The comet Lovejoy has been snapped by ESA and NASA’s SOHO spacecraft merrily continuing on its path to obliteration in the Earth’s sun.

Lovejoy, first spotted on December 2, is on a course to plunge destructively towards, but not quite into, the Sun later on today, as its icy body disintegrates in the Sun’s heat.

The comet will pass around 140,000 km above the solar surface, where … Read More → "Comet Lovejoy spotted plunging toward fiery doom"

Glowing walls and roll-up displays may lie in our future, thanks to organic light-emitting diodes. And for bringing this future closer, a team from Dresden has won the German Future Prize.

For Karl Leo, a German physicist, the future of lighting is within reach. 

In fact, it’s lying on his laboratory table, in the form of a four-by-four centimeter plate of glass. The ultra-thin square begins to glow when the researcher connects a current, allowing electricity to flow through it.

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) was developed at … Read More → "German lighting breakthrough receives prestigious award"

The FCC has adopted the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, which will require ads to be broadcast at volumes no louder than the volume of the show that they’re running with. Until now, ads have been louder because YELLING AT PEOPLE MAKES THEM WANT BUY YOUR STUFF. Idiots. via Dvice and Engadget</ … Read More → "FCC tells TV advertisers to turn the volume down"

Working with a golf pro can definitely help to improve your performance on the greens, although pros can sometimes find it difficult to determine if you’re gripping your club too tightly, just by watching. Germany’s Sensosolutions addressed that problem with its SensoGlove, a computer- and sensor-equipped glove that allows users to set their desired level of grip, and then receive feedback on whether or not they’re gripping within that range. Yesterday, the … Read More → "SensoGlove golf glove gets an upgrade"

A report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research shows that solar power installations in the United States grew more in the third quarter of 2011 than in all of 2009. The growth in the third quarter of 2011 totaled more than 240% of the growth in the third quarter of 2010, and by year’s end the United States will have installed 1.7 gigawatts of solar energy – the same … Read More → "U.S. solar industry grows more in third quarter of 2011 than in all of 2009"

Quimperié’s Luxury MIG 675 is a hydrogen-powered boat that grabs energy directly from the water beneath it as it zips across the waves. The high-tech 22-foot-long boat has seats for three and it tops out at 70 mph. It’s quite the zippy, zero-emissions ride, and it has a price tag to match – it retails for $329,727. We’re still not quite sure how the technology in this speed demon works, Quimperi& … Read More → "Luxury MIG 675 yacht harvests hydrogen fuel from the water it floats on"

Earlier this year a man lost a $57 million jackpot when a casino alleged a “software glitch” on the slot machine. Well, that’s nothing compared to the backlog of $9 billion in unprocessed payments that happened in Japan in March.

Here are the top five worserest, most expensive computer glitches of 2011, according to Software Quality Systems, a UK company specialized in this kind of thing…  via Gizmodo

Continue … Read More → "The worst computer bugs of 2011"

The H2GO hybrid is a environmentally friendly R/C car that uses hydrogen to power the battery that turns the motor and moves the toy car. That’s right, this R/C is a tiny electric car fueled by hydrogen. And where do you get this hydrogen fuel? From a pint-sized solar-powered hydrogen generation and refueling station, of course.

Toy owners will use … Read More → "Hydrogen fuel cell R/C vehicle"

In 1995, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a controversial exhibition entitled “Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt,” in which works considered to be genuine Rembrandts were displayed alongside those done by his students and admirers. (These lesser paintings are often dismissed as “the school of Rembrandt.”) The point of the exhibition was to reveal the fine line between genius and imitation, authenticity and fakery.

A hundred years ago, about 700 works were attributed to Rembrandt. … Read More → "How does the brain perceive art?"

Alexander Graham Bell foresaw many things, including that people could someday talk over a telephone. Yet the inventor certainly never could have anticipated that his audio-recording experiments in a Washington, D.C., lab could be recovered 130 years later and played for a gathering of scientists, curators and journalists.

“To be or not to be…” a man’s voice can be heard saying in onerecording as it was played on a computer at the& … Read More → "Alexander Graham Bell recordings played from 1880s"