We asked Bill Nye about his plan to save Earth from civilization-ending asteroids

Michael Kovac/Getty Images

Nobody sees it coming. An unidentified asteroid, just a couple miles wide, shatters Earth’s atmosphere with a deafening bang, craters its surface with the energy of a few million nuclear bombs. The shockwave flattens buildings like they’re made of dust. Millions of people, incinerated in the blink of an eye. After the initial blast, molten debris is ejected into the atmosphere and into Earth’s orbit, such that civilization’s final act is set in a rain of fire.

This isn’t the beginning of a History Channel doomsday script. It’s a dramatization of a highly unlikely but nonetheless plausible asteroid impact event that would spell the end for humanity as we know it. After all, dinosaurs ruled Earth the last time a city-sized asteroid hit. And look what happened to them.

When it comes to asteroid’s capable of wiping out a city, we’re practically as in the dark as the dinosaurs, having identified just about 1.5 percent of the million or so out there. Meanwhile, astronomers think they’ve found between 90-95 percent of the civilization-ending space rocks, none of which pose an immediate threat to the planet. It’s the 5-10 percent we don’t know about that are the problem though. If one of those bad boys drops by unannounced, the consequence would be catastrophic.

The technology sounds straight out of science fiction but it’s all within our technological reach.

Asteroid impacts don’t keep Bill Nye up at night but, like a swimmer with a fear of sharks, it’s the ones we don’t see that have him worried. “It’s a low probability event with an enormous consequence,” he tells Digital Trends. “The only preventable natural disaster.” Discovering the remaining 5-10 percent of those asteroids is key. After that, engineers will set out to deflect any inbound asteroids. From nuclear blasts that knock the asteroid off its path to swarms of laser-beaming spacecraft to nudge it in the other direction, the technology may sound straight out of science fiction but Nye says it’s all within our technological reach.

As CEO of The Planetary Society, the fun-loving and often irreverent science guy is currently spearheading a Kickstarter campaign called Kick Asteroid!, which aims to raise money and awareness about these outer space threats and nudge lawmakers into action. Offering merchandise like shirts and posters, the campaign met its $50,000 funding goal but continues to take pledges with a couple days left to go.

So, we spoke to Bill Nye about the possibility of asteroid impact events, why we should worry, and what we can do about it.

Digital Trends: Asteroid impacts make for compelling movie scripts but seem less rooted in reality. How often do they actually happen and how worried we should be?

Bill Nye: Well there was a significant one in 2013 that was 20 meters or so that hit the atmosphere [in Chelyabinsk, Russia]. Everybody ran to the windows and dozens of seconds later the shockwave hit the ground, blew glass in their faces, and hurt a thousand people. Some of them had very serious injuries and had to go to the emergency room. Then in 1909 there was the Tunguska airburst in Siberia that leveled two-thousand square kilometers of trees. 10 million trees were knocked down in an instant. And 1908 wasn’t very long ago. If that airburst had happened over Paris or New York or Sydney, that would be the end of any of those places. And what finally did the dinosaurs in was an asteroid impact, which is now reckoned to have been off the coast of Mexico.

Shattered glass strewn across the foyer of the Chelyabinsk Drama Theatre after a meteor struck down early morning in February 2013.

The smaller ones happen a couple times a century, the big ones happen every few centuries, and the huge ones happen every few million years. It’s a very low probability event but with enormous consequence. It would be just “Control-Alt-Delete” for civilization.

So are we past due for one of the big ones?

“We’ve identified about 90 percent of the catastrophic ones but that leaves 10 percent, which is more than enough to be troublesome.”

Nobody knows. We speculate about that all the time. Lisa Randall wrote a cool book where she speculated that the Earth is passing through a disk of dark matter every few million years and the periodicity of 35 million years of asteroid impacts is related to matter we don’t understand yet. It’s a very cool idea — but neither here nor there. All it would take is one. We’ve identified about 90 percent of the catastrophic ones but that leaves 10 percent, which is more than enough to be troublesome.

You said if one did hit it would be essentially Control-Alt-Delete scenario. What would the aftermath of a big asteroid impact look like?

In the impact [that killed the dinosaurs], what we now call the Chicxulub crater, the cone of ejected material is thought to be bigger in diameter than the diameter of the Earth. This red hot debris ended up essentially in Earth’s orbit for days or weeks. That caused global fires and killed off whatever the large animals ate, so they couldn’t make a living. The only creatures that lived through it were living underground in burrows and stuff.

Say we were going to be hit by one of the 10 percent of unknown asteroids. How long beforehand would we have a warning? Would we be able to see it approaching?

Probably not. Let’s say it’s 30 kilometers in diameter. That’s big compared to a football stadium but tiny compared to the vastness of space. So as we like to “hilariously” joke — looking for asteroids is like looking for a charcoal briquette in the dark. They’re very hard to see but with the right instruments, especially infrared telescopes, we can see them. They glow about 150 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. So we want to advocate for space to build systems to look for these things, so that we get 20 or 30 years notice. If we have 30 years notice then we can send a spacecraft out to give it a nudge so it doesn’t cross the Earth’s orbit when we are there.

