A couple of lucky ducks at genius factory MIT have been chosen by NASA to create the planes of the future. The future in this case is the year 2030, to be precise, and they'll have $2 million with which to do it. The Seaquest DSV-inspired image above is one of the initial designs pumped out by the team, led by MIT professor Edward Greitzer. In addition to designing sleek planes that will probably never see the light of day, the team will also be studying ways to make tomorrow's big metal birds quieter, greener and more energy efficient. And MIT, let's work on *insert lame leg room joke here* too, ok? [MIT]

Which OS comes with a pre-loaded Snow Leopard wallpaper image? Can one of the OS's make me look cool in a coffee shop? Will the radiance and beauty of Apple's latest OS distract diehard users enough to ignore its failings? The answers to these questions and more were answered by the crack tech team at The Onion this week. With hilarious results, as always. A tease is above. Hit the link for the full monty. [The Onion]

And it does it all without batteries of any kind. That is, if it ever comes to light (ugh). Slated for release in 2009, the 5.11's Light for Life UC3.400 LED flashlight uses the almost mystical power of an ultracapacitor to achieve a full 23.5-hour charge in 90 seconds. This torch is expensive at $170, but the makers promise you'll make that up and then some over the course of its 10-year lifetime.

The UC3.400 specs state the flashlight is rated for 50,000 recharges, regardless of temperature or storage conditions. Flashlight News does the math, and that comes out to one charge a day for 135 years, which is perfect given the cold, dark days the coming Singularity will bring.

Moe importantly, these stats best typical rechargeable flashlights with ease; current rechargeable flashlights begin to degrade after the first use, are affected by extreme hot and cold, and will last for just 500 to 1,000 charges.

This thing is also nigh indestructable, claims the manufacterer:

Made of a firearm-grade high-strength polymer, the 11.5' UC3.400 casing is fully sealed against the elements. It's abrasion, crack and bend-resistant. The temperature-tolerant ultracapacitors are rated at -40° F to 149° F (-40° C to 65° C). Also, the water-resistant, ruggedly built UC3.400 flashlight features solid-state construction.

[Flashlight News]

When the DSi specs were first revealed in front of the Nintendo money vault this past October, we noticed the battery life of the DS line went from 'pretty awesome' to 'WTF?' The brighter, larger screens were initially blamed for the 1-6 hour drop, but a field stripped DSi we discovered today hints the drain might be due to a beefier processor and speakers housed within.

The beefing up arrives, apparently, because of Nintendo's multimedia plans concerning the portable—mainly the new sound, video and photo manipulation features.

'The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range,' Bunnie says, adding that Linux could have a field day playing around on this system. Hackers, get going! [Bunnie's Blog via MAKE]

The Christmas ads are already hitting the airwaves, so it's only fair that we bring you this LED motherboard menorah way too early too. There are few surprises with this 5.5-inch tall by 9-inch wide menorah, other than the geek factor that comes alongside celebrating eight crazy nights with a motherboard and some LEDs. For $25 you too can celebrate Hanukkah 2.0. [Fred Flares via Technabob]

In case you forgot there's a big RED announcement happening this week on November 13, RED CEO Jim Jannard is again lighting up the RED User forums with another cryptic tease. Saying nothing more than 'Not sure what this means...' the outspoken exec lets fly some ports for the company's upcoming übercamera. As CrunchGear rightly notes, we're probably looking at two XLR ports, video outs and a proprietary connector. We'll know all on Thursday. And for all the pre-buzz, the RED people have made some really spectacular gear and we can't wait to see it trickle into consumer level gear. [RED User via Crunch Gear]

We have some bad news for people with pacemakers this afternoon. A new study found that headphone ear buds can make them a bit wonky. So, while you take a breather from Lauren Hill's Killing Me Softly, and drape those iPod ear buds around your neck, they could be, well, killing you softly. With his words. With magnets.

'Headphones contain magnets, and some of these magnets are powerful,' said Dr. William Maisel, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He added the usual 'it's too late now, bucko' caveat, of course, saying: 'I certainly don't think people should overreact to this information.'

Worse still, these are magnets we're talking about, so the danger arrives whether your player is powered on or off. Of the 27 people involved in the pacemaker study, four experienced 'interference' when headphones were placed within an inch of their chests. One patient had their pacemaker reset. Ten of the 33 patients with implanted defibrillators experience the same interference. Interference is classified as anything from 'not noticeable to the patient' to heart palpitations. In the case of the defibrillator, interference could keep the device from administering a life-saving shock.

