Rocket starships! Robot wings! Radar X-ray! Huge amoebas! Gravity detector! Solar Himalaya! Nanoparticle assembly! Leader faces! And a solo-visaged octo-tentacled beast that will haunt your very nightmares! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—and beyond!
Behold, the ne plus ultra of American innovation: Pizzametry, an automated machine capable of making custom pizzas in mere minutes, while you watch TV. Let us marvel at the pneumatic glory of Pizzametry spinning dough, slicing pepperonis, squirting sauce, and sprinkling cheese.
U.S. forces used a combination of spy drones and bomb-handling robots to help beat back Iraq's insurgents. Now, those militants have a warning for those American troops still remaining in Iraq: We've got robots, too.
Reverse magnets! Dog robot! Cramped fish! Hair story! Cell swallowing! Cool science! Space storm! Fake planets! And studying abuse reveals that everything she said was true! It's your Friday Science Watch, where we watch science—with soul!
A robot will run, swim and cycle through one of the most grueling tests of fitness endurance — Hawaii's Ironman Triathlon. What kind of images does that conjure up in your mind? Perhaps Robocop in a Speedo, clanking down a tropical highway while downing a quart of Pennzoil? Well, don't get too excited. The robot is…
It looks a bit like silver bird. It probably was used to spy on insurgents. And now it's in the hands of the Pakistanis.
Not all robots are bad! As you can see in the video above, Trossen Robotics' DARwIn-OP has okay taste in beer, even if it can't do anything except kick the can for now. Maybe it will even let you and your fellow humans keep some Tecate in your communal slave refrigerators, after the robot uprising. [via Popular…
Hole phobia! Particle colliders! Universe analysis! Predator prey! Introvert extrovert! Urban evolution! Science retraction! Melting ice! And surly robots spouting impenetrable brogue! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—despicably, if possible!
This is a "robot mouth" developed by Professor Hideyuki Sawada. It is, uh, "singing" a Japanese nursery rhyme called "Kagome Kagome." Fear not! Its intentions—"to help hearing-impaired people improve their speech"—are noble. So far. Soon, its horrible moans will provide the soundtrack to the ritualistic setting…
Neptune day! Lyme disease! Solar dearth! Towel robots! Leg transplants! Runaway elephants! Owl vision! Ocean heat! And the utter failure of the US space program continues! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—extra-terrifically!
Last month, a group of scientists in Prague unveiled a robot capable of juggling five balls at once. No big deal, right? Wrong! As Stephen Colbert explained on tonight's Report, this development—along with the invention of other "robo-slackers"—means that, after robots are done taking America's factory jobs, a new…
The nerve of robots these days. You go to the trouble of showing one how to throw a ball through a hoop (sure, you missed a time or two, but you're human — it's expected) and the cheeky little bastard goes and improves upon your demonstration until it's sinking shots like Jordan. Researchers at the Learning…
Tech overenthusiast Robert Scoble knows which toy will be hot with geeks this holiday season: robotic balls you control with your iPhone. They're surprisingly hypnotic!
Here's a new trailer for Real Steel, the Hugh Jackman family action-adventurer about robot fights. Yes, robot fights! Nothing silly about that at all. Just some robots fighting for fun and profit (our profit), like robots are wont to do.
Wondering how you will kiss your significant other in the future? Well, you, specifically, will be alone for the rest of your life, but the rest of us will be frenching non-stop over the internet via this little gadget.
A New Zealand grocery store's computer system opened the doors and turned on the lights from 1:00 a.m. on Good Friday until around 9 a.m., possibly due to a "computer glitch" but more likely just because the computer wanted to mess with us. The early-morning free-for-all ended when police were contacted and told that…
A new study shows that Americans work 8.5 hours a day. The eight-hour work day is a fiction!
India beat its longtime rival Pakistan yesterday in the Cricket World Cup semifinals as all of South Asia tuned in via satellite television. Fans in Pakistan's North Waziristan were no exception, although many stayed indoors to avoid Hellfire missiles. From the AFP:
Why is no one asking about the United States' humiliating failure to compete in the robots-with-facial-hair race? Though American scientists were at the forefront of the bearded robot revolution, a new collaboration between the Japanese company Geminoid and Danish professor Henrik Scharfe has produced the first-ever…
Watson, the IBM supercomputer know-it-all asshole that crushed its meager human competition a few weeks ago on Jeopardy!, has some new flesh-and-blood to feast on tonight: Four members of Congress. Unfortunately, the carnage won't be televised. Humans still have a tenuous control over the airwaves, which Watson's…
