Category Archives: Technology

Astronomy, Computing, Consumer, Electromagnetism, Engineering, Health, Imaging, Internet, Physics, Science, Space, Technology

Laser Communications Gets a Zap(pa) from Moon Unit

November 25, 2013 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

Lasers rank among the most vital and widespread technologies in the industrialized world, but for years they were considered a solution looking for a problem. One possible application lay in communications: Lasers, being of higher frequency and energy than radio, held the potential to communicate more information per second.

Fast-forward to October 2013, when NASA pulled off one of the most impressive proofs-of-concept in history. That month, a spacecraft orbiting the moon sent data 239,000 miles to Earth via a pulsed laser beam at a download rate of 622 megabits per second (by comparison, high-speed consumer data plans are usually measured in the tens of megabits). Everyone from cryptographers to high-speed Wall Street traders sat up and took notice. Sound cool? Read on as I explain…

How Laser Communication Works

Engineering, Geoscience, History, How To, Materials, Physics, Technology, Travel

Like a Bridge Under Troubled Waters

November 8, 2013 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

A partially disassembled tunnel boring machine (TBM). Photo by Mike.

Between the years of 1825 and 1843 , through floods and financial failures, Marc Isambard Brunel and his son dug a tunnel under London’s Thames River. Our ambitions have grown since then, but the technology we use still bears a striking resemblance to Brunel’s shipworm-inspired device.

In this article, I look at some of the worlds most breathtaking underwater tunnels and delve into how they were constructed.

How do you build an underwater tunnel?

Computing, Consumer, Engineering, Internet, Technology

Cloudy With a Chance of Hacking: Remote File Access

October 21, 2013 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

In the internet’s early days, bottom-of-the-barrel bauds would choke on anything bigger than a byte-sized file. Today, bandwidth has opened wide enough to gulp down gigabyte-sized games and stream movies, enabling companies to provide access to your media and work files anywhere and any time you want it. If you are curious about virtual private networks, remote file access and cloud services, here is a nice friendly article that breaks it all down for you and includes a brief tour of the more popular options available.

How Remote File Access Works

Auto, Consumer, Engineering, Green, Maintenance, Physics, Science, Technology, Top 10, Travel

Going the Extra Mile (on the Same Tank of Gas)

September 7, 2013 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

Call it ecodriving, hypermiling or plain old frugality, people today are trying every trick they can think of to wring a few extra miles from a drop of gas. Unfortunately, most fuel-saving tips range from the dubious to the downright dimwitted. Even the ones that work — such as making only right turns — veer into the ridiculous. In this Top 5 list, I’ve separated the classics from the clunkers and saved you the trouble of doing your own Mythbusters episode. Read on to discover….

Everyday Driving Tips to Save Fuel

Biochemistry, Chemistry, Consumer, Genetics, Green, Science, Technology, Weird

Driving by Larch Light

June 4, 2013 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

Would you want to live in a world that looks like a Pandora knockoff, or blares like the wall decorations of a stoner crash pad? What if you couldn’t turn it off?

Such were the questions raised when a Kickstarter campaign launched to “create real glowing plants in a do-it-yourself biolab in California.” At first, observers merely wondered if the technology could work. But as time passed, their questions moved on to more troubling concerns regarding the unregulated spreading of genetically modified seeds…

Could glow-in-the-dark plants replace streetlights?

Writing • Editing • Commentary