NYC to London in One Hour

While many thought the days of the Concord long gone, aircraft manufacturer Airbus has just won a patent for a hypersonic plane, which is being dubbed the Concord 2.0. The curious-looking aircraft (which would be able to travel at four-and-a-half times the speed of sound) is set to be a passenger plane—meaning a flight from NYC to London could take just one hour. Apparently the …

CH25: Cynthia Breazeal

How an emotional, empathetic robot named Jibo stands to revolutionize communication

Cynthia Breazeal didn’t just invent a new robot, she invented the field of social robotics. Before Breazeal, robots were conceived of as brute-force laborers. Whether strong enough to lift what we can’t, able to traverse dangerous terrain on earth or in space, or designed to work on soul-crushing assembly lines, they were endowed with sufficient intelligence to function independently of us and no more. For …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Test riding the hoverboard, digital detox, an alien voiced by Kathleen Hanna and more in this week's look around the web

1. A 390-Year-Old Bonsai Tree that Survived an Atomic Bomb Washington DC’s National Arboretum will honor its oldest artifact this week: a 390-year-old bonsai tree from Japan. But perhaps more impressive than its age is the tree’s history—which was fortuitously revealed in 2001. The miniature white pine is actually a survivor of the 9,700-pound atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima and was quietly donated to the …