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Who would have thought that the key to sleeping like a baby is a specialized blanket? Not vibrating headbands, not napping classes, and most definitely not human-shaped mattresses either. The secret to a more restful shuteye lies in a good ‘ol blanket, or more specifically, a weighted blanket.Initially developed for people in the autism spectrum, weighted blankets enjoyed mainstream success in recent years when companies started mass producing them to cater to masses with sleep disorders....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn March 11, the Senate passed a series of reforms to U.S. patent law. If the House of Representatives passes a similar bill, it will amount to the first major overhaul of the country’s patent system in nearly 60 years. One change in particular is causing some hullabaloo: a shift from the current first-to-invent system to the first-to-file approach used in most other countries. The new system would award patents based on who filed an application first rather than who originally generated the idea....

In a video from Nakhon Pathom, a province in Thailand, an 80-meter barge passes peacefully under a bridge, feet from the edge of a waterside restaurant. At first, it seems that nothing has happened. But seconds later, it’s clear that something is very wrong. The barge stops moving. Seconds after that, the entire bridge comes crumbling down around it. View full post on YoutubeThe bridge, which crosses the Thai Chin River, was struck by the barge carrying soybeans when the operator Sumet Tappandee lost control....

On Monday morning, the space and defense industry woke up to the news that defense giant Northrop Grumman intends to buy aerospace/missile company Orbital ATK in a $7.8 billion deal. The industry reaction is, in a word, whoa. There is more at stake here than a business takeover story. Northrop is trying to capitalize on global trends that run the gamut from inspiring to disconcerting. To unpack this deal, you have to start with the players....

The Gordon Dam in Tasmania is 415 feet high—about the equivalent of a 38-story building. If you simply drop a basketball from the Gordon Dam (as you might find yourself doing from time to time), it will swerve a bit but still land close to a spot directly below you. But as Veritasium explains in a new video, things turn out differently if you put a touch of backspin on the ball as you let go....

This may not make the Californians stuck in constant traffic feel any better, but at least their agony is official: According to the annual rankings of terrible traffic by nav company Tom Tom, Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the country. San Francisco comes in second. The crazy congestion of New York isn’t enough to pull it into the top three—it’s Honolulu, HI, that takes the bronze for going nowhere fast....

The U.S. Department of Energy is planning to ask Congress for $3 to 4 billion to turn its existing network of supercomputers into high-performance AI machines. In part, the DOE’s move is a bid to compete with countries like China that are heavily investing in artificial intelligence at the governmental level.Having a network of AI machines could improve the rate at which scientific discoveries are made, keeping the U.S. competitive in innovation....

An airline employee stole a Q400 Turboprop plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Friday night. The 29-year-old employee was a ground service agent at Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines. According to the New York Times, the handler was thought to be suicidal. The plane crashed some 30 miles away with fighter jets chasing its flight, and killed the rogue pilot.View full post on TwitterThe flight was “a joy ride gone terribly wrong,” Sheriff Pastor told The Seattle Times....

Media Platforms Design TeamBoeing has spent years designing the CST-100 to transport humans to and from the International Space Station. Whats left to do?Everything. Well, not entirely everything. There are two major milestones that lead up to the design completion. The first is a preliminary design review, and that was done about two years ago. The second is the critical design review, which comes up in July. We should essentially have the design complete, and proof that everything that the government says we’re supposed to be able to do, we can do....

Until very recently, the people who need to test the scratch resistance of a car’s paint had just two popular options, and both were kind of silly. The crockmeter involves moving a robotic finger over paint repeatedly, rubbing until surface scratches are created. The Amtec-Kistler car wash attacks paint with a rotating wheel of wet brushes, to simulate microscopic scratches that happen during, well, car washes. In both cases, researchers usually create the scratches and then just kind of look at them to see how bad they are....

