What they are and which one is best for you.
The Keys to NYC Living: Your Guide to Property Types in the City That Never Sleeps New York City’s real estate landscape is a fascinating array of options for aspiring homeowners. Whether you’re dreaming of a sleek downtown address or a cozy uptown retreat, understanding the different types of properties available can transform your home-buying […]
It's not as straight-forward as you think.
The fine-structure constant was introduced in 1916 to quantify the tiny gap between two lines in the spectrum of colors emitted by certain atoms. The closely spaced frequencies are seen here through a Fabry-Pérot interferometer. As fundamental constants go, the speed of light, c, enjoys all the fame, yet c’s numerical value says nothing about nature; it […]
How Dreams of Spacefaring Zombies Led to the Launch of Sputnik.
What, you think there’s enough room on Earth for everyone who has ever lived?
Early on a Saturday morning 60 years ago, the millennia-old dream of spaceflight came true as Sputnik 1 rocketed into orbit to become Earth’s first human-made satellite. The mission notoriously shocked the world and minted a new era of human exploration, but what’s less well-known is that Sputnik arose, in part, from a 19th century […]
Algorithms Supercharged Gerrymandering. We Should Use Them to Fix it.
A new suite of open source redistricting software can help citizens reclaim democracy.
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Gill v. Whitford, in which the state of Wisconsin will argue that congressional redistricting practices are not subject to judicial oversight. At the core of this hearing is whether partisan gerrymandering—a tactic used by political parties to redraw congressional voting districts so that the voting power within those […]
5 Years Cruising the World, They Still Living the Dream.
Asia at Sea talked to Brian about how this all started and to find out where they are now and how they are getting along.
5 Years ago, Brian Trautman dropped the mooring lines of his boat Delos, and left the business World in Seattle behind him. He and his crew planned an epic trip across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand but when they finally got there, they weren’t ready to stop…Asia was beckoning. Asia at Sea talked to […]
Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto, the Creator of Bitcoin?
Like a frustrating episode of Lost, there’s one too many clues and few, if any, answers.
For all of Bitcoin’s fabled transparency, a key piece of this bubblicious puzzle remains elusively opaque. Who the hell is Satoshi Nakamoto? Like a frustrating episode of Lost, there’s one too many clues and few if any answers. Satoshi, of course, is the one who started it all, unleashing his concept of a cryptographic, self-regulating […]
How Humans Will Respond to Immortality: An Interview with Philosopher John Fischer.
The scope of The Immortality Project reflects that boundlessness.
Five million dollars is a hefty grant for any academic to receive, let alone a philosopher. And yet that’s exactly what UC Riverside philosophy professor John Martin Fischer received last year for a project that will involve dozens of scientists, philosophers, and theologians from around the world to examine a subject that is probably unknowable: […]
The Nations Guaranteed to Be Swallowed by the Sea.
“We’ve already lost some island atolls. On others the rising sea is destroying homes, washing away coffins and skeletons from graves”
Imagine the street you live on is knee-deep in floodwater, and it’s ruining everything in sight, including your home. Now imagine that those awful floodwaters never, ever recede. Instead, the water just keeps rising and rising until your entire country drowns. For a number of island nations, that’s ultimately the significance of the recent reports […]
Meet Aubrey de Grey, the Researcher Who Wants to Cure Old Age.
He believes that tackling the individual illnesses that haunt old people’s lives is a fundamentally flawed strategy.
Aubrey de Grey has been called many things. “Transhumanist” is one of them, but one he dislikes. “Immortalist” is the tag used to describe him and his colleague Bill Andrews in a documentary shown at South by Southwest this March, though de Grey rolls his eyes when someone drops the word “immortality.” The British gerontologist […]
I Skyped Jacques Cousteau's Grandson on the Bottom of the Ocean.
The expedition is led by Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of the well-known French oceanographer and scuba visionary Jacques Cousteau.
On June 1, a team of six splashed down 63 feet beneath the ocean surface to shack up in Aquarius, the world’s only underwater lab, located off the coast of Florida. They’ll be down there for 31 days, surfacing only on July 2. “Mission 31” will mark the longest stretch spent in the ocean base, […]
Haunted by His Brother, He Revolutionized Physics.
Time. As a physicist, Wheeler had always been curious to untangle the nature of that mysterious dimension.
The postcard contained only two words: “Hurry up.” John Archibald Wheeler, a 33-year-old physicist, was in Hanford, Wash., working on the nuclear reactor that was feeding plutonium to Los Alamos, when he received the postcard from his younger brother, Joe. It was late summer, 1944. Joe was fighting on the front lines of World War […]
The Arctic Seed Vault puts apocalyptic talk of climate change in perspective.
Since 2007, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has maintained a repository of the world’s agricultural heritage.
Since 2007, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has maintained a repository of the world’s agricultural heritage. A series of tunnels bored into the side of a mountain, this vault is climate-controlled, secure against tectonic activity or sea-level rise, and designed to hold up to 4.5 million different seed varieties for centuries to come. Built 900km […]
Floating Utopias for the Age of Rising Seas.
In 1962, haunted by the specter of nuclear annihilation, the sociologist Lewis Mumford penned a new preface to his book, The Story of Utopias.
A two mile-thick ice sheet in Antarctica is collapsing, which all but guarantees at least 10 feet of global sea level rise. That’s grim news for the 44 percent of the world’s population living in coastal areas, who now face the dire prospect of preparing for the coming tides. Developing the necessary engineering solutions, as […]
What the Near Future Is Actually Going to Look Like.
The biggest lie about the future is that it's going to look much different from today.
The biggest lie about the future is that it’s going to look much different from today. I mean, The Jetsons and Futurama are one thing, but in near-future portrayals—those shown in goofball blockbusters like I, Robot and Minority Report—the world is given a glossy, high-tech makeover. These futuristic landscapes suggest we’re about to see a […]
How Lasers, Radar, and Local Economies Are Helping Save World Heritage Sites.
The Global Heritage Fund is eager to employ novel technological approaches to the evergreen problem of protecting cultural history.
Archeology is often viewed as a painstaking science involving scalpels, toothbrushes, and methodically detailed notes. Well, to a large extent, that remains an accurate perception. But it doesn’t mean that lasers can’t be thrown into the mix too. The Global Heritage Fund, a non-profit based in Silicon Valley, is eager to employ novel technological approaches […]
'Black Box' Software Could Be the Future of Cryptography
“Traditional encryption is about securing data” said Dr. Dan Boneh
Imagine trying to throw a dart at a bullseye that’s 200 feet away with only your bare hands. Now, add a blindfold to the equation. Theoretically, it might be possible. But practically, it’s pretty much impossible—about the same odds as trying to break a new form of software protection called indistinguishability obfuscation. Indistinguishability obfuscation—similar in […]
The Strange "World" of Internet 'Role-Play' Has Gòne Mäinstream
On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog. Unless you tell them you are.
On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog. Unless you tell them you are. Or that you’re a vampire. Or a werewolf. Or a 90s-era professional wrestler. The fake social media profile is an old joke, but lately it’s evolving. Maintaining a fictional online identity has become a lifestyle, a social pursuit, an act of […]
How Respond to Immortality: An Interview with Philosopher John Fischer
The scope of The Immortality Project reflects that boundlessness.
Five million dollars is a hefty grant for any academic to receive, let alone a philosopher. And yet that’s exactly what UC Riverside philosophy professor John Martin Fischer received last year for a project that will involve dozens of scientists, philosophers, and theologians from around the world to examine a subject that is probably unknowable: […]
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