All most of us know about nuclear explosions today comes from the 60′s and movies. Back during the cold war, kids in school had bomb drills, which were weird considering the radiation could make it under your desk.

A new photo and story has surfaced that occurred back in 1962. The US strapped a hydrogen bomb to a rocket and fired it 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. The bomb used was 1000 times more powerful than the one that leveled Hiroshima.

Hacking a Wiimote is nothing new, but William Luxemburg from the Delft University of Technology is using the Wiimote and an LED light as a water-level sensor, measuring evaporation. The image tells the story. Just a tub of water with a Wiimote pointing at a plastic boat.

It’s simple and cost-effective and yields the same, or better results than pressure sensors that cost $500 or more. He re-programmed the Wiimote’s output and when it was connected wirelessly to a laptop he was able to receive real-time information on what the water level was doing in the tub.

In an article published Wednesday in Nature, researches in Japan reported the successful passing of a transgene from a primate to its offspring, marking a milestone in this type of research. In the study the scientists injected a number of marmoset embryos with a manufactured virus which contained a gene that would be inserted into the animals DNA, making their feet glow green under ultraviolet light.

A world where gadgets are powered by blood? It could happen sooner then you think. It won’t be long until our gadgets are full fledged living entities soon after that. Maybe. In a not too distant future Piezoelectric nanowires may reside in our blood vessels. They would use the energy created by blood flow to power gadgets. Stuff like pacemakers, iPods, anything designers can dream up really.

It sounds pretty amazing, but the reality is that it may cause some sort of new diseases in our bodies or make us more susceptible to them. These things never work out the way you think. If it happens at all, it won’t be for a long long time hopefully.

NASA has announced that they are looking for ideas on what to do with the two space shuttle orbiters and main engine display kits by issuing a Request For Information (RFI) to the public. If you can convince them that you can appropriately display the shuttle to the public along with having enough money to transport and store them then you may have a good chance and scoring your own space shuttle from NASA.

Officials at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced on Tuesday that the world’s biggest physics experiments will be on hold until April. This comes as result of recent large, unexpected helium leak into a sector of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Earlier this month CERN had its first successful test run of the LHC by sending a beam of protons clockwise through a 17 mile ring making up the system. The next steps were to send the proton beam counter-clockwise through the LHC, and then eventually send beams in both directions having them collide in an attempt to study new forms of matter that could not be studied in any other existing machine.

Research into the helium leak has shown that the likely cause was electrical connections between two of the superconducting electromagnets which caused a …

In what is probably the biggest physics experiment in history, today marks the first successful test of the Large Hadron Collidor in Geneva by sending a beam of protons through the the entire underground ring that makes up the world’s largest particle collider. The beam sent through travels through the 17 mile underground ring and nearly the speed of light and can make 11,000 laps through the tube every second.

Officials with CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) dubbed the test a success today and the next step will be to send a beam of protons through the tunnel in the opposite direction. Today’s beam went clockwise and the next trial will be to send the beam counter-clockwise.

If successful then the team will be able to work towards the ultimate goal of sending protons through the tunnel in both …

According to the Space Adventures tourism company out of Virginia, Sergy Brin, cofounder of Google, has put a $5 million deposit down for a vacation in space aboard a Russian spacecraft. The total trip will cost $35 million dollars and the launch date is scheduled for sometime in 2011.

Brin joins a small number of elite individuals who have both the desire to travel into space and more importantly the deep pockets to make it happen. Richard Garriott’s trip with Space Adventures is still coming up this fall. Brin’s $5 million deposit also makes him the founding member of a new Space Adventure club called the Orbital Mission Explorers Circle. The membership appears to work something like a vacation timeshare, but for space. Brin and any other new members that join get preferential options to the mission seats or can sell the seat to another space traveler if there schedule just doesn’t allow for traveling to space that day.

After over three years of direct planning and ten months of traveling through space, NASA’s Phoenix Mars spacecraft today sent back signals that it has made a safe landing on the surface of Mars. The Phoenix spacecraft appears to have hit the intended target in the icy area of Mars’ arctic circle.

Signals sent from Phoenix were delayed by 15 minutes as they were routed through the Odyssey satellite currently orbiting Mars and back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Earth which caused the celebrations of steps of the landings to take place shortly after they actually happened on Mars.

The Star Trek Tricorder can tell you whether a rock has certain minerals in it, if there’s toxic gas in the air, etc. And if you point it at a girl, it will tell you that there is no way in hell she is going to get with you. This tricorder is made from the original pattern used to create the props, and made of die-cast metal and plastic to give you that perfect future look and feel.

They are a limited edition of 2,000 pieces, and include a display case and certificate of authenticity. If you needed further proof that this is not your average Tricorder, just look at the price. The Star Trek Mark IX Science Tricorder Replica is $349.99.

The University of Melbourne announced on Friday a new technology they are calling “GiFi”, which promises some serious game-changing wireless transfer speeds for all types of consumer gadgets. The tiny silicon chip invented by professor Stan Skafidas is able to move data through the air as fast as 5 gigabits per second at a distance of just over 30 feet.

This short-range wireless technology would potentially be a competitor or more than likely a replacement for WiFi, and things like Bluetooth might want to look out as well. The transfer speeds combined with the constantly increased storage capacities of small handheld devices could really take media down some new avenues as well. The Age newspaper uses an example of transferring a high-definition movie from a kiosk at a store to your mobile phone in seconds. Then that same movie can be transferred just as quickly from the phone to your home computer or entertainment system to watch.

Some scientists from the U.S. and Canada have teamed up to create a new knee brace that generates electricity from your steps. The brace takes advantage of the stop energy that occurs after swinging the knee forward which would otherwise dissipate as heat, much like braking on an electric or hybrid car.

According to the initial studies on the 3.5 pound prototype, a person walking at 2.2 mph was able to create around 5 watts of electricity while wearing a brace on each leg. The researchers state that this device can generate enough electricity to power as many as 10 cell phones, or possibly a small laptop. Some practical future applications include using the knee-mounted generator for campers or soldiers who are not near electricity to power up GPS devices or satellite phones.