There are two things you should never do if you want to maintain productivity: start clicking on links in Wikipedia, or open Google Earth. There are many, many other ways to waste time on the internet but the amount of work hours lost between those t...
VR seat company Positron teamed up with Universal at SXSW this year to showcase a "Zero Gravity VR Experience" tied in with the studio's The Mummy reboot.
While it fell (way) short of simulating weightlessness, it was nonetheless a nice way to watch...
NASA launched its two Voyager probes almost 40 years ago, sending the first on a more direct route out of the solar system. Voyager 2 took a longer route to survey Neptune and Uranus in 1986, becoming the first and only spacecraft to fly by the ice g...
Space geeks are going to love this. Remember Carl Sagan’s message for extraterrestrials? Right now it is about 13 billion miles away from Earth aboard the Voyager I spacecraft. Hopefully some aliens (or the crew of the Enterprise) will find it soon. To celebrate the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Voyager Golden Record, a Kickstarter has been launched to produce a reproduction as phonograph records. How cool is that?
The Voyager Golden Record contains the story of Earth expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth’s greatest music from myriad cultures and eras, from Bach and Beethoven to Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, Senegalese percussion to Solomon Island panpipes. Dozens of natural sounds of our planet — birds, a train, a baby’s cry, a kiss — are collaged into a lovely sound poem. There are spoken greetings in 55 human languages, and one whale language, and more than one hundred images encoded in analog that depict who, and what, we are. Etched on the record’s gold-plated aluminum jacket is a diagram explaining where it came from, and how to play it.
I don’t know about you, but I have to have a set. A $98 pledge will get you the full box set, which comes with three translucent gold vinyl discs, with a book detailing the history and contents of the record, a 12″ x 12″ fine art print, and a gold leaf box to store it in.
[via Boing Boing via Nerd Approved]
Back in the 70's, famed astronomer Carl Sagan and a team of scientists and artists put together a collection of golden phonograph records, which were sent to space aboard Voyager 1 and 2. They contain greetings in 55 languages, a plethora of animal s...
This cake is perfect for those stuck in the Delta Quadrant. It’s a wedding cake that also happens to be an edible model of the starship Voyager. It is going forward at warp speed. You can tell from the lit engine nacelles, which I would devour first so it can’t get away.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron and cabinet ministers are set to get their very own Air Force One under new government plans. Reuters reports that as part of a spending review due next week, Chancellor George Osborne will announce that £10 mi...
Three years ago, the American Geophysical Union said the Voyager 1 probe left the solar system. NASA quickly said nope, hold your horses, we're not there yet. Then, NASA announced a year later that yes, Voyager 1 really did make it. The debate stil...
It would be an understatement to say there's been a long build-up to the moment when Voyager 1 ventures into interstellar space: scientists thought the probe was on the edge back in 2010, and we've been waiting for the official milestone ever since. Researchers contributing to an American Geophysical Union journal now believe that the spacecraft may have crossed that symbolic border months ago. Measurements from August 25th onwards show a steep drop in the detected volume of cosmic rays from the heliosphere, just as the extrasolar rays are picking up. Spectrum measurements from the period also mirror those of interstellar regions. On the surface, the clues strongly imply that Voyager 1 has passed the limit of our solar system's influence. NASA, however, disputes the claims -- the agency notes that its vehicle is still traveling the magnetic highway, and it won't have officially escaped the surly bonds of the Sun until the magnetic fields shift. We won't break out the champagne and party streamers, then, but the dispute underscores just how close we are to having another human-made object roaming the galaxy.
Via: BBC