DENVER, Colorado (PNN) - October 31, 2014 - When Colorado banned magazines with a capacity of 16 or more rounds back in March 2013, the ostensible justification was that doing so would limit the carnage a mass murderer could wreak when loosed on the soft targets of a "gun-free zone". That such targets can be mowed down in great numbers even without such capacity was apparently of no concern.

BERKELEY, Kalifornia (PNN) - October 17, 2014 - The magnetic poles of the earth have switched back and forth many, many times during the 4.54 billion years that the Earth has been around. Previous research suggested that the process of reversing the poles took place over a long time period, potentially over a few thousand years. But new research shows that the reversal could actually happen much faster than that, with the magnetic North Pole migrating to the South Pole in a time span as short as a century.

If your car was powered by thorium, you would never need to refuel it. The vehicle would burn out long before the chemical did. The thorium would last so long, in fact, it would probably outlive you. That's why a company called Laser Power Systems has created a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. The element is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laserbeam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.

PRINCETON, New Jersey (PNN) - October 13, 2014 - No tool in existence protects your anonymity on the Web better than the software Tor, which encrypts Internet traffic and bounces it through random computers around the world. But for guarding anything other than Web browsing, Tor has required a mixture of finicky technical setup and software tweaks. Now routing all your traffic through Tor may be as simple as putting a portable hardware condom on your Ethernet cable.