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Years after most of the universe’s mass went missing, it seems we still can’t figure out where it went. Scientists have put a WIMP detector in a Minnesota mine hoping to find the elusive quarry, but to no avail. See the BBC News story here: BBC NEWS | Dark matter detector limbers up.

A WIMP is an (as yet undemonstrated) weakly interacting massive particle, and the theory says that the missing mass may be packed in the back pockets of these heavy but barely detectable particles. It reminds me of 19th century efforts to keep the old ether theory of light propagation alive, despite all evidence to the contrary. But I’m no physicist. For some reason, I’m charmed by the fact that fully 70% of the universe is locked away somewhere and we have absolutely no idea where it is. It’s both humbling and exciting to see such gaping holes in our model of the universe.

Anyway, if you happen across the missing mass, please notify the authorities. You may want to print up a few our Americans for a Closed Universe flyers for distribution around town. Or, as Derwood Tuthill says, “Save the Universe: it’s the environmental issue of all time.”

This just in from the Science Fiction Technology Naming department… scientists at MIT are building a pollution mitigation device for diesel engines called a (wait for it) plasmatron fuel reformer. It works like this: some of the diesel fuel passes through the reformer, which forms a hydrogen rich gas, which is then combined with the diesel exhaust to lower the noxious nitrous oxide emissions. But that’s not the important thing. What really matters is, who came up with that fabulous name? I guarantee you the plasmatron reformer was named by someone with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with paperback science fiction (“If you can just shut down the tractor beam, I should be able to knock the plasmatron fuel reformer offline.”). I hope this technology cuts pollution levels and all, but these guys deserve an award for the name alone.

The Economist has a good article on biotech this week. The moral of the story is that there’s a lot more to biotech than the pharmaceuticals business. Industrial solvents, food products, textiles, energy production, even the feedstocks to the plastics industry can be produced from living organisms that have been appropriately wired. Early indications are very promising. As the money pours in and the public catches on, we’ll soon find out if people are as opposed to genetically modified laundry starch as they are to genetically modified corn flakes.

I was intrigued by the description of a French company mentioned late in the article: Metabolic Explorer. Assuming it works as advertised, they have a terrific business model: “In silico lead strain generation for the development of new bioprocesses to replace existing chemical syntheses.” Check out their Products and Service page.

Francis found this one a while back. A digital artist named Greg Apodaca is not only a talented photo manipulation artist, he also happens to be great at putting together a site that effectively gives away his magic tricks. Like any good magician, however, he can confidently show you what he does, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it yourself. Look at his Digital Portfolio page. They’re all fascinating little studies, but the ones with people in them are the most remarkable. Look at the pictures of the women at the far right and far left of the second row. For a really disturbing treat, move the mouse back and forth quickly over the image so you get a grotesque little animation.

People like Greg are manufacturing what your notion of beauty is. The women in glamor magazines don’t exist; they are built in tiny digital factories by a variety of skilled artificers. The raw materials for this process may be real women, but the desire-inducing finished product can only exist in the ether. Does that make us happier or more miserable?

I commented on this back in March, but the woman behind the site has since revisited it and added a lot of stuff. Whether or not you saw it the first time around, go back and look at it again. GHOST TOWN is a first person account of what it’s like to drive through (on a motorcycle at high speed) the radioactive wasteland around Chernobyl in Belarus.

Let us say, speaking speculatively, that the Earl of Withington (who is also Viscount Munthorpe and has the family name of Grisham) is coming over to your place for beer and poker night Tuesday next. You grab the nearest Mont Blanc pen and your best cotton bond stationery to begin an invitation… but how to address him? Correct Forms of Address is the site for you. You might have dashed yourself upon the rocks of social self-destruction by referring to The Right Honble. The Earl of Withington as simply “The Honble. Earl of Withington” or “My Dear Viscount” or, heaven forbid, “My Main Man Earl.”

Cruise around this helpful site long enough and you will soon be deciphering jawbreakers like this.

He was the Most Noble Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale and Marquis of Ormesby; Earl of Sale; Baron Ware of Thame; Baron Ware of Stoven; and Baron Ware of Rufford…

I love jargon, and I especially love the patient, helpful people who enjoy explaining it. Nevertheless, when you come across a site like this, you’d like to think that it is actively maintained by an impeccably dressed Englishwoman, not a Trekkie lawyer who lives with her parents in Sour Lake, Texas (that’s her, first row, third from the left). Then again, fascination with form tends to congregate at the edges of the empire.

Geoffrey Ballard is getting the hero treatment these days for his pioneering work on the hydrogen fuel cell. His eponymous company is leading the world in practical solutions to fuel cell power generation. More recently, Ballard has joined an outfit called General Hydrogen “to fulfill his vision of a hydrogen economy,” according to the company’s web site. He’s promoting an intriguing vision of a virtuous cycle of freely convertible hydrogen and electricity. One problem with our electric grid these days is that there aren’t good “batteries” for storing up excess electrical generation capacity. For instance, windmills turn whenever the wind blows, but not necessarily when the electricity can be sold. Use that electricity to make hydrogen, and then you have the ability recover it as electricity whenever you like.

Ballard is appealing because of the methodical way he goes about solving practical commercial problems. I found a good interview with Ballard, and although you might suspect he’s green to the bone, in fact he acknowledges that if you leave oil behind, you have to fill in the deficit with nuclear power. Otherwise there just aren’t enough kilowatts to go around.

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Mailinator was invented as a sort of tax dodge. Go to a site that gives you something for free, and it’s very likely that they’ll demand your email address so they can market to you later (that’s the tax). They’ll demand a working address by making you click through the email they send you. Mailinator avoids this problem by displaying (insecurely, by the way) any mail to anyone. And if Mailinator gets spammed as a result, well, that was the whole idea. If you always retrieve your email within an hour or so of receiving it, Mailinator can function as a perfectly reasonable free email service.

It’s hard to outsmart the web.