Phoenix Has Landed

I love reading new stories about science and technology accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Earlier this year it was shooting down a falling satellite. Today it's the Mars Phoenix Lander touching down in the northern reaches of Mars. From the story,

Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. There has been about a 50% failure rate on all Mars missions since Russia launched the first one in 1960.

Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

The last time a Mars probe landed using its thrusters ("soft landing") was in 1976.

There's little that's more exciting than finding out new information about the final frontier.

Can Your Printer Do 100,000 DPI?

Apparently they've figured it out at IBM.

Researchers there have demonstrated a new technique for printing on a nanoscale. According to the press release,

“This method opens up new ways to precisely and efficiently position various kinds of nanoparticles on different surfaces, a prerequisite for exploiting the unique properties of such nanoparticles and for making their use economically feasible,” explains Heiko Wolf, researcher in nanopatterning at IBM’s Zurich Research lab.

The process involved arranging gold particles, each measuring only 60 nanometers across. That's "roughly 100 times smaller than a human red blood cell." This achieves a resolution of 100,000 dpi, whereas your printer probably doesn't do much better than 300.

Pretty neat--especially if you're into super-mega-ultra hi-def.

Via The Raw Feed.

Cyborg Moths? You Bet.

I just wanted to quickly flag a really cool (albeit poorly written) article from the Register on the new cyborg moths being developed by DARPA.

"This is going to happen," said Mr [Rod] Brooks. "It's not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply."

"A bunch of experiments have been done over the past couple of years where simple animals, such as rats and cockroaches, have been operated on and driven by joysticks, but this is the first time where the chip has been injected in the pupa stage and 'grown' inside it.

"Once the moth hatches, machine learning is used to control it."

Soft, chewy insect on the outside? Delightfully crunchy robot on the inside? Sounds delicious! Of course, the intelligence-gathering ramifications of this technology can't be overestimated. It's about time we put our six-legged friends to good use.

By the way--DARPA must be the absolute coolest place to work. Ever.

Time For A New Computer

So I've gone to the store and fooled around with Window Vista, and I think it's time for me to dump my aging, quirk-prone machine for a nifty new one. I've had my current computer since 2002.

I'm looking at an HP from Circuit City. It has all the expandability I think I'll want for the next five years. I really want to get the 19" monitor along with it, but that's $200 more. Can I justify it? I suppose I could convince myself to get it. Thoughts?