Word: less
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...bets are off, however, if genetic engineers find a way to intervene. What slows the human body down is less the architecture of its skeleton than the chemistry of its muscles. The key to speed is making muscles contract faster, and the key to that is gassing them up with as much oxygen as possible. "About 80% of the energy used to run a mile," explains physiologist Peter Weyand of Harvard University, "comes directly from oxygen...
...course, even if genetically manipulated athletes did survive their training and thrive in their sport, it's hard to say what they'd have won. A well-trained runner or ballplayer is one thing; a well-manufactured one is something else--less a product of skill and will than tricky genetics and smart pharmacology. "Maybe one day athletes will call up a prescription for bigger muscles or whatever," says Holman. "But will it still be called a sport?" You don't have to be an athletic purist to know the answer...
...start of the 21st century, alas, all that remains of these happy visions are a few scattered cloud-seeding programs, whose modest successes, while real, have proved less than earthshaking. In fact, yesterday's sunny hopes that we could somehow change the weather for the better have given way to the gloomy knowledge that we are only making things worse. It is now clear that what the world's cleverest scientists could not achieve by design, ordinary people are on the verge of accomplishing by accident. Human beings not only have the ability to alter weather patterns on local, regional...
Sometime in the next 30 years, according to the most recent forecast from the U.S. Geological Survey, a large portion of the San Francisco Bay Area will jump more than 3 ft. in less than 30 sec., shaking the ground for perhaps 100 miles and triggering an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7. Bridges will buckle. Apartment buildings will pancake. The dorms at the University of California, Berkeley, will roll like barrels on a wave. Water, power and transportation lines will be cut. The subway that runs under the bay could be a death trap. By the time the dust...
...about unmanned space probes going to the stars? Unmanned probes can be much smaller and lighter than manned spaceships. That means the total power required for a probe to reach the stars is much less. But the unmanned probe still needs an engine delivering one megawatt per pound. The problem of cooling the engine remains the same, whether the ship is manned or unmanned, and the conclusion is the same. Unmanned probes are not going to reach the stars within this century...