Virgin Galactic launches new spaceship VSS Unity. It made a successful first glide flight on Dec. 3, a key step after a deadly crash of its predecessor two years ago. The company's goal is to take tourists to the edge of space, more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth. Potentially it can carry up to six passengers on a three-hour suborbital flight. Despite the hefty $ 250,000 price tag, more than 600 would-be astronauts have already signed up, including Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher.
Huge safety shield erected at Chernobyl. A massive radiation shield, dubbed New Safe Confinement, has been installed over the number four nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, the site of the catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident. The steel-and-concrete structure is 275 meters wide, 108 meters high and weighs 36,000 tons, and is the largest movable land-based structure ever built and is supposed to secure the unit for at least 100 years.
A single atom meets a single photon… Mapping the interaction between those two may inform design of quantum devices. "The photon knocks the atom into an excited state. To build reliable devices, scientists will need to control the interaction," said the team bringing Rubidium atoms and infrared photons together.
Amazon’s Snowmobile = giant hard drive. An effort to upload more business’s data to its cloud, Amazon launched a new Snowmobile service, an actual 18-wheel truck designed to shuttle as many as 100 petabytes.
Self-lacing sneakers? Yes please! Nike’s first self-lacing shoe, the HyperAdapt 1.0, went on sale last week. It feature adaptive fit that senses when the wearer’s foot is in the shoe using a pressure sensor and automatically tightens the straps. The price of stepping into the future? $ 720 a pair.
Photo credit: Virgin Atlantic
