If you were going to kick off a technological revolution, you’d be hard-pressed to do it with more pizazz than Tesla with its electric cars. Flashy, kinda-self-driving, neck-snappingly fast electric cars. But oddly enough, what’s driving it all—the electric motor—is an ancient technology at this point. It’s lost out to the gas engine for over […]
This isn't a gossip column, but that doesn't mean we don't occasionally dabble in whispers from time to time. As such, this week we've got a (sort of) breakup, hot news about yet another videogame making its way to TV, and some dirt on Nintendo's long-awaited online service. Well, kinda. Bottom line: Some stories are […]
A popular misconception is that the potential—and the limits—of quantum computing must come from hardware. In the digital age, we’ve gotten used to marking advances in clock speed and memory. Likewise, the 50-qubit quantum machines now coming online from the likes of Intel and IBM have inspired predictions that we are nearing “quantum supremacy”—a nebulous […]
The pig looks like any other pig, only it's been wearing a backpack for a week—in the name of science. Just behind its head sits a control box, with a battery and processor, from which runs a cable that enters through the pig’s flank. Once inside, the cable attaches to a very special robot clamped […]
The online storefront for the consumer genetics company Orig3n features an image of a young woman facing toward a sepia horizon. Her tresses are wavy, her triceps enviably toned. Her determined stance complements the copy floating beside her: "Take charge of your future," it reads. "Orig3n DNA tests uncover the links between your genes and […]
When the 300-foot Maersk Launcher docked in San Diego early Monday morning, it unloaded a cargo of hardened black blobs scooped from the bottom of the sea. The blobs are not rocks, but naturally-occurring metallic nodules that could one day yield metal deposits of cobalt, manganese, and nickel—not to mention scarce rare earth minerals. As […]
On September 14, 2015, at 3:50 AM Central time, a tiny vibration shuddered down the 2.5-mile-long arms of a massive machine in Livingston, Louisiana. A fraction of a second later, a similar vibration shook the arms of an identical machine in Hanford, Washington. Eventually, physicists from those facilities confirmed the nature of those twinned tremors: […]
The launch company Rocket Lab has amusing names for its missions. The first, in May, was called “It’s a Test” (it was). When the staff debated what to call the second launch of their diminutive Electron rocket, so sized (and priced) specifically to carry small satellites to space, they said, “Well, we’re still testing, aren’t […]
This story originally appeared on the Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For over 20 years, Thomas Hildebrandt has harbored a dream: to save the northern white rhinoceros, the world’s rarest large mammal. On Monday the scientist received the devastating news that Sudan, the last male of the species, had been put down in his northern […]
“What is the difference between apples and pears?” That’s an old Dutch saying that Ben Nijssen has pondered for his entire life. Any five-year-old could tell you the difference in taste, but a much smaller percentage of the population could speak on the chemical differences between the two fruits. Nijssen, an analytical chemist in the […]