Dyllan Furness
Former Contributor
Author/Co-Author of 829 articles
Dyllan Furness is a freelance writer from Florida. He covers strange science and emerging tech for Digital Trends, focusing on the people and ideas transforming the world. His other work has appeared at outlets like Vice, Ars Technica, and Quartz. If not online, you can find him in the kitchen, on the road, or on the dance floor.
No soil? No problem. H2Grow can cultivate crops practically anywhere
Through tailor-made hydroponic systems, H2Grow aims to solve hunger in arid regions and help vulnerable communities become more self-reliant by securing food resources. H2Grow, a project from the United Nations World Food Programme, is helping crops flourish in unexpected places.
Conjuring catastrophes: Inside the world’s largest hurricane simulator
With their state-of-the-art hurricane simulators, researchers like Brian Haus hope to gain critical insights that help improve forecasting and fortify our coastal cities before the next big one hits.
Will GPS ever become obsolete? Meet the ant-inspired tech that could replace it
GPS is today’s go-to navigational system and it’s great until it doesn’t work. Researchers at universities and some of the world’s top tech companies are developing advanced navigational techniques designed to fill in the gaps when GPS fails.
Climeworks wants to clean the atmosphere with a fleet of building-sized vacuums
Using machines that resemble jet engines, Climeworks wants to fight climate change by extracting CO2 from thin air. The gas can then be sold to carbonated drink and agriculture companies, or sequestered underground.
Inside the Ocean Cleanup’s ambitious plan to rid the ocean of plastic waste
In 2013, Boyan Slat crowdfunded $2.2 million to fund the Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization that builds big, floating trash collectors and sets them out to sea, where they’re designed to autonomously gobble up garbage. The organization has since raised over $35 million and a lot of questions from incredulous experts.
Meet the MIT scientist who’s growing semi-sentient cyborg houseplants
Elowan is a cybernetic plant that can respond to its surroundings. Tethered by a few wires and silver electrodes, the plant-robot hybrid can move in response to bioelectrochemical signals that reflect the plant’s light demands.
Only three people have explored the deep oceans. Meet the next two
In a new mission called Five Deeps, a team of explorers will brave the inhospitable depths of the world’s oceans, observing, mapping, and collecting samples along the way. The explorers aim to traverse 40,000 nautical miles over the course of a year.
Time for test-tube turkey? Everything you need to know about lab-grown meat
Lab-grown meat is big business. A handful of enterprising startups have raised and invested hundreds of millions of dollars into nascent technology, banking on breakthroughs in biotech to revolutionize the food industry.
To make more room for livestock, the Dutch will moove cows to a floating farm
A Dutch company is developing a floating dairy farm, which they hope to use as a proof-of-concept for future agricultural systems. The farm will use automated cleaning and milking robots, while recycling waste into fertilizer. Later, they hope to include crops and other livestock.
‘Waterworld’ no longer seems sci-fi, so an artist designed your future gills
Meet Amphibio: A 3D-printed garment designed to work like a set of gills. Why? Because if sea levels keep on rising, many of the land currently inhabited by humans will be underwater -- so artist Jun Kamei started building a potential solution. Could it really work though?
Meet the Australian ‘techno-artist’ growing a web-connected ear on his arm
Ear on Arm is an ongoing endeavor by the artist Stelarc, whose eccentric performances put his squishy body in the indifferent grip of technology. Stelarc sees the modern body as a “chimera of meat, metal, and code,” and uses it both as the vessel of exploration and the uncharted territory to be explored.
From BigDog to SpotMini: Tracing the evolution of Boston Dynamics robo-dogs
Launched in 1992, Boston Dynamics has introduced some of the most advanced robots around, especially when it comes to replicating the movement of animals -- the most well-known of which are its series of canine-inspired machines.
To unlock secrets of evolution, scientists want to sequence all life on Earth
The Earth BioGenome Project has an ambitious goal — to sequence the DNA of all plants and animals species on Earth. In doing so they hope to unlock secrets of evolution and help preserve the blueprint of species for perpetuity.
