Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com, where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Marshall Brandon, Welcome to this week's Friday
Speaker 1: news round up. A lot of stuff happened this week,
Speaker 1: but in terms of hype, nothing beat Apple's Wednesday announcement
Speaker 1: of the iPad two. There was lots of stuff to
Speaker 1: like in the announcement. For example, the processor now has
Speaker 1: two cores instead of one, so it's twice as fast,
Speaker 1: Plus there's now much better support for graphics. There are
Speaker 1: two cameras in the iPad two instead of none in
Speaker 1: the original iPad, and an HDMI cable can now connect
Speaker 1: the iPad directly to an HD TV or projector. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal for teachers and business people. Battery life
Speaker 1: is the same at ten hours, but there were also
Speaker 1: a couple of disappointments. The screen is the same resolution
Speaker 1: as the original iPad, and it appears that RAM did
Speaker 1: not increase either, although no one knows for sure because
Speaker 1: Apple isn't talking about it. The announcement itself was hailed
Speaker 1: as a triumph. Chris Taylor on CNN had this to
Speaker 1: say quote his introduction of the iPad two did quadruple duty.
Speaker 1: It enticed mainstream customers, wowed spec hunting tech geeks, tweaked
Speaker 1: his competitors, and pleased Wall Street future presidential candidates would
Speaker 1: do well to study it. End quote. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: good endorsement. If you type brain stuff iPad two into Google,
Speaker 1: you can read more about the announcement and you can
Speaker 1: see jobs performance on stage when he announced the product.
Speaker 1: To counterbalance that triumph, there was a disaster on the
Speaker 1: space front this morning. NASA launched its new Glory satellite
Speaker 1: on top of a Taurus rocket. It cost almost half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars to build the satellite and get it
Speaker 1: on that rocket, and it was scheduled to help with
Speaker 1: climate research. Glory was supposed to study total solar radiation
Speaker 1: hitting the Earth, as well as the effects of things
Speaker 1: like carbon soot, so that we could get a better
Speaker 1: estimate on global warming and things like that. Unfortunately, the cover,
Speaker 1: the fairing that protects the satellite during launch, failed to
Speaker 1: separate from the satellite, so there was too much weight
Speaker 1: for the satellite to reach orbit, and the whole thing
Speaker 1: re entered the atmosphere and burned up. And all of
Speaker 1: that happened this morning. Also on board were several cube SATs,
Speaker 1: you can. You can go to brain stuff and learn
Speaker 1: about cube sets. There are little tiny satellites maybe ten
Speaker 1: centimeters on a side, usually built by college students for
Speaker 1: experiments in theory. They could have been deployed because they
Speaker 1: were situated differently than the main satellite, but there's no
Speaker 1: word yet on whether that happened or not. So maybe
Speaker 1: next week I can give you an update on whether
Speaker 1: any of those satellites actually made it into orbit. Two
Speaker 1: video game events have also gotten a lot of hype
Speaker 1: this week. One was the technology nd the upcoming video
Speaker 1: game called Battlefield three. They're releasing this new game engine
Speaker 1: called Frostbite Too to drive the game, and there were
Speaker 1: a number of improvements in this engine that make the
Speaker 1: games trailer extremely impressive. If you type brain stuff Battlefield
Speaker 1: three into Google, you can see videos that break down
Speaker 1: just how impressive the improvements are in terms of adding
Speaker 1: realism to the game. The other big event on the
Speaker 1: video game front is a live action movie trailer that
Speaker 1: came out for a movie called Find Macarrov, based on
Speaker 1: Call of Duty Modern Warfare. People are just beside themselves
Speaker 1: when describing this trailer. If you type brain stuff find
Speaker 1: Macarov where Macarrov is spelled m A k A r
Speaker 1: o V. Into Google, you can see what all this
Speaker 1: excitement is about. There's also a lot of buzz on
Speaker 1: the cell phone front, and it's pretty interesting. There appears
Speaker 1: to be a new way to implement cell phone hours.
Speaker 1: When you look at the towers today, they are huge,
Speaker 1: immensely tall, and ugly. Neighbors don't like the looks, so
Speaker 1: they fight every tower that people try to put up.
Speaker 1: Now there's a new way to implement the antennas that
Speaker 1: is incredibly small, so small it could fit in your pocket.
Speaker 1: They could be attached almost anywhere. You can put them
Speaker 1: on buildings or water towers, or power lines or just
Speaker 1: about anything, and all they need to work is a
Speaker 1: network cable and a little power. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things where it's hard to believe it's true because the
Speaker 1: size difference in the ease of implementation is so immense
Speaker 1: from the old way of doing it. If it works,
Speaker 1: it would mean the cost of cell phone coverage would fall,
Speaker 1: probably dramatically, and the amount of coverage would rise. Google
Speaker 1: Interesting Reading number six for details. Also in Interesting Reading,
Speaker 1: there's a story about a new way to harvest tidal energy.
