February 23, 2014

Turning Mars Into Our Next Frontier Town

An entire home can potentially be built in a day using a 3D printer. A revolutionary technology initially developed to build emergency housing, Contour Crafting has NASA excited. And it may one day build biospheres on Mars.

Right now the technology uses concrete to build its homes, but concrete would be extremely costly and heavy to transport to Mars. The solution? Martian soil. Check out this extraordinary technology and its potential in this video:

Image credit: Kevin M. Gill/Flickr

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Saturn, Where Are Your Rings?

In 1612, Galileo was shocked as to why Saturn’s “appendages” had disappeared. It wasn’t until later that century that the mystery was solved: Saturn has rings, and when Earth crosses […]