A visual representation of Asteroid laser ablasion, a recent development in laser technology, being used to deflect an incoming asteroid. DE-STAR: Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation

What sort of nudges are we talking about? How would we deflect an asteroid?

Well you can just run into it with the spacecraft going at a high speed, using a kinetic impactor, as they’re called. Maybe detonate a nuclear weapon near it so that it causes some of the asteroid’s surface material to shoot off into space, to oblate. The Planetary Society sponsored a cool line of research where we’ve proposed building spacecraft with lasers on them. We’d then we have a swarm of our laser “bees” and they would beam laser light at the surface of an asteroid and cause the surface to burn off, to oblate a little bit. That momentum of that ejected stuff would give the asteroid a little push through space. I’ve always been charmed by that idea.
But whatever we do it’s almost certain to not require anything new. By that I mean new technology. It would be a whole new spacecraft with a whole new set of gizmos, but it would be made from the existing spacecraft technology and components.

What sort of investment would we be talking here to build one of these spacecraft?

“Compare that to the destruction of humankind. We should probably come up with the cash.”

I don’t know, but compare it to what a flagship mission cost. This would be something akin to Cassini, which flew for 20 years for four billion dollars. That’s not that much but, still, say it’s 10 times that. Compare that to the destruction of humankind. We should probably come up with the cash. And all the money is spent in space is really spent on Earth! Don’t forget that! There would be no aerospace contractors we presume involved and, as I like to say, space brings out the best in us. We solve problems that have never been solved before.

The Kick Asteroid! campaign is in part about raising awareness for asteroid threats, and to light a fire under lawmakers to fund some of these missions. What are lawmakers currently doing to mitigate the risk of asteroids and what they can do better and your better?

We can dedicate more resources for a more thorough search. We have the NEOWISE spacecraft (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infared Survery Explorer) but we could use two or three more of those things. 10 percent of the asteroid population may end life as we know. That’s a lot of asteroids.

Progression of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) investigation during the first four years since its restart in December 2013. NASA

But you used the word mitigation and I’m all for it. I mean in Chelyabinsk it would have been good if there were some type of public warning, maybe like an AMBER Alert on your phone. “Stay away from the windows for the next three minutes!” Something like that. But better yet would be to not have to do that at all and just deflect every one of them.

This last question comes courtesy of our emerging tech editor: “Deep Impact” or “Armageddon”? Which film is more scientifically accurate when it comes to a potential asteroid impact?

The one where they didn’t blow up the asteroid is better. (Note: he means “Deep Impact” is better.) Blowing up an asteroid is problematic.

“Amateur astronomers are different from amateur golfers, in that amateur astronomers genuinely contribute to the science of astronomy.”

But, by the way, in one of them (He means “Deep Impact” again.) the premise was that a kid had seen an asteroid that no one else saw. Well, a lot of asteroids are identified by amateur astronomers. Amateur astronomers are different from amateur golfers, in that amateur astronomers genuinely contribute to the science of astronomy. This is real science done by regular people. The thing that amateur astronomers are able to contribute is what we call “tracking.” Somebody’ll find it and then all these hundreds or thousands of astronomers around the world train their telescopes to the same part of the sky to see if they get agreement on watching this thing move across the sky against the background stars, stars that are so fantastic that they don’t seem to move from our point of view.

So the Planetary Society supports amateur astronomers with we call the Shoemaker NEO grants, named after the famous astronomer who studied asteroids and comets. Every two years we give away grants to amateur astronomers to improve their equipment or their systems associated with their telescopes to track these objects.

Editors’ Recommendations

• X-ray laser heats water to 180,000 degrees in a fraction of a second
• We all cut cable, and now we’re just as screwed on streaming
• Avoiding armageddon: U.S. reveals plans to counter killer asteroids
• Fitbit to use Google Cloud to share medical data with doctors
• Cooler Master’s new $79 mechanical keyboard lights up your desk like Christmas

Reprogrammable Braille could capture the Harry Potter series in a few pages

Dimples are formed on an inverted plastic fruit bowl by poking the dimple location with a simple stylus, in much the same way that the pages of a traditional Braille book are printed.

Why carry around a tome when you can carry around just a few pages? That seems to have been the question that launched the latest innovation in Braille, which should help to reduce the size and weight of books for the visually impaired. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a so-called reprogrammable Braille — it’s described as “a framework to encode memory, in the form of Braille-like dimples and bumps, onto a blank, lattice-free material.” In essence, this material is as dynamic as the words it can contain, changing as needed to reflect new text.

