No, it can't. Microwaves work by speeding up atoms in an object, thus generating heat. "Microwaves can only speed up atoms, not slow them down," writes Sandeep Ravindran of Popular Science. But Ravindran was curious about whether it would be possible to build a reverse microwave -- a device that can instantly chill an object:

Scientists do have a high-tech method for slowing atoms, however: lasers. Shoot a moving atom with a laser, and it will absorb the laser’s photons and re-emit them every which way, causing the atom to hold nearly still. Placing an atom at the junction of multiple beams can slow its momentum in all directions, decreasing its energy and cooling it.

This drops an atom’s temperature a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit—much colder than anything you’d want to put in your mouth—in less than a second. But because it works most efficiently on low-density gases of atoms of a single element, physicist Mark Raizen of the University of Texas doesn’t think it will be useful for cooling food anytime soon: “Not unless you can subsist on a thousand sodium atoms.”

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/can-microwave-technology-be-used-make-food-cold | Photo: NASA

(YouTube Link)

Matthias Wandel used LEGO Technic parts to build a machine that distributes dominoes in rows. His website is filled with other similar gadgets, most of which are made out of wood.

Link via Make | Wandel's Wooden Machines

(Video Link)

Parkour is a sport consisting of running, climbing, crawling, and jumping over any obstacle in a path through an urban environment. Vimeo user saggyarmpit, a graphics design student in Singapore, created this amazing flip book animation video showing a parkourist in action.

via CrunchGear

The wedding planner blog Wedding ABC has pictures and information about fifteen weddings that were designed around unusual themes, such as a Halo wedding, a Nazi reenactors' wedding, and one in which attenders were dressed in nothing but bodypaint (so, somewhat NSFW). Pictured above is a mysterious wedding in which participants wore gas masks.

Link via The Presurfer

The Kellogg Company, producer of Eggo Waffles, released a limited line of Star Trek-themed waffles. They include 25 different images, icons, and phrases from the science fiction franchise. You can view more pictures at the link.



Link via Geekologie

The Economist has an article about how languages can be said to be, comparatively speaking, more or less complex. The grand prize for most complex language goes to one in the Amazon:

With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means “I do not know how to write.” Like Kwaio, it has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as “bark that does not cling closely to a tree”, which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart.

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Image: NASA

An ingenious solution to a common problem:

The 35-year-old Sicilian first showed up at a police station on Thursday (local time) asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family, but was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime, the Agi news agency said on Friday.

The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door, where he threatened the owner with a boxcutter as he grabbed a few sweets and a packet of gum.

He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery.

Link via The Agitator | Image: FBI

Too lazy to come up with New Year's resolutions, let alone keep them? This web tool by graphic designer Monica Verlarde will take away all of that hard work and provide you with a resolution -- often a very simple one.

Do you have a New Year's resolution? What is it? Share in the comments.

Link via Technabob

(YouTube Link)

The OmniTread robot was built by engineering students at the University of Michigan. Its body consists of seven segments connected by pneumatic bellows. Treads on all four sides of the segments give it traction against surfaces, and the connecting bellows can inflate or deflate to provide stiffness or flexibility as needed. The robot can squeeze through a four-inch hole or ascend a vertical tube.

http://www.engin.umich.edu/research/mrl/00MoRob_6.html via CrunchGear

The US Navy has the frigate Constitution, launched in 1797. The British Royal Navy has the Victory, which dates even further back -- to 1765. But both of these vessels are museum ships, rather than truly active vessels.

The oldest naval vessel in active service is the VMF Kommuna, a Russian Navy salvage ship built in 1915. James Dunnigan writes for Strategy Page:

This 2,500 ton catamaran was built in the Netherlands and entered service in 1915. Kommuna began service in the Czar's navy, spent most of its career in the Soviet (communist) Navy, and now serves in the fleet of a democratic Russia. Originally designed to recover submarines that had sunk in shallow coastal waters, Kommuna remains in service to handle smaller submersibles, does it well and has been maintained over the decades to the point where it cheaper to keep the old girl operational, than to try and design and build a replacement.

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Why-A-Czarist-Warship-Remains-In-Service-12-30-2009.asp via Hell in a Handbasket | More Pictures | Image: Warfare.ru

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Rachelle Brown of Houston, Texas, decorates the interior of her car with Christmas lights and fake snow. It looks so much like a snow globe that one might be inclined to pick up her car and shake vigorously. The video is from the NBC affiliate in Houston.

via Urlesque

(YouTube Link)

The Estonian station TV3 recreated the introduction to The Simpsons as though the show took place in an Estonian village.

via The Presurfer | Company Website

Stained glass artist Joseph Cavalieri created panels based on The Simpsons. The series is called "Missing Episode" and mixes that TV show with the work of 17th Century French poet Jean de La Fontaine. Pictured above is "The Death in the Playground".

Link via Popped Culture

Mark Evans carves images onto leather with knives. He's deliciously unpretentious about his craft:

Art doesn't get more primal than etching animal skins with a big knife. I don't do 'pseudo intellectual' I make art.

And that's it: no postmodern angst, no childhood issues. Just a guy with a knife and a sheet of leather. At the link, you'll find a gallery of his amazingly-detailed work.

Link via DudeCraft