I will now list some of the tasteless song puns I thought of while writing this post: Shot Through the Heart, Heartbreaker, and the aforementioned Killing Me Softly.. Your turn. [Yahoo News]

This video shows how FEMA no only deals with credible threats as hurricanes and terrorist attacks, but also with credible threats like alien attacks and UFO crashes: They have an entire chapter dedicated to this topic in their firefighters manual. Great. As if it wasn't enough with the UK government revealing airplane encounters with UFOs and Hubble discovering unidentified objects in Space to fuel my absolutely cuckoo, sculpt-giant-mountains-out-of-mash-potatoes, I-hope aliens-are-two-meter-tall-buxom-blue-amazons, I-want-to-ride-a-warp-capable-spaceship fantasies. [io9]

The Australians, not content to dive in the ocean deep with a mere shark cage, have taken to hopping in the water with 19.6ft long salt water crocodiles using nothing but 4cm of acrylic plastic to keep them safe. As the croc gnashes its teeth against the cage, you piss your pants, the wife takes some pics, and we once again reaffirm why dolphins are actually the dominant species on the planet.

The croc in question here, Choppa, was selected for this humiliating assignment because he lost two front teeth while fighting with some other 2,000lb. crocodiles at the Crocosaurus Cove amusement park.

'In the Northern Territory, the saltwater crocodile is an icon and is part of our life. They are always in the news, either in someone's swimming pool or killing someone's favorite horse,' said Michael 'That's not a knife, this is a knife' Scott, who opened the cage in July.

There have been no fatalities yet, although there are apparently some noticeable gashes in the plastic from the Choppa's remaining teeth. [Daily Mail]

November 9, 1967, T-minus 8.9 seconds: Thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen begin coursing through the giant center F1 rocket engine: The Saturn V's ignition sequence has begun. Next, two outer engines are lit, followed 300 milliseconds later by the other two, ignited in pairs to avoid toppling the 364-foot rocket above. Nine seconds after all five engines go to full thrust, the first Saturn V rocket begins to lift from the launchpad, taking the unmanned Apollo 4 check-out module into space.

The launch was flawless. Forty-one years ago to the day, the Saturn V became the biggest, tallest, largest-payload rocket ever to be sent into space. Even more amazingly, it still is.

If you talk about the Moon landings, some people remember Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon, and may think of the photo of that famous footprint, or the planting of the flag. I choose to remember the rocket that enabled it all, the Saturn V, a pretty shocking mechanical masterpiece all by itself.

Nearly everything about it is monumental in scale and historic in importance:

• At 364 feet high, it was roughly as tall as a 36-story building.

• Its launch weight of 6.7 million pounds was equal to about 2,200 average late '60s cars.

• Its orbital payload of 260,000 pounds is the equivalent of about 1,500 average people.

It was designed under the supervision of the rocket man, Wernher von Braun, and was chosen in 1963 from a list of potential systems proposed to make good President Kennedy's promise that a man would visit the moon within a decade.

The rocket was so very large that it required NASA to build the Vertical Assembly Building, one of the world's largest buildings. It had to be constructed in three stages, could hold four Saturn Vs at the same time, and was reportedly so large that it had its own weather systems. It's still used to put Space Shuttle stacks together, and will house the upcoming Ares series rockets too. It's also home to the four largest doors in the world.

The Saturn V's first-stage rockets—five F1s made by Rocketdyne—are the most powerful single-nozzle liquid fueled rocket engines ever to see service. The engine bell for each was over 12 feet across. Each engine developed 1.5 million pounds of thrust, drinking over 670 gallons of fuel mixture per second: That's enough to empty your typical 30,000-gallon swimming pool in around 45 seconds. The F1 even makes the more modern Shuttle seem wimpy, since each F1 had more thrust than all three Shuttle main engines combined.

Its second-stage rockets—five J2s, also by Rocketdyne—were the largest liquid-hydrogen rocket engines in their day, and remained so until the Space Shuttle's main engines were built. The J2s were also the first rocket engines that were able to restart in mid-flight.