The design is surprisingly simple. First, there’s a thin elastic shell that is compressed on each end. Next, a stylus is used  to create simple indentations, much in the same way that a traditional Braille book might be printed. The shell keeps these indentations where they were even when the force is no longer applied. But once the shell is stretched back out to its original position, those indentations disappear.

“We show how an otherwise featureless curved elastic shell, when loaded appropriately, can store elastic bits (e-bits) that can be written and erased at will anywhere along the shell,” said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics at SEAS and senior author of the study. “This system could serve as the basis for small-scale mechanical memories.”

This new material marks the first time that scientists have proven that mechanical memory is possible in a system without any inherent lattice. Moreover, researchers say that their method can be used on any scale — whether it’s one-atom-thick graphene or paper, you should be able to use this  technique to create reprogrammable Braille. If implemented correctly, this could turn Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace from a massive 21 Braille volumes into just a few pages.

“Simple experiments with cylindrical and spherical shells show that we can control the number, location, and the temporal order of these dimples which can be written and erased at will,” Mahadevan added. “This paper is a first step in showing that we can store memories. The next step is to ask if we can actually compute with them.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Nike’s latest patent turns your workout clothes into towels
• Asus ROG Phone shrinks your gaming PC and puts it in your pocket
• These 3D-printed houses could be one-tenth the price of regular homes
• The best laptop bags
• Rolls-Royce is creating a fleet of robotic snakes and beetles to repair planes

Nomad creates a wireless charging pad just for the Tesla Model 3

While you’d imagine that Elon Musk and his team would have thought of every tiny detail when it comes to the  Tesla Model 3, they did manage to leave one thing out: A wireless charging pad for smartphones. Sure, there’s a charging dock with two USB ports that’s tailor-made for phones, but who wants to deal with messy cables?

Luckily, Nomad has the perfect solution. The company has created a premium wireless charging pad that fits perfectly into the charging dock on the Tesla Model 3. The wireless charging pad is powered by the dual USB ports and simply slides into the charging dock. And since it’s coated with a thermoplastic rubber and has walls on both the sides and bottom, you won’t need to worry about the pad or your devices moving while driving.

In addition to being a perfect fit for the Tesla, the charging pad has been engineered to ensure you get a quick charge. There’s two 7.5-watt charging coils, allowing you to charge two devices simultaneously. There’s also an integrated 6,000mAh battery that can give your phones an extra boost, even when the car is turned off.  Nomad claims its custom-engineered pad for the Tesla is able to charge a completely depleted phone to 50 percent within an hour.

And it’s not just iPhones and other flagships that will charge via the wireless charging pad: Nomad promises any phone that has wireless charging capabilities will work with the pad. There are even optional spacers in the box that will allow you to easily prop up smaller phones so they can charge wirelessly.

The wireless charging pad for the Tesla Model 3 is just the latest creation from the minimalist team at Nomad. The company is known for creating products that are both durable and gorgeous.

You can pre-order the wireless charger for the Tesla Model 3 now on the Nomad site. The charger usually sells for $150, however there’s a pre-order promotion that brings the price down to a more affordable $130. And while orders for the Tesla Model 3 take nearly a year to fulfill, Nomad plans to begin shipping its wireless charging pad on September 1.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best wireless phone chargers for your iPhone or Android
• The best iPhone accessories
• Here’s everything we know about Apple’s AirPower wireless charging mat
• Here’s the latest news on the Tesla Model 3, including specs and performance

The Looking Glass brings us closer than ever to Star Wars-like holograms

Previous

Next

1 of 5

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

There are several reasons why 3D televisions failed, and one of them was the lack of 3D content. Well, there’s a new 3D “holographic display” in town — the Looking Glass — and the company behind it is following quite a different strategy. Instead of delivering content-less hardware to consumers, the Looking Glass is designed by and for 3D creators.

Looking Glass Factory is a Brooklyn-based company founded in 2013 that has been tinkering with hologram technology for the past five years. It has produced and sold several products since, including L3D cubes, the Looking Glass Volume, and the HoloPlayer One, but it’s clear everything has been leading up to the new Looking Glass.

Looking Glass Factory

The Looking Glass is a heavy, glass box that’s available in 8-inch and 15-inch sizes. It can display 3D holographic content — which looks like it’s floating in air — and you don’t need any kind of headset for it to work. It’s meant to sit on a desk because it needs to be connected to a relatively powerful PC or laptop.

We had a chance to check it out, and we can easily confirm the Looking Glass produces the most lifelike 3D content we’ve ever seen. Animations ported into the Looking Glass — which is easy to do since the platform supports Unity — are fluid, and they look sharp from various angles. You can also interact with the holographic interface, as the Looking Glass supports a variety of peripherals such as the Leap Motion Controller, and even the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers. We tossed around an animated dancing figure with just our hands thanks to the hand-tracking Leap Motion controller, and we also lit up a scene of a frog with our finger acting as a torch.

