got to funnel it down, using a series of platform pieces, into a waiting "mouth" somewhere on screen. Gameplay is simple but interesting as the game very slowly opens up, level by level, into more and more creative ways to find solutions. The standard Chillingo polish is here as well -- each level has the usual three star rating, a timer that tracks how fast you complete things and even a score depending on how well you do. Leaderboard and achievements are tracked with Game Center and Crystal, and there's a fun social feature for sharing levels with friends as well. Feed Me Oil is a fun little physics outing that doesn't do a lot of new things, but does what it does in a polished and fun way. It's only US$0.99, so give it a look when you want a little physics thinking to do.
Periodic Table welcomes two new, ultraheavy elements, jury still out on the names
If you bump in to the Periodic Table of Elements today, be sure to give it a hearty Mazel Tov, because it's just welcomed two new members to the family. Yesterday, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially recognized elements 114 and 116, crediting the discovery to scientists from Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California. Boasting atomic masses of 289 and 292, respectively, the new man-made additions are now the heaviest elements on record, seizing the belt from copernicium (285) and roentgenium (272). As with most heavyweights, however, both decay within less than a second, making it difficult for researchers to get a grasp of their chemical properties. Nevertheless, both apparently had enough credibility to survive IUPAC's three-year review process, paving the way for the real fun to begin. At the moment, 114 and 116 are known, rather coldly, as ununquadium and ununhexium, respectively, though their names will eventually be jazzed up -- sort of. The Russian team has already proposed flerovium for 114 (after Soviet nuclear physicist Georgy Flyorov), and, for 116, the Moscow-inspired moscovium, which sounds more like an after shave for particularly macho chemists. IUPAC will have the final say on the matter, though one committee member said any proposed names are likely to be approved, as long as "it's not something too weird." Head past the break for a full, and somewhat obtuse PR.
NVIDIA's quad-core Kal-El used to demo next-gen mobile graphics, blow minds (video)
You might think yourself too grown-up to be wowed by shiny, glittery things, but we doubt many will be able to watch NVIDIA's new Glow Ball tech demo without a smidgen of childlike glee. Built to run on the company's quad-core Kal-El processor, it shows us the first example of true dynamic lighting on mobile devices and also throws in some impressive physics calculations like fully modeled cloth motion. Instead of the pre-canned, static lights that we see on mobile games today, NVIDIA's new hardware will make it possible to create lighting that moves, fluctuates in intensity, and responds realistically to its environment -- all rendered in real time. The titular glow ball can be skinned with different textures, each one allowing a different amount and hue of illumination to escape to surrounding objects, and is directed around the screen using the accelerometer in your tablet or smartphone. NVIDIA demoed the new goodness on a Honeycomb slate with 1280 x 800 resolution and the frame rates remained smooth throughout. In order to emphasize the generational leap that we can expect with Kal-El, the company switched off two of the four cores momentarily, which plunged performance down to less than 10fps. That means the simulations we're watching require a full quartet of processing cores on top of the 12-core GPU NVIDIA has in Kal-El. Mind-boggling stuff. Glow Ball will be available as a game on Android tablets once this crazy new chip makes its way into retail devices -- which are still expected in the latter half of this year, August if everything goes perfectly to plan. One final note if you're still feeling jaded: NVIDIA promises the production chip will be 25 to 30 percent faster than the one on display today. Full video demo follows after the break.
Climbing robot can scale walls on a supersonic stream of air, won't leave fingerprints behind
There are plenty of wall climbing robots roaming the Earth, but few can scale heights as gracefully as this little guy can. Developed by researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, this bot can wind its way across any glass, metal or cloth terrain, without even touching its pods to the surface. The secret lies in Bernoulli's Principle, which states that as the speed of a fluid increases, its pressure decreases. This phenomenon also applies to streams of air, which, when moving at high speeds around of a circular gripper, can create a vacuum strong enough to hold things without actually touching them. In this case, air shoots out of the robot's feet at more than 2,000 miles per hour, creating enough pressure to lift the craft, while holding it close to the wall. The technology isn't new, but rarely can it support the weight of an entire device -- let alone the extra cargo that this climber's non-contact adhesive pads can hold. Researchers say the supersonic grippers will be available in "some months" and will probably cost "a few hundred dollars." As for the bot itself, Canterbury's engineers envision it being used for industrial inspections -- though the more we think about it, the more we realize just how dirty our windows are. Video after the break.
