Maybe you've heard that Tiangong-1, China's 19,000-pound prototype space station, is scheduled to rain down on Earth … eventually. As in, some time between now and next April. Most of the spacecraft will burn up in orbit—but sizable chunks (up to 220 pounds, by one estimate) could end up making landfall. Thing is, nobody's sure […]
Not to make this about politics or walls or borders or displacement, but Australian pop balladeer Troye Sivan’s “Lucky Strike” is all about politics and walls and borders and displacement. More specifically, it is about the negation of those thorny, unkind configurations. At first blush, the song is a cool, coy slowburner with pure intentions. […]
In early August, a Google engineer named James Damore posted a document titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” to an internal online discussion group. His memo was a calm attempt to point out all the ways Google has gone wrong in making gender representation among its employees a corporate priority. And then, on August 5, the […]
So, what happened last week? Not much; it was just another seven days in which everyone got excited about a movie with sad superheroes, President Trump got lauded for not ruining a former president's funeral, and everyone else awaited the latest from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. That's all pretty standard, right? Toss in the […]
Female scientists were reporting sexual abuse and harassment by professors years before the #MeToo movement exploded in the public eye last fall. From unwanted comments and weird texts to missed promotions and direct assaults, female graduate students and postdocs are often vulnerable while working in male-dominated field camps, laboratories, or remote observatories where there are […]
These days any old schlub can pilot a drone without cratering it, what with good old autopilot tech, but there are drone pilots out there whose abilities push the limits of human cognition. Drone racing is a truly insane endeavor (now with its very own Drone Racing League!)—with human pilots banking around corners and through […]
For all their crustiness about new features, videogame fans seem to have enthusiastically endorsed one particular Newfangled Idea: selfies. Last year, the joyous Spider-Man allowed players to turn Peter Parker's lens on himself, with Spidey throwing peace signs or boastful jumps depending on where the shot was taken.1 Meme fodder, no question; also, as it […]
The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones will be bigger, badder, and hairier than ever. No, we're not talking about the saga—we're talking about the furs! Because that's literally all HBO sees fit (ha!) to show us. Earlier today, the studio released a collection of brooding character stills, notable mainly for the fabulous […]
Is Elon Musk crazy or just awesome? This week, the serial CEO (Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink) posted on Twitter about yet another one of his ventures, the super fast tube-based transportation system called hyperloop. Is this even possible? Let's do some quick calculations. First, what is the speed of sound? I am assuming that Elon is […]
The month-long launch window for NASA’s new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet’s soil—effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It’s also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, […]
