The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped many pictures of dense clusters of galaxies burning with untold numbers of stars. And then there is NGC 6503, which may just be the loneliest galaxy out there. The galaxy lives in a vast region 150 million light years in which it is the sole galaxy.The region starts just outside our local cluster of galaxies, about 17 million light years away, and has been termed the “local void....
With exploding cellphones taking headlines on a regular basis now, you may be yearning for a phone that’s tough. If so, look no further than the borderline absurd Torque X01 built by the Japanese company Kyocera.The Torque is a flip phone with only a few apps oriented towards hiking and other outdoor activities, with data on weather, temperature, altitude and barometric pressure. You’ll have to flip open the flip phone to interact with it, but relevant information can also be mirrored to the front screen so you read it while the phone is closed....
The tiny sensor developed by the Eindhoven University of Technology isn’t much to look at. And that’s quite literally – it’s 2 millimeters squared, or 0.07 inches. But it can do something few other sensors can: run on no power. That’s a little reductive. The tiny temperature sensor requires a little power, but it’s enough that it can get it all from radio waves, powering the sensor from a wireless device nearby....
Media Platforms Design TeamIridium Satellite (Photograph by ideonexus via Flickr. Some rights reserved.))Two satellites collided with each other nearly 500 miles over northern Siberia. One was a 12-foot-long, 1200-pound U.S. telecommunications satellite owned by Iridium Satellite company in Maryland, serving as part of a 66-satellite network. The other was a Russian military satellite called Kosmos-2251, which hasn’t been operational in a decade. It weighed more than a ton and, like many other Russian satellites, was powered by a nuclear reactor....
Since 1969, there have been plenty of convincing debunkings that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked, from the tireless and exhaustive work of the folks at Moon Base Clavius to Buzz Aldrin landing a solid right jab to the face of lunar truther Burt Sibel.But one of our favorites has to be this short film from S.G. Collins, posted back in 2012 and making the rounds once again this week....
Salvatore Cezar Pais is the inventor behind several unusual technology patents.The patents seem to point to a method of transportation similar to UFOs.Experts say Pais’ claimed technologies require considerable proof to gain credibility. The elusive engineer behind several highly unusual patents, filed on behalf of the U.S. Navy, has broken his silence and finally spoken to the media. Salvatore Cezar Pais responded to emails sent by The War Zone, but his answers bring us no closer to how the technology behind the patents, which involve fusion power and other exotic tech, came about....
During its rollout of the (very impressive!) iPad Pro, there was an odd moment in Apple’s presentation: when the Apple Pencil was announced. The crowd, which had previously applauded everything from customer satisfaction ratings to battery life, laughed. Why? Well, for one, Apple’s Steve Jobs was famously against the stylus. “Who wants a stylus?” he asked when debuting the original iPhone in 2007. “You have to get ’em, put ’em away, you lose ’em, yuck....
It’s easy to see the devastation of war when it happens right in front of our eyes in the form of destroyed cities and charred countryside. But it turns out the effects of our weapons can ripple beyond our planet. World War II shook the Earth so violently that the shockwave into space.In a paper published in Annales Geophysicae, University of Reading researchers in the United Kingdom looked back at radio evidence from the 1940s to study how bombing raids in Europe might have affected radio transmissions....
Media Platforms Design TeamLivonia, Mich.— The electric vehicle market in the U.S. is tiny right now, less than half of 1 percent of all vehicles sold. The Nissan Leaf is blazing the trail as the first modern EV for public sale, but more are coming, including the Ford Transit Electric. For Ford’s first EV since the Ranger EV, the company partnered with Azure Dynamics to quickly adapt the van for electric propulsion....
It seems like some people spend their entire paychecks on beer, but five thousand years ago in the city of Uruk in what is now Iraq, they cut out the currency middleman. This ancient tablet now on display at the British Museum is basically a pay stub for a worker who got paid in beer. Payment on booze wasn’t entirely uncommon in the old days, especially because the stout concoction they drank was no watery Bud Light—it was thick enough to be more or less food....
