EPFL

More than a hundred mobile-phone-style cameras are packed onto a metallic sphere to allow this camera to see everything around it. Computer algorithms calculate the distance to objects to create 3-D images.

Bzzz ... bzzz ... bzzz ...

Wait! Before you swat that annoying fly, consider this: Its eyes inspired the invention of a camera with a 360-degree view on the world and the ability to reproduce images in 3-D.

The applications are seemingly limitless, ranging from enhanced robot navigation and surveillance to 3-D movies and immersive realities for video gamers, according to co-inventor Pierre Vandergheynst, an electrical engineer at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

"Imagine a sporting event where you will be able to watch the event as being one of the players. You would be able to walk on the soccer field, you would be able to stand where the goalkeeper is," he said.. "Imagine being at a concert and decide to see the concert from the audience and then suddenly walk on stage and get closer to the guitarist or the pianist. This would be possible with such devices."

Vandergheynst said the technology overcomes two main problems of traditional cameras: the fact that they observe only a fraction of the scene in a specific direction and the camera's traditional lack of depth. He goes into detail in this video news release:

Taking a cue from the common housefly's eyes, which are composed of thousands of spherical photoreceptors, Vandergheynst and colleague Yusuf Leblebici packed more than 100 cameras similar to those used in mobile phones onto an orange-sized metallic sphere. The result is a camera that sees information located all around it. At the same time, special algorithms calculate the distance to the objects it sees, enabling the creation of an accurate 3D reconstruction.

This contrasts with traditional 3-D images, which generally start with 2-D images made with two lenses that are then overlaid to generate a 3-D effect when seen with special glasses. Newer technology is making 3-D imagery possible with single-lens, point-and-shoot cameras such as the Sony WX5 and TX9.

But the 360-degree camera that sees in 3-D "is likely to change the entire field of image acquisition, with a huge range of potential applications," Leblebici predicted in a news release.

And for that we have that fly … bzzz, bzzz … to thank.

Swat?

More on vision technology (and insects):

• Seeing triple: 3 types of 3-D glasses
• Animal eyes inspire new technology
• Baby diving beetles use bifocals
• Ancient 'unicorn' fly had five eyes

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle). 

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell

This enhanced-color view, showing an outcropping of bedrock on the rim of Intrepid Crater on Mars, is just one little piece of a panorama sent back by NASA's Opportunity rover. The full view is available at NASA's Mars rover website.

Two of the latest craters encountered by NASA’s Opportunity rover during its nearly seven-year trek on Mars pay tribute to the sailing ships of old -- 41 years old, to be precise. Intrepid Crater and Yankee Clipper Crater are named after the lunar lander and command module for Apollo 12, which landed on the moon on today's date in 1969.

Opportunity drove past Yankee Clipper Crater on Nov. 4, and stopped at Intrepid Crater five days later. It's been a tradition for the craters encountered by the rover to be named after historic ships of exploration, such as Endeavour (Pacific explorer James Cook's vessel) and Endurance (polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship).

James Rice, a member of the rover science team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, picked up on that tradition -- and added in the topical twist from Apollo 12, the second mission to land on the moon.

"The Apollo missions were so inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates," he explained in a news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which serves as the Mars rovers' mission control. "When we were approaching these craters, I realized we were getting close to the Nov. 19 anniversary for Apollo 12."

Rice sent pictures of the craters to Apollo 12's Alan Bean and Dick Gordon, and this week the rover team received this reply:

"I  just talked with Dick Gordon about the wonderful honor you have bestowed upon our Apollo 12 spacecraft," Bean wrote. "Forty-one years ago today, we were approaching the moon in Yankee Clipper with Intrepid in tow. We were excited to have the opportunity to perform some important exploration of a place in the universe other than planet Earth where humans had not gone before. We were anxious to give it our best effort. You and your team have that same opportunity. Give it your best effort."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell

This stereo view of the Yankee Clipper crater on Mars is based on imagery sent back by NASA's Opportunity rover. Use red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect. This larger version provides a better 3-D experience.

The aptly named Opportunity is just past the halfway point in a years-long trek from Victoria Crater to the 13-mile-wide Endeavour Crater, which would be the biggest impact site ever explored on Mars. Intrepid and Yankee Clipper are puny in comparison, measuring about 66 feet (20 meters) and 33 feet (10 meters) wide, respectively. Intrepid is about the same size as Eagle Crater, the place into which Opportunity rolled during its "hole-in-one" landing on Mars, almost seven years ago. (In case you're wondering, Eagle Crater was named after the Apollo 11 lunar module. Remember? "The Eagle has landed.")

Since Opportunity's landing in January 2004, the rover has rolled 15.53 miles (25 kilometers), which serves as a milestone in the metric system.

"Importantly, it's not how far the rovers have gone, but how much exploration and science discovery they have accomplished on behalf of all humankind," JPL's John Callas, Mars exploration project manager, said in the news release. Over the past six years, Opportunity and its twin Spirit have turned up ample evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter than it was today, and could conceivably have harbored life.

Speaking of Spirit, that rover is still mute on the other side of the Red Planet, stuck in a sandy mire with two gimpy wheels. NASA's team tried to put the solar-powered robot in the best position available to weather the dim Martian winter -- but there's a chance that the big chill killed the rover's electronics.

No communication has been received from the rover since March, but NASA is continuing efforts to contact the rover using a paging technique known as "sweep and beep." If Spirit wakes up, NASA is ready to put it to work on a full agenda of stationary science. If Spirit has given up the ghost, as some scientists suspect, NASA can still take solace in the fact that it's gotten six years of exploration from a machine that was projected to last just 90 days on Mars.

Update for 6:55 p.m. ET Nov. 19: In a follow-up phone call, Callas said it's too early to give up on Spirit. The weather models for Mars indicated that last month was the earliest time for hearing from the rover, but as the Martian summer approaches, the sun is getting brighter every day where Spirit is sitting. "The peak of the solar insolation is around mid-March," he said. The sweep-and-beep strategy is aimed at getting the rover's attention just in case it wakes up but has lost track of time. So does this mean the rover team is keeping hope alive? "That's right," Callas said.

Correction for 12:15 p.m. ET Nov. 20: I originally referred to Dick Gordon as a moonwalker, but as Brant and Jeff pointed out in their comments below, Gordon never walked on the moon. He was orbiting above as the command module pilot while Bean and Pete Conrad went down to the surface. Gordon was slated to have his moonwalk as the commander of Apollo 18, but that mission was canceled due to budget cuts. Sorry about the error, and thanks for keeping me honest. (I've also corrected the projected lifetime for the rovers.)

More about Apollo 12 ... and Mars:

• Apollo 12's Alan Bean: The right-brained astronaut
• Timeline: NASA's Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• See a Martian milestone in 3-D
• Still more from the Mars rover website
• Still more about the Apollo 12 mission

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Hot on the heels of a NASA probe's encounter with a comet, yet another glowing iceball is causing a sensation among astronomers. Comet Ikeya-Murakami, in the constellation Virgo, appears to be in the midst of an eye-catching outburst.

It can't be caught with the naked eye. The shooting star was discovered just a week ago by Japanese amateur astronomers Kaoru Ikeya and Shigeki Murakami, and it's currently receding from the sun. But skywatchers are getting some great views of comet and its unconventional tail through remote-controlled telescopes. The pictures show a long tail and a rapid brightening, perhaps due to the explosive collapse of a structure within the comet.

Joseph Brimacombe's Flickr animation, seen in the video clip above, loops together time-lapse photos that show the comet moving across the night sky over New Mexico. Brimacombe, who lives in Australia, was able to capture the imagery thanks to the New Mexico Skies remote-telescope setup.

Italian astronomers Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero used imagery from the remote-controlled GRAS Observatory in New Mexico to create their own animation, which appears to show bright material flashing away from the nucleus. You can see a still frame at right, and clicking on the link in the caption will bring up the full animation from SpaceWeather.com.

Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin processed his imagery from a remote telescope in New Mexico, using a Larson Sekenina filter, to bring out two symmetrical jets streaming from the comet nucleus ... or nuclei. "I saw an excellent inner coma, which looks like the mini-version of the 17P/Holmes comet after its powerful outburst in 2007," Elenin told me in an e-mail.

SpaceWeather.com provides additional views of the comet, plus a handy sky map in case you want to pull out your binoculars or telescope and try looking fof it early Thursday. It should be hanging close to Saturn in eastern skies, just before dawn. "Set your alarm and happy hunting!" SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips says.

