Wired has me eager for interplanetary conquest with their look at our armada of airships and robotic rovers:

With the miniature lab tests complete, [Wolfgang Fink, of Cal Tech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory,] plans to take his show on the road, probably to the Arizona desert. Over a large geographic region, they’ll float an airship with [...]

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the Telegraph reports that an asteroid just blew up over Indonesia with the force of three atomic bombs:

Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster.

The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) [...]

Discover has an interesting bit of unexpected biomimicry. The mantis shrimp (probably the scariest marine predator less than 3 feet long) has an unusual way of looking at the world… and one that might help create better DVD players:

Circular polarized light is one of two forms of polarized light, or light waves that travel in a specific plane.

The specialized [...]

We all want a primitive man, says the Telegraph, reporting on new evidence that modern humans got it on with Neanderthals:

[Said Professor Paabo, who is director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig:] “I’m sure that they had sex, but did it give offspring that contributed to us? We will be [...]

Forget asteroids or nuclear war. Science Daily now has me worried that we’re all going to die from toxic pond scum:

The microscopic plants usually exist in small concentrations, but a sudden warming in the water or an injection of dust or sediment from land can trigger a bloom that kills thousands of fish, poisons shellfish, or even humans.

James [...]

Click to embiggen vastly

Landsat 7 gave us this memorable look at clouds moving rapidly over the Aleutian Islands. These whorls happen, as any canoeist knows, when a fluid moves around an object.

Hypnotic, even when the moment is frozen in time.

Found at the USGS Earth Resources and Observation Science (EROS) “Earth As Art 2″ gallery.

SONG: Let’s Take the Boat Out
(To download, double right click and “Save Target As…”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “A Rocket for the 21st Century”, from SEED, 29 Sep 2009, as used in the post “Plasma drive. We have one.” (with necessary allusions to “YOU PUT IN OTHER DETAILS”).

ABSTRACT: First, I should say that I’m definitely [...]

Designboom recently gave a green design award to the Murakami rocking chair.

Great invention – it’s a rocking chair with a dynamo and a built-in reading lamp. Your rocking makes the light go.

Rochus Jacob, designer:
Advanced nano-dynamo technology which is built in to the skids of the chair and more efficient light sources such as the newly developed OLED generation [...]

So first there was that little problem with Al Qaeda and the Large Hadron Collider. Now, the Belfast Telegraph reveals a similar link between Mossad and NASA:

In an affidavit supporting the complaint that was unsealed yesterday, FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on September 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli [...]