General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, chief of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, said in November 2016 that he would deploy A-10s to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, where these bruisers would join the fight against Islamic State that was raging at the time. Able to fly for long periods and pick out small ground targets with precision, the A-10s were simply too effective and too tough to leave out of the battle against ISIS....
Media Platforms Design TeamHOMESTEAD—MIAMI SPEEDWAY—Gentlemen…start your robots! DARPA’s Robotics Challenge (DRC) kicked off this morning, pitting 17 teams against one another in a series of eight physical challenges. The competition aims to develop robots that could one day come to the aid of humans in disaster situations.Each of the eight tasks from climbing a ladder to turning a valve is designed to mimic realistic obstacles that robots would encounter in catastrophes....
Media Platforms Design TeamAn Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel at the Point Honors Event in New York City. (Photograph by Jason Kempin/WireImage/Getty Images)In the U.S., gasoline and diesel are dirt cheap compared to their cost in Europe. In late August, the average U.S. price for a gallon of gas was $2.60, and a gallon of diesel cost $2.65. Both diesel and gasoline come from the same barrel of oil–since diesel is a heavier, less refined product, it has historically cost less than gasoline....
For as long as people have been creating organized communities, rats have been there to pick off the remains. As an invasive species, they’re practically unparalleled in their success, much to the chagrin of the people living with them. But when they recently re-invaded Ecuador’s Galápagos National Park, a new weapon proved extremely effective in the fight: drones.While the Galápagos islands are historic for being the site of Charles Darwin’s discoveries about evolution, other visitors have been less helpful....
Media Platforms Design TeamDEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: 1/10AGES: 3+BUILD TIME: 1 HourPARTS COST: About $6MATERIALS · Barrel-shaped plastic container (legs) · Two 1-cubic-in. wood blocks · Two 1½-in. cup hooks · 3-oz. nonlead fishing sinker · 1-in.-dia. key ring · No. 64 rubber band · Drill with 1/8-in. bit HOW IT WORKSRolling the jug transfers energy from the container to the suspended sinker, causing it to swing like a pendulum. When the jug stops, the sinker keeps oscillating, and the return stroke rolls the jug back to the rollee—that’s you!...
If you live in Greenland, ice and cold temperatures are probably a part of your everyday life. But it’s not every day that an 11 million-ton iceberg just parks itself off your coast and dares you to do something about it. That’s what’s happening in the small village of Innaarsuit, starting last week.View full post on YoutubeIf this clip doesn’t display, watch it on YouTube.On Thursday, a large iceberg drifted to within a few hundred feet of the shoreline, prompting evacuations of the area....
The Great Pyramid of Giza has been around for 4,500 years, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a few surprises left…maybe. Researchers currently using non-invasive scanning called muon radiography to map the entire pyramid have found two previously undiscovered “cavities” inside the ancient structure itself. These cavities are described as an “unknown void” on the pyramid’s north face along with another perceived hole in the pyramid’s northeastern edge. But no one really knows for sure how big the holes are, what could be in them, or if they really exist at all....
Media Platforms Design TeamAFP/Getty Images.You’re not alone if you drive under the logic of “nine you’re fine, 10 you’re mine”—that it’s okay to go a little above the speed limit, and you probably won’t get pulled over. Google’s self-driving cars are programmed to drive the same way, we learned today. The lead software engineer on Google’s project told Reuters that the autonomous car is allowed to break the speed limit by up to 10 miles per hour....
Media Platforms Design TeamBats are some of the most skilled aerial acrobats in the world. When they emerge at dusk, they engage in a swift swooping ballet, devouring insects and avoiding their own nocturnal predators. Bats’ natural talent for echolocation is widely known for allowing them to navigate. But that’s not the whole story about why bats are such agile aviators, researchers at the University of Maryland reported in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday....
Renewable energy installations like wind turbines and solar farms are usually tasked with preventing changes to the environment, but according to new research they may cause some environmental change of their own. According to a study published in the journal Science, building wind and solar farms in the Sahara desert can increase rainfall and make more plants grow.Governments and energy providers around the world are increasingly turning to wind and solar power to generate electricity and to replace climate change-causing fossil fuels....
