This Is How You Lift a Sunken Warship Out of the Sea

With huge chains and honking cranes, that's how. Example: This Republic of Korea Navy's corvette—half of it, actually—floating over the sea's surface. And before you cry "PHOTOSHOP!", check out the scene from a distance.

It's the Cheonan, a South Korean Pohang-class corvette that broke in two on March 26. According to an international investigation, the cause was a torpedo fired from a North Korean Yeono class miniature submarine, killing 46 crew members. A few weeks later, on April 15, the South Korean Navy recovered the stern part from the bottom of the sea using a giant floating crane. On April 24, the bow was recovered.

Conquer Your Fear of Creepy Crawlies With Augmented Reality

A lot of augmented reality applications we've seen thus far have seemed a little, well, excessive. But if AR can put me at peace with spiders, snakes, cockroaches, and the rest? That's a feat deserving of a Nobel Prize.

In a study described in an upcoming edition of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, six female participants, all of whom were totally freaked out by cockroaches in real life, were outfitted with AR helmets and bombarded with simulated cockroaches. They were all still totally freaked out, just like they would be if confronted with the real things. That's as far as the study got.

But it's an important first step in applying augmented reality to exposure therapy, a technique by which individuals overcome phobias through exposure to the objects they fear. Similar techniques have been used for years to treat returning soldiers' Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with virtual reality video games, and this study only shows that in some less extreme cases simulated stimuli can induce fear just like the real thing. But if AR exposure therapy proves to be effective, it could help countless individuals work past their everyday hang-ups: heights, enclosed spaces, subways, rats, dogs, bugs, and the rest. Maybe I'll finally be able to leave my apartment.

Medal of Honor 2010

NASA Finds Outer Space 65 Feet Underwater

NASA may not be sending anyone to the moon or Mars in the near future, but they've discovered the next best thing: an undersea laboratory three miles off of Key Largo. It's how astronauts do Space Camp.

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations—its friends call it Neemo—has been around for nearly a decade. This past Monday marked the kickoff of its 14th mission, sending six aquanauts down to the underwater Aquarius lab:

During their two weeks in the laboratory, the aquanauts will go on simulated spacewalks, operate a crane and perform other tasks of the sort astronauts would face in setting up a habitat on another planet. "The primary objectives are based on engineering and testing and operations design for planetary exploration," said William Todd, the project manager for the Neemo 14 mission.

Other particulars that authenticate the experience: the buoyancy of diving suits can be adjusted to reflect the one-sixth gravity of the moon of the three-eighths gravity of Mars. Communications are lagged twenty minutes, as they would be on a real Mars mission.

So why is this important now? Because the future of manned space flight is in serious political jeopardy. Because today the Senate Committee on on Commerce, Science, and Technology will hold hearings on that future. And because despite all of that uncertainty, whatever happens, it's important to know that we're prepared for whatever space exploration throws at us.

LG 3DTVs and Xbox 360s Sold Together In South Korea For 3D Gaming

Thanks to LG's Flickr, we now know that 3D gaming on the Xbox 360 is possible—with LG 3DTVs, at least. The details are sketchy due to the translation, but it appears they'll be sold together in South Korea. The Flickr account, after translation, says that LG and Microsoft Korea have entered a "strategic partnership" to bundle the Xbox 360 and LG's LX9500 (which will come in 47 and 55-inch sizes when it goes on sale this May/June) 3DTV model together. In South Korea, more than 1,000 stores will apparently launch 3D gaming areas showing LG 3DTVs and Xbox 360 gaming, with the initiative being rolled out to Asia Pacific regions. No word on whether the western world will see any love from LG and Xbox 360, sadly.

The European Suborbital Shuttle

Following the trail of SpaceShipTwo, Dassault has been working on a new suborbital civilian spacecraft. Not to be confused with the Future High Altitude High speed Transport 20XX, the new aircraft could be a 11-ton vehicle derived from their VEHRA satellite launcher. VEHRA and VSH—the name of the new civilian vehicle—are both air launched, and "based on the X-38 experimental lifting body from NASA, for which Dassault Aviation had defined the shape." While VEHRA will have heavy versions capable of putting a 7-ton payload in low orbit, VSH is only designed to bring tourists into the edge of space, flying at Mach 3.5. If you don't have the money for this kind of trip, don't worry. It looks like you have plenty of time to save those purple rupees, as the aircraft is still in the first stages of development.

This Boat Is Perfect for Vacation, Living, or Weather Apocalypse

According to the designer, the solar-powered Arkki is the kind of boat you would like to have in case the ice caps melt. He's wrong. It's the kind of boat I would like to have right now. Apparently designed by Cylons, the trimaran's surface is covered with multilayered solar panels, which power the ship and can bring her up to 8 knots. The hull is made of concrete and reinforced with plastic fibers. What I like most about Arkki is that it is designed to be a house. And a very large one at that: It has 1647 feet of interior space and a 1076-foot exterior wood deck. It's not as big as the WHY, but it looks much better. So good, in fact, that Sean Connery would like to use it if he were playing Noah in a movie.