• Sony XEL-1 OLED Television

    By sway Posted on 10.23.2008 Comments

    Hanging a television on the wall is nice. Even better is sticking it on, like wallpaper. The first organic light-emitting diode TV isn’t that thin, but at three millimeters, it’s close. (Sony has prototypes that are one tenth as thick.) It also produces stunning colors and the highest contrast possible—from brilliant white to pitch-black. OLEDs have long promised these results, while presenting plenty of challenges. The achievement of taking OLED from a lab experiment to a consumer product is the top innovation of the year.

  • NASA Mars Lander

    By sway Posted on 10.23.2008 Comments

    Aside from actual living things, the ultimate find for planetary science is the stuff that makes life possible: water. That’s exactly what NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander found in July, when its scooping device uncovered clumps of ice buried just beneath the surface of the Martian arctic plain. Guided by a team of scientists at the University of Arizona, the Lockheed Martin–built spacecraft has been up there since May, gathering soil samples using its robotic arm and capturing the highest-resolution images of another planet ever taken.



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December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

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