Science

This project would be impressive under any circumstances, but it's particularly timely given today's concerns about the atmosphere and global warming.

Breathing Earth is a Flash-based project that "displays the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates--all in real time."

With so much attention focused on alternative energy these days, non-fossil fuel proposals for cars have run a wide gamut. Even the once-verboten subject of a nuclear-powered automobile has arisen with increasing frequency.

Usually absent from these discussions, however, is the history of designs for such vehicles that came off drawing boards in Detroit throughout the 1950s at the height of the Atomic Age. This post on Damn Interesting, for example, reminds us that such models as the Ford Nucleon were once seriously considered as the automobiles of the future.

In retrospect, perhaps Ford's ideas weren't so far-fetched … Read more

Regardless of our personal convictions about UFOs, activity appears to have picked up again at the legendary Area 51. But as always, the question remains: What is it?

An article in Popular Science speculates what may be going on in the storied parcel of desert in southern Nevada, ideas that include the construction of specific models of futuristic warplanes. Perhaps the most interesting part of the post is the gallery of artist renderings depicting possible flying machines, based on various forms of evidence ranging from patent filings to reported sightings.

Some scientists are obsessed with reading our minds--or, at least, watching them in action.

A couple of weeks ago, MIT's Technology Review posted an article about a new technique to visualize chemical activity in the brain. Yesterday, the same publication reported that researchers at the University of New Mexico have refined neuro-imaging techniques "to the point where they can reliably detect a single thought forming in an individual's brain."

Can the secrets of mental telepathy be that far off?

The inaugural launch of a system to map wildfire movement in real time has been postponed...again.

The joint mission between NASA and U.S. Forest Service has been rescheduled (for the second time) until Sept. 12 due in part to a lack of approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Vincent Ambrosia, the principal investigator of the Western States Unmanned Aerial System Fire Mission at NASA's Ames Research Center. FAA approval is required because the system includes the use of the unmanned Altair aircraft.

"Due to some 'open issues' on mission profiling and delays in receiving … Read more

We often hear of innovations that promise to drastically change how we use light, but this one truly hits home: a one-watt lightbulb.

EcoGeek reports that Mule Lighting has developed a line of LED lamps with roughly 10 times the life of its incandescent counterparts. But the environmental blog points out that pricing probably precludes wide use at this time, noting, "Unfortunately, they're not yet being mass produced and are probably pretty expensive (since they wouldn't tell us how much they cost)."

Some readers were mildly interested by yesterday's post on a world map of Google traffic but said the image would have been better with more detail. For example, one suggested that the map would have been more dynamic if it illustrated traffic similar to the way the FAA visualizes aircraft routes, as shown on this page posted at UCLA.

Then again, are those really flight patterns or creatures from outer space in a 1950s horror movie? You be the judge.

Anyone who watches late-night cable knows that the synthetic jewelry market is thriving. But you may be surprised to learn that one of the industry's more competitive subsets involves human DNA.

Pink Tentacle reports that a Russian company named New Age Diamonds is targeting Japanese consumers with something called the Heart-In Baby Diamond, "a synthetic diamond made from the hair of newborn babies." This is reminiscent of an item we posted late last year on LifeGem, "a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life."… Read more

Numeric lists, as we all know, are the new black when it comes to the dissemination of online information. So we smugly thought we had come across the ultimate version recently with the top 10 of the top 10. Wrong.

We've been outdone once again in the universe of listmania, this time not because of meta-filtering but because of topical importance--which, in this case, is the very sobering subject of our mortality. In this list, Discover tackles the issue with "20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Death."