Sea creatures like octopus, squid and cuttlefish are among nature's best camouflage artists, changing color to blend into their environments. This is partly because cephalopod skins have some primitive optical abilities - their skin has the same light-sensing proteins
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It's never happened, and NASA feels confident that it never will. For one thing, astronauts generally don't float free. Outside the ISS, they're always attached to the spacecraft with a braided steel tether, which has a tensile strength of 1,100 pounds. If it's a two-person
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The strangely named Dalu Rebot Restaurant, in the northeastern Chinese city of Jinan, is a 100-seat hotpot restaurant with a very peculiar staffing choice: It features two robot receptionists and six robot waiters who wheel around drinks and food on large indoor pedal-driven
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Mapmakers have more power than ever. But who are the mapmakers?
Buried beneath November's headlines depicting rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, European economic woes, and the brazen disclosure of confidential State Department cables, a meaningful geopolitical
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Ten reasons apps are better than bookmarks
Everyone loves apps, right? Google is the first to launch a desktop app store (though Apple and Microsoft aren't far behind), the Chrome Web Store, expressly designed for their Chrome browser. It looks pretty much like any
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"Anonymous," a group of hackers perhaps best known for their attacks on the Church of Scientology, have appointed themselves the protectors of Wikileaks. To that end, they've begun a full-scale attack on those who have harmed Wikileaks in the past. This is no cute
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Wet, squishy quasi-liquid electronics could yield better implants that work with the wet, squishy environment of the human body, according
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A Japanese probe bound for Venus has missed its orbit and been seized by the sun's gravitational pull, in a major setback for Japan's shoestring space program. The probe, called Akatsuki,
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Since their introduction into hospitals, robots have sliced up and sponge-bathed
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Could Wikileaks's most damaging files be hacked too early?
Once your leader has been compared to a Bond villain, you might as well go all the way, right? A few months back, Wikileaks released a giant file that's been referred to as the "thermonuclear" option,
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Bavarian beer purveyors concerned about a smelly Oktoberfest are hoping bacteria can make the experience more enjoyable. They plan to pour a solution of live bacteria on the
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Samsung has announced three new models to add to its lineup of notebooks - the QX series, the RF series and the SF series. We haven't had a chance to test any of these units yet, but the press release offers the following information:
QX Series: This Core i5-driven notebook is made for professionals
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A new opera produced by the lab behind Guitar Hero technology includes robotic singers, interactive instruments and a focus on technology that could change the way we experience live performances.
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Pirate Parties International, the central group that unites all of the disparate political Pirate Parties in other countries, recently had a meeting wherein a particularly bonkers proposal was discussed. The problem: Where can servers that store data frequently seen as unsavory
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Our GPS-wielding smartphones have made it somewhat difficult to get lost, say, on the way to the museum. But if you're waiting for the day your phone will also help you navigate to a specific painting once you're inside, you might be waiting
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Think your car runs like crap? A sewage utility in Bristol, UK, has converted a Volkswagen Beetle to run on human waste. The Bio-Bug
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Meet Tesla Patent Pending.
PopSci.com.au has unleashed a new opinion writer over at our blog. He's outspoken, he's informed, and he can usually be found hiding in dark rooms with a pile of new gadgets around him. Boys and girls, please
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Conventional wind turbines have an Achilles
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In just over a decade, the car industry in China has exploded. As of November 2009, China is the largest automobile market in the world, combining active partnerships with established foreign brands with a thriving, developing domestic market.
China's seemingly
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Without a telescope, the Lagoon Nebula is faintly visible with the naked eye as a unremarkable patch of gray in the heart of the Milky Way. Observed up close with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, it looks slightly
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One of my most favourite pastimes is losing myself in an engaging film. Although I enjoy a mindless Hollywood blockbuster as much as the next 18-35 year old male target demographic member, it’s the films that drag me away to a whole other world that stick with me. And that’s because my
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In 1975, French philosopher Michel Foucault coined the term ‘panopticism’ in his book, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. The term itself is derived from the panopticon, which is a rather ingenious prison design. The panopticon is circular, with prisoners housed on the outer
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It wasn’t so long ago that I was querying the logic behind the surge of interest in the newly released iPad. Since then, my desire to purchase Apple’s latest iGadget hasn’t increased in the
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While scouring the PopSci front page for inspiration I came across this story about the impending test-drive of a modified Ford Escape for blind drivers. While
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Today I’m going to explore the ins and outs of a question that I’m sure many of us have encountered in some form or another, be it through TV shows, movies or morbidly curious minds. The question is simple: if you could know when you were going to die, would you want to know? Personally,
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As far as self-explanatory blog titles go, this one certainly takes the cake in terms of removing the mystery of my point of view. For those who wish the point hammered home, I’m not a fan of Twitter. For me, Twitter is the bumper sticker of the online realm: a rather hit-or-miss attempt
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It wasn’t so long ago that there was rather serious talk of the end of an era: we were going to see the decline of paperback and hardcover books, and enjoy the rise of the e-book. The only problem was that it didn’t play out like that. E-books arrived in a big way, with a multitude of onscreen
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The term ‘geek’ is in dire need of an upgrade. What used to be a word that described a stereotypical pasty, overweight and agoraphobic middle-aged man no longer refers to the same thing. Nowadays, pastimes and interests that relate to typical geek culture—love of movies, TV show obsession
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As I’m sure many of you are more than well aware, parts of Australia are currently suffering through some of the coldest days we’ve had in years (coldest day since 1949 here in Sydney town). While this can certainly prove difficult to motivate oneself to do much of anything during the day
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Not so long ago I received an email whose intent was to garner some sort of appreciation for my parent’s generation. It contained a list of various activities that we ‘kids these days’ don’t have an appreciation for: having to post letters by way of snail mail, playing outside due to
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