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Over the last 30 years, scientists have discovered thousands of new planets. But one of the big questions that remains—especially for those hunting for alien life—is whether those planets and their atmospheres could support life. Ground- and space-based telescopes can tell us the basics of each planet’s specific cocktail of gasses that form its atmosphere, but to get a closer look, scientists are using sophisticated tools to simulate faraway planets in their earthbound labs....

There were cheers in California and Florida mission control rooms when the SpaceX Dragon-2 capsule landed in the Atlantic during today’s historic test flight. But the mission wasn’t complete when the space capsule hit the water. For some of the SpaceX engineers, the work had just begun.This was the first time that SpaceX’s recovery team deployed on the Go Searcher ocean vessel to recover a capsule that had returned from space....

The long-lost SS Cotopaxi has been found after having gone missing nearly a century ago.The vessel was on a trip from South Carolina to Cuba when it disappeared after it encountered a storm.New research and analysis of the ship’s records discovered that a distress signal—which had previously gone unnoticed—was sent on December 1, 1925 and included ship’s location.In late November 1925, the shipping vessel SS Cotopaxi, named after the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador, set off from Charleston, South Carolina, and made its way toward Havana, Cuba with its hold full of coal....

Media Platforms Design Team"It has not been found it yet," says Fort Drum spokeswoman, Julie Halpin.The “it” in this case is an M36 Captive Flight Training Missile, an inert training or dummy version of the AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missile used by attack helicopters like the Apache as well as unmanned combat aerial vehicles like the Predator drone. An AH-64D from the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade, part of the 10th Mountain Division assigned to Fort Drum in northern New York, lost the training round during a flight from Fort Drum to Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, NY....

I’m on that train all the time. The 5:44 out of Grand Central, on the Harlem Line. It’s early for me, the train I take when I’ve worked late the night before, or when I have to take my son to basketball practice, or when my wife is making something special for dinner. I usually have to run, so I’m out of breath when I get on board. I pull out some work or a book, lower myself into one of the squeaky vinyl seats, and get comfortable for the next fifty-nine minutes....

Media Platforms Design Team1990-1993: Post-ShuttleThe space shuttle carries commercial satellites until the 1986 Challenger disaster. Europe’s Ariane 4 fills the void by launching multiple sats at one time.1996-1998: A Bubble InflatesIridium, Globalstar, and Orbcomm constellations launch. But these firms go bankrupt and others dissolve, gut-punching launch providers planning for a boom.2002-2004: Telecom PopsThe U.S. launch industry retreats to the government market. Russia and Europe prepare to pick up the slack by making investments in spaceports and rockets....

Recently, scientists have been studying ancient erythrosuchid fossils that were first discovered in the 1950s.The fossils depict ferocious animals that had “steak knife teeth” and massive heads to accommodate their “hypercarnivory” diet. It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like 250 million years ago. We’re talking about a time even before dinosaurs, when beasts known as erythrosuchids ruled and roamed the Earth freely. Although erythrosuchids never walked among dinos, the two are distant cousins....

Astronomers have discovