NASA has just awarded a $125,000 grant to Anjan Contractor to create a 3D printer that prints…food.

The printer, based on open-source hardware called RepRap, will use a kind of nutrient powder and oil to construct foods, which will be available in specially-designed cartridges.

And the first item on the menu? Pizza.

Hungry?

Work on the printer will actually start in a couple weeks, and they chose pizza because, well, it’s a fairly easy food to put together.

First, a layer of dough will be “printed” onto a heated plate, which will cook as the second layer — a tomato sauce made of the aforementioned nutrient powder, water, and oil — is applied on top. Then it’s the “protein layer,” which at this point could be made of anything, including algae, grass, or insects. I really don’t know.

Of course, I’m not sure how a 3D-printed pizza would actually taste, but the goal here isn’t necessarily to make something that tastes good. Rather, the goal is to supply much-needed nutrition over long periods of time. And, in case of NASA’s grant, while on a lengthy voyage to Mars.

Not only would this technology make long trips through space more viable — the nutrient powders for the machine could last up to 30 years — it would also serve to feed a growing population right here on Earth.

Now, me, I’m still waiting for my hydrator like the one in Back to the Future II. Wake me up when someone makes one of those.

Source: There’s An Audacious Plan To End Hunger With 3-D Printed Food

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A Robot Future: Sooner Than You Think?

In an article for Mother Jones, Kevin Drum gives us a (somewhat) optimistic look at our future “robot paradise.”

Evoking Moore’s Law, he predicts that by 2025 we will have developed a computer “with the processing power of the human brain,” and that by 2040 our robotic future utopia (or nightmare, depending on your point of view) will finally be realized.

Sound optimistic? It is. But with the good comes the bad.

It will be a paradise, says Drum, because robots will make life easier and perform menial tasks without complaint. It will be a nightmare, on the other hand, because this new technology will rob us of jobs and, if we’re not careful, wreak havoc on the economy. As far as the latter is concerned, we’re already getting there.

Read it: Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us?

Plugging Into The Cloud

In response to Drum’s article, The Economist takes the idea of a future “robot paradise” one step further, highlighting the wireless/Cloud nature of modern devices and what that might mean for human brain-computer interfaces:

“Brain-computer interfaces are still in their infancy, but there’s no reason to suppose they won’t progress just as rapidly as AI itself. By 2040, people may well be communicating directly with servers through chips implanted in their brains, which is to say they may be communicating telepathically with each other. If two servers at Google headquarters are both part of Google, what are two humans linked by a terabit-per-second direct neural link? Ten humans? A million?”

Imagine plugging your brain into a computer and suddenly having access to all the information on the Internet, and seemingly-telepathic communication with other humans. What would that experience be like, and would this change what it means to be an individual human? Likewise, would human-like intelligent robots ever be treated as “people” if they acted more as a hive mind than as individuals?

While Kevin Drum wonders how we’ll deal with the economics of a robot-driven future, The Economist is more interested in the sociopolitical reality of artificial intelligence and the human-computer interface scenario outlined above.

Read it: In the long run, we are telepathic androids

I Am Not A Robot…Yet

There’s another possibility on this strange road to our future robot utopia: that we remove the interfaces altogether, and humans and robots become one.

My personal thoughts regarding “robot uprisings” have always been that it won’t be a swift revolution, but a gradual change. Specifically that, given the way we already integrate technology into our lives, in the future there won’t be this clear distinction between technology and humans. We will be, for better or worse, completely integrated.

Ultimately, I think Kevin Drum’s prediction of a “robot paradise” by 2040 is amazingly optimistic, and even the idea of brain-computer interfaces leaves me skeptical, at least for now. How can we create human-like artificial brains, or even brain interfaces, when we don’t even fully understand the real ones?

Controlling a 3D-printed hand is one thing, actually communicating over a network with your mind is another. I feel like we’re vastly underestimating the true capability and complexity of the human mind, here.

Then again, I’m neither or neuroscientist nor or a roboticist, so I’ll leave that to the experts.

Anyway, as always, let’s ask my good friend Tara the Android how she feels about our inevitable slide into robot supremacy:

Fantastic.

Image credit: Ricardo Diaz

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Crazy ants.

Think people would be happy? What’s crazy compared to fire, right? Here’s the problem: while fire ants are usually outside and they stick to themselves unless agitated, these new “crazy ants” — a species known as Nylanderia fulva — are a bit more chaotic. Oh, and they enjoy building “mega-colonies.” In your house.

