DeviceGuru writes "Harvard University's tiny microrobotic fly, hailed by its creators as 'the first robotic fly that is able to generate enough thrust to takeoff,' will be showcased at New York's Museum of Modern Art starting Feb. 24. The life-sized 'Flybot' reportedly has a wingspan of 1.2 inches (3 cm) and weighs a mere 0.002 ounces (60 mg). This project of the Harvard University Microbotics Lab has received funding from DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which hopes to gain access to micro-miniature surveillance technologies."

DirectedImpact writes to tell us the University of Washington is making great strides towards having an embedded HUD (among other things) in your contact lens. "During [the last few] years scientists have presented several real life applications of these contact lens and they talked about helping vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels, Internet surfing on the go, concluding with the fact that the material of which they would be built is flexible and biologically safe."

jcatcw writes "Earlier this week actor Hayden Christensen, of Star Wars fame, and director Doug Liman discussed teleportation with MIT professors to compare the reality to the special effects version in the upcoming movie, Jumper. Edward Farhi, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, said, 'It's a little less exotic than what you see in the movie. Teleportation has been done, moving a single proton over two miles. [But] teleporting a person? That is pretty far down the line. The quantum state of a living creature is pretty formidable. That is just not in the foreseeable future.'"

The Bad Astronomer writes "Rumors have been flying in recent days that the SETI project has received a strong signal from space, indicating the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Bad Astronomy breaks down the origins of this (false) claim, which mostly amounts to a heaping helping of shoddy journalism. 'I just talked to Dan Wertheimer, the astronomer quoted in the article. He told me that the original interview was about sending signals into space (so-called active SETI) as opposed to just listening for aliens. After the interview, he talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at what are called radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are seen once and never repeat. These may come from one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on. Somehow, in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T.'"

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet Aus reported on a new low-noise chip that could help in building the $1.6B Square Kilometer Array, the world's largest radio telescope. Wikipedia claims the telescope will be 50 times as sensitive as current instruments. It will have a resolution able to detect every active galactic nucleus out to a redshift of 6, when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and way crazy. It will have the sensitivity to detect Earth-like radio leakage at a distance of several hundred to a few thousand light years, which could help greatly with the search for extraterrestrial life. The chip's designer, Prof. Jack Singh, commented on the chip's ability to help with quantum computing research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence."

holy_calamity writes "A New Zealand physicist has written a paper saying that physicists should seriously explore the possibility the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation. He says that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation and also claims his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more. It should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis too. He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "One century ago, many Americans still had not seen a movie or ridden in an automobile. The New York World greeted its readers on January 1, 1908 with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America: 'We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,' the newspaper said. 'We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need.' Today the NY Times asked ten knowledgeable New Yorkers to imagine New York City a century from today. Their visions include archaeological excavations at the Fresh Kills landfill, the waterfront at Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a dome over Central Park, and a virtual reality grid superimposed over the city."

GeneRegulator writes "The NY Times is running a story on communities that are forming around kids with rare genetic mutations. New technology that can scan chromosomes for small errors is being applied first to children with autism and other 'unexplained developmental delays.' It turns out that many of them have small deletions or duplications of DNA. Meanwhile, hundreds of little groups are forming around the banner of their children's shared mutations. As new research shows that many of us have small deletions and duplications of DNA that separate us from our parents, and that many of these "copy number variants" contribute to skills and senses, the families described in the story may presage the formation of all sorts of 'communities of the genetically rare' in the general population, not just amongst the developmentally delayed."

Token_Internet_Girl passed us a link to an MSNBC article on a very disappointed Star Trek fan. Mr. Moustakis of NJ bought a poker visor he thought was worn by Data in Next Generation at a Christie's auction for some $6,000. When he brought it to a convention to have it signed, actor Brent Spiner explained that he'd already sold the well-known visor in a personal sale; like Senator Vreenak, Moustakis had been given a fake. "Christie's spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer's case had no merit. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, demands millions of dollars in punitive damages and a refund for the visor and two other items Moustakis bought at the 2006 auction."

