Companies to Invade Your Retinas as Soon as Next Year?

Posted by on under wide image, retinas, retina, frt, centimeter, goggles, prototype, subtitles, nec, real time, brother |

Engadget is one of many reporting that Brother and NEC both seem to have retina display technology in the works for release next year. Brother, at least, seems to have a fully functional prototype, while so far NEC is mostly talk. "Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them -- which is certainly no small feat, even if it may not be the most practical one. Slightly less specific, but also working on a retina display of its own is NEC, which apparently hopes to incorporate a microphone into their display and use it as a real-time translation device that would quite literally display subtitles as you talk to someone."

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Tagi: wide image, retinas, retina, frt, centimeter, goggles, prototype, subtitles, nec, real time, brother

Giant Balloons Could Solve Space Junk Problem

Posted by on under dead satellites, giant balloons, global aerospace, manageable bits, space junk, mdash, ballo, football field, gossamer, centimeter, milli, orbit, atmosphere, gates, accounting |

An anonymous reader writes "More than 100,000 objects bigger than a centimeter wide hover around our planet, accounting for 4 million pounds of junk that befoul our atmosphere and threaten the expensive satellites we actually want in orbit. Dr. Kristen Gates, of Global Aerospace Corporation, proposes that we can clear the skies by attaching a football field-sized balloon to dead satellites, which would increase the orbital drag on it, eventually bringing it down into the atmosphere where it would burn up. The GOLD — or Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device — unit is easily inflated in space, and best of all, if the deployed GOLD balloon collides with space junk, it won't deflate or break the junk into smaller, less manageable bits."

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Tagi: dead satellites, giant balloons, global aerospace, manageable bits, space junk, mdash, ballo, football field, gossamer, centimeter, milli, orbit, atmosphere, gates, accounting