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This ATLAS mini model is gathering votes.

(Credit:
Sascha Mehlhase)

Unfortunately, the Large Hadron Collider is too big to bring home and put on display in your living room. Scientist Sascha Mehlhase created a 4,500-piece Lego model of the collider back in 2011 at a cost of about $2,700. That was also too big for most people.

Now, he has created a smaller model of the ATLAS experiment, a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, and put it up as a candidate for an official Lego kit.

The project is on Cuusoo, a site for Lego enthusiasts to share their models and attempt to gather 10,000 votes in order for Lego to consider making their creations as kits. Mehlhase’s ATLAS currently has 5,756 supporters, so it has definitely caught the eyes of Lego builders.

The new kit requires only 560 pieces, takes around an hour to construct, and has a materials costs of about $100, making it much more accessible than the big-daddy model.

Mehlhase is a postdoc at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, working on searches for stable massive particles in ATLAS. He also dedicates time to physics outreach projects aimed at getting kids excited about science. His discovery of a stable massive ATLAS Lego model has led him to the creation of a version that has a shot at ending up in the hands of Lego and physics enthusiasts around the world. If it works out, it will be a pretty impressive outreach accomplishment.

It’s heartening to know that adult scientists with access to some of the largest and most impressive scientific equipment ever created still want to play with little plastic blocks.

Mehlhase’s original model was much larger.

(Credit:
Sascha Mehlhase)

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(Credit:
Nic Healey/CNET Australia (right), Reuben Lee/CNET Asia (left))

Both Samsung and LG, two of the biggest players in the burgeoning world of Organic Light Emitting Diode televisions, have announced (or depending on where you live, are selling) curved OLED screens to go along with traditional “flat” OLED screens.

Curved screens have been used in theaters for decades, and more recently in some high-end home theaters too. In a TV though, it’s nothing more than a gimmick.

Here’s why.

(Credit:
LG)

Let me say up front that I am a huge fan of OLED. So much so that it pains me to write this article. OLED promises better picture quality than plasma, better energy efficiency than LED LCD, while being both thinner and lighter. You can sort of buy an LG model right now, and Samsung’s version seems perpetually on the horizon. We saw prototypes of 4K OLED TVs from Sony and Panasonic (they’ve teamed up), but nothing else so far. The issue is, and long has been, making them cheap enough to manufacture.

Curved screens have been found in many theaters, the most famous probably being the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. It’s not a new idea, but the benefits still hold true today…in certain circumstances. With really large screens, one of the biggest advantages is being able to “focus” more light towards the audience. Another is reducing optical distortions when using certain projection lenses. There’s also a potential “naturalness” to an image that has every part equidistant to your eyeballs. But perhaps the most notable benefit is the ability to fill a massive percentage of a viewer’s field of view. Sitting in the right seat, one could have the image practically wrapped around them.

This is how Samsung describes the benefits of a curved screen: “the curved panel allows the distance between the user and TV screen to be the same from almost any angle.” And LG’s take: “With a gentle inward flex, the entire screen surface is equidistant from the viewer’s eyes, removing the problem of screen-edge visual distortion and detail loss.” So by their own definitions, one of the main reasons to have a curved screen is so every part is the same distance from the viewer’s eye.

Radius, radii, radiuses
The problem is not with the idea of curved screens, but a curved screen TV. To get the benefit of a wraparound image, or even the benefit of a more natural image that has every part equidistant from your eye, you need to be sitting in a pretty specific place. With a theater screen, that place is an area big enough in which a lot of people can sit. Sure, people off to the sides aren’t getting the best effect (if any), but the folks in the middle are. With a smaller curved screen, that sweet spot is a lot smaller. 

(Credit:
LG)

Small TVs don’t have a very large sweet spot to being with. (I’m counting 55-inch TVs as small in this context, as they are small compared to theater screens.) Let’s take the curved aspect out for a moment. What’s the ideal seating area for a 55-inch, 1080p TV? That’s actually pretty easy. You should be sitting close enough so that you’re able to see all the resolution. Not so close that you can see individual pixels, but not so far that the TV could be 720p and it wouldn’t look any different. You also want it to fill your field of view enough so that it’s not like looking at a postage stamp from across the room.

