A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought. Put on the headset, made by Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and when a giant boulder blocks the path in a game you are playing, you can levitate it — not by something as crude as a keystroke, but just by concentrating on raising it, said Tan Le, Emotiv's president. The headset captures electrical signals when you concentrate; then the computer processes these signals and pairs a screen action with them, like lifting a stone or repairing a falling bridge.

The headset is the consumer cousin of brain-computer interfaces developed in research labs and used, for example, by monkeys who manipulate prosthetic arms with thoughts. The monkeys’ intentions are detected by sensors, translated into machine language and used to move the arm. In general, some interfaces use sensors implanted directly in the brain; others use electrode-studded caps.

For humans, Emotiv plans to have its noninvasive, wireless EPOC headset ($299) on sale in time for Christmas, Ms. Le said. With 16 sensors that lightly touch the head, it uses a standard technology, electroencephalography, or EEG, to pick up electrical signals from the scalp's surface and convert them to actions that control or enhance what happens on screen.

To help players master the art of moving on-screen objects solely through concentration, the headset will come bundled with a game, set on a magical mountain, that includes practice exercises, said Geoffrey Mackellar, Emotiv's research and development manager. "You clear the mind," he said, and then do 30 to 40 seconds of training, by concentrating, for instance, on visualizing a block lifting from the earth. "On the first or second attempt, you can lift it at will."

Other, harder challenges follow. In constant feedback, he said, the machine learns more about how users think just as users grow more skillful at concentrating.

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Vatican: It's Ok To Believe in Aliens

The Vatican's Chief Astronomer said that it's ok to believe in extraterrestrial life: that God created them too.

Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday. The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation." In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

The interview, headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life. Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy. The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

We've read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown and know all about the Vatican's super-secret archives which are stuffed full of all kinds of ancient treasures and secrets. Clearly, the Vatican is fully aware of an impending alien visit and wants to make sure that Catholics know beforehand that there's no need to switch religions once the aliens get here. Good to know.

Posted on May 13, 2008
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The Dangers of Time Travel

Tom Holt, author of You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps and the upcoming release The Better Mousetrap, helps explain why time traveling -- no matter how well-intentioned -- will always mess up the timeline and lead to disastrous results.

First stop --

Actually, second stop fourteenth-century Constantinople. First stop, your local pet shop, where you'd buy a couple of dozen cats. Then fourteenth-century Constantinople, where you release the moggies in the cargo holds of the rat-infested grain ships on their way to spread the Black Death throughout Europe. Then fast-forward to seventeenth-century London, with your fire extinguisher under your arm --

Not so fast. By stopping the Black Death in its tracks, you've changed history. True, you've saved a third of the population of Europe from a horrible, lingering death. Which means, no fourteenth-century labour shortage, which means the feudal system doesn't collapse, which means you're too busy ploughing the Earl of Middlesex's estate by lantern-light with a team of oxen to go larking about time-travelling.

This is why a) we have time cops and b) we generally refrain from time traveling.

Posted on May 1, 2008
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Sir Arthur Clarke Has Died

Science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died. He was 90.

Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died at 1:30 a.m. in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer. He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits. He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

*****

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment. "Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer." From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79. Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

Clarke was so much more than a brilliant author. So many great scientists and astronauts have said they pursued their careers because of Clarke's work. It is a great loss.

Posted on March 18, 2008
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Scientist Valentines



Ok, this is like the best valentine ever. It's one of a series of Scientist Valentines from David Friedman's Ironic Sans.

There are cards featuring Darwin ("I Select You. Naturally), Newton ("I Fall For You") and Einstein (I = LUV^u). You can send them as email valentines. Pure Genius. (via Bloggers Blog)

Posted on February 14, 2008
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J.J. Abrams Hires NASA Scientist to Advise on Star Trek Movie

J.J. Abrams is going for the real in the new Star Trek movie: he's hired a real NASA scientist to advise him on the production.

The out-of-this world visuals in the new "Star Trek" movie will actually be based on science from our solar system. A NASA planetary scientist has joined the film's production team to ensure the scientific accuracy of the movie's astronomical scenes. As the leader of the Imaging Science team on NASA'S Cassini mission at Saturn, Carolyn Porco has guided a crew of scientists and engineers responsible for illustrating the mission's results.

