A research team by Jianyu Huang (pictured) at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque claims to have developed the world's smallest battery:

It consists of a bulk lithium cobalt cathode three millimeters long, an ionic liquid electrolyte, and has as its anode a single tin oxide (Sn02) nanowire 10 nanometers long and 100 nanometers in diameter – that’s one seven-thousandth the thickness of a human hair.

The battery was made inside a transmission electron microscope, allowing the scientists to study it while it was charging:

By following the progression of the lithium ions as they travel along the nanowire, the researchers found that during charging the tin oxide nanowire rod nearly doubles in length. This is far more than its diameter increases and could help avoid short circuits that may shorten battery life. This unexpected finding goes against the common belief of workers in the field that batteries swell across their diameter, not longitudinally.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: US Department of Energy

Pictured above is Pestilence Pony from the television show Robot Chicken. It was used for a particular sketch featuring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation (6:1-8) as My Little Pony toys. Seth Green, one of writers and producers of Robot Chicken, is promoting an online petition to convince Hasbro to make these ponies.

Link via Popped Culture | Image: Cartoon Network

(Video Link)

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis is the home of the Minnesota Vikings football team. It had an inflatable roof, but under the weight of eighteen inches of snow, it collapsed early this morning. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Link

(Video Link)

YouTube user SterlingBreed captured this marvelous video. Keep Portland weird! via Geekosystem

Artist Paul O'Connor and his colleagues at the British art collective Undercurrents built a tiny solar powered movie theater in a 1960s-era travel trailer. Sol Cinema can seat eight adults and generally screens films with an ecological theme. The official website provides additional photos as well as a list of tour dates and locations in the UK.

Link via Technabob | Official Website | Photo: Sol Cinema

(Video Link)

Martin Spitznagel performed this ragtime medley of music from Super Mario Bros., Harry Potter movies, and Star Wars. Andrew Barrett and Tom Warner accompanied him on washboards. This performance took place at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento in 2008.

via reddit | Spitznagel's Website

The design firm Rock Paper Robot made the Float Table. It's composed of 64 wooden blocks that are linked together with steel cable but held in form with opposing magnets.

Link and Video via Technabob | Photo: GizmoDiva

Andrew Young, a doctoral student at the University of Exeter, has a novel proposal about how ancient Britons built Stonehenge. He hypothesizes that they placed balls in grooved tree trunks to act as bearings for the heavy stones:

Young first came up with the ball bearings idea when he noticed that carved stone balls were often found near Neolithic stone circles in Aberdeenshire, Scotland (map).

"I measured and weighed a number of these stone balls and realized that they are all precisely the same size—around 70 millimeters [3 inches] in diameter—which made me think they must have been made to be used in unison, rather than alone," he told National Geographic News.

The balls, Young admitted, have been found near stone circles only in Aberdeenshire and the Orkney Islands (map)—not on Stonehenge's Salisbury Plain.

But, he speculated, at southern sites, including Stonehenge (map), builders may have preferred wooden balls, which would have rotted away long ago. For one thing, wooden balls are much faster to carve. For another, they're much lighter to transport.

Link | Photo: University of Exeter

Vincenzo Cosenza created a series of maps tracking the most popular social networks around the world over the past year and a half. This month's map is above. Consenza writes:

Zuckerberg’s creature continues to gain users around the world (almost 600 millions). Since June 2010 Facebook has stolen new important nations from local, previously strong, competitors (in 115 out of 132 countries analyzed it is market leader) especially in Europe. In particular:

- From Iwiw: Hungary

- From Nasza-Klasa: Poland

- From Hi5: Mongolia

- From Orkut (Google): Paraguay and India. Orkut remains the first social network in Brasil.

In Japan Mixi is still the most used web-based social network (Ameba that I previously mentioned it’s not a pure social networking site, but also a portal/blog-hosting provider). But if we look to mobile social networks usage the leader is Gree followeb by Mobage Town.

Link via Geekosystem

The design of this Charmander cake is simple, but effective. When lit and seen from above, it looks like the Pokémon is actually breathing fire.

