The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo | Wired Science One late night in 2007, Rogelio Bernal Andreo and his wife were driving down Highway 1 along California’s Lost Coast, when his wife opened the moon roof. What spread out above them looked nothing like the mauve sky near their Sunnyvale home. “It was like the Milky Way was in front of us,” said Andreo, a former early eBay employee, who runs a Spanish-language internet company. He pulled out his digital SLR camera and spent two hours trying to capture the vast galaxy. “I started to look on the internet and see all these pictures, really gorgeous pictures,” Andreo said. Two years of intensive study, rigorous practice, and perhaps $10,000 of equipment later, he knows. Thanks to cheaper high-quality digital cameras and editing equipment, creating beautiful images of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters is now within the reach of anyone with a few thousand dollars to spend. But that doesn’t mean the photos aren’t “real.” “The stuff up there is really dim,” Andreo said. See Also:
Replication Revolution: Best 3D-Printed Objects in Entertainment, Science and War | Wired Design Amazing 3-D printed creations are starting to surface at an incredible rate, demonstrating the innovation potential that the technique holds for almost every industry. While these machines have been around for over two decades as a bona fide method of high-end design and manufacturing, they had largely gone unnoticed by the general public until the advent of compact, open source, free-software printers like the RepRap. This movement helped bring the technology to a wide group of users and allowed for small-scale commercial, educational, and domestic use. Photo Courtesy of PropShop ModelmakersAerospace Engineering Planes are increasingly being manufacutured with 3-D printers. Beastly Drone Sub Is 'Underwater Predator' | Danger Room TAMPA, Florida — Ross Lindman gently pats the black hull of his intimidating 25-foot aquatic robot. Then he gestures to the bomblets strapped to either side of it. “This,” says the Columbia Group vice president, “is an underwater Predator.” Lindman isn’t kidding. And that doesn’t remotely approach what the Proteus can carry. “You can strap different types of mines and ordnance to it,” Lindman says, 3,200 pounds’ worth. All of that is in addition to its potential spying capacity. The Proteus is designed to be a somewhat autonomous vehicle: Plug in coordinates for it and watch it go. The Proteus is a step in a direction the Navy’s top officer badly wants the seafaring service to travel. Proteus can’t meet Roughead’s lofty goals. But it’s a step toward a bigger unmanned sub that’s weaponized — the current ones commandos use are about the size of a torpedo. The Proteus takes the first approach. That’s if it works. Photo: Spencer Ackerman See Also:
Political Gridlock Leaves U.S. Facing Cyber Pearl Harbor There’s almost universal agreement that the U.S. faces a catastrophic threat from cyber attacks by terrorists, hackers and spies. Washington policy makers just don’t seem able to do anything about it. Even with the consensus about vulnerabilities in U.S. networks, and with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, Congress failed to pass cybersecurity legislation that was four years in the making and had sponsors from both parties. The measure succumbed in August amid partisan gridlock and aggressive lobbying, even though lawmakers had heard warnings for years about holes in corporate and government systems that imperil U.S economic and national security. “Based on my experience, very few people on the Hill get this,” said Shawn Henry, who stepped down as executive assistant director of the FBI in April. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, yesterday failed to muster enough votes to revive the measure. Obama Directive Senate Bill Liability Suits Latest Warning DHS Targeted
How Stellar Stylists Turn Astronomical Data Into Amazing Space Images | Wired Science Photo: NASA Cassiopeia A is a 330-year-old ball of red-hot gases and space dust. But with the right makeup and some expert attention, this former star can still look positively radiant. 1// Capture raw imagesSpace telescopes spit out streams of 1s and 0s—representing light and darkness. 2// Blend the wavelengths It may look seamless, but the portrait above is actually a composite of images taken in different wavelengths. 3// Colorize Visualizers assign hues to wavelengths that are invisible to the eye. 4// Show your work Lest you think that these retouchers are cheating, check the metadata that’s added to the file. Images: Microsoft Research; Nasa