CERN’s scientists, the fine people who brought us the W and Z particles, anti-hydrogen atoms and hyperlinked porn sites web pages, are now hard at work building the Large Hadron Collider to discover something even cooler: the Force. Yes, that Force. Or like physicists call it, the Higgs boson, a particle that carries a field which interacts with every living or inert matter, which could bring us closer to understanding how the Universe works:
I’m not quite sure how you would actually play a game of Tetris with ice cubes, but if you put a little food coloring in there and pop them into a glass—you will have yourself a frosty drink that can only be compared to the lego ice cube tray in terms of sheer geekyness. Unfortunately, that wont happen anytime soon—these are only concepts at the moment. [Martin Zampach via NOTCOT]
Forest Pearson is a 10-year-old who saved US$500 to build a snow-making machine from scratch. Forest Pearson is also our hero, who will probably grow to build a 100-person Jacuzzi on top of Everest. This real-world Calvin put together the machine using a 30-gallon air compressor and a pressure washer, with spray nozzles that throw perfect snow powder. The machine may look simple in the following the image, but the results are stunning Update: now with video:
There isn’t much in the way of technical specs on the Lights, Music, Beauty speaker system concept from designer Ian Murchison—but it appears that all we really need to know is that it generates one hell of a light show.
Why you would need a remote controlled, 3-point light system attached to your computer is beyond me—unless you are prone to throwing impromptu office parties, you find that blinding lights help you concentrate on the task at hand, or (by the looks of things) you plan to throw your iMac out the window to see if it can fly. Not sure if this one will ever find its way to store shelves, but hey, you never know. [Yanko Design]
Super Potato wasn’t the only place Ashcraft took me in Osaka; no, that was just one small taste of our tour. We explored all of Den Den Town, which is Osaka’s version of Akihabara: a geek centre full of electronics, manga, and video game shops. And unlike Akihabara, it hasn’t sold itself out to tourists.
Behold the view from 117,597 feet, taken on August 11, 2007 by a camera hanging from a helium balloon launched by a group of guys in Alberta, Canada. Called the SABLE-3 (Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment #3), it was packed with a Byonics MicroTrak 300 APRS tracking device, a Nikon Coolpix P2 digital camera set to snap one picture per minute, and filled with enough helium to take it to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere.
Matt Tovey made this really slick table using 434 Itanium CPUs on the way to the trash can. Rather than waste some perfectly good hardware (list price as of last year for all those chips: over $800,000), he made a striking and unique desk for himself. Check out his detailed step-by-step, with plenty of photos, over at his blog. Nice work, Matt. I’ll take two. [Matt's Projects via Neatorama]
newVideoPlayer("legocatapult_gawker.flv", 475, 376); We just found one more video of one of the projects from that new book, Forbidden LEGO by Ulrik Pilegaard and Mike Dooley, and this one’s the Candy Catapult. The book with all the particulars about how to build this mini trebuchet for sweets will retail for $24.95. [No Starch Press]
Luckey and Luckey make some of the sweetest “playgrounds” I’ve ever seen, multi-story contraptions with tons of netting and platforms that jut out, allowing the tykes to climb up and around all over the place. They look like some fancy architecture or a sculpture as much as they look like objects for kids to climb on, which is probably why so many of them are built in children’s museums. They should make some adult-sized versions; I’m not too old to enjoy a good climb. galleryPost('climbers', 8, 'Luckey Climbers'); [Product Page via NotCot]
This week on the 99th episode of Coolness Roundup, Gizmodo’s Charlie White and Sci Fi Tech’s Stephen Schleicher talk about iMacs, iLife, iWork, and take a look at high-definition combo DVD players. They wrap things up with the Rapid-Fire Roundup of Cool Products, all on Coolness Roundup, a free netcast on iTunes, or you can download it directly from the show’s official website. [Coolness Roundup]
