Giant Freakin Robot

Years of planning, preparation, and setbacks all come to a head on Monday, October 8^th as Felix Baumgartner will attempt to set a new world record in skydiving. It is an incredibly dangerous feat that will require free-falling through near vacuum and then breaking the sound barrier with his own body, but after months of postponed jumps Baumgartner is finally ready to make his way into the history books.

The amount of equipment and support crew needed to make the jump happen make it look more like a NASA mission than an adrenalin junkie’s energy drink promotion. In order for Baumgartner to reach the edge of the atmosphere, it has required the invention of a new type of weather balloon-lofted space capsule. As the capsule takes him to the jump height of 23 miles, it will be tracked the whole way by a full mission control room that will have the old record holder, Joe Kittinger, in attendance. Once he reaches altitude, Baumgartner will plummet through the nearly airless void in a specially designed pressure suit, hoping not to loose too much control before he enters the more navigable air of the upper atmosphere. Needless to say, no matter what amount of preparation has gone into it, this skydive will still be an extremely dangerous stunt.

The world established in Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 social satire RoboCop may soon be a reality. Researchers at Florida International University’s Discovery Lab are working on building new technology to help bring the disabled police officers and soldiers back to the work force by giving them a robotic boost to serve and protect the public.

According to Cnet.com, Florida International University researchers are working with U.S. Navy Reserves to bring this new technology to work in real-world applications. These robots would be remotely controlled by the disabled to do “everything from responding to 911 calls and writing parking tickets to ensuring the security of nuclear facilities.” This could mean a great deal to technology, manufacturing, and law enforcement.

At the moment, Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Robins is working with Discovery Lab researchers and engineers to design this new brand of “RoboCops.” The design has to be stern enough to take seriously but pleasant enough to comfortably approach. Robins explains:

Most of us have accepted that time travel will probably always remain limited to the realms of science fiction. But for one Vancouver, Washington attorney, time travel is a fact. Wait, that should probably be “fact.” At any rate, an attorney named Andrew Basiago is not only claiming that time travel does, in fact, exist, he says he personally took part in a top-secret government time-travel experiment over 40 years ago.

The face of a time traveler?

Google Street View is a convenient way to get around a new city by mapping its landmarks, buildings, and, of course, streets. But strangely enough, Google Street View also photographed two separate pink-colored UFOs in the sky directly over Jacksonville, Texas and Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico.

Google Street View user Andrea Dove told East Texas ABC affiliate KLTV about the strange occurrence over the Texas sky. She said that a pink-ringed object was spotted on Google Street View hovering over Jacksonville, Texas. Could this be an actual UFO or a photo aberration? KLTV reporter Jamey Boyum said, “No one I spoke with had seen anything strange over Jacksonville, and although it could be a lens flare or an unexplainable reflection of some nearby object, I saw no indication of anything which fell under that umbrella.”

Thankfully, photo-video analyst Marc Dantonio explains what exactly is going on with the images on Google Street View. He contends that this is merely a lens flare reflected off a nearby object such as a building. Dantonio, who creates special effects and prototype models for the US government, tells the Huffington Post: