moon

Get a whiff of this, space geeks. A pair of artists has created a batch of scratch-and-sniff prints that smell like the moon.

And just how does the moon smell? Hagen Betzwieser and Sue Corke haven't been there themselves, so they went with reports from Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, who said it has a strong smell resembling gunpowder.

The limited-edition silkscreen prints, which sell for $55 unframed, started out as "Moon, Scratch & Sniff," a commissioned project for Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, which held an event on olfactory art last month.

Now anyone with an interest … Read more

Japanese construction company Shimizu likes to dream big. Big as in ringing the moon with solar panels and beaming the energy to Earth. But in light of Tokyo's plans to build a $2 billion robot moon base, Shimizu's recent ideas for futuristic engineering projects, including the construction of pyramid cities, seem a little less far-fetched.

Shimizu's "Proposals to Benefit Future Generations" include an offshore pyramid city, home to 750,000 people, that was featured in Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering, seen in the video below. The pyramid would be the largest structure on the planet, … Read more

This week, Donald's back in the studio, joined by Eric Franklin and Dong Ngo from Inside CNET Labs. We ponder Japan's plans to turn the moon into a playground for robots, and tackle OLED displays that roll and vanish. Dong drops some knowledge on recent hard drive innovations and a waterproof case for his Flip Ultra HD. The iPad meets Velcro. And the hoverboard makes a comeback (kinda).

We got starry-eyed last month about Japanese plans to send humanoid robots to the moon, but now we're, well, over the moon to see that the Japanese want to build a whole robot base on the heavenly body by 2020.

A Japanese government panel has produced a draft paper outlining how humanoid rover robots will begin surveying the moon by 2015, according to a report by the prime minister's office.

As part of the $2.2 billion project, the droids will begin construction of an unmanned base near the south pole of the moon that will be powered … Read more

I once called Playboy "pornography" on Loaded and, boy, did I ever get some heated e-mails!

"Playboy is not pornography! It is art!"

OK, calm down. Can we at least agree that Playboy is adult content?

Hopefully, that does not offend those who are so loyal to the bastion of nude female portraiture.

And, now, that portraiture will come in 3D. The June issue will be equipped with polarized glasses so that the centerfold jumps right out at you. In an artistic manner, of course.

This brings up questions we've been asking ourselves about 3D … Read more

NASA's plans to visit the moon may be shelved for the time being, but that doesn't mean that you can't take a trip to the lunar surface. And you won't even need to get fitted for a space suit.

NASA and the Citizen Science Alliance on Tuesday announced Moon Zoo, a project to essentially crowdsource the examination of a large set of high-resolution images of the moon in a bid to answer some of the most burning scientific questions about the big rock orbiting us every 27.3 days.

Moon Zoo users will view new images … Read more

Just as the Obama administration ditches NASA plans to return to the moon, a group in Japan is vowing to send humanoid robots there by 2015. Call it a giant leap for droidkind.

The Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association (SOHLA), a satellite-manufacturing consortium in the Osaka area, has vowed to put bipedal humanoid bots on the moon in the next five years, according to a Jiji Press report. SOHLA is now developing a prototype astro-bot called "Maido-kun" that it hopes will follow in the steps of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (minus the "Dancing with the Stars" part). … Read more

Adding to all the cover versions of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" that are out there--the recent one by the Flaming Lips and guests, the dub version by The Easy Star All-Stars, the brilliant parody by The Squirrels--comes this.

Video game programmer Brad Smith has taken the Pink Floyd classic and reworked it as a bunch of sound files for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Nintendo's classic 8-bit video console. And he has posted the whole album as a YouTube playlist. (YouTube seems to be having some technical issues as I write this, … Read more

Moon Audio claims the Signature Titan was designed to outperform any speaker system in the world. It's a strictly limited edition of three pairs, and each pair is hand-signed by the designer. Each pair will also be named after its buyer and once the third pair is built, the Signature Titan is history.

Even by high-end audio standards the pricing structure is a little unusual: Signature Titan #003 can be yours for $500,000 per pair, but the cost for #002 doubles to $1,000,000! Sounds crazy, but #001 has already been sold for $2,000,000!

I spoke with Moon Audio's founder, Chris Moon, yesterday about the Signature Titan, and learned the speaker grew out of Moon's dissatisfaction with the world's best production speakers. He went out and built the Signature Titan just to see how far he could take speaker design. Moon isn't your average high-end guy, he told me that he discovered, recorded, and produced Prince, along with Morris Day, Alexander O'Neal, Dez Dickerson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Moon wrote and produced music for companies such as Northwest Airlines, music scores for films and television.

Moon claims the designers of the 72-inch-tall speaker have been involved in the high-end audio industry for 25 years. Installation and setup in the customer's home anywhere in the world is included in the purchase price. They better have strong floors; the pair of speakers weighs 2,800 pounds!… Read more