Time crystals, seems like something out of a sci-fi movie or even the “Final Fantasy” game series.  A perpetual motion machine, an item that can oscillate for eternity without any energy application.  This has long a goal of scientists and inventors, but the idea has fallen short as make believe and an impossibility.  What if however, a Nobel prize winning physicists says it’s possible?

Wired reported that MIT’s Frank Wilczek has made that very claim, putting himself out there to be shunned from the scientific community for such outlandish claims.  But it was with great consideration and thought that he came to the idea that, theoretically, it is possible.  His idea states:

When matter crystallizes, its atoms spontaneously organize themselves into the rows, columns and stacks of a three-dimensional lattice. An atom occupies each “lattice point,” but the balance of forces between the atoms prevents them from inhabiting the space between. Because the atoms suddenly have a discrete, rather than continuous, set of choices for where to exist, crystals are said to break the spatial symmetry of nature — the usual rule that all places in space are equivalent… Eventually, his equations indicated that atoms could indeed form a regularly repeating lattice in time, returning to their initial arrangement only after discrete (rather than continuous) intervals, thereby breaking time symmetry. Without consuming or producing energy, time crystals would be stable, in what physicists call their “ground state,” despite cyclical variations in structure that scientists say can be interpreted as perpetual motion.

An interesting claim, but one that clearly isn’t going to be excepted by the scientific community at large. Not everyone thinks his idea is that of science fiction.  A Berkeley team of scientists, after reading the idea, decided to attempt to make the crystal based on the concept.  If they succeed, it will rewrite the basic ideas of time as we know it, and destroy the fundamental concept of time symmetry.  The Berkeley researchers are optimistic and have said it can take “anywhere between three to infinity years” to accomplish.  But until then we can only wonder.

What do you think of Wilczek’s idea, completely outlandish or could he be right/

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As you’ll see in the demo video below, you effectively reach “into” your computer monitor to manipulate the different windows, documents and other elements in a virtual 3D space. There are two cameras that make this possible. First, there is a camera there to track your hand gestures, allowing you to literally “grab” a window and move it around. Second, there is a camera to try your eye movements so that the UI can adjust accordingly.

The display itself is powered by a transparent LED so that you are able to see “into” the flat panel into the 3D space behind it. This could completely change the way that we use our computers in the future, assuming that the big computer companies get on board and work to refine this kind of system. You can see how a 3D space like this would be great for product designers and architects, as well as the possibilities for augmented reality. If you thought the Nintendo 3DS was neat, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Of course, the SpaceTop is still very much in early development, but even in these early stages, it demonstrates a lot of promise. Would you want a computer UI like this? Is this, perhaps along with Google Glass, the precursor to real Minority Report style interfaces?

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The Meshworm robot is able to move along nearly any surface the same way that a worm does; it scrunches up its body, then it extends it. This crawling motion is referred to as peristalsis and while it may not be very fast, it does allow it to navigate through tough terrain where wheels or legs may not work.

There is a coil that wraps around the soft body and by sending an electric current through this coil, it squeezes the body and thus extends it. When this is released, sections of the body scrunch back up and through this repeated motion, the Meshworm silently moves along. What’s more, the body is made up primarily of soft materials, allowing the Meshworm to survive abuse by way of mallet and even getting stepped on. It’s an autonomous robot to boot.

It’s easy to consider what some of the military applications could be for the phallic-like robot, but the researchers have a broader vision. They’re considering next-generation endoscopes, for example, as well as for implants and prosthetics.

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The era of 3D printing has firmly launched, but there are still some setbacks to using 3D printer technology, namely they aren’t exactly portable. While most 3D printers must be disassembled in order to be moved, two MIT students have come up with a new solution that fits easily in a small suitcase, the PopFab. Ilan Moyer and Nadya Peek developed the PopFab as a machine that could do all 3D editing while folding out from a metal briefcase easily and relatively quickly. Once folded out you simply need to attach the printing head to the fold-out arm, put in printing material and connect a computer to send the design.

The video below is one of what is proposed to be several ‘episodes’ that show off what the PopFab is capable of doing using different heads and attachments. Theoretically the PopFab could be used as a portable solution for vinyl cutting, drawing, milling, object creation and much more. The creators have even tested its traveling abilities by carrying it on aboard flights within the US, Saudi Arabia and Germany. The PopFab is a very interesting device at this stage and could have tons of potential. 3D printing itself has tons of uses, but adding the element of portability takes these uses even further.

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What this means is that they don’t need an additional layer of polymer to hold the nanotubes together. Since the cells only use small amounts of purified carbon, the end product is lighter and presumably more efficient. The new cell also uses what is known as C60 or Buckminsterfullerene, another type of carbon.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, even though the new all-carbon solar cells are able to capture near-infrared light energy, they still suffer from the same lack of efficiency as their predecessors. The proof of concept devices have only achieved 0.1 percent efficiency thus far, but scientists have already identified some areas for improvement. For instance, they’ve noticed that homogenous mixtures of carbon nanotubes are more efficient than heterogeneous mixtures.

