CATEGORIES

The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.

It’s called the “longest-swim problem”: If you had to drop someone at the place in the ocean farthest from any speck of land—the remotest spot on Earth—where would that place be? The answer, proposed only a few decades ago, is a location in the South Pacific with the coordinates 48 52.5291ᤩS 123 23.5116ᤩW: the “oceanic point of inaccessibility,” to use the formal name. It doesn’t get many visitors. But one morning last year, I met several people who had just come from there.

The Hunt for Life on a Moon of Jupiter Begins - Nearly half a billion miles from Earth, a world may be stirring.

Europa has fascinated astronomers and exobiologists at least since 1979, when the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft reconnoitered the moon and photographed an icy white surface shot through with cracks and fractures, suggesting a churning ocean disrupting the frozen crust. The later Galileo mission, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, discovered that Jupiter's magnetic field is disrupted in the vicinity of Europa in a way consistent with a deep, electrically conductive liquid beneath the surface of the moon. The Juno mission, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, has been studying Europa more closely still, documenting ice walls, scarps, and ridges, all pointing to a surface in constant motion. Astronomers now believe that Europa has an ice shell up to 15 miles thick, covering a global ocean up to 100 miles deep.

Inside the Uncanny World of TikTok Home Remodeling - Turn a tree into a luxury apartment. Retrofit a bedroom for a million children. The videos are bizarre-and going very viral. Who's behind them?

If you've been on TikTok at any point in the past six months, chances are you've stumbled across them, as I first did during a fairly routine doomscroll one night this summer. For me it started with two videos somewhat incongruously tagged #homeremodeling and #housedesign. One of them featured a CGI man summoning a baby phoenix outside of a tree that he planned to turn into an apartment. Then a robotic AI voice started to narrate how the CGI man, identified as Little John, was going to build it. Over the next 90 seconds, Little John transformed the tree into a maniacally space-efficient luxury unit in an AI-generated ballet of flying galvanized square steel, ecofriendly wood veneer, and expansion screws.

A Full-Term Gig - Hiring someone to carry your baby to term is a booming business.

Hiring someone to carry your baby to term is a booming business. The market for surrogacy is expected to expand to $129 billion by 2032, fueled by older parents, rising infertility, and more same-sex families. Silicon Valley contributes to the growth too: Tech companies like Google, Meta, and Snap pitch in up to $80,000 toward the six-figure cost of the process.

THE MIDLIFE NOT -A-CRISIS OF MARK CUBAN

Though he's soon to be out at Shark Tank, the billionaire has a massive new \"disruption\" in the works. He's certain it'll save lives.

THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE OF MEREDITH WHITAKER

It's free. It doesn't track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it's a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.

THE DAD-ROCK DIPLOMACY OF ANTONY BLINKEN

Two major wars. A rising China. Hackers everywhere. He's from the US government, and he's here to help.

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES TRAE STEPHENS

The venture capitalist and cofounder of the defense-tech startup Anduril has worked with Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, and Elon Musk.

THE TELEVISUAL HIJACKING OF ALFONSO CUARON

Gravity, Children of Men, the best Harry Potter film-and now a seven-part miniseries?

What's the future for Western 'super apps'?

Super apps create a single interface to unify a broad ecosystem of services such as messaging, e-commerce, and transport. With consumers making all of their purchases within one walled garden, the user engagement and data benefits for the app owner are obvious and substantial. These apps have become a major part of the Chinese technology landscape, so we asked two leading experts: Could the concept successfully break through in Western markets?

WAIT, GO BACK

To mature as programmers, newer generations need to take a lesson from Google’s programming language.

THE SICK (AND SLOW) BURNS OF JOSH JOHNSON

The comedian tells jokes the way he found fame: slowly, and then all at once.

THE ULTRACOOL CASH GRABS OF BOOBI ALTHOFF

Now the Tik Tokker turned podcaster is out to prove her worth-by being herself.

