WINDOW TV: Samsung's Smart Window is a large TFT LCD touchscreen. It can be completely transparent and function as a window in the wall of your house. But wait, there's more. It also lets you use apps such as for weather or recipes, or to check Twitter, and works as a TV. It has day and night modes, and apparently doesn't show what you're watching to the outside world. SO the neighbours won't know about your secret shopping channel obsession. Gizmodo has more, and there's video here.
SEA ROCKET: Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was meant to be on its way to Mars. Instead it failed after launch late last year and entered a decaying orbit. The other day it re-entered the atmosphere, breaking apart and scattering debris into the Pacific. The Pacific seafloor must be littered with dead spacecraft by now. Details at
Scientific American.
NUDGING SPACE: It's not only the Phobos-Grunt launch that went very wrong. One that was kept quiet until the craft was rescued was the US Air Force's $2 billion AEHF-1 communications satellite. It failed to reach its required orbit when a fuel line clogged. Controllers had to find another way to boost it thousands of miles into place. Eventually they used hundreds of tiny thruster manoeuvres. At least it should be a while until that one comes down in the Pacific. Wired has more.
ROCKET BRICKS: Here's one rocket that shouldn't end up in the Pacific: it's made of 120,000 Lego bricks and took 250 hours to build. It's a
5.76 metre tall scale model of the Saturn V rocket, complete with gantry, liquid fuel tanks and the NASA Astrovan. Maybe you shouldn't try this at home: the model was built by an Australian LEGO Certified Professional. Really? Certified to work with Lego? Meet The Brick Man.
DOLPHIN DETECTORS: The US Navy has 80 bottlenose dolphins in San Diego Bay that have been trained to detect mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby. Apparently dolphins have been used several times in the last decade to detect mines, in part because of their powerful sonar. Perhaps they could also be trained to locate bits of failed spacecraft. More at The Atlantic Wire.