What it's like to crash on a monocycle.

This is a monocycle, which looks cool as blazes and fun to drive. But not so fun to wipe out in at the 2:56 mark. It bounces a few times, maybe not as bad as the equivalent crash on a motorcycle.

Monowheel vehicles have been an area of enthusiastic exploration by inventors. They go back to the 1800s even.

Perpetual motion museum - bent your mind watching people try to bend the laws of physics

"Hey, guys! I've invented a design for a 125% efficiency motor, and if you all fund my Kickstarter in return for a share of the profits in my new motor company, I can eventually build 500 of these things on a 3-ton scale and produce the world's first kinetic power generator! Who's in?"

"Hello? Anybody?"

Welcome to the world of The Museum of Unworkable Devices, a huge, engaging site documenting one of the most futile fields of study in engineering, the history-long quest for perpetual motion. Within, Donald E. Simanek serves as a James Randi of the engineering world, showing us endless attempts at overbalanced wheels, spinning magnets, wild stunts with hydraulic pressure, and machines which baffle the limits of the imagination as surely as they thumb their nose at Newton, Archimedes, and Einstein.

The site also works as an education in physics principles. For instance, did you know that the ball along the bottom ramp of this device reaches the goal first?

Be sure not to miss the FAQ, "Why won't my perpetual motion machine work?", where Simanek explains it all like you're 5. Ought to be required reading in high school science at least.

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Perpetual motion ties into a related fallacy emerging in computing.

I've recently investigated thoroughly the latest cult, sure to usurp Scientology as the most tenacious, known to some of you already as the "Singularity". The "Singularity" is the point at which computers are supposed to surpass human brains in intellect, at which point they will continue on their own to build even smarter computers, and so on ad infinitum until we're all living in the Matrix.

I'll stop for a paragraph so you can fight the urge to puke. Deep breathing helps.

The idea of  the Singularity (which has been "just a few years from now" since about the 1700s) and the bogus search for a perpetual motion machine is evident when you consider that computers do nothing until a human writes a program for them. And it's quite daunting for a human to write a program that causes a computer to be smarter than a human, since by definition the human is not smart enough to write it. And computers really are not smarter than humans at anything, they just appear to be in certain fields by virtue of brute force and speed - for instance, they beat you at chess by calculating six moves ahead from every possible move, including the ones we would eliminate through common sense. Like the would-be perpetual motion inventors, Singularitarians seek to boost the IQ of machines by making them smarter than they are so they can write themselves, just like overbalanced wheels seek to gain infinite momentum by making objects be heavier than they are so they can push themselves.

Every time, I pin down some Singularity zealot and ask them "How could you write a computer program that was smarter than yourself?" The answer is always "We'll have a computer program write the program!" I bounce back "OK, how do you write THAT program?" "We have the computer write that program, too!" Oh, I see. We'll write a program to write a program to write a program to overwhelm common sense, just like we'll trick those nasty old laws of physics by spinning a wheel inside a wheel inside a wheel...

Swedish wooden toy plays cup-and-ball Monte, no elctronics

It's by a Swedish artist who makes wonderful and elaborate hand-crank wooden toys, see more in their gallery here.

Making an Easter Island statue walk

To test a theory as to how the natives of Easter Island could have transported the massive statues that are their claim to fame, scientists used a technique involving only technology available to the islanders at the time to move the statue along a road. Read more here at anthropolgy.net, which also tells of how the island was successfully settled and farmed thanks to islander's resourcefulness.

Strip tease, zombie style!

Ksenia Vidyaykina is a Russian-born artist who creates performance art pieces with a feminist message. "Trapped" is a series of stories of women in distress, including a mermaid getting an abortion and a strip-tease by a dancer who starts tearing off her skin once she runs out of clothes.

The Creepy Viral Puppet Of Your Nightmares

You've probably seen images with a character like this being tossed around all over the web - they go back years, to the very first image boards. Trouble is, you never see them posted with any context, so you have no idea what's going on here. Well, wonder no more, it's <a href="http://photoslaves.com/understanding-joshua-by-charlie-white/">the art project of Charlie White</a>, an associate professor at the University of Southern California's Roski School of Fine Arts. Why not pop over to that link and browse through the gallery? You're bound to recognize at least one of them.

