The announcement that scientists had finally detected measurable proof of the Big Bang – the very beginning of our universe – was met with awe and joy. And, for a lot of us, utter befuddlement. Gravitational waves? Cosmic inflation? Accelerating expansion? These aren’t terms that the average person immediately understands. Luckily for the folks who can’t wrap their heads around this amazing news, New Scientist made a video explaining the discovery in simple terms.

In the video above, a towel, an apple, and a ping pong ball are used to explain how scientists were able to detect gravitational waves dating all the way back to the birth of the universe. It’s heavy material, but explained in a fun way. We still don’t really get it, but that’s okay – that’s why we’re not astrophysicists.

If you need a refresher course on the entire theory of the beginning of the universe, this animation from Munich “information designers” Kurzgesagt breaks it down for you. It’s definitely worth a watch if you’ve ever wondered what happened between the Big Bang and the formation of stars and planets. Just don’t watch it when you’re sleepy, because the narrator’s voice is so soothing you’ll drift off to his explanations of hydrogen gas and plasma. Not that we know from experience or anything.

The post Big Bang Proven? Discovery Explained for Non-Scientists first appeared on Gajitz.

Augmented reality, once the realm of sci-fi books and imaginative gamers, is now part of our everyday lives. The Microsoft Kinect has become a staple in the living rooms of homes around the world, but it’s missing one thing: the sensation of touch.

Research conducted by University of Illinois PhD candidate Rajinder Sodhi and Disney Research’s Ivan Poupyrev resulted in a fascinating new technology. It’s called the Aireal, and when it’s activated it sends out tiny puffs of air that let you feel textures and objects in mid-air.

According to the inventors, the sensation is nothing like air simply blowing on your skin. The apparatus consists of five subwoofers that track your body movements. The machine pushes air out rapidly through a hole and can adjust the puffs of air to mimic textures such as sand, water, or stone.

There are no special gadgets to wear, no complex wired systems to install. The Aireal can be used to simulate sensations like a flock of birds flying around the room or a butterfly landing on your hand.

There is still a lot of refinement and research to be done on the Aireal, but the technology is all available today. It’s inexpensive and can bring a whole new level of sensations to your entertainment experience.

The post Augmented Reality System Creates Textures with Air Puffs first appeared on Gajitz.

It’s hard enough to grow up on Earth, what with the social development, the awkward teen years and then trying to figure out what being a grownup really means. But the sciencey minds at VSauce took a very careful look at what it means to be an Earth-bound human…and what it would be like to be born outside the confines of our home planet. Namely, in outer space.

The long but very entertaining video goes into the specifics of how difficult it would be to conceive in space, the problems a human body would have developing in outer space, and (somewhat creepily) what a space child might look like. Radiation, isolation, decreased bone mass and an increased chance of dementia later in life are just some of the woes that await kids conceived and born in that vast area outside of our home planet.

The post What Would a Human Conceived + Born in Space Look Like? first appeared on Gajitz.

As if Star Trek needed anymore anachronisms, it looks like the Enterprise wouldn’t have survived warp speed. A group of physicists at the University of Sydney discovered that arrival and landing of a craft running faster than the speed of light would be catastrophic.

In the 1990s, a Mexican physicist created The Alcubierre warp drive. It suggests that the space-time continuum be formed into a bubble around the spacecraft, allowing it to travel faster than the speed of light while conforming to the rules of special relativity. The theoretical mechanism was recently dusted off by some students and their professor at the University of Sydney.

They found that the spacecraft would collect debris along the bubble-shaped space-time continuum, with some even entering the bubble. Then came the landing: as the craft decelerates, all of the energy produced by The Alcubierre warp drive is released at once with such force that anything within contact would be completely destroyed. Sorry Mr. Sulu, you’re fired.

The post Scientists Find Explosive Truth about Speed of Light Travel first appeared on Gajitz.

Eye-mounted or eye-embedded heads-up displays are no longer in the realm of science fiction. They’re getting closer all the time, and eventually they’ll be just as commonplace as our regular contact lenses of today. That’s the premise of Sight, a short film from Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo. The futuristic plot puts us into a day in the life of Patrick, a creepy, somewhat maladjusted software engineer who both works on and uses Sight, a very popular HUD system embedded in the eyes.

The film shows us what our future could look like, with most entertainment, decorative objects, and even social interactions being either supplied or augmented by an always-on computer system. Would that world feel any less real than the one in which we live now? This outstanding sci-fi vision is so exciting and so chilling precisely because it could easily become a reality in our lifetime.

The post Short Sci-Fi Film Gives a Chilling Glimpse of Our Tech Future first appeared on Gajitz.