In comparison, America's first manned rocket, the Redstone, was about the same length as the final stage of the Saturn V. Redstone was actually less powerful than the emergency escape rockets on the manned capsule atop the Saturn V. (I suppose it's important to note, too, that those escape rockets never had to be used.) And Redstone's maiden liftoff was only 14 years before the Saturn V's, which shows the tremendous speed of NASA's rocket program in the '50s and '60s.

Here's a great comparison chart of the world's biggest and best rockets:

Even the Space Shuttle, deemed by some the most complex machine humans have yet built, doesn't compare to the Saturn V. And if you're wondering what the unlabeled black rocket in the middle is, it's Saturn V's, the Soviet N1 moon-shot rocket. This had four attempted launches, none successful. Part of this was due to lack of management and funding, but part had to do with its incredibly complex first-stage design, which required the synchronized firing of 30 separate rocket engines.

Perhaps most amazing of all facts about the Saturn V is that each of its 12 main Saturn V launches was successful. Two of them suffered in-flight problems including engine cutoffs, but the on-board computers were able to compensate, resulting in a successful mission. The rocket was even considered at one point to act as a prototype for the first stage of the Space shuttle, thereby requiring no solid-rocket boosters. If that had happened, the 1986 disaster that befell Challenger would never have happened.

There were also plans for several post-Saturn V projects on the drawing boards. The best was a super-massive variant with eight engines in each of the first two stages, capable of launching all the International Space-Station hardware to orbit in one shot. Sadly, for political and financial reasons, all variants were canceled.

Today, there are other contenders as NASA suits up for the next moon shot. Though not as tall as its predecessor, the massive Ares V rocket, child of NASA's somewhat troubled Constellation program, is technically able to put 414,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit.

But until the Ares V flies, the Saturn V remains king of rockets. Call me overly nostalgic (or pessimistic, seeing as Ares is well underway), but I'm inclined to think the Saturn V may well keep that title forever.

There's minimalism, and then there's this LED concept watch from Hiranao Tsuboi at design firm 100%. The LED lights forgo the need for a watch face by being interwoven with the links on the wristband. The look is sleek, and unlike many concept timepieces these days, I can actually tell the time. [Design Boom]

As the economy slips deeper and deeper into oblivion, we can take some solace in these wonderful Black Friday ads that will inevitably trickle out up until the day after Thanksgiving. Today, we bring you the Dell Black Friday ad, complete with deals on their computers, media devices, monitors, peripherals—pretty much you name it, it might be there. That includes this pretty incredible Xbox 360 deal: XBOX 360 Arcade With 7 Games Including Rock Band 2 - $199.00. Wha?!

Full ad text below:

Dell Inspirion 530 Desktop E-Value Code 16254-DDPHDD1 - $479.00
Dell Inspiron 13 Laptop E-Value Code 16254-DNPHWD1 - $699.00
Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop 15.4' Widescreen E-Value Code 16254-DNPHPD4 - $559.00
Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop 15.4' Widescreen E-Value Code 16254-DNPHPD5 - $649.00
Dell Inspiron 518 Desktop E-Value Code 16254-DDPHOD1 - $549.00
Dell Inspiron 530s Desktop E-Value Code 16254-DDPHFD1 - $299.00
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Laptop 8.9' E-Value Code 16254-DNPHXD2 - $299.00
Dell Studio 15 Laptop 15.4' E-Value Code 16254-DNPHUD2 - $699.00
Dell Studio 17 Laptop 17' E-Value Code 16254-DNPHVD2 - $799.00
Dell Studio Desktop E-Value Code 16254-DDPHMD1 - $749.00
Dell Studio Hybrid E-Value Code 16254-DDPHLD1 - $699.00
Dell XPS 420 Desktop E-Value Code 16254-DXPHQY1 - $649.00
Dell XPS M1330 13.3' Laptop E-Value Code 16254-DYPHTE1 - $1029.00
Dell XPS M1530 15.4' Widescreen Laptop E-Value Code 16254-DYPHHE1 - $1029.00
Digital Cameras
Canon Powershot SD1100 8MP 3x Zoom Digital Camera - $159.99
DVD Players
Sony BDP-S350 Blu-Ray Disc Player - $249.99
Electronics
Smartparts 7' Digital Picture Frame - $44.99
GPS Navigation Systems
Magellan 1400 GPS Navigation Unit - Free With Select Laptops
Pharos PDR200 GPS - $94.99
Hard Drives
Western Digital 1TB My Book World Edition Network Storage - $169.99
Home Theater
Sony HDX275 Home Theater System - $229.99
Monitors
Dell SE198WFP 19' Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor E-Value Code 16254-DMPHWC1 - $129.00
MP3 Players
Creative Labs Zen Mozaic 8GB MP3 Player - $74.99
Networking & Wireless
Linksys WRT110 Rangeplus Wireless Router - $39.99
Software
Norton 360 2.0 All In One Security Software - $9.99
Television
Sharp 42' 1080p LCD HDTV - $779.00
Video Games
XBOX 360 Arcade With 7 Games Including Rock Band 2 - $199.00