Porco now will also work on the new Paramount Pictures film as a consultant on planetary science and imagery. "This is a fabulous opportunity to bring to a wider audience the discoveries we've made at Saturn, and the spectacular sights we have seen there," Porco said. "And what better way to do that than to make use of those discoveries in the crafting of imagery for one of the most popular movie franchises of all time." Porco was invited to join the Star Trek Team by the movie's director and producer, J.J. Abrams.

"Carolyn and her team have produced images that are simply stunning," Abrams said. "I'm thrilled that she will help guide our production in creating an authentic vision of space, one that immerses our audience in a visual experience as awe-inspiring as what Carolyn's cameras have captured."

Carolyn Porco directs the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. You can see some great Cassini photos of Saturn, it's rings and its moons here.

Posted on February 12, 2008
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Jumper Director Meets the MIT Physicists

Filmmaker Douglas Liman was a physics prodigy who landed a scholarship to Brown University. He never took a physics class and ended up as a successful director. He and actor Hayden Christensen agreed to attend a symposium at MIT with two MIT physicists, Dr. Farhi and Dr. Tegmark, to discuss the physics behind Limon's new SF film Jumper. The hero of Jumper can teleport himself wherever he wants, just by thinking about it. So what did the real physicists have to say?

In real experiments recently, Dr. Farhi told the movie fans, physicists had managed to "teleport" a single elementary particle, a photon, which transmits light, about one and a half miles, "a little less exotic than what you see in the movie." What is actually teleported in these experiments, he explained, is not the particle itself but all the quantum information about the particle.

To accomplish this is no small matter. Among other things, the teleporters have to create a pair of so-called entangled particles, which maintain a kind of spooky correlation even though they are separated by light years. Both of them exist in a kind of quantum fog of possibility until one or the other is observed. Measuring one particle instantly affects its separated-at-birth twin no matter how far away. If one is found to be spinning clockwise, for example, the other will be found to be spinning counter clockwise.

In order to use this magic to "teleport" a third particle, Dr. Farhi emphasized, you have to send a conventional signal between the entangled twins, and that takes time, according to Einstein. "You cannot get that thing over there faster than the speed of light," Dr. Farhi said, to cheers from the crowd.

*****

Dr. Tegmark said that even inaccurate science fiction movies could inspire scientists to think. You could see something that you think is impossible, he said, but that might start you thinking. "Why is that impossible? It can trigger a train of thought," he said.

Dr. Farhi is bringing us down with his bummer news that there won't be transporter technology by the end of the year, but he and Dr. Tegmark did like the movie. We can't wait to see it.

Posted on February 9, 2008
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U.S. Navy Brings Railgun to Life

The U.S. Navy may have invented a railgun but gamers have been using railguns to destroy enemies for several years now. Wikipedia describes a railgun as type a gun that "converts electrical energy (rather than the more conventional chemical energy from an explosive propellant) into projectile kinetic energy." Wikipedia's entry also mentions that railguns were part of the plot in the 1996 film Eraser starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vanessa Williams. The Free-Lance Star points to railgun video game usage as early as the Quake II video game.

Railgun technology has been featured in popular games such as Quake II, in which players can choose weapons for combat. In a 2006 listing by Game trailers.com, a handheld railgun was ranked seventh on the list of the 10 favorite video-game weapons.

Mark Daniel, a self-described gamer from Fredericksburg, said the weaponry in video games can be almost as much of a draw as the characters or story line. He said it's "cool to see technology can be influenced by science fiction, video games and movies."

"Every time they have a new idea for a weapon in a video game you get a lot of hype about it," he said.

Indeed, a Free Lance-Star story on the railgun last year drew more than 300,000 hits online.

Even though it is not a novel idea the U.S. Navy's railgun is still very impressive and unlike the video game and movie railguns it is worth noting that the Navy's railgun is real. Gizmodo says it destroys everything it touches at 5,640 mph. Here's a video of the Navy's railgun in action.



Posted on February 2, 2008
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Geordi-like Visor Makes Dentist Trips Less Disturbing

Dvice is blogging about these interesting visors that are supposed to make the trip to the dentist less disturbing. The visors block out nearly all vision and they are connected to a DVD player that gives the wearer the impression they are viewing a 60-inch screen. They also look very much like Geordi La Forge's visor on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Staring at cute posters of cats and fish on the ceiling of a dentist office is so 1990s. The future is here, and it surprisingly looks like a technology from a 1990s television series. The relaxView B.V. is a display device that looks similar to Geordi La Forge's visor on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The device sits on the bridge of your nose covering almost all of a person's range of vision. The relaxView B.V. is hooked up to a DVD player and is because of the positioning, it give the impression of a 60-inch screen.

This system is a bit different than the 20-inch TV hanging across the room because it is capable of completely distracting one away from the dental work being performed. According to Dr. Rob Roef, a dentist, even the slightest awareness of any of the factors that go into dental work will enhance sensitivity and increase discomfort. Blocking out almost all awareness with a device like the relaxView B.V. is one way to combat the discomfort.

We are eager for something even more advanced like nanobots that repair your teeth without trips to the dentist but these awareness blocking Geordi La Forge's visors might work in the meantime. Medgadget has more on this dental pain distraction visor from relaxView B.V..

Posted on January 10, 2008
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Scientists Find the Brain's RAM

Scientists have now located your brain's RAM. Apparently, a good memory is dependent on your brain being able to filter out extraneous information. The amount of working memory varies from person to person.

Scientists believe they have located a new brain area essential for good memory - the "irrelevance filter". People who are good at remembering things, even with distractions, have more activity in the basal ganglia on brain scans, the Swedish team found. The work in Nature Neuroscience could help explain why some people are better at remembering things than others. Clinically, it could also aid the understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The ability to hold information in the mind so that it is immediately accessible is known as working memory. We use working memory all of the time - for example, when doing a simple maths calculation in our head or recalling a telephone number.

Working memory is important because it gives a mental workspace in which we can hold information whilst mentally engaged in other relevant tasks, which is crucial for learning. Its capacity is limited and seems to vary from person to person. These variations are not just due to having a larger or smaller memory store, but also due to differences in how effectively irrelevant items are kept out of memory, the Karolinksa Institute researchers believe.

Scientists are hoping to learn more to be able to treat brain disorders in which people can't pay attention long enough to accomplish a task. But what we want to know is: when will we be able to upgrade our internal RAM?

Posted on December 10, 2007
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Saturn Sounds Like a 50s Science Fiction Movie

Remember the creepy sound effects on some of those old science fiction films? Well, NASA just released a sound file that contains Saturn's actualy radio emissions and they sound just like the sound effects used in old science fiction films. Rupert Goodwins, blogging at ZDNet's Mixed Signals blog, says the signals sound like the sounds effects on BBC radio science fiction dramas from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The technology of the 50s, 60s and 70s was such that these sounds tended to be heavy on whooshy reverb and atonal squonking: these abstract efforts were content to evoke an emotional response that didn't go much beyond "oooh, that's weird". Of course, in short order that response mutated to "oooh, that's 'em silly buggers at the Radiophonic Workshop mucking around again" and whacked-out audio spaciness became as dated as anything printed in the Data 70 font.

Nobody told Saturn. Perhaps it was that the Saturnalians first contact with mankind was via a series of space probes launched in the 60s and 70s, which tended to come with a nice set of "Sounds of Earth" cover disks -- FREE with Voyagers 1 and 2! - that inevitably reflected the spirit of the times. Perhaps they just got addicted to BBC broadcasts of The Foundation Trilogy and Brian Aldiss short stories, but lost their wireless by the time Hitch-Hiker's Guide brought the genre slightly more up to date. Maybe it's just that Saturn, every inch the classic SF icon and by far the most typecast of the planets, feels it necessary to underline its brand in order to fend off more distant newcomers as they are revealed by Hubble and pals.

Whatever the reason, we now have the radio sounds that Saturn makes, relayed from the Cassini orbiter. And those sounds are identical in every way to the legally-mandated science fiction background sounds which the BBC saw fit to transmit in those bygone days.

I am at a loss to explain this. But it makes me very happy.

NASA tries to explain that these sounds have something to do with the auroras near the poles of the planet Saturn but we are pretty sure it is the Saturnalians waiting for us with their ray guns.

Posted on November 5, 2007
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George Takei Has Asteroid Named After Him

George Takei, who played Sulu on the original Star Trek series, as well as Hiro Nakamura's dad on Heroes has gotten an asteroid named after him.