The Monty Hall Paradox

It's well-known amongst the oldsters of the web, but it's time to introduce it to a new generation. So: The most famous nonintuitive puzzle in probability mathematics:

You're on a game show (the problem was named after the TV game show Let's Make A Deal, hosted by Monty Hall. You have three closed doors in front of you. You're told that two of the doors have a goat behind them, while the other door has a car behind it, but you don't know ahead of time which is which.

Let's belay all the devil's advocates who say they want a goat. You want a car.

The game works like this: You pick a door. Then Monty Hall opens one of the doors you did not pick, and shows you a goat behind it (he always picks a goat door). Now there's two doors left - one you picked, and the other you didn't pick. One has a car, and one has a goat. Now you get the opportunity to switch your decision to the other door, Either that, or you stay with what you've got. After you make this decision, all doors will be opened and you get whatever is behind the door you picked.

Now, what's your best strategy to win the car? Stay or switch?

The answer is that you switch. You win 2/3rds of the time if you switch, and lose only 1/3rd of the time when you stay with your initial pick.

Wikipedia has one of the most complete entries ever explaining the problem and all of the math behind it. However, what's really interesting is the story of the problem's history.

Cognitive psychologists have tested and studied people extensively on this, and no matter how far along we go on the scientific and mathematical literacy scale, the vast majority gets this problem wrong on the first guess. World-renowned Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos first heard of the problem and got it wrong. But the most notable hullabaloo was when high-IQ columnist Marilyn vos Savant gave her answer to the problem in her column in Parade magazine... and in the ensuing months the magazine received nearly 10,000 letters from readers arguing with it, a thousand of those from readers who held PHD degrees or better. She argued back and forth with readers for months, and classrooms across the country started testing it with their own simulations an discovered that she was right.

For those of you wanting to test this out, we have these wonderful modern computers now that are so good at this. Here's just one Monty Hall simulator that's usable online.

The puzzle has also taken on a life of its own in the media, being the subject of a Mythbusters episode, several mystery TV series, stage magicians' acts, and classroom exercises. Alas, Discovery channel hordes their shows' videos on their own channel, so all I can embed is this funky video:

Now don't stay up all night puzzling over this!

Your word for the day...

Pop quiz: What is this man doing?

• Trying out for a part in David Lynch's Pinocchio.
• Using the latest model of inconspicuous weed vape.
• Playing a synthesized nose trumpet.
• Using an olfactometer.

Well, big surprise, it's the last one. From this site. It's kind of law enforcement equipment, like binoculars for your nose.

A ticket to the future for $10 - what a charmingly wacky idea!

From the main page of the Time Travel Fund:

"Time Travel, once it becomes feasible, will initially be very expensive yet it will become more and more economical as time goes by.

The concept is that one day, it may be possible for people living far in the future to retrieve you from your current frame of reference (their past - your present) and bring you into the future (their present - your future.)

That is the purpose of the fund. The simple answer is, we pay them to bring you into the future."

Hey, the link is there, it's your money. Make up your own mind! Look how studiously they compute that compound interest!

Me, I don't have much faith in a page that says "Page has been formatted for Internet Explorer V6.0 and above, 800x600 resolution." That sounds to me like they don't know didly about the future. And if the money was worth it to those future people, wouldn't they want to send somebody back to fix the website so visitors have more faith in it and they make more money?

Chastity belts with teeth

From Sherman Sculpture...

"A powerful 500 volt electrical shock is delivered to anyone foolish enough to come into contact with the two carefully insulated electrodes.  The electrodes run the full length of this device giving protection from different angles of attack."

The idea here is to make an artistic anti-rape statement... however, in the more troubled areas of the world where a woman is simply not safe to walk the streets, period, the idea of an anti-rape device is taken more seriously and with a whole lot more practicality. Such is the case with the "Rape-Axe" device invented in (where else?) South Africa and unveiled in 2005.

