• Bahrain World Trade Center

    By sway Posted on 10.23.2008 Comments

    The first skyscraper to integrate large-scale wind turbines suspends three 1,200-megawatt units between its matching 787-foot office towers. The turbines, which were completed in April, supply 15 percent of the electricity for the two buildings—roughly the same amount used by 300 homes. To maximize energy output, the tapered towers funnel wind between them, creating a negative pressure zone behind the buildings that draws more air through the gap.

  • Large Hadron Collider

    By sway Posted on 10.23.2008 Comments

    The Large Hadron Collider is the most ambitious engineering problem ever solved. Construction on the $10-billion behemoth—housed 300 feet underground in a 17-mile circular tube—spanned 14 years and required the efforts of 10,000 engineers and physicists. But its real engineering feat comes from the 1,200 magnets—each 35 tons in weight, 50 feet long, and powerful enough to crush a bus between them—that steer a stream of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light.


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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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