Laser 'tractor beams' to tidy up space junk - tech - 29 April 2010 - New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627585.900-laser-tractor-beams-to-tidy-up-space-junk.html
A new thruster design could make it possible for dead satellites to be pushed, pulled and steered by lasers aboard other craft
- Not really a tractor beam as such but at least they're thinking along the right lines.
Check this out.
http://www.startrekmovie.com/panoramas/bridge.html
A 360 panorama of the Bridge fro the new Movie.
A couple of notes:
I'll never understand why designers love to put those needless ankle breaking steps all over the floor.
The disco floor lighting under the Captain's chair is just plain dopey looking.
The Captain's chair itself is, well, why don't I just skip that one.
The very nice indirect ceiling light is wasted by the needless and ubiquitous spot lights all over the place. Also if you were trying to work at any of the wall side stations those lights would be right in your eyes.
Lights mounted in bulkheads and support beams are a major mistake but you'll find them in all kinds of movie sets.
The Chairs are clearly a nod to the original series but not something you would ever actually see or use on a Starship. Here is an area where they could have improved on the original and didn't.
The transparent panels would be a lot cooler if they moved in some kind of track but they don't, they're fixed. Still I like the idea of being able to display all that information.
I could go on and on, (You have no idea, really!) but overall, I think it looks like it was designed by a lighting technician. It's a mishmash of different Star Trek series and movie set elements just thrown together and over lit.
"So much style without substance
So much stuff without style"
- Peart
Brian G. sent this over.
Deep space travel gets one step closer.
"Computer simulations done by a team in Lisbon with scientists at Rutherford Appleton last year showed that theoretically a very much smaller "magnetic bubble" of only several hundred meters across would be enough to protect a spacecraft."
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html
That's what I've been saying!
Practical Cloaking Devices On The Horizon? from PhysOrg.com
(PhysOrg.com) -- Invisibility cloaks get a step closer to realization, with the demonstration of a new material that can bend (visible) light the 'wrong' way for the first time in three dimensions.
[...]
Check out the article here.
Or the main site: http://www.holografika.com/
Imagine the next generation of video games with this technology built in. Users interact directly with the objects in the game. No clumsy game controllers, no mastering the interface or game mechanics over the game play.
To say nothing of the potential educational value. 
More than that, I can easily see designers using sophisticated software to extract complete virtual worlds from existing media. A computer scans "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy (for instance) and builds a complete, interactive, virtual world from the images and characters. Then programmers set up simple, but increasingly complex, tasks within the world. Users are sent on a quest to retrieve some artifact from some specific location within the virtual world and must travel there and interact with other player characters and non player characters along the way.
The fun potential would be unlimited.
When this is available you can find me in either the LOTR or the ST:TNG simulations but not the Harry Potter sim.
http://futurismic.com/2008/04/21/
universal-translator-a-possibility/
I told you so.
I want to talk to dolphins . . . also maybe my cat if he's smart enough.
I actually saw this on KurzweilAI this morning but Futurismic has some cool links.
You know at the moment, I'm just hoping I can pay my bills and get by for another year but, man, I would take a trip like this in a second. Maybe they could set up an a list of alternate alternates who could ride for a substantially reduced rate (read "Free") for people who can't go at the last minute. I mean it would be a shame to waste those empty seats. Damn! I wish I could afford this.
Jedi training indeed!
This is staggering in it's implications. Look at the simplicity of the interface. This is big news, as you can clearly see by the way almost no one is covering it.
Actually, I've been following a few stories on this and I understand that a really big announcement in coming soon from one of the major game manufacturers. Let's look beyond gaming though. even given the limited scope of having to use it with smart devices (which are increasing in number every day) this has applications as yet undreamed for almost every aspect of our lives.
Plus it's just plain cool.
This is actually another substantial breakthrough because it has the potential to lead to more precise testing and more, even bigger, breakthroughs, not least of all for neural electronic interfaces.
On another note, I'm sorry for the recent lack of posts here, but I've been ill. For the first time in a long while I managed to get a hell of a sore throat but I'm shaking it off finally.
Even those of us original Trek fans who bought into warp drive and phasers thought the cloaking device was more fantasy than science fiction. Yet here we are. Note the casual reference in the article to the "technological singularity". It's not even a question of 'if' anymore but simply 'when'.
Here are some of what I think are the top science stories this week. Notice that in most of these the news is current or in the very near future. We're not talking about speculation for the next thirty years, but within the next three years.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will join scientists from SETI
The first mission for the Allen Telescope Array will be to scan several billion stars across a vast swath of our own Milky Way galaxy, said astronomer Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. That broad-brush survey will be followed in the coming years by detailed examinations of a million stars — a quantum leap in coverage of celestial real estate. In the 45 years since scientists first started looking for signals from alien worlds, only about 750 stars have gotten such close scrutiny.
"This is an exponential increase in speed," Shostak said.
Craig Venter is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.
The announcement, which is expected within weeks . . .
The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.
University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.
The researchers created this new composite plastic with a machine they developed that builds materials one nanoscale layer after another.
Darpa hatches plan for insect cyborgs to fly reconnaissance
Cyborg insects with embedded microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) will run remotely controlled reconnaissance missions for the military, if its '"HI-MEMS" program succeeds.
Insect swarms with various sorts of different embedded MEMS sensors--video cameras, audio microphones, chemical sniffers and more--could then penetrate enemy territory in swarms to perform reconnaissance missions impossible or too dangerous for soldiers.
Uh . . . . what?
This makes the technobable on Star Trek: The Next Generation sound reasonable by comparison.
Read all about it - if you dare.
Now don't tell me, let me think.
That looks like something, something I've seen before, what was it? The Jupiter II?
No, no that's not it. Darn . . . why can I never remember these things.
Actually this is just an idea not an actual design.
Still though . . .
