That's 123 billion digits more than the previous number. Computer scientist Fabrice Bellard ran his calculations on a desktop computer, taking 131 days to run the program and then check the results:

Previous records were established using supercomputers, but Mr Bellard claims his method is 20 times more efficient.

The prior record of about 2.6 trillion digits, set in August 2009 by Daisuke Takahashi at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, took just 29 hours.

However, that work employed a supercomputer 2,000 times faster and thousands of times more expensive than the desktop Mr Bellard employed.

I blogged about that record at the time.

Link via Geekologie | Image: flickr user Paul Adam Smith, used under Creative Commons license

Artist Rob Vargas created this graphic using data from a study by the University of California at San Diego. Americans consume 3.6 zettabytes a day. A zettabyte is one billion trillion bytes. That's a lot of LOLcats!

http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo.php via Fast Company | Artist's Website

Last October, I posted about a drug that binds antibodies to cocaine to diminish its pleasurable effects in users. Well, it's not working out terribly well because some users are responding by taking enough cocaine to overwhelm its protection:

Nobody overdosed, but some of them had 10 times more cocaine coursing through their systems than researchers had encountered before, according to Kosten. He said some of the addicts reported to researchers that they had gone broke buying cocaine from multiple drug dealers, hoping to find a variety that would get them high.

Thankfully, the drug was able to help some test subjects avoid cocaine.

Link via Popular Science | Image: US Department of Health and Human Services

Cartoonist H. Caldwell Tanner drew a version of the expulsion from Eden narrative in Genesis 3 using only Internet catchphrases. He writes "Genesis would have been a lot cooler if it featured blue hedgehogs." Probably.

Link via Urlesque

Luke Skywalker survived the arctic conditions of the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back only because Han Solo killed his tauntaun (a native beast of burden) and shoved Luke inside the animal's warm carcass. This led the blog Wolf Gnards to ask, as a practical question, how long could Luke really survive in a tauntaun's body?

In a normal environment, a carcass gets cold in 8 to 36 hours losing an average rate of 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. However, the ice world of Hoth is not an average environment. The Star Wars database lists that Hoth reaches nightly temperatures of -60 F. In a frigid, sub-zero environment, body heat can be lost almost 32 times faster. This means a Tauntaun's body heat could drop almost 51.2 F every hour. Considering that Han Solo's Tauntaun died of severe hypothermia even before it was cut open with Luke's light saber, one could assume it's core body temperature was already well below normal. The problem for Luke is if the Tauntaun's body temperature reaches freezing point those once toasty guts, blood, and assorted alien goo, will in fact become a frozen coffin. If the Tauntaun died of cardiac arrest due to hypothermia with an average body temperature of 75 F (23 C), and if Tauntaun blood freezes at 28.4 F (-2 C), then Han has roughly 56 minutes to set up a shelter before Luke once again is in danger of losing his life in the barren wasteland of Hoth.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it should be followed with rigorous scientific testing. Any volunteers?

Link via Forces of Geek | Image: Lucasfilm

(YouTube Link)

A (presumably) abandoned ship near a US nuclear test is swamped by the resulting massive wave. The video is courtesy of Atom Central, a site filled with pictures, videos, and information about nuclear weapons.

via Urlesque | Atom Central

Dutch artist and inventor Joost Conijn refitted his Citroën with wooden panels and installed a wood-burning boiler for propulsion. He then traveled around Eastern Europe, documenting people's reactions to his odd car.

I'm just a bit skeptical because the engine in the video doesn't sound like steam engine and the car moves at a pretty phenomenal rate of speed for a steam engine. But I have read that during World War II, some cars in Sweden were converted to wood-burning engines due to a scarcity of oil, so a functional steam engine modern car should be hypothetically possible.

What do you think? Is this real or a hoax?

http://www.divus.cz/umelec/en/pages/umelec.php?id=196&roc=2002&cis=2 via Make | YouTube Video | Artist's Website (Google Translator Version)

Here at Neatorama, we're always looking for ways to make our site more entertaining, which is why I found this recent comment by giltwist useful:

Neatorama's biggest strength and biggest weakness is that there is no specialization to the stories. I think you might attract more users if there was something, anything that was a Neatorama staple that made me check back looking for particular weekly columns. The closest to that you have right now are those bathroom reader things, and those are pretty hit-or-miss for me. What ever became of Miss Celania's video blogging? I remember the raisin milkshake then nothing.

We aim to please, which is why Alex has graciously allowed me to experiment with this post: a weekly tour of interesting tidbits in geek culture. Do you like it? Would you like to see more? Share your feedback in the comments.

1. Star Wars With a Laugh Track


(YouTube Link)

YouTube user CaptainChirac added a laugh track to the Luke/Vader confrontation scene in The Empire Strikes Back to turn this dramatic epic into a comedy. (via Topless Robot)

2. Star Trek Cross-Stitch



Craftster user coincollect408 made this amazing cross-stitch that looks as precise as a low-resolution photograph. (Link via Geek Crafts)

3. Buffy/Twilight Mashup


(YouTube Link)

Buffy thinks of Edward as a creepy stalker rather than as a sultry, romatic figure. (via Jockeystreet)

4. Giant Welded 12-Sided Die



Paul Edward Carson made this huge, welded d12 for those occasions when he needs "to generate a random number between 1 and 12 while destroying my house...." (Link via Make)

5. Superheroes/Dr. Seuss Mashups



Artist Ryan Dunlavey offers these mashups of superhero comics and Dr. Seuss book covers. (http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2009/dr-seuss-gets-mashed-up/ via io9)

Is this something that you would like to see more of? Let us know -- we take your feedback very seriously.

(Video Link)

German percussionist Michael Vorfeld creates sound installations by turning different light bulbs on and off. The popping bulbs and flashing lights create a uniquely rhythmic experience for his live audiences. The above video is from a performance last February in Brussels.

Official Website via Urlesque

This isn't quite how I remember the Battle of Yorktown, but presumably artist Joseph Griffith did careful research for this painting marking the 225th anniversary of that battle. This image is part of a post full of Kool-Aid Man references in pop culture at Jeremy Barker's Popped Culture.

Link

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