The U.S Navy plans to put one of its first hypersonic weapons to sea in eight years, aboard submarines.Hypersonic weapons travel at speeds in excess of 3,800 miles an hour.Hypersonics will be used to strike fleeting, time sensitive targets or kick down the enemy’s door in a conventional conflict.The U.S. Navy plans to put its first hypersonic weapons to sea in eight years, stowing them aboard nuclear attack submarines. The Conventional Prompt Strike weapons will be embarked aboard new Virginia-class submarines, giving the Navy a Mach 5+ weapon invulnerable to modern air defenses....

Earlier this week, Lexusstarted teasing a hoverboard. It appears to be a real, functioning skateboard-that-floats, but the catch is that the tech behind the board would require a specially designed skatepark in order to work. Here is that skatepark. Found by the Spanish website El Patín, the custom park is located in Cubelles (Barcelona, Spain) and has apparently been under construction for about a month, complete with 24-hour security. And while the end result is probably intended to look like a normal skatepark, El Patín’s photos show the secret ingredient:the metal track required to make such a hoverboard actually levitate....

Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Hiroyuki Maehara (Kwasan and Hida Observatories, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)Whenever a big solar storm appears, it necessarily comes with the looming threat that the Big One, aimed at our planet in just the right way, could overload the power grid and generally set civilization back a few centuries. While we should be thankful that hasn’t happened, we should also be thankful that our sun doesn’t seem as temperamental as some similar stars....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe here at Popular Mechanics respect the creative use of liquid nitrogen. We also know that at a chilly minus 320 F, liquid nitrogen will shatter glass, crack metal and explosively freeze anything containing water molecules. In other words, it’s not a substance you can use to keep your beer cold. So when I recently came across a video of Sub Zero, a Utah scoop shop that freezes its ice cream using liquid nitrogen, I was intrigued....

The Pentagon says its missile interceptor is a success—in an early test, at least.Yesterday the Department of Defense its Ground Based Midcourse Defense system against a simulated intercontinental ballistic missile, a weapon of the type North Korea could theoretically launch against the continental United States. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency claims the dry run, which involved launching two interceptor missiles against a single incoming missile, successfully hit the target. The simulated ICBM launched from the Ronald Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands....

Media Platforms Design TeamWinter squash may be most famous as pie filling and soup, but we like to make our squash pull more weight. Hard squash is a great substitute for bowls, or even great-aunt Hilda’s tacky disposable serving platters. And even better, DIY bowls make for fewer dirty dishes to slog through before you can relax on the couch and enjoy some football. Media Platforms Design TeamStep 1: Pick a squash....

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have developed WiFi technology that is capable of seeing people through walls and other obstacles. The new device, called RF Capture, is an expansion of previous methods CSAIL used to capture movements across a house—technology that allows firefighters determine if there are living people in a burning building and can let mothers see their baby’s breathing.RF Capture takes the capabilities a step further, making it possible to outline a person’s silhouette from beyond a wall, detect small movements, and distinguish between multiple people....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne great thing about being a car guy with a TV show and a website is that I hear from lots of people who want to sell me cars. Most are Ford Granadas—those really rare ones with the fake hubcaps—but every now and then something interesting comes my way.Take the 1962 Daimler SP250 I’m currently restoring. The original owner, a man named William Brzozowski, lived in Baltimore and never garaged the car....

Whenever there is an old technology, there’s a band of devotees out there trying to keep it alive. This goes for pretty much anything, even Pong. That’s why it’s only sort of a surprise that someone is Kickstarting new casing for old, old Amiga computers, and they might just reach their goal. At the time of writing, more than 560 people donated more than $108,000 towards Phillipe Lang’s quest to build a new casing for the AMIGA 1200 computer, a computer released nearly 23 years ago....

The Chinese Academy of Scientists has invented a new handheld anti-riot weapon.The weapon uses sound to disperse crowds, causing discomfort to individuals until they leave the area.The U.S. has looked into similar nonlethal weapons, using strobes and the LRAD sound cannon.A new weapon invented by Chinese scientists uses low frequency sound waves to cause physical distress, forcing rioters, protesters, or anyone else the wielder wants to vacate the area. The new “sonic gun” was developed as a nonlethal weapon system for use by police and law enforcement as an alternative to lethal weapons....