TIME has picked its choices for best inventions of 2009. Those that got the votes range from best new gadgets to best new breakthrough ideas of the year. Here are some:

The breeding population of the highly migratory southern bluefin tuna has dipped to more than 90 percent since the 1950s. It seemed that the southern bluefin tuna, prized for its ‘buttery sashimi meat,’ will no longer spawn. Then, ‘in Port Lincoln, Australia, a tankful of bluefin tuna began to spawn in landlocked tanks.’ Now, there’s hope for bluefin aquaculture and the tank-bred tuna.

Philips Electronics ‘became the first to enter the U.S. Department of Energy’s L Prize competition, which seeks a LED alternative to the common 60-watt bulb.’ The 60-watt lights occupy half of the entire domestic incandescent market. The challenge is to replace the said bulb with LED bulbs. If this could be done, ‘the U.S. could save enough electricity per year to light 17.4 million households.’ Philips claims a cash award and federal purchasing agreements worth about $10 million. ‘Philips’ LED bulb emits the same amount of light as its incandescent equivalent but uses less than 10 watts and lasts for 25,000 hours — or 25 times as long.’

The Herschel Space Observatory now has the telescope for invisible stars. It ‘scans the skies in the infrared spectrum. In order to avoid infrared interference and temperature fluctuations from Earth, it hovers in space at the second Lagrange point, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away, where the gravity of the Earth and sun balance out.’

World food shortage and shortfall in world food production may now be addressed with the invention of vertical farming. ‘Valcent, a company based in El Paso, Texas, is pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming. But best of all, by growing upward instead of outward, vertical farming can expand food supplies without using more land.’

Via TIME

The best, smartest, and coolest thing built in 2009, according to TIME, is ‘a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before.’ This is called NASA’s Ares Rockets. Previous to this invention, astronauts had not been able to move ‘beyond the harbor lights of low-Earth orbit in nearly 40 years.’ The Ares 1 had its first unmanned flight on October 28.

The rocket is ‘a slender white stalk that looks almost as if it would twang in the Florida wind. But up close, it’s huge: about 327 ft. (100 m) tall, or the biggest thing the U.S. has launched since the 363-ft. (111 m) Saturn V moon rockets of the early 1970s. Its first stage is a souped-up version of one of the shuttle’s solid-fuel rockets; its top stage is a similarly muscled-up model of the Saturn’s massive J2 engines.’

The Ares 1 ‘has lightweight composites, better engines and exponentially improved computers giving it more reliability and power.’ Possibly by 2015, it will launch an ‘Apollo-like spacecraft with four crew members.’

On the other hand, the Brobdingnagian Ares V rocket that NASA is also developing at the moment is ‘a 380-ft. (116 m) behemoth intended to put such heavy equipment as a lunar lander in Earth orbit, where astronauts can link up with it before blasting away to the moon.’

Not to be outdone is the Ares Lite, ‘a heavy-lift hybrid that could carry both humans and cargo and is intended to be a design that engineers can have in their back pockets if the two-booster plan proves unaffordable.’

Via TIME

Have you ever missed an important appointment with your doctor or a romantic date because you forgot about it? VibraLite 8, the vibrating watch can help you solve this issue of forgetfulness. The watch comes with 8 alarm settings and Auto Reset Countdown Timer option, which gives you extensive combinations of variable and interval reminders.

The Auto Reset Option Countdown Timer can be set for seconds, minutes and hours for interval reminders. This will help you a lot especially if you have too many things to do. Since the world is literally moving faster than ever, it’s quite possible that you forget to do some of the important things. With timely reminders about your day’s ‘things to do list’, you will not miss your important works.

All you have to do is set the alarm before hand for your various activities and the clever watch will vibrate to signal you the alarm at the set time. More than anything else, this is a cool way to manage your time management skills as well. You can fetch the VibraLite 8 watch for $149.95.

Via: RedFerret\ContactAssist

Between June and mid-August 2009, Clock Clock, a clock by Swedish Designers, known as `Humans since 1982’ is set to grab eye-balls at Rhösska Design Museum in Göteborg. What’s so different about it? It is an innovative time piece formed by combining as many as 24 analog clocks together.

As time moves, the analog hands in the 24 different clocks rotate automatically, to form a huge digital display of the correct time, in the form of letters created by the hands of the clocks. Else, you keep guessing time.

A sure shot exhibit and product that not just makes you stand back and watch it, but also gives you that feel of time so different from these days when you have discarded the watch and preferred to check time in your mobile phones or simply gotten used to relying on the wall clocks, the only common factor being that it is all digital.

Via: Coolbuzz

Lately, people seem to have been disillusioned with gadgets loaded with features and specifications. So what could you expect at a time like this but a minimalist clock! Art Lebedev has created the Word Clock that breaks the conventional mode of reading time. It literally reads time in phrases and not in numbers.

Numbers can sometimes be difficult to read and remember as well. Hence, reading the time in phrases might help us better to remember incidents and the time. This word clock is powered by USB and is indeed an interesting concept to display the time in phrases and not in numbers. Nevertheless, it might also consume a longer time while reading the phrase to check the time.

For sure, this word clock is unconventional and the idea is novel but the price tag may be a little too heavy for your pockets. It is priced at $190, which is a tad too expensive for me. Hence, I would rather be happy and contented reading the time in numbers. After all, it’s the time that matters and not how it is displayed, in numbers or phrases!

Via: GearCrave