Awesome Science

Before the B-2 bomber was Germany’s Horten 2-29, which NatGeo has recreated to test out its stealth abilities; the result? World War 2 London would have never seen it coming.

Most of you have likely seen this fantastic photo of Russia’s Sarychev volcano taken by the space station, but even better is this sequence of 29 photos stitched together into an animation.

We wish we had one of these Chem C3000 kits as kids; ideal for budding mad scientists with 387 experiments, it’s packed with two dozen compounds, test tubes, flasks and more.

Born out of a swine flu discussion, Jer Thorp’s Just Landed is another Twitter mashup, but this time using “just landed/arrived in” tweets and the user’s hometown to track their movements.

Created by Ringling College student Christopher Hendryx for his thesis, Oxygen is not only beautifully rendered but by far the most entertaining chemistry lesson we’ve ever had.

While influenza of any type is a nasty little bugger, this visualization of H1N1/Swine Flu makes it look surprisingly beautiful, with mutated viruses exploding from respiratory epithelial cells.

The U.S. electrical grid is laid out in all its bare, crumbling glory with these interactive maps by NPR; you’ll be able to see the major power lines, sources of power and power plant locations.

Modern Thinker is Peter Terren’s rendition of Rodin’s classic Thinker, albeit with Tesla coils and sparklers; a fine wire mask and foil suit kept hit from becoming a Modern Charcoal Briquette.

If you liked yesterday’s Bacon Lance of Death, you’ll want to check out Mad Science; it’s by Theo Gray, the same guy behind the Bacon Lance, and includes 52 extreme experiments.

Situated in a 10′ x 10′ x 10′ room with $600k worth of projector equipment, IDEO Labs’ 3D Immersion isn’t perfect (UCSB has a spherical rig), but seems like ridiculous fun to use.

Using nothing more than bacon and an air house, Theo Gray creates a thermic lance capable of cutting steel; it’s really about the oil, as he also uses cucumber and oil-coated breadsticks.

The racing stripes make it look like a soapbox racer, but CMU’s Scarab Lunar Rover is all business: able to work in light or dark using 3D laser scanners, it features a 1 meter coring drill.

This Time Travelers Essentials tee is the only shirt you’ll ever need: it includes info on electricity, chemistry and other basic sciences if you feel up to changing making history.

Consider us en-light-ened: Richard Box’s FIELD is an array of 1,301 fluorescent tubes that draw their power from the electromagnetic fields generated by overhead transmission lines.

Used to improve vision after macular degeneration, this Implantable Mini Telescope (IMT) is a 4mm long prosthesis that is implanted in one eye; it enlarges images up to 3x.

Based off of the Jesus lizard, this Water Runner Robot is designed to move across the surface of water thanks to large, disc-shaped feet; next up: steering, and then world domination.

Looks like we’ll be piloting BattleMechs soon: Honda has developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that uses blood flow and electrical potential to control an ASIMO robot. Thanks, Sonic!

iPhone apps are nearly a dime a dozen, but Tapbots’ Convertbot has an ultra-slick interface despite having rather mundane uses; it’ll convert everything from currency to power.

The 3″ nickel-alloy Rosetta Disk (a modern Rosetta Stone) is now online; the original is micro-etched with 13,000 pages of language documentation on over 1,500 languages.

The SRV-1 Blackfin is a fully assembled surveillance robot that you can control via the web using a Java-based console; it’s customizable with open source code and schematics.

This six-ton Tmsuk T-52 Enryu robot translates to “rescue dragon;” a pair of arms can each lift 1100 pounds, ideal for earthquake and accident rescue ops (or taking out deranged cyborgs).

Based on existing capacitive panels, Mitsubishi’s 3D Touch is targeted towards the mobile market; it’s a 5.7″ screen which senses a finger’s distance and speed without physical contact.

I Heart Chaos’ Periodic Table of Video Game Characters is one that we could get lost in for a good half hour; they’ve managed to pair (by letter) a character with each real life element.