metaincognito.com » science http://metaincognito.com robots will eat your cereal Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:04:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 en hourly 1 Hummingbirds. Cool. http://metaincognito.com/2009/07/02/hummingbirds-cool/ http://metaincognito.com/2009/07/02/hummingbirds-cool/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:12:06 +0000 admin http://metaincognito.com/?p=320 Researchers recently determined that the hummingbird is the fastest bird alive when you measure relative to size and by that measure it actually flies faster than the space shuttle re-entering orbit, or an F-18 – 385 times its own body length a second.

Hummingbird Diving In Action from Science News on Vimeo.

Today wired covered some promising hummingbird bot development, which is looking really impressive (and just got more funding). One wonders how such a thing would be powered for long period of time, but first things first.

]]> http://metaincognito.com/2009/07/02/hummingbirds-cool/feed/ 0 Surface of the Sun http://metaincognito.com/2009/06/18/sunspot/ http://metaincognito.com/2009/06/18/sunspot/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:59:21 +0000 admin http://metaincognito.com/?p=275 sunspot

What happens when scientists get their hands on a 76-teraflop supercomputer? Wired reports that this mind-boggling CPU power was used to create a simulation of a sunspot, modelling the sun’s magnetic processes at work over a region 31,000 miles by 62,000 miles, and with a depth of 3,700 miles. That is a lot of sun action – and we can just be thankful that the output is so completely gorgeous. Check out wired for the full story.

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