Would you spend $50,000 to have your own personal easy-to-fly no-license-required helicopter? Is the fact it has a really cute name (AirScooter)going to change your mind?
Programmed plastics, triggered by light
An MIT engineer and his German colleagues have createdbrainy plastics that can be programmed to change shape when struck by certain wavelengths of light and return to their original shape when exposed to other specified wavelengths. It’s the kind of discovery whose uses will only become clear over time…and then we’ll wonder how we ever …
Popcorn perfection possible?
Scientists have uncovered the scientific key to perfect popcorn popping. It’s research you can sink your teeth into.
A hands-on approach to data manipulation
Don a pair of reflective gloves and this new computer interface lets you manipulate images on the screen just by moving your hands. New Scientist seems to think this idea was original with Minority Report, but I’m pretty sure it’s been widespread in written science fiction for years, if not decades. I used a hand-waving …
"Strange Harvest" on Between the Covers in May
I’ve finally heard when my short story “Strange Harvest” will be on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers. It will be part of “Six Impossible Things,” a special series of short speculative fiction that will air weekdays from May 16 through May 27, hosted and curated by Nalo Hopkinson, who will also have a piece in …
Dinosaur eggs found whole in mother’s belly
How did dinosaurs lay their eggs? We now have a much better idea, thanks to a stunning fossil discovery.
Waking you when you’re ready
Here’s a new alarm clock that wakes you when you’re ready–that is, when you’re in the lightest stage of sleep. You program it with the latest time you want to be wakened, and it wakes you in the last lightest sleep phase before that. (It monitors your brain waves with a special headband.) I think …
"How One City May Put an Alien Species to Good Work"
Alas, the “alien species” in question is an invasive type of water snail, not blue-skinned intelligent slugs from Oom’la’khor IV seeking to help out primitive planets like ours in their development…but I’m still calling it the “Science Fiction Headline of the Day.” You can do that when you’re the sole judge of the contest.
The walls have ears…
…literally, if the walls are part of an installation using neural software that can pick out suspicious sounds–gun shots, say, or breaking glass–from a noisy environment.
Giant structures could point way to ET
Maybe listening for radio signals is the wrong way to find extra-terrestrials; a better method might be to look for giant artificial structures–and new telescopes will give us the ability to do it.
“Musseling” in on the glue industry
Since all of my science columns are online, I frequently get questions out of the blue about past column topics. This week, for example, I received an e-mail from a mother whose nine-year-old had decided to do a third-grade science project on glue. They’d found my column on the topic from a decade ago, and …
This satellite makes house calls
A new U.S. Air Force satellite has been launched to do something no one has ever tried before: seek out and inspect other satellites in orbit. It may visit as many as eight satellites during its mission, maneuvering around them and taking pictures. This could lead to a new breed of service satellites that can …
My latest live walk and vlog
Buy Autographed Books
