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A group of researchers at Stanford University have developed a new type of battery using water and salt that they hope could be used to store energy produced from wind and solar farms, increasing the effectiveness of renewable energy sources.The two fastest-growing forms of energy generation in the world today are wind and solar, and both have the same fundamental limitation. They’re subject to the weather, and routinely go for hours or days without generating any electricity at all....

Welcome back to Popular Mechanics’ Riddle of the Week series. This week’s problem requires a bit more math than any of the riddles we have posted thus far, bumping its difficultly level up to hard. So get out a pad and pencil, get ready to draw some diagrams, and don’t give up!ProblemYou’ve designed an incredibly advanced aircraft, a true marvel of aeronautics, the X-100. You want to fly all the way around the world in it without stopping....

Rolls-Royce set a new record for most powerful aircraft engine gearbox on Monday, as its Power Gearbox (PGB) intended for the upcoming UltraFan engine reached 70,000 horsepower on a test rig at Rolls-Royce’s facility in Dahlewitz, Germany. Ultimately, Rolls-Royce intends for the gearbox to hit 100,000 horsepower, equivalent to about 100 Formula 1 cars combined. Rolls-Royce started testing its Power Gearbox late last year, and the company plans to use the PGB to build its geared UltraFan engine, which, on paper, will be 25 percent more fuel efficient than the manufacturer’s current line of Trent engines....

Apple has finally given its newest crop of iPhones the bright color treatment. This month the Cupertino company is releasing bright red versions of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.This is a move Apple made last year as well, rolling out red versions of iPhone 7 at about this point in 2017. An unspecified portion of the proceeds go to Product (RED), a charity organization that fights the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Africa....

Media Platforms Design TeamSwiftwater Rescue TeamsThese units are made up of first responders who are specially trained and equipped to conduct water rescues in rivers or raging floodwaters. When someone is trapped in an attic, on a rooftop, or on top of a flooded car, these are the guys who fetch them. Fire departments, counties, and police units can take this training, which is regulated in the United States and Canada by the National Fire Protection Association....

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been temporarily powered down. Its duties of smashing particles together at the speed of light and unleashing exciting new forms of energy are on hold until 2021. The LHC, housed in Geneva, Switzerland, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), continuously breaks new ground in physics by combining particles at nearly the speed of light, emitting radiant beams of energy, some of which are previously unknown to humankind....

Mike Robidoux of East Haddam, Connecticut, is an operating engineer at a power plant by trade, woodworker by hobby, and now chicken farmer by his wife’s impulse. When Mike’s wife came home with eight chicks this past April, they had nowhere to keep them but in a box in their basement. After failing to find a coop that met his construction standards, Robidoux, who’s built decks and house additions in the past, decided to build one on his own....

Media Platforms Design TeamFor the past three decades cruising has been the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry. Eleven new ships were christened last year, and almost 21 million people went on a cruise. Statistically, cruising is relatively safe, but recent failures in seamanship, emergency response, and engineering should sound an alarm. Introduce bad weather or remote surroundings into the equation and an incident like the Costa Concordia shipwreck, which made international headlines two years ago, could result in hundreds of deaths....

Heat shapes Earth. Our blue marble, the only planet known to support life, gets heat from the sun, of course, but also from its molten core. That internal furnace provides Earth’s magnetic field and its geography on the whole—everything from foothills to volcanoes to earthquakes owe their genesis to heat at a tectonic level. The inner workings of Earth are crucial to understanding the planet and how life formed here. That’s why NASA is sending a robotic hammer to Mars....

New research shows that that it’s possible Vikings might have used crystals as a backup guidance system when they made their long voyages across the North Atlantic.Dénes Száz and Gábor Horváth, researchers at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University, studied the distance of Viking journeys and the technology available at the time. A trip between Norway and Greenland, for example, would take around three weeks, and Vikings would want to use their sun compasses to guide them on their journey....

When Yamaha debuted ATV power steering with the Grizzly 700, it was a revelation. Steering at normal speeds doesn’t take a lot of muscle, but when you’re inching across rocky terrain in 4wd or towing a trailer through thick woods, power steering can transform an otherwise backbreaking ordeal. What we’re trying to say is that we care about our readers, which is why PM is giving away a 2008 Yamaha Grizzly 700 4x4 FI EPS ($8199)....