The idea is to get the Looking Glass into the hands of 3D creators around the world. These creators can then see what their creations look like through this holographic display, which can even help influence the design process. For example, pulling a 3D model into the Looking Glass and then casting artificial light to it can help animators see exactly where the shadows land quickly.

This will eventually lead to creators populating a 3D App Library, which currently houses dozens of apps from Looking Glass Factory. Once there’s plenty of content, co-founder and CEO Shawn Frayne told Digital Trends consumers will follow — they’ll want the Looking Glass in their homes.

“It’s one of our theories that a few years from now in people’s homes, they do have several Looking Glasses in each of their rooms that has an Alexa or some other voice A.I. running with it,” Frayne said. “There’s a virtual character that speaks with the voice of Alexa, and then she or he will bring up anything you ask for. In that sense, it would start to become a centerpiece of media and communication and creation in the home.”

How it works

The Looking Glass is made up of a combination of light-field and volumetric display technology. The light-field display recreates the rays of light that bounce off the 3D content, which helps you visualize it, and the volumetric display helps create these animated objects in three dimensions. Frayne said the Looking Glass generates 45 views of 3D content, so a group of people can huddle around the device and see the scene without any problems. We didn’t find ourselves feeling any eye strain or nausea after staring at the Looking Glass for quite some time.

With these holographic objects, Frayne believes we will see more data that our brains will prefer over standard 2D screens. For example, looking at map data of Mars through the Looking Glass will provide a better understanding of the terrain than if we simply looked at them on a 2D screen.

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive.”

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive, and then they realize, ‘Oh I can design my characters faster and better in this system,’” Frayne said. “Then it’s this virtuous cycle of the designers creating new media for this system, and then people consuming that and enjoying it and learning from it.”

The Looking Glass starts at $600 for the smaller version, but the price jumps up to $3,000 for the larger model. You’ll be able to nab them for deeply discounted prices through Kickstarter, which is simply where the company is taking its pre-orders. About a 100 units will ship in September, and the rest will follow in December.

It looks like 2018 is shaping up to be the year of holographic displays. RED, the company behind professional video cameras, is working to bring a smartphone with a holographic display later this summer.

Editors’ Recommendations

• AT&T to sell the Magic Leap One Creator Edition AR headset in U.S. this summer
• We tried some of the RED Hydrogen One’s crazy tech: Here’s what you need to know
• Google Home review
• Samsung tapped Hollywood talent to bring AR Emoji to life
• How broke college grads made animation software used in Jurassic Park and Iron Man

The Looking Glass brings us closer than ever to Star Wars-like holograms

Previous

Next

1 of 5

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

There are several reasons why 3D televisions failed, and one of them was the lack of 3D content. Well, there’s a new 3D “holographic display” in town — the Looking Glass — and the company behind it is following quite a different strategy. Instead of delivering content-less hardware to consumers, the Looking Glass is designed by and for 3D creators.

Looking Glass Factory is a Brooklyn-based company founded in 2013 that has been tinkering with hologram technology for the past five years. It has produced and sold several products since, including L3D cubes, the Looking Glass Volume, and the HoloPlayer One, but it’s clear everything has been leading up to the new Looking Glass.

Looking Glass Factory

The Looking Glass is a heavy, glass box that’s available in 8-inch and 15-inch sizes. It can display 3D holographic content — which looks like it’s floating in air — and you don’t need any kind of headset for it to work. It’s meant to sit on a desk because it needs to be connected to a relatively powerful PC or laptop.

We had a chance to check it out, and we can easily confirm the Looking Glass produces the most lifelike 3D content we’ve ever seen. Animations ported into the Looking Glass — which is easy to do since the platform supports Unity — are fluid, and they look sharp from various angles. You can also interact with the holographic interface, as the Looking Glass supports a variety of peripherals such as the Leap Motion Controller, and even the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers. We tossed around an animated dancing figure with just our hands thanks to the hand-tracking Leap Motion controller, and we also lit up a scene of a frog with our finger acting as a torch.

The idea is to get the Looking Glass into the hands of 3D creators around the world. These creators can then see what their creations look like through this holographic display, which can even help influence the design process. For example, pulling a 3D model into the Looking Glass and then casting artificial light to it can help animators see exactly where the shadows land quickly.

This will eventually lead to creators populating a 3D App Library, which currently houses dozens of apps from Looking Glass Factory. Once there’s plenty of content, co-founder and CEO Shawn Frayne told Digital Trends consumers will follow — they’ll want the Looking Glass in their homes.

“It’s one of our theories that a few years from now in people’s homes, they do have several Looking Glasses in each of their rooms that has an Alexa or some other voice A.I. running with it,” Frayne said. “There’s a virtual character that speaks with the voice of Alexa, and then she or he will bring up anything you ask for. In that sense, it would start to become a centerpiece of media and communication and creation in the home.”

