An Englishman named Charles Babbage created the first design for a general-purpose programmable digital computer, which he called an "analytical engine," in 1834. He never finished building it (the full machine would have been huge), but at a party he … Continue reading
Simone Giertz is a remarkable young woman. She lives on a boat and invents things, such as an alarm clock that slaps you to wake you up. Skip ahead to 3 minutes and 20 seconds if you just want to … Continue reading
Here's someone whose hobby is building various things with stone-age technology, in this case a hut with a ceramic tile roof and underfloor heating. He doesn't live this way; he's just interested in how it might be done. His raw … Continue reading
This three-minute silent animation shows how the International Space Station was assembled over a period of many years in near-Earth orbit: Link: https://youtu.be/vgfWH3g9kpY There's not a lot of information given on how the various modules are used, but that's covered … Continue reading
A few days ago I posted a four-minute video from John Green talking about the UN's Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious proposal from the year 2000 to address a number of major world problems in just 15 years. You might … Continue reading
As you've probably heard, Volkswagen,the world's biggest car maker, was caught cheating on emissions tests. Specifically, its diesel engines had software that turned on anti-pollution features only when it detected signs that an emission test was going on. In normal … Continue reading
Venus is closer to Earth with shorter transfer times and tons of solar energy. Unfortunately, its atmosphere at the surface is horrifically tremendously high pressure (comparable to a depth of a kilometer in Earth's oceans) and unimaginably hot (nearly 900 … Continue reading
Yesterday's video from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website (link) is a short one produced by the National Spaced Society to remind people what's coming very soon: the first flyby of Pluto. (The images of Pluto shown are of … Continue reading
For now robots don't appear to present much danger to our Pop-Tart supplies, nor are they likely to be rivals for our dogs' affections. Link: https://youtu.be/YdaEUJLArKs by … Continue reading
Complete with unintentional underwater videography. A few successes somehow made it into this compilation. Link: https://youtu.be/RbE6BKJ2drQ by … Continue reading