I covered this from the other side in How big a TV should I buy? and we can use similar math here. THX recommends the TV fill 40 degrees of your field of view. So for a 55-inch TV, they’re recommending you sit 66 inches away. This is also about where people with 20/20 vision are seeing all the resolution possible with 1080p. SMPTE recommends 30 degrees, so they’re saying you should be 88 inches away.

So ideally, a curved OLED screen should have a curve whose radius is somewhere between 66 and 88 inches. Since most people still sit about 108 inches from their TVs, we could even accept this as an outside number.

(Credit:
Samsung)

Thankfully, Dennis Burger of HomeTechTell did some math and research on the curved part already. He figured that at a distance of 90 inches (well within our range), the TV would need a curve of about 3 inches between the center and the edges. The LG is not nearly this deep. According to LG, the OLED’s curve is 5 degrees, not the 7.5 needed for a 90-inch viewing distance. How different is that? Well, the LG’s “sweet spot,” based on its curve, is 134 inches away. Over 11 feet. Not only is this farther than most people sit from their TV, but it also means it might as well be 720p. In other words, in order to get every part of the screen equidistant from your eye, LG’s stated goal, you have to be sitting so far away that the screen will look tiny.

But this is all getting into the weeds. Even if a new curved OLED screen comes out, it effectively requires the owner to sit at a rather precise distance from the screen. Too close or too far, and the curve loses its major benefits. And let’s not forget, this is for one viewer. With several people on the couch, all the claimed benefits are lost.

(Credit:
Samsung)

Bottom line
Look, the fact that a “flat” screen TV can be curved at all is pretty amazing. But since OLED is barely off the ground (arguably, not off the ground at all), it’s disappointing to see finite resources going into something of little value beyond “hey, neato” which, also arguably, OLED inherently has already.

However, this won’t always be the case (we hope). The beauty of OLED is that, in theory, it’s scalable in size and resolution. So projection-screen-size, or even wall-size OLED screens are theoretically possible. In that case, a curved screen could be pretty awesome.

And while we’re dealing with this far off future, how about a flat, wall-size OLED screen that, at the touch of a button, curves in at the edges for movies? Flexible OLED screens. That’s a thing, too. Hurry up future times.

Got a question for Geoff? First, check out all the other articles he’s written on topics like HDMI cables, LED LCD vs. plasma, Active vs Passive 3D, and more. Still have a question? Send him an e-mail! He won’t tell you what TV to buy, but he might use your letter in a future article. You can also send him a message on Twitter: @TechWriterGeoff.

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Flames in space form actual fireballs.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET)

Here on planet Earth we’re used to flames — whether from a candle or campfire — reaching upward to the sky with slender limbs hungry for oxygen and driven by rising hot air. But in space, sans our planet’s strong gravitational pull, flames are more likely to take the shape of eerie fireballs.

Within the flame of a regular candle wick, there’s quite a bit going on. As the video below released this week by NASA explains, molecules from the wick are being cracked apart and vaporized by the flame, then combined with oxygen to produce light, heat, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as soot.

In recent years we’ve become quite familiar with how flames can extend and expand quickly in their greedy quest for more fuel and oxygen; witness countless western wildfires of the past decade. But researchers aboard the International Space Station have observed that flames in microgravity behave much differently, staying in a small spherical shape and letting oxygen molecules come to them.

They also discovered something very strange while conducting experiments on how to put out fires in their environment. Small droplets of a fuel called heptane were set aflame inside a test chamber. The flames quickly went out, but surprisingly the droplets continued to burn without the presence of flames.

It could be that flames are actually present, but just too faint to see, something NASA refers to as “cool flames.”

Cool flames can burn at temperatures as low as 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but they behave very differently from the flames we’re used to. For starters, they don’t produce the carbon dioxide we’re used to getting from fires. Instead they give off carbon monoxide and formaldehyde. Fortunately, cool flames typically can’t exist on earth for more than a few fractions of a second, whereas they can persist on the International Space Station for up to a minute.

However, NASA says these insights could have practical implications on our planet, such as better fuel efficiency.