How it works

The Looking Glass is made up of a combination of light-field and volumetric display technology. The light-field display recreates the rays of light that bounce off the 3D content, which helps you visualize it, and the volumetric display helps create these animated objects in three dimensions. Frayne said the Looking Glass generates 45 views of 3D content, so a group of people can huddle around the device and see the scene without any problems. We didn’t find ourselves feeling any eye strain or nausea after staring at the Looking Glass for quite some time.

With these holographic objects, Frayne believes we will see more data that our brains will prefer over standard 2D screens. For example, looking at map data of Mars through the Looking Glass will provide a better understanding of the terrain than if we simply looked at them on a 2D screen.

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive.”

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive, and then they realize, ‘Oh I can design my characters faster and better in this system,’” Frayne said. “Then it’s this virtuous cycle of the designers creating new media for this system, and then people consuming that and enjoying it and learning from it.”

The Looking Glass starts at $600 for the smaller version, but the price jumps up to $3,000 for the larger model. You’ll be able to nab them for deeply discounted prices through Kickstarter, which is simply where the company is taking its pre-orders. About a 100 units will ship in September, and the rest will follow in December.

It looks like 2018 is shaping up to be the year of holographic displays. RED, the company behind professional video cameras, is working to bring a smartphone with a holographic display later this summer.

Editors’ Recommendations

• AT&T to sell the Magic Leap One Creator Edition AR headset in U.S. this summer
• We tried some of the RED Hydrogen One’s crazy tech: Here’s what you need to know
• Google Home review
• Samsung tapped Hollywood talent to bring AR Emoji to life
• How broke college grads made animation software used in Jurassic Park and Iron Man

The Looking Glass brings us closer than ever to Star Wars-like holograms

Previous

Next

1 of 5

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

There are several reasons why 3D televisions failed, and one of them was the lack of 3D content. Well, there’s a new 3D “holographic display” in town — the Looking Glass — and the company behind it is following quite a different strategy. Instead of delivering content-less hardware to consumers, the Looking Glass is designed by and for 3D creators.

Looking Glass Factory is a Brooklyn-based company founded in 2013 that has been tinkering with hologram technology for the past five years. It has produced and sold several products since, including L3D cubes, the Looking Glass Volume, and the HoloPlayer One, but it’s clear everything has been leading up to the new Looking Glass.

Looking Glass Factory

The Looking Glass is a heavy, glass box that’s available in 8-inch and 15-inch sizes. It can display 3D holographic content — which looks like it’s floating in air — and you don’t need any kind of headset for it to work. It’s meant to sit on a desk because it needs to be connected to a relatively powerful PC or laptop.

We had a chance to check it out, and we can easily confirm the Looking Glass produces the most lifelike 3D content we’ve ever seen. Animations ported into the Looking Glass — which is easy to do since the platform supports Unity — are fluid, and they look sharp from various angles. You can also interact with the holographic interface, as the Looking Glass supports a variety of peripherals such as the Leap Motion Controller, and even the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers. We tossed around an animated dancing figure with just our hands thanks to the hand-tracking Leap Motion controller, and we also lit up a scene of a frog with our finger acting as a torch.

The idea is to get the Looking Glass into the hands of 3D creators around the world. These creators can then see what their creations look like through this holographic display, which can even help influence the design process. For example, pulling a 3D model into the Looking Glass and then casting artificial light to it can help animators see exactly where the shadows land quickly.

This will eventually lead to creators populating a 3D App Library, which currently houses dozens of apps from Looking Glass Factory. Once there’s plenty of content, co-founder and CEO Shawn Frayne told Digital Trends consumers will follow — they’ll want the Looking Glass in their homes.

“It’s one of our theories that a few years from now in people’s homes, they do have several Looking Glasses in each of their rooms that has an Alexa or some other voice A.I. running with it,” Frayne said. “There’s a virtual character that speaks with the voice of Alexa, and then she or he will bring up anything you ask for. In that sense, it would start to become a centerpiece of media and communication and creation in the home.”

How it works

The Looking Glass is made up of a combination of light-field and volumetric display technology. The light-field display recreates the rays of light that bounce off the 3D content, which helps you visualize it, and the volumetric display helps create these animated objects in three dimensions. Frayne said the Looking Glass generates 45 views of 3D content, so a group of people can huddle around the device and see the scene without any problems. We didn’t find ourselves feeling any eye strain or nausea after staring at the Looking Glass for quite some time.

With these holographic objects, Frayne believes we will see more data that our brains will prefer over standard 2D screens. For example, looking at map data of Mars through the Looking Glass will provide a better understanding of the terrain than if we simply looked at them on a 2D screen.

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive.”

“The hope is that at first people get the system because the content feels more alive, and then they realize, ‘Oh I can design my characters faster and better in this system,’” Frayne said. “Then it’s this virtuous cycle of the designers creating new media for this system, and then people consuming that and enjoying it and learning from it.”

