• Entertainment & Gaming

    The Leap Year Demystified

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 2.29.2008 3 Comments

    Happy Leap Year Day! Today is February 29th, the hanger-on day we get at the end of February every four years. Everybody knows it eventually comes around and most of us learned the thirty days hath September rhyme in school. But we could probably use a refresher on why exactly it shows up. Let's take a look.

  • Entertainment & Gaming

    Introducing the World Wide Telescope

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 2.28.2008 4 Comments

    Playing with Google Earth is an immensely gratifying experience. You swoop in like a superhero and pan around as though you're hovering over your own house. Imagine if you were able to do all that in the other direction, out into space. This spring, Microsoft is poised to release the World Wide Telescope, which promises to do just that and more, on a scale of galactic proportions. Microsoft has assembled an application of tremendous depth and breadth using data from the Hubble and land-based telescopes around the world.

  • Science

    Where Undersea Cables Go

    By Lauren Aaronson Posted on 2.8.2008 5 Comments

    Undersea cables have made big news in the last few days, ever since several cables were cut last week near Dubai and Alexandria, disrupting Internet service all over the Middle East. (The latest news: It looks like a ships anchor sliced one of the cables. Oops!) The accident draws attention to how much our modern lives depend on unseen cables—just three inches thick and buried under sand—that most of us have never even thought about. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of these things snaking under our seas, with even more on the way.


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February 2012: The Future of Fun

Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?


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