You’re stranded on a desert island. After you’ve tried smoke signals and run out of patience with your beach ball named Wilson, it’s time to get creative: You scribble an SOS onto a scrap of paper, pop it into a glass bottle and send your message off to sea. What are the odds that it reaches mainland?“It depends entirely on where it’s thrown into the ocean,” says Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering and fluid dynamics at MIT....
Interior work gets expensive in a hurry. Restoring all that upholstery, carpet, and trim can rival the cost of an engine rebuild—or a trip to St. Barts—by the time you’re done. Which is why auto parts stores are filled with products promising to bring new-car look (and smell) back to your cruddy cabin on the cheap. And so, with a modest budget, I decided to see how far back I could turn back the clock on my 1993 Bronco’s shabby interior....
Broken power windows are a real bummer, especially if they get stuck down in hot or cold weather. In a few hours you can troubleshoot and fix your power windows by following these steps.Another toll-booth, another mile–or at least it seems as if the tollbooths come every mile on this road, with a half mile of traffic idling its leisurely way up to the token monster. Within an arm’s length of the bin, you toggle the power window switch with one hand while the other hand fingers a token, preparing to whip it into the basket just as you floor the throttle....
Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS—Nascar and the NFL have opposite problems. The pro football TV watching experience is so fantastic that even with the league’s unmatched popularity, some teams have trouble selling out the stadium. Nascar, meanwhile, does an admirable job during its TV broadcasts of capturing the strategy and drama that play out over the course of an enormous oval. But no matter how good your surround sound, there’s no substitute of the deafening roar that vibrates your water bottle as horde of stock cars screams around the track....
Media Platforms Design TeamMost of the action in Christopher Nolan’s out July 16, takes place within the human mind—specifically, when people are dreaming. Using a machine called the PASIV Device, agents can invade a target’s dream and steal, or even plant, ideas. To make these mind games a physical reality, a team led by special-effects supervisor Chris Corbould had to build unique rigs that would make actors appear as though they were walking on walls and otherwise defying the laws of physics....
In 2021, NASA will launch its Lucy mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids for the first time. Billions of years old, these asteroids serve as a time capsule for the earliest days of the solar system. Getting there will require some of the fanciest flying in the space agency’s history and NASA has just started publicly discussing how Lucy will navigate its way through some of the oldest asteroids in the solar system....
A small column in a local newspaper 86 years ago inspired a monstrous myth. The May 1933 Inverness Courier article explains how a well-known businessman and his wife were driving along the north shore of Loch Ness when they witnessed a “tremendous upheaval” in the water. Upon stopping, they noticed an enormous creature with a “body resembling a whale” sending out “waves that were big enough to have been sent out by a passing steamer....
View full post on YoutubeIf William Gibson’s cultural legacy were to be summed up by a cynic, it would be this: he made the act of hacking appear way cooler than it is. Movies show acts of daring, pounding away at keyboards to gain illicit access to complex systems — often the reality is something closer to social engineering (e.g. You just call someone and pretend to be the right person....
When compared to electric or battery-powered tools, pneumatic tools are often faster, more accurate, less expensive and lighter in weight. Plus, there’s a pneumatic tool for nearly every DIY chore you’re likely to encounter, including drilling holes, driving nails, sanding wood, tightening nuts, spraying paint, stapling down cable, sawing wood and metal, polishing surfaces and sandblasting away paint and rust.In order to use to use air tools, you do have to invest in an air compressor....
A new neutron detector made of a layered, lithium-enriched semiconductor material can fit in your hand.Neutron detectors are important in many industries, including space exploration and analysis.Lithium is extremely reactive, and layering it between other materials isolates and protects it. Scientists at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have shrunk room-sized neutron detector technology into a portable, handheld device powered by lithium semiconductors. Existing detectors “use helium gas or flashes of light,” which means the lithium technology makes a third family of detectors....
