Onelargeprawn
This robot can solve a Rubik’s Cube in the blink of an eye.
Made by messieurs Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo, the robot uses several motors and two PlayStation Eye cameras. The researchers say with further debugging they hope to improve the time. See their development blog for info on the machine, including outtakes when things went awry.
[via Mashable]
It’s almost time for the next installment of your favourite shooter. Call of Duty: Inifnite Warfare zips to the zero-gravity war zones in outer space while Battlefield 1 dials it way back to a simpler time in a World War I setting. Many of the armaments used in these games take their cues from real life and if you have an interest in such history, you may like the “Iconic Arms” series by YouTuber Ahoy.
Iconic Arms takes you through the heritage of some of the familiar weapons that you’ve fired in your digital adventures. It’s insightful information that’s even accessible to people with a passing interest in weaponry. Here’s a video on the most ubiquitous assault rifle in the world, so popular that 1 in 5 of the firearms available worldwide is an AK-47.
At the minute, The Iconic Arms series comprises 14 entries including favourites like the Desert Eagle, Beretta 92, MP5, M16, SPAS-12, Uzi, and FAL. Check it out on YouTube.
[via SA Gamer]
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (or DSCOVR) satellite sits 1.5 million kilometres away at what is called Lagrange point 1, a place in space between the gravity of the Earth and the Sun such that the satellite can maintain its stability. Why? For one thing, it enables NASA’s EPIC camera aboard the satellite to capture enough steady shots of the Earth to create this wonderful time lapse video. Watch and listen as EPIC lead scientist Jay Herman takes you though a year in the life of our planet as seen from DISCOVR.
[via Sploid]
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA) recently began deep water environments in and around the Mariana Trench, which you know to be the deepest part of the world’s oceans.
Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are diving into the depths and beaming live footage of what they’re seeing. On day 4, at a depth of 3.7 KM (the trench’s maximum depth of approximately 11 kilometers!), this gelatinous thing of beauty was spotted.
Scientists identified this hydromedusa as belonging to the genus Crossota. Note the two sets of tentacles — short and long. At the beginning of the video, you’ll see that the long tentacles are even and extended outward and the bell is motionless. This suggests an ambush predation mode. Within the bell, the radial canals in red are connecting points for what looks like the gonads in bright yellow.
NOAA maintains a log of the photos and videos captured during the dives, you can see it here.
Live streams of the deep water exploration can be seen on cameras 1, 2, and 3. Some times you’ll just see static images. Science can’t be fun all the time.
[via The Verge]
Marvel’s continually expanding its cinematic universe (MCU for short), and we now have the teaser trailer for the next film: Doctor Strange starring Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch. We’ve covered previous Marvel films here before, so we anticipate this one with …err… anticipation. If you’ve no idea who Doctor Strange is, or why this is an exciting trailer, let me help you. But first watch the trailer.
Seiko has been manufacturing watches for over 90 years. This little video entitled Art of Time highlights the skilled craftsmanship and precision that goes into creating their time pieces.
It’s a Rube Golberg contraption reduced to a size that could fit on a work bench, a stark contrast to some machines that could fill a large studio. Seiko’s machine includes 1200 parts, with some as small as 0.7mm, and the setup reportedly has been a year in the making. Arguably the machine requires human intervention to get to its conclusion, but I suspect that’s a nod to the Grand Seiko watches and movements that are still built by hand. Check out Art of Time below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZuhJFY3SS8
Hell’s Club: Another Night is a quite possibly the greatest movie mashup of all time. Editing whizz Antonio Maria Da Silva creates a fictional nightclub where characters from disparate movies meet and interact. Outside of time. Outside of all logic.
Blade is the bouncer at the entrance. Daft Punk, the resident DJs, are banging out the killer tunes. Multiple James Bonds are at the bar. RoboCop is enforcing the no smoking rules. John Travolta is feeling the Saturday night fever, and so is the terrible dancer Jean-Claude Van Damme. Naturally, cocktails are being served by Tom Cruise.
Everyone’s having a great time until a bunch of Xenomorphs crash the party (via the ventilation shafts, obvs). It’s…madness, glorious mashup madness.
Swedish musician Martin Molin built the Wintergartan Marble Machine, a wonderful Rube Goldberg contraption to play out a rather uplifting ditty. It’s an intricate music box made up of specially crafted pulleys, funnels, and tracks that guide some 2000 metal marbles through the machine to play the different musical instruments. Molin started building the machine in 2014.
[via @dev_za]
The murderous Ginger Cat has struck again. The Paper Army cannot stand idly by as more of their people are (literally) torn to pieces. This time, it’s all out WAR.
[via @WhoopseyDaisy]
University lecturer John Edmark creates spinning sculptures that come to life when they’re lit by a strobe light or captured by a video camera using an extremely fast shutter. Edmark calls his 3D-printed sculptures Blooms and says they’re designed using the same method nature uses in pine cones, sunflowers, and artichokes. You may know this method as the Fibonacci sequence — it is nature’s numbering system.
Check out the hypnotizing animations created by Edmark’s spinning Blooms.
[via Business Insider]