Speaker 1: Every day all around the world, the eye goes out
Speaker 1: and the tide comes back in, and that happens twice
Speaker 1: every day. A lot of water is moving around, like
Speaker 1: quadrillions of gallons of ocean water is moving around because
Speaker 1: of the tides, and it should be possible to harvest
Speaker 1: energy from it. But the tides tend to move really slowly,
Speaker 1: so energy capture has been difficult without using pinch points
Speaker 1: of some sort. A new solution to the problem involves
Speaker 1: flying underwater kites and the tidal flow. So you think
Speaker 1: about when you see Chinese fighting kites, they're whipping all
Speaker 1: through the air. They're moving much faster through the air
Speaker 1: than the wind is actually moving because they're going side
Speaker 1: to side. Well, these underwater kites are doing that same
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They're actually flying figure eight patterns in
Speaker 1: the tidal currents and they move through the water ten
Speaker 1: times faster than the tide is moving, and that makes
Speaker 1: it possible to harvest power more efficiently. In theory, this
Speaker 1: development could make it possible to generate tidal power in
Speaker 1: many places around the globe where it's in possible to
Speaker 1: get it. Now, can technology cause mass protests? There's a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence to suggest that Facebook and Twitter had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with protests in places like Egypt.
Speaker 1: But what about Google Earth. There's an interesting article in
Speaker 1: Interesting Reading number six nineties seven that suggests that Google
Speaker 1: Earth had an effect in Bahrain. People in Bahrain started
Speaker 1: to look at how the country's land is chopped up.
Speaker 1: Much of the land is used by immense palaces and estates,
Speaker 1: while most of the remaining population is compressed into these
Speaker 1: small parts of the country. People started talking about the discrepancy,
Speaker 1: so the government shut down the connection to Google Earth.
Speaker 1: So then someone did a screen capture of all these
Speaker 1: different maps and things that were available on Google Earth,
Speaker 1: and those started moving around through email. It certainly fed
Speaker 1: into the discontent that led to the protests. Information always
Speaker 1: finds a way, it seems just a paraphrase as Jurassic
Speaker 1: part Scientists are worried that the planet's sixth mass extinction
Speaker 1: event has begun. So far in Earth's history, we know
Speaker 1: of five previous mass extinctions that destroyed a third or
Speaker 1: more of the species in existence. The asteroid strike sixty
Speaker 1: five million years ago is the best known and most
Speaker 1: recent of these events. It killed about half of all species.
Speaker 1: There were four other mass extinction events prior to that
Speaker 1: that humans can detect in the fossil record. Why do
Speaker 1: scientists think that we are in another mass extinction event?
Speaker 1: Because quote, biologists estimate that within the past five hundred years,
Speaker 1: at least eighty mammal species have become extinct out of
Speaker 1: the starting total of five thousand, five hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: species end quote. That's enough to qualify as a mass
Speaker 1: extinction event, especially since the trend is likely to continue
Speaker 1: or accelerate. If you google interesting reading number six, you
Speaker 1: can see details of what they're talking about. You've heard
Speaker 1: of space tourism. It's been pretty limited so far, first
Speaker 1: because flights to the space station cost about twenty million dollars,
Speaker 1: and second because the number of seats were extremely limited.
Speaker 1: But things ought to take off in two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: when Virgin Galactic starts offering suborbital flights for just two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on a regular schedule, and x Corp
Speaker 1: has a plane that should start flying as well at
Speaker 1: half that price. One big benefit this development will provide
Speaker 1: is the ability to take many more scientists into space.
Speaker 1: In the past, unless you could get a payload under
Speaker 1: the Shuttle or the International Space Station. There's been no
Speaker 1: way for a scientist to experience more than about thirty
Speaker 1: seconds of zero G in one of the airplanes known
Speaker 1: as Vomit comments, these suborbital flights will provide a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes of time in that zero G realm. If
Speaker 1: you google Interesting Reading number six seven, you can see
Speaker 1: why scientists are are so excited about this new possibility.
Speaker 1: Consumer Reports is reporting that it took its first look
Speaker 1: at the Chevy Vault and they weren't particularly impressed, at
Speaker 1: least from a pure logic standpoint. The main problem probably
Speaker 1: is the fact that the car costs so much. The
Speaker 1: model they tested had a price tag of over forty
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars. The amount of money saved with a
Speaker 1: plug in hybrid just isn't enough to match that cost,
Speaker 1: at least when compared to a Toyota Prius, because a
Speaker 1: Prius costs half as much. Using that logic, though, I
Speaker 1: would guess the Consumer Reports must really dislike the Corvette
Speaker 1: or the BMW for that matter. If you google Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number six six, you can go look at exactly
Speaker 1: what Consumer Reports had to say about the volt. Speaking
Speaker 1: of cars, there is now an experimental new way to
Speaker 1: drive a car. You control the car with your thoughts.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a union between a self driving car
Speaker 1: and a human controlled car. You think about where you
Speaker 1: want to go, and the car handles the details of
Speaker 1: getting you there. It's called brain driver. You wear this
Speaker 1: headset that has sixteen sensors on it that are reading
Speaker 1: your brain waves off your scalp, and you think about
Speaker 1: turning left, or turning right or stopping. Is it perfect? No?
