Enlarge / A solar cell with 26.3 percent efficiency. Photovoltaic & Thin Film Research Laboratories (Kaneka corporation) Solar panels are cheaper than ever these days, but installation costs can still be considerable for homeowners. More efficient solar panels can recapture the cost of their…

Boom Supersonic has raised a new $33 million Series A round, which it says is enough to build and fly its first supersonic jet, the XB-1 demonstration and testing craft, which will be a 1/3-scale prototype version of the supersonic airliner it will eventually build and sell to air fleet customers.…

Huns and other nomadic populations in central Asia sometimes bound infants skulls' to modify their shapes. (Erzsébet Fóthi/Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest) To hear the Romans tell it, the arrival of Huns at the empire's border was an unmitigated catastrophe. “The Huns in multitude break…

Has this dress been to more countries than you?

6 March, 2014 in | Comment Source

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Zoetrope reel, 1870s — Before there was Pixar, there was the Zoetrope. The optical illusion was first demonstrated in 1836, over a hundred years before the first Saturday morning cartoons. The device was patented in 1867 by Milton Bradley, the man, not the company, and in many ways can be considered…

Aside from the (admittedly considerable) appeal of watching Robert Downey Jr. crack wise as billionaire genius-turned-superhero Tony Stark, perhaps the biggest lure of Marvel's Iron Man movies is finding out just what kind of amazing toys and gadgets he's built into the latest version of his…

The discovery of alien life would be revolutionary. But what if we uncovered it on two—or even seven—planets all orbiting the same star? That’s the tantalizing possibility offered by the cosmic grouping called TRAPPIST-1 , where seven Earth-size worlds circle a star roughly 39 light-years away.…

In partnership with Lumix G by Panasonic Technology These Machines Will Teach You to Draw Whether You Like It Or Not We might not be able to mainline judo like 'The Matrix,' anytime soon, but Saurabh Datta's machines could help you learn to play the piano by hijacking muscle memory. Emerson…

Despite being just the size of an insect, tiny military weapons being developed by the military have the incredible power of hundreds of tons of TNT. In a new book, Louis del Monte, a physicist from Minnesora warns that these tiny weapons - dubbed 'nanoweapons' - could lead to the most destructive…

You can’t have a conversation with your microwave or refrigerator—unless, of course, you’re on acid. And that’s all right, because these machines serve their purpose just fine as-is. They can afford to be shy. But the robots that will one day move into your home can’t. To be truly useful, they’ll…

Almost a decade ago, I tried to place a bet with a leading UK betting shop that I would die within a year . They should have taken the bet - I am still alive. But they will not gamble on life and death. A life insurance company, by contrast, does little else. Legally and culturally, there is a clear…

Jorge Silva / Reuters Quick, what’s the capital of Australia? No Googling! (And no points if you’re Australian—that means the information is more meaningful to you, which means you’re more likely to know it.) Did you get it? Or are you sure you learned it at some point, but forgot right around the…

Now refrigerators last 8–10 years, if you are fortunate. How in the world have our appliances regressed so much in the past few decades? I’ve bought and sold refrigerators and freezers from the 1950’s that still work perfectly fine. I’ve come across washers and dryers from the 1960’s and 1970’s that…

Forrest Fenn is a millionaire who hid a treasure chest in the Rocky Mountains. Adventure seekers look for clues based on a poem he published in his book, The Thrill of the Chase, with hopes of claiming the million-dollar treasure. John Burnett/NPR Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, there is a bronze…

Astronomers have just spotted a star whizzing around a vast black hole at about 2.5 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, and it takes only half an hour to complete one orbit. To put that into perspective, it takes roughly 28 days for our Moon to do a single lap around our relatively tiny…

March 15th, 2017 Are They building electronic dossiers on as many of us as they can? I don’t know, but it sure looks that way. —Cryptogon, 2007: NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite In Open Thread: Trump Wiretap Claims , I wrote: Where is the uproar over the spook’s data center in…

The Justice Department announced Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first U.S. criminal cyber charges ever against Russian government officials. The indictments target two…

“All over the countryside in China, in the most unexpected places, farmers are striving to build their own aircraft. They don’t work in fancy hangars with all the equipment one could wish for, they simply play around in their backyards, recycling scrap metal and using household tools. They are…

The walls of the bar are covered in old art, photographs of Ireland, and yellowing posters in frames. A pair of hurleys, the flat ash stick of the Gaelic game, are tacked above the door frame. The bar’s otherwise full of dust-coated bottles of bygone whiskeys and stouts, musical instruments, and…

More than a century after their discovery, we still don’t really know what blood types are for. Do they really matter? Carl Zimmer investigates. When my parents informed me that my blood type was A+, I felt a strange sense of pride. If A+ was the top grade in school, then surely A+ was also the most…

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg U.S. subprime auto lenders are losing money on car loans at the highest rate since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as more borrowers fall behind on payments, according to S&P Global Ratings. Losses for the loans,…

Two years ago, my nephew was set to graduate from Maryland’s Towson University with a degree in political science. After six long years, both he and his parents were ready to breathe a sigh of relief—he had made it to the finish line. He had never been excited about school, and his parents had…

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Sen. Rand Paul was asked about President Trump’s accusation that President Obama ordered the NSA to wiretap his calls. The Kentucky senator expressed skepticism about the mechanics of Trump’s specific charge, saying: “I doubt that Trump was a target directly of any kind…

A new non-partisan study on entrepreneurship gives some credence to the tech industry’s stance that American innovation benefits from robust immigration. The study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in Arlington, Va., shows that immigrants started more…

Magnus Carlsen, 22, the world's top chess player, became the youngest player to be ranked world No.1 on January 1, 2010. Oli Scarff/Getty Images A decade ago, Magnus Carlsen , who at the time was only 13 years old, created a sensation in the chess world when he defeated former world champion Anatoly…

Back in 2011, I was talking with Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, backstage at our D9 conference, when he made a casual reference to a “Gang of Four” companies that he believed ruled the consumer tech industry. Once on stage, I asked him about that term. He explained that, in his…

Update on March 17: What was first believed to be a depiction of Pharaoh Ramses II is now more likely thought to be King Psammetich I, who ruled Egypt from 664 to 610 BC, according to Egyptian antiquities officials. The biggest clue pointing to the statue's true identity was the discovery of an…

Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens

Getty Images Nobel-Prize winning economist Angus Deaton Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might, said Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton on Monday. If an entrepreneur invents something on the order…

Today in Tedium: When it comes to video game consoles, the manufacturers don’t like it when you bend the rules. But it happens anyway. Technically inclined individuals inevitably want to bend the platforms to their will, despite platform owners that want to protect their massive investments, and…