Friday Futures: invisibility cloaks, life on a moon, space freezers

invisibility
Image credit: ararat.art / Shutterstock.com

Welcome to Friday Futures, our weekly guide to the latest visions of The Future from around the web. This week: invisibility; life in space; rising sea levels; surveillance; autonomous air taxis and a freezer in space.

Look! There! Scientists just invented a real invisibility cloak

Researchers from Montreal’s National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS) just published a study in Optica detailing a new approach to invisibility cloaking. Read more…

One of Saturn’ moons could support life – no problems

Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) have published a paper in Nature outlining their discovery of complex organic molecules on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s 53 moons. Read more…

Rising sea levels will come at an awful cost (not just livelihoods)

Failure to meet the United Nations’ 2ºC warming limits will lead to sea level rise and dire global economic consequences, new research has warned. A study found flooding from rising sea levels could cost $14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100. Read more…

Big Brother is alive and living in the UK

Four years ago, the United Kingdom’s Home Office (the department responsible for immigration, security, and law enforcement) proposed developing a national strategy concerning biometrics, the biological measurements that can identify specific people, such as DNA or fingerprints. Read more…

Here’s why they put a freezer in space

On a frigid day last January in northern Sweden, a German-led team of physicists loaded a curious machine onto an unmanned rocket. The payload, about as tall as a single-story apartment, was essentially a custom-made freezer. Read more…

The Milky Way was in a head-on collision once, you know …

Astronomers have discovered an ancient and dramatic head-on collision between the Milky Way and a smaller object, dubbed the ‘Sausage’ galaxy. The cosmic crash was a defining event in the early history of the Milky Way and reshaped the structure of our galaxy. Read more…

Here’s the low-down on the annual advertising bash in Cannes

Key themes among the winning projects were social activism and political commentary, and transformative innovation—with an emphasis on innovation with real impact rather than tokenistic change. Read more…

Video: autonomous, ubiquitous air taxis (or how to make anything fly). Watch it now…

(Compiled by Alex Leslie; Edited by John C. Tanner)

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