More sights worth seeing:

• Folks are starting to put together 3-D views of Comet Hartley, based on imagery sent back by NASA's Deep Impact / EPOXI probe. SpaceWeather.com passes along a cross-eyed stereo view from Hanno Falk as well as a red-blue anaglyph from Belgium's Patrick Vantuyne. The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla posted a red-blue animation from Daniel Machacek and Luca Cassio. (You'll need red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.)
• Six months ago, astronomers were intrigued by the disappearance of a white cloud stripe on Jupiter, known as the Southern Equatorial Belt or SEB. Now Christopher Go, a Jupiter-watching astronomer in the Philippines, is seeing evidence of the SEB's return. "We can expect impressive and rapidly changing disturbances over the next three months," SpaceWeather.com quotes John Rogers, director of the Jupiter section of the British Astronomical Association, as saying.

Update for 2:30 a.m. ET Nov. 11: Thanks to Daniel Fischer for pointing out there's not much chance of Comet Ikeya-Murakami brightening at this point.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

It turns out that Robonaut 2 -- along with the human members of the shuttle Discovery's crew -- will have to wait a few more weeks before going into orbit, due to today's postponement of Discovery's launch. But you can still go on a virtual adventure with Robonaut and NASA, thanks to the efforts of some enterprising 3-D photographers.

This adventure doesn't require high-tech 3-D TV monitors like the ones being talked about for the coming holiday season. All you need are the cheap red-blue glasses commonly associated with 1950s-era 3-D flicks. These glasses are widely available from novelty shops -- and I've been known to send out free some spectacles myself. (More about that later.)

The YouTube video above is one example of 3-D at the edge. Filipino director/cinematographer Paolo Dy captured the Robonaut demonstration during this week's NASA tweetup -- a gathering that brought together 150 Twitter-using space fans at Kennedy Space Center for a behind-the-scenes look at the space program.

The Robonaut may look fairly flat in this particular video, but it's amusing to see phone-wielding twitterers click away in 3-D as NASA shows off its humanoid robot.

Another clip from Dy shows tweeps dashing away from NASA's countdown clock in 3-D: 

Check out Dy's website for 3-D photography of tourist sites in Europe, plus the lobby of the Manila Peninsula Hotel.

Color/3-D hybrid imagery is tricky because you have to include just enough red and blue to fool the brain into seeing the 3-D effect, and enough of the other colors to make the scene come alive. But photographers have been able to do it, even with space scenes. One of the masters at this is Belgium's Patrick Vantuyne, who offers 3-D scenes of interplanetary landscapes and space hardware on his Tridi website. Here's an unusual sidelong perspective of an Atlantis launch (be sure to check out Vantuyne's full-size version):  

Patrick Vantuyne / Tridi.be

Liftoff of the shuttle Atlantis is captured in a stereo view created by Belgian 3-D whiz Patrick Vantuyne.

But the launch is just the beginning of a 3-D space journey. Vantuyne also provides views of the space shuttle as seen from the space station, the space station as seen from the shuttle, a 3-D view of the Hubble Space Telescope flying away from Discovery, an up-close-and-personal portrait of astronaut Joe Tanner during a 2006 spacewalk, and Discovery coming in for a landing.

"What you are seeing is real stereo/3-D and not some kind of software gimmick to produce a simple stereo effect," Vantuyne says of his space hardware gallery.

You don't have to end your 3-D mission with the shuttle. Here's a selection of other 3-D space sites, plus some of the earlier roundups I've written about:

On the Web:

• Anaglyph albums from Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Anaglyph gallery at Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• 3-D showcase for NASA's STEREO mission

From Cosmic Log:

• The depths of Mars ... in 3-D
• See the moon's marvels in 3-D
• Saturn's moons in 3-D
• More from outer space in 3-D
• The Red Planet in 3-D
• More 3-D delights from Mars
• Fly through a nebula in 3-D

As I mentioned, you'll need red-blue glasses to see these anaglyphs the way they're meant to be seen. If you can't find them at novelty or party stores, you can contact one of the mail-order vendors listed on this NASA webpage. I'm trying to do my part as well.

So far I've sent out more than 100 cardboard 3-D specs that have been provided free of charge by Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope team. (Why WorldWide Telescope? In part, it's because the astronomy software offers Mars imagery in 3-D. Also, Microsoft Research's headquarters is in my neighborhood. After all, Microsoft is a partner along with NBC Universal in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

I'll be sending out 25 more red-blue glasses to the first 25 people who left a comment on the "3-D ALERT" posting on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. Today's 3-D giveaway has ended, but keep a watch on the Facebook page for future 3-D ALERTS. And while you're on the page, please click on the "Like" button to join the Cosmic Log community. You can also follow me on Twitter (@b0yle). And if you really like me, please consider picking up a copy of my book about the planet search, "The Case for Pluto."

