The big kahuna, the 800lb gorilla, the game to end all games, and it might **might** be released this year. On next-gen.biz, an interview with Shane Kim (microsoft game studios general manager) reveals that:

“Shane Kim: I call it The Mythical Halo 3 - we haven’t announced any such game yet! Obviously the Halo franchise is very important to us. When you have Bill Gates being quoted fairly constantly, talking about a game, you know it’s important to the company. But his recent comments reflect the position accurately. Which is that, if there were a Halo 3 we would be careful about how we announce and introduce it. It’s exactly the same way we talked about Halo 2, where people wanted it a year after Halo. That would not have accomplished anything.

Next-Gen.biz: Is it coming out this year?

Shane Kim: It depends. If it’s the game that everyone is expecting then, yes. For us it’s about making a proper impact on the platform. It has to be something with huge significance, so we won’t be rushed. We don’t want all the hype and speculation to overshadow some of the great titles that do have coming this holiday and thereafter. Gears of War has an incredible level of anticipation. I think it has more anticipation than Halo did before Halo came out. If you remember the E3 before the launch [of Xbox] a lot of people were not sure that Halo would be so great. We learned a lot of lessons at that E3. We chose not to show a lot of titles at this past E3. For people in the industry, their first assessment of a title is based on the visual impact.”

So there you have it. Don’t expect the Halo 3 shadow to fall over Mass Effect or Gears of War, but it’s out there somewhere, and it’s most definitely coming to get you.

Read the full story here

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A Japanese concern has created a device that can create three dimensional images consisting of dot arrays in empty space. By focusing laser light, the device makes use of the plasma air emission phenomenon to generate these glowing lights. The article is an interesting read, check out the full story and some additional images here. A series of galvanometric mirrors and a linear motor allow any number of different images to be produced.

Do you see the possibilities here….?

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(actual algae not pictured)
Seeing as how the whole world is going to have to find something else to put in it’s gas tank beside gasoline, a cheap and efficient way to produce hydrogen is badly needed. Researchers at the University of California at Berekely have engineered a strain of pond scum that with further refinements could produce vast amounts of hydrogen. Perhaps pond scum is not so lowly after all. Read the whole story here.

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Blu-ray players will hit North America on May 23rd, with a short list of movies available the day the player hits stores. New movies will retail for $39.99, and older titles at $29.99. Okayyyy…… so I get draconian DRM, double the cost of new DVD titles, but it’s HD….. Hmmmmmm, maybe I’ll wait and see what the HDDVD prices look like.

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51 individual hubble exposures were needed to create this composite image. The full image, which can be found here, is 16,000 x 12,00 pixels in size. The Pinwheel galaxy is twice the size of the milky way and contains roughly 1 trillion stars.

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 Episode 3 [58:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 3 of the Unsayable Podcast is now available for download. This week we have deadly protons, Gears of War, and Mutant Chicken with Alligator teeth.

Links from this week’s show include:

• This week in Darpa: Exoskeletons
• Challenges to deep space travel
• Mutant chicken grows alligator teeth
• PS3 launch doubts and pricing issues hurt Sony’s stock
• Xbox 360 controller costs $11 to produce

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A new article on Defenstech.org gives some details on the “active denial” system, which is a microwave based energy weapon, and Pulsed Energy Projectile weaponry. The pulsed energy projectile is a laser based system that can be targeted with pinpoint accuracy from miles away, this system would, “(fire) a short intense pulse of laser energy. This vaporizes the outer layer of the target, creating a rapidly-expanding expanding ball of plasma.”Sounds painful, doesn’t it?

Read the full story:

Defensetech.org

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This article is awesome. Imagine the possibilities, if the genetic information to create teeth is still present, albiet dormant, in modern chickens…. then what genetic traits lay untapped within the human genome? Are we looking at the beginning of reactivating latent genetic instructions? Humans with preternatural strength, gills, tails, or even fur? As strange as it may be, I think there may be an untapped business market here. The merging of humans with animals has been a phenomenon in every culture I’ve ever studied, humans seem to love the idea of blending themselves with the strength of other animals. Obviously there are some very complex bioethical issues that have to be addressed here, but if we behave true to form, if we can do it, we will do it. Read the whole article on Sciam.com

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On long voyages through deep space, astronauts will be exposed to a constant barrage of cosmic rays, the vast majority of which is made up of protons. Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have just published their results of tests they carried out on how DNA is effected by bombardment by protons.

Here’s a quote from the article:

“Scientists have been assuming that protons damage cells in a way similar to x-rays, but our results indicate that these assumptions have been wrong. The new data show that protons produce more potentially lethal double-strand breaks, a type of severe DNA damage, than other kinds of DNA damages,” said Brookhaven biologist Betsy Sutherland, the study’s lead researcher. “This means that scientists don’t really know how human DNA is affected by the most numerous particles in space and, as a result, do not know how to design the proper protection for astronauts.”

Read the entire story on SpaceRef

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This guy is not selling the needler itself, only a few of the crystals he used to make the needle rounds themselves. Reguardless, this is cool.

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