(TECH) Printing Food & Mining Reality – Meet MIT's Israeli Crop

"A machine that can be programmed to produce your favorite food, a lamp that projects digital information, these are among the innovations being cooked up by MIT's Media Lab.

Amit Zoran, an Israeli-born doctoral student at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, never imagined the splash his project would make. Together with colleague Marcelo Coelho, he has developed the concept of a food printer, reminiscent of the futuristic replicator that science-fiction fans know from the television series 'Star Trek': The crew members on the Starship Enterprise 'ask' the machine to replicate a certain dish, and it does.

In the three-dimensional computer simulation created by the two students - their invention does not actually exist - there are canisters of various ingredients, which are combined by the replicator to create a specified dish. Aptly called the Cornucopia, the theoretical device looks something like a portable grill and has special temperature-control chambers, enabling the preparation of hot or cold food."