Matt Damon’s latest film, Elysium, is set 140 years in the future where society is divided between the elites, who live in a utopian orbital society, and the rest of us, who struggle in squalor down on the planet’s surface. To combat this inequality, an unsung hero installs himself into a full-body prosthetic and breaks into the "most secure place in the universe." Must be one hell of a suit.
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No man is an island. If anything, every man is a sentient, mobile farm for the countless quadrillions of bacteria that colonize us. And by introducing the right bacteria into that equation, you can give your body one heck of a boost.
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With an unsettling *splat* your toast has once again landed butter-side down on the carpet. But it’s not like you’re going to waste another five minutes waiting for a replacement piece to brown. Heck no, just yell out "five second rule," pick that sucker up, brush off all that hair and lint and you’re ready to eat, right? Science says no.
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Lithium may store the power that drives out modern mobile world but it’s copper that delivers it. This malleable metal is a vital component in modern homes, electronics, and agriculture. But our reliance on copper comes at a steep price, both economically and environmentally.
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Lithium’s kind of a big deal. It powers everything from our gadgets to our cars—really our entire modern world. And that’s not changing any time soon; some analysts estimate that demand could grow up to 25% over the next several years. But how does one harness the power of a metal that bursts into flame every time it gets wet? How do you even get it out of the ground?
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It’s an honest mistake, thinking that marijuana and industrial hemp are one and the same. And in some ways they are: both are species of the genus cannabis, they both have the iconic five-fingered pot leafs, and both are widely sought after the world over. But aside from their outward appearance, they two have very little in common, including where it counts the most.
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Big Data—information sets too large to be effectively computed on desktop systems—isn’t just the buzzword du jour. It provides an unprecedented ability for business and industry to precisely model the effects of past managerial decisions on the bottom line. But an emerging analytical process called prescriptive analytics could help companies not only learn from previous decisions, but predict and plan for upcoming issues as well. It’s Big Data evolved, and could change how the world does business.
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Ethics aside, espionage is an indispensable part of statecraft. The ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] information gathered helps steer national policy decisions for everything from mundane trade negotiations to the blackest of ops. And nowhere is this more evident than in the development of the US spy satellite fleet during the Cold War. These orbital telescopes granted an unprecedented peek over the Iron Curtain—revealing Soviet military capabilities, supply reserves, industrial sites, and more—that no ground-based spook could hope to provide. More »
That Pet Rock of yours lose a bit of its luster over the years? Not to worry, NASA plans to put one big enough for the whole world to share in orbit around the moon by the start of the next decade. Here’s how. More »
After a rather lazy 17 years spent relaxing underground, billions of incredibly noisy insects are about to burst out of the earth, noisily swarming over the East Coast and wreaking havoc along the way. This is The Great Cicada Invasion of 2013—but what the hell is a cicadia, anyway, and why have they been hiding for nearly two decades? More »
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