Very cool video of an Atlas 5 launch [launch details here] that leaves ripples in the clouds as it breaks the sound barrier.  If you notice there is a “Sun Dog” there too that gets dispersed from the sound shock waves.

Really Cool.

Sonic Boom Meets Sun Dog from barbara tomlinson on Vimeo.

Video from Kennedy Space Center Apollo Center February 11, 2010. Launch of Solar Dynamics Observatory on an Atlas V rocket. About 1 minute 14 seconds after liftoff the vehicle went supersonic. The shock wave obliterated a sun dog. It was really beautiful, and poetic for this mission. A sun dog or parhelion is a bright rainbow effect in the sky caused by refraction of sunlight through ice crystals.

This is an item that holds double interest.

1. It is a cool display of the Shuttle Launch profile with three items in view on the page.  The Shuttle STS-116 launch video and three telemetry data displays: Speed, Altitude, Downrange distance.

2. It is an implementation of cool HTML 5.0 specification page markup.  The video is embedded in the page as a <video> tag (not the <object> tag nor the <embed> tag) and the graphs are all implemented by the <canvas> tag (again no flash).

This is all really cool stuff.

Scientists have analyzed data from the Mini-SAR radar on India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft to discover nearly 600 million tons of water ice locked in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's north pole.

Lunar water is a resource of inestimable value. Reserves of this volume would be enough to support a permanent colony on the moon and could even be used as fuel for missions to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond.  Water is the key to the exploration and exploitation of natural resources in space.  Finding this much water on the moon is unbelievably great!

Fascinating and avant guard speach given by Jesse Schell at the Dice Summit, a TED for the gaming industry. 

He talks about technology divergence, gameplay on Facebook, points systems in the real world now, connectivity of everyday objects and finishes by drawing it all together into a game system for reality that we all will experience in the not too distant future.

These amazing new images have just arrived from Cassini, which clearly show plumes of water ice bursting from the "tiger stripes" near the small moon's south pole.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35565930/ns/technology_and_science-space/

This is a fascinating video of Circa 1964 Livermore Data Systems "Model A" Acoustic Coupler Modem.  What is most fascinating is that our intrepid tinkerer, K.C., had the modem but then he had to scrounge for the other pieces necessary to enable his experiment.

1. The Serial Adapter.
2. The circa 1980 phone.

So above and beyond the modem itself, all the other pieces are leaving the world as well.  His observation about how the USB port wouldn’t send the correct voltage to change the tone of the modem appropriately is telling.  Does your computer have a serial port on it?

I especially love the technical equipment necessary for completing the job.

exhibit a

Check it all out at phreakmonkey.com

If you think you are going insane with all the connectivity apps in the world today and all the email and spam and popups and noise, just wait until your existence looks like this video.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

TechRivet has posted something like this before, but not quite this exhaustive or complete a graphic.  This one shows the absolute distance in a logarithmic scale for objects ranging from the ISS to the Sloan Great Wall of Galaxies.

You therefore end up with objects in close proximity by absolute distance that are in opposite directions from the Earth.  Such as the “Extent of Milky Way disk” and the “Milky Way Center”.

Never-the-less it is a fascinating chart to peruse. [link]

This is truly incredible.

A freight train 295 cars long.

Made possible by new technology in modern day locomotives.  Specifically wireless control of “slave” engines placed along the length of the gargantuan train.

Apart from the most obvious fact that these two boats are all composite, winged 30 knot racers, they are also laced with cutting edge electronics and sensors.

Case in point: The helmsman for the USA boat BMW/Oracle racing is outfitted with a Heads Up Display glasses that shows him all the wind information and rigging load information and allows him to make adjustments that would just be impossible without.

He looks like a member of the Borg.  Resistance is futile.

Update: Here is a picture of the cyborg in action: