On #NewYearsEve, our New Horizons spacecraft will fly within 2,220 miles of this object, providing the first close-up look at such a pristine building block of the solar system. Get the latest update: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
Power suits, robotaxis, Leonardo da Vinci mania—just a few of the things to look out for in 2019. But what else will make our top ten stories for the year ahead?
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Continue reading “What will be the biggest stories of 2019? | Part One | The Economist” »
The Space Force would constitute the sixth branch of the US armed forces.
The news: During a meeting with the National Space Council today, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to begin work on the creation of the Space Force. He stated, “‘We are going to have the Air Force and we’re going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.”
Some background: This isn’t the first time Trump has brought up this idea. He has continued to express interest in the idea during visits to West Point and in speeches to military members.
Continue reading “Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to create the US Space Force” »
2019 is off to a great start.
A Danish startup called Organic Basics claims its underwear will remain fresh through weeks of wear, eliminating the need for frequent washing.
And this could be a boon for the environment — if it’s actually true.
A computing system that mimics neural processing could make artificial intelligence more efficient — and more human.
People (including myself) love slow-motion videos and we also tend to love watching things being destroyed. Lawnmowers are really, really good at destroying things, but capturing its destructive power with a high-speed lens isn’t the easiest thing in the world… unless you flip it upside down and strap the camera right to the blade.
Now, I wouldn’t want to be the one to tackle such a project, but the good news is that a YouTuber by the name of Tesla500 has already done all the hard work. The over 20-minute-long video shows the building of the rig itself as well as lots and lots of random household objects meeting their end in super slow motion.
How math helps us solve the universe’s deepest mysteries
One of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments.
Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world’s most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world’s leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics. These physicists are sometimes accused of doing ‘fairy-tale physics’, unrelated to the real world. But in The Universe Speaks in Numbers, award-winning science writer and biographer Farmelo argues that the physics they are doing is based squarely on the well-established principles of quantum theory and relativity, and part of a tradition dating back to Isaac Newton.
