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Hyperloops are still years or decades from ever transporting their first passengers, but that doesn’t mean a few companies aren’t still working on improving the design. Hyperloop One—which recently received an investment from Virgin Group and became Virgin Hyperloop One—just broke a new record for the fastest hyperloop pod yet: The pod managed to travel a whopping 240 miles per hour.It’s difficult to say with certainty that this is the fastest hyperloop pod in the world, because there might be some secret groups with faster speeds....

Tons of celebrities shared an Instagram post this week to protect their photos on the app. It was fake.The Instagram hoax actually dates back to 2012. It was fake then, it’s fake now, and it will be fake in the future.The best way to control your data online is to always read the terms of use for any app and be extra diligent about processing and spreading questionable news.Julia Roberts, Rob Lowe, and even current Secretary of Energy Rick Perry were among the many celebrities, politicians, and regular people who recently shared this Instagram post in an effort to protect their photos:InstagramLike lots of less famous users, they didn’t understand that the news was a complete hoax....

Chicago is currently in the middle of a vicious cold spell caused by rogue Arctic winds. The temperatures, which reached -30 degrees Fahrenheit, have prompted individuals and organizations to take some extreme measures to fight the cold. For instance, Metra Rail, which runs some of the commuter trains in the city, has taken the extreme measure of setting its tracks on fire.The tracks on fire can be seen in the video below as well as this overhead shot from CNN....

The James Webb Space Telescope has been merged with its spacecraft and sunshield.Over two decades in the making, the James Webb has faced several delays.Meant to be a successor to the Hubble, the chance for an unprecedented space observatory is now closer to reality.After years of delays, engineers have bridged the two halves of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Both sides of the JWST were connected in Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California....

An international coalition is decommissioning Jason-2/OSTM, an ocean-monitoring satellite, after 11 years. It’s not the glamorous work of a satellite like the Hubble, but Jason-2 has made many of the crucial discoveries about Earth’s changing climates.Jason-3 is currently orbiting the planets, and others are following in its wake. After 11 straight years of success, the U.S.-European Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) has come to an end. A joint mission combining the forces of NASA, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Jason-2 has studied Earth’s changing oceans at a critical time in the planet’s history....

A test of North Korea’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile ended in failure Saturday. The Bukkeukseong-1 (“Polaris-1”) missile disappeared from sight of foreign observers shortly after launch. The launch was likely the first full flight test of a missile expected to carry a nuclear warhead.According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, the missile was launched from a floating barge off the coast of the port city of Wonsan. The launch occurred between 2:20 and 2:40pm, but South Korean intelligence lost track of the missile shortly afterward....

Putting recyclable plastic in the microwave results in a material that could make cheap batteries. Recycling right is challenging, and industry statistics may not reflect lived experiences.The best innuendo for microwaving is “ultrafast microwave irradiation process.“Scientists are thumbing their noses at responsible parents everywhere by putting cheap plastic in the microwave. Single-use polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic is being “reduced to flakes” before going into the microwave for two minutes. What emerges are “flowers” of disodium terephthalate, a molecule that scientists believe could become a plentiful and valuable material for battery anodes....

Media Platforms Design TeamI spent about six weeks working on PM’s May cover story breaking down the realities of plug-in hybrid cars. Over those six weeks, I went from being a skeptic, to a true believer, to a skeptic again, and finally, to something between. Ultimately, I’d like to think I’ve become a “realist” on the subject. And here’s why. —Ben Hewitt1. At the true believer end of things, there are the people working on this tech....

Scientists at MIT used pressure-sensitive fibers to show where knots are holding tight, using “twist fluctuations.“The computer model they developed could conceive of newer, even tighter knots for specialized applications.Even very similar-looking knots can have wildly different hold and strength, and now scientists can analyze why.Color-changing fibers are helping scientists to understand, for the first time, the exact ways some knots hold tighter than others. In 2018, researchers developed pressure-sensitive fibers in part to help healthcare providers apply the correct amount of compression....

Welcome back. We continue to explore this strange island, where there are three types of people: knights, who always tell the truth, knaves, who always lie, and spies, who may answer you however they please. ProblemOn the island of knights and knaves and spies, you come across three men. You know that one is a knight, one is a knave, and one is a spy—but you don’t know who’s who. You are allowed to ask these three gentlemen two yes-or-no questions....

