Future Stories

Significant improvements to the trip times of the San Diego to Los Angeles rail connection could be affordably made. Alon Levy is a public transportation expert and writer at Pedestrian Observations. He described what could be done for California and on the east coast. The Los Angeles-San Diego corridor is 128 miles long and mosty straight. Target trip times of two hours should be achievable even with the frequent stops on the Pacific Surfliner. Trip times of about 1:45 or 1:50 are possible which would be competitive with driving even outside rush hour. The investment required for this ranges from

In 2008 an original bond measure approved the California High-Speed rail project. The measure was full of lies about costs. There was a strict guarantee that the California high-speed rail measure included in 2008. Maximum non-stop time for San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes. From 2008 to 2018, the state rail authority made a series of political and financial compromises that slowed speeds on long stretches of the track. A 2018 computer simulation by the authority says that the proposed train will make the trip in two hours and 36 minutes and 50 seconds. * trains operating

When the Thirteenth Doctor’s rainbow-accented costume was first revealed , I was admittedly a little reticent. I didn’t dislike it, per se, but there was a quirkiness to it which made it stand out much more than the typical aesthetics of Doctor Who ’s modern Time Lord couture . But the more and more we see of season 11,… Read more...

By searching for the telltale, periodic dimming of light from distant stars, astronomers can spot orbiting exoplanets tens to hundreds of light-years away. But how do they know what these bodies look like? Perhaps they first try to imagine how the planets in our own Solar System might appear to a faraway alien world. Read more...

As much as diehard fans of Warner Bros.’ DC movies might not want to admit it, the fact of the matter is that most of the studio’s film so far have been, well, not great . The studio’s less-than-stellar track record made it kind of difficult to get too excited for Shazam! , a property you wouldn’t immediately think… Read more...

Ann Nocenti wrote some of the most inventive, daring, and pointed superhero comics of the 1980s. We’re all really lucky that she makes a triumphant return to the medium this week, with The Seeds #1. Read more...

Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the company Diamond Materials have developed 6 inch wide diamond disks for window units to heat the plasma in fusion reactors. Gyrotrons are microwave oscillators generating a temperature of up to 150 million degrees Celsius in the reactor, similar to a very big microwave. This high temperature makes the tritium fuel reach the plasma state required for fusion. To guide microwave radiation from the gyrotrons into the plasma and in order to maintain a vacuum and keep the radioactive tritium inside the reactor, a team around Dr. Dirk Strauss and Professor Theo

Hey, guys—long time no talk. Managing io9 is such a full-time job that it’s been tough to communicate with you all, let alone write things, such as “Postal Apocalypse.” This has bummed me out for a long time. Which is why I’m stepping down as chief of io9. Read more...

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is going to be filled with Spider-People. Not just people, but pigs, robots, you name it . Two of the most recognizable ones, though, are Peter Parker and Miles Morales, voiced by Jurassic World ’s Jake Johnson and Dope’s Shameik Moore. Read more...

Steven Moffat apparently can’t stop making TV shows about time travelers. The former Doctor Who showrunner is heading to HBO with a series based on the novel The Time Traveler’s Wife , about a wife and husband whose relationship is criss-crossed throughout time. Now, where have I heard that before... Read more...

SORRY, ELON.  To be ready for human occupants, Elon Musk has long called Mars a “ fixer-upper of a planet .” But according to a new NASA-sponsored study, a better description might be a “tear-down.” The scientists behind that project say it’s simply not possible to terraform Mars — that is, change its environment so that humans can live there without life support systems — using today’s technology. BUILDING AN ATMOSPHERE.  Mars has a super thin atmosphere; a human unprotected on the surface of Mars would quickly die , mostly because there’s not enough atmospheric pressure to prevent all your organs from rupturing out of your body (if you survived a little longer, you could also suffocate from lack of oxygen, freeze from low temperatures, or get fried from too much ultraviolet radiation). This  study , published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy,  considers how difficult it would be to increase the atmospheric pressure on the Red Planet enough so that humans can walk on Mars’s s

Mass colonization of Mars will require advanced space capabilities. There will need to be hundreds or even thousands of fully reusable SpaceX BFR. A study that shows that Terraforming Mars needs to go beyond blowing up the Mars Ice caps shows that more advanced capabilities like placing a magnetic shield at Mars L1 or placing large orbital mirrors will be needed to Terraform Mars. Fortunately if we have thousands of SpaceX BFR then placing large structures in Mars orbit or at Mars L1 will also be possible. New research indicates that it will be more difficult to Terraform Mars because

Our A.V. Club Field Guide To Parenting is designed to guide you toward the best kids’ books, shows, movies, and music, just like we do with The A.V. Club for adults. Every month or so, we will feature a new subject with a few essential pop culture takes parents should know, saving you from the mountains of kids’ dreck … Read more...

