#18 is the best, as it illustrates bluntly in one image the technological advances in just the past decade.
Ten modern conveniences we take for granted that didn’t exist before 1970.
I especially like the picture of the audio cassette and the pencil with the caption, “Our children will never know the link between the two.”
The creation in the lab of an as yet unnamed superheavy element adds weight to the theory that there might exist even heavier elements that are stable in nature.
The scientists did not observe element 117 directly. Instead, they searched for its daughter products after it radioactively decayed by emitting alpha particles—helium nuclei with two protons and two neutrons. “The heavy nuclei makes an alpha decay to produce element 115, and this also decays by alpha decay,” says Jadambaa Khuyagbaatar of GSI, lead author of a paper reporting the results published on 1 May in Physical Review Letters.
After a few more steps in this decay chain, one of the nuclei produced is the isotope lawrencium 266—a nucleus with 103 protons and 163 neutrons that had never been seen before. Previously known isotopes of lawrencium have fewer neutrons, and are less stable. This novel species, however, has an astonishingly long half-life of 11 hours, making it one of the longest-lived superheavy isotopes known to date. “Perhaps we are at the shore of the island of stability,” Düllmann says.
If these superheavy elements could be created, they would be the stuff of science fiction. They might have properties that we would find extremely useful.
The crashes that changed aviation and plane designs forever.
Like the 1964 Alaska earthquake, sometimes bad things have to happen to force humans to face a problem and fix it.
Eight museum Corvettes go caving when a sinkhole opens up below them.
News you really can use: Amazing German designed cat climbing furniture.
The first person to cycle to the South Pole.
Leijerstam used a modified version of the commercially-available Sprint trike, made by recumbent tricycle manufacturer Inspired Cycle Engineering (ICE). She chose to go with a recumbent trike because it would allow her to maintain stability in the often very-high winds. This allowed her to concentrate simply on moving forward, instead of having to waste time and effort keeping her balance. The strategy paid off, as she not only made it, but also beat two other cyclists who had set out for the Pole on two-wheelers, days before her Dec. 17th start date.
Five myths about hacking you probably believe, thanks to the movies.
The article is focused on hacking, but it really illustrates the general difference between reality and the movies in almost all things. You simply have to ask the same questions about almost every other Hollywood generalization to find out how far from reality those generalizations are.
Why it costs so much to buy WiFi on an airplane.
The man who invented the first programmable computer.
It appears the Easter Island statues did walk the eleven miles from the quarry where they were carved — as believed by natives. With video.
China isn’t only going up: A three man crew took a Chinese submersible to a depth of 22,800 feet in the Mariana Trench earlier this week, the record for that nation.
The answer is 43: An IBM supercomputer today became the fastest in the world.
Fifteen picturesque shipwrecks from around the world.
A Japanese dentist has invented a self-stirring cookpot that also saves energy. Video below the fold.
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Let us do the driving: Volvo road tests a system on Spanish highways where one driver in a lead truck controls a train of cars following behind him.
It just kept going and going: Renovations at a Los Angeles restaurant in February uncovered a neon light, hidden inside a wall, that had been was switched on in 1935 and left burning for 77 years.
The walls of the restaurant featured numerous hand-tinted transparencies of mountain and forest landscapes, each of which was backlit by a rectangular neon light. One such light was installed in a window-like nook in a basement restroom, where it softly illuminated a woodland scene.
In 1949, the nook was covered over with plastic and plywood when part of the restroom was partitioned off as a storage area. But for some reason, workmen never got around to disconnecting the electricity. For the next 62 years the illuminated tubing was hidden within the wall. Meieran estimates that the neon tube has racked up more than $17,000 in electrical bills.
The television as envisioned by dreamers — before it existed.
R.I.P. Eugene Polley, inventor of the television remote control.
Don’t throw away your broken electronics! There’s money to be made from them on ebay.
Want to find something different? Use a search engine that intentionally skips the top million results.
The death of the double click.
The story includes some nice history behind the invention of the GUI.
Interestingly, I could probably count on one hand the times I have double-clicked on a computer, since I rarely use the mouse at all. Instead, I have found it is far faster to use the keyboard to access commands, files, programs, etc.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s graveyard of wrecked race cars.
The 100-year march of technology in one graph.
A vertical forest: Two new skyscrapers being built in Milan are designed to allow trees to grow on the outside of every floor.
A toy company has designed building blocks that make it possible to combine multiple building block brands, from Legos to Tinkertoys.
By downloading free designs and using a 3D printer, you could have your very own pieces to connect ten different brands of building toys to each other and construct even more elaborate contraptions and structures.
As the first commenter on the webpage noted, “This is the next singularity.”
