Bench Press

On Bench Press, we usually discuss technologies to empower scientists to do research or to better communicate with each other and with the public. But, technologies can also help the “casual” fan appreciate science as well. Case in point: Google recently announced a new application available for Android phones called Google Sky Map. The concept is quite ingenious. If ancient navigators used starcharts and compasses to determine their location, why can’t a phone that knows its location (via built-in GPS) and its direction (via magnetometer and accelerometer) be used to figure out what stars are up above?

Or in other words, Google took this physical setup (very cute setup from Google for how Google Sky Map works) of what is basically a sextant, compass, and calendar:

And replaced it with a smartphone:

I haven’t had a chance to play with it (as I don’t own a G1), but the application looks very nicely packaged. You can use it to figure out what stars are right above you. But, the coolest feature is the ability to use the application to point you in the direction of something you’re interested in seeing (e.g. the planet Saturn).

More details are in the video below. You can get Sky Map for Android through the Android Market. For anyone who’s tried it, let us know what you think in the comments!

(Image credit – Google)

A completed magnetometer.

The age old dilemma of magnetic resonsance imaging: do you sacrifice precision for size, or size for precision?

Generally, behemoth MR machines are required to produce images of great detail. The downside? Price, immobility, and an inability to take the device to the field. The tradeoff of using their smaller, less expensive counterparts, however, is their lackluster resolving power. This could all change with John Kitching’s new developments in MR technology. Kitching, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is working on smaller, less expensive MR machines with resolutions that rival their larger cousins. Taking a new spin on an old idea, Kitching has adapted the procedure of producing atomic magnetometers and taken it to a significantly smaller scale.

The result: highly sensitive magnetic sensors about the size of a grain of rice. Kitching believes that mass production is not too far off in the horizon, and with an army of tiny magnetic sensors, the possibilites are endless. Pocket-sized MRIs, anyone?