Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says SpaceX is developing a plan for trips to Mars that will eventually cost just $500,000 per seat. Musk founded SpaceX 10 years ago and interplanetary travel has always been one of his goals for the company. Few details were provided about the Martian voyage, but Musk did say we can expect to hear more about the plan in less than a year.

The bargain basement price for a trip to Mars … Read More → "Elon Musk says ticket to Mars will cost $500,000"

From the soaring heights of Denali (Mount McKinley) to surreal slot canyons chiseled below the earth’s surface, the National Park System comprises some of the most stunning, superlative lands in the United States. To explore all of them would take an incredible amount of time and resources, but the new Nature Valley Trail View website is making it a little easier.

Earlier this month, Nature Valley launched what it calls the first ever street-view-style national … Read More → "Hike the United States’ most stunning trails from the comfort of home"

Fans of the classic 1982 science fiction movie Blade Runner will remember the ESPER machine that allows Deckard to zoom in and see around corners in a two-dimensional photograph. While such technology is still some way off, researchers in MIT’s Media Lab have developed a system using a femtosecond laser that can reproduce low-resolution 3D images of objects that lie outside a camera’s line of sight.

… Read More → "MIT researchers create camera that can see around corners"

If you have an interest in perusing Albert Einstein’s vast body of work, you’re in for a treat and will continue to be in for one for the rest of 2012. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently announced that it’s going to begin the long process of scanning and uploading over 80,000 Einstein-related documents for display on Einstein Archives Online. The … Read More → "Einstein archives online to display 80,000 digital documents, scientific and personal a"

In order to reduce the use of fossil fuels, we need to increase the use of renewable sources of energy. At least, so the theory goes. However, a new study published in Nature Climate Change challenges this assumption, demonstrating that, rather than displacing fossil fuels, alternative sources of energy barely outpaced increasing demand over the last 50 years.

The paper … Read More → "Alternative energy has barely displaced fossil fuels"

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have created what sounds impossible – even nonsensical: an experimental electron microscope without lenses that not only works, but is orders of magnitude more powerful than current models. By means of a new form of mathematical analysis, scientists can take the meaningless patterns of dots and circles created by the lens-less microscope and create images that are of high resolution and contrast and, potentially, up to 100 times greater magnification.< … Read More → "New process could revolutionize electron microscopy"

What’s in store for robotics in 2012? Nearly a quarter of the year is already behind us, but we thought we’d spend some time looking at the months ahead and make some predictions about what’s going to be big in robotics.

Or at least what we think is going to be big. Lacking divine powers (or a time machine) to peek into the future, we relied on our experience as longtime observers of the robotics landscape, covering the field here on Automaton and on Hizook, another leading robotics … Read More → "Robotics trends for 2012"

All of you who laughed when I wrote about Samsung’s WiFi enabled washing machines, might have laughed to soon. Soon, there might be WiFi in everything around you. Earlier this morning, Atheros, a division of Qualcomm launched a new very low power consuming WiFi chip, AR4100P, that is focused on what is commonly known as the “Internet of Things.”
via GigaOM

Read More → "Another new chip for smart homes & appliances"

Tech manufacturers are toying with all sorts of new ways we can interact with hardware, software and the real world. And now, according to a recently surfaced Microsoft patent, the company could be looking into reinvigorating the gaming space with displays built into eyewear and helmets.

Microsoft’s system, a virtual image projector, could be built into helmets, goggles, and other types of eyewear. It would involve … Read More → "Microsoft could Be working on gaming helmet, eyewear"

Who would’ve thought that something mundane could be so beautifully complex inside? Here’s Kevin Twomey dissecting and photographing the insides of mechanical adding machines, revealing their gorgeous innards of gears, springs, and other mechanical components.
via Neatorama

< … Read More → "Beautiful innards of mechanical adding machines"