Your next holiday: up a 20 km space elevator

Anyone with vertigo best look away now: Canadian space and defence company Thoth Technology has been granted a US patent for a “space elevator” that would reach a stomach-churning height of 20km above the ground. Why, you might ask, would anybody want that? For “for...

Fist bump your way to data paradise, with Apple

Ah the fist bump: beloved of ageing hip hop fans, “cool” geography teachers and Barack Obama. And now, it appears, of Apple too. The tech giant has filed a new patent for “gesture based information exchange between devices in proximity”, i.e. ways to transfer...