biology

This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface.

It's everyone's favorite question when it comes to record-setting birds: which is the fastest? The peregrine falcon has taken the trophy for fastest, reaching an incredible 242 mph on a high-speed dive. The much larger golden eagle is not far behind with a maximum dive speed of 200 mph. However, this is on a dive, when gravity is certainly helping the bird reach such mind-blowing speeds.

Click here for more mind blowing birds.

The device is a sensor, and it represents some of the core technology of MC10, a startup that makes flexible electronics. Ghaffari, cofounder and director of advanced technology at the company, isn't at liberty to tell me what, exactly, it senses. It could be temperature, muscle activity, or heart rate.

The sensor's counterpart is another rectangle of silicone. This one encases more traditional semiconductor chips, each about half the size of your pinky nail. Rather than being soldered to a brittle green board that's etched with interconnects, the chips are linked by what appear to be the same wavy, bendable wires. It's not as flexible as the passive sensor because of the chips, but it's still supple enough to bend around my finger. It's the brains of the system, Ghaffari tells me. It receives data from the sensor and then processes, stores, and passes on that information.