In 1997, Garry Kasparov, perhaps the greatest chess player of all time, squared off against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. This epic rematch has since been called “the most spectacular chess event in history.” Who won this “Man vs. Machine” battle? Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov: Round 1? With two six-month exceptions, Garry Kasparov was…
10,000 years ago, a giant meteorite plunged to the earth, smashing its way into Savissivik, Greenland. In 1895, famed Arctic explorer Robert Peary trekked across the icy expanse and laid eyes on the 31-metric ton slab of iron. The three year struggle that followed would go down as one of the greatest “man vs. nature” battles…
In 1816, average global temperatures fell. A strange fog drifted across the Northern Hemisphere. Sunlight dimmed. Crops died due to unusual amounts of dust. What caused “The Year without a Summer?” What was the Year without a Summer? “The Year without a Summer” was indeed a strange year. It was most apparent in the northeastern…
During the 1500s, a group of European missionaries traveled to South America hoping to convert the locals to Christianity. To their horror, they discovered that Amazonian witch doctors actively used a strange potion…a potion which they considered “the work of the devil.” But modern analysis indicates that this mixture, known as Ayahuasca, is far from evil. Could this…
On August 26, 2011, Professor Paul Davies published a paper in Acta Astronautica entitled, “Footprints of Alien Technology.” In it, he suggests a new approach in the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life. This approach, which he calls astroforensics, consists of police-style forensics techniques…employed right here on Earth. Who is Paul Davies? Paul Davies is an…
On April 8, 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was analyzing the impact of low temperatures on solid metals. While examining pure mercury, he used liquid helium to lower the temperature to 4.2 kelvin. Suddenly, the mercury wire changed into a superconductor…and forever altered the face of science. The Chaos Book Club Today is Day…
In 1964, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory conducted a top-secret experiment with enormous global ramifications. The project remained classified until 2003 when heavily-excised documents were finally released to the public. What was the Nth Country Experiment? The Chaos Book Club Today is Day 16 of the Chaos book club. Chaos is an adventure thriller along the lines of Indiana Jones or…
There are currently 118 confirmed chemical elements, the last 24 of which are synthetic. But as scientists construct larger and larger atomic nuclei, these artificial elements become increasingly unstable, often breaking up in mere seconds or even microseconds. However, some scientists believe that this won’t always be the case and await the day when the…