Gearfuse

Unless you’re one of those crazy Rainman-like guys who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute, then the cube has caused you some sort of frustration or grief at one point in your life. Well, this new Rubik’s Cube appears even more difficult than its predecessor.

Without colors on any side, the only leeway you get is from the varying sizes and even that will probably throw you off track.  On top of that, to create even more frustration, the surrounding sides of each individual block have reflective mirrors on its surface. I’m getting angry just thinking about solving this thing.

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Holographic images are no longer exclusive to science fiction films thanks to the ICT Graphics Lab at USC.  Three-Dimensional displays have proven to be quite difficult to emulate, suffering from problems such as small viewing areas and high costs.  Using spinning mirrors, high-speed DLP projections and very precise mathematics, the crew at USC are able to display nearly 5,000 individual images reflected every second which come together to create a real-space three-dimensional object. In this case, they’ve displayed a Star Wars imperial tie-fighter.

They’ve also created a formula that renders specific projections at different heights and traces each projected beam back to the display. This way, the projection always finds the correct position of the viewer. So regardless of where you’re standing, the tie-fighter will always be a tie-fighter.  This is a huge breakthrough in three-dimensional holographs that could eventually lead to Cortana-like women everywhere.

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Sunlight is a commodity only now being fully realized for its gigantic magnitude of energy resources. In fact, The Cold Light fiberoptics don’t even the sun as a power source. The light gets transfered to an indoor-friendly fluorescent glow. On display at the Haus der Forschung in Vienna, a headlining institute in research science, the Cold Light system, called “0-24 Licht”, dangles in cords from the display, showing a dazzling bright light.

The “0-24 Licht” works with a number of situated mirrors, which capture sunlight and projects the light into a series of optical condensers set up at the entrance. From here, state of the art optical fibers transfer the light indoors, without any heat energy needed. “0-24 Licht” marks the first working prototype of a direct sunlight to fluorescent lighting system and can one day have a wide effect on architecture and electric costs, as well as the environment. — Andrew Dobrow

Cold light [Domusweb, via Inhabitant]