In other news, Tesla is broadening its portfolio beyond electric cars. This week the company announced a $2.6 billion merger with SolarCity, and Musk revealed plans to build gigantic battery Gigafactories all around the world. California gets a lot of its energy from renewables -- and that figure is set to skyrocket, as the Golden State just announced plans for the world's largest floating wind farm. And researchers have developed living bricks that could be used to build energy-generating houses.



Is the singularity upon us? This week IBM created the world's first artificial neurons, which process and transmit signals just like the ones in your brain. In other tech and design news, researchers created a fog harvester that sucks water out the air like a cactus. A new smart beehive could fight colony collapse by monitoring the health of bees. A high-tech pen scans the colors of objects and lets you draw with over 16 million hues. And an avant-garde face mask uses spiderwebs to clean the air that you breathe.