Wow!

"A seven-year-old blind boy has been taught to "see" using his ears. Lucas Murray from Poole in Dorset has learned to use echoes to picture the world around him - similar to sonar techniques used by bats and dolphins. He clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and from the sound that returns he tries to work out the distance, shape, density and position of objects. The echolocation technique has helped Lucas, who was born blind, play basketball and rock climb. He was taught the system by blind Californian Daniel Kish, 43, who founded the World Access for the Blind charity." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wow!! - Kol Tregaskes

Bumping some old good posts. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

"National Geographic's International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year's entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer's Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 25 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wow! - Kol Tregaskes

"The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) says it expects to restart the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by this weekend after more than a year of repairs. The 27 km (17 mi) particle accelerator was launched last year, but suffered a failure from a faulty electrical connection, damaging 53 of the smasher's 9,300 superconducting magnets. Repairs are now completed, and the plan is to begin injecting protons into the LHC this weekend, on the path to search for particles such as predicted-yet-unobserved Higgs Boson. Collected below are some photographs of the repairs, and of the LHC and some of its experiments in various stages of construction." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

More on page 2. - Tanath

Damn, love that lighting - Mo Kargas

It took Stan Munro (38) 6 years to build this toothpick city. He used 6 million toothpicks and 170 litres of glue. He can spend until 6 months to create a building and each of his creations is built to 1:164 scale. He works at the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, New York ( USA ). Look at the amazing works of one of the most patient men in the world. - Kol Tregaskes

This is absolutely amazing. I would never have the patience to do anything like that. What a fabulous artist also, to be able to recreate so many iconic structures. - Laura Morrison

""One of the more interesting results to come out of the early years of quantum information was that you can do any quantum operation on any number of qubits using only single and two-qubit logic gates," says Hanneke. Although one and two-qubit gates have already been built and used to perform specific algorithms, no one had yet built a device capable of all possible quantum routines. Until now." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"Artist Stephen Wiltshire has been hard at work this week drawing the Manhattan skyline from memory over at Pratt. He only took a 20 minute helicopter ride prior to getting started, "during which time he impressed on his mind thousands of landmarks, great and small."" - Tanath from Bookmarklet

More detailed images here: http://www.designboom.com/weblog... - Tanath

"Big head mode, an undisputed classic video game Easter Egg, as it turns out, also makes for a damn good Halloween costume. Kotaku reader Eric's papercraft big head mode version of himself makes normal Eric equally cool and creepy." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

I love looking at stuff like this and seeing patterns on a whole new scale - Jay

"Amazingly, none of these beautiful pieces of art are photographs. They were all made with various methods, but all of them are part of the photorealism genre. The movement got its start in the US in the 1960s and 1970s, but since then, it’s taken on new forms. Some artists prefer to work in paints, some with computer graphics, and some use materials that are a little more unusual. Whatever media they use, these 10 artists elevate photorealism to new heights with their monumental talent." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wow! - Kol Tregaskes

"On Wednesday, October 28th, NASA launched its Ares I-X prototype vehicle, the first launch from Kennedy's pads of a vehicle other than the space shuttle since the Apollo Program's Saturn rockets were retired. NASA's Constellation Program's 327-foot-tall rocket produced 2.96 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and reached a speed of 100 mph in eight seconds. The two-minute sub-orbital test flight encountered a few problems along the way, as the launch pad was slightly damaged, a planned stage separation did not go quite according to plan, and a possible parachute failure led to a hard splashdown for its first stage. The Constellation program is under pressure as a recent committee report depicted it as overly expensive. The Obama administration is set to make a decision in the next several months about the near-term direction of U.S. Space Policy." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wow! - Kol Tregaskes

"there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them" - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"There are upper limits for the drug, though. While it can make a rat better at navigating a maze, it cannot grant the rat new intelligences beyond the known limits of rat comprehension. Or, at least that's what the rat wants us to think as it tries to take over the world." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

Pinky and the Brain!!!! - Roberto Bonini

"Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wonderful! - Kol Tregaskes

spac-e-ial - Demetrios the Traveller

"If we live in a multiverse, it's reasonable to ask how many other distinguishable universes we may share it with. Now physicists have an answer" - Tanath from Bookmarklet

Some interesting speculation. - Tanath

franz ferdinand'tan beduk'e. - Eda Demir

o benim heart breaker ım:D - Gududu

he is The Funkmaker!! - selin

"A small entry of pictures by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama of New York City from above." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

Wow!! - Kol Tregaskes

Spidra, what was it like then? - Kol Tregaskes

"The lightweight, rechargeable battery uses thin pieces of paper--pressed mats of tangled cellulose fibers--for electrodes, while a salt solution acts as the electrolyte." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"While many of the most stunning space images come from huge telescopes or Hubble, Brunier wanted to create photographs of space that were closer to the commonplace human experience of just going outside and looking at the sky." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

GOOD - MUSTAPHASMA

Whoa. That's scary good! - CAJ, somewhere else

"A driver "miraculously" escaped alive after his car plunged over a 200ft (61m) cliff in north Devon, coastguards have said." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

"In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field—virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes. These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach" - Tanath from Bookmarklet