TOP INNOVATORS

10 BEYA SCIENCE SPECTRUM AWARDEES MAKING A HUGE IMPACT IN STEM

INNOVATION IN ACTION

Navy Leader Walt Davis Champions Vision, Adaptability, and Risk-Taking to Inspire Future Generations of Innovators

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Demystifying the Metaverse: A Look at its Potential to Bridge the Digital Divide

REDEFINING YOURSELF

How Kindra Porter Uses Change to Drive Progress in Aerospace

THE IMPORTANCE OF AI AND HBCUS

Inclusive AI Advancement: HBCUs' Role in Diversity, Ethics, Research, and Workforce Development

REVOLUTIONIZING HEALTHCARE

The Transformative Impact of Medical Technology Health on Global

LANNY SMOOT

Lanny Smoot is synonymous with creativity and innovation in theme park entertainment.

ENGINEERING'S GRAND CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES

From AI to Infrastructure: Shaping the Next Decade with Engineering Solutions

Preparing to take flight: Inspiring the next generation of pilots

BOEING AND NONPROFIT PARTNERS AWARD SCHOLARSHIPS FOR GREATER INCLUSION IN AVIATION

PEOPLE & EVENTS

Autodesk has made a generous donation of $5 million to Howard University’s College of Engineering and Architecture (CEA), marking the largest philanthropic contribution in the college’s history.

ON CAMPUS

South Carolina State University (SC State) received an $8 million funding boost from the state to propel its STEM program and strengthen its partnership with neighboring universities, including the University of South Carolina and Clemson University.

Chasing an Asteroid - How NASA defied incredible odds to get its asteroid-hunting osiris-rex mission off the ground and in the process upended what we know about our solar system.

Dante Lauretta sat in the backseat of a helicopter hovering high above a remote patch of Utah desert, waiting for a small, twinkling speck in the sky to plunge toward earth.If you didn't know better, you might think what was beginning to burn through the skies above the American southwest in the early hours of September 24, 2023, was a shooting star. But it wasn't a shooting star. Or a meteor. It was a dishwasher-size capsule filled with bits of ancient asteroid-priceless matter from the dawn of the solar system. In other words, it was a treasure chest moving at 27,000 miles per hour and sizzling at a temperature half that of the sun's surface.

Whether We Live in a Simulation - scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.

In the 1999 film the Matrix, Neo discovers A truth to end all truths-the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder, the idea isn't quite as relegated to the fiction section as one might expect. . In fact, University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.

Henrietta Lacks - It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose

It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose "immortal" HeLa cells were pivotal in developing treatments for diseases such as polio, HIV/AIDS, and COVID19-is referred to as "the mother of modern medicine." But Lacks's legacy is complicated due to the ethical concerns surrounding the use of her special cells. Lacks, who died of cancer at age 31 in 1951, was never aware that her cells led to significant medical advancements or that they had been taken without her consent. And even now, her strange case raises questions about the morally dubious methods through which we achieved unquestionably positive breakthroughs in medicine.

Underwater UFOs - A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies.

A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies. Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, former Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, recently published a paper arguing that unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, more commonly referred to as UFO) and unidentified submersible objects (USO) are linked, and should be studied further.

Synching Up Our Circadian Rhythms - If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is.

If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is. Like many things in your body, your circadian rhythm is more complicated than it might seem on the surface. Rather than being entirely brain-based, it's actually controlled by a collection of several circadian clocks (central and peripheral) that all work together to keep your gears turning like a well-oiled machine.

The Ancient Language of Easter Island - Today, humans inhabit- or have, at the very least, explored- pretty much every corner of the planet. But that immense proliferation of Homo sapiens across the globe was a slow process.

With the first humans leaving Africa between 60,000 and 120,000 years ago, the species slowly spread across the Earth over many millennia. And one of the last places these ancient humans made their way to was the southeastern Pacific island of Rapa Nui, known more broadly as Easter Island.Located 2,360 miles off the coast of Chile, Rapa Nui is one of the most isolated places in the world. Its native people, who are also named the Rapa Nui, first arrived on the island's shores between A.D. 1150 and 1280, and lived in isolation until the arrival of Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen in 1722.