The Potential of Space Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Future

When we think about the value of the space travel industry, we have to think beyond space missions. One of the most important and burgeoning activities of the space travel industry – that is often underappreciated – is the development of green technologies that could revolutionise many industries on Earth, including energy, food, and materials. When…

View Post

The Technodelic Experience: Using Virtual Reality to Achieve a Psychedelic State

The company SoundSelf has developed VR technology that can induce altered states of consciousness. Interestingly, the technology helps you slip into a somewhat psychedelic state through the use of your own voice. By breathing deeply and exhaling in extended tones, you modulate audio and visual stimuli, transforming your consciousness in the process. SoundSelf has created…

View Post

Envisioning Green Cities of the Future

We may all conjure up different images when we try to think what cities in the future will look like, say 20, 50, or 100 years from now. For the optimistically minded, these cities may be idyllic, clean, hi-tech, and utopian, while for the more pessimistic among us, such cities may look bleak, barren, in…

View Post

Asteroid Mining and Capitalism in Space

Asteroid mining is the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids and bringing these resources back to Earth. With an exponentially rising global population, precious resources are quickly becoming depleted. Luckily, asteroids contain many materials that we need and so mining them could set us on the path to a sustainable future. There are, however, some…

View Post

The Ethical, Psychological, and Social Implications of Mass Surveillance

In 2013, the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), tapped fibre-optic cables for access to our personal communications (including emails, Facebook posts, internet histories, and phone calls), and then shared this information with the National Security Agency (NSA), the major spy agency in the US. The Snowden…

View Post