Riled Up Journal

Take an Elevator into the Past

Alan Lightman's "Einstein's Dreams" imagines 30 scenarios in which time acts differently than it does in your living room. These worlds were imaginary. Today's Observation Deck on Wired.com reminds you that you live in an equally strange universe, where standing on top of a tall building means that you're aging more slowly, because, due to the time-warping effects of gravity and speed, time is going more slowly up there. This is not science fiction, this is science fact. You can take an ...

3012

Bright Future for Electric Cars?

It's a failure of imagination. A failure to see cool new things as cool. They ridicule the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, two cars that have shown slow initial sales numbers, without noticing how awesome it is that these two babies run on lightning. (Coal-fired lightning, but still lightning). Well, Bloomberg points out that the Toyota Prius had similarly slow sales numbers at the start. And now the Prius is the third-largest selling car in the world. How long before the Volt takes ...

3200

Bright Future for Electric Cars?

It's a failure of imagination. A failure to see cool new things as cool. They ridicule the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, two cars that have shown slow initial sales numbers, without noticing how awesome it is that these two babies run on lightning. (Coal-fired lightning, but still lightning). Well, Bloomberg points out that the Toyota Prius had similarly slow sales numbers at the start. And now the Prius is the third-largest selling car in the world. How long before the Volt takes ...

2671

Bright Future for Electric Cars?

It's a failure of imagination. A failure to see cool new things as cool. They ridicule the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, two cars that have shown slow initial sales numbers, without noticing how awesome it is that these two babies run on lightning. (Coal-fired lightning, but still lightning). Well, Bloomberg points out that the Toyota Prius had similarly slow sales numbers at the start. And now the Prius is the third-largest selling car in the world. How long before the Volt takes ...

2918

Renewable Energy: Better Than You Ever Thought

If you were in favor of renewable energy, this article shows you why you're aren't enthusiastic enough.

2703

Renewable Energy: Better Than You Ever Thought

If you were in favor of renewable energy, this article shows you why you're aren't enthusiastic enough.

2706

Renewable Energy: Better Than You Ever Thought

If you were in favor of renewable energy, this article shows you why you're aren't enthusiastic enough.

3206

Warmest Spring on Record

It's shaping up to be the warmest spring ever in the nation's capital, in Philadelphia, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma and lots of other places. The trees budded a month earlier. The snow -- what little there was -- melted off the mountains faster. Air conditioning units were turned on earlier than ever. The short-shorts came out earlier. So, you know: not all bad.

2046

Warmest Spring on Record

It's shaping up to be the warmest spring ever in the nation's capital, in Philadelphia, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma and lots of other places. The trees budded a month earlier. The snow -- what little there was -- melted off the mountains faster. Air conditioning units were turned on earlier than ever. The short-shorts came out earlier. So, you know: not all bad.

1993

Warmest Spring on Record

It's shaping up to be the warmest spring ever in the nation's capital, in Philadelphia, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma and lots of other places. The trees budded a month earlier. The snow -- what little there was -- melted off the mountains faster. Air conditioning units were turned on earlier than ever. The short-shorts came out earlier. So, you know: not all bad.

1900

Climate Changes Before Your Eyes

To watch the climate change, you can't just average out the temperatures or measure the rainfall or count up the extreme storms. To really watch, you have to go to the ends of the Earth. To see the world warming, you have to go where it's coldest. To the ice. In Greenland, an iceberg breaks off a glacier and roils the water, an iceberg that is two or three times as big as lower Manhattan. In Iceland, the glaciers do a disappearing act. In the Arctic, glaciers melt like the snow in ...

2036

Climate Changes Before Your Eyes

To watch the climate change, you can't just average out the temperatures or measure the rainfall or count up the extreme storms. To really watch, you have to go to the ends of the Earth. To see the world warming, you have to go where it's coldest. To the ice. In Greenland, an iceberg breaks off a glacier and roils the water, an iceberg that is two or three times as big as lower Manhattan. In Iceland, the glaciers do a disappearing act. In the Arctic, glaciers melt like the snow in ...

2021

Climate Changes Before Your Eyes

To watch the climate change, you can't just average out the temperatures or measure the rainfall or count up the extreme storms. To really watch, you have to go to the ends of the Earth. To see the world warming, you have to go where it's coldest. To the ice. In Greenland, an iceberg breaks off a glacier and roils the water, an iceberg that is two or three times as big as lower Manhattan. In Iceland, the glaciers do a disappearing act. In the Arctic, glaciers melt like the snow in ...

1969

Five, Four, Three, Two, One

The era of commercial space services just began with the launch of the SpaceX rocket and Dragon payload to the international space station. The successful launch of the slimmed down Falcon 9 rocket represents the beginnings of ambitious commercial programs for new space flights. It is also an important development if for no other reason than engineer demography. The average age of NASA engineers is over 50 years and nearing the time for their retirement hobbies while the age of SpaceX ...

2017

Five, Four, Three, Two, One

The era of commercial space services just began with the launch of the SpaceX rocket and Dragon payload to the international space station. The successful launch of the slimmed down Falcon 9 rocket represents the beginnings of ambitious commercial programs for new space flights. It is also an important development if for no other reason than engineer demography. The average age of NASA engineers is over 50 years and nearing the time for their retirement hobbies while the age of SpaceX ...

1963

Five, Four, Three, Two, One

The era of commercial space services just began with the launch of the SpaceX rocket and Dragon payload to the international space station. The successful launch of the slimmed down Falcon 9 rocket represents the beginnings of ambitious commercial programs for new space flights. It is also an important development if for no other reason than engineer demography. The average age of NASA engineers is over 50 years and nearing the time for their retirement hobbies while the age of SpaceX ...

2114

Popping the Methane Cork

Methane is 25 time more powerful than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere. The “corks” holding back methane release from Arctic frozen grounds may now have started to pop. Research published in Nature Geoscience last week describes 150,000+ sites in the Arctic that have been observed where methane is increasingly seeping out. The seeps are occurring in areas that are thawing as the polar climate warms and the ice melts. The methane had been trapped in the ground for millennia by glacial ...

1965

Popping the Methane Cork

Methane is 25 time more powerful than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere. The “corks” holding back methane release from Arctic frozen grounds may now have started to pop. Research published in Nature Geoscience last week describes 150,000+ sites in the Arctic that have been observed where methane is increasingly seeping out. The seeps are occurring in areas that are thawing as the polar climate warms and the ice melts. The methane had been trapped in the ground for millennia by glacial ...

2122

Popping the Methane Cork

Methane is 25 time more powerful than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere. The “corks” holding back methane release from Arctic frozen grounds may now have started to pop. Research published in Nature Geoscience last week describes 150,000+ sites in the Arctic that have been observed where methane is increasingly seeping out. The seeps are occurring in areas that are thawing as the polar climate warms and the ice melts. The methane had been trapped in the ground for millennia by glacial ...

2256

Eclipse Viewing

May 20, 2012 offered a special opportunity for some folks to view an annular eclipse of the Sun. It was the first to occur in the 21st Century the last annular eclipse was in 1994 and the next one won’t happen until 2030. NASA produced an animated projection of the eclipse path as it moved across the earth while a video produced from photos taken by a science teacher in California using a telescope to make a stunning video. 5/20/2012 Eclipse Path (credit: NASA) ";" ...

2138

Eclipse Viewing

May 20, 2012 offered a special opportunity for some folks to view an annular eclipse of the Sun. It was the first to occur in the 21st Century the last annular eclipse was in 1994 and the next one won’t happen until 2030. NASA produced an animated projection of the eclipse path as it moved across the earth while a video produced from photos taken by a science teacher in California using a telescope to make a stunning video. 5/20/2012 Eclipse Path (credit: NASA) ";" ...

2035

Eclipse Viewing

May 20, 2012 offered a special opportunity for some folks to view an annular eclipse of the Sun. It was the first to occur in the 21st Century the last annular eclipse was in 1994 and the next one won’t happen until 2030. NASA produced an animated projection of the eclipse path as it moved across the earth while a video produced from photos taken by a science teacher in California using a telescope to make a stunning video. 5/20/2012 Eclipse Path (credit: NASA) ";" ...

1999

Re-Greening Mount St. Helens

Landsat is an Earth observation program operated by NASA and the USGS. Over 22 years, the satellite acquired images as it passed over Mount St. Helen since the volcano exploded in 1979. Everything in the path of the eruption was destroyed, buried, or burned to dust by the pyroclastic flows of the massive explosion. Using animation to combine and synchronize the captured Landsat images gave unprecedented opportunity to witness how life has recovered from the devastation. The time-lapse ...

2255

Re-Greening Mount St. Helens

Landsat is an Earth observation program operated by NASA and the USGS. Over 22 years, the satellite acquired images as it passed over Mount St. Helen since the volcano exploded in 1979. Everything in the path of the eruption was destroyed, buried, or burned to dust by the pyroclastic flows of the massive explosion. Using animation to combine and synchronize the captured Landsat images gave unprecedented opportunity to witness how life has recovered from the devastation. The time-lapse ...

1922

Re-Greening Mount St. Helens

Landsat is an Earth observation program operated by NASA and the USGS. Over 22 years, the satellite acquired images as it passed over Mount St. Helen since the volcano exploded in 1979. Everything in the path of the eruption was destroyed, buried, or burned to dust by the pyroclastic flows of the massive explosion. Using animation to combine and synchronize the captured Landsat images gave unprecedented opportunity to witness how life has recovered from the devastation. The time-lapse ...

2068

The Future of Lazy

Honda introduced the future of lazy, with their UNI-CUB personal transportation device. It has the look and classiness of a unicycle combined with the labor-saving and diabetes-inducing qualities of a Rascal scooter. People are already saying it takes the title from a Segway of All-Time Geekiest Transportation Device. But, admit it: because it's hand-free, it looks far more useful than either a Segway or a Rascal. Today's young screen addicts will be able to ...

2147

Archive Highlights

Video Highlights

Recent Archive Highlights

Environmental Art

Patagonia and Sustainability

Where Good Ideas Come From

Bottled Arctic Notes

Bloody Falls, Dry Valleys, & Mars

With the Stoke of a Pen, an update

Archive