Plasma jet engines: Taking us to space without burning fuel
New Scientist is launching our hopes higher than ever with a report on a whole new electric engine that can carry a plane to space: […]
engineering
We’ll build skyscrapers out of wood. And do the planet some good….
Nature reveals the new growth of ambitious plans to cool the planet with wooden skyscrapers: Constructed almost entirely from timber in 2014, the 8-storey, 30-metre […]
Science Art: Head Frames, Figs. 3-6, from The Design of Mine Structures, 1912.
Types of head works for mines. These frames helped draw out the rocks that the miners were busy breaking up deep underground. At the time […]
Science Art: Longitudinal Section of “Star” Class Four-Cylinder 4-6-0, by AJ Creswell, 1963.
Click to embiggen A train! A big ol’ train! This image is one of many found in H.A.V. Bulleid’s Master Builders of Steam, a book […]
This origami microscope costs less than a dollar – and you can magnify stuff by 2,000 times.
Popular Science shows us how to make a cheap paper microscope that really works: In the Foldscope, invented by Stanford University engineers, creased paper creates […]
Science Art: Lancashire Boiler with Galloway Tubes, 1898
Click to embiggen slightly From The Colliery Manager’s Handbook … Fourth edition, revised and enlarged, an 1898 book in the British Library’s public domain collection. […]
This homemade toy saves lives.
Nature shows how one of the simplest toys out there – a loop of string with a spinning bit of paper in the middle – […]
You can now 3D-print a sonic tractor beam.
Science Daily brings us one step closer to a sci-fi tomorrow with researchers publishing open-source directions on making a tractor beam at home: Last year […]
World Power: How Africa can leapfrog the world with renewable energy.
Nature looks into the future of Africa and sees a sunny outlook – at least as far as solar and wind power generation go: Africa’s […]
Science Art: Aneroiddose für die Luftdruckkompensation des Pendels, by Sigmund Riefler
Click to embiggen Sigmund Riefler was a physicist and precision clockmaker. He also created this, a precision barometer, or, rather, a barometer connected to a […]
There’s a tunnel-bus driving the streets of China.
The Verge has some photos of – and the story behind – the new, tunnel-like city bus that cars can drive under in traffic: According […]
Drinking the ocean.
Scientific American (and notable author Rowan Jacobsen) reports on the dry, dry nation of Israel creating a water surplus by making the sea drinkable: Desal […]
Bacteria movement could power tiny machines.
Wired is thinking big about something much, much smaller than a hamster in a wheel – powering microscopic machines with “bacterial windfarms”: The natural movement […]
Science Art: (The Wyttenbach Steam Steriliser) The book of fruit bottling, 1907.
Click to embiggen Mmm. Jelly. Jam. Apple butter. This is labeled “THE WYTTENBACH STEAM STERILISER” on on Wikimedia Commons, with some garbled dimensions. But you […]
3D printers make a methane-eating plastic… that excretes fuel.
Science Daily has more on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers who have 3D-printed a polymer that turns methane to methanol: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory […]