Microsoft Unveils Hologram Visor

Microsoft Corp surprised the tech world with the unveiling of a prototype hologram visor that can bring the Minecraft video game, Skype calls and even the landscape of Mars to three-dimensional life.

The veteran tech pioneer, which long ago lost the mantle of the world’s most inventive company, is making a bold play to regain that title in the face of stiff competition from Google Inc and Apple Inc.

Virtual or enhanced reality is the next frontier in computing interaction, with Facebook Inc focusing on its Oculus virtual reality headset and Google working on its Glass project.

Microsoft said its wire-free Microsoft HoloLens device will be available around the same time as Windows 10 this autumn. Industry analysts were broadly excited at the prospect, but skeptical that it could produce a working model at a mass-market price that soon.

“That was kind of a ‘Oh wow!’ moment,” said Mike Silver, an analyst at Gartner who tried out the prototype on Wednesday. “You would expect to see a relatively high-priced model this year or next year, then maybe it’ll take another couple of years to bring it down to a more affordable level.”

Microsoft does not have a stellar record of bringing ground-breaking technology to life. Its Kinect motion-sensing game device caused an initial stir but never gripped the popular imagination.

The company showed off a crude test version of the visor – essentially jerry-rigged wires and cameras pulled over the head – to reporters and industry analysts at a gathering at its headquarters near Seattle.

It did not allow any photographs or video of the experience, but put some images on its website.

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Particle Accelerator Put On A Chip

Researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) National Accelerator Laboratory have demonstrated a “particle accelerator on a chip”.

The Stanford University facility believes that the tiny particle accelerator has applications in science and medicine. A series of the miniature accelerators 100 feet long potentially could be more powerful than SLAC’s existing two mile long linear accelerator, despite each little segment being a glass chip smaller than a single grain of rice.

In a statement, experiment leader Joel England of SLAC said, “We still have a number of challenges before this technology becomes practical for real-world use, but eventually it would substantially reduce the size and cost of future high-energy particle colliders for exploring the world of fundamental particles and forces.”

At a practical level the accelerator could power tiny portable X-ray scanners used for treating military casualties in the field, as well as for use in security operations in airports and a wide range of scientific research.

Before we get too excited, it is worth pointing out that at the moment there is no compact way to get electrons up to the speed that the accelerator can work with, so at this stage, we have a two mile long machine with a tiny working part, but this is a major leap forward toward finding an alternative to microwaves in particle accelerators and making the process more portable.

Stanford University professor and principal investigator Robert Byer added, “Our ultimate goal for this structure is [one] billion electron volts per meter, and we’re already one-third of the way in our first experiment.”

We hope that this could also lead to the ability to create wormholes into other galaxies. But we doubt it.

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MIT Develops Inflatable Antenna

Satellites the size of shoe boxes, which are expected to one day allow researchers to explore space more efficiently, will soon have greater range.

MIT researchers have built and tested an inflatable antenna that can fold into such a satellite, then inflate in orbit to enable long range communications — from seven times the distance possible today.

The technology will let the small satellites, called CubeSats, move further into space and send valuable information to scientists back on earth.

“With this antenna, you could transmit from the moon, and even farther than that,” said Alessandra Babuscia, a researcher on the inflatable antenna team at MIT, in a statement. “This antenna is one of the cheapest and most economical solutions to the problem of communication. But all this research builds a set of options to allow the spacecraft … to fly in deep space.”

The MIT effort comes as engineers at the University of Michigan work on ways to propel such small spacecraft into interplanetary space. The team is building a plasma thruster that could fit in a 10-centimeter space and push a small satellite-bearing spacecraft into deep space.

The university researchers using superheated plasma that would push through a magnetic field to propel a CubeSat.

The MIT researchers are seeking to solve the communications problems and enable far-afield CubeSats to send data to and receive instructions from Earth.

The CubeSat devices cannot support radio dishes that are used today to let spacecraft communicate when far from Earth’s orbit.

The inflatable antennas significantly amplifies radio signals, allowing a CubeSat to transmit data back to Earth at a higher rate, according to the university.

MIT engineers have built two prototype antennae, each a meter wide, out of Mylar, which is a polyester film known for its strength and use as an electric insulator. One antenna was a cone shape, while the other looks more like a cylinder when inflated. Each fits into a 10-cubic-centimeter space within a CubeSat.

Each prototype contains a few grams of benzoic acid, which can be converted to a gas to inflate the antenna, MIT noted.

In testing, the cylindrical antenna performed “slightly better” than the cone shaped device, transmitting data 10 times faster, and seven times farther than existing CubeSat antennae.

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‘Monster’ Solar Storm Erupts On the Sun (Video)

  Sun makes a major eruption and NASA captures it.