[Black Friday Info]

Tucked away in Steve Ballmer's Webkit lip service from Friday was this gem about the potential for an Apple-esque Microsoft App Store. 'I actually will agree that there's some good work, particularly at Facebook and also with the iPhone, where both of those companies have made it easier for developers to distribute their applications,' he said. The chair chucker went on to say there's 'not much money being made' with those platforms, but he agreed with the concept, and confirmed there's something coming from Redmond on this front soon. So, Microsoft emulate Apple? I'll believe it when I see it... [Computerworld]

The Hubble space telescope, despite its foibles, is perhaps best known for the humbling, amazing, and awesome image known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). The HUDF, assembled from 800 separate exposures, offered humans an incredible look back at the history of the universe (and no fewer than 10,000 galaxies). Well, another magnificent piece of human engineering, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, played some cosmic Chasing the Jones' this past week when it captured the deepest ground-based U-band image of the universe. Ever. We are so small.

Space junkies, go to town with the full presser below. And, for those of you with some time on your hands, the ESO has a link to the full 80 MB TIFF image in the page we linked to below.

A Pool of Distant Galaxies – the deepest ultraviolet image of the Universe yet

Anyone who has wondered what it might be like to dive into a pool of millions of distant galaxies of different shapes and colours, will enjoy the latest image released by ESO. Obtained in part with the Very Large Telescope, the image is the deepest ground-based U-band image of the Universe ever obtained. It contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observations with the VIMOS instrument.

This uniquely beautiful patchwork image, with its myriad of brightly coloured galaxies, shows the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S), arguably the most observed and best studied region in the entire sky. The CDF-S is one of the two regions selected as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), an effort of the worldwide astronomical community that unites the deepest observations from ground- and space-based facilities at all wavelengths from X-ray to radio. Its primary purpose is to provide astronomers with the most sensitive census of the distant Universe to assist in their study of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The new image released by ESO combines data obtained with the VIMOS instrument in the U- and R-bands, as well as data obtained in the B-band with the Wide-Field Imager (WFI) attached to the 2.2 m MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla, in the framework of the GABODS survey.

The newly released U-band image – the result of 40 hours of staring at the same region of the sky and just made ready by the GOODS team – is the deepest image ever taken from the ground in this wavelength domain. At these depths, the sky is almost completely covered by galaxies, each one, like our own galaxy, the Milky Way, home of hundreds of billions of stars.

Galaxies were detected that are a billion times fainter than the unaided eye can see and over a range of colours not directly observable by the eye. This deep image has been essential to the discovery of a large number of new galaxies that are so far away that they are seen as they were when the Universe was only 2 billion years old.

In this sea of galaxies – or island universes as they are sometimes called – only a very few stars belonging to the Milky Way are seen. One of them is so close that it moves very fast on the sky. This 'high proper motion star' is visible to the left of the second brightest star in the image. It appears as a funny elongated rainbow because the star moved while the data were being taken in the different filters over several years.

[European Southern Observatory via Slashdot]

Apparently our polite neighbors to the north, the Canadians, are going to use two underwater robots to bolster their claims over the Arctic in 2010. These twin $4 million Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (not T-1000's, lame), are being constructed by the very un-Cyberdyne sounding International Submarine Engineering to scout out and claim potential drilling locations in the cold north. The ice cold Arctic, as you may know, is a hotly contested territory for the Canadians, Russians, Norwegians, Danes, and United States. Sadly, there are no frickin' laser beams. Which is too bad, because we're positive Putin armed his Russian robot submersibles to the teeth. At the very least, they'll have GPS.