This is “fundamentally a new kind of photovoltaic cell,” says MIT professor Michael Strano. I wonder if they could start pasting these onto the roofs of electric or hybrid cars.

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Can you imagine a world where tiny little cube robots can bind together to form replicas of existing shapes and items just by sensing their presence? No, I’m not talking about some crazy CGI enhanced scene in a summer blockbuster Sci-Fi movie, we are talking about the MIT project lead by Professor Daniela Rus. The “Smart Sand” project has tons of obstacles to climb over before it truly gets very far off the ground, but it is attempting to use large cubes, 12mm on each side, that can actually bind together to mimic real objects.

At this year’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics And Automation, Kyle Gilpin, one of the researchers involved, actually demonstrated an algorithm that makes this possible. Though the demonstration only showed off a formation of a VERY simple object, the potential is huge. The idea behind the technology is that each of the “smart pebbles” can only process a little information about the object they need to duplicate, but that is fine, since as long as each part obtains a little information about the object, they can put it all together through information sharing to solve the problem.

Before they really can achieve more advanced replications of different objects and shapes, they will more than likely need to shrink the size of the cubes, which Gilpin believes is certainly possible, though difficult, and would like to get down to a size of at least 1mm.

We are quickly approaching a very strange Sci-Fi future, between this new smart robot technology and developing 3D printer concepts. More than likely, we will look back at technologies like this in another decade or two and think, “Was this stuff really that unbelievable back then?”

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It seems like every time we turn around we have another technology pushing the boundaries of what we thought was possible. We’ve all seen the glove-controlled PCs in Minority Report, right? That’s sort of what MIT’s Media Lab has accomplished, wedding a glove/attachment with an iPad. The video the group released shows drawing objects in 3D real time. The project website for T(ether) says that the new technology is a spatially aware display that allows people to interact with volumetric data, from the looks of it, the iPad camera is also involved in tracking the data and the user’s head position in 3D space.

While this looks pretty cool and could have some interesting uses, I wouldn’t expect things like the machines in Minority Report to become commonplace anytime soon. On the other hand, with Windows 8 due out later this year, we can expect touch to become more and more commonplace in the next few years and that’s certainly a step in the right direction.

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We live in a time where new technologies are constantly being discovered and manipulated to do things that were previously relegated completely to the world of science fiction. The age we are in is a marvelous one because we are just now starting a trend of pushing the realm of what we think is possible, and the new ZeroN is one technology that does just that. Basically, this MIT Media Lab project uses a small plastic-coated spherical magnet, called ZeroN, that can move around and be placed anywhere within its 3D block of anti-gravity space. This means that ball can be placed in any spot in the air and just stay there. This is pretty cool and is accomplished using a three-axis motor controller, while tracking motion using none other than two stock PS3 Eyecam devices, alongside a video projector. It’s amazing just how many high-tech projects seem to get started using parts that are meant for gaming systems, actually.

Beyond staying where you point it, the system can also track and record movements, as well. Right now, this is a fun trick, though it really might not seem to have a practical application, YET. The truth is that there are a lot of ideas probably easily within reach for such a technology, you just have to get a little creative. Using it as an astronomy model of planets, displaying specific images (projected onto the ball) in mid-space to get a better look, or as a 3D movie camera device.

As you can see, this is an ambitious project, and a pretty cool one at that. The video below can better explain some of the uses and ideas behind the technology, for those interested.

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Over the course of the years, the ninety-five foot tall Building 54 has been the center of plenty of hacker attempts on visual displays, thanks to its grid-like windows to the front. The new hack realizes a pretty impressive dream, a gigantic game of Tetris.

For those that were asleep during the late-80s and early-90s, Tetris was a Russian game that was highly popularized after being purchased by Nintendo and slapped onto the Gameboy. The 21-story MIT building, known as the Green Building, has windows arranged in an 18 x 9 grid, which isn’t exactly the same as the 20 cells by 10 cells wide display common for Tetris, but it certainly works well enough as the pictures show.

The MIT IHTFP hack didn’t show how the Tetris game was accomplished, but it has something to do with mult-color LED lighting modules at each of the windows. Pretty cool MIT trick, though I’d be more impressed with a giant game of Angry Birds, or perhaps Super Mario Brothers. Yes, I’m hard to please like that. Kidding aside, its clear the folks behind this have a bit more time on their hands than most of us.

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Whereas QR codes are effectively 2D barcodes that have to take up space on a page, NewsFlash is effectively invisible to the human eye. That’s because it uses flashes of pink and green light that the human eye effectively averages out and does not see; however, the camera on your smartphone can see these pulses, which are then effectively translated as binary code that your phone can then understand. Using the NewsFlash app, you are then redirected accordingly.

In the video below, as an example, a scan of a newspaper page on a tablet sends the smartphone to the same article within the app. In much the same way, a NewsFlash scan of a newspaper in a foreign language can send you an English translation of that article automatically. Of course, this will only work with lit displays and not printed materials, since regular paper can’t flash pink and green, but this could prove interesting in certain signage and other scenarios.

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