Put down your smartphones, look away from your smart watches. Right now, at this very moment, Mars is close to Earth than it will be for a long, long time. And you should take a look at the sky for a change. If you do, you’ll get to see Mars up close for the first time since 2003, when it last made an approach like this. But don’t let that trick you into thinking this is a common occurrence. When Mars knocked on our door in 2003, it was the first time the Red Planet came that close in some 60,000 years, according to Space.com . And if you miss it this time around, you’ll have to wait another 269 years before it comes around again. The best view of Mars happened early Tuesday morning, but you can still see it Tuesday night if you simply look up . And unlike last summer’s solar eclipse , you’ll be a-okay if you want to stare straight at this floating red ball. Mars is particularly close to the Earth now because the two planets’ orbits are in a straight line from the Sun.  Both Earth

For a character who had his own show canceled after just one season, years later Matt Ryan’s take on DC’s snarky English spellweaver John Constantine is still surprisingly flourishing. Along with guest-starring on Arrow and a full-time turn on Legends of Tomorrows , Ryan’s Constantine even got his own animated show … Read more...

Panasonic will increase the battery production at the Gigafactory by 30% to support increased production of the Tesla Model 3. Panasonic will add 3 production lines by the end of 2018. This will bring the number of production lines to 1s. The production capacity will be 35 GWh per year and meet Tesla’s production goal of consistently building 5,000 Model 3 per week. Tesla plans to have sustained production rate of 10,000 Model 3 per week by the middle of 2019. This will mean more upgrades and expansions for Gigafactory 1 will be made.

These days, the Jungle Cruise ride in Disney theme parks is unlike any other ride there. That’s because it isn’t just about the ride itself, it’s about a full experience where “tour guides” joke about the ride while on the ride with silly, PG-rated jokes. It’s so unfunny, it actually becomes funny, and the new movie… Read more...

Godzilla: King of the Monsters ’ first trailer didn’t just bring the big G with it: it promised, well, monsters . Several of them, actually, all ready to challenge him for his title. For fans of Godzilla’s many Japanese films, these foes are some iconic familiar faces, but if you’re fresh to the world of Kaiju outside… Read more...

Russians have built the vast majority of planes that leverage Wing in Ground Effect. Flying low above the water or land can provide extra lift to enable planes with far more cargo capacity. The Soviet Navy built about thirty 125 ton Orlyonok-class ekranoplans and they were deployed mainly in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleets. They were used from 1979 to 1992. There was also a few 400-ton Lun-class ekranoplan was built as a missile launcher. In 2015, Russia’s Naval Aviation Chief Igor Kozhin expected to complete a standardized wing-in-ground-effect platform with a lifting capacity of up to 300

ROBOTIC HIGH FIVE. On Monday, researchers at OpenAI, the nonprofit AI research company co-founded by Elon Musk , introduced Dactyl, an AI system trained to control a robotic hand. According to the researchers, the system can manipulate physical objects in the hand with dexterity never before possible for AI. The task Dactyl tackled might sound like something you’d teach a toddler: take this six-sided block and move it around until a certain side is on top. Unlike a toddler, though, Dactyl needed more than a century’s worth of experience to learn how to expertly complete the task. But thanks to powerful computers, the researchers were able to pack all that experience into just 50 “real-world” hours. PRACTICE MAKES (ALMOST) PERFECT. The researchers trained Dactyl in a simulated environment — that is, a digital setting with a computer-generated hand — using a technique called domain randomization. They built certain parameters into their simulated environment, such as the cube’s siz

HAL 9000 is the original suspicious digital assistant. Before we invite Alexa, Google, and Siri into our lives to surveil our every action there was 2001: Space Odyssey ’s HAL, an AI so murderous it’s a wonder anyone saw its actions and thought, “you know, not all of this is bad.” But despite the fact that HAL gave us… Read more...