Link via Geekologie | Photos: My Food Looks Funny

(Video Link)

A railgun is a weapon that uses electromagnets to accelerate a projectile to very high speeds. The US Navy has been developing one for several years. Today they fired a shot at Mach 7 at a target 100 miles away:

An electromagnetic railgun offers a velocity previously unattainable in a conventional weapon, speeds that are incredibly powerful on their own. In fact, since the projectile doesn't have any explosives itself, it relies upon that kinetic energy to do damage. And at 11 a.m. today, the Navy produced a 33-megajoule firing -- more than three times the previous record set by the Navy in 2008.[...]

Ellis says the Navy has invested about $211 million in the program since 2005, since the railgun provides many significant advantages over convention weapons. For one thing, a railgun offers 2 to 3 times the velocity of a conventional big gun, so that it can hit its target within 6 minutes. By contrast, a guided cruise missile travels at subsonic speeds, meaning that the intended target could be gone by the time it reaches its destination.

Furthermore, current U.S. Navy guns can only reach targets about 13 miles away. The railgun being tested today could reach an enemy 100 miles away. And with current GPS guidance systems it could do so with pinpoint accuracy. The Navy hopes to eventually extend the range beyond 200 miles.

Link via DVICE | Photo: US Navy

When astronauts work outside the International Space Station, they remain tethered to it with a very strong cable. Nonetheless, NASA has made preparations for the unlikely event that the tether breaks. Astronauts have an emergency jetpack that they can use to move back to the station. But what if the astronaut is unconscious or the jetpack fails?

Jim Oberg, a space journalist who worked at the space shuttle’s mission-control center for 22 years and specialized in rendezvous procedures, weighs in on the options for rescue. The station’s robotic arm, he explains, is usually not within range of where the astronauts work and moves too slowly to grab someone. The Soyuz vehicles need a full day to power up and undock. By then, the carbon dioxide filters in the astronaut’s spacesuit would run out, asphyxiating him. And the ISS cannot redirect its positioning rocket quickly enough to catch up to a runaway astronaut.

In a worst-case situation, the only rescue option, according to Oberg, would be for a second astronaut to link together several tethers end-to-end, attach them to the station, and then use his Safer pack to jet over to his crewmate and haul him in. Certain conditions could make a rescue easier, he says. If an astronaut floated away more or less at a right angle from the station’s orbit, orbital dynamics (which require too much math to explain here) dictate that he would float back toward the station in about an hour.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/fyi-how-would-nasa-rescue-astronaut-who-floated-away-international-space-station | Photo: NASA

(Video Link)

Last year, we featured artist Chris O'Shea's giant human-crushing hand projected onto a public screen. One of his more recent projects was to hack the Xbox Kinect gaming platform so that it can play an air guitar:

First it thresholds the scene to find a person, then uses a histogram to get the most likely depth of a person in the scene. Then any pixels closer than the person to the camera are possible hands. It also uses contour extremity finding on the person blob to look for hands in situations where your hand is at the same depth as your body. It only works if you are facing the camera front on. Then it uses one hand as the neck of the guitar, drawing a virtual line from the neck through the person centroid to create the guitar line. The other hand is tracked to see if it passes through this line, strumming the guitar. The neck hand position controls the chord.

http://www.chrisoshea.org/lab/air-guitar-prototype via CrunchGear

In 2002, blogger Julie Powell decided to spend a year cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She blogged about her experience daily. The blog led to a book. Then, in 2009, this story was turned into a movie called Julie & Julia.

Lawrence Dai is taking this process a step further. He's going to watch this movie every day for a year:

For the moment, I will not tackle the existential query, "Why, Lawrence? Why Julie & Julia? Why now?" Instead, I shall stick to explicating the rules of engagement.

Starting today, Tuesday, November the 30th, 2010, I will watch the comedy-drama Julie & Julia every day for a exactly one year--from the opening title sequence until the very last credits roll.

The film clocks in at a humbling 2 hours, 2 minutes and 33 seconds, which means if I am successful in my endeavor, I will have watched 745.5125 hours of Julie & Julia, or rather, a little over 31 days of nothing but this movie.

Link via Urlesque | Image: Columbia Pictures

Studio V is an industrial design firm in Tel Aviv. It recently produced the Manifold Clock, which folds and unfolds a fan as the hands circulate. At the link, you can watch a time-lapse video of it in action.

Link via Make | Photo: Core77