Willard Boyle, man who revolutionized digital imaging, dies at 86
We have some sad news to share with you today: Willard Boyle, the man who created the imaging technology behind everything from digital cameras to barcode scanners, has died at the age of 86. In 2009, Boyle shared a Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the CCD, which allowed people to capture images in digital format for the first time. It all began way back in 1969, when Boyle and his future co-Laureate, George E. Smith, started laying the groundwork for the CCD while working at Bell Laboratories. Building off of Einstein's photoelectric effect, the two eventually came up with a way to locate and quantify the electrons that are knocked out of orbit every time light strikes silicon. Boyle and Smith used this technology to create their own digital camera in 1970, as well as a TV camera in 1975. Prior to his groundbreaking invention, Boyle spent two years working for NASA's Apollo program and helped develop both the ruby laser and the semiconductor injection laser. The last three decades of Boyle's life were spent in Wallace, Canada, where he grew up and, on May 7th, passed away after battling kidney disease. He's survived by his wife, three children and an indelible legacy.
TUAW's Daily iOS App: Casey's Contraptions
I won't mince words here: I've seen and played a lot of iOS games, and when I first saw Casey's Contraptions back at GDC this year (which is out today for the first time on the iPad), I thought it was the most impressive iOS game I'd ever seen. The Incredible Machine is what jumps to mind to describe it, but really, this game is more than that -- it's a full engine of physics gameplay. The idea is that you're presented with over 70 included puzzles by young Casey, and then you have to solve them with various items, which span everything from punching gloves to darts and RC cars. After that, you can also create your own levels and even share both created levels and solutions around with an incredible social backdrop. The whole app is very impressive -- the design is just perfect, there's a huge number of items to interact and build with, and the social features are really amazing and incorporated seamlessly through email and Game Center. Seriously, if you own an iPad, Casey's Contraptions is pretty much a must-have title. There are content and feature updates on the way as well (and if you don't happen to own Apple's tablet, there's also an iPhone version coming soon). Casey's Contraptions is in the App Store right now for US$2.99.
NASA concludes Gravity Probe B space-time experiment, proves Einstein really was a genius
Well, it looks like Einstein knew what he was talking about, after all. Earlier this week, researchers at NASA and Stanford released the findings from their six-year Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission, launched to test Einstein's general theory of relativity. To do so, engineers strapped the GP-B satellite with four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure two pillars of the theory: the geodetic effect (the bending of space and time around a gravitational body) and frame dragging (the extent to which rotating bodies drag space and time with them as they spin on their axes). As they circled the Earth in polar orbit, the GP-B's gyroscopes were pointed squarely at the IM Pegasi guide star, while engineers observed their behavior. In the universe outlined by Einstein's theories, space and time are interwoven to create a four-dimensional web, atop which the Earth and other planetary bodies sit. The Earth's mass, he argued, creates a vortex in this web, implying that all objects orbiting the planet would follow the general curvature of this dimple. If the Earth's gravity had no effect on space and time, then, the position of NASA's gyroscopes would have remained unchanged throughout the orbit. Ultimately, though, researchers noticed small, but quantifiable changes in their spin as they made their way around the globe -- changes that corroborated Einstein's theory. Francis Everitt, a Stanford physicist and principal investigator for the mission, poetically explained the significance of the findings, in a statement: "Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotated its axis and orbited the Sun, the honey around it would warp and swirl, and it's the same with space and time. GP-B confirmed two of the most profound predictions of Einstein's universe, having far-reaching implications across astrophysics research. Likewise, the decades of technological innovation behind the mission will have a lasting legacy on Earth and in space." The GP-B mission was originally conceived more than 50 years ago, when the technology required to realize the experiment still didn't exist. In fact, the experiment didn't actually get off the ground until 2004, when the satellite was launched into orbit 400 miles above Earth. After spending just one year collecting data (and an impressive five years analyzing the information), NASA has finally confirmed something we always quietly suspected: Einstein was smart. Head past the break to see a more in-depth diagram of how the GP-B gathered its data.
