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Media Platforms Design TeamLeaning over the rail of the metal catwalk, I peer down through 16 ft. of crystal-clear water at the cool, blue glow coming from the shapes at the bottom: partially spent uranium fuel rods. “Blue,” says Joel Duling, my guide to America’s most sophisticated nuclear test reactor, “not green like on .” The narrow canal snakes under the catwalk and makes a dogleg through an opening in the wall into the reactor area, a cavernous room that feels like a jet hangar....

Cold War Two is suddenly getting a lot hotter, as the U.S. and Russia escalate toward a conflict over Syria.On Sunday, an Su-22 fighter-bomber of the Syrian Air Force dropped bombs on U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. To the United States, that made the plane a clear and present danger “in accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defense of coalition-partnered forces,” as a statement from the coalition command put it....

Media Platforms Design TeamAt the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS)—and perhaps, hopefully, only at KBIS—dozens of spectators stop in their tracks to watch a public demonstration of a debut toilet. Equipped with notepads and cameras, the crowd gathers at Kohler’s lavish booth on April 16, the first day of the Chicago trade show. The man hosting the demonstration speaks at a staccato clip into his microphone, hailing the toilet’s new flapper mechanism....

London has spent the last several years dealing with a very unique problem: fatbergs. London’s sewer system is a relic of the Victorian era, and the narrow pipes can’t handle the amount of fat and grease modern Londoners flush down their drains. That fat solidifies and builds up into giant deposits, the largest of which can weigh over a hundred tons.The public’s fascination with fatbergs really began last year, when crews discovered a world-record 150-ton fatberg in the sewers....

Last July, the U.S. Navy subjected one of its newest ships, the USS Jackson, to so-called shock trials. Designed to test the ship’s ability to withstand nearby underwater explosions, these test involve detonating a really big explosive charge right next to the ship. The trials, which took place off the coast of Florida, were so powerful they sent residents on shore running to the U.S. Geologic Survey to ask if an earthquake had taken place....

What would happen if the Earth started spinning twice as fast tomorrow? As we find out in this video from RealLifeLore, nothing good. There are the obvious impacts, such as 12 hours days instead of 24 hour days. But other effects are fairly surprising. The centrifugal force of the Earth would pull water from the poles to the equator, raising the water level there by 100 meters. This would totally wipe out Indonesia and most of the northern part of South America, and would turn Africa into two disconnected islands (with a third island where Mt....

Media Platforms Design TeamNever say never, though from today’s scientific vantage point, it’s hard to see how we’ll bridge the gap from the dreaded depredations of Boarding Group 4 to the breezy convenience of “Beam us up.” But, hey, let’s dream for a minute.There have, in fact, been successful experiments in something called quantum teleportation, in which the information contained in one atom is transferred to another, effectively replicating the first atom in another place....

Navies worldwide are scrambling to assist Argentina in locating a submarine overdue since last Wednesday. The ARA San Juan, an aging diesel electric attack submarine, was last heard from on November 15th. In response, the navies of the world—including Argentina’s wartime adversary, the UK’s Royal Navy—are mounting an international rescue effort.The submarine was sailing from a base in the southern Tierra Del Fuego region of Argentina to its home port at Mar de Plata near the capital Buenos Aires....

Editor’s note: The January/February 2018 issue of Popular Mechanics collected some of the greatest hits over 116 years of publishing. So here is some of the magazine’s best advice over that time, completely out of context.The sunroof is nonsense. (February 2017) We Americans are convinced we can do most things better, and certainly much quicker than anybody else. (April 1907) Step one: Scratch head. (November 1997) For the last time, there is no spinning in foosball....

Engine: 1,203cc (73 cu in) V-Twin Price (base model): $13,000 Horsepower: 123 Torque: 87 ft-lb Weight (wet): 508 lbs. (230 kg) I’ve been taught that gravel is bad, dirt is bad, and sand is badder-er, but the FTR gives me some confidence with the extra tread on the front and rear tires. I disable the ABS, then tear off, the back end kicking sideways and spitting dirt. Make no mistake: this bike was meant for the road....

