I knew it was going to be a wonderful night when I magically found street parking on Central Park West directly across from the American Museum of Natural History. Camera in hand I entered the planetarium where I enjoyed a presentation of vintage films and movies depicting space travel and life on other planets. I was soon flying towards the dark side of the moon and out into the Milky Way during a 3D presentation of the planets that was out of this world.
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Feed SubscriptionThis Week In Bots: I Compute, Therefore I Am
Floppy Starfish Bot Soft-shelled robots have popped up from time to time, but none perhaps have been as amazing as this new innovation from Harvard . It's a super-floppy starfish-esque robot that can crawl, maneuver, and wiggle its way along the ground...and can also squirm its way into tight spaces and even through tiny holes. Just like the worms of your squirmiest nightmares! Enjoy! [youtube QpnLj-rzjIo] The robot is just five inches long, pneumatically powered and was designed to replicate the motions of a real sea creature
Read More »NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity Had Planetary Protection Slip-Up
All NASA spacecraft sent to other planets must undergo meticulous procedures to make sure they don't carry biological contamination from Earth to their destinations .
Read More »This Week In Bots: The Flapping, Foam-Spraying, Zombie-Satellite-Tracking, Poop-Scoopin’ Edition
Flying Dinosaur Bot There's a big debate about how modern bird evolved from flying dinosaurs, and another about how those dinosaurs learned to fly: Did they gradually get better at gliding like a flying squirrel, or did they run-flap along the ground giving them better hunting speed and the ability to easily leap onto perches?
Read More »Planetary Pretender: Asteroid Vesta Has Planet-Like Features
NANTES, France--Asteroids are often considered debris, the scraps and odd lumps that went unused in the forming of the planets. But when it comes to Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in our solar system, Chris Russell hardly considers the rock a mere castoff.
Read More »Isotopes Say New Origin Stories For Some Planets
If you’ve ever wondered where the Earth came from, the answer, it seems, is blowin’ in the wind--the solar wind. Or so say scientists who, after examining solar wind samples collected by the Genesis spacecraft, conclude that the inner planets of our solar system formed a little differently than we’d thought. The work appears in the journal Science
Read More »This Week In Bots: Robochefs, Killer Toy Drones, Teacherbots, And More
As Stephen Hawking once said: "Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world." So what developments in robotics happened this week? Robot breakfast We've seen research roboticists perform various odd tricks with their robots, but this one takes the pancake
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