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Welding goes back thousands of years, but was totally revolutionised just a couple centuries ago. Oobject has 12 awesome videos showing the evolution of welding from blue-collar craftsmen last century to laser-wielding robots today. [Oobject]
It's an obvious point, but I didn't know until today that bridges contain structure sensors that burn through batteries, needing constant replacement. Luckily, a new solar-powered radio could simplify these systems greatly.
In China, they're currently working on the Siduhe Grand Bridge, what will be the tallest bridge in the world when completed. How tall is it? Well, let's just say that you could put the Empire State Building in the valley below it and it wouldn't touch the bridge, with a whopping 360 feet of overhead. So how do you get cables across a chasm that large to build a bridge with? Rockets, of course.
Move over bristlebot: Europe's I-SWARM program is developing some similarly small but much smarter micro 'bots that could be used to build human colonies on Mars. The tiny machines would be dispersed in huge numbers, working automatically and independently, and also collaborating together to form larger compound 'bots able to do physical stuff like moving rocks out of the way.
Good ol' Frank Whittle: he dreamed up a device that can both deafen and thrill you at the same time. And you don't even have to be an aircraft fanatic to enjoy these jet engine test videos put together by OObject...the engineering, the noise and general "but what if it blows up?" bonkersness of running a chained-down jet engine to maximum power while it's inside a test shed will get you. Best watched from the comfort of your net surfin' armchair. Wait... what am I saying? That's clearly not true, but if you're unable to get close to a jet test site, you'll just have to make do. [OObject]
Carbon nanotubes have been popping on Giz for a while, touted as one of the next wonder-materials—but a new development in their manufacture means they may not remain "future technology" for long. In fact the work of a team at CSIRO and the University of Texas at Dallas means that commercial-scale production of sheets of carbon nanotube "textile" is possible at up to seven metres per minute.
The 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge has just concluded with some pretty astonishing imagery in the winning slots. This picture, dubbed "Glass Forest," is a scanning electron micrograph of diatoms (weird unicellular algae) clinging to a marine worm, and won the photography category: to my eyes it looks half like a palm tree and half like a Star Trek effect. The illustration category winner is even more amazing.
Japanese scientists are so hyped up on the possibilities of building a real life space elevator that in just two months' time the country is playing host to a conference designed to set a production timetable. Carbon nanotube technology has advanced so rapidly that a material capable of withstanding the amazing forces in the space elevator cable is almost within reach: according to the chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association it'd only need to be four times stronger than the current strongest nanotube rope.
Yesterday we had the FCC imagery to give us some of the HTC Dream's sizes, but today over at Androidguys.com they've got hold of engineering drawings that give us the full data: it's pretty skinny. Interestingly it's got a bent chin that looks a lot like the MotoRizr design, but the screen here slides to the side to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. By using the FCC dimensions and doing a little measurement it looks like the phone's body is around 0.64-inches (16.35mm) deep which makes it fatter than the iPhone's 12.3mm, but thinner than the HTC Touch Pro's 18.1mm. The screen bezel complies with an approx 3.5-inch screen, but doesn't confirm the size of the screen itself. We'll have to wait for the next leak for that. [AndroidGuys via AndroidCommunity]
Newsweek's latest issue, due out tomorrow, profiles a subject near and dear to many a geek guy's heart and loins: hot women. But there's a twist! These are women with brains to match their good looks, and that's exactly the point. Called the Nerd Girls, this team of twentysomething Tufts University coeds was created by founder Karen Panetta to dismantle two common "myths." First, that boys are better at math and science than girls; and second, that a female engineer is a socially inept girl with no sense of style. Do the Nerd Girls succeed at demolishing stereotypes? We've covered the rising tide of girl geeks here before, and the Tufts team has already built a solar powered car (what have you done lately?), but by all means take a look at what these "Nerdettes" have to offer and decide for yourself.
Welding goes back thousands of years, but