6 engineering marvels that tamed ‘impossible’ terrain to cut travel time

By Les Shu Published December 2, 2016

If a mountain stands between you and your destination, the logical solution is to go around it – unless, of course, you find a way to go through it. What seems like an impossible feat to the rest of us, it is merely a challenge for determined engineers. Had Joseph Strauss listened to experts who deemed building a bridge from San Francisco to Marin County was impractical, then the Golden Gate Bridge may never have been built.

Now Boarding: From ice rooms to inside the Eiffel Tower, 7 of the coolest hotels on Earth

Recommended Videos

By the end of 2016, it’ll be possible to travel through the Alps in a high-speed train, thanks to the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. Not only will it shorten the trip for passengers, but make it faster to deliver goods. Like the Golden Gate, the Gotthard, along with these five other modern engineering marvels, not only cut down on travel time, but make it possible to get from one place to another – something earlier generations could only dream of. Here are six incredible recent projects that make traveling over land a little less daunting.

Former Senior Editor, Photography

I am formerly a senior editor at Digital Trends. I bring with me more than a decade of tech and lifestyle journalism…

Topics

Emerging Tech

Google is making Gemini and Search work better with the apps you love

Gemini's guest list is growing, and your favorite apps are invited.

Gemini AI on a phone.

Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.

The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.

Emerging Tech

AI bots are now trying to sabotage public health policies, like banning disposable vapes

Thousands of AI bots voted in a public health poll to block sales restriction on disposable vapes. It's like Big Tobacco is back from the dead.

Woman smoking a vape.

In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.

Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.

Emerging Tech

A tiny smartphone gadget can detect some of the nastiest chemicals in your water

Scientists built a tiny smartphone gadget that can spot toxic 'forever chemicals'

Smartphone-connected drinking water safety sensor Featured

What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.

Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.