Did you know you can measure an unknown mass with a rubber band? You pretty much can. The first thing you should do with any project is to play. So, go get a rubber band and play with it. What happens when you stretch it? Perhaps you can feel that it takes a greater force […]
If you have a super-expensive camera that records in high speed, you should just record some stuff. Right? That's exactly what Dan and Gav do on their YouTube channel, The Slow Mo Guys. In their most recent video, they decided to determine the speed of breaking glass. The plan is to take a long section […]
One year ago, Hewlett Packard Enterprise sent an off-the-shelf supercomputer up to the International Space Station, to see if its mass-produced hardware could survive, basically unmodified, in the harsh environment of space. Now NASA and the computer company are declaring the experiment a success—even though nearly half of its hard disks failed after getting fried […]
This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On January 3, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the release of ShakeAlertLA, a new earthquake-warning app for residents of Los Angeles County. The app—the first of its kind in the United States—promises to “save lives by giving precious seconds to […]
WIRED ICON Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel-winning biologist NOMINATES Janelle Ayres, Molecular physiologist at the Salk Institute For a long time, immunologists believed that the only way for a patient to survive an infection was to kill the invading pathogen. And research built around that belief led to very important discoveries for antibiotics and vaccines. But to […]
Imagine a woman in Lubbock, Texas, who just found out that she's pregnant. She wants an abortion, but Lubbock is one of 27 abortion deserts in the US: The nearest clinic is 308 miles away in Fort Worth, forcing her to take time off from work, pay for travel, and likely arrange childcare to get […]
A few years ago, a company called Spaceflight had a wacky plan. The plan, in the words of CEO Curt Blake, was “Let’s buy a Falcon!” Not, like, the bird of prey. Like the big SpaceX rocket that, similar to its avian namesake, swoops back down to Earth once it’s done its job. Buying the […]
This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s no surprise that a list of places most at risk from climate change and sea-level rise reads like a Who’s Who of global cities, since historically, many great cities have developed near oceans, natural harbors, or other bodies of water. Miami ranks first, New […]
Before Californians use an electron, they like to swirl the glass a little, get some nose. You want a whiff of that subatomic particle’s terroir before pouring it into an air conditioner or a phone. Does it have the musty, planet-destroying aroma of a greenhouse gas appellation—generated, perhaps, by the burning of coal or oil? […]
In July 2016, a group of archaeologists commissioned a small plane—along with special pilots—to fly over the thick jungle canopy in northern Guatemala, near the border with Mexico. Cruising well above the trees, the pilots combed the area, pointing three lasers at the ground that fired 300,000 pulses of light per second. Over 12 days, […]