Scientists turn fiber optic cables into seismographs
A marine “carpet” to monitor the planet's seismic activity in real time? With distributed acoustic sensing, fiber cables act as seismographs
Search Results for: Oceans
Dear Asimov, here we are: robots will kill
Future wars will be faster and more technological, but less human than ever: welcome to the era of robot soldiers. There is a perfect place to test advanced weapons: they are the Wallops Islands, a small patch of land off the coast of Virginia that seems to have come straight from Asimov's pen. If a fishing boat had passed there a year ago he would have seen half a dozen dinghies circulating in the area: a closer look would have revealed that the dinghies had no one on board. … Read more
What will happen next decade? 11 predictions about the future
In summary, the 20s will present a mix of very good, very bad and very strange things: here are 11 predictions about the future of the next decade.
A day face to face with Italy in 2050
Travel in time and experience a November day in Italy in 2050, from North to South. Here's what you'll see in one case or another.
A war between India and Pakistan would cause millions of deaths
The world is interconnected: even a "regional" scale atomic war between India and Pakistan would drag the entire planet into a long nuclear winter
Rice straw soap: natural surfactant is reality
Surfactants are everywhere: detergents, toothpastes, paint, makeup, etc. A natural surfactant eliminates harmful substances from all these products
Venus was habitable until a catastrophe happened millions of years ago
A team of scientists speculate that Venus was habitable and housed life until a mysterious planetary catastrophe 700 million years ago.
Plastic roads for the cars of the future
Plastic roads are four times lighter in structure than asphalt, assemble like LEGO and turn waste into recyclable resources.
Hybrid robot swims and takes off using water as a propellant
Imperial College researchers have invented a hybrid robot that requires just 0.2 grams of calcium carbide to use water as a fuel
Fresh water under the seabed also in Norway
The quantity of fresh water is enormous, incalculable: it originates from a depth of 1km, but its underground extent is still unknown.
Is there life on Europa? Two missions to find her
In just 10 years we will see 2 missions in search of life on Europe, one of the most habitable places in the solar system beyond Earth (except on Saturday evening).
Aquanaut, the underwater robot transformer
To explore the seabed and manage ocean platforms, a team of NASA veterans builds a transformer underwater robot that becomes humanoid.
How long can humanity survive?
What are the long-term predictions for humanity, whether it will survive (a very) long time? 6 problems to face in the very, very distant future.
An artificial coral reef in Sidney harbor
The artificial reef took place in the seafront area of the famous Opera House, the characteristic Sydney theater known throughout the world. Not far from there is the Great Barrier Reef, which is increasingly at risk.
Dragonfly is official, NASA will make a mission on Titan
Dragonfly will land near Titan's equator, among dunes apparently composed of layers of solid hydrocarbons. It will be powered by plutonium like the Martian rovers, and with its eight rotors it will be able to cover much more distance than any space predecessor.
Never so much CO2 in our atmosphere
The human race has just broken a new record in its great race for ecological collapse.
An accidental discovery can repair the reef 25 times faster
“Microfragmentation” would allow corals to restore the habitat of underwater fauna.
A device produces clean energy through evaporation
At first glance it may seem like a nice colorful toy, but in reality it is a refined device designed to produce electricity. It is a device developed by researchers at Columbia University, who used very special materials to create an instrument that exploits the humidity present in the air to generate 'clean' electrical energy. The device was made with colored Lego bricks, a sheet of rubber coated with spores, a coil and … Read more
The beauty of landing on a flying airport.
Size matters, even when it comes to aircraft: the bulkier the aircraft, the better they fly, with more stability and efficiency (think of the recent, enormous Airbus A380). Nothing prevents us from imagining, therefore, a timeline in which we will aim to create increasingly larger aircraft, to the point of launching real flying airports, capable of hosting and landing other planes on top of them. This is the underlying reason for the 'Airborne Metro' concept: it is, in fact, ... Read more
In nanomachine towards the future
It's not the first and it won't be the last. Scientists from the University of Groningen (Holland) and the Empa research center (Switzerland) have created a nanometric transport system equipped with four motor units (translation: a “namomachine”). It's electric, four nanometers long and every half turn of the wheels has to fill up... It works thanks to a scanning tunneling microscope positioned above it, which transmits a tiny electric charge that causes reversible structural changes in the wheels (translation: … Read more
Hansen predicts: the seas will be higher than 7 meters
A chilling prophecy comes to us from James Hansen, 68 years of which almost 30 spent at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies: he almost never makes an observation wrong. In 1981 he wrote that the following decade would mark peak heat and the prediction came true. At the beginning of the nineties he said that the first decade of the new century would beat the previous record and this time too the facts proved him right. Let's hope that now he is wrong because the scenario he draws is... Read more
