Covent Garden’s Huge Balloon-Filled Cloud

French artist Charles Pétillon is synonymous with his use of white balloons, adding them to cars, golf courses and two-story houses for a humorous take on the mundane. Now, he’s installed his largest balloon-filled exhibition to date at London’s historic Covent Garden, joining an impressive roster of past artists including Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Banksy. Titled “Heartbeat,” the public artwork features a massive 54-meter-long …

Purifying Water with a Book’s Pages

A new book, developed by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia, can bring contaminated water to 99.9% purity using its pages. The “drinkable book,” spearheaded by chemist Teri Dankovich, contains pages peppered with silver and copper nano-particles that neutralize bacteria upon contact. Each book can supply four years of clean drinking water for a single person and comes with …

MIT’s Gooey 3D Glass Printer

The brilliant minds at MIT’s Mediated Matter Group have released a hypnotizing new video of their latest invention: a 3D printer that uses molten glass as its medium. Created in collaboration with MIT’s Glass Lab, the Glass 3D Printer (G3DP) contains a 1900°F “kiln cartridge” that fires the substance into a malleable state. It’s then laid down in gooey, crystal-clear layers, akin to what glue …