The Expedition Titanic crew pulled into port in Newfoundland today, ending their North Atlantic adventure earlier than planned. But this isn't the final chapter of the historic shipwreck's saga.

For one thing, there are mountains of data to go through — including HD video of the site in 3-D as well as sonar readings gathered by high-tech vehicles operating two and a half miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. The main aim of Expedition Titanic is to create the most comprehensive maps and visual record where the ship tragically came to rest 98 years ago. The Titanic was considered "unsinkable," but it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down, taking 1,517 victims with it.

The RV Jean Charcot had to leave the site late Wednesday due to the approach of Hurricane Igor, a monstrous storm stretching across 1,000 miles of the Atlantic. But researchers say they were able to get what they came for despite the forced early exit.

"We certainly have all the data we talked about — the clues to what happened to the Titanic," Dave Gallo, expedition co-leader and a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, says in a video clip sent back from the ship. "What story can we tell from what we've seen? Are we going to change the story that exists, or are we going to come up with a new story? We haven't had the time — we've been collecting the data — to go back and look at it. ... Now we need to go back and start to look at all these things."

One of the tales to untangle has to do with the Titanic's largely intact bow, which has become the wreck's signature image. Why does the front of the ship seem to be in such good shape? Did the bow plow into the ocean bottom directly, or did a different area of the ship take the brunt of the impact, allowing the bow to settle in more gently?

The detailed imagery is likely to help researchers refine their models for the Titanic's breakup and descent. P.H. Nargeolet, expedition co-leader and director of underwater research for RMS Titanic Inc., talks about what is known and still not known in the must-see video displayed above. He also says time is running out. Corrosion in the form of "rusticles" is clearly taking its toll on some key sections of the shipwreck, but not so much on others.

"In a few years, all the deck will collapse. That's for sure," Nargeolet says. "There's no question about that. The hull itself will be here for a long time."

Gallo says the Titanic's impermanence makes this expedition critically important. "The techniques that we're using here can be applied to other shipwrecks, if we find other wrecks," he says. "But in terms of protection of this site, it's invaluable. How do you protect something if you don't know what's here?"

Here's another first-run video that features highlights from the bow section. Pay particularly close attention to these artifacts:

• 00:00: The camera looks down at a cargo crane that is still largely intact.
• 00:30: A space heater, especially designed for use in the Titanic's best suites, lies out of place where third-class passengers exercised and took the sea air.
• 00:45: A door marks the entrance to third-class accommodations, not far from the crew's mess hall.
• 00:55: The Titanic's chains look as strong as they were 98 years ago.
• 01:10: One of the ship's anchors is encrusted with rusticles.
• 01:25: Sections of the hull are torn apart.

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Will this be the last visit to the Titanic? Not on your life. Deep Ocean Expeditions is touting a 2011 trip that features visits to the site in Russian submersibles for $40,000 per person ($5,000 if you just want to stay on the ship). The next year marks the centennial of the Titanic's sinking, and cruise packages are already being set up for the 100th anniversary. The 2012 cruises will include topside memorial services and perhaps even virtual visits to the underwater site itself, thanks to remotely operated vehicles.

But you won't have to sail to the North Atlantic to get in on the Titanic treatment in 2012. James Cameron, the film director who turned the tragedy into an Oscar-winning movies, has said that "Titanic" will be re-released in 3-D just in time for the centennial. That's old hat for Cameron: He pioneered 3-D moviemaking techniques back in 2003 for his Titanic documentary, "Ghosts of the Abyss," and turned 3-D into box-office gold in "Avatar."

The Titanic shipwreck site isn't the only underwater frontier that's in Cameron's sights. This week Australia's NewsCore reported that the director was commissioning the construction of a deep-sea submersible to take him down the planet's deepest ocean trench, Challenger Deep. The idea would be to capture footage for use in his "Avatar" sequel, which is set in an alien world's ocean, or perhaps in two other deep-sea movies that Cameron has in mind.

Cameron said that the submersible was "about half-completed," and that he planned to begin preparations for the dive sometime this year. "Avatar 2" is expected to come out in 2014.