The Looking Glass starts at $600 for the smaller version, but the price jumps up to $3,000 for the larger model. You’ll be able to nab them for deeply discounted prices through Kickstarter, which is simply where the company is taking its pre-orders. About a 100 units will ship in September, and the rest will follow in December.

It looks like 2018 is shaping up to be the year of holographic displays. RED, the company behind professional video cameras, is working to bring a smartphone with a holographic display later this summer.

Editors’ Recommendations

• AT&T to sell the Magic Leap One Creator Edition AR headset in U.S. this summer
• We tried some of the RED Hydrogen One’s crazy tech: Here’s what you need to know
• Google Home review
• Samsung tapped Hollywood talent to bring AR Emoji to life
• How broke college grads made animation software used in Jurassic Park and Iron Man

Can I use my old SD card on a new phone?

SD cards aren’t tied to any particular device, but the files on them might be. Just clean ’em up!

SD cards are fairly cheap. That’s part of the reason they get used so much. But if you have a new-ish one, especially an expensive high-capacity card, and you switch phones, you’ll probably want to reuse it. I don’t blame ya one bit, and all you really need to do is clean them up a little and they will drop right in. Here’s what you need to know.

More: Best microSD Card for Android in 2018

About those old files

An SD card you’ve used in an Android phone will have a bunch of files on it. Some of them you might have put there, like things you’ve downloaded; others are placed there by apps like your camera, and others just pop up and might have weird names you don’t recognize. Those are all files your old phone needed, but your new phone doesn’t.

Taking care of the files you saved to the card and media in folders like Pictures or Ringtones is simple. I’d suggest you copy them somewhere else like your Google Drive storage, so you can reformat the card (that’s just easier), but if you want them on your new phone, you can leave them right where they are. Just remember that if you do format the card in your new phone, they are gone forever. Services with storage like Google Photos and Google Drive come free with your Google account — don’t be afraid to use them!

Old files can be useful, but just remember that when you format the card, they’re gone forever.

You might have a folder called DCIM if you’ve told the camera in your old phone to save photos to the SD card. You can take a peek inside of it and you’ll see that it’s filled with your photos, but can also have what appear to be duplicates of photos with a name that’s almost the same. Depending on the camera app on your old phone, those are from things like portrait mode shots, panoramas, photospheres, or any other type of photo that’s not a “regular” picture.

Your new phone might not be able to understand what to do with those, especially if you’re moving from one brand to another. But Google Photos does. I’d recommend you upload every photo on your phone to Google Photos, and use the Photos app to delete the ones you don’t want in the cloud. But don’t delete the rest just yet, because Google Photos doesn’t save the full resolution and quality of your pictures unless you tell it to do so. Take the whole folder and upload it somewhere the same as you might have done with documents or other things you wanted to keep from the step above. This is actually a great place to keep the original copies if you use an app from the Play Store to create a .zip file from them all.

The important part is to make sure you’ve saved them somewhere so you can have your new phone format the SD card. That erases everything.

The other files — ones in the Android folder or nested inside another folder are fine to delete. Some may be encrypted and can’t be read by any other phone; others might not be. But every one of them was created by an application and will be recreated and populated once an apps need to do so. If you plan to format the card in the new phone as suggested, ignore them. Otherwise, delete them.

Adoptable storage and App Lockers

None of this applies if you used your SD card as an adoptable storage device in your old phone. When you do that, the card is formatted as an encrypted drive and can’t be read by any other device except the phone that encrypted it.

To reuse the card, you’ll need to reformat it. If your new phone allows you to use an SD card as an adoptable storage drive, you’ll still need to reformat it. You do this through the dialog when you first insert the card and the system asks you what you want to do with it.

More: Everything you need to know about your SD card and Adoptable storage

This same advice probably goes for any type of App Locker app you might have used. An App Locker takes applications and “hides” them or can hide specific content like risque photos or private documents. You need a password to see these hidden apps and media files. If you use the same App Locker app on your new phone it might be able to retrieve those files, so check before you format anything. I’d suggest you unlock any media files you want to keep and back them up somewhere, then lock them back up once you’re done.

Do you really want to reuse your SD card?

SD cards aren’t super expensive, but if you’re like me, you want to use anything you’ve bought until it falls apart. That’s not the best idea when it comes to SD cards.

Unless your old SD card is Class 10 or faster, you don’t probably don’t want to reuse it. It will make apps that use the SD card for data run slower, it will take longer to copy files that you like, and your new camera probably can’t even use it for things like burst photos or 4K video. Technology moves fast and cards that were fine just two or three years ago when you bought your old phone are too slow by today’s standards.

More: Everything you need to know about SD card speeds and your phone

Thankfully, SD cards aren’t nearly as expensive as other types of computer storage. The very best high-capacity card is only going to set you back about $100, and you can get a high-quality, fast SD card for your phone for about $30. If your new phone has a camera that can take HD video, you’ll be very glad you sprung for a new card.

