Lifeboat Foundation

Our communities are getting really smart. Here’s what to expect.

A new technique produces long-lasting movies of nonluminous objects with just a few hundred femtoseconds between frames.

Circa 2016

Richard T. Forman and Jianguo Wu call for global and regional approaches to urban planning.

Continue reading “Where to put the next billion people” »

When the Wright brothers pioneered their first flight in 1903, they dreamed of transforming the way our world connected. It’s safe to say they would be astonished at the progress of aviation. From that 59 second flight traveling a distance of 852 feet, we have established a world where there is an airport in nearly every major city, giving people the opportunity to see the globe in ways the Wright Brothers dreamed of.

Watch Giant Flow Batteries Could Power Your City In The Future, an Earth video from Seeker.

Rock samples from the island suggest it’s a strange hybrid that represents a whole new way for the planet to make volcanoes.

What would do if you ran into the most massive spider in the world?

An unholy alliance?

Scientists have taken a major step towards creating an aircraft of the future, one powered by an ion drive rather than using moving parts and fuel like conventional aircraft.

In a paper published today in Nature, a team led by Steven Barrett from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described how they created a so-called electroaerodynamic-powered plane, one that uses solid-state propulsion, meaning no propellers or jet engines with expendable fuel.

“The future of flight shouldn’t be things with propellers and turbines,” Barrett says in the video below. “[It] should be more like what you see in Star Trek, with a kind of blue glow and something that silently glides through the air.”

Continue reading “Scientists are building a plane that doesn’t run on any fuel, and it could look like something out of ‘Star Trek’” »