Identify/Connect/put fundae:

Identify and connect the three images:

(Thanks a bunch for all the questions, mate! Really great stuff! I had a hard time picking one…)

Cracked by: Goyal, Tathagata Chatterjee , Guneet , udupendra , gammafunction , Rohan , duriel , malcaluffin and rajeshvj.

Answer:
To quote sidsen:

As a tribute to the Italian artist Giotto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_di_Bondone), whose “Adoration of the Magi” was one of the first to feature the “Haley’s comet”, depicted as the Star of Bethlehem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Bethlehem), the space probe sent up to inspect and photograph the Haley’s comet was named the “Giotto” (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/giotto.html)

Identify the character in (1) and the old chap on the left in (2).

Also, who/what did (1) eventually become?

Only (partially) cracked by Tathagata Chatterjee!

Answer :

(1) is an action figure of Starkiller, the original female protagonist of the Star Wars series. Starkiller later became male (Luke Starkiller) and was then bowdlerized by the movie production company (becoming Luke Skywalker).

(2) is Ralph McQuarrie, the guy who did all the concept art (including Luke) for the original Star Wars (and the original BSG and many many other SF sagas)

Who is this famous computer scientist, and what term did he coin?

Here’s a clue to narrow in on the term a bit: the man caricatured below wanted to make a movie about it, but couldn’t.

Cracked by sidsen , Goyal , Rohan , udupendra , insufferablejake , Guneet , Srivats , gudanggurum , bobo , rajeshvj , Atul Mathew , duriel , malcaluffin , jayanth , gammafunction and Tathagata Chatterjee.

Answer:

John McCarthy, coined the term Artificial Intelligence.

Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a movie called AI but passed away before he could. Spielberg took it up later on.

Who’s the guy in the pic below and what did he win?

Clue:

Cracked by rajeshvj , akhi , insufferablejake (nice catch! I didn’t notice it…) , Rohan , gudanggurum , svgreatest , Dibyo , Apurva , Atul Mathew , udupendra , duriel , malcaluffin , sidsen and Goyal.

Answer:

David Bowie won the Lifetime Achievement webby award (and also made a really peculiar acceptance speech).

Oceanography got a boost from a storm that hit in Jan 1992. The flow of events is depicted in this image:

What happened during the storm?

Cracked by WikiWaki , sidsen , gudanggurum , Srivats , Guneet , rajeshvj , akhi , malcaluffin , insufferablejake , madhur , Ananth and shenoyvarun86.

Answer:

This is the path of the “friendly floatees“. A tanker full of plastic bath toys capsized somewhere in the Atlantic. Since they float, they followed ocean currents and started ending up in all sorts of strange places. This gave oceanographers a whole ton of data to work on! Check the wikipedia page for tons of info.

Connect the equation (x + y)ⁿ = xⁿ + yⁿ to these identities:

Cracked by Goyal , p vs np , Ajay Parasuraman , Rohan , insufferablejake , Tathagata Chatterjee , gammafunction , sidsen , malcaluffin , rajeshvj , Srivats and shenoyvarun86.

Answer:

Check out udupendra’s comment below for the answer straight from the horse’s mouth :-)

For the next week (or so) we’ll be posting questions sent in by some Boiledbeans toppers (Some of you probably already know about this). Thanks a lot for sending in your questions guys!

Please keep the questions coming to boiledbeans[at]gmail[dot]com !

Cracked by udupendra , priyananda , WikiWaki , rajeshvj and Goyal!

This is James Randi of the JREF talking about the origins of the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Randi is a former stage magician and now a professional skeptic, who spends his time debunking claims of the paranormal and/or supernatural. The JREF sponsors a $1M challenge for anyone who can prove their claims under a sensible test environment

1. 2.

2 is just a closeup of 1.

Cracked by: udupendra , Goyal , insufferablejake , rajeshvj. “Cool” job, guys!

Answer:

Galileo Thermometer, one of the first temperature measuring devices.