The robot submarines are just the latest tool for the five 'polar nations' currently jockeying for supremacy in the oil-rich Arctic Circle. Trouble is, there's no land mass up there, which is the traditional yard stick for territorial disputes, so the interested parties have taken to mapping the terrain underwater.

For Canada, this means determining where the Canadian continental shelf ends, and whether or not the subs can discern 'geological links' between the country's northern coast, High Arctic Islands, and two underwater mountain ranges: the Alpha and Lomonosov ridges. The latter certainly sounds Russian, but who are we to get in the way of a little apocalyptic robot war, right? [Canada.com]

Onyx Online, for the iPhone, is kind of like Xbox Live. Sort of. The ambitious service is the brainchild of Trism developer Steve Demeter, who hopes to add a slew of 'social media' features to iPhone games, like leaderboards, achievements, forums, and the like. There's even a pissing contest feature, wherein Onyx-enabled games will allow players to view each other's profiles, scores, challenge friends, and see what games people are playing. Like we said, just add a headset and some 15-year-old boys screaming 'your gay' and you have Xbox Live (and no, there's no typo there— even when they scream it, they use the wrong spelling, just like in the forums).

The thing is, Onxy was created more out of a sense of self-preservation amongst developers than it was keeping it real for people who game on the iPhone. As the App Store becomes cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of throwaway games, Demeter told Wired the indie developer is in danger of being muscled out by big boys like Sega, who have the marketing budget to get their titles (for better or worse) to the top of the heap.

So by making games talk to one another, or by encouraging some competition among the players, a pack mentality begins to take shape with the smaller games. A rising tide raises all boats, or the saying goes.

'Right now games don't introduce the social aspect at all on the iPhone,' Demeter told Wired. 'If there is a social aspect it's an island. If these users are playing Trism, they're playing Trism; it's an island. How does that tie into other puzzle games? If players are still connected to a larger whole then they're more likely to keep playing other games.'

Demter then claimed Onyx will 'save' the App Store. For now, we'll agree that it could save something—Demeter's busines—but we'll be watching this one nevertheless. [Wired]

World-famous DJ/mashup artist Girl Talk (a.k.a. Greg Gillis) has gone on record: he's a PC, and his sweatband may not be totally ironic. His 'I'm a PC' short features a lot of his philosophies on music, which aren't so interesting, and his habit of taping Saran wrap to his computer during shows, which is sort of interesting. In between are shots of his live performances, which really are a ton of fun, and fleeting glimpses of sweaty yet colorful American Apparel.

I'm a huge, unabashed, and unembarrassed Girl Talk fan, yet even I'm not sure that, like he says, 'Software and computers are the most punk rock thing that's happened, ever.' I think punk rock might actually hold that crown. But hey, Night Ripper was the unofficial dance party soundtrack for my entire fourth year at college, so whatever you say, dude. [YouTube]

I'm kinda disappointed Google CEO Eric Schmidt really won't be the country's first ever chief tech officer after all. Despite rumors and (fairly reasonable) speculation he was not-so-subtly campaigning for the position (and Obama), yesterday he definitively said that he wouldn't take the position if offered:

'I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no.' His experience and knowledge of all kinds of tech—he's really into green energy, for instance—made him one of my personal favorite choices for the position. And Google mojo is a plug by itself. So who do you want whispering in the president-elect's ear about new solar power technologies, the effect of YouPorn HD on our nation's broadband infrastructure and revamping kids' education to make them more prepared in a world that revolves around bits as much as bullets? [Reuters via Neowin]

An observant small-towner spotted AT&T's Sidekick rival, the Quickfire, in a nameless rural burg somewhere in (we presume) the heartland: 'small town' is all the info we have. It's all hooked up, activated and everythin'. The Quickfire's official release is this Monday, Nov. 10th, but out there with the good people, deadlines don't matter so much. You can see up top there that this phone can navigate you to Main Street, not that Wall Street all them city folks have messed up so bad. The fine people over at FreeHTC ain't releasin' any location specifics, but you can find the phone's specs after the jump.

- 2.8' touchscreen display
- full QWERTY keyboard
- quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS, as well as Bluetooth
- MicroSD slot
- $99 with 2-year contract
- lime green, orange, or silver accents (!) [FreeHTC]