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The astronauts aboard the International Space Station often spend their time running experiments and tests, living in microgravity, and occasionally going on spacewalks. But in some way, their out-of-this-world experience isn’t too different from our own. They still have to eat three meals a day, get a full night’s sleep, and struggle with outdated office equipment.The printer on the ISS still churns out important documents, but it’s almost 20 years old at this point and time for an upgrade....

Right before we fall asleep, we pass through a semi-lucid state called hypnagogia. It’s a surreal state in which you might lose your sense of self, experience a distorted sense of space and time, get lost in lucid dreams or bizarre ideas free from constraints. Geniuses through history like Edison, Tesla, Poe and Dalí have tried to channel the uninhibited creativity of the state. Some even devised a trick — holding a steel ball in their hands, which would drop as soon as they left the hypnagogia state....

Virgin Galactic is getting real in its plans for space tourism.A document filed by the company’s minority owners details its aggressive plans for the next several years, beginning with test flights in 2020. By 2023, if Virgin Galactic and others have their way, space tourism will have reached a level of normalcy (at least for those who can afford it.) The launch into commercial space travel will be an aggressive one, if Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic gets its way....

Media Platforms Design Team MONTEREY, Calif. — The folks at BMW keep hammering on about their new 1 Series as the spiritual successor to the company’s iconic 2002 model. You remember that one, don’t you? It was manufactured between 1968 and 1976 and helped put the small Bavarian company on the map here in the United States. To us, the 1 Series looks more like a second-gen 3-series, which, unlike the 2002, did come as a factory convertible....

Media Platforms Design TeamSonoma, Calif.—When Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionni toured his new colonial holdings in Auburn Hills, Mich., just over a year ago, he found the Chrysler design team engaged in a hurry-up fix of the Sebring. The makeover began with the interior, and one might have been tempted to call the results lackluster, if not for the fact that the main problem was, well, too much luster, in the form of hard, shiny plastic....

Media Platforms Design Team[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/p5STy6HRZEQ?version=3&hl=en_US[/youtube]In the video above, Bob Lutz, former Vice Chairman at General Motors, swings by Jay Leno’s garage in what first looks like an ordinary a crew-cab Chevrolet Silverado. Take away the flashy graphics and there’s not much to give away the fact that you’re actually looking at a hybrid truck inspired by the Chevy volt. This creation is called the Via Vtrux (Lutz sits on the board at Via Motors), and its sheet metal masks a fully functioning extended-range electric drivetrain based on the Volt....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen a trio of investors bought Missy the cow for a record-setting $1.2 million at an auction at Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, outsiders gained a glimpse into the arcane world of elite livestock breeding. Whether it’s the width of her hips or the protein content of her milk, Missy excels. “She’s got the total package,” says Michael Hutjens, a dairy specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign....

MIT WEEK: OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES* MONDAY: MIT Fights for Clean Power With Holy Grail of Fusion in Reach* TUESDAY: Turning Disabled Into Gamers, MIT Spreads Robot Rehab* WEDNESDAY: With Electric Scooter, MIT Hopes To Rev Up Practical Transport* THURSDAY: Crash-Proof UAVs Fly Blind at MIT’s High-Tech Aerodrome* FRIDAY: MIT’s Efficient Nanowire Storage Could Replace Car Batteries* TIME MACHINE: Classic PM Cover Tracked MIT’s Early Solar PowerCAMBRIDGE, Mass. – It’s not the most attractive spy bot, but the unmanned aerial vehicle hovering some 20 ft....

Ewan McGregor, the Scottish actor who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, could be returning to the character for a new show on Disney+.McGregor is still only in “talks” at this point, but he has long expressed interest in returning to the role first made famous by Sir Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars trilogy.Disney+ is a new streaming service that will debut in November and will feature all Star Wars movies on demand, as well as new Star Wars spinoff TV series....

China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is finally fully operational.Since it booted up in September, it’s already made a ton of new discoveries about the universe. Researchers will use the telescope to unravel mysteries about the universe, listen for gravitational waves and fast radio bursts, and discover other incredibly faint celestial phenomena.China officially booted up its Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) over the weekend, even though construction wrapped in 2016 and the telescope has already produced several incredible findings....

