Holding An Exploded Water Balloon [Photography]

Edward Horsford has taken a series of high-speed pictures that captures a water balloon...without the balloon. The shots are snapped at the point of explosion, when the balloon skin breaks open. It looks like he's somehow holding a ball of water.

He actually takes the pictures solo, with no help. When Edward talked to the NPR, he said that the camera was actually the least important part of the shots. What mattered most was the timing of the flash. The camera was set to take a long exposure of ~2 seconds and if the flash fired during that time, he would get one of these awesome images (the flash was sound-triggered).

Other than that, it's old fashioned popping the water balloon. Looks pretty sweet. [Edward Horsford via NPR via Neatorama]

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This is the city of Sydney morphed into a male and female [Art]

One hundred and sixty thousand citizens of Sydney, Australia had their faces photographed in order to make one set of composite faces for the city. See the faces of the city's neighborhoods below.

The face project was conducted at local street fairs. Sydney residents who participated filled out a consent form and had their pictures taken. Their ages ranged from two weeks to ninety-three years. Their race was more homogenous. Over fifty percent of the project participants described themselves as Anglo Saxon Celtic, while only three percent considered themselves Indigenous Australians.

Those of Chinese ancestry formed the most populous minority. While they were not much represented in the overall composite faces, they were seen in the composite faces for one Sydney neighborhood, Haymarket.

To see more Sydney faces, go to The Face of Sydney.

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Photoshop Artist Creates a World Without Weapons [Photoshop]

A world without war or weapons would be a pretty spectacular place. That will never happen, of course, so artist Tabor Robak used Photoshop's awesome new "content-aware fill" feature to erase them from a few photos. The result is Annihilation.

Actually, I suppose we should never say never in cases like these. When we're all hooked up to atrophy-inducing virtual reality mega networks in 2050, I suppose we could use similar techniques to selectively edit out weapons. And annoying neighbors. And worthless reality TV personalities. And... [Tabor Robak via Good Design]

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NVIDIA Teases Cooler, Quieter Beast of a GPU [Nvidia]

NVIDIA, unsurprisingly, is billing its next big GPU as the fastest, quietest and coolest yet.

Shocking, yes, but the "vapor chamber system" at its heart, which they contend will knock off about seven decibels (compared to the GTX 480) does sound slightly cool (obnoxious pun!).

Within the sealed cooling chamber, you see, water will be boiled by a copper plate, and will in turn force a heat transfer from the hot components (which are also cooled by the fan). Once cooled, the water is then recycled back to the copper plate so it can do its thing again. A nice little enclosed cooling system that promises quieter performance.

As Rumorpedia reports, the GPU is still unnamed and mysterious, but it does exist. Release dates, pricing, all that? Unnamed as well. Just some leaked slides, available for viewing in the source link that follows. [Rumorpedia via Engadget]

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Grip-Happy Compliant Electroadhesion Sneaking Into Everyday Usage [Static Electricity]

More than two years ago SRI International was marching robots up walls using little more than static electricity. Today, they've moved onto bigger and better things, like gripping a banana using the same technique. Meet "compliant electroadhesion."

As was the case back in 2008, electroadhesion still requires very little power to function. According to SRI, 11 square feet of electroadhesive material will support about 440-lbs. using 40mW.

SRI envisions "sticky" walls and other everyday uses for electroadhesive materials. Bananas, tissue boxes and soda cans—all can be equally gripped with ease by the power of static electricity and a bit of a current. [SRI International via technabob]

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