Speaker 1: Does it have any practical application No? Does the car
Speaker 1: go very fast? No? But it does show that the
Speaker 1: thought control of devices is improving. Maybe one day we
Speaker 1: won't have to type on keyboards anymore. We can just
Speaker 1: think about what we want to type and it'll come
Speaker 1: out on the screen as we think it. If you
Speaker 1: google interesting reading number six nine six, you can see
Speaker 1: the details. There is now a new material available that
Speaker 1: has the moldibility of plastic and the strength of steel.
Speaker 1: The key is an alloy called metallic glass. So instead
Speaker 1: of having to forge or cut the steel on a
Speaker 1: C and C machine, these new alloys can be poured
Speaker 1: into a mold or blown like uh plastic bottle is
Speaker 1: blown through blow molding. Scientists are claiming that This could
Speaker 1: open up a whole new world of inexpensive metal parts.
Speaker 1: They claim it could be as revolutionary as the development
Speaker 1: of plastics has been. If that's true, and if you
Speaker 1: think about how ubiquitous and cheap plastic is today, you
Speaker 1: can get a sense of what's in store. Google Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number six nine six for details. There is a
Speaker 1: guy in Spain who has lived to be a hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen years old. Obviously, scientists would like to know
Speaker 1: what's going on, so they've been studying the guy. So far,
Speaker 1: they've determined that he is not a mutant. He appears
Speaker 1: to have a normal genome. So what do they think
Speaker 1: is going on? First, he's been on the Mediterranean diet
Speaker 1: all his life. Plus, the weather is nice where he lives,
Speaker 1: and he stayed active. Apparently he rode his bike every
Speaker 1: day up until the age of a hundred and two.
Speaker 1: So if you want to live to be more than
Speaker 1: a hundred, you might want to get on your bikes
Speaker 1: arting tomorrow. You might want to google the Mediterranean diet
Speaker 1: and see what he's eating. And maybe you want to
Speaker 1: move to Florida or San Diego if you want to
Speaker 1: get out of the cold weather. You can Google Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number six s to learn more about the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen year old Spaniard. Speaking of humans who
Speaker 1: live a long time, there was another article looking at
Speaker 1: the number of early human beings on planet Earth. Apparently,
Speaker 1: for a period of about a million years, there just
Speaker 1: weren't that many of our human ancestors around. There were
Speaker 1: maybe twenty thousand breeding humans, twenty six thousand at most,
Speaker 1: according to the article. Why such a small number? Apparently
Speaker 1: there was a huge volcanic eruption that nearly wiped out humanity,
Speaker 1: and possibly a second event at that same scale, and
Speaker 1: then it's likely that without rifles and hd TVs and
Speaker 1: cars and so on, we just didn't compete exceedingly well
Speaker 1: with the local fauna. If you go to Interesting Reading
Speaker 1: number six six you can learn more out early humans,
Speaker 1: and there are a couple other really interesting evolution articles
Speaker 1: in there. And finally there's an article entitled six important
Speaker 1: things you didn't know We're running out of And really
Speaker 1: that's a good title because it immediately creates curiosity. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all know that we're running out of oil and
Speaker 1: we're running out of bluefin tuna, But what are the
Speaker 1: six things that I didn't know about. I'll give you
Speaker 1: the short version here, and you can google interesting reading
Speaker 1: number six nine six for the details. The six things
Speaker 1: are first of all helium. It could all be gone
Speaker 1: in twenty five years. Second is chocolate because there's only
Speaker 1: so many places to grow it. Third is radioactive medical
Speaker 1: isotopes because there are just not very many suppliers left.
Speaker 1: Fourth is tequila, of all things, because of the destruction
Speaker 1: of the cactus from which tequila is derived. That number
Speaker 1: five is phosphorus, which could all be gone in thirty years,
Speaker 1: at least the easy supplies of it, and that would
Speaker 1: be a freaking disaster if we ran out of phosphorus.
Speaker 1: And finally water. Now, obviously we aren't going to run
Speaker 1: out of water per se. It's fresh water that's the problem.
Speaker 1: Because we are busy eliminating the aquifers and sucking rivers
Speaker 1: dry as it is as the population grows, coming up
Speaker 1: with supplies of fresh water is a real problem. So well,
Speaker 1: that's not really an upper to end up on. I
Speaker 1: guess I'll say that you should go get a glass
Speaker 1: of water and be thankful for it, and also be
Speaker 1: thankful the next time you see a helium balloon, because
Speaker 1: they may not be around that much longer anyway. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more, you can google interesting reading
Speaker 1: number six and have a great weekend. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does that how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and don't forget to check out the
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