Oh, no – does this make me a geek?

There's this guy called Jay Hinson. He's bright. Really bright. His PhD thesis was on the decay of the tau lepton into three charged pions and a tau neutrino. That's particle physics, people.

So Jay lets his mind wander one day and starts to think about "technology which allows subspace fields to 'reduce' the mass of a ship while still allowing for energy and momentum conservation".

Except when Jay says "ship", he means "space ship". And when he says "technology", he means "Star Trek".

"This," Jau writes, "led me to consider various other energy and momentum related questions concerning subspace and warp fields in general."

Like it does.

To read Jay's musings on this subject, all 17,236 words of it, click here.

Elsewhere – ie, back in the real world – you will find Jay's discussion of relativity and faster-than-light travel (it starts here).

He calls it an FAQ and, while I would quibble about his use of the word "frequently", it's actually a highly readable piece of work that had me thinking "Shit – I understand relativity, special and general!" at one point. Seriously. He made it make perfect sense to me. And I don't know nuthin about nuthin.

Someone needs to publish this guy. Just take out the Star Trek stuff first.

Cutest. Animal. Ever.

The momonga (Pteromys momonga), a flying squirrel that lives in Japan.

Super-kuwaii!

Quod erat demonstrandum

Ever wanted to get inside a saxophonist’s mouth? For some reason, researchers at the University of NSW did.

"It's wet in the mouth and the acoustic conditions in there are really variable, and it gets really loud in there during playing," acoustician Jer-Ming Chen he explains.

No shit, Sherlock.

Today’s issue of Science has the results of their research: experienced saxophonists are better players of the saxophone.

Making Sensorama

I’m obsessed with Morton Heilig lately. He’s called “the father of virtual reality” with good reason.

When TV sucked the life out of the cinema in the 1950s, the cinema fought back with gimmicks like Cinerama, 3-D and Smell-O-Vision. Heilig, who was working as a Hollywood cinematographer, wanted to take the illusion of cinematic immersion one step further.

His Sensorama machine, patented in 1962, was a hot-bed of cutting-edge technology. The experience was essentially riding a motorbike through the streets, complete with stereo images (for which he invented a new camera and projector) and sound, smells (wafts of hibiscus and jasmine), bumps and shakes through the seat and handlebars and the wind in your hair. All senses covered.

Great idea but, as he said himself, “Sensorama may have been too revolutionary for its time.” It was a commercial flop.

That didn't deter him, however. In 1969 he patented the Experience Theatre, a version of the Sensorama for a larger audience. It was a theatre with a large semi-spherical screen showing 3D motion pictures, with peripheral imagery, directional sounds, scents, wind, temperature variations and body tilting in the seat. The audience was seated in the focus point in arena seating. It didn't take off either, but the Walt Disney Company soon patented a similar system, called Thrillerama.

Eye candy

Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka studies the psychology of vision at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. His work centres around visual illusion, visual completion, motion perception and stereopsis (binocular depth perception). He is a scientist but I think his work is art.

His current research is about "anomalous motion illusions": static images that look like they're moving.

Click these pictures to bring them up to full size and you'll get the drift. Literally.

2007: the year in tech

XO-1 laptop
Unveiled by Nicholas Negroponte at the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005, the $100 laptop for children in developing countries went into full-scale production on 6 November this year. It uses flash memory instead of a hard drive and is equipped with a video camera, microphone, long-range Wi-Fi and a hybrid stylus/touch pad. All its software will be free and open source. You can donate one at One Laptop per Child.

Apple iPhone
If you can sell 270,000 products at $599 in the first 30 hours of release, you know every cent of your marketing budget was well spent. The most hyped product of the year was launched into an eager fanboy market and garnered lots of initial praise for its design innovations. A few weeks later, however, the dust settled and the reality emerged: tied to one carrier without 3G, crappy camera, the same battery trouble as iPods, overheating ... the list went on. The second-generation iPhone is on its way in 2008 – and, knowing Apple, the third, fourth and fifth as well.

Facebook
It poked the world and the world loved it. Facebook has more than 58 million users and another 250,000 join every day. Microsoft bought a minority stake for $240m, putting its valuation at $15bn. Its 23-year-old founder, Mark Zuckerberg, sat next to Rupert Murdoch at Herbert Allen's Sun Valley conference. Simple to use and elegantly designed, users don't show signs of fighting its walled-garden approach. Yet.

WiTricity
When MIT unveiled its wireless electricity by lighting a 60W light bulb from two metres away – and through a wall – it signalled the death knell of rechargers. Expect commercial versions in three years. It turns out old Nikola Tesla had it right all along.

Wii
If you told me 10 years ago that a Nintendo system would be the best-selling game console I would have smacked you upside the head with an N64 cartridge. But the Wii turned out to have appeal beyond traditional gamers. It's the first time a product has been the Christmas must-have two years running, outselling the PS3 six to one. Amazon sold 17 every second in December and Nintendo admits it can't keep up with demand.

TV 2.0
Still in its infancy, the convergence of broadcast television and the internet will be huge news in 2008. Joost – from the people who brought you Skype – and video-on-demand services like the BBC's iPlayer are just the beginning.

The Google phone
Coming soon: not a piece of hardware but Google AdWords-supported software that will result in free mobile calls. Ads on your phone as a step forward? I'd rather pay.