More on the Titanic and 3-D views:

• Expedition bids farewell to Titanic
• Reports on Expedition Titanic from NBC News' Kerry Sanders
• Expedition Titanic website 
• RMS Titanic's Facebook page, Twitter feed, Flickr site, YouTube channel
• Blog postings from the Waitt Institute
• Titanic 3-D imagery from National Geographic (red-blue glasses required)

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

"Hubble 3-D" made a splash this year in big-screen movie theaters, and now 3-D imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope can make a splash on your computer as well. This week the Hubble team released a red-blue video clip providing a fly-through of the Carina Nebula, its featured image of the week.

"The 3-D interpretation uses lots of artistic license, so it is not intended to be scientifically accurate," according to a posting about the video clip on Slashdot.

Here's how the Hubble team explains the scene: "The stars and nebula layers from Hubble's two-dimensional image have been separated using both scientific knowledge and artistic license to create the depth in the movie. Of note, the relative distances between stars and the nebula have been greatly compressed."

You'll need red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect, and you'll want to select the fullscreen option to maximize the awesomeness. Over the past couple of years I've mailed out about 75 3-D spectacles to Cosmic Log readers, and I'll send more spectacles to the first 25 people who make a request as a comment below ... assuming that I can get in touch with you through the Newsvine registration system, of course. The 3-D glasses are being provided courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

You won't need 3-D glasses to check out these other goodies on the Web:

• Inside Science: Tying string theory together 
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'What Darwin Never Knew' (replay)
• Cracked: Six scientific reasons you're a bad employee

Update for 3:30 p.m. ET Sept. 20: I have more requests than there are spectacles, but I will see if I can scrounge up more for the people who have requested them up to this point. I'll be sending out messages today requesting your mailing addresses. If for some reason I don't get in touch with you by Tuesday, send an e-mail to alan-at-thecaseforpluto-dot-com.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

An expedition to document the Titanic shipwreck site in 3-D has been brought to a quick end due to the approach of yet another hurricane.

The RV Jean Charcot headed back from the site in the North Atlantic at midnight and is due back in port at St. John's, Newfoundland, on Friday.

"Safety first," the Expedition Titanic team declared in a Facebook update. "The accelerated movement of Hurricane Igor means that we are leaving the wreck site earlier than expected. ... Even though we're leaving early, we still have plenty of great photos and videos to share over the coming weeks and months."

Some of those images document areas of the debris field that have been little-seen since the 98-year-old wreck of the luxury liner was rediscovered in 1985.

Anyone who's watched the movie "Titanic" is familiar with the ship's jutting bow  — which was the site of Leonardo DiCaprio's "King of the World" scene and now serves as the shipwreck's signature image. The bow was most recently featured in NBC News' reports from the expedition, aired last month before Hurricane Danielle forced a weeklong break in the action.

You can almost imagine the ghosts of the Titanic's 1,517 victims wafting along nearly intact decks and rusted-out staterooms. Not so with the stern, however. The area around the ship's backside, which has been the focus of the expedition's underwater survey for the past week, reveals the full violence of the Titanic's clash with an iceberg and its resulting breakup.

In the video above, which is being made available to the public here for the first time, you can see the steel of the hull broken off and peeled away like the skin of an orange. Whole sections of the hull are stacked on the seafloor, with portholes staring up like the eyes of dead fish.

You can also see a ship propeller lying amid the debris, and there's a close-up look at the conical top of a high-pressure cylinder from the Titanic's main engines. With a diameter of 54 inches and a stroke of more than 6 feet, this cylinder produced about 3,750 horsepower when the Titanic was moving full steam ahead.

Another video, shown for the first time below, surveys the debris field around the stern: a splayed-out section of the hull here, a porcelain basin there, the intricately wrought side piece from a bench sitting atop mangled metal, a brass grate gleaming dully in the deep.

Even though the expedition is winding down, there's lots more to see: The Expedition Titanic website provides a great overview of the effort, and you can count on RMS Titanic Inc.'s Facebook page, Twitter feed, Flickr photo site and YouTube video channel to point you to the latest imagery. The Waitt Institute and WHOI's Dave Gallo are filing updates as well. If you haven't seen Kerry Sanders' reports on the expedition, check 'em out now. And stay tuned for more pictures and first-run video in a follow-up Cosmic Log posting.

 For something completely different, you can tune in at 9 p.m. ET tonight (6 p.m. PT/SLT) and hear me chat with Jay Ackroyd on "Virtually Speaking" about the future of NASA. The show is being simulcast on Second Life and BlogTalkRadio. If you miss it, don't worry: The show will be archived. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."