World’s First Bio-Material Toilet Discreet and elegant, the Block is the world’s first bio-material toilet—made from a mixture of wood chips and resin. Produced by Finnish interiors brand Woodio and designed by Pentagram, the toilet eschews porcelain (which carries a larger carbon footprint) for an innovative wood that’s highly durable and waterproof. The Block is expected to last 10 to 15 years with the possibility …
David Smith, a hobbyist mathematician based in the UK’s East Yorkshire, is largely responsible for figuring out one of the most puzzling visual mathematical problems: “is there a shape that can be arranged in a tile formation, interlocking with itself ad infinitum, without the resulting pattern repeating over and over again?” The search for this “Einstein” shape—an aperiodic monotile—has been predicted to exist, but never …
New Storm-Tracking Satellite Will Observe Space Weather Too Headed into space on 1 March, the GOES-T satellite and its arsenal of high-resolution cameras will track storms, wildfires and more in real time across North America. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NAOA) partnered with NASA to design and construct the satellite, which already has siblings in space. In contrast to previous satellites of this nature, …
