Trigger Warning
‘Trigger Warning’ is a fast paced journey through a city of memes.
An urban hinterland of embodied ideas and warring ideologies. Switching between various first-person perspectives, the film embodies the current culture clashes bubbling away beneath the surface of the city.
via Superflux Vimeo
NASA is testing a new submarine that will hunt for undiscovered sea life — and scientists eventually want it to look for aliens on Europa
Their goal is to create a drone submersible so small and so light that they'll one day be able to shoot it into space to explore other oceans. Orpheus is the first step in that direction.
Hilary Brueck | Business Insider
Steam-powered spacecraft could jump-start asteroid exploration
A team led by the University of Central Florida (UCF) has unveiled a spacecraft that will use water to explore asteroids. Instead of ending the mission when it runs out of propellant, the craft will pull water from the celestial body it’s visiting. The technology could give a new lease of life to asteroid mining.
Erin Winick | MIT Technology Review
Backflipping MIT Mini Cheetah
MIT'S new mini cheetah robot is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip. At only 20 pounds the limber quadruped can bend and swing its legs wide, enabling it to walk either right side up or upside down. The robot can also trot over uneven terrain about twice as fast as an average person's walking speed.
via MIT YouTube
Mice get night vision with a nanoparticle injection
The tests, published in Cell, found the infrared effect lasted in the mice for 10 weeks, causing no long-term damage (though some had cloudy corneas for up to two weeks.)
via The Download | MIT Technology Review
NASA is going back to the future with nuclear rockets
Tucked into the recent spending bill that was passed by Congress is a line item for $100 million for NASA to develop nuclear thermal rocket engines, according to a recent article in Space News.
Mark R. Whittington | The Hill
A Troubling Discovery in the Deepest Ocean Trenches
In the Mariana Trench, the lowest point in any ocean, every tiny animal tested had plastic pollution hiding in its gut.
Ed Yong | The Atlantic
A World Without Clouds
A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.
Natalie Wolchover | Quanta Magazine
Earth's atmosphere stretches out to the moon — and beyond
A recent discovery based on observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, shows that the gaseous layer that wraps around Earth reaches up to 630 000 km away, or 50 times the diameter of our planet.
“The Moon flies through Earth’s atmosphere,” says Igor Baliukin of Russia’s Space Research Institute, lead author of the paper presenting the results.
ESA | Space Science
China’s CRISPR twins might have had their brains inadvertently enhanced
New research suggests that a controversial gene-editing experiment to make children resistant to HIV may also have enhanced their ability to learn and form memories.
Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review
How Google, Microsoft, and Big Tech Are Automating the Climate Crisis
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all struck lucrative arrangements—collectively worth billions of dollars—to provide automation, cloud, and AI services to some of the world’s biggest oil companies, and they are actively pursuing more.
Brian Merchant | Gizmodo
The future of Mars exploration may rest on a glider
After Opportunity, now what? An unpowered inflatable craft using thermal updrafts to stay aloft could cost-effectively map less-documented parts of the planet’s surface to help plan lander missions.
via MIT Technology Review
Life probably exists beyond Earth. So how do we find it?
With next-generation telescopes, tiny space probes, and more, scientists aim to search for life beyond our solar system—and make contact.
Writing by Jamie Shreeve, Photographs by Spencer Lowell, Art by Dana Berry | National Geographic
The Communal Mind — Patricia Lockwood travels through the internet
"A few years ago, when it suddenly occurred to us that the internet was a place we could never leave, I began to keep a diary of what it felt like to be there in the days of its snowy white disintegration, which felt also like the disintegration of my own mind." —Patricia Lockwood
via London Review of Books
The Architecture Draftsman
Imaginary architectures drawn by Stefan Davidovici, Architect, Milan.
Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles.
Damian Carrington | The Guardian
Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers
Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.
Ian Sample | The Guardian