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The Boeing 747 might be the most versatile aircraft ever flown, and we’re not just talking about the many variations of the wide-body jet that have carried passengers around the world during 46 years of active service. The huge plane is also a firefighter—the colossal Global SuperTanker just scored FAA aerial firefighting approval a few weeks ago. And now you can step inside a 3D recreation of the firefighting 747 and experience the tech required to blast nearly 20,000 gallons of fire retardant onto a wildfire at 800 feet....

Following the horrific mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, President Trump has called on private enterprises, particularly social media companies, to develop new tools for surfacing “red flags” that could help identify violent shooters before they act. Trump says these tools could enable the government to act earlier to prevent mass casualties.View full post on YoutubeThe problem? With the current state of AI technology and the ongoing negligence of social media platforms to protect human life, this simply isn’t a feasible idea....

Scientists from a French university have determined that in some instances, the brain can treat sensory tools—such as white canes for the visually impaired—as extensions of our bodies.This sensory embodiment shows that even though we know a tool isn’t actually a part of our bodies, our brains can treat it as such—especially when it comes to direct sense of touch.This research could prove pivotal in creating higher quality prostheses with heightened sensitivity to touch....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf I’m lost in the woods, should I climb to the top of a hill to get cell reception?Satellites play no role in cellphone reception, so getting closer to the sky, or getting a clear shot at it, won’t necessarily result in a connection. Cellular reception largely depends on how close you are to a cell tower, what geographical and man-made obstructions stand in between, and how many people are using the tower at a particular time (more users decreases a tower’s range)....

When it comes to high-definition television, space really is the final frontier—until Wednesday morning. At 11:30 a.m. EST, NASA will transmit the first live high-definition television (HDTV) broadcast from space (in this case the International Space Station) to earth.Designed to give curious minds a look at life aboard the 220-mile high space station, the broadcast will air on Discovery HD, a NASA partner on the program. The agency has also worked with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and broadcast company NHK to exhibit another live HD session overseas prior to the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you wanted to be among the first to get your paws on the new iPhone 6 Plus, then I hope you succeeded in staying up late last night.While in-store purchases don’t begin until next Friday, Sept. 19, pre-orders for the new iPhones began at 3:01 a.m. Eastern time this morning (12:01 a.m. Pacific). As I write this about nine hours later, it appears Apple’s stock of the 5....

Media Platforms Design TeamChemical rockets are ponderous. The space shuttle, for instance, carries more than 3.8 million pounds of expensive propellant–even empty, its two solid boosters weigh 193,000 pounds apiece. Oleg Batishchev, principal research scientist at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, appreciates such rockets for their raw, Earth-escaping punch. But once a craft hits orbit, he says, his new invention makes more sense: The Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster is designed to be a lighter, cheaper way to move through space....

So, Did They Find It?The announcement at CERN may not have lived up to the press buildup over the last few days, but it was encouraging. Essentially, the Higgs remains at large, but the physicists are closing in. With almost near certainty, they say the particle should be somewhere between 115 and 130 GeV—gigaelectronvolts, or billion electron volts. An electron volt is defined as the energy it takes for an electron to move across 1 volt of electric potential....

An Air Force office assessment of the F-35’s impact on budgets and operations obtained by Bloomberg News found that, due to high operating and maintenance costs, the service could be forced to cancel the order of as many as 590 jets from its planned fleet of 1,763 F-35As. To avoid cutting a third of the Air Force F-35 fleet, the service will need to find a way to drive down operating and support costs by as much as 38 percent in the next 10 years, according to the analysis reported by Bloomberg....

In a clever twist on the idea of a fan-made trailer, a graduating class at Florida’s Digital Animation & Visual Effects (DAVE) School has made a terrific tribute to both Star Wars and the legendary conceptual designer and illustrator Ralph McQuarrie. Using McQuarrie’s old designs, the DAVE students made something like a trailer for the Star Wars film of an alternate universe, which they call The Star Wars.View full post on VimeoWhile there’s no real acting in the trailer, that allows for the focus to entirely be on McQuarrie’s designs, work was featured in the entire original trilogy as well as works like E....

