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What is the Flight Management System (FMS)?In many ways, it’s like the GPS in your car, with waypoints programmed in between the origin and the destination. You program in where you are going, and off it goes. The FMS will allow the airplane to hook up [that routing with] the autopilot, and maintain the heading within a few feet. It’s amazingly accurate. If I’m going to fly from New York to Los Angeles, I’m not going to just take one path in the sky, because the winds are always changing....

Some math conjectures and theorems and proofs can take on a profound, quasi-religious status as examples of the limits of human comprehension. TREE(3) is one of those examples. “You’ve got all these physical processes going on in the universe all around you. None of them are anything compared to TREE(3),” says University of Nottingham mathmatics professor Tony Padilla in a new episode of the wonderful YouTube series Numberphile. View full post on YoutubeWhat is TREE(3)?...

Media Platforms Design TeamDennis Sørensen smiles confidently as he flexes his robotic fingers, and gingerly closes them around a disposable plastic cup. Although blindfolded, Sørensen instantly recognizes what he is touching. Round. Hard. Breakable. Lethargic sensory nerves, rusty and unused since an accident nine years ago, begin to stir.Scientists have been hacking into the nervous system for decades, determined to hot-wire the brain to build more intuitive prostheses. They’ve come so far they can build robotic limbs that users control with their minds....

.The Decade, Reviewed looks back at the 2010s and how it changed human society forever. From 2010 to 2019, our species experienced seismic shifts in science, technology, entertainment, transportation, and even the very planet we call home. This is how the past ten years have changed us. Bots are a lot like humans: Some are cute. Some are ugly. Some are harmless. Some are menacing. Some are friendly. Some are annoying … and a little racist....

We’ve landed more than a dozen people on the moon, sent countless rovers and orbiters to survey it, yet a full half of our closest solar system neighbor remains mostly unexplored. The far side of the moon is so intriguing that China is sending a rover just to explore it, and that spacecraft just started on the first leg of its long journey.China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft has been in development for years, and on Saturday it finally launched into space....

Ninety-nine people have been killed and almost 200 others are missing after a volcano violently erupted in south-central Guatemala for more than 16 hours on Sunday. Lava spilled into houses in rural neighborhoods Sunday and Monday morning, and homes and roads were blanketed in layers of ash. Rescuers tried to make their way through charred streets to save residents in villages surrounding Guatemala City, but many were left trapped in their homes....

Everybody loves “Made in the U.S.A.” Politicians like Donald Trump campaign on it, promising to bring back jobs to America. Buyers see it as a sign of quality, especially in tools. But you probably know the other side of the story, too. It costs more to make things in America, and lots of shoppers don’t put their money where their mouth is, opting for the cheaper product when it’s time to part with their hard-earned cash....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou don’t need me to remind you that climbing ladders is potentially dangerous, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do: According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, about 250,000 Americans for stool or ladder-related injuries. And a published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 97 percent of ladder accidents happened at home. Follow this advice and it might just keep you from becoming a ladder statistic....

It can be hard to comprehend how truly vast the universe is. A new picture from the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory offers a sense of the daunting perspective. Every grainy dot in this photo represents an entire galaxy.The Herschel, named after legendary German-born British astronomer William Herschel, was active from 2009 to 2013. The largest infrared telescope ever launched, it had a mirror 11.4 feet in diameter (3.5 meters) which it used to collect long-wavelength radiation from several of the coldest and most distant objects in the universe, according to the ESA....

Media Platforms Design Team"Pop!“That’s the last thing Texas resident Aron Embry claims he heard before his Motorola Droid 2 phone “exploded” in his ear Thursday morning, leaving a trail of blood dripping down his face, according to his account, told to reporters at WFAA-TV in Dallas/Forth Worth, Texas. Embry—and his hearing—survived the incident. And while the details are still unclear (both Motorola and the Consumer Products Safety Commission are investigating the case), this incident, if proven true, is different from most of the rare cases of gadget explosions for one key reason: It doesn’t seem to have involved the battery....

