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An international team made of more than 200 astronomers working for a decade-plus have captured a picture of a black hole named Pōwehi. The picture marks the first direct observation of a black hole in history.It’s a sight to behold, and a staggering scientific achievement. But how do you photograph a black hole, and why does it matter? Let’s explore. What’s a Black Hole, Anyway?Black holes are regions of spacetime, just like Earth....

If it has been a while since you last booted up MS Paint to awkwardly draw a few stick figures with your mouse, you might be surprised to see what it’s up to nowadays. A few videos detailing an upcoming update to the classic app have been floating around the web, along with with a build of the application that was apparently released to software testers back in May. The bones of the painting program are the same as ever—it’s a simple program designed to be easy to use rather than particularly powerful—but it also has a bunch of new features....

We have found the perfect item for anyone who’s ever thought, I need to have a goopy Aliens statue in my living room and this $3,000 is just burning a hole in my pocket. This statue of Lance Henriksen’s character Bishop from Aliens is now available on Etsy, the site more known for cutesy knits and cross-stitch art than it is for life-size representations of extraterrestrial disembowelment.In the film, Bishop was an android who helped defend Lt....

Paramount Pictures just released the first trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, and like most reboot fare, the hero, Captain Pete Mitchell, once again played by Tom Cruise, returns along with his trusty sidekick—the F-14.View full post on YoutubeThe trailer doesn’t really show us much: just a scene between Cruise and Ed Harris talking about Maverick’s stubbornness to not die. The rest is filled with Cruise riding motorcycles and pulling off some impressive flight maneuvers with what looks like a few callouts to the original 1984 film (I think we glimpsed Goose?...

April 12, 1999. It’s 12:30 in the afternoon and Brigadier General Dan Leaf, flying in the cockpit of an F-16, is trying to stop a massacre unfolding thousands of feet below. He’s the Commander of the 315th Air Expeditionary Wing, operating from Aviano Air Base in Italy during Operation Allied Force. The military campaign against Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, with British and U.S. using airstrikes attempting to curb an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Yugoslavian government....

Media Platforms Design TeamNissan’s flagship mid-size sedan gets an overhaul next year, when the all-new 2013 Nissan Altima debuts. The following year, the 2014 Altima will feature an all-new Nissan-designed powertrain that includes the Altima’s first hybrid engine. The full specs of the system have not yet been released, but at a technology briefing in Tokyo, we were able to discover some details of the upcoming hybrid.The EngineA supercharger will feed the new 2....

On July 1, a fire onboard a secretive Russian nuclear submarine killed 14 sailors before it was extinguished. The sailors were assigned to the Losharik, a small nuclear-powered submarine that is alleged to conduct underwater espionage activities. The cause of the fire is not known at this time.The incident took place in Russian territorial waters north of the Arctic Circle. According to Russian state media the Losharik was engaged in “biometric research activities” when the fire broke out....

Boeing has announced that it is going to begin studying autonomous flying technologies that could eventually be implemented in passenger airliners, according to Reuters. “The basic building blocks of the technology clearly are available,” said Mike Sinnett, Boeing’s vice president of product development. The announcement comes a week and a half before the annual Paris Air Show, one of the biggest aviation events in the world.A self-flying airliner is a logical continuation of autopilot systems that are already in place, and Boeing has the backing of many major airline companies who are interested in more efficient flight....

Building a mechanical clock is a long, involved endeavor but Chris, who runsthe YouTube channel Clickspring, offers a fantastic look into every step of the process.Starting all the way back in February of last year, Chris embarked on a journey to build an entire Large Wheel Skeleton Clock from scratch, using only home equipment. The entire (lengthy) series of videos is an incredibly detailed first hand look at how every minute hand and gear and cog needs to be precisely designed and machined in order to add up to a mechanism that actually functions....

Where to start with chimneys? Probably here: A chimney is not just an elongated window, not just a portal from inside to outside with deep, brick sills. A chimney, in fact, is a machine for generating airflow to fuel combustion. Hot air from a fire in a fireplace rises through the column of a chimney, creating a draft that pulls more air into the fireplace, feeding the fire. As such—as a machine—chimneys are more complicated than they appear....