The baseball world was shocked when Sports Illustrated reported that New York Yankees superstar third baseman Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during his 2003 season, for which he was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player.But while there’s been much talk of how this positive test–since confirmed by Rodriguez in an interview with ESPN–will affect Rodriguez’s place in the baseball history books, there has been little discussion of what he took and how he might have benefited....

The Loch Ness Monster has captured the popular imagination since 1933, when a photo surfaced of the mythical creature, long neck slinking out of the water. The photo has since then been dispelled as a hoax (it turned out, the creature pictured was a toy submarine with a fake snakehead attached), and previous scientific studies have not yielded evidence of the mythical beast.Now, a team of scientists will investigate the phenomenon anew through DNA sampling of Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands....

Popular Mechanics contributing editor Jeff Wise, a private pilot and long-time aviation writer, takes on his biggest challenge yet: Flying withoutan engine. Follow along as Jeff learns that no matter how experienced the pilot, getting a glider license is no easy sail. Today’s lesson: If you have no expectations, you’ll never be disappointed.For most of my life, I had no interest in the weather. Low-pressure systems, cold fronts—I just didn’t care, except to decide if I needed to take an umbrella to work....

Black holes are what’s left after the deaths of stars far, far more massive than the sun, but just how big these matter-sucking monsters could get has been a tricky question to answer. A researcher at the University of Leicester in England thinks he knows: the upper limit is the mass of 50 billion suns.This new study looked specifically at the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies. The origin of these black holes is a mystery, though there’s speculation that they were objects in the early universe called “quasi-stars” that began to form as stars before collapsing in on themselves and creating the black holes, gradually drawing in more matter and more mass....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’d like to install Windows 8 on my Mac. What’s the best way to do it? Mountain Lion and Windows 8 can live happily on one machine. There are two ways to get Win 8 running on a Mac. To run Windows from startup, you’ll need to install a bootable version of the OS using Apple’s Boot Camp, a program that partitions the hard drive and gets your installation running (for the actual installation, you’ll need to insert either a USB drive or a DVD with the install media on it)....

Tesla has been hyping its Model 3 vehicles since they were announced in 2014. The car was designed to be an affordable all-electric sedan, but despite receiving approximately half a million pre-orders the company has so far only delivered a few hundred units. However, that might be about to change: Electrek is reporting that ‘hundreds’ of new Model 3s have been leaving the Tesla factory over the past few days.Electrek published drone video footage yesterday of a parking lot at the Tesla factory in Fremont full of Model 3s being loaded onto trucks....

I have a whole bunch of devices that are charged via USB, so I’m thinking about installing an electrical outlet with built-in charging ports. It’s a pretty straightforward project, right? These receptacles are greatthey eliminate the need for bulky USB adapters that hog valuable outlet space. They are especially useful by the bed, where many of us stash all kinds of USB-equipped devices, such as phones, tablets, and e-readers. That stuff competes for space on a standard duplex outlet that may already be serving a desk lamp or a clock....

Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS — What does the man who has everything get when he craves a custom Corvette? He hires Pratt & Whitney to build him a fire-breathing, E85-burning, 600-hp beast. At first glance, Jay’s stunning one-off might bear a passing resemblance to Chevrolet’s current king of the hill, the Z06, but deeper inspection reveals stunning engineering and aesthetic details. For starters, its powerplant is built around a CNC-milled block of billet aluminum, and boasts 1....

It was nearly dusk on May 6, 1937 when the 804-foot, swastika-marked, cigar-shaped German airship LZ 129—the Hindenburg—floated into the Lakehurst Naval Airstation in New Jersey. The crew, who had been flying for three days since leaving Frankfurt, realized they needed to land fast to avoid a rapidly approaching storm. At about 7:20 p.m. they dropped the forward landing ropes and began the mooring procedures. Three minutes later, the Hindenburg burst into flames....

Today, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft finally entered the Pluto system, zipping along at 31,000 miles per hour between Pluto and Charon. NASA got the signal from the craft at 7:49 a.m. At closest approach, it will be just 7,750 miles above the surface of Pluto and about 18,000 miles from Charon. This has been a long, long time coming, and so NASA scientists and Pluto fans wait with great anticipation for the results of humanity’s first up-close observations of the once-ninth planet....