On average, every commercial airplane is struck by lightning at least once per year. But with reinforced fuel tanks and hardened electronics, planes are designed to withstand these thousands of amperes without much incident. In fact, lightning hasn’t downed a plane in the U.S. since Pan Am Flight 214 in 1963. But accidents can still happen. On May 5, a Sukhoi Superjet, operated by Russian operator Aeroflot, was struck by lightning shortly after takeoff at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, becoming a devastating fireball down the tarmac after landing....

StandardToilet, a U.K.-based company, has reportedly developed plans for a sloped toilet seat that aims to limit users to less than five minutes of toilet time. The decreased angle of the toilet specifically strains the quad muscles, according to the company, tiring toilet users out.Twitter was flush with opinions when the news broke.Sit! Stay a while! Unless you’re on the porcelain throne, that is.A company from the U.K. called StandardToilet has reportedly developed plans for a toilet that slopes down at a 13-degree angle....

“Self-driving,” and even worse “Autopilot,” is pretty misleading term. Right now, in 2020, the most advanced systems are only capable of a handful of functions, none of which mean that you can check your inbox while behind the wheel. Even Cadillac’s Super Cruise, which allows you to take your hands off the wheel for minutes at a time, will stop working if you look away from the road. But once you temper those Jetsons expectations, modern safety systems are really impressive....

Update 6:20 p.m. EST: Congress has voted to pass a temporary spending bill to fund the U.S. government through February 8, according to Bloomberg.Original Post:SpaceX will not be able to conduct a static fire test of its Falcon Heavy rocket during the government shutdown. The suspension of all non-essential U.S. government services that began on Saturday, January 20, will prevent the U.S. Air Force from providing the required support to conduct launch operations, including the Falcon Heavy static fire....

After spending more than $500 million, the Department of Defense is moving away from its railgun project and instead leaning towards a mixture of new and existing technologies.The U.S. Navy’s highly touted electromagnetic railgun weapon system, which can fire a projectile traveling 4,800 miles an hour at distances of up to 100 miles away, will likely never see combat in its current form. The half billion dollar project has not led to a combat-ready system, and instead the Pentagon is looking at combining brand new hypervelocity railgun technologies with “powder” gun technologies hundreds of years old....

Near the water in downtown Seattle, there’s about to be a skyscaper unlike anything the city—and, well, the world—has seen. A 38-story tower will sit a full 85 feet off the ground, creating a open plaza beneath it, all thanks to the immense strength of the 20 steel and concrete columns that will support it. Skanska USA’s 2+U project, designed by architectural firm Pickard Chilton, will give Seattle new office space, but the open-air 24,000-square-foot retail, arts, and cultural plaza underneath the tower is the real draw....

It looks like the iPhone 5C’s plastic casing isn’t as cheap as it looks.Daniel Kennedy, a 25-year-old British man, escaped wihout major injury when his green iPhone protected him from an onslaught of pellets fired toward him during a scuffle. Police say that an October 2014 fight between him and another man turned violent over water issue, which angered the suspect so much that he shot at Kennedy using a sawn-off shotgun....

The revival of smaller pickup trucks in America is alive and well. And if we’re lucky, there might be a new entrant soon.Volkswagen’s reveal for the 2018 New York Auto Show included this concept truck called the Atlas Tanoak. It’s built upon the platform of Volkswagen’s Atlas SUV and includes the VR6 engine, which makes 276 horsepower and 266 lb.-ft. of torque. The truck bed measures about 67 inches long by 57 inches wide....

Every day of the shuttle’s flight, at least twice a day, NASA convenes a press conference in the Johnson Space Center to update the global media on the state of Space Shuttle Discovery and the STS-121 mission. No doubt NASA mission planners—faced with a chorus of pre-launch criticism over everything from escalating costs to safety issues to questions about why the shuttle was launching in the first place—felt pressure to display utmost transparency, updating the press corps at an average of once for every four orbits Discovery makes....

VALENCIA, Spain—America’s Cup racing is a sport that’s won by tenths, even hundredths of a knot of boatspeed, so anything that makes a boat faster—especially anything new and innovative that nobody else has—is, to put it lightly, very closely guarded. These guys make the Pentagon look like a billboard. And so it was with great anticipation and fanfare (literally, there was a trumpeter), that BMW Oracle unveiled their new weapon in the battle for the America’s Cup: The at-the-very-least-$5-million USA 87—or at least some of it....