So get ready for the next generation of vehicles — new, improved, and with more space fireballs! Watch the video below for a more eloquent explanation of the science and let us know what potential you see in formaldehyde-expelling balls of fire in the comments.

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(Credit:
Duolingo)

We’ve seen some pretty creative marriage proposals, but we never would have thought of proposing via a language-learning app. Flavio Esposito, on the other hand, seems to like thinking outside the down-on-one-knee box.

The Italian man’s American girlfriend was using Duolingo to learn Italian, so he got in touch with the Duolingo team to come up with a surprise.

“She’s learning my own language, and she enjoys it so much that I’m wondering if I could ask you to set up an exercise for her that would lead to the big question: ‘Will you marry Flavio Esposito?’” he wrote.

The team, unable to resist either the challenge or the romance, set about writing some translation exercises for Kate to be dropped into her learning program.

“Lu ti ama,” ran the first one: “He loves you.” “Lu ti adora:” “he adores you.” “Voi due parlate a telefono tutte le sere:” “the two of you talk on the phone every evening.”

Then the big question:

(Credit:
Duolingo)

Who could say no? Certainly not Kate.

(Credit:
Duolingo)

We hope the happy couple lives blissfully and bilingually ever after.

Have you seen or been part of a creatively techy marriage proposal? Tell us about it in the comments below.

(Source: Crave Australia)

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A trick sure to inspire copycats around the world.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Christopher MacManus/CNET)

After saving (or destroying) the galaxy, what’s a Jedi or Sith supposed to do in their off time? A comedic group called JesterLads came up with a hilarious trick that made many people think a mysterious hooded figure was opening elevator doors with the power of the Force seen in “Star Wars.”

With a hidden camera rolling, unsuspecting people in the elevator think it’s just another normal day, but suddenly change tune as a nearby man wearing a gray hoodie waves his hand to reopen the elevator door that’s about to close.

The reactions from other elevator occupants, which make the video totally worth watching, range from pure awe (“Are you Neo or something?”) to anger (“Stop doing that”). Some people just stare at the hooded man and smile, perhaps wondering if they’ve happened to come across a real-life Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Sadly, this isn’t a real Jedi trick, as the hooded figure happens to wave his hand in synchronization with his accomplice hitting the elevator button. Regardless, I’m sure many of you found humor in this piece by JesterLads comedians George and Austin, who set up the “Star Wars” elevator prank at King’s College London.

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The Paravelo looks ready for launch.

(Credit:
XploreAir)

First, flying food became a trend. Now, the hot new flying creations are flying bicycles. The latest entry in the wheeled-air-machine category comes from British company XploreAir. It’s a bicycle, flying machine, and camping tent all built into one device.

The Paravelo can be taken apart and used as just a bike, or it can docked to its trailer with a flexible wing and biofuel-powered fan. Up in the air, it can go at speeds up to 25 mph for up to 3 hours and reach heights up to 4,000 feet up.

The bike itself is fairly lightweight, though the trailer with the fan adds quite a bit of size to the whole contraption. It all folds down for storage. XploreAir says the purchase and operating costs of the Paravelo will be similar to having a small family
car.

XploreAir is currently raising funds on Kickstarter to further develop the project. The biggest problem here is that you can’t actually get one of these flying bikes for a pledge.

The best you can hope for is to plop down $7,800 and get a non-flying replica of the bike, along with the option to buy one of the first five Paravelos to come off the production line. For that price, I would hope for at least a hop, skip, and a jump. The Paravelo won’t come cheap, but that’s not surprising.

If the Paravelo gets off the ground, it could open an interesting new chapter in personal exploration. It’s more adventurous than just hopping in your car. What is it with our desire to take earth-bound things and make them fly through the air, preferably with people on board? I guess we’re still envious of birds.

(Via TechEBlog)

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Project Zero, shown here at the Paris Air Show, is big enough for a single passenger.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

LE BOURGET, France — Sure, there are electric vehicles on the road now. But aviation company AgustaWestland thinks they may have a place in the air, too.

At the Paris Air Show here, the Finmeccanica subsidiary showed off an exotic tiltrotor aircraft called Project Zero that’s powered by lithium batteries. It flies, but project manager Jianye Zhang wouldn’t say how far or how fast.

