In case you wanted to feel some space-feels today, here’s a letter to NASA from seven-year-old Dexter. Dexter wants to be on NASA’s first mission to Mars, but regrets to inform you that he won’t be able to make the trip because he’s seven. NASA replied with a letter and some Mars swag, and Dexter’s mother posted pictures of it all to Reddit.< … Read More → "Dexter wants to go to Mars, can’t because he’s seven, gets awesome letter from NASA instead"

… Read More → "Curiosity rover shoots video of Martian moonrise"

Safely navigate in your car without taking your eyes off the road using the Garmin Head-Up Display ($130). This portable projector beams navigation information from your bluetooth-equipped smartphone onto a reflective film on your windshield, allowing you to see turn-by-turn directions, time of arrival, distance to the next turn, your speed, the speed limit, traffic information, and more.
via uncrate</ … Read More → "Garmin head-up display"

The word “the” is the most commonly-used word of the English language; it makes an appearance in around 80% of all written paragraphs. 

To recognize its usage and usefulness, Melbourne-based Australian restaurateur Paul Mathis has created a new symbol as a short-formed substitute for “the”. 

The “the” symbol looks like what happens when an uppercase “T” conjoins with a … Read More → "‘The’ gets its own symbol in the alphabet ‘?’"

Asteroids may not be as stable as scientists thought. A recent experiment shows that the force from a landing spacecraft might easily cause an avalanche or something resembling an extraterrestrial mudslide, as a result of shifts in the dust on the asteroid’s granular surface.

Researchers compare the force chains to a stack … Read More → "Landing on asteroids could cause a zero-gravity avalanche"

Major soccer games already get covered by 20 or so cameras; the new rig, developed by the German company GoalControl, adds 14 more, attached high above on the stadium’s gantry. The cameras shoot the goal area at 500 frames per second. Image-processing software erases the players and ref and locates the ball in 3-D space every two milliseconds. Within a second  … Read More → "New camera system helps soccer refs make the right calls"

At what point does a building become a city? At 1.7 million square meters, the New Century Global Center lands somewhere between the two.

New Century, which has been under construction since spring of 2012 (which isn’t long, for a building of this size), opened officially on July 1. The 18-story, glass-and-steel frame structure sits above a … Read More → "The largest building ever constructed has opened in China"

Instead of using a powder that sticks to fingerprint residue, they created an electrochromic polymer film that doesn’t. The film does form on metal surfaces – and changes color – when an electrical current is applied to such a surface. Because of the insulating quality of the residue, however, the film won’t form beneath it. In fact, the fingerprint ends up working like a stencil, allowing the film … Read More → "New fingerprint-imaging system beats powder when it comes to metal items"

In a paper published this week, Victor Manuel Ortega-Jimenez and Robert Dudley of the University of California Berkeley found that spider webs change their shape in response to the electrostatic charges of insects, and that positively-charged bugs are actually attracted to the webs. It has long been assumed that spiders change the shape of their web to catch different bugs, but until now, researchers … Read More → "Spider webs use electricity to attract prey, study finds"

Li-ion batteries may be ok for your smartphone, but when it comes to large-scale energy storage, the priorities suddenly shift from compactness and cycling performance (at which Li-ion batteries excel) to low cost and environmental feasibility (in which Li-ion batteries still have much room for improvement). A new “wood battery” could allow the emerging sodium-ion battery technology to fit the bill as a long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly battery for large-scale … Read More → "Wood nanobattery could be green option for large-scale energy storage"