Freshly Exhumed writes: Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and consultant on numerous movie scripts, was excited to watch “Ad Astra,” the new Brad Pitt space thriller. The film was promoted with the promise of scientific realism in depicting a solar system well on its way to being settled by humanity. Unfortunately, Professor Frank finds that despite…
Tag: imagination
Appreciating the classical elegance of time crystals
Structures known as time crystals, which repeat in time the way conventional crystals repeat in space, have recently captured the interest and imagination of researchers across disciplines. The concept has emerged from the context of quantum many-body systems, but ETH physicists have now developed a versatile framework that clarifies connections to classical works dating back nearly two centuries, thus providing a…
MIT Unveils New ‘Blackest Black’ Material and Makes a Diamond Disappear
An anonymous reader shares a report: What do you do with a $2 million natural yellow diamond? If you’re at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you coat it in a wild high-tech material that makes any object look like it fell into a black hole. The coated diamond is now a piece of art called The Redemption of Vanity, a collaboration…
Spitzer’s Orion
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html…
Chernobyl and Why Some TV Shows Should Be Unbingeable
An anonymous reader shares a column [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled]: Few television shows in recent years have been as compelling, yet as difficult to watch, as Chernobyl. The story of the hours and days following the 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown, and the many awful ways that radiation can kill, was expertly told. But it was the antithesis of…
Inventor Flies Across the English Channel on His Jet-Powered Hoverboard
PolygamousRanchKid quotes CNN: French inventor Franky Zapata has successfully crossed the Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard for the first time, after a failed attempt last month. Zapata took off from Sangatte, northern France early on Sunday morning and landed in St. Margarets Bay, near Dover in England. The journey took just over 20 minutes, according to Reuters news agency… In an…
How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working at a Nonexistent Game Company
An anonymous reader shares a report: Brooke Holden had all but given up on breaking into the video game business. […] “Professionally inexperienced but passionate team manager looking for a hobby project to help support and manage,” she posted to a subreddit for assembling game dev teams. It was just a lark, yet a half dozen replies accumulated under the post….
What will Earth’s next supercontinent look like?
Here are 4 different scenarios of what planet Earth might look like when the next supercontinent forms. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/what-will-earths-next-supercontinent-look-like…
Craigslist Founder: Most Online Outrage is Faked For Profit
The Guardian profiles 66-year-old Craigslist founder (and former IBM programmer) Craig Newmark, calling him “a survivor from the era of internet optimism.” He’s now investing “significant sums” to protect the future of the news industry — “and rejects the idea his website helped cause journalism’s financial crisis”
[H]e firmly rejects any notion that all the philanthropy — an estimated $50m in the…
Super rare video of giant squid in US waters
Here be monsters. This video shows a living giant squid, captured on camera in its natural habitat for only the 2nd time in history. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/giant-squid-video-photos…