Science

Not long ago, word leaked of a plan that could take anyone with an extra $150 million on a trip around the moon. So SpaceX founder Elon Musk's assertion today that he hopes to be able to take people on a round-trip to Mars for $500,000 signals a much better deal.

Musk told the BBC that he expects to unveil details of his plans sometime later this year or in early 2013. Essentially, though, Musk believes that with its Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX may already have the base infrastructure in place that could get paying … Read more

If you're a local fan of digital art, there's a good chance you spent at least part of your weekend at the Creators Project, a celebration of the art form that drew thousands to see a diverse collection of interactive installations here in San Francisco.

From 40-foot-tall latticework cubes filled with LEDs (see video below) to huge triptychs that converted people's body images into flights of fancy, the project showcased some of the best--and worst--digital art around. It also gave visitors access to a collection of films on the topic, and the chance to listen to a number of musicians, including the hit group, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. … Read more

Happy 10th birthday, SpaceX.

On March 14, 2002, entrepreneur Elon Musk, one of the so-called "PayPal Mafia" members, launched his new company with a modest goal: to become a world leader in private space exploration.

Ten years later, SpaceX has achieved just that, especially after inking the 2008 deal that gave its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft the exclusive rights to take NASA's cargo to and from the International Space Station after the end of the Space Shuttle program.

But the company has had plenty of other noteworthy milestones, including its 2006 deal with NASA to … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--These days, smartphones seem like they're everywhere. And with their wide array of built-in sensors, those devices--iPhone, Androids, Windows Phones, and others--can provide us with more and more data about where we are and what's around us than ever before.

And yet, the devices sometimes still seem like they're caught in a very 1.0 era--they can tell us where we are, but that information may not be useful in any way beyond helping us get to where we're going.

But what if your iPhone could automatically give you your shopping list when you arrive … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--When Richard Garriott went to space, he lost money on the deal. Next time, he wants to make a profit.

In October 2008, Garriott, a well-known video game designer, traveled as a space tourist to the International Space Station.

The son of a NASA astronaut who grew up thinking everyone goes to space--because his neighbors all had been--his dream of following in his father's footsteps was dashed when he learned as a teenager that his eyes disqualified him for the job. "Being told I was not going to be allowed to go into space," Garriott said, &… Read more

IBM said this evening that its scientists have developed a computer chip that can move a trillion bits of information a second.

Known as the "Holey Optochip," the prototype optical chipset can transfer the equivalent of 500 high-definition movies a second, or the entire U.S. Library of Congress Web archive in an hour, Big Blue said. The innovation is possible because IBM's scientists figured out that, by drilling 48 minuscule holes in a standard quarter-inch silicon CMOS chip, they were able to ramp up data transfer rates from what was possible.

And by breaking through the … Read more

Two small asteroids now bear the names of two towering figures in computing history, Unix inventors Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.

Asteroid 300909 Kenthompson and 294727 Dennisritchie both were discovered in 2008 by Tom Glinos and D. H. Levy (the latter famous for being a discover of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which smashed into Jupiter in 1994).

Rob Pike, who worked with the pair where the influential operating system was invented, AT&T's Bell Labs, flagged the news in a Google+ post yesterday; the new names apparently arrived in February. Pike nowadays is heavily involved in Google's … Read more

Some people think of scientists as quiet people in white coats secreted away in labs, rarely seeing the light of day. I know better than that.

As the daughter of a chemistry prof, I'm well aware of the humorous side of science, with its jokes about atoms, geology innuendos, and mathematics puns. Fake Science is where Nobel laureates go for an online laugh. … Read more

If you want to know how the U.S. Navy's futuristic electromagnetic railgun works, you could hop on over to the information page on the Office of Naval Research's Web site. Or you could watch a monotone Taiwanese animation.

If you're not familiar with the railgun, it's a favorite Navy project that is intended to be able to launch a 5-inch projectile more than 100 miles without the use of traditional explosives. Using a complex system that forces the projectile out of a ship-bound gun at more than 4,500 miles, the Navy hopes to be … Read more