Xfire system projects a bike lane onto the road

A lot of people won’t ride a bicycle on city streets because they’re scared that a vehicle will run into them.

This fear certainly isn’t helped by the many drivers who unknowingly get dangerously close to cyclists while driving alongside them.

Xfire’s Bike Lane Safety Light is designed to address that problem by using lasers to project a virtual bike lane on the road around the bike.

The folks at Xfire aren’t the first to think of this idea, incidentally. Designers Alex Tee and Evan Gant came up with a very similar concept in 2009, which seems to now be commercially available as the Laser Lite Lane.

British design student Emily Brooke, on the other hand, built a one-off device that projects a symbol onto the pavement in front of the cyclist, to let drivers know that a bicycle is approaching from the rear.

Powered by two AAA batteries, the device uses dual 5-milliwatt red lasers to project two lines onto the asphalt, extending back from either side of the bike’s rear wheel.

While those lines don’t do anything to physically protect the cyclist, they do provide motorists with an attention-getting visual guide as to how much distance they should be keeping.

The device also serves as a standard tail light, incorporating five “extremely bright” red LEDs.

True, some people just won’t care about lines on the road, but in many cases drivers simply don’t realize how much space a cyclist requires – this is a way of letting them know, not unlike those side-extending safety flags that some riders use.

NASA ISS Image: Dubai City Lights

The city lights of Dubai are seen from space in this image taken by a crew member on the International Space Station.

The highways and major streets are sharply defined by yellow-orange lighting, while the commercial and residential areas are resolved into a speckle pattern of individual white, blue, and yellow-orange lights.

The brilliant lighting of the city contrasts sharply with both the dark Persian Gulf to the northwest, and largely undeveloped and unlit areas to the southeast.

Likewise, the clusters of lighting in the Palm Jumeira complex at bottom right correspond to the relatively small part of the archipelago that has been developed.

Isolated areas of blurred city lights are due to patchy clouds.

Picture: NASA/AP

Pictures of Earth City Lights at Night: Egypt and The Nile

Earthbound folks rarely get the chance to see how the planet's city lights glow from space.

In 2010, author L. Douglas Keeney noticed pictures being tweeted by astronauts on the International Space Station.

The clear images of Earth's city lights were made possible by new camera technology that was able to shoot high-resolution photos even as the station moved at a rapid 17,500 miles an hour some 240 miles above Earth's surface.

Keeney then got to work, pouring through more than 300,000 unmarked NASA photo, choosing 400 of the best images for his book the Lights of Mankind: The Earth at Night as Seen from Space.

Keeney shared seven of his favorite photos with us, which he dubbed the "Seven Wonder of the Nightime World."

Pictures of Earth City Lights at Night from Space

Cosmic Christmas Spotted in Space

This Hubble photo of 30 Doradus was taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen. Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3

SPACE.com -- Cosmic Christmas Spotted in Space

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a festive view of the cosmos in time for the holiday season, with some saying the picture of a star nursery looks like a wreath, maybe a Christmas tree, or even Santa.

The spacecraft observed a group of young stars called R136, which is only a few million years old and inhabits the 30 Doradus Nebula, part of a relatively nearby satellite galaxy of our Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud.

In the photograph, hundreds of brilliant blue stars are surrounded by a ring of warm, glowing orange clouds of dust. The colorful portrait evokes a giant wreath of pine boughs studded with glowing jewels — sort of. And in the hollow center, the dark shadow has the distinct silhouette of a Christmas tree. Really!

Finally, if flipped 90 degrees clockwise, the image even resembles the face and beard of Santa Claus himself. Somewhat.

Well, whether or not this heavenly view actually has anything to do with the season on Earth, it does teach scientists about what's happening up above.

Create your own Personal Cycle Lane wherever you go

(Image: Evan Gant, IDSA and Alex Tee, Altitude Inc)
Cycle lanes are a good way of keeping bikes away from cars and minimising accidents, but they aren't available on every road.

Evan Gant at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Alex Tee of Altitude Inc in Somerville, Massachusetts, have designed a portable cycle "Light Lane" that straps to the back of a bike.

A laser projects an image of a cycle lane onto the road directly behind the cyclist to remind approaching cars to leave room.