Feed Me, Seymour!

Carnivorous Clock eats bugs, begins doomsday countdown

This prototype time-piece from UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau traps insects on flypaper stretched across its roller system before depositing them into a vat of bacteria. The ensuing chemical reaction, or “digestion,” is transformed into power that keeps the rollers rollin’ and the LCD clock ablaze.

So when the machines become sentient, they will already be carnivorous. All we can do now to compound the problem is to make sure they have a taste for human flesh.

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderhead

Thunderhead Accelerator

Besides being host to stunning lightning displays, thunderclouds also emit gamma rays, although researchers aren’t completely sure why. Last fall, detectors installed on a mountaintop in Japan captured the first simultaneous observations of this radiation along with the high-speed electrons thought to be their source. The results, detailed in the 26 June Physical Review Letters, support the prevailing model of thundercloud accelerators generating “runaway” electrons, which may sometimes initiate lightning.

We Stab it with Our Steely Knives

… but we just can’t kill the beast. Until the fourth try. Fortunately the failed attempts are kinda neat, too.

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My instinct to grab a pointy object to burst the bubble was misplaced, of course. The soap film isn’t a rigid object, so it was content to accommodate the intrusions, for a while.