Futurist Thomas Frey: It has always seemed outrageous to me that in a world where so many people are dying of obesity, that we can still have an equally unacceptable number of people dying of starvation.
There are about 7 billion human beings on the planet.
Earth is in the middle of a population crisis. While countless species have seen their numbers plummet in recent decades, with more than a few going extinct entirely, humans have seen theirs grow and grow — and the two trends are hardly unrelated. But incredibly, when considering the indelible impact we’ve had on the planet and the creatures we share it with in our brief time here, everyone alive today accounts for a whopping 12 percent of all the humans that have lived, ever.
What will cause the power to shift among nations between now and 2050?
Futurist Thomas Frey: I often get interview requests from newspaper and magazines as they probe for a better understanding of the world ahead. However, the request I received two days ago was a bit unusual.
There are 440 commercial nuclear reactors in use worldwide. They are all currently helping to minimize our consumption of fossil fuels. But how much bigger can nuclear power get?
Engineering students at Harvard University have developed a cell phone app that, when paired with an ordinary metal detector, can be used effectively to detect land mines. Instead of just beeping when it passes over a metal object, these enhanced metal detectors present the shape of the object found below ground…
Google has topped a list of the most reputable companies in the U.S., according to a Harris Interactive poll. Harris Interactive asked more than 30,000 respondents to identify the 60 most visible companies in the U.S. and rate them based on 20 different attributes, including financial performance, emotional appearance, social responsibility and leadership…
Futurist Thomas Frey: Great communities are founded on great ideas. At the same time, our most admired communities become a magnet, attracting the brightest minds. The relational effect is clear: Bright minds make a community great, and great communities attract bright minds.
A businessman from Delhi has tattooed 305 flags of different countries on his body to promote amity among nations. Har Prakash, who also likes to call himself Guinness Rishi, hopes to get more flags inked on his body and create a new world record…
Futurist Thomas Frey: Over the past month I have hosted a series of meetings to discuss the topic of global elections. The purpose of these discussions was to help expand our understanding of the topic. I also truly believe that someone will begin to produce global elections, in a meaningful way, sometime very soon.
Google Earth map that shows the different population sizes surrounding nuclear power plants.
Nature News along with Columbia University, has created a Google Earth map that shows the different population sizes surrounding nuclear power plants. They are trying to demonstrate the danger threshold of other nuclear plants worldwide, compared to the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.
Scientists could get their first glimpse of the dawn of the universe from a telescope buried up to half a mile underground. This new device is designed to detect gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are an elusive phenomena created by some of the most violent events in the universe such as black holes, neutron stars and the Big Bang.
Just like humans, whales also have “pop songs,” complete with music mania that sweeps across the ocean:
The findings are based on 11 years of recordings from underwater microphones slung over the sides of boats, which were collected by marine biologist Ellen Garland of the University of Queensland in Australia and colleagues. Picking out the patterns took a while; the team had to listen to 745 songs in total from six whale populations across the South Pacific over the 11-year period. The researchers identified 11 distinctly different styles (audio). Sometimes the “hit song” contained snippets from previous seasons, sometimes it was entirely revolutionary…