More: Best microSD Card for Android in 2018

If you followed this advice, you can pop your old card in your new phone and say yes when it asks if you want to format it. Once that’s finished it’s ready to go with your new phone and you can start filling it up again. Remember though, SD cards don’t live forever so always be sure to back up your important files regurlarly!

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

• Galaxy S9 and S9+: Everything you need to know!
• Galaxy S9 review: A great phone for the masses
• Complete Galaxy S9 and S9+ specs
• Galaxy S9 vs. Galaxy S8: Should you upgrade?
• Join our Galaxy S9 forums

Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint

These discounts make Philips Hue lights far more affordable

Light up your room with some colorful lights.

Philips Hue is one of the most well-known smart light makers, and people tend to fall in love with the bulbs once they try them out. Amazon currently has a whole bunch of Philips Hue products on sale, from single bulbs to multipacks, and even bundles.

Whether you’re looking to kickstart an obsession or scratch an itch and add a few more bulbs, you’re going to want to check out these great offers before they sell out. Many of these prices are the same or within a few dollars of what they were on Prime Day.

The deals you won’t want to miss include:

• 2-Bulb White & Color Ambiance Starter Kit – $99.99 (Was $150)
• 2-Bulb Starter Kit with Echo Dot Bundle – $129.99 (Was $200)
• 2-Pack White Dimmable LED Bulbs – $39.99 (Was $50)
• 4-Pack White Dimmable LED Bulbs – $41.99 (Was $50)
• White & Color Ambiance Bulbs – $39.99 (Was $50)
• White Candle LED Lights – $23.99 (Was $30)
• Color Candle LED Lights – $39.99 (Was $50)
• White & Color Ambiance LightStrip+ – $69.99 (Was $90)

There are a few other discounts available as well, so be sure to check them out. You can also check out more smart home-related deals here.

Best PlayStation 4 Accessories as of July 2018

Your PS4 is fine on its own, but these accessories can help complete the experience!

My mama told me that the key to any good outfit is the right accessories.

That’s not true. She never said that, but it sounds like the sort of thing that some mom somewhere said. The same, however, is certainly true for gaming setups. The right gaming accessories can spell the difference between just playing video games and having a gaming experience.

There are so many options when it comes to accessories for the PlayStation 4. We’ve curated the best of the best to help take your PS4 experience to the next level!

• Headset
• Charger
• VR
• Fighting Stick
• Steering Wheel
• Dualshock
• Camera

Headset

So the kids or the roommates are sound asleep and you’re ready to blast some baddies with a rocket launcher. The only problem is that you want to blast the volume while you do it. There is a solution to your woes. Pick up an Arctis 7 Steel Series headset and you’ll never have to worry about waking people up again. It has everything you might want from a gaming headset for your PS4: great sound, good comfort level, lag-free wireless audio, and a killer battery life. Happy silent gaming for $144!

See at Amazon

Charger

I know what you’re thinking and yes there is a way to charge your PS4 controllers and display them stylishly. When you’re kicked back on the couch with your feet up you can look over and rest easy knowing that your controllers are charging and lookin’ sweet when you see the soft blue glow of this dual controller charging stand. Pick up yours for only $16.

See at Amazon

VR

File this under pricey but game-changing. Are you ready to take PlayStation gaming to the next level? If the answer is yes then you might as well consider the accessory to beat all accessories. The PlayStation VR will afford you the opportunity to at last take the helm of a Starfleet ship, climb the mountains of Skyrim, or get the pants scared off of you in Resident Evil. The world of VR is yours for the taking for $330.

See at Amazon

Fighting Stick

Maybe VR isn’t right for you. Maybe you like your gaming experience to feel more like an evening playing Streetfighter 2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting at the local pizza parlor. The problem is that you’ll never come close to that experience with the standard PlayStation 4 controller. What you need is a real deal fighting stick. Pick up this Qanba Obsidian fighting stick and you will be ready to take on all comers. And with the satisfying click of Sanwa buttons, you’ll be in fighting game heaven for $200.

See at Amazon

Steering Wheel

All right, all right, so maybe fighting games are not your raison d’etre. You’re more of a pedal to the metal, rubber meets the road sort of gamer. You love racing games and much like your fighting game loving cousins, it’s all about the controller. If you’re going to go all in with racing games you might as well go all in with your controller and pick up a Driving Force G29 racing wheel. At last, you’ll be able to brake and hit the gas with your feet the way good ol’ Hank Ford intended. Start burning rubber for $252.

See at Amazon

Dualshock

Sure, the PlayStation 4 comes right out of the box with at least one Dualshock controller. However, it’s never a bad idea to have a backup. In addition, one of the tenants of customization is to make something your own. That can be done with one of the many versions of Dualshock controllers that are available to you. You can pick up an alternate color version or you can get yourself one of those newfangled Soft Touch models. Prices can vary anywhere from $40 to $70 depending on what you’re after.