Large Hadron Collider smashes beam intensity record, inches closer to discovering God particle
Already a record holder for mashing protons together at 7 TeV (trillion electron volts), the Large Hadron Collider can now add world's brightest beam to its list of accomplishments. Beam intensity is a way of measuring the number of collisions in its 17-mile-long track, and a higher intensity means more impacts -- which, in turn, means more data, increasing the likelihood that the elusive Higgs boson will rear its head (should such a thing exist). The LHC smashed the previous luminosity record set last year by the Tevatron collider. What's next for the CERN team, with two world records under its belt? Largest beard of bees.
'3D Towers' double disk storage capacity, don't require glasses
Here's some exciting news for all you data storage enthusiasts and academics out there: researchers in France have found a way to double the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives by constructing "3D towers" of information. The team from SPINTEC created these pillars out of bit-patterned media -- separated magnetic nanodots, each of which carries one bit of data. By layering the dots in specific formations, the team created a "multilevel magnetic recording device" with an areal density of two bits per dot -- twice what it started with. According to researcher Jerome Moritz, these findings could provide IT companies with a new way to circumvent physical limitations to their data storage capacities, allowing them to build up and over the vaunted one Tbit per square inch barrier. The team's full findings were recently published in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics. You can read the full article at the source link or, if you're afraid of paywalls, just check out the PR below.
TUAW's Daily App: Land-a Panda
Land-a Panda has been tearing up the App Store charts lately, and for good reason. It's a fun mix of platformer and physics puzzler that has you catapulting a panda through a series of levels in order to try and get him to his beloved mate. There's even a little Cut the Rope influence here. Your panda gets launched from a seesaw to start the level, and from there, he is fired from cannon to cannon to the other side of the map. Sometimes you have to time your launch just right, other times you can rotate the cannons around to line up your shot, and there are lots of other obstacles and mechanics that pop up later in the game. Land-a Panda is a lot of fun, and there's a ton of content to go through as well. There are 80 levels across a few worlds in the game already, and more content is on the way. It works with the Retina Display on the iPhone, there's full integration with OpenFeint and Game Center, and the whole experience is well-polished and works great. The app's not universal, but at US$0.99 for the iPhone and just a buck more for the iPad (and lite versions for both devices with 16 levels unlocked), it's a great deal that's easily recommended.
Theorists get us closer to believing time travel is possible via the Large Hadron Collider
Hard to say if Doc Brown would give this his coveted seal of approval, but our gullible minds have already been made up: time travel is not only possible, but it's well within reach. A gaggle of scientists have apparently figured out a theory that could use the Large Hadron Collider to move a Higgs singlet back and forth through time. The 'catch' is that they have yet to prove the existence of said singlet, but the upside is that nothing in theory violates any laws of physics or experimental constraints. In other words, this wouldn't enable a human to move back and forth along the universal timetable à la Fringe, but it could allow for messages to be sent forward and back. About 14 other improbable things have to happen before this could even be tested, but if you're even remotely interested in the concept (c'mon, you are), you owe it to yourself to give those source links a peek.
Havok physics engine comes to Android 2.3, demoed on Xperia Play (video)
Great graphics are often a component of great video games, but fancy physics can help too, and last week Havok announced that it was bringing those to Android, along with all of the requisite development tools. That means smartphones with Android 2.3 or up can potentially enjoy the same procedural animations and pretty dresses that we've enjoyed on PC and home console for years, and as the first gamer-centric smartphone with Gingerbread on board, Sony Ericsson's forthcoming Xperia Play got to be the first to demo them. Watch a pickup plow through road hazards, a gorilla get catapulted across a football field, and an Assassin's Creed-esque warrior run, jump and climb with the best of them in the video above. Oh, and just so you know, we got a (very brief) hands-on with all three demos in person at GDC 2011 last week, and each was practically enjoyable enough to be an Android game of its own. The realistically bouncing ball's in your court, developers. Don't let us down.
Nicalis' NightSky coming to Windows on January 6
Nicalis, best known for releasing Daisuke Amaya's Cave Story on the Wii and DSi, has announced that it will be bringing the 2D physics-based platformer NightSky to Windows on January 6. The title, by Sweden's Nifflas, was originally scheduled for release on WiiWare as well. Nicalis says it hasn't "given up on consoles" for the game, but the PC and Mac releases will arrive first. The game looks intriguing -- you can see a short launch trailer after the break. There's no word on price yet (or where you'll be able to get it, other than the official website), but assuming the game arrives as planned, those who want to get their hands on this 2009 IGF finalist will finally be able to do so.
