[YouTube]

The premise of a realistic hologram is no longer so far-fetched, but what about actually touching the thing? Researchers from The University of Tokyo may have found a way.

The clip explains things better than we can, but researchers have essentially combined motion tracking, like you see in the Wii, with holograms, like you see on CNN, with ultrasonic waves, like we’ve seen before but can’t really be seen.

Basically, these waves can pinpoint locations with incredible precision, and they’re flexible enough to simulate varying textures. So you could interact with a virtual object that you could actually feel, a major hurdle in creating the fabled Holodeck (you know we couldn’t get through this entire post without making the comparison).

Things are finally getting interesting, folks. [via CrunchGear]

GE just announced that they’re fitting 500GB of data on discs the size of DVDs through “holographic storage” technologies. It’s OK to be a bit lost. This clip explains the idea in more tactile terms.

While CDs are read in 2D space (one layer), and DVDs are read in much the same way (but with an extra layer+ of data), GE’s holographic storage uses the entire disc density for storage. Data drawn through chemical reactions floats if suspended in gelatin.

Or…you could let the expert explain it in his own words about a minute in to this clip…Mr. Fancy Goggles and his fancy blue shirt. [via boingboing]

Sheinhardt Wigs GE engineers have announced a breakthrough in the formerly retardedly-expensive field of holographic storage: by making the holograms smaller, they can squeeze 500GB on standard-sized optical discs.

And the even cooler part is that the base tech will be very similar to the laser systems used to read CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs today, so the new holographic-enhanced players and drives would still be backwards compatible with previous optical discs.

Still quite a while until this approaches the realm of a product, but it’s good to know about the next stupid format war this will surely spawn well before it happens! [NYTimes]

After one day of shooting, World Builder was in post production for 2 years. Despite its extremely small artistic team (essentially one guy), the first half of the piece deploys some really believable visual effects to establish a sort of virtual reality version of Illustrator or Maya.

The clip, be it a tad long for internet perusal, is a real pleasure to watch. Load it up when you have a few minutes to dedicate to your imagination. [Thanks Helen!]

One branch of theoretical physics believes that the Universe is just a holographic version of 2D information. And scientists have observed such being true, the 2D horizon around a black hole encoding the data from its earlier 3D star stage. You’ve observed the idea yourself as well, as it’s not so different from a 3D movie playing from a DVD, or even music playing from data on a CD, really.

From New Scientist:

If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized [ed: uber tiny] squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. “Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry,” says Hogan.

We won’t rewrite New Scientist’s entire brilliant piece, but needless to say, that Hogan guy in the quote above not only thinks that a new experiment may have found that noise in our holographic signal—he predicted the experiment’s results before they happened. Hit the link to blow your pea brain for the day. Then ask yourself if we’re all just bits of information on God’s hard drive. [New Scientist and image]

Results from “Do You Prefer a Paper Ballot or a Voting Machine?“

Which Do You Prefer?

Touchscreen 29%
Lever Machine 9%
Punch Card 3%
Paper (Optical Scan) 32%
Paper (Ballot Box) 20%
I Don’t Care 6%

Which Did You Actually Use?

Touchscreen 26%
Lever Machine 7%
Punch Card 1%
Paper (Optical Scan) 42%
Paper (Ballot Box) 13%
I Didn’t Vote 10%

We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding.

Once they have them perfected, they want to “deploy” these soldiers using something called “quantum ghost imaging”. This will allow to create photorealistic, non-cheesy-fake-CNN-looking holograms out of thin air by “pairing photons that do no reflect or bounce off an object, but off other photons,” whatever that means. Parmentola explains it as “”like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that’s connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen” which leaves me scratching my head as well. He hinted that this is closer than we can imagine.

The rest of their projects are equally mindblowing. Although this used to be the subject of much rumourology and speculation, the Parmentola confirmed that they are working in:

• A project to erase bad memories, which will be critical in helping soldiers with psychological damage.
• Devices that will translate one soldier’s thoughts into electrical signals that can be beamed to other soldiers, to help in stealth operations.
• Growing back body parts, both internal organs and limbs (Parmentola said researchers are not far away from this), using molecular-sized particles that act as nano-scaffolding for the human cells to grow, dissolving after the organ has regenerated.

Let’s hope it’s no all smoke and mirrors, because this research has the potential to benefit countless others outside the battlefield. [DoD Buzz]

CNN’s holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station’s election centre in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

On the subject’s side:
• 35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring
• Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image
• The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronising the angles so perspective is right
• The system is set up in trailers outside Obama and McCain HQ
• Not only is it mechanical tracking via camera communication, there’s infrared as well
• Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them. Useful for a misplaced hair or an unseemly boogar
• Twenty “computers” are crunching this data in order to make it usable

On the HQ side:
• Only used on two out of 40-something total camera feeds that CNN has
• Wolf Blitzer really loves it (or loves Jessica Yellin):

It’s still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin. I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

• The delay is either minimal, or we’ve gotten used to satellite delay that we don’t even notice now
• An array of computers takes the crunched info feed from the subject’s side in order to mesh it with the video from Wolf’s side.
• Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the images are actually “projected” onto the floor of the CNN studio so that Wolf can actually talk to the person, you know, in a face to face. So it’s not quite Star Wars just yet. Only after computers merge the video feeds together do you get a coherent hologram + person scenario

The dude being beamed across the country next to Wolf will have 44 cameras trained on him, with 20 computers in his location crunching the video feeds to produce 360-degree imaging data. All of that stuff is sent to New York, where the images are processed and projected by another array of cams and comps. then, plasma TVs back in Chicago and Phoenix will let the interviewees see Wolf and the other CNN people. CNN can project two different views from each city, so Wolf can be flanked by two different holograms.

Man, I so know where I’m watching the election coverage. The future. [USA Today via The Guardian via Waxy via BBG, Whew]