Update: DJI has released a statement asserting that this leaked drone is not an upcoming product: “The drone you feature is not an official DJI product, but appears to have been custom-built by a third party using DJI components. Our flight control and communication systems are widely acknowledged to be the best in the business, and we are pleased that drone innovators rely on our components to develop new and exciting product ideas....

Racing has always driven automotive innovation. By building better race cars, automakers are ultimately able to deliver better production cars. So, in 2005, when students at the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research approached Ford Motor Company about collaborating on a hydrogen fuel cell car capable of setting a land speed record, the automaker jumped at the opportunity. Just months before, the same group of innovative OSU scholars set a land speed record (315 mph) for electric cars....

Plastic is a wonderful material that has changed the way we live in uncountable ways. It’s versatile, cheap, extremely durable, and long-lasting. That durability does tend to become a problem when that plastic is thrown away, as a lot of it ends up in the oceans. A group of researchers is trying to solve this problem by building an alternative to plastic bottles and containers using crab shells and tree fibers....

Elon Musk’s latest venture, The Boring Company, is starting to present its vision to the world. Anyone with the slightest familiarity to Musk will not be surprised to hear that it is a little ambitious. Specifically, it seems like the company would aim to build massive underground tunnels to whisk drivers out of traffic.View full post on YoutubeThe video also portrays a carrying system for each car in the tunnel, and then the tunnel bringing the car back onto street level....

The United States space industry is booming, and not everyone is excited about it. The Europeans, who dominated commercial spaceflight before the rise of American upstarts like SpaceX, are suddenly worried that the America’s effort “now represents a further strong challenge to European competitiveness and freedom to act in space.” That hand-wringing comes from a new report by a leading European space advocacy group. ASD-Eurospace fears that Europe has not only lost its comfortable lead in commercial spaceflight, but also is falling far behind the curve and won’t have the launch hardware and spacecraft to keep up....

A study reveals that New Caledonian crows enjoy using tools to complete tasks.The study also shows the birds experience a mood boost when they get a little handy.Crows: They’re just like us. The black birds like to figure out ways to accomplish tasks and have a good time putting their curiosity and creativity to work. A new study published in Current Biology shows that New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) “behave optimistically after using tools....

Media Platforms Design TeamMillennium BridgeAt the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince–the first Potter film in two years, out today–things are looking pretty grim not just for the boy wizard, but for everyone. Gray storm clouds roll ominously over London as pedestrians, eyes on the sky, hurry across the city’s Millennium Bridge. Suddenly, the bridge begins to quake. Cables snapping, the bridge undulates and twists, pulling free of its piers, and crashes violently into the Thames....

The idea of life on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is one of the most intriguing hypotheticals in the solar system. Ever since the Voyager missions first flew past the tiny, icy world in 1979, the idea of figuring out what, if anything lies below that ice has grabbed at minds ranging from Arthur C. Clarke to Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As it stands, the current plans for a Europa mission doesn’t sound too dissimilar from the old Voyager and Galileo missions, involving “45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon’s icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell....

Media Platforms Design TeamAfter the 2006 Breakthrough Awards ceremony, we caught up with half the team of young engineers from Dartmouth College, who were honored with ourNext Generation Award (last item). TheGyroBike, developed by Hannah Murnen, Augusta Niles, Nathan Sigworth and Deborah Sperling, sat gleaming in the lobby of the Hearst Tower, while fellow inventors admired the design of the silver gyroscope clamped to the front tire of a red child’s bike....

Scientists from Tufts University, the University of Vermont, and the Wyss Institute at Harvard have developed tiny, living organisms that can be programmed. Called “xenobots,” these robots were made with frog stem cells.The research, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is meant to aid development of soft robots that can repair themselves when damaged. Ultimately, the hope is these xenobots will be useful in cleaning up microplastics, digesting toxic materials, or even delivering drugs inside our bodies....