See at Amazon

Camera

Maybe you’re not entirely interested in owning a PSVR. Or maybe you just find it to be downright cost prohibitive. The PlayStation camera does have other uses aside from just VR. If you are a Twitch streamer or planning on becoming one, then you might want people to see your beautiful face while you no scope noobz. As it stands right now, if you intend on streaming directly from your PS4 then you are going to need to pick up a PlayStation camera. You can get your very own PS4 camera for around $60.

See at BestBuy

The great part about accessories is that it allows you to make the game experience unique to you. If you’re looking for something more then you don’t have to live with what comes out of the box. Happy gaming and happy accessorizing!

Updated July 2018: Updated pricing.

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

5 years on, the Chromecast still has frustrating flaws that detract from the magic

We were caught off guard by how great the first Chromecast was — now, we expect more consistency from this streamer.

The original Google Chromecast was announced just over five years ago. Three generations and tens of millions of sales later, it’s hard to believe this idea originally blindsided us, accompanying the launch of the second-generation Nexus 7 tablet. The idea was ever-so-simple: use your phone to control a TV-based streaming device, but let the controls happen over the internet rather than on the same old buggy direct wireless display protocols of the time.

In a perfect world, the Chromecast works amazingly and is just as magical as it was on Day 1. You open up an app and without connecting directly to the Chromecast it starts to play from the cloud. You can still use your phone as a remote while you continue to browse content and use it for other things. You can Cast from hundreds of different apps across various genres, as well as send content directly from your computer’s browser. It’s a fantastic technology that Google has improved on over the years, both in hardware and software.

However, for as much progress as Google has made, the Chromecast experience still has some dark spots that show up on a regular basis and it completely befuddles me. It really detracts from what’s typically — but not consistently — a great experience.

The whole Cast system is still filled with instability — and it doesn’t help that every app displays it all differently.

There are two distinct flavors of problems with the Chromecast. The first is the inexplicable bugginess of the whole system. When the Cast system works, it’s truly magical … and when it doesn’t, you don’t really have any troubleshooting steps or process to figure it out. Every few times I Cast from an app on my phone to my Chromecast or NVIDIA Shield Android TV, the app loses its link with the Cast target — the content keeps playing, but now I have no way to play/pause/rewind or adjust volume.

My only fix here is to tap that Cast button again in the app — will it reconnect? Who knows. Sometimes it reconnects and lets me control what’s already playing. Most of the time it reconnects and has no idea what the Cast target is doing. In bad cases it requires force closing the app, re-connecting the Cast session and starting to play the content all over again (and not from where it was last playing, of course).

The other main problem is the inconsistency of Cast experience between apps. Google built a standard for having an app use the Cast protocol to send media to a Cast target, but was implemented with dramatic irregularity. Every app has a different-looking interface for starting a Cast session, and even further differentiation in how ongoing controls are handled. The only thing that’s consistent between apps is the Cast button itself — everything after that point is fair game to be different and confusing. Things go even further when you talk about the differences between audio and video casting. Then you get back to the performance irregularities. Some apps, like Google’s own and Netflix, are really good about keeping the Cast session alive — others, like ESPN+ and NBC Sports (to name two of many), are horrendous at keeping that Cast session active.

The increased power of the latest Casting devices has somewhat eased the frustration. The newest Chromecast Ultra is powerful enough to swap between streams relatively quickly, as are the high-end Android TV boxes and even the latest TVs that have Cast built in. A Chromecast Ultra can re-acquire a stream and start playing far faster than a first-generation Chromecast, but it hasn’t eliminated the bugginess that causes it to drop that connection in the first place.

If you’re going to have the ‘it just works’ mentality, you need to make it just work.

Google is constantly evolving the Cast protocol to handle higher quality streams, enhanced two-way communication, and of course more consistency. However, it also needs to go back and look at the core tenets of the experience to really lock them down. The app-provided interface for Casting needs to be tightened up with some consistency, and the whole system needs to have more redundancy or checks or something so that it doesn’t so often lose its connection between the Cast sender and Cast receiver.

People complain about the lack of a true navigable interface for the Chromecast, and I honestly don’t have a problem in principle with not having one — that is, so long as the Cast system works as intended. As soon as the wheels start to come off, you’re left in a weird place of having no idea what’s wrong with the system, and that’s a bad user experience all around. If you’re going to stick with the “it just works” mentality, you need to make it just work.

What do you think of the Chromecast?

Do you have similar issues? Let us know in the comments below.

Chromecast

• Chromecast buyer’s guide: Which should you get?
• Chromecast vs. Chromecast Ultra: Which should you buy?
• Chromecast Audio: Everything you need to know
• Chromecast Ultra vs. Roku
• Join the discussion in our forums!

Best Buy
B&H