A 1up feature looks at the influence that Ridley Scott's amazing cyberpunk film Blade Runner has had on gaming. In addition to outlining the (underappreciated) late 90's direct game adaptation, the article discusses the film's subtler touch on tone, music, and content in other titles. "Try as William Gibson might to distance himself from Blade Runner's influence, the game adaptation of his seminal novel ironically takes a lot of its visual cues from Blade Runner, particularly in its realization of the urban sprawl. Even better, we got a little proto-cyberpunk musical influence in the soundtrack. Neuromancer boasted a technically impressive, if scratchy, Commodore-synth rendition of Devo's "Some Things Never Change" playing over the title. Truth be told, the song is actually much improved by the necessary excision of all the lyrics except for the chorus."

Active Seti writes "If aliens were hunting life outside their own planet, could they peer through the vastness of space and lock onto Earth as a likely home for life? Researchers say with a roughly Hubble-sized array observers could measure Earth's 24-hour rotation period, possibly leading to observations of oceans and the chance of life. 'They would only be able to see Earth as a single pixel, rather than resolving it to take a picture,' said Astronomer Eric Ford. 'But that could be enough for them to identify our planet as one that likely contains clouds and oceans of liquid water.' The research will be useful to astronomers designing the next generation of space telescopes on our planet, because it provides an outline of the capabilities required for studying the surfaces of Earth-like worlds."

paulraps writes "Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm have proposed a radical technological measure to stop top level competitors from taking performance-enhancing drugs. Klüft and Holm, reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events, argue that competitors at the highest level should either have computer chips implanted into their skin or GPS transmitters attached to their training bags so that the authorities can keep tabs on them at all times."

Curlsman writes to let us know that the fan site startrek.com, operated for 13 years by CBS, is being shut down and its staff laid off. Is this site worth a write-in campaign? From the (perhaps final) post: "Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team. Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately. We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years. If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."

tripper700 writes "25 years since its original release, a definitive version of Ridley Scott's science fiction masterwork Blade Runner, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, has been released. So what exactly has changed? And is it worth all the fuss? SFFMedia describes each change in detail. Is it just a patch up job attempting to cash in on a cult film? Or like an oil painter retouching a masterpiece, or a novelist polishing prose, is Ridley Scott simply trying to perfect his original vision?"

gambit3 writes "'Serenity: Better Days' will be released as a 3 part comic in early 2008. The series is a step back in time to the early years of the Firefly crew, and the fledgling gang's turbulent attempts to cope with success after they pull off their first successful heist. It features the same creative team as Those Left Behind, with the story by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, and Adam Hughes providing all three covers this time." Ironic, considering today's brand-new poll.

Random BedHead Ed writes "Good news everyone! After a five year vanishing act the sci-fi spoof Futurama returned this week with a direct-to-DVD feature. Wired has an article about its return, including the story of the show's origins, a behind the scenes gallery, interviews with creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and some interesting trivia. For example, did you know the ship has an overbite like a Simpson's character? Or that the show's title is taken from an exhibition at the 1939 Worlds Fair?." We just talked about this a bit the other day, too, in reference to a great interview on TVSquad.

abramsv writes "A collection of the most inspiring and hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc 'popular tech & science' magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature — all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (1930s to 1970s)."

Critical Facilities writes "Someone thought it would be a good idea to model their home theater after the Enterprise NCC-1701D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The result is super geeky, but actually rather cool. Named the best theme theater installation at CEDIA 2007, this Palm Beach County, FL home features motion-activated air-lock doors with series sound effects, and a "Red Alert" button on the Crestron TPMC-10 controller to turn all of the LEDs bright red and flashing."

HotChk101 writes to tell us that the plot for Star Trek XI has been revealed over at IESB. This information has not yet been confirmed by the studio so take with the requisite grain of salt. Be warned link contains potential spoiler information.