Giant space lasers!

Now that I have you attention, welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Science Roundup, that sweet spot in the week where I look over all the truly awesome science news I have accumulated over the week and pick the ones I think are looking particularly spiffy and snazzy and ready for their big debut, and parade them along the promonade for you, my lovely patrons, to see.

There might also be some really long sentences involved. No promises.

So let’s see. What goodies do we have in the big old science news Tickle Trunk today?

Well, from the great land of Japan, we have a very cool piece of new technology from the worlds of cybernetics and robotics, and for once, it’s almost not very creepy at all!

And what are these practically non nightmare inducing news toys? They are, get this, brain sensing robot cat ears which sense your mood and perk or flatten accordingly.

Specifically, they perk up attentively when you are feeling perky and attentive, they lie flat and sluggish when you feel fat and sluggish, and they move around and twitch excitedly when you are feeling excited.

So in the social sphere, what they basically do is amplify your mood signals. They go a long way towards making your mood as easy to read and interpret as your pet’s.

In this sense, they are truly the “mood rings” of the new millennium. Mood rings, but with a distinctly furry feel to them, which I find just plain adorable.

I also wonder whether these might have some therapeutic use in teaching autism spectrum disorder patients how to read moods. You start with an assistant with the ears on, and they can learn to read the ears (never thought I would be typing THAT sentence), then learn to recognize the facial expression that goes with a particular ear pattern, and thus use the ears as a birding device to make the learning curve smoother.

Here they are in action on a good looking Asian chick.

Next up, we have what has got to be the most jaw-droppingly sexy piece of technology to come out recently, the new Japanese Defense Ministry Flying Sphere Drone.

It looks like something that would be quite comfortable chasing Flynn through Tron, or Princess Leia through the Death Star for that matter, and it not only hovers quietly, but it can move in all three dimensions at up to 60 kilometers per hour and can even roll on the ground like a ball.

This thing really has to be seen to be believed.

In fact, my main problem with this thing is that it is so gobsmackingly cool that I feel I cannot possibly be objective about how useful it is. Every time I try to think about whether their claim that “because it is spherical, it can land anywhere” is true, or whether its performance will be improved when they stop using off the shelf parts, the excitable nerd in me says “But it’s so COOOOOOL!” and off I go, wanting such a cool toy for myself and wondering if it could be fitting with a tiny speaker that rmits menacing humming sounds.

I bet a lot of the journalists were thinking the same thing. Right or wrong, this is how things get funded, people. The money goes to the cool stuff.

And last and possibly least, what we have all been waiting for, giant space lasers.

Bet you thought I just did that to get your attention, huh? Oh ye of little faith.

Admittedly, though, they are giant lasers, and they are about space, but they are not actually located in space, so I might have fudged things a little.

What they are, in fact, is yet another ground-based laser system designed to take out space junk (man made stuff no longer in use) and space debris (other stuff up there in orbit).

This one has some advantages. It can zap both the big stuff and the small stuff, and being ground-based, it is, at least in theory, a lot cheaper and simpler than the space-based “junk bot” ideas that others have been putting forward as of late.

But there’s the obvious problem that what can take down space junk can take down stuff that is not space junk yet, like say the spy satellites of your political enemies.

And the less obvious problem that, at least currently, the economic value of clearing space junk is nearly impossible to assess, and hence these project defy even basic cost-benefit analysis. This makes it very hard to make the case for them even in a non-profit governmental setting.

So as cool as zapping space junk with a giant laser sounds, it is probably not going to happen.

But if it does, they should totally let regular folks try it for mucho dinero.

Properly marketed, it would pay for itself!