“There are videos on YouTube of people sweeping out dustpans full of these ants from their bathroom. You have to call pest control operators every three or four months just to keep the infestation under control.”

Nylanderia fulva is native to Argentina and Brazil, but turned up in Houston, Texas in 2002. Since then, the crazy ants have spread to the east coast on down to Florida. They’re slow, but wherever they show up, they seem to drastically out-compete other ant species, including fire ants.

According to Edward LeBrun of the University of Texas at Austin, “When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back.”

So pick your ant-sized poison: the fire ant who, if trifled with, is liable to hit you with a potentially dangerous sting that causes pain similar “to what one feels when burned by fire,” or a crazy ant who gets all up into your electronics and builds an outpost in your bathroom.

There can be only one. I guess. I’m not really an ant scholar or anything.

Source: Alien ‘crazy ants’ invading southern U.S.

Image credit: Samantha Henneke

The post They’re Crazy, They’re Ants: “Crazy Ants” Invade Southeast U.S. appeared first on Stranger Dimensions.

That’s what a road-building company in Belize recently did. In order to retrieve gravel to fill a road, the company leveled the 2,300-year-old Nohmul temple. According to BBC News, “only a small core of the pyramid was left standing.” Fantastic.

Apparently, this isn’t something new, particularly in Belize. Other “Maya mounds” have been bulldozed for similar purposes. I understand that it’s probably difficult to protect all of these ancient structures, but it’s truly unfortunate that anyone would think to use them as “road filler” to begin with.

Parasites, eating away our history.

Image credit: Global Jet

The post Company Bulldozes Mayan Temple, Possibly Awakens Old Ones appeared first on Stranger Dimensions.

Well, their future. Our past. You have to think fourth-dimensionally.

What’s even cooler? Scott Bradlee, who provided a couple of the cover tracks for Bioshock Infinite (in particular, this Ragtime-Waltz cover of Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) has his own YouTube channel, where he and his friends remake modern music in a variety of past styles.

Together, they’re called Postmodern Jukebox, “Imagining the possibilities of music, one ridiculous video at a time…”

Indeed.

You can check out their version of Thrift Shop in the video up there, straight from the Jazz Age, or visit their channel for even more curious twists on the popular(?!) music of today.

Oh, and before I forget: I know you’ve been wondering what it would be like if Lady Gaga fell through a wormhole and ended up leading a classical quartet. Here you go.

The post A Different Kind of Time Travel: The Music of Today, Yesterday! appeared first on Stranger Dimensions.

“In order to explore the current limits of 3D printing technology, I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D-printable, 33rpm records and printed a few functional prototypes that play on ordinary record players. Though the audio quality is low -the records have a sampling rate of 11kHz (a quarter of typical mp3 audio) and 5-6 bit resolution (less than one thousandth of typical 16 bit resolution)- the songs are still easily recognizable…”

Sure, the vinyls only have a sampling rate of 11kHz (much less than the typical 44.1 kHz of standard MP3s), and nowhere near the usual 16 bit resolution, but that seems beyond the point. As a showcase of what you can accomplish with 3D-printing and a little ingenuity, this is pretty cool.

Of course, the process wasn’t exactly simple; Amanda began by developing a Processing algorithm to create a virtual 3D model of a record. After importing the raw audio data, the algorithm generates the geometry of the record and exports that data into a 3D-printable STL file.

Step over to Instructables for the full how-to, or visit Amanda Ghassaei’s website to see more of her incredible projects, including her Laser Cut Record, which is basically similar to the above 3D-printed record but with wood. And a laser cutter.

The post How to Convert Your MP3s into 3D-Printed “Vinyl” Records appeared first on Stranger Dimensions.

“Thousands of meteorites have collided with the Earth since 2500 BC. 34,513 have been recorded, only 1,042 have been seen falling. BOLIDES is an attempt to visualize and explore the meteorites that have collided with the Earth. The visualization focuses mainly on meteorites that were eye-witnessed when falling and hitting the ground.”

BOLIDES uses data from The Meteorite Bulletin, and focuses mainly on those meteorites that are confirmed and classified as “fell” — that is, they were visibly observed by people or devices while they fell to Earth. The website also contains information on each meteorite, including their size, type, and location of impact.

It’s an eye-opener, no doubt.

Check it out: BOLIDES – Visualizing meteorites

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