Paleontologist Jack Horner participates in a “Jurassic World” Q&A at the Natural History Museum.
Here at Popular Science, we can’t wait to see Jurassic World, which opens in theaters nationwide today. I mean, who can resist velociraptor biker gangs:
But we were also curious about the real scientific research that inspired the movie. So we talked with Jack Horner, a noted paleontologist who has consulted on the entire Jurassic Park movie franchise, including Jurassic World.
In Brief
Foxconn Electronics, the Taiwanese manufacturing company behind some of the biggest electronic brands’ devices, including Apple’s iPhone, has announced that it will ramp up automation processes at its Chinese factories. The goal is to eventually achieve full automation.
In an article published in Digitimes, General Manager Dai Jia-peng of Foxconn’s Automation Technology Development Committee explains that the process will unfold in three phases.
Google, Microsoft and a host of labs and start-ups are racing to turn scientific curiosities into working machines.
NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and start doing what it’s uniquely qualified for.
The International Space Station is getting on in years, and at some point in the next decade we’re going to learn the date of its shutdown. But what comes next? A new company called Axiom Space has a plan to launch a commercial space station in the next few years, which would get its start as a module attached to the ISS.
It’s easy to shrug off a plan from a company you’ve never heard of, but Axiom has some big names on board. For example, it’s led by one Mike Suffredini, who managed NASA’s ISS program for 10 years. The time is fast approaching that we need to come up with a successor to the ISS, and Axiom’s commercial station could be it.
The plan calls for the core module to be launched around 2020. There are two versions of this phase of construction; one in which the 9×5 meter module (known as Module 1) is launched in one piece, and another where it’s sent up in pieces and assembled in orbit. Assembling in space would take longer, but sending it up as a single payload would be expensive and risky. The completed Module 1 will have its own propulsion, so it will fly to the ISS after reaching orbit.
India is going to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI), according to a leading advocate of the system.
The world’s largest democracy will release a report in January stating that UBI is “basically the way forward,” according to Professor Guy Standing, who has worked on universal income pilot projects in India.
If implemented, India would join Finland in providing free money to citizens.
