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The contents of a handwritten European letter sealed for 300 years are no longer a secret, thanks to a technique that let scholars peek inside virtually without damaging the intricately folded historical document. In the letter, dated July 31, 1697, Jacques Sennacques asks his cousin Pierre Le Pers, a French merchant in The Hague, for a certified copy of a death notice for Daniel Le Pers. That's no history-making revelation, but the technique that revealed the request could hold promise for unlocking sealed correspondence containing historical gems across time and place. CNET Science From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week. All those years ago, Sennacques' letter was closed using a process called "letterlocking," a complex folding technique used globally to secure post before the invention of envelopes. Think of it like ancient encryption: Letters sealed this way couldn't be opened without getting torn, and rips indicated a note … [Read more...] about Scientists read a 300-year-old sealed letter without opening it

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more . Game on! Jordan Palmer 12 Dec 2020 Source: Android Central As NVIDIA proclaims in every piece of marketing, the Shield Android TV box is "the streamer for gamers." It also happens to be the best TV streaming box for playing games developed for Android TV from the Google Play Store. Want to start playing? Here are some games to try. If you're wanting some more games to play on the go, then be sure to check out our best Android games list! Note: The NVIDIA Shield TV (2019) is not quite as gamer-ready as its predecessors and the Shield TV Pro (2019). NVIDIA went with a 32-bit version of Android TV and also downgraded the RAM on its tube-shaped streaming dongle to just 2GB. This has affected the base model's compatibility with some 64-bit games from the Play Store including several on this list (Metal Gear Solid 2, Half-Life 2, The Witness, and Portal). Meanwhile, the NVIDIA … [Read more...] about Best Android Games for NVIDIA Shield TV 2021

Who knew all you needed to build cutting-edge VR was a really, really big phone? A recent teardown of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset revealed a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 inside being used as the screen. It’s only natural then that Samsung’s own VR headset, the Samsung Gear VR uses the brand new Samsung Galaxy Note 4 as its display and was built in concert with Oculus VR. See also: The Virtual Reality Renaissance Is Here, But Are We Ready? It’s also no surprise that the experience of using Samsung’s new virtual reality headset is almost as good as it is on an Oculus. The South Korean consumer electronics giant revealed the new cutting-edge virtual reality headset on Wednesday at IFA in Berlin and at a special unveiling event in New York City. Let’s play Looking a lot like Oculus’ hipper cousin, the white and black Gear VR resembles a large set of goggles with straps, plastic and Velcro to hold it securely on your head. It’s designed to work with the 5.7-inch Note … [Read more...] about Samsung Gear VR: What a Trip

If you’ve heard of fusion energy, you’ve probably heard of tokamaks. These doughnut-shaped devices are meant to cage ionized gases called plasmas in magnetic fields while heating them to the outlandish temperatures needed for hydrogen nuclei to fuse. Tokamaks are the workhorses of fusion—solid, symmetrical, and relatively straightforward to engineer—but progress with them has been plodding. Now, tokamaks’ rebellious cousin is stepping out of the shadows. In a gleaming research lab in Germany’s northeastern corner, researchers are preparing to switch on a fusion device called a stellarator, the largest ever built. The €1 billion machine, known as Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), appears now as a 16-meter-wide ring of gleaming metal bristling with devices of all shapes and sizes, innumerable cables trailing off to unknown destinations, and technicians tinkering with it here and there. It looks a bit like Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, towed in for repairs after a run-in with the Imperial fleet. … [Read more...] about The bizarre reactor that might save nuclear fusion

The design of many robots has been inspired by living creatures, from the humanoid machines that have appeared in science fiction for decades to the mechanical cockroaches that scurry around some research labs. There has even been a robotic tuna used to explore the ocean. But our reliance on the mechanical has left a very large area of the animal kingdom left out: soft bodied creatures with neither skeletons nor shells. In a paper that will be released by PNAS , researchers describe a soft-bodied robot that can crawl around lab, powered by compressed air. The limits in robot design have been very practical. We don't yet have something that will mimic muscles well, which leaves our creations articulating their joints with things like gears and engines, which require a fairly rigid support structure. But the creators of this new robot were inspired by squid, which perform impressive feats of flexibility using a soft body that's supported by the ocean's buoyancy. They figured they … [Read more...] about Robot without a skeleton inspired by squid, crawls on land