Ever since Touch ID proved fingerprint reading could be seamless instead of clumsy and annoying, a fingerprint sensor has become something of a mandatory feature on every high-end phone. The downside is that you need to put the sensor somewhere, and as screens get larger and bezels shrink down, there’s not a whole lot of space. Android phones have mostly opted for the back and the iPhone still has its Home Button (for now), but next year both are likely to finally disappear....

If one thing is clear about the future of motorcycles, it’s that they’re getting smarter. Electric motorcycle purveyor Zero unveiled the newest addition to its slate of connected bikes on Monday, and the SR/F is certainly a testament to the growing relationship between automobiles and operating systems. Let’s start with the SR/F’s show-stopping feature: How fast you can juice it up. The bike charges to 95 percent capacity in just an hour, albeit only if you have all three available charging modules activated....

Portland, Ore.—Fresh in the hands of new ownership (China-based Geely automotive), Volvo is poised and ready for a comeback. And though safety is arguably the most distinct identifier for the brand, the new-for-2011 S60 reveals what happens when Volvo decides to flex its performance muscle, and target shoe moving away from more mundane Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. Does this Volvo have the breadth of character to handle both road and track with competence?...

On March 25, 2000, NASA launched a satellite called Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE). Five years later, the space agency unexpectedly lost contact with the satellite and declared the mission over. But on January 20, 2018, Scott Tilley, an amateur astronomer, recorded observations of a satellite that he deduced was consistent with the lost IMAGE satellite.Tilley was searching for signs of the secretive Zuma mission when he came across an unidentified high earth orbit satellite....

The F-22 Raptor, possibly the most advanced fighter plane in the world, just bombed a drug lab in Afghanistan. The incident marked the first time that the F-22 has dropped bombs in anger. But a larger question overshadows the airstrike: Is it really necessary to use a plane that costs nearly $70,000 per hour to bomb an undefended drug factory?The bombing was part of Operation Jagged Edge, a campaign to attack Taliban drug production....

The HMS Hermes arrived too late to change the course of the First World War. But it arrived just in time to change the course of world history. One hundred years ago, the W. G. Armstrong-Whitworth shipbuilding company laid down the hull of the world’s first aircraft carrier at Walker, U.K. World War I, which saw the introduction of fighters, bombers, and bomb-dropping airships, was in its final months. The modest Hermes was just 600 feet long and carried just 15 Swordfish torpedo bombers....

Media Platforms Design TeamWoodpeckers are uniquely unsusceptible to head trauma: Despite pecking 12,000 times per day at a speed of 23 feet per second for each peck (which they do to knock bugs out of trees for food, as well as to make hollow spaces for their nests), a healthy woodpecker won’t experience any of the cracked skulls or brain damage that would befall a human who suffered so many hits to the head....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat It IsBMW Vision EfficientDynamics ConceptThe SpecsRadical design? Check. Three-hundred and fifty-six horsepower with 590 lb-ft of torque? Check. A curb weight of less than 3000 pounds? Uh huh. Advanced six-speed DSG transmission? Yes, that too. The resulting stats are predictable: 4.8 seconds from 0-to-60 mph. What’s not par for the concept-car course is the powerplant–a three-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine coupled to an advanced plug-in hybrid drivetrain. That means you’re looking at an eco-machine capable of hanging with BMW’s mighty M3, while churning out Prius-besting EPA numbers of 62....

‘Mad’ Mike Hughes has been promising the world a rocket launch for a few months now, but obstacles keep getting in his way. First, the Bureau of Land Management said he couldn’t launch his rocket on public land, so he found some private land to hold his launch. He was all set to go on February 3, streaming his launch live on NoizeTV, when an unspecified malfunction stopped it.More Wild StuffFearsome Fossil Shows Spider With a Scorpion TailHere’s How NASA’s Wild Airless Tires WorkIn case you’ve missed the previous installments of this adventure, Mike Hughes wants to go to space in order to prove the Earth is flat....