Science + Tech
Advances that redefine reality. Welcome to the future.
Florence's Museo Galileo
Located near Ponte Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria, Museo Galileo is in the Florence’s historical center. Formerly the Museum of History of Science, Museo Galileo is dedicated to the education and preservation of science history. Since its founding in 1927, the museum has grown to be an archive of scientific instruments and an institute focused on the research, dissemination, and documentation of technology and science. Museo Galileo boasts an impressive specialized library, multimedia center, photographic and restoration laboratories, and more.
By Dava Sobel8 years ago in Futurism
Do Language and Emotion Affect Health?
Some years ago, when I was a little younger but just as peculiar, I was a general surgeon more interested in why people got sick than in cutting them—and equally interested in why they got well. Eventually, I decided that if I were to get any of my crazy ideas accepted, I'd have to become a psychiatrist. So I started hunting for a psychiatry residency. I was interviewed by one eminent gentleman and incidentally expressed my belief that anger and depression were important mechanisms in the induction of cancer. He sneered, not very politely, and said, "Every weekend we get at least a dozen nuts in the emergency room who have figured out what causes cancer." I asked, "What do they say?" His reply, which I treasure, was, "We ignore them... we have better things to do."
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
David Cronenberg’s Prophetic Videodrome
Videodrome is the best movie ever made about Facebook. What felt “vaguely futuristic” about it in 1983 is prescient today: technology and media are ever more intimate, personal, embodied, an interpenetration that David Cronenberg’s film graphically explores.
By Nathan Jurgenson8 years ago in Futurism
What Was the Star of Bethlehem?
It’s a scientific detective case, really, not unlike some modern UFO reports: cold clues, conflicting observers, many possible explanations, lack of data from people who should have seen what others reported, plus a need to come up with an answer. The nature of the Star of Bethlehem, or the Star of the Magi, used to come up every year around December and was the subject of planetarium shows all over the Western world. It was the case of trying to identify a historical event using available records, modern knowledge of the sky, ancient astrology, and was subjected to the errors of interpreting extinct tongues.
By Mark R. Chartrand III8 years ago in Futurism
Making Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica was one of the most expensive series ever created for television in its time. Its price tag averaged nearly a million dollars per hour for the episodes seen in fall of 78. The usual fees for a big budget series were compounded by an inspired move from creator/writer/executive producer Glen Larson. In signing John Dykstra, multiple Academy Award-winning special effects supervisor for Star Wars, Larson hired a formidable talent. Dykstra created the dazzling array of effects that highlight this otherwise pedestrian program, making Battlestar Galactica the hottest new series of its time.
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
How Can Venus Be a UFO?
A celebrated UFO report, widely publicized in the 1970s, is Jimmy Carter's sighting in Georgia, before he was governor. Hundreds of UFO writers and lecturers refer glowingly to the "Jimmy Carter UFO," though not a single one of them appears to have actually investigated the report. In light of statistics showing that 90 to 98 percent of all such instances can readily be identified as scientific phenomena (at least a quarter of these cases turn out to be bright planets), one suspects that UFO buffs are afraid that just such a solution would explain away the Carter sighting and thus deprive them of a good publicity gimmick.
By James Oberg8 years ago in Futurism
Darwin’s Archipelago
In 1966, I spent four months in the Galápagos Islands, gathering materials for a picture book on that archipelago. My Galápagos, the Galápagos of 1966, had been discovered by science but not by Lindblad. Charles Darwin had come 131 years before, but tour boats were not yet calling; there were no hotels, and the Ecuadorian government had yet to establish the Galápagos National Park. The islands were best known among the citizens of the mainland for their old penal settlements. The Encantadas—the enchanted isles, as the Spanish had first called them—for a time had been devil's islands of the Pacific.
By Kenneth Brower8 years ago in Futurism
