Microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation – “maser” technology – has been redesigned for practical use, with revolutionary implications for a variety of detection devices.
Search Results
You searched for: light
Physicists at the Israel Institute of Technology are working on a new structure that could bring the popular science fiction device to real-world situations such as the operating room.
As kids, my siblings and I would flip through old family albums and marvel over old pictures of family members in their youth. More than just thicker hair and thinner […]
According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, living in the moment is not possible.
A World War II veteran has created a wind turbine that hides its blades inside a drum-like structure so that birds and bats won’t fly into them accidentally.
Lean thinking is not only good for a company’s bottom line. It can also be applied to the challenges of sustainability and conserving natural resources, which also makes good business sense.
When you enter the voting booth on Tuesday and pull a lever or jab a touchscreen for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, you will be registering a vote not only […]
In the search for planets beyond our solar system that could support life, scientists have drawn up a more specific list of bio-signature chemicals, including sulfur gases and ethane.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it This is the ponderous epigraph of many a high school history term paper. And it’s wrong. Like as not, we’re “doomed” […]
Like most industries, the manufacturing sector is transforming rapidly. Because of recent technological advances and globalization, U.S. manufacturing is facing intense international competition, increasing market volatility and complexity, a declining […]
Finally, we now have a viable proof-of-concept for the vertical farm idea that has excited environmentalists for more than a decade. Last week, Singapore opened the world’s first-ever commercial-scale vertical farm, […]
A combined US/UK study claims that LED bulbs have a slight environmental edge over compact fluorescents, and with continued improvements that advantage is expected to grow significantly fairly soon.
I wanted my audience to identify with Shylock in a deeply personal way, so much so that they would involuntarily nod and think, “Yes, I understand, I have been there.”
This seems to be a week of sex-focused controversy. But then sex tends to have that effect, even when it’s just our own species. Nelson Jones wrote about a German […]
Bill Nye has made national news with his statements on creationism versus evolution on Big Think. The big idea behind it: if you reject science, you won’t succeed, and we as a society won’t succeed to the fullest extent.
In my previous post on “Southern Slavery As It Was”, I cited two modern-day Christian pastors who claim that black slavery was a positive and beneficial institution. To throw some […]
In a letter responding to Anthony M. Amore’s editorial “No ‘Thomas Crown Affair’” in The New York Times about the recent robbery at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, […]
Stories from scientists, dream clubs and even people who have committed crimes while sleepwalking.
It was this map of Greenland that triggered this post. I say map, but I mean hole in a drainpipe. This picture was sent in by Ruland Kolen, who was […]
Five hundred years ago today, Michelangelo unveiled The Sistine Chapel Ceiling to Pope Julius II. The next day, All Saints’ Day 1512, the Pope inaugurated the newly decorated chapel with […]
I was reading a 1937 essay in which the author made casual mention of the problem of “morganatic marriage.” I’d never heard this term before. I figured it might be […]
This week, we witnessed another step in the Republican party’s long drawn-out national suicide: “I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life […]
Intervening on the great Crooked Timber vs. Bleeding Hearts Libertarians debate on freedom in the workplace, Matthew Yglesias says: My standard approach to this is that in almost all political contexts, including this one, both […]
The theme of this year’s Nantucket Project is Collective Intelligence, or how we can leverage technology and other advances to aggregate and amplify human intelligence. We plan to utilize the […]
Sometime in the early 1930s, Henri Matisse hired a photographer to document his paintings at different stages of development. These photographs became signposts along the road toward what Matisse wanted […]
Since it was launched in 2009, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered more than 700 confirmed planets outside our solar system. Some may be quite appealing to humans in the future.
A study that starts today uses ordinary citizens and vehicles equipped with Internet access to help researchers gather data that could drastically improve the driving experience.
This blog often talks about risks that we fret over too much. Time to talk about one we worry about too little; the air we breath…indoors. For a number […]
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it This is the ponderous epigraph of many a high school history term paper. And it’s wrong. Like as not, we’re “doomed” […]
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it This is the ponderous epigraph of many a high school history term paper. And it’s wrong. Like as not, we’re “doomed” […]