Researchers at American University have mapped the genome of the subterranean devil worm.Devil worms survive in extreme conditions with adaptations like 70 or more copies of a heat-protective gene.It’s common for genes to copy themselves, but 70 copies is an evolutionary feature, not a bug.Rejoice, for the devil worm has been genetically mapped. Scientists have only known about the extremophile nematode since 2008 because it lives in such far underground and lifeless-seeming places....

Researchers have discovered a collection of around 50 dinosaur footprints on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. They date back to the Middle Jurassic period (about 174 to 163 million years ago), from which there is a dearth of fossils to study. In addition to their uncommon age, some of the prints are particularly detailed and well-preserved, showing clear outlines and even the presence of claws. The findings are published in the Scottish Journal of Geology and are not the first instance of footprints found on the Scottish island....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Universidad de Puerto Rico’s CASH House–the acronym stands for Caribbean Affordable Solar House–has an architectural style that assistant construction manager Ernesto Mohler calls “representative” of the vernacular on the island. In that mild climate, walls are often treated as optional. Puerto Rico’s house engineers that element into an open veranda that brings the home’s indoors into a lush exterior garden. The transitional space, clad in reclaimed lumber, provides the sense of continuity that Puerto Rico feels is the essence of their design....

December 6, 2018: Yesterday, a Marine F/A-18 Super Hornet collided with a KC-130 refueling tanker during an exercise off the coast of Japan. Both planes went down. Two pilots were recovered from the Hornet, but one has now died. American and Japanese forces are still searching for the crew of five that was on board the tanker.Back in April, we reported on what was behind the unsettling rise in military training accidents across all the branches of the armed forces:The U....

When you watch a video on a TV screen, you’re not seeing an actual moving image. Instead, you see a series of still images that flash very quickly in succession to create the illusion of a moving image.You might already know how a TV screen works, but seeing one in action in extreme slow motion really brings the process into a new light. Fortunately Slow Mo Guys filmed the process to reveal exactly what you are looking at when you stare at the TV....

Spring has come and gone. With the yard finally whipped into shape, you’ve managed to schedule a long weekend up in the mountains–just you and your family and a few days of a lot of nothing. The motorhome starts with the aid of jumper cables, and a few hours of freeway driving should fully charge the battery. The sad part is, when you finally reach the campsite, the kids can’t watch TV, the microwave won’t work and, horrors, the blender is incapable of making your favorite frozen concoction....

Media Platforms Design TeamSlopesThe operator’s manuals for all of the machines we tested recommend the mowers not be operated up and down slopes greater than 10 degrees (the Deere manual says 13 degrees, provided the mower is not being operated with an attachment such as a bagger). Manufacturers studiously avoid any mention of side-slope mowing. Good, conservative advice. Steeper slopes should either be mowed with a walk mower or landscaped so there is no grass to mow....

View full post on YoutubeScientists at MIT have created a low-cost camera that can capture a burst of light as it travels across a scene at 670 million miles per hour. The work comes from the lab of Ramesh Raskar, who received a 2012 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award for CORNAR, a camera that sees around corners. While that invention relied on a $500,000 imaging system to capture the speed of light, the lab’s newest camera can do just about the same thing, but on a budget of only $500....

Is it a flying car, or just a really large drone? The line is getting blurrier, especially now that Japan’s NEC Corp. just unveiled a prototype with four propellers that was able to smoothly hover for about a minute.View full post on YoutubeTested just outside Tokyo in a giant cage used as a safety precaution, the unmanned vehicle reached as high as 10 feet into the air.NEC’s push for a flying car comes from the Japanese government, which announced a countrywide initiative last year for companies to build an electric (or hybrid electric) vehicle with driverless capabilities that can take off and land vertically, a feature commonly known as VTOL and previously reserved for military jets....

Media Platforms Design TeamJust three days after the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray debuted at the Detroit Auto Show, two images of the pending 2014 Corvette Convertible have leaked on the web, well ahead of a rumored debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March. The Corvette convertible shares styling cues from the shoulder line down, but the sleek Stringray back has been sliced off and a heavily sculpted trunk put in its place....