Some inventions save people’s lives, others improve them and still others end up as the white elephant gift no one wants to take home. Sometimes the question isn’t, “Why didn’t I think of that?” it’s, “Why would anyone think of that?”
Well, if benefit to humankind were the only means of making a profit, there would be no reality TV. In that spirit, here’s a list of ten kooky creations that made a mint, including one that turned out to fill a legitimate need.
One of the unwritten rules of physics says you can’t get something for nothing; at best, you can swing a fair exchange rate between energy in and energy out. The problem is heat: Like an energy embezzler, it skims off the top of chemical reactions, physical systems and electrical circuits (which is why we can’t have perpetual motion machines).
Superconductors don’t break the laws of thermodynamics, but they do manage to find some fairly large loopholes. Send current through a superconducting wire, and it loses no energy to resistance. Bend the wire into a loop, and it will hold charge indefinitely. Levitate it above a magnet, and the sun will devour the Earth before it will fall.
Plus, it can levitate a frog.
What is Superconductivity?
Quiz: How Super are Superconductors?
NASA is planning its most powerful rocket to date, a jack-of-all-trades vehicle intended to carry the American space program through a dizzying array of potential missions. Inheriting parts from the now-defunct space shuttle, its stillborn successor, Constellation, and the Saturn V workhorse that launched Americans to the moon, this modular monster is Senate-mandated to meet the requirements of any mission NASA dreams up, from near-Earth milk runs to massive undertakings like Mars exploration.
Can a single vehicle serve so many masters in so many ways, or will this phoenix turn out to be a turkey? Find out below – and then test your knowledge in the Big, Bad Space Launch System quiz.
How the Space Launch System Will Work
Blastoff! The Big, Bad Space Launch System Quiz
Anyone can make a bucket list, but why stop with stuff you want to accomplish while you’re alive? Death offers all kinds of opportunities that life simply cannot match: You can be transformed into a diamond, launched in fireworks, propelled in ammunition, or installed as a permanent part of a coral reef community — none of which I would recommend doing while still drawing breath.
Finally, for those who prefer their final resting place out on the final frontier, there’s the ultimate infrequent flyer plan ….
How Space Burial Works
To Star-stuff We Return: The Space Burial Quiz
Playing video games isn’t exactly rocket science but, thanks to a crowdsourcing computer game developed by University of Washington researchers, it can be molecular biology – and can offer hope to sufferers of tough-to-crack diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV.
Like John Henry versus the steam hammer or Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue, Foldit players show that humans still have a thing or two to teach machines; unlike Henry, who died, or Kasparov, who lost in a rematch, protein-folding gamers still have an edge over the brute-force number crunching of supercomputers.