Archive for: science fiction
What were you doing 30 years ago? Me? I wasn’t even a hapless floating protein in my mothers head. If you were more than a simple thought, however, you were probably there to see Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back in theaters. (You lucky devil you.) Even though I was born after the initial Star Wars trilogy was released, I still grew to appreciate the series for what it was — awesome. Over the years, Star Wars has only gained in popularity with countless fan clubs and downright cult-like groups professing their undying faith for the sci-fi flicks.
Naturally, new gear to rock your Star Wars fetish is always a welcome addition 30 years after the fact. With that said, ThinkGeek has two new goodies for all you Star Wars fans to get crazy over — the Wampa Rug and the C-3PO backpack. Starting with the latter, the C-3PO backup is…well…a backpack. You put stuff in it. Except this one is ultra nerdy because it’s Star Wars. As for the rug, it’s 62″ x 30″ in size which means it’s perfect for cuttin’ — or whatever else it is you may find to do on him.
$99.99 for the Wampa Rug and $59.99 for the C-3PO backpack.
We care about gadgets. We care about Star Wars. We also care about having a good time. So sit back, relax, and hit the button below. Because next to worrying about how your going to pay your bills, your kids’ college tuition, and how you’re going to put food on the table, the biggest thing that weighs heavily each and every night is this: What exactly does a Star Wars AT-AT do in its “daily life”?
Rest assured that Patrick Boiv has captured all that makes up an AT-AT’s afternoon in his minute-long documentary dubbed: ” AT-AT Day Afternoon”
- February 19, 2010 10:33 am
I’m not trying to knock the true geek’s basement living, rarely venture up for air lifestyle (I’ve done it plenty myself), but sometimes you just stink. Plain and simple. Not to mention, for someone who is constantly multi-tasking and taking in information from all over the place, standing in place, staring at a blank wall, and scrubbing just doesn’t seem very exciting. So, why bathe?
If you’re a geek who doesn’t see the need to bathe, take note. The Star Wars Logo Soap is your soap. Everywhere in society we see geeks being tied to some sort of Star Wars/Star Trek background as the science/space stuff gets our gears grinding. Well, now you can take that geeky, space loving obsession and turn it into a squeaky clean dermis.
The Star Wars Logo soaps retail for $6.50 each. To some, that’s a bit pricey for a single bar of soap. But these are a labor of love, created one at a time. Surely you can appreciate that.
[Product Page: Etsy -- SoapLane]
Geeky-Gadgets > Nowhere Else
- February 11, 2010 5:17 am
What can’t LEGO’s do or be morphed into? That seems to be the question that keeps popping up in my head. I mean, the little plastic blocks have even been turned into salt shakers. What do you do after that? A recreation of the famous 1902 sci-image featured in “Le Voyage dans la lune” of course.
Looking at the picture above, the fact that no detail was spared is easily apparent. The maker responsible, Guy Himber, is no stranger to LEGO/steampunk creations as a quick peek at the link in this sentence proves. Clicking on through will provide a pretty impressive gallery of other works of art by Mr. Himber himself that will no doubt awe the geeks out there. Think you can top that?
Make
When I was little I was always wishing for some distinguishing feature that I often found so cool and exciting in the animal world. Example: for the longest time I had a fascination with tails. Animals were cool and had tails therefore I wanted a tail. But I’ve since grown up and realized such a wish is silly. No sir. I’ve graduated to more technological things — hello glowing humans.
Ok, so in all honesty, glowing humans aren’t here yet but glowing Prairie Vole’s are. Thanks to the uber smart individuals at Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, the iron shroud surrounding pair bonding (deep science stuff = Google it) has been lifted a little higher today. The real aim is to make lab created genetic mutations and other scientific alterations easier, more clear, and to gain an overall better understanding of how the human body works. In the example above however, making stuff glow is a close second I’ll settle for. To achieve the glowing little guys you see above, scientists injected a particular gene from a jellyfish. As the prairie voles grew, so did their luminescence. Even more trippy is that the glowing gene was passed on to the prairie vole’s children. Awesome!