Star Trek and Heroes star George Takei has been immortalized by having his name permanently affixed to an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, StarTrek.com reported. The Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union approved the name "7307 Takei" for the asteroid previously labeled "1994 GT9," the site reported.

The Takei reference will be used in the scientific community to identify the minor body from now on. Only about 14,000 asteroids have been named after specific people, out of about 400,000 such bodies known to exist. "I am honored, indeed transported to the galaxies, to know that my name has been assigned to an astronomical object in our solar system," Takei told the site. "I am yet to come down to Earth."

Asteroid 7307 Takei is approximately 5 miles in diameter, located in an orbit ranging between 2.5 and 3.0 astronomical units from the sun in the mid-solar-system asteroid belt. It was discovered in 1994 by two Japanese astronomers. The name was suggested by Tom H. Burbine, a Massachusetts astronomer, who cited Takei's work with the Japanese American Citizens League and the Human Rights Campaign, as well as his celebrity.

What an amazingly cool honor to receive -- we totally want an asteroid named after us. Congratulations, George!

Posted on October 4, 2007
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Stephen Hawking Wants to Make Science As Exciting As Science Fiction

Stephen Hawking has written a new book about the cosmos for children, saying that he wants to "make science as exciting as science fiction."

"It is easier to explain things to children because they have open minds and are eager to learn," he told reporters at the prestigious Cambridge University, where he is a professor. "George's Secret Key to the Universe", the first book in a planned trilogy, explains the workings of the solar system, asteroids, black holes -- one of Hawking's favourite topics -- and other celestial bodies with the help of a set of young heroes.

It will be released in French on Thursday, and in English a week later, and is set to be sold in 29 countries. The second book in the trilogy will be published next year. The book was written with his daughter Lucy, who came up with the idea, and Christophe Galfard, the first Frenchman to write a doctorate thesis on Hawking's observations. "Our aim is to make real science as exciting as science fiction," Hawking said. Lucy Hawking, a journalist and writer, told the press conference that one of her father's common refrains was, "That's too much science fiction, we do science fact."

The trio wanted to "provide a modern vision of cosmology from the Big Bang to the present day," without presenting it as magic, Galfard said. "All of what we see (in the universe) corresponds exactly to what has happened already," he added. The sole element of fiction in the book involves Cosmos, a supercomputer that opens a door allowing George and his friends to travel into space aboard an asteroid. "I don't know of any other book quite like 'George's Secret Key to the Universe'," Hawking, 65, said. "I think we may be unique."

George's Secret Key to the Universe is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. Every kid on our Christmas list is getting one (and we'll pick up one for ourselves, to boot).

Posted on September 3, 2007
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Professor Says Hollywood Movies are Ruining Science For Students

A UCF professor says that all the inaccurate physics in movies is actually hurting students' understanding of science.

Movies such as Spiderman 2 and Speed generate excitement among audiences with their cool special effects. But they also defy the laws of physics, contributing to students’ ignorance about science. Two University of Central Florida professors show just how poorly Hollywood writers and directors understand science in an article published in the German journal "Praxis der Naturwissenschaften Physik." Common sense may indicate that people should know the stunts in movies are just make believe, but the professors say that's not necessarily true.

Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed. And, if that were realistic, a ramp would be needed to adjust the direction of motion to even try to make the leap, said UCF professor Costas J. Efthimiou, who co-authored the article. "Students come here, and they don't have any basic understanding of science," he said. "Sure, people say everyone knows the movies are not real, but my experience is many of the students believe what they see on the screen."

And that's not just a UCF problem. Efthimiou said students across the United States seem to have the same challenge with science. It starts young. The Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 report seems to support his observations. The report shows that the average science scores among 12th graders in the U.S. dropped from the previous year. The scores remained stagnant in the fourth and eighth grades. Worse, only about one-third of all students tested were proficient, meaning they had a solid understanding of what they should know.

Is the professor trying to say that the big freeway chase in Die Hard 3 where Bruce Willis driving a huge truck on an elevated freeway while being chased by fighter plane wasn't perfectly plausible? Because we beg to differ. That happened to us just the other day in L.A.

Seriously, though, we do think more science should be taught in schools, along with math. That's why we love the show Numb3rs -- math is cool, people. And speaking of Numb3rs, season 3 premieres Friday, September 28th, 2007 on CBS.

Posted on August 15, 2007
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