Airport security is both slow and ineffective. The random testing of airport security finds that the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) fails to detect weapons 80-95% of the time. The 95% failure rate was from 2001 to 2015. Recent tests have found some improvement to 80%. New scanning equipment could speed up security checks by 30% and with further integration in a few years, it may no longer be necessary to remove laptops and electronics for separate scanning from luggage. The new CT (scanning) systems are based on the same technology currently used to automatically screen checked bags for explosives. Those

Timeless ran out of luck ( again !) at the conclusion of its second season with news that it had been re-canceled . Ever since, the show’s hugely dedicated fanbase has rallied in an attempt to save the show once more—and they’re being rewarded, albeit not with a third season. Read more...

BYE, BYE AUTONOMOUS SEMI. Just under two years ago, Uber bought Otto , a startup focused on developing self-driving trucks. Now, Uber is bidding adieu to its plans for autonomous shipping, at least for the time being. On Monday, the company  revealed in a statement  that it’s closing its self-driving truck division. Uber’s self-driving trucks were seen on the road as recently as March, where they were contracted to deliver freight in Arizona. ONE FOCUS. The move won’t affect the employees of Uber’s self-driving truck division — they’ll just move to the self-driving car division, Eric Meyhofer, Head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, said in an email statement to TechCrunch . The hope, according to Meyhofer, is that focusing all of Uber’s self-driving expertise and energy on its cars will help that division build momentum. “I know we’re all super proud of what the Trucks team has accomplished, and we continue to see the incredible promise of self-driving technology applied to m

In the three months since its release , Avengers: Infinity War has become a staple of pop culture dialogue. Thanos , his snap, and the jokes are already integrated into our everyday lives. So you’re probably wondering, is there really more we can learn about this massively successful movie? It turns out the answer is a… Read more...

Lab-grown meat could become increasingly common on restaurant tables. When will meat alternatives be as ubiquitous as the real thing? The post Lab-Grown Meat Could Become a Restaurant Staple appeared first on Futurism .

Today’s best deals kick off with a rare discount on Apple’s AirPods , a portable projector , an HP Omen gaming laptop sale , and more. Read more...

Actor Topher Grace, otherwise known as that guy who’s not playing Venom anymore, has an interesting hobby of editing down giant trilogies into single feature-length movies. His latest masterpiece is Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit , so it looks like Warner Bros. has a new hashtag to contend with: #ReleaseTheGraceCut. Read more...

Space, as we all know, is the final frontier. It’s the star-spangled playground in which our imaginations run amok, and the setting for stories that made us fall in love with sci-fi. Some of us spent hours pretending we were the Doctor’s companions, helping him find Gallifrey from the TARDIS . Some of us imagined the … Read more...

Video games are constantly trying different ways to make you feel like the game you’re playing has exciting, tangible stakes. Some are more creative about it than others. Read more...

Simon Pegg talks about where the Star Trek movies are at. Doom Patrol recruits an Orange is the New Black alumni for its latest team member. Robert Kirkman wants to bring another post-apocalyptic comic book to television. Plus, more rumors about who’s really a killer robot in the new Terminator , and our first look at … Read more...

Who could’ve guessed it, said beast is not that bad once you get to know it as it lives inside your body. And once you get past, you know, all the wanton murder it does. Read more...

The risk of developing autism-spectrum disorders is determined by the bacteria inside the pregnant mother. Preventing forms of autism could be as simple as an expectant mom modifying her diet or taking custom probiotics. Development of autism-like neurodevelopmental disorders was prevented in lab mice. They cab halt the development of such disorders by blocking a particular inflammatory molecule produced by the immune system. Targeting this molecule, interleukin-17a, offers another potential avenue for preventing autism in people, the researchers say. This approach would be much more complex because of the risk of side effects. “We determined that the microbiome is a

The US Defense Department leaders will initiate the changes that they can perform without congressional approval for the New US Space Force. President Trump has ordered the creation of a new branch of the military. The US Marines were half-way between the army and the Navy. The Marines were carved out of the army. The Space Force will mostly be taken from the Air Force but will include other existing space satellites and other space-related assets from other military branches. The Pentagon will take three of the four components of the new Space Force: * a new combatant command for

An online shop called slightlywrong will finally let you strike back at over-zealous fans who have annoyingly dedicated their lives to correcting misquotes. The store sells a small collection of pop culture-inspired t-shirts that are sooo close to being accurate—but wrong enough to enrage nerdy pedants. Read more...

The deadly Carr Fire burning in Northern California can now claim an unfortunate milestone: It has officially cracked the list of the 10 most destructive wildfires to ever beset California. Read more...

Sometimes, you’ve got the bandwidth for watching the extended cut of a superhero movie plus all its special features, or binge-watching an entire TV season. But other times, you only need a quick fix. We’re here to help with 10 of the best new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror shorts around. Read more...

