Giant balloons could clear out space junk

Helium balloons are known for pulling things up, but they could be a great way to drag defunct satellites down to Earth, a team of engineers says. Dead satellites pose a hazard to other orbiting spacecraft. In 2009, one of them wandered into the path of a still-functioning satellite, destroying both craft and spawning thousands … Read more

Rescuing the Enlightenment from its exploiters

While the Enlightenment, ‘one of the most important shifts in the history of man’ as one recent account put it, has certainly had its detractors, who blame it for anything from the Holocaust to soulless consumerism, it now also has a veritable army of self-styled heirs. Militant secularists, New Atheists, advocates of evidence-based policy, human … Read more

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