NASA is readying its 2020 rover for its trip to Mars. The rover has been able to stand on its six wheels for the first time.Approximately the size of an SUV, the rover will be able to make 360-degree turns in placeWhen the rover gets to the untamed terrain of Mars, it will be able to climb terrain on as much as a 45-degree angle.NASA’s 2020 Mars rover continues to make progress with one small stand....
This land northwest of Salt Lake City oscillates between steep-sloped mountains and long stretches of flatland. The terrain echoes the cycles of its history. Railroads, cattle, and Cold War weapons projects have all come in booms and gone in busts, bringing jobs and people to this sparsely populated expanse of Utah and then taking them away.We’ve come to visit Promontory, a word that doesn’t describe a town or even a county....
SpaceX kicked off the year with a Falcon 9 launch of the classified Zuma payload, a satellite or spacecraft supplied by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government. The launch on Sunday night, January 7 at 8 p.m. EST, appeared to go off without a hitch to those watching SpaceX’s live coverage of the mission. Since it was a national security payload, SpaceX did not broadcast the flight of the second stage after it separated from the first stage or the separation of the payload from the second stage....
It’s quickly becoming the Bigfoot of baseball, an urban legend born in a Japanese lab and racing across the Internet. They call it the “gyroball”–the exact translation is probably closer to “Demon Sphere Gyro Ball”–and it’s either the first new pitch in nearly four decades, or a complete and total sham.Daisuke Matsuzaka, Seibu Lions pitcher and World Baseball Classic MVP, claims he can throw gyroballs. (AP)Five years ago, computer scientist Ryutaro Himeno was testing super-computers by modeling the fluid dynamics of airflow around baseballs....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen new technology is designed correctly, it can be very liberating for its users. Car engines give drivers speed and range, broadcast television individualizes the consumption of moving pictures, and cellphones offer 24/7 connectivity for chatters on the go. In 1925, a writer for Popular Mechanics decided to test the freedom provided by a radio. Accompanying a team of geological surveyors, he set off to the Canadian Rockies to determine its range....
As drones become more common in the sky, so too do the ways to knock them down. Declassified CIA documents from the Cold War show that the ambition of knocking low-flying recon missions down is a long-standing tradition. As early as 1964, in the region now known as the Congo, such a mission prompted an unusual response: a thrown spear attack.In 1960, as the Congo stepped into independence after 75 years of Belgian colonization, a crisis of leadership emerged almost instantly....
Media Platforms Design TeamShares of Ford Motor Co. neared $20 before falling back to 16 as it posted $6.6 billion in earnings for 2010. Just two years ago, Ford’s stock was trading at two bucks and the company was bleeding cash. The Chevy Volt earned North American Car of the Year, and parent company General Motors’ market share is actually higher after exiting bankruptcy and closing four brands. Even Chrysler, the other Detroit company that almost failed, is making an operating profit, showing vastly improved products coming out of its marriage to Fiat and gearing up for its own stock offering later this year....
According to submarine expert H.I. Hutton, the Navy Seals use two- or three-seat Yamaha FX Cruiser SHO Jet Skis.Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps also uses a similar vehicle for nuisance attacks and ship seizures.Jet Skis are not the first civilian vehicles to be adapted for military use. The U.S. Army and Marine troops use Polaris MRZR vehicles to outmaneuver enemies.U.S. special operations forces have embraced civilian vehicles, from trucks to ATVs, to get around quickly and quietly on the modern battlefield....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen it comes to exploring an asteroid or a comet, a wheeled rover just won’t do. That’s why NASA is once again looking toward the “hopper” concept of a robot that shifts around its weight in order to freely roam around a low gravity surface with the Hedgehog concept, currently under the auspices of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program.The Hedgehog is a cube shaped, spiked rover that moves by redistributing its weight internally....
While drones may be the increasingly popular option for hobbyists in search of flight, RC planes offer a level of detail and control that make the hobby both addictive and expensive. Which can make it that much more devastating when a plane goes up in smoke.View full post on YoutubeAccording to the YouTube poster Centre, the plane was a 1/3 scale twin turbine costing $35,000. Such are the risks of flying RC planes, even when you’re flying them properly....
