WORMHOLES
Reason #145 I want to go to MIT
An MIT team has designed a sleek spacesuit that relies on mechanical counter-pressure instead of using gas pressurization.
A bold new book tackles the ultimate thought experiment: what if there were no humans left?
Walter Haut, the now-deceased former PR representative at the Roswell Air Force base, issued an affadavit to be opened after his death, the text of which has just been released. It concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".
"We're kind of a big deal"
Giant Penguins Once Roamed the Earth
Researchers report in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have found remains of two types of penguin in Peru that date to 40 million years ago. One of them was a 5-foot giant with a long sharp beak.
The Robotarium X in Jardim Central, Portugal, is the first zoo for artificial life. It houses a revolving cast of creatures powered by photovoltaic energy. Unlike with a real zoo, the Robotarium is the ideal environment for its residents, with plenty of sun, smoothness, tranquility and attention. There are no fights or aggression and the only competition is to assure a place under the sunlight.
Lake Dissapears in Central Chile
One casual theory is that an earthquake opened up a fissure in the ground, allowing the lake's water to drain through.
Bacteria Could Help Steady Buildings
Soil bacteria could be used to help steady buildings against earthquakes, according to researchers at UC Davis. The microbes can literally convert loose, sandy soil into rock. And men TO STONE!
I never thought such a thing was possible. Thanks N. Gitomer for the enlightening link.
Check out this joker's spacecraft
As private companies rush to the space travel industry's big bucks, we begin to enounter shitty spaceship design. Thanks Rosten Woo for the link.
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Homebrewed Dome
Archived From March 6, 2007
Did you know that the geodesic dome is the only man-made structure (apart from, maybe, a "spirit vibe") that gets proportionally stronger as it increases in size? Truth: of all known structures made out of linear elements, a geodesic dome has the highest enclosed volume to weight ratio. It is no secret to my intimates that if I ever earn enough money to own anything, I will have a home with a room-sized dome inside of it, and inside of this dome I will hang a globe of Earth, and there will be a crystal bowl of fruits in the center.
Buckminster Fuller, incidentally, didn't invent the geodesic dome. That privilege is reserved for a certain Walter Bauersfeld, who built a like-structured planetarium right after World War One. Bucky, to be fair, may have absorbed the idea from cultural osmosis independently of Bauersfeld, and he did the rest. It is to him that we owe the word "geodesic," in any case. To think of young Buck and his friends at Black Mountain College, hanging like children from the early dome's struts, euphoric in the face of tensegrity, is heartwarming.
Wanting to experience a shadow of this joy, I set out to build my own dome, albeit on a smaller scale. I gathered an armful of the Pacific Northwest's twigs from Portland's Forest Park -- taking care to gather slender, sturdy branches -- and brought them home, where they were each whittled and sanded to the appropriate density.
Following the invaluable guidelines of Desert Domes, which, despite its deeper Burning Man aesthetic, provides a simple strut-length calculator and ample mathematical formulae, I decided on a relatively simple 2V structure (the "V" represents the structure's chord factor). This meant that I needed only two strut sizes, and hence I cut my twigs accordingly, into 3" and 3.5" lengths. After that, I followed a diagram and carefully pieced it together. The glue was tricky: my original call of using polyurethane was a disaster, since it dries to rigid immovability. I disassembled and started again with rubber cement, which provided the necessary flexibility. The whole project took me weeks, which is probably about as long as it would take to construct a human-sized geodesic home.
The structure surprised me on many occasions; despite my shoddy craftsmanship, it held itself up without support very early in the construction. A moment of revelation, too, occurred midway through the process. Now building the dome firsthand, I suddenly understood that the edges of all the small triangles make up larger, remarkable circles -- "great circles," they're called -- that distribute stress across the sphere. These circles are the geodesics, and where they intersect, triangles are born. The beauty of this interconnectedness, once I saw it, was striking.
<< | Posted on March 6, 2007 at 7:40 PM | >>
Comments (9):
Oh, shit!! Awesome. I saw some web how-tos about newspaper domes for schoolroom projects. That's so great that you did it!
Posted by Claire @ March 6, 2007 8:46 PM
Did you see the GIANT one at Reed? I helped take it down yesterday.
Posted by adrian @ March 6, 2007 8:51 PM
sleep inside a giant geodesic dome-dream catcher. rule the night. i know you can do it
Posted by evan @ March 6, 2007 9:38 PM
Have you seen the soap bubble building?
http://inhabitat.com/2007/02/27/bubble-building-national-swim-center-in-beijing/
There are also some discussions of self assembling buildings, like nano tech, but not nano.
Posted by Rob @ March 6, 2007 10:18 PM
Have you come across Christopher Alexander? He's another good, wacko architect. And Shelter by Kahn and Easton is in this vein but more grounded. Nader Khalili also does simple structures. http://www.calearth.org/EcoDome.htm
Posted by Raf @ March 7, 2007 6:19 AM
Claire, IT IS SO COOL AND BEAUTIFUL!
Oh, so little and precious and perfect. Wowee.
Posted by sarah @ March 7, 2007 11:18 AM
I once built one out of rolls of newspaper
Posted by Damon @ March 6, 2007 8:41 PM