What kind of animal is man?

The quack medicine that turns you into a Smurf

What, did you think we were joking?

Boom! There, real-life Papa Smurf all up in yo' shizzle! And here's Smurfette:

...and in fact there's dozens of photos online of this condition. Most recently, Baby Boomer Randroid politician Stan Jones fell victim to the condition.

What you're seeing here is the effects of a condition known as "Argyria", which is caused by the ingesting of colloidal silver. That's right, drinking silver potions turns you blue. Colloidal silver is frequently prescribed by quacks as treatments for various illnesses - it's been a staple of alternative medicine for some time. As for Stan Jones, he actually made his own silver potions and drank them at home for reasons related to Y2K paranoia back before the turn of the century. And he still swears by it!

For those stuck with this condition, guess what? There's no cure! OK, technically there's laser surgery, so if you call having all of your skin being burned off and waiting for it to grow back a "cure" then yes, that's a cure.

The first solar-powered boat to circumnavigate the globe

This impressive-looking craft is the ocean-borne chariot of one Raphael Domjan, a captain who has piloted it all around the world, completing a new world record upon accomplishing this feat in 584 days at a distance of over 37,000 miles.

Gives me another opportunity to point out how far solar-powered vehicles have come, and yet we still have to spend $20/day on gas in the US just to drive a car.

Barbie collectors take note:

You probably don't have Surrealist Barbie yet. From The Zymoglyphic Museum Curator's Web Log.

A star with three habitable planets - and why we could get there sooner than you think!

Consider the following...

This is Gliese 581, a red dwarf star about 22 light-years from Earth in the direction of the Libra constellation. It's attracted huge attention in the scientific community the past few years, due to harboring - so far - six planets, three of which have a very good shot at having Earth-like conditions suitable for life. These three planets, c, d, and g, make up three out of the top five habitable planets given in this list. Variously, c, d, and g all make good candidates for either supporting Earth-class life already, or being a suitable place for the human race to colonize.

Now, you might be saying, "Great, 22 light-years away you say? What good is that without the Starship Enterprise?" Yes, I know. I've made similar snarky observations myself...

What if I told you that way back in 1955, an idea was proposed at the famous Los Alamos Laboratories whereby, using already-existing technology, we could have a man-made vehicle bridge a distance of 22 light-years in about 44 years? In fact the idea was suggested by Stanislaw Ulam in 1947, and further collaboration came from Freeman Dyson.

The project was Project Orion, which has now been shut down. A money quote from this section:

"A nuclear pulse drive starship powered by matter-antimatter pulse units would be theoretically capable of obtaining a velocity between 50% to 80% of the speed of light."

And - strictly in the abstract - a vehicle busting 0.5c could travel 22 light-years in 44 years. However, you do have to consider that this isn't necessarily the launch speed of the vehicle; it has to thrust for a long, long time to build up that speed. You also want to think about whether you need to stop at the end. For a fly-by or crash-into mission - which are what our first missions to the moon were - no worries there.

You might also ask "Wait, I thought antimatter was strictly science fiction." Well, no, it isn't. We've produced antimatter! Positrons were created in 2008 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for one. CERN produced antihydrogen way back in 1995, for another. For that matter, you can get one positron every 75 minutes from a plain old banana. In 2011, CERN was reducing the problem to one of keeping antihydrogen stable - so far for 16 minutes:

But wait a minute - This hardy makes for a sustainable rocket fuel source, you say. Yes, quite true. But the general principle, that of using actual detonations of matter behind a ship to propel it forward as opposed to just chemical rockets, has many applications.

One of the problems of antimatter is that it's extremely expensive to produce, and even harder to keep around. But perhaps with more study, we could get it down to "canned antimatter" you could grab off a shelf and go.

Getting back to Project Orion, its main thrust was investigating nuclear pulse propulsion. Exactly what it sounds like on the tin, you fire off nuclear explosions at the rear of the vessel, and use this to attain as much as one-tenth light speed (0.1c.). This still closes a distance of 22 light-years in 220 years. Once again, fudge in acceleration / deceleration times, and you'd still get there in 400 years, or even less time if all you want to do is take a few pictures and readings from closer-by and transmit them by signal back to Earth.

