If you sleep for eight hours a day and live to be 90 years old, you will have been asleep for 30 years of your life.

A software engineer and former professor, Daniel Oldis, thinks we should be finding a way to capitalize on this time, and to use it to interact with other people.

Oldis has studied lucid dreaming for four decades, and is on the experimental threshold of being able to send messages to other people, asleep or not, via the internet.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Objects projected onto your back seat appear exactly as they are.

While a rear view mirrors’ convexity gives us a wide field of view, the sacrifice we make is that these object appear smaller and thus, further away.

While convexity is useful while changing lanes, it’s not so helpful after you’ve knocked someone’s bumper off while parallel parking.

Via DVice

What can support up to 4,000 times it’s own weight, withstand blasts of dynamite, and is used by NASA to collect comet dust?

If you guessed aerogel, you are correct!

Aerogel is one of the cooler synthetic substances that science has to offer. It was actually only invented in 1930, and only came into existence as the result of a bet between two chemists: Samuel Stephens Kistler and Charles Learned.

Courtesy of Uber Phones

While most of us own some kind of iProduct and receive a seemingly endless amount of joy from them, seldom do we offer a second thought to the production process required to make such a magical device a reality.

There’s a popular notion that the entire device is made by machines, but that’s not the case, as you’ll see below. A Taiwanese electronics company you may or may not have heard of, Foxconn, is responsible for the production and assembly of the iPads, iPods and iPhones that have come to dominate our daily lives.

Here’s a quick look inside the Foxconn factory in China, one that employs over 200,000 people! 

Can this machine operate forever?

Since at least the 12th century, man has sought to create a perpetual motion machine; a device that would continue working indefinitely without any external source of energy.

A large scientific contingent thinks such a device would violate the laws of thermodynamics, and is thus impossible.

Could it be that as a race, we don’t fully understand the laws of physics and such a device may indeed be possible? What would the ramifications be if we could actually build a perpetually moving device?

Via Ryno Motors

“Personal electric transportation with the versatility of a single wheel and the horse power to take you wherever you want go.” -Ryno Motors

A bicycle is to a motorcycle as a unicycle is to a…

That’s the question everyone wants answered and one that mechanical engineer Chris Hoffman sought to solve. When Hoffman’s daughter drew him a sketch of a motorized, one wheeled contraption, he had no choice but to actually build one.

Courtesy of Philips

The light bulb, a modern marvel, has become bland and underappreciated. How did we let this happen? What can we do to bring that spark back?

Via Darpa.Mil

Functional electronic devices that can dissolve in water or other fluids at a set point in time offer up a myriad of possibilities to the world.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has funded a successful study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University, Tufts University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that showcased the feasibility of dissolvable or transient electronics to the world. How we can use this technology in the real world is where things get interesting.

IC 1101

And you thought Felix Baumgartner’s stratospheric leap made you feel small.

We’re discovering incredible facts about the universe seemingly everyday. We think the universe is 13.7 billions years old and it is currently expanding. There are theories that the universe could be infinite, and theories that there could be multiple universes. For our purposes today, we’re going to stick with just the facts, and talk a little bit about the largest galaxy known to man, the creatively named IC 1101!

Credit: Rick English

The possibilities for 3D printing are seemingly only inhibited by our imaginations. 3D printed instruments are a great example of that.

Though electric guitars have been printed within the last year, the world’s first 3D printed acoustic guitar was recently unveiled, providing an impressive solution to a daunting challenge.

With a sleek design, the 3D printed guitar was assembled from assorted custom printed parts. A company called 3D Systems printed intricate musical pieces out of a number of different materials including stainless steel, sterling sliver, and plastic.