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Category: futurism – Page 446

Possible Life-Supporting Planet Found Orbiting Dying Star

The existence of life on planets orbiting stars akin to our sun doesn’t necessarily require these stars to be exceptionally powerful.

Scientists have uncovered a possible “giant planet” orbiting a dying star, which could potentially support life in the future.

Researchers from University College London made the “startling” discovery while studying a white dwarf, the glowing remnants of a star that exhausted its hydrogen fuel. Located about 117 light-years away, this star, known as WD1054-226, features a ring of planetary debris in its habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, where temperatures might allow liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface.

A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working

‘I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable.’

Apollo, the popular Reddit app for iOS, could face millions of dollars in fees as a result of Reddit’s new paid API model. According to an update posted by developer.

Reddit announced changes to its API policy in April, which allows the platform to put limits on the number of API requests made by a third-party client like Apollo. But now, we have more details on what exactly this means: Selig says Reddit plans on charging about $12,000 per 50 million requests.

The future of Apollo on Reddit isn’t clear.

New York City Sinking Under Weight of Skyscrapers

New York City is sinking under the weight of its massive buildings, leaving it more vulnerable to rising seas, a new study finds.

Most coastal cities are slowly sinking as the earth beneath them settles and groundwater is drained away. In some metropolises, the weight of large, concrete-and-steel skyscrapers may be hastening this slump, but experts rarely, if ever, account for the mass of large buildings in projections of future sinking.

For the new study, scientists tallied the weight of every building in New York, which they put at 842 million tons, and estimated the downward force of these structures across the city. They found that buildings are leaving a bigger imprint in areas rich in clay than in areas where sand or bedrock predominate.

As rising oceans threaten NYC, study documents another risk: The city is sinking

If rising oceans aren’t worry enough, add this to the risks New York City faces: The metropolis is slowly sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, homes, asphalt and humanity itself.

New research estimates the ’s landmass is sinking at an average rate of 1 to 2 millimeters per year, something referred to as “subsidence.”

That happens everywhere as ground is compressed, but the study published this month in the journal Earth’s Future sought to estimate how the massive weight of the city itself is hurrying things along.

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