Seasteading: Libertarians dream of creating self-ruling floating cities. But can the many obstacles, not least the engineering ones, be overcome?
Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why it was so troubling to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it…
Human ancestors were making spears to hunt 500,000 years ago – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, a study has revealed. The collaborative study, published in the journal Science, found the stone-tipped weapons at the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1. Attaching stone points to spears (known as “hafting”) was an important advance…
The Spitzer Space Telescope has looked back in time to see what scientists called the “faint, lumpy glow” given off by the very first objects in the Universe, and these ancient objects obviously provided some early cosmic fireworks. While they are too faint and distant to figure out what the individual objects are – they…
Scientists have discovered that a space inside a special type of carbon molecule can be used to imprison other smaller molecules such as hydrogen or water. The nano-metre sized cavity of the hollow spherical C60 Buckminsterfullerene — or bucky ball — effectively creates a ‘nanolaboratory’, allowing detailed study of the quantum mechanical principles that determine…
The causes of infertility, which affects around 10% of couples, are often unknown, but may in some cases result from the body’s inability to produce viable gametes — also known as sperm and egg cells. The first study of the development of such ‘germ cells’ from humans could help scientists to learn how to create…
Large wind farms slightly increase temperatures near the ground as the turbines’ rotor blades pull down warm air, according to researchers who analyzed nine years of satellite readings around four of the world’s biggest wind farms. The study showed for the first time that wind farms of a certain scale, while producing clean, renewable energy,…