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Wellcome Collection In the 1500s, Mail Disinfection Was Really, Really Weird
Past epidemics left behind a paper trail of stained, scorched, and punctured letters.
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Illustration by Chris Chester / The Atlantic; Photos … The Rise and Fall of an All-Star Crew of Jewel Thieves
They were highly sophisticated. The local police seemed helpless. Then a retired septuagenarian detective stepped in.
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Angie Smith Meet the Safecracker of Last Resort
Charlie Santore sees Los Angeles from the inside, by breaking into safes whose owners can no longer unlock them.
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Matt Chinworth How Will Police Solve Murders on Mars?
Mars P.D. will have to deal with new blood-spatter patterns, different body decay rates, and space-suit sabotage—and they won’t be able to fire guns indoors.
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Angie Smith Drone Cops Take Flight in Los Angeles
The L.A. County Sheriff has deployed a quadcopter drone for rescue and reconnaissance. But will the public accept that these aerial officers come in peace?
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Reuben Wu Los Angeles, America’s Future Spaceport
The city of stars was once a major hub for aerospace. Soon it might be again.
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Slaven Vlasic / Julien Behal / PA Images … The City That Remembers Everything
The smart city is moving beyond cameras and microphones to stranger surveillance tools.
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Alex Dos Diaz Parking for Gold
Competitive parking may not inspire the popular imagination like NASCAR or the NBA, but a handful of enthusiasts are hoping to change that. Welcome to the National Valet Olympics.
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Alex Petrowsky Inside LAX's New Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Unit
If the airport’s experimental team succeeds, every critical infrastructure site in the world might soon have its own in-house intel operation.
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eLISA Science / The Atlantic The Satellites That Could Trace the Ripples of the Cosmos
The eLISA space mission aims to detect gravitational waves with an enormous laser triangle and floating gold cubes.
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NASA / The Atlantic The Future of Archaeology Is 'Spacejunk'
Museum tours may one day rocket beyond Earth to explore abandoned satellites and derelict spacecraft.
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CORONA Atlas Project / The Atlantic Archaeologists Are Spotting Ancient Ruins in Cold War Spy Photos
The declassified images are a treasure trove for scientists who study the empires of antiquity.
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NASA / The Atlantic The Growing Risk of a War in Space
The prospect of weaponized satellites launching a Pearl Harbor style attack in orbit is more probable than many people realize.
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Andy Clark / Reuters / The Atlantic The Existentialism of GPS
Satellite-based art projects have a way of revealing the inherent slipperiness of the physical world.
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Michaela Rehle / Reuters / The Atlantic How a GPS Glitch Can Change the Taste of Your Salad
Much of the automated world depends on satellites. When one has a problem, it can cause startling butterfly effects.
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Gene Blevins / Reuters Tracking Earth's Secret Spy Satellites
With the right gear and know-how, anyone can keep tabs on the clandestine ”moons” that surround our planet.
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NASA / The Atlantic Subverting Our New Space Overlords
Governments and hedge funds are pulling economic data from daily satellite images of ports, farms, and even mall parking lots—here’s how they might be fooled.
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Andres Kudacki / AP / The Atlantic The Age of Fake Shooting Stars Is Upon Us
A satellite-delivered meteor shower is scheduled to open the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo—an artificial star over Bethlehem might be next.
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Kineticorp The Novelist Who Reconstructs Car Crashes
The tools of the trade: Animations, toy trucks, and a stuffed feral pig on wheels
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Inside a Radioactive 'Health' Mine
There are only half a dozen radon health mines in the United States, and all six of them are located within twenty minutes' drive of each other in western Montana.
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