Via Iran’s FARS news agency, this just in:

[Inventor, Ali] Razeghi also claimed to have beaten competitors working on similar devices: “The Americans are trying to make this invention by spending millions of dollars on it where I have already achieved it at a fraction of the cost.” He added that he is concerned about industrial espionage, as other nations will be eager to learn his secrets. “The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight,” he said. 

I know, I know. But wait. History is already being rewritten. 

Seen from Saturn. By Cassini. January 4th, 2013.

Related: Depth Perception, Planetary Bling, Titan Obscured, What Cassini Sees. 

A mistake that the Institute for Centrifugal Research works tirelessly to correct. The ICR’s “pioneering achievements in the realms of brain manipulation, excessive G-Force and prenatal simulations” are illustrated, quite vividly, in Till Nowak’s short documentary, presented below. I beg you, please, wait for the ‘wedding cake’ amusement ride.

Via Things, a site you may want to bookmark.

A group of researchers put the theory to the test, letting twenty volunteers soak their fingers in warm water for 30 minutes to get them good and pruney, then testing exactly how long it took them to move wet glass marbles and fishing weights from one container to another. On average, pruney-fingered participants moved wet marbles 12 percent more quickly than when they were tested with unwrinkled fingers. When the same test was performed with dry marbles, the times were roughly the same. Thus, it seems, the hypothesis was proved: pruney fingers do help us grip better.

From the Smithsonian magazine. 

This chap, via Peter Risdon. I do hope someone’s told Caroline Lucas. 

By Saturn’s rings.

As seen by Cassini at a distance of three million kilometres from Titan. One of these. See also this, this and this.

Steve Hoefer explains how to turn matches into very small rockets.

Via Laughing Squid. And if you need a little more oomph from your tiny apparatus, there’s always this old friend: 

Because the world has been waiting for a low-friction ketchup bottle. 

MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith and a team of engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have devised a “super slippery” coating ideal for clogged condiments. The coating does have potential in other, non-ketchup-related areas, including windscreens and fuel lines, but the team is currently in talks to market a sauce bottle lubricant. “The market for bottles – just the sauces alone – is a $17 billion market,” says Smith. “And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.” Imagine. No more futile shaking or caveman-style thumping. No more mayonnaise mishaps or inadequately spiced sandwiches.

Watch that goop glide, baby.

Via Brain Terminal. And for the latest in spilled condiment relocation, see this. 

Real-time face substitution by Arturo Castro. Wait for Mr Jackson.

The bin liner poncho is a classy touch.