Everyone is blabbing about the metaverse. But what does this future digital world look like? WSJ’s Joanna Stern checked into a hotel and strapped on a virtual-reality headset for the day. She went to work meetings, hung out with new avatar friends and attended virtual shows. Photo illustration: Tammy Lian / The Wall Street Journal
Category Archives: Technology
Analysis: Air Conditioning Is Warming The World
The warmer it gets, the more people use air conditioning—but the more people use air conditioning, the warmer it gets. Is there any way out of this trap?
Video timeline: 00:00: What’s the cooling conundrum? 01:05: The pros and cons of AC 03:28: How to reinvent air conditioning 05:02: Can buildings be redesigned to keep cool? 07:30: Scalable, affordable cooling solutions 10:24: Policy interventions for cooling
Preview: Time Magazine – ‘Best Inventions Of 2021’
Cities: Electric Scooters & The Age Of Micromobility
Astronomy: Stunning ‘Butterfly Nebula’ From Hubble Space Telescope
This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to nearly 20 000 degrees Celsius. The gas is tearing across space at more than 950 000 kilometres per hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the centre of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula.
WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the Servicing Mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2200 years. The “butterfly” stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star’s outflow, creating the classic “bipolar” or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae. The star’s surface temperature is estimated to be over 220 000 degrees Celsius, making it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy. Spectroscopic observations made with ground-based telescopes show that the gas is roughly 20 000 degrees Celsius, which is unusually hot compared to a t
Views: Candela C7 – The World’s First Electric Hydrofoil Boat (Video)
At the recent Cannes Yachting Festival, MBY editor Hugo Andreae took the helm of the Candela C-7, the world’s first foiling electric boat, for the flight of a lifetime… Candela C-7 specifications LOA: 25ft 3in (7.7m) Beam: 7ft 10in (2.4m) Weight: 1,300kg Motor: 55kW Torqeedo Battery: 40kWh Lithium Ion Top speed: 30 knots Range: 50nm @ 22knots +8nm @ 5knots Wave height: Up to 1.1m Draft: 0.7m (foils lifted) 1.5m (foils down) Foiling capacity: 800kg
Technology: NASA Targets Asteroid With Spacecraft
NASA introduced the space agency’s first planetary defense test mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART, a spacecraft they plan to launch later this month on a mission to crash into an asteroid.
Analysis: Facebook & The Race For The Metaverse
A tech industry battle is taking shape over the “metaverse.” WSJ tech reporter Meghan Bobrowsky explains the concept and why tech companies like Facebook, Roblox and Epic Games are investing billions to develop this digital space. Photo: Storyblocks
Infographic: Renewable Energy’s Falling Costs
Sustainability: Redesign The World Competition – ‘Carbon Neutral Rings’
Pawel Rymsza’s proposal to house humanity in a network of ring-shaped structures built around huge algae-rich lakes is the first of 15 visionary projects shortlisted for the Redesign the World competition powered by Twinmotion.
Called Carbon Neutral Rings, Rymsz’s proposal is to create a network of enclosed carbon-neutral cities for humanity to live in. Each ring is built around a huge reservoir of algae, which would be used to filter the air inside the rings and act as a carbon sink to absorb the city’s emissions.
The carbon dioxide absorbed by reservoirs would ensure the cities are carbon-neutral initially and would become carbon-negative over time as humanity shifts to less carbon-intensive technologies.
Redesign the World is the ultimate design competition, which called for new ideas to rethink planet Earth to ensure that it remains habitable long into the future. Launched in partnership with Epic Games, the contest asked entrants to visualise their concepts using architectural visualisation software Twinmotion.
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1730861
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