How Big Can a Solar-Powered Drone Be?
It's a brilliant idea: Put solar panels on a drone so it doesn't need a battery. Without a battery, you could fly a drone as long as the sun keeps shining. It's awesome (assuming your motives are pure). That's exactly what students at the National University of Singapore did. But if you watch the video,…
Bionic Limbs 'Learn' to Open a Beer
Andrew Rubin sits with a Surface tablet, watching a white skeletal hand open and close on its screen. Rubin’s right hand was amputated a year ago, but he follows these motions with a special device fitted to his upper arm. Electrodes on his arm connect to a box that records the patterns of nerve signals…
Watch SpaceX Attempt Its Wickedly Complex Satellite Launch
Update: After delays, this launch successfully took place on Monday, Dec. 3. On Sunday, SpaceX plans to hoist into space the largest cosmic carpool to depart from US soil. The California-based aerospace company is flexing its ridesharing muscles in a carefully choreographed orbital ballet as its flagship rocket—the Falcon 9—prepares to launch 64 small satellites…
Is ’Oumuamua an Alien Spaceship? Sure! Except, No
When you wish upon a star (or an asteroid or a comet) you are wishing on plasma, ice, dust, rock, on an object that exists, for real, so far away and moving so fast that no living human will likely ever have direct contact with it. (Well, generally.) But you’re also wishing on a metaphor.…
Dietary Supplements Can Contain Viagra, Steroids, or Worse
You know those sexual enhancement dietary supplements for sale at gas stations and markets across the country? Beware, they might actually be viagra. Or steroids. Or an antidepressant. Many supposed dietary supplements for weight loss, erectile dysfunction, and muscle building may contain actual pharmaceuticals—but you likely have no way of knowing what's in them. Between…
A Designer Seed Company Is Building a Farming Panopticon
When Geoffrey von Maltzahn was first pitching farmers to try out his startup’s special seeds, he sometimes told them, half-acknowledging his own hyperbole, that “if we’re right, you shouldn’t just see results in the field, you should be able to see them from outer space.” As the co-founder of a company called Indigo Ag, von…
A Levitating Glass Bead Probes the Universe’s Mysteries
Francesco Ricci stands at a table covered in a tangle of wires and tiny mirrors. “Here is where everything happens,” he says, pointing to a metal cylinder roughly the size of a cookie tin. A graduate student at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Ricci is showing me a device he’s built to survey…
This Fearsome Titan Games Event Reveals the Value of Torque
I'm oddly attracted to The Titan Games. I think we can all agree that this is the newest incarnation of the popular '90s show American Gladiators. It's not the theatrics that I enjoy, it's the crazy competitions. As you can imagine, there's a bunch of cool physics to talk about for some of these events.…
A New Climate Change Lawsuit Takes Aim at ExxonMobil
This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. New York is suing the oil giant ExxonMobil in a lawsuit that claims the company engaged in a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to downplay the risks posed to its business by climate change regulations. The legal action, launched by New York…
This Hyper-Real Robot Will Cry and Bleed on Med Students
Hal the robot boy is convulsing. His head shakes back and forth so rapidly, it looks like he’s vibrating. His eyelids droop over his blue eyes and his mouth is ajar. He makes no sound, other than the faint whirs of his motors. Hal was built to suffer. He is a medical training robot, the…