There may be no one better than James Cameron to take you on a whirlwind tour of science fiction history. After all, he wrote a lot of it.Cameron, the famed director of The Terminator, Aliens, Avatar, and other groundbreaking films, is about to take a deep look at the ways in which sci-fi predicted the future and changed our culture. AMC Visionaries: James Cameron’s Story of Sci-Fi is a six-part series that debuts at 10 PM Eastern on Monday, April 30 on AMC....

This is the first year the World Car of the Year presentations have been made here at the NYAS, and consequently the first time as a member of the jury, I’ve had an opportunity to actually attend the awards presentation. Briefly, 46 jurors and automotive journalists from around the world pick the best overall new car, and three other cars in the categories of Green, Sports, and Design. For details got to wcoty....

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced this morning by the Swedish Royal Academy.William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza, three scientists who study the impact of oxygen availability on blood cells, will share the $1.1 million prize.The researchers’ work has led to a better understanding of how oxygen is absorbed and used by the body.The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to a trio of scientists—William G....

Researchers at MIT have developed a system they hope will correct one of self-driving cars biggest blind spots: country roads. A new system called MapLite is capable of self-driving without the need for 3D-mapped roads, making it uniquely suited for tackling more rural areas. For the most part, self-driving car tests have focused on cities. Boston, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and dozens of other cities have begun or plan on beginning self-driving pilot programs....

Media Platforms Design TeamAviation pioneer, record-setter and extreme adventurer Steve Fossett is missing in Nevada after taking off alone in a single-engine plane without a filed flight plan. Fossett, 63, was the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon and unrefueled in a plane before he set the flight distance record last year. Fittingly, he was scouting locations to break the land-speed record for a car when he flew out of a ranch on Monday morning....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’m no luddite. In fact, I’m probably as anchored to my iPhone as a teenager making prom plans. But bluetooth helmets have me eternally conflicted over the issue of technology creep.Helmets with listening devices are nothing new (remember the good ole’ Chatterbox?), but Schuberth’s new S2 takes audio technology a step further by featuring the world’s first embedded antenna. Schuberth says the dual-band antenna improves FM radio reception and enhances sound quality when communicating with other riders up to 1/2 mile away....

Along with the folding phones and hulking battery monsters that were released during and around the annual Mobile World Congress, an age-old mobile phone trend is clawing its way back out of the grave for what feels like the hundredth time. The Fxtec Pro1 is here, and, folks, it has a keyboard. Harkening all the way back to the iconic design of the original Motorola Droid, one of the very first Android smartphones to take the iPhone on head-on, the Fxtec Pro1 has a classic 64-key physical keyboard that slides out from underneath the standard touchscreen....

Media Platforms Design TeamLocation: Deal’s Gap, North Carolina. Route 129Why it Rocks: If there’s a more infamous stretch of curvy two-lane blacktop in the country for the hardcore sportbike rider to test his or her skill and bravery, we haven’t heard of it. The Tail of the Dragon, or just the Dragon to some, packs more than 300 curves into just 11 miles. On a motorcycle, that means you’ll be leaning over hard and flicking the bike back and forth, changing direction constantly....

Pew-pew-pew is coming soon-soon-soon.The U.S. Navy plans to put a laser weapon on a warship by 2021. The High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, or HELIOS, is a defensive weapon system designed to burn boats and shoot down unmanned drones. The weapon will go to sea with a guided missile destroyer assigned to the Pacific Fleet in two years’ time, the Navy says. The service placed an order for HELIOS in January 2019....

In the mid-1960s, everyone at NASA was gearing up to go to the moon. The unmanned Apollo test flights would begin in 1967, with manned flights the following year. But long before any components or astronauts when to space, every aspect of spaceflight had to be thoroughly tested by NASA engineers.One of those tests involved how well pressurized spacesuits would perform in the vacuum of space. For these tests, NASA constructed a massive vacuum chamber from which they could pump out all the air....