Since Orion, other projects have sprung up based on its inspiration, some of them still active inquiries:

• Project Valkyrie - Proposed theoretical spacecraft which could use antimatter fusion to reach .92c. Over nine-tenths of light speed.
• Project Longshot - Started and stopped in the late 1980s by NASA, this would have been a rather conservative probe to Alpha Centauri B that could have gotten close-up data back to us by about the year 2195, using nuclear pulse propulsion at 0.43c.
• Project Daedalus - A 1970s study conducted by the British Interplanetary Society to inquire as to whether an unmanned vehicle could use then-current technology to reach another star within one human lifespan. The fastest they could then come up with was a fusion rocket to Barnard's Star in 50 years, also about 0.1c.
• Project Prometheus - Done in 2003-2005, this was another NASA study investigating the potential behind nuclear-powered systems, bouncing around ideas such as nuclear-powered ion thrusters and the like.

All of these studies indicate that even without faster-than-light travel, at least scientific probes and telescope missions could bridge the cosmos in reasonable time - for interstellar distances. And there's many more past projects and studies where those came from. We need not be intimidated by the light-year for very much longer!

The latest dirt on remote-controlled cockroaches

"Biobots" "roboroach", and "cyborg roaches" are just a few of the names being given to the emerging technology of driving a remote-controlled cockroach for useful purposes... such as searching for earthquake survivors. As the linked article reasons, why go to the trouble of building a robot to crawl through rubble when nature has already given us a perfect design that's more than up to the task? Roaches can squeeze through tight spaces and seamlessly traverse walls, edges, ceilings, and just about any shape, right side up or upside down! Even our best designs are still years from accomplishing this.

There's a video at that link. Here's a few more examples of this bizarre field of research (trigger warning for anybody with entomophobia):

As this video shows, you could easily make this a flying unit with a little helicopter rigging:

You could also help them on their way by giving them their own ground vehicle to pilot:

And before everyone starts yelling about "cruelty to animals": (1) They're bugs. They process pain/discomfort differently than we do (and how do we know they aren't having a blast anyway?) (2) From exterminators to flyswatters to electronic bug-zappers, we've been killing bugs off en mass practically since we first found one, and nobody's protested yet. Don't pick a time when we're doing important things in science with them to get high-and-mighty now.

What do you want me to do with the rest of Charlie Brown's body?

"Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown" - from the guy who later brought you all of The Simpsons. This exists. It even exists so hard that it gets its own Wiki page. Painful, wasn't it? Watch it again.

Blit, a Bell Labs computer with GUI capabilities from 1982

Fantastically nostalgic early precursor to our modern technical gadgets, even having voice simulation. Astounding how far we've come, and yet how well they envisioned the future!

More about Blit here.

Face the future blending of life and technology

With its haunting opening quote and mesmerizing imagery of half-organic mechanics set to beautiful music, this short film evolves the future where man engineers life directly. Indeed, there is no human or other recognizable life form present (with the possible exception of the end product), signifying that perhaps the machines that we leave behind us will continue to run without us after we are gone - and our machine-assembled descendants will awaken without knowing about us.

Or maybe it's already happened?

The Insect World Is An Alien World

Fantastic art video of a praying mantis and the predatory world it lives in.

Prie Dieu from Cokau on Vimeo.

If you've ever encountered a paying mantis in real life, these things impress you with how alert they are. They'll land right on your hand and turn around and look you right in the eye, challenging you to prove your sentience to them. If we didn't have praying mantises on our home planet, we'd be astounded to find them in space and instantly convinced of their intelligence.

Hopefully Blogger will cooperate with a non-YouTube video, but the thing is aparently only available on Vimeo.

A Turing Machine Made From Model Trains

From Turing Train Terminal. In the schematics section, they detail how the system can perform up to six binary calculations. I couldn't find a YouTube video of the beast in action, so here's a Lego Turing machine instead, set to the theme to the '80s TV series A Team by somebody with nauseating taste: