It’s often said that the loss of one sense improves the others. New research shows the dramatic extent to which this is true in blind people, and how their brains make new connections to boost hearing, smell, touch—and even cognitive functions such as memory and language.
Continue reading The Brains of Blind People Really Are Wired to Enhance Other Senses
Seeing as the Earth is a puny nugget of metal sitting atop a nearly 2000 mile-thick mantle of high-pressure flowing rock, it’s no surprise that the rock occasionally seeps out, either slowly or explosively, through the surface. It’s pretty cool to see the magma glowing beside Sicily’s nighttime lights, though.
Continue reading Astronauts Can See Mount Etna’s Crazy Eruption From the Space Station
It’s been more than three years since Elon Musk open-sourced his design for the Hyperloop, a futuristic form of transportation that promises to shotgun passengers through low-pressure tubes at near-supersonic speeds like bits of fleshy buckshot. And on Tuesday, one company released the first details we’ve seen so far on what a Hyperloop shotgun shell — er, passenger pod — might look like.
Continue reading Take a first look inside a Hyperloop passenger capsule
The Fat Cat Collective 