MINDS THAT CHANGED THE FUTURE  /  NIKOLA TESLA Nikola Tesla and the Future He Could Not Finish A century after his experiments with rotating magnetic fields and wireless power, engineers are still working on the same stubborn question: how do we move energy — and make it useful — with less waste? Nikola Tesla helped shape the modern electrical age through his work on alternating-current motors and power systems. More than a century later, his inventions remain essential to modern technology, while some of his most ambitious visions are still unrealized. In June 2024, engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory transferred 270 kilowatts of power to a Porsche Taycan without plugging a cable into it. Electricity crossed a gap of about 12 centimeters between coils. The laboratory reported efficiency above 95 percent for the demonstration, while emphasizing that the system remained a research prototype. More surprising than the absence of a cable was the design: the team used po...

The Future of Virtual Reality: What Happens When the Digital World Feels Real? From Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro to AI-generated worlds, brain interfaces, and the science of presence. What happens when the digital world begins to feel real? Virtual reality is transforming how we experience space, perception, and the boundaries of reality. The room that isn’t there Imagine standing at the edge of a cliff. You know perfectly well that you are in your living room. You remember putting on a headset. Yet when you look down, your stomach tightens and your feet hesitate. Nothing below you is real. Your reaction is. That strange split between knowledge and instinct is the secret of virtual reality—and perhaps its most important scientific achievement. VR does not need to convince you intellectually that a digital world exists. It needs to persuade the perceptual systems that normally keep you alive. For decades, the popular promise was straightforward: put on a headset and go somewh...

The Internet Is Not Disappearing. The Way We Use It Is. From ARPANET and the dot-com crash to AI agents, digital borders and a web that may no longer need a browser. From a small network connecting research computers to a global infrastructure serving billions, the internet has transformed how humanity communicates. Now AI agents may change how we experience it once again. Imagine this: you need to replace a broken washing machine. You tell an assistant your budget, the size of your apartment and the delivery date. It compares independent reviews, checks which models actually fit through your doorway, finds a reputable retailer and returns with three sensible choices. You approve one. The machine arrives on Tuesday. You never visit a search results page. You never open ten browser tabs. You may never see the retailer’s website at all. For most of the web’s history, this would have sounded like a triumph. The internet was built to move information between computers, and the web ...

 Who Will Own the Next Space Station? The Private Race to Replace the ISS NASA wants to move from operating the International Space Station to buying time aboard privately owned successors. Vast, Axiom, Starlab and Orbital Reef promise new science and new markets. But who gets access when an essential laboratory becomes a business? Private companies are racing to build the next generation of orbital stations. But who will control humanity's future in low Earth orbit?