The 21st century has been a real disappointment so far. Our robot servants top out at mediocre vaccums, self-driving cars are years away (and won't be able to fly even when they do arrive), and we're closer to inventing tricorders than phasers. A tricorder. Who wants a goddamn medical scanner when you could be blasting baddies with laser force? Read More >>

Thirty feet beneath the hills of Menlo Park, California, scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator have worked for the past half century to alter our fundamental understanding of the universe. The 1.9-mile-long structure, where electrons fly at nearly the speed of light, is reputed to be the straightest object on earth. Here's a peek inside. Read More >>

You're looking at the heart of the most powerful X-Ray laser machine ever created by humans, billions of times stronger than anything before it. It's the Linac Coherent Light Source and it has created something that nobody has made before on this planet: the kind of matter that you can only find in the heart of stars and giant planets. Read More >>