Life as a 911 dispatcher is usually pretty stressful no matter where you are, but dispatchers in Elk Grove, California likely have it worse than most. Not only do they have to contend with the normal parts of the job, they also have to deal with the hundreds of accidental 911 calls from iPhones being refurbished at a nearby Apple factory.A report from CBS Sacramento reveals that since October, phones at Apple’s main repair and refurbishment facility have accidentally called emergency services over 1,500 times....

(Coast Guard footage) A Coast Guard 60 Jayhawk helicopter pulled four shipwrecked fishermen from the 43 degree waters of Alaska’s Bering Sea late on Wednesday afternoon. The men were found in a life raft about 100 miles west of Adak, on the far end of the remote Aluetian Island chain. Their boat, the 93-foot Katmai, begun taking on water in the stern compartments late Tuesday night, as the ship was on its way back to the port of Dutch Harbor after fishing for cod....

With the weather as beautiful as it gets on Earth, and a few minutes to spare from our busy production schedule, I took a walk up Broadway to Lincoln Center where performance artist, magician and master self-marketer David Blaine is carrying out his latest death-defying stunt. Thought you might enjoy seeing a few snaps. If you haven’t heard, Blaine is spending a week underwater, encased in an 8-ft. acrylic sphere, in preparation for a nationally televised TV special on May 8, in which he will attempt to escape from chains while holding his breath longer than anyone has before....

Yes you can get Wi-Fi on most any airplane, but plenty of times it’s so bad that you’ll wish you didn’t even have the option. A number of airline carriers are working to change that. The Cathay Pacific Group is next up, installing Gogo’s 2Ku on its planes starting in 2018. Meanwhile, Emirates is continuing its luxury role by announcing it will have 50Mpbs connectivity on some of its fleet by 2020....

Media Platforms Design TeamHorsepower by itself is wicked fun, but it can bite too. Consider this: One day I’m driving my 1966 Hemi-powered Dodge Coronet up a winding road in Coldwater Canyon, near my home in Los Angeles. A car pulls up behind me. I decide I’m gonna have a little fun with this guy. With 425 hp, my old Dodge—one of just 339 made with the Hemi V8—has more than enough poke to make this guy disappear from my rearview mirror....

Terminators are scary, fictional, killing machines. But that didn’t stop one hobbyist from building one out of metal.Consisting of over 500 parts, the beast of a machine is every bit as intimidating as one seen on the big screen.Terminators have become a worldwide phenomenon, and a global catchphrase for fear of technology gone wrong. Throughout the Terminator movies, one thing becomes very clear: No one should be building Terminators. Yes, some of them can get turned to the forces of humanity, but on the whole, they’re unstoppable killing machines controlled by Skynet....

Media Platforms Design TeamUPDATE (Aug. 16, 8:26 p.m.): Divers in the high-tech recovery effort at the site of the Minneapolis bridge failure discovered bodies in two cars salvaged from the Mississippi River today, pushing fatalities from the accident to 11. Officials continued to deliberate over how and when to rebuild the Interstate 35W overpass, as investigators from the NTSB remain months away from conclusions about any possible engineering deficiencies that might have directly led to the tragedy....

Frustrated when your digestive system has no regard for your need for long, unbroken stretches of sleep? Be grateful you’re not an Australian Wombat. These critters produce up to 100 bowel movements in a single night. And unlike any other creature in the animal kingdom, this marsupial poops cubes. We’re not talking roundish shapes that could be described as cube-like. We are talking actual cubes—as in a six-sided Rubik’s Cube sort of cube....

Back in May, a SpaceX rocket carried two NASA satellites into orbit. The GRACE Follow-On satellites were a continuation of the initial GRACE mission, and over the past month these satellites have been undergoing a series of tests to ensure they’re prepared to do science, and according to a recent test the spacecraft are more than ready.NASA’s original GRACE mission—which stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment—was a pair of satellites that orbited the Earth together....

In 2016, a pair of astronomers made an exciting announcement: There might be a hidden planet about ten times the size of Earth lurking somewhere in the most distant part of our solar system, waiting to be discovered. They dubbed this hypothetical world “Planet Nine” and have been looking for it ever since.Three years later, Planet Nine still has yet to be found, but not due to a lack of searching....