Unbelievable Hubble Shot Captures the Biggest "Star Nursery" Nearby [Space]

This absolutely gorgeous shot is the most detailed ever taken of what HubbleSite describes as the 'largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.' Get ready to pick your jaw up off your lap.
In the words of experts who understand more about this stuff than 'OMG so pretty!':

The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.

This shot (full, massive size can be found here) were taken between October 20th and 27th of this year by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. The blue lights are from the hottest, biggest stars, while the green is oxygen and the red is hydrogen. Whoa, you guys. Whoa. Check out this thread on Reddit for some desktop-wallpaper-scaled versions of the shot.
[Gizmodo via HubbleSite]

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Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Is Stronger Than the Wall It Papers [Home Decor]

Holy crap, you guys, bomb proof wallpaper. This stuff is strong enough to keep very heavy flying objects from breaking walls—in tests, one thin layer was enough to keep a wrecking ball from knocking down a concrete wall.
The X-Flex wallpaper is really a layer of Kevlar-type material, in between sheets of "elastic polymer wrap," which provides both flex and strength so that the projectile doesn't knock the wall down. It seems really effective—check out Pop Sci's video here for evidence—and the US Army is considering using it for bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also incredibly easy to attach, being basically a rollable sheet, although I'm not sure if it can be unattached and reused. Still, its effectiveness is really impressive.
[Gizmodo via Pop Sci]

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Future is almost here: OLED wallpaper coming in 2012 [OLED]

We were hoping OLED wallpaper was on its way, but didn't realize it was going to be as soon as 2012. In just two years, gorgeous wallpaper like this will start to replace light bulbs. Don't like this design? OLED lighting will take on a variety of forms, limited only by the imaginations of its creators.


OLED lighting is tremendously efficient, 2.5 times more so than energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. That means a wallpaper panel like this can operate at an astonishing 150 lumens per watt, requiring just 3 to 5 Volts to power the OLED film that can function as anything from light-emitting wallpaper to a road sign.


This is all made possible by a breakthrough from British company called LOMOX, saying it's solved the main drawback of OLED lighting up until now: longevity. The company claims its OLED lighting will last longer than a compact fluorescent bulb. Better yet, it emits more lifelike light. The future looks bright.


[DVICE via OLED Display]

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