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Hello and welcome to This is Genius science in 90 seconds, the stories that matter, from
the people with grey matter.
And first up this week, space elevators. We talked about them in our video about wierd
ways to get into space, annotation below, and now a report from the from the International
Academy of Astronautics claims we could feasilbly have the first space elevators into Low Earth
Orbit as soon as 2025, with more ambitious cables carrying 20 tonnes or so to geostationary
orbit from 2035. The system could lift as much as a space shuttle every two days for
a fraction of the cost.
Next up, and out-of-body experiences may seem like pseudoscience, but to people who experience
them they are all too real. Now, for the first time, a team from the University of Ottowa
have mapped the brain during an OBE. Scanning a subject who claimed to be able to experience
trips at will, the team noticed that her visual cortex almost entirely shut down, whilst the
part of the brain associated with kinesthetic imagery, which includes mental imagery of
bodily movement, became super active. So no paranormal activity, but rather interesting
nonetheless.
And finally, launching satellites costs quite a lot of money. So how about we don't? The
Keck Institute for Space studies have suggested we could use giant, sci-fi esque airships
to replace everything from spy to mobile communications and science satellites, for a fraction of
the cost - though the report says there are some technical, and many political, hurdles
to overcome.
That's it for this week, check out the rest of the playlist for more on these stories.
We've also got an awesome video collaboration going up today, we've united with Truthloader,
Dark5, alltime Conspiracies and Alltime numbers to bring you a top five of bizarre CIA programmes,
it should be appearing at the bottom and there's a link in the description so check it out,
it's amazing and you get to hear me try and do an American accent and wear a fake moustache.
That's worth a click, right?