Project Zero at the Paris Air Show (pictures)

The single-passenger aircraft looks like a flying wing, but it’s got two propellers built into the surface of the wing. For takeoff, the propellers push air downward to thrust the aircraft up like a helicopter; to fly, the propellers rotate toward a vertical orientation to thrust the aircraft forward.

“For us, this is a demonstration — an incubator,” Zhang said.

There are three technology goals AgustaWestland wanted to accomplish with the design: an all-electric motor, a very precise propeller blade control that adjusts each blade’s pitch 18 times a second, and a complete absence of the hydraulic systems commonly found in helicopters.

Hydraulics are a maintenance hassle and must be checked for leaks before every flight, so the company wanted to see what could be done without them.

Project Zero is very light, Zhang said, through use of a lot of carbon fiber and other weight-saving materials. He wouldn’t say precisely how much the aircraft weighed, but said it was more than 500 kilograms.

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The Emerald City is part of a Wizard of Oz display built by 12 members for Brickworld 2013.

(Credit:
Captain Redstorm/Flickr)

We’ve seen plenty of crazy Lego re-creations over the years, from landmark architecture to vintage computers, but we can’t help but be impressed when an entire movie is redone in bricks.

That would be 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” which a team of 12 Lego builders has turned into a marvelous 3D plastic diorama that includes just about every scene in the film, including a rotating tornado.

The collaborators from VirtuaLUG recently showed off the result of their teamwork at Brickworld 2013 Chicago, a display of spectacular Lego builds.

VirtuaLUG has done displays including portrayals of “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Lord of the Rings.” For its “Wizard of Oz” set, the 12 builders in three different countries worked on their components separately and then assembled them in Chicago.

The display, at least 10 feet long, begins with a sepia-tone re-creation of Kansas, complete with a spinning tornado carrying Dorothy’s house off to Oz.

It then turns into a brightly colored array of bricks to simulate Munchkinland and the Yellow Brick Road, which leads away to show minifigs of Dorothy meeting the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion.

The road leads through the poppy fields to the Emerald City, an eye-popping build of the green metropolis.

The display continues into the dark forest, which lights up with ultraviolet lights for an eerie glow, to the witch’s castle, which has a detachment of Winkie guards on the bridge. It concludes back in Emerald City as Oz’s balloon is about to launch.

Check out Beyond the Brick’s walk-through video of The Wizard of Oz display, which was named best collaboration at Brickworld, below.

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How about listener Orlando’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II: 404 emblem?

On today’s show we’re welcoming Dan Chiappini from GameSpot Australia along with 404 veteran Scott Stein. We’ll briefly recap Scott’s time down at
WWDC but then get right into some more E3 talk where we make Scott feel jealous about missing what was probably the biggest E3 in something like seven years. Dan think he knows why Nintendo refuses to open its “vault” of games and we all wonder how the company can rebound from a bleak E3 showing.

We’re also chatting about the mundane abundance of shooters at
E3, the lack of innovation, and which games actually piqued our interest.

And be sure to enter CNET’s awesome “From Old School to Tech Cool” contest that’s currently underway on our Facebook page!

– Follow our new buddy Dan Chiappini on Twitter

– Make sure to do the same for 404 veteran Scott Stein

– Catch up on Scott’s and the rest of CNET’s WWDC coverage

– Give CNET’s E3 2013 page one last skim

Episode 1286

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The giant asteroid Vesta as captured by the Dawn spacecraft.

(Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Are you up for a challenge? How about a Grand Challenge? NASA on Tuesday issued a Grand Challenge aimed at locating all asteroid threats to Earth and figuring out what to do about them.

It seems the asteroid threat has really picked up steam lately. We’ve had some close fly-bys. Some scientists have suggested nuking asteroids if they get too near. NASA has an initiative to lasso an asteroid for closer study. It’s been asteroid fever around the planet lately.

You don’t have to have a string of initials behind your name or a place on the roster of a science agency to participate in this challenge. It’s open to all, including citizen scientists.

“NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth’s orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver in an announcement.

Along with the challenge, NASA issued a request for information for ideas on locating, redirecting, and exploring asteroids. If you or your organization has been spending some of brain power on the asteroid problem, then now is the time to share your thoughts.

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