Right now, the Pokébuzz is all about the live-action Detective Pikachu movie starring Ryan Reynolds—but, as the kids like to say, you don’t just catch one. You catch them all. The first English-language look has arrived for the latest Pokémon animated flick, Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us , which is coming to the… Read more...

When will we know that antiaging rejuvenation using damage and age reserval really works? In such a world we will see 20 year old mice and a young Sylvester Stallone. Stallone is a wealthy famous person who uses human growth hormone and other treatments to stay youthful. George Church is a scientist deeply involved in founding and running many companies developing antiaging. George will be among the first to use aging reversal treatments. I expect Stallone will be among the first to use anti-aging for humans even before the treatments are fully approved and definitely before the treatments have become

We’ve only been to the Moon a handful of times. But we’ve already set our sights on a far more ambitious mission: colonize Mars. If you believe the hype, it may happen in just a few decades. Elon Musk anticipates that SpaceX’s BFR (big f–king rocket) will take its first handful of passengers to the Red Planet by 2024 — if everything goes according to plan, that is. Mars One’s crew, which will take up permanent residence on Mars, is slated to launch by 2031 . NASA is aiming for a similar mission  by 2033 . Getting humans there is hard enough. But surviving there, especially over a prolonged period? That’s a whole other question. A structure on Mars would have to withstand intense solar radiation and massive daily temperature changes, and provide a pressurized environment inside for humans to inhabit over a prolonged period of time. Weight and space limits aboard the rockets that will get us there will make the design task even harder. 3D printing the habitat seems like humanity’s

Have you ever seen a kid take a marker or crayons to a phone or iPad? If so, you might be able to imagine what it was like to see kids of the 1950s drawing all over the fantastic new technology of the day: television. But in at least some cases, this wasn’t a horrifying mistake. The person on the TV screen told them… Read more...

As DC Comics has transmogrified over the last 20 years, Geoff Johns has been at the very center of—or, at least, extremely close to—the engines of change. His title is different nowadays but he’s still going to be working on deepening interpretations of the company’s iconic characters. Read more...

TUBULAR TESLA.  If you’re looking at which forms of transportation are the cleanest, the surfboard is hard to beat. It produces no emissions — the only fuel needed to get from Point A to Point B reak is a gnarly wave. Sure, it might not be ideal for your morning commute if it happens to involve inland roads or electronics. But that isn’t stopping Tesla from adding surfboards to its clean transportation offerings. On July 28, Tesla added the Limited Edition Tesla Surfboard to its online shop. According to the product page, the Tesla surfboard features the same paint finishes as Tesla’s vehicles and will fit in the company’s Model S, Model X, and Model 3 vehicles. VERY LIMITED EDITION. Tesla produced just 200 of the $1,500 boards, and they sold out almost immediately. eBay  is now your only hope for snagging a Tesla surfboard — that is, if you’re willing to shell out upwards of $5,000 for a single board. What sets the board apart from those you’d find in a beachside surf shop, yo

Saved, the Clone Wars are! The shocking news from Comic-Con that the beloved animated series would return for 12 final episodes means Clone Wars has a chance to truly finish on its own terms. But in the five years since the show came to its end, we’ve learned about a lot of stories the show had planned on telling, but… Read more...

Wonder Woman 1984 is shaping up to be a righteous flick , with Gal Gadot and Chris Pine putting on their best fanny packs and shoulder pads to save the world from champagne fountains and cocaine parties...or something like that. We may not yet know what role Pedro Pascal is playing in Patty Jenkins’ sequel, but we’ve… Read more...

LIZARD BRAINS. We knew that they can regenerate their tails (and spinal cords ). But it turns out that geckos can regenerate parts of their brain, too, according to researchers from the University of Guelph. That’s cool for geckos, but it could be cool for us, too; it could signal a new area of research for the treatment of human brain injuries and degeneration. The researchers published their study  last month in the journal Scientific Reports . Because geckos can regenerate various parts of their bodies, the researchers suspected there might be something interesting going on in gecko brains, too. So they injected leopard geckos with a chemical label they could then detect within the DNA of any newly formed cells.   This allowed them to see new cells as they turned up in the geckos’ brains. They found many more of them than they anticipated. The researchers were also able to identify a type of stem cell that regularly turned into brain cells in the animals’ medial cortex, a part o

N 48.12885°, W 123.68234° —Amid the panoply of greenery that makes up the Hoh Rainforest, a gap in the old growth forest arises. Well, more accurately it’s a gap in a tree—a hollow inside a towering sitka spruce that stands like an open door. Beyond it, a short game trail through ankle deep mud and pools of water… Read more...

