Monday, January 23, 2012

New T-ray technology could help enable Star Trek-style “tricorders”

New T-ray technology could help enable Star Trek-style “tricorders”: "We recently looked at one of the potential contenders in the US$10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, which as the name suggests, was inspired by the medical tricorder of Star Trek fame. Now scientists have developed a new way of creating Terahertz (THz) or T-rays, which they say could help make handheld devices with tricorder-like capabilities a reality."

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Kepler spacecraft discovers tiniest solar system yet found

Kepler spacecraft discovers tiniest solar system yet found: "Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered a tiny solar system consisting of a single red dwarf star, known as KOI-961 and three planets which are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth."

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Semi-human-powered flight project gets off the ground ... maybe

Semi-human-powered flight project gets off the ground ... maybe: "A Dutch mechanical engineer is working on realizing da Vinci's dream of human-powered flight, with some help from modern technology. Jarnos Smeets is the driving force between the Human Birdwings Project, which utilizes a combination of gadgets including an HTC Wildfire S and a Wii remote. He claims to have conducted his first successful test flight this week, even though he didn't appear to get too far off the ground."

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