NaturalMotion gives us a crash course in game physics
Physics can make or break a game -- imagine how boring Half-Life 2 would've been without the gravity gun. NaturalMotion, the studio behind Backbreaker, shows how physics work in-game through its Euphoria engine (a staple of Rockstar's most recent games, like Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV).
TUAW's Daily App: Burn the Rope
This isn't an iOS port of the great Flash game You Have To Burn the Rope, though an upgraded version of that would be nice to have. Instead, this one is a pretty inventive puzzle title by a company called Big Blue Bubble. The idea is that you touch anywhere along a rope to start up a flame, and then you have to keep that flame burning by tilting your iPhone so that the fire always burns up. It works really well as a physics puzzle game, and each level has certain percentage goals of the rope to burn (and later there are enemies to burn through as well), and whenever your flame splits off at different intersections, you need to watch each side of the flame and make sure it has vertical room to grow. Getting through the levels is not that hard, but burning everything on the screen is both challenging and fun (when you can actually do it). It's a really inventive game. Something only possible on the iPhone, it takes a nice different angle and just iterates on it, similar to popular games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. That iteration lasts over 80 levels, and the developers promise even more to come. There's no Game Center integration, unfortunately, but there is a silly theme song, and all of those levels make for quite a bit of game. As of this writing, the game is on sale for a buck, but I think it's worth it even for a few bucks. It's too bad there's no lite version to try out, because the concept really is original. But if you like puzzlers like Cut the Rope and Zen Bound, this one will probably scratch that same itch.
IBM makes racetrack memory breakthrough, which could come in handy someday
If you can't tell your DRAM from your STT-MRAM, you'll need to bear with us for a sec: IBM's figured out the math required to read and write data from the spaces between magnetic fields, racing across a nanowire, at hundreds of miles per hour. IBM's been plugging away at the so-called racetrack memory since 2004, calling it the perfect hybrid of magnetic storage and flash, but until recently scientists didn't know whether the magnetic domain walls (where data will live) had any mass to speak of. As it turns out, they do, and thus have to obey the tiresome laws of physics as they move along the nanowire "track," but also accelerate and decelerate the exact same amount, more or less canceling out the effect. Long story short, IBM can use this knowledge to precisely position those 1s and 0s in their newfound data bank, and someday we'll all reap the benefits of dense, speedy and reliable memory. You know, assuming PRAM, FeRAM, and ReRAM don't eat IBM's lunch. PR after the break.
DC Universe video touts world, combat physics
The DC Universe hype machine is in full swing, what with this week's partial NDA drop and the steady stream of information flowing out of Sony Online Entertainment pertaining to the superhero title. To that end, game director Chris Cao narrates the latest DCUO video, which focuses on physics and physics-based combat. Note that when Cao says physics, he's talking more comic book and less Stephen Hawking, and the two-minute short does a good job of demonstrating the possibilities generated by what SOE is calling the MMO genre's first fully integrated physics system. Whether you're looking to encase your enemies in blocks of ice and toss them out of the fight, or use them as a frozen weapon to bludgeon any nearby baddies, it's all doable according the video. Check it out on the official DCUO Facebook page.
TUAW's Daily App: Trucks and Skulls
I'll be honest, at the expense of disagreeing with some of you: I don't really like Angry Birds. Sure, I'll admit it's a quality app, and I obviously can't deny all of those sales. But personally, it's just not my game -- I don't find it nearly as fun as some of the other games on the App Store. That said, I know plenty of people enjoy Angry Birds, and for those people, Trucks and Skulls will probably scratch the same itch. Gameplay is almost exactly the same, except instead of birds, you're throwing trucks, and instead of pigs, you're attacking ... well, you can probably guess. There are a few new mechanics, a full level maker and screenshot sharing service, and the stages are obviously different, but otherwise, it's more of the physics puzzle goodness that Angry Birds has, only done with a heavy metal, death trucker aesthetic. Heck, maybe that appeals to some of you even more than Rovio's title. Trucks and Skulls just recently released a free version, and the full game is just US 99 cents on the iPhone and $1.99 on the iPad, with Game Center integration included. If you've already blown through Angry Birds and the recent holiday edition, give Trucks and Skulls a try.
