Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001
NASA has a nice image by Herman Potočnik (aka: Hermann Noordung), who created the first technical drawings of space stations (of which a small segment is shown here), which were published in 1929.
More info on Herman Potočnik can be found at this memorial centre web page.
[via Warren Ellis][picture is part of this image from NASA]
But then you’d have to be a staggeringly ignorant fool to believe it would have been, anyway.
Yes, just as planned, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was activated this morning… and while it hasn’t actually started doing collision tests yet, the boffins have been revving protons around the ring and checking everything works as it’s supposed to. And apparently, it’s going better than they had hoped. Here’s a computer representation of particles produced by protons smashing into collimators*:
The Holy Grail of the Large Hadron Collider project is a subatomic particle known as the Higgs Boson, the conjectural key to the Unified Theory that physicists have been chasing after for years.
However, not everyone thinks it will be that simple - Steven Hawking himself has a $100 bet that the Higgs will not be found. Particle physics isn’t my field (arf!), but I’d be hesitant to bet against a guy with Hawkings’s track record. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. [image courtesy CERN via New Scientist article]
* - No, I’m not entirely sure what a collimator is, either. And I’ve probably mis-termed or described at least one thing wrong in the above post, because that’s what happens when writers try to report on Big Physics; I try my best, but I’m not on a journalist’s salary here. I’m sure some of our friendly readers in the field will correct any errors with their usual alacrity. 
The ability to touch and manipulate 3D images is key to the future of interactive entertainment, not to mention every other episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now two UC-Santa Barbara researchers say they’ve built a prototype room-sized 3D display using projectors, a user-tracking system, and two FogScreens, which produce 2D images using microscopic water droplets and ultrasound.
To achieve the 3D effect, the same image is rendered on two overlapping screens at different depths. Users’ head positions are tracked since the 2D images on each screen depend on the user’s viewing direction. The system computes the image alignment in real time, and users see a single, fused 3D image where the screens overlap.
But a room-sized DFD [depth-fused 3D] still presents technical challenges for researchers. For instance, the fog from two FogScreens can bleed through and disrupt each other, air conditioners and open doors can cause turbulence that interferes with the image quality, and alignment and tracking errors can occur because people view the 3D images with two separate eyes.
Possible future applications include virtual museums, surgery, and offices, not to mention virtual catch or Frisbee.
[Image: 3D teapot by Cha Lee, UCSD, IEEE]
We interrupt our normal broadcasting to bring you… some space pr0n.
If you’re getting a bit worn down by the trouble and strife here on Earth (and who could blame you?), maybe you’ll get some refreshing respite from five minutes gawping at the landscape of the Saturnine moon Enceladus as captured by the Cassini probe:
The above image [courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute] was taken from less than a thousand miles above Enceladus’ surface. Just think - in the space of a month we’ve confirmed water on Mars and seen the surface of a distant moon that may also have the potential to harbour life.
OK, back to the grind. Think about it too long, and it gets hard to come back to Earth…