I’m all for the advancement of science, especially health science. But at the end of the day (today anyway) I’m simply dumbfounded with glowing rodents. I’d love a couple of my own. Of course, I’d really like to glow myself — without the need to lick a nuclear reactor’s control rod of course.
Science Daily
Science fiction is full of tails entailing tricks and tweaks on life itself. “Suspended animation and “re-animation” are words typically used to describe scientific ways of tricking the body, reaching the absolute limits between life and death, and even surpassing them. The little mouse above appears to be a goner, but, he’s actually suspended. But wait, that’s a sci-fi term we see in books detailing the future of medicine and science. That isn’t possible yet. Is it? The answer may surprise you.
After a tragic accident involving his daughter, Mark Roth of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is on the verge of bringing science fiction to life. He has discovered that by replacing oxygen in our bodies’ cells with a toxin — hydrogen sulfide. The hydrogen sulfide stops the real problems behind death after our hearts stop, the chain reaction after oxygen stops filling our cells. With hydrogen sulfide, even though we aren’t breathing and our hearts aren’t pumping, the presence of the hydrogen sulfide keeps us “suspended”. So far, the smaller insects Mark Roth has tested them on all come back to life within minutes of reintroducing oxygen into their test containers. The mice on the other hand haven’t been able to be completely suspended. Instead, their metabolism is dropped to under 10% of normal functioning which is really low. As the insects, adding oxygen back into the mix brings the little rodents back “normal speed” within minutes.
When becoming suspended with hydrogen sulfide, we don’t die. We merely “stop growing”. The concept of time is rather simple to follow as well. Becoming suspended for an entire day results in the organism or animal taking a day longer to develop than an animal that wasn’t suspended. Some truly freaky, futuristic stuff for sure.
Unfortunately, tests on larger subjects such as swine and animals of that size are proving harder than their smaller counterparts both in actually getting the specimens to test as well as the results coming forth. Not to mention, the larger size is presenting a problem — they aren’t able to drop into a suspended state with gasified hydrogen sulfide. To get around this, Ikaria, Roth’s co-founded company had to develop an injectable “suspension fluid” consisting of sodium sulfide that would dissolve into hydrogen sulfide once it comes in contact with blood.
Human trials are already underway in Canada and Australia meaning within presumably the next 10-15 years, we could literally leap frog through decades of your average science fiction text book. Simply amazing isn’t it?
CNN
- September 10, 2009 12:17 pm
When you were a young child, did you ever dream of spacey/futuristic technology coming down to earth? Technologies such as levitation (a.k.a. “anti-gravity”). While nothing is “impossible” as much as it is simply not known yet or undiscovered, anti-gravity was one of those things that on paper seemed possible yet we just couldn’t figure out how to apply it in the real world. Thank everything hold some braniac scientists have figured it out. The lucky little mouse you see above is one of the first living beings to experience human made anti-gravity or levitation. The best part is that the feat simply uses refined technology…
- September 1, 2009 8:47 am
While handheld/personal breathalyzers are a drinkers best friend as the difference between a good night with a sweet morning or a bad night resulting in a hefty fine and lengthy jail stint is a mere 0.08%. For those who don’t drink, a breathalyzer is obviously useless. For those that do, and do so often or simply want to know precisely when they’ve had a tad too much. Sure you can get any run of the mill breathalyzer that sniffs out alcohol on your breath. Or, you can go the extra mile and get a little extra bang for your buck. How so? How about a breathalyzer with a built in lung cancer sniffer? Sound science fictional? Scientist in Israel are close to getting an actual working portable breathalyzer and lung cancer sniffing device that as you can guess, will determine your blood alcohol level and if you have lung cancer. Spiffy huh. Before, pretreatement of your breath was needed, adding extra time, complexity, and procedures into the mix that ultimately slow down the overall process. However, this new method can do without that pesky pretreatement junk meaning faster detection and hopefully recovery. Hopefully the kinks can be worked out in the near term so that Lung cancer patients’ longevity can be increased, providing them with longer years of healthy living.
Source: Dvice, Ars Technica, Image Source