It’s no secret that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse looks unlike every other Spider-Man movie that’s come before it. In fact, it looks different from most animated movies that have come before it, too. For the directors, it was important to create a unique, comic book-inspired visual style for Sony’s big screen… Read more...

I didn’t grow up with Stephen King. Apart from checking out the TV miniseries The Stand , and my mom once seeing him at a casino, King and his work haven’t been a part of my life. Having barely visited his stuff, I was curious whether Hulu’s Castle Rock —a series that dwells within King’s stories, intertwining his … Read more...

NASA’s newest exoplanet-hunting spacecraft has started taking scientific data as of last week, according to a NASA release. Read more...

QUIET SKIES. Hop aboard a domestic flight in the last few months? You might be one of the thousands of American citizens monitored by armed, undercover air marshals through the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Quiet Skies program. The TSA launched Quiet Skies in March, but the public is just hearing about it now thanks to a July 29 report by The Boston Globe , which obtained TSA bulletins on the program and talked to air marshals involved in it. CHOOSING A TARGET. According to The Globe’s report, the TSA screens every American traveling within the nation for potential inclusion in Quiet Skies, but even air marshals interviewed anonymously by The Globe aren’t sure why it decides to include some people and not others. The one concrete criterion seems to be that they “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a TSA bulletin from March. Additionally, targets may have the same travel patterns as known

Guardians of the Galaxy cast members Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Pom Klementieff, and Michael Rooker have released a joint statement in support of writer-director James Gunn after he was fired from the third film earlier this month. Read more...

Star Wars fans collectively wiped tears from their eyes last week after learning that Carrie Fisher would indeed appear in J.J. Abrams’ Episode IX . Mark Hamill and Fisher’s family have weighed in on the news...and if you’ll excuse me, I may have something in my eye again. Read more...

The internet is filled with your embarrassing pictures from high school or that one office party. Here’s how you can hide posts you don’t want haunting you. The post Going Dark: How to Hide Your Social Media Presence for Good appeared first on Futurism .

Score discounts on some affordable wireless earbuds , a ton of stuff from Nike , two battery packs , and more of today’s best deals. Read more...

Amazon is ending its policy of letting viewers vote on which TV pilot episodes they would like to become full-length series, announcing at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Saturday that it was ending the crowdsourcing portion of its original content program. Read more...

DARPA will use the Silent Falcon UAS Technologies solar electric, fixed wing, long endurance, long range Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) for the Stand-off Ubiquitous Power/Energy Replenishment – Power Beaming Demo (SUPER PBD). DARPA will demonstrate the feasibility of recharging the batteries on board, in flight, by using a laser light source, allowing for indefinitely long flight times by using concatenated “Fly” and “Fly & Charge” cycles removing the need to land to refuel.

The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts and Smart Dubai are making the first Court of the Blockchain. They will expand existing dispute resolution services and explore how to aid verification of court judgments for cross-border enforcement. The plan is to streamline the judicial process, removing document duplications, and driving greater efficiencies across the entire legal ecosystem. Dubai is a high technology and blockchain leader. The Dubai Blockchain Strategy wants all applicable government transactions on Blockchain by 2020. Future research will combine expertise and resources to investigate handling disputes arising out of private and public blockchains, with regulation and contractual

A few months ago, DC Comics announced the creation of the Sandman Universe , four new series taking place in the fictional landscape established in Neil Gaiman’s award-winning run on Sandman. One of the new series, House of Whispers , is going to be unlike anything else ever before seen in the Dreaming. Read more...

The final season of Star Wars Rebels hits Blu-ray Tuesday and with it, of course, will be a nice selection of special features. io9 is excited to debut this lovely clip from the set, which focuses on Hera and Kanan. Specifically, the course of their relationship during the animated series. Read more...

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is magnificent. For a hundred years, it has consistently predicted all sorts of wacky phenomena scientists have later observed throughout space. One international team is now announcing that a 26-year-long observation campaign has once again confirmed the theory. Read more...

The BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation rounds out its cast and Wonder Woman 1984 picks up a few more actors for the tubular sequel. A famous DC bodyguard is set to make their debut on Supergirl , someone looks like they’re quietly exiting the MCU, and David Tennant joins the cast of another animated series. Allons-y,… Read more...