The high-orbit cloud: Why space is the next frontier for data centers The Terrestrial Ceiling: A Crisis of Power and Heat The relentless march of digital transformation, fueled by the explosive growth of AI, IoT, and big data analytics, has pushed our terrestrial data centers to their very limits. We are facing a dual crisis: a voracious energy appetite that strains global power grids and a critical cooling dependency that drains precious water resources. Consider the sheer scale: a single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a small city and demand millions of gallons of water annually for evaporative cooling. This unsustainable trajectory necessitates a radical re-evaluation of where and how we process and store data. But what if the solution isn't found beneath our feet, but above our heads? Moving data centers into Earth's orbit isn't merely a flight of sci-fi fancy anymore, it’s emerging as a viable and, increasingly, a necessary logistical lea...
Is gravity a cosmic fluid? Part 1: The weight of history By Marcelo Fontinele "What goes up, must come down." Since we were children, we have heard this phrase that simply expresses one of nature's most fundamental phenomena: gravity. However, behind this apparent obviousness lies one of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Throughout the history of science, we have tried to decipher its nature: Is it a force? A curvature? Or perhaps something even more fundamental, like a fluid that permeates the cosmos? In this first part, we revisit the visions of two geniuses: Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Understanding them is essential to taking the next step toward a new interpretation. Newton: Gravity as a Universal Force of Attraction Isaac Newton, in his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), postulated the Law of Universal Gravitation , formulated as: $$F = G \cdot \frac{m_1 m_...