LED-studded ‘electronic skin’ monitors your health, makes you look like a cyborg
A team of engineers from the University of Tokyo has developed an ultrathin, breathable, and stretchable display that can be worn directly on the skin.
Astrophysicists want to shield Earth from solar flares with … a giant magnet?
A huge solar flare could hit Earth in the next century, and these scientists think a massive loop of conducive wire could save us
Lilium’s new VTOL jet puts you a step closer to flying to work, Jetsons-style
Lilium says it has completed test flights on the world’s first electric vertical take-off and landing jet at a private airfield in Bavaria.
The chatbot will see you now: AI may play doctor in the future of healthcare
Startups are using intelligent machines to redesign the clinic, redefine the role of the practitioner, and reposition the patient in relation to her own health.
‘Can I borrow your pickup?’ NASA needs help moving an asteroid
NASA wants to capture an asteroid and drag it back to Earth within the next decade, but yesterday said it will need some help to do so.
What happens when anyone can edit genes at home? We’re about to find out
Many experts think Zayner’s project is careless and even dangerous. And, although Zayner's goal is to do good, they wonder if it’s worth the risk.
Meet Toru, the German robot that’s picking through your packages
Toru is a line of automated warehouse robots whose creators hope will make the picking and shipping industry far more efficient.
It took scientists 70 years to solve this physics problem, and an AI system did it in under an hour
Australian physicists developed a highly-specialized artificial intelligence that learned and recreated a Nobel-winning experiment.
Apparently, blasting bourbon barrels with infrared light makes for damn good whiskey
Buffalo Trace's 2016 Experimental Collection opens with a whiskey aged in barrels that partner Independent Stave toasted with infrared light.
This creepy snake-like robot is designed to fix equipment on the ocean floor
Eelume, the snakelike robot, will live on the ocean floor and help maintain deep sea equipment.
China to launch the first mission to the far side of the moon
China plans to launch a spacecraft to the far side of the moon this month. The Chang’e-4 spacecraft is scheduled to take off from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan on December 8 carrying a lander and rover, which will touch down on the lunar surface.
Stephen Hawking wants to launch a swarm of nano-probes into outer space… with lasers
Stephan Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg, and Yuri Milner announce Breakthrough Starshot, an ambitious project to reach Alpha Centauri
MIT student designs gardening robots that could grow produce for astronauts on Mars
A NASA fellow and PhD student has developed a system of robots and AI that can autonomously grow crops in the harsh environments of space, including on Mars
SpaceX will attempt yet another high-velocity rocket landing tonight. Here’s where to watch
SpaceX hopes to safely bring another Falcon 9 rocket home tonight after launching a Thai telecommunications satellite into a high-elliptical orbit.
The ESA’s space junk collection plan involves shooting large nets at derelict satellites
E.Deorbit will entail using either a net or a robotic arm to capture one of ESA's derelict satellites in low orbit and burn it up in an atmospheric reentry.
NASA just gave $100K to a company that wants to steer asteroids toward Earth
NASA has awarded funding to California-based company Made in Space to develop technology that may see asteroids become self-propelled spacecraft
NASA wants astronauts to have 3D printed pizza, and this startup is building a printer to make it happen
An Austin, Texas company, whose founders were commissioned by NASA to develop palatable foods for astronauts, has built a device that can 3D-print pizza.
The ‘spacecraft cemetery’ is the final resting place for hundreds of rockets and satellites
Decommissioned objects in Earth's orbit can also be instructed to crash into a “spacecraft cemetery” once their service is complete.
Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company Blue Origin is going to livestream its next rocket launch
On Friday, Blue Origin will show their rocket launch on a live webcast for the first time. Bezos tweeted the announcement on Monday.
Aliens have probably once existed, according to leading astrophysicists
Frank’s piece, titled, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens,” argues that, at some point before humans existed, there were probably aliens.