An engineer for the space exploration company SpaceX has outlined an elaborate plan to build Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, which he says could be ready to fly within the next 20 years.

“We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship… so let’s do it,” writes BTE Dan on his website, BuildTheEnterprise.org (which has been loading intermittently because of heavy traffic). 

The website includes conceptual blueprints, budgeting proposals, a timeline for research and development, and almost every other conceivable detail.

Could they actually pull this off?

Meet Santino, a super-smart chimpanzee living in the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden who has received a lot of attention lately for his learned ability to outsmart his human spectators.

One day in 2010, Santino was apparently fed up with being ogled, so he scared visitors away by aggressively flinging stones. (No one was hit.) Later that same day, when a different group of people approached his pen, the chimp came up with a new idea. “Santino approached them holding two stones, but this time appearing nonaggressive and munching on an apple.” When he got close enough, the sly primate let the rocks fly, taking the humans by surprise. 

In a new study published in the journal PLoS One, researchers suggest that the chimp’s deceptions hint at a deep level of thinking once only associated with humans. 

Super-fast computers… made by bacteria? 

The bacterium Magnetospirillum magneticum can typically be found in ponds or lakes, just below the water’s surface. Magnetospirillum isn’t just your ordinary microbe, though. It possesses a strange and unique ability, one that scientists think may allow us to build faster and more powerful computers in the near future: The tiny creature regularly creates powerful nanoscale magnets that humans otherwise wouldn’t be able to build.

(Source: theweek.com)

Yogurt: The secret to male sexual prowess

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were using mice to study how eating yogurt affects weight gain when they noticed something strange.

“You know when someone’s at the top of their game, and they carry themselves differently?” explained one researcher. “Well, imagine that in a mouse.”

Not only were yogurt-fed rodents noticeably slimmer than their peers, but the males exhibited a distinct sexual “swagger,” complete with shinier fur and more pronounced… features

Groundbreaking research suggests the universe’s most mysterious substance — dark matter — is hitting the human body at a much higher rate than previously thought. 

Old theories suggested these particles collided with particles in our body maybe once in a lifetime, but now, a team of experts argues that dark matter particles are flying through your body as often as once a minute. 

The self-cleaning, glare-free glass 

MIT researchers have unveiled a new technique which “virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare.” The days of straining your eyes or posing awkwardly to see your tablet screen better seem to be coming to an end. The team released a video of the new wonder glass, which doesn’t fog up, easily repels water, and can rid itself of dust and lint.

The groundbreaking technology works using microscopic, cone-shaped grooves measuring in the nanometers, which, while indistinguishable to the human eye, give the glass its near-magical properties. The researchers say the technique could easily be reproduced en masse to be applied to any number of every day objects: eyeglasses, cameras, TV sets, windows, and a countless other possibilities. Check it out