“A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale…” In fact, “Sedentary and hierarchical hunter-gatherers are not unusual. If anything, it’s the profusion of mobile, egalitarian bands that might be the […]
“Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the future of space exploration.” This article gets wild somewhere in the middle. The more I encounter the frameworks that space theorists use, like the Kardashev scale, the more they start to seem normal. | learn more
Thiel lays out his 2×2 matrix: pessimist vs optimist, determinate vs indeterminate. It starts out a little obscure, but once he fills in examples it really drives his point home. I found his description of the circular investment flows in […]
I only made it about halfway through this interview of Eric Weinstein, but it was quite interesting up until he lost me. “Eric Weinstein is a mathematician with a bold and piercing intelligence, unafraid to explore the biggest questions in […]
“[Requiring no power for pumping water down] makes this Eavor-Loop technology a bit of a unicorn. Essentially it’s a low-enthalpy geothermal station that sends fluid through a sealed loop in a way that self-perpetuates without adding any extra energy at […]
“It all sounds like science fiction, and the Navy has been skeptical too. Navy authorities called bullshit on Pais’ inventions and his patents went through a lengthy internal review at NAVAIR. The War Zone obtained emails about the bureaucratic fight […]
“[The] new plasma thruster concept can generate exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometers per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters.” That’d help us get to Mars faster! Much faster, in fact, because the gains of faster […]
“Human beings are creatures of mimicry. We are evolutionarily supercharged to do one thing better than anyone else: learn by watching and copying others. And the most important thing we learn is how to want.” | learn more
“We are not short of evidence that microbes can survive in space for extensive times. A favored way to find out is to carry out often multinational studies by placing sample organisms on the surface of the International Space Station.” | learn […]
There are two distinct stories here sharing the common ground of desert. First, donor nations have pledged $14 billion dollars for a ‘Green Wall’ to hold back the desertification of land on the edges of the Sahara. “The project covers a strip […]