If you haven’t yet heard of Augmented Reality (AR), then brace yourself for a game-changer. Unlike virtual reality which attempts to bring real life into a virtual world, AR overlays artificial information about the environment and its objects onto the world we live in.

Augmented reality is a “live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” You may have seen early forms of AR on your cell phone. There are several apps out, such as the night sky app, that recognize an image, and project new data on top of the image. With augmented reality, the possibilities are both endless and entertaining. Business cards, for example, are changing forever, with personalized secret messages only visible through the AR spectrum. Check out an amazing example below.

Since 1982, when penny composition was shifted to a mix of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, the mixture of metals that goes into pennies and nickels has remained steady. Believe it or not, the U.S. Treasury today spends ¢2.4 for every penny, and ¢11.2 for every nickel that it produces.

In 2011, the U.S. Treasury produced 4.3 billion pennies and 914 million nickels. For you non-math majors, that means we lost over $116 million just to produce pennies and nickels last year alone. The Treasury stopped using copper in pennies because of it’s increased value and utility, but nickels are still made of 75% copper and only 25% nickel.

We are incredibly lucky to be living in the golden age of technology, where things that we once knew were impossible are becoming reality. Thirty years ago, would anyone have ever imagined that you could create a 3D file in a computer, and immediately create a corresponding object? Even though most people have never seen them in action, 3D Printers have actually been around for over a decade. While most uses to date have been industrial, this technology is becoming more affordable and making it’s way into many of our offices and living rooms.

3D Printing is a form of additive manufacturing, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive manufacturing is what we’ve been doing for thousands of years; cutting, drilling and shaping objects from metal and other materials. This is not only more time consuming, it also wastes up to 90% of the material byproducts. Additive manufacturing requires less raw materials, less assembly, and allows the flexibility of creating the same object in many materials.

Just a cool video for you to check out. If you’ve never been night skiing, bundle up and check it out, it pretty serene. This video takes things a step further, almost to an art form.

If you haven’t heard of Jeremy Lin yet then you clearly aren’t a sports fan. This 23 year old Asian-American rookie out of Harvard has become the first mega-sensation of 2012. From being cut by two teams, to living on his brother’s couch, to scoring 38 points in a primetime game against Kobe Bryant’s Lakers, this guy has been on a wild rollercoaster ride. Similar to Tebowing with a little Chuck Norris flair, people are getting creative with Mr. Lin by altering his name and dreaming up fables about his life.

Even though Lakers forward Metta World Peace thinks Lin needs to get more ‘swag’, Linsanity is undeniably a worldwide phenomenon. People have already bought every Jeremy Lin domain name you can imagine with the hopes of cashing in on the excitement. The spirit is very contagious, some might even say Lintagious (terrible). We at Astounde decided to put our brains together, have some pun, and create the ultimate Jeremy Lin word collection. Hope you enjoy it!

The first man-made object to reach space occurred on October 3rd, 1942 by German scientists during WWII. In the seventy years since, thousands of objects have reached orbit including designated phone and television satellites, weather monitors, and of course astronauts. Many objects served their purpose, but many others malfunctioned or became unresponsive and were left to forever circle the Earth.

Objects currently orbiting the Earth include abandoned satellites, used rockets, fragments of spacecraft, and random debris from past collisions. There are now over 500,000 pieces of space junk zipping around the Earth at over 17,500 miles per hour.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland is the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator. It’s construction was an arduous process, beginning in 1998 and taking 10 years to complete. The collider lies 600 feet beneath the French and Swiss border, and has a circumference of 17 miles. The LHC was a collaborative effort, using the minds of over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries!

The Large Hadron Collider

The purpose of the multi-billion dollar project was to allow physicists to potentially answer some of the most fundamental, unanswered questions known to man. Scientists hope this tool will answer questions about the structure of space and time, and help us to grasp the underlying concepts behind some of the deepest laws of nature.

You’ve probably seen commercials for luxury vehicles that use motion sensors to correct operator error, either by moving sideways or by stopping short. Similarly, cars with adaptive cruise control will automatically adjust your speed, to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you. Combine these 21st century developments with GPS technology, and you have the ingredients for a vehicle that can get you from point A to point B with nothing more than a little direction.

Are you ready for the self-driving car? Are we ready for the autonomous vehicle?

The flux capacitor, hoverboard, and self-tying shoes were all fantastic ideas stemming from the 1980′s silver screen trilogy ‘Back To The Future’. While it looks like we’re still a little ways away from time-travel, and are still working out the kinks on the hoverboard, the latter of the three aforementioned inventions has been kick-started into reality.

If you hadn’t heard, there was a new molecule unearthed in a new way with the huge potential of curbing the global heating of the planet.

German chemist Rudolf Criegee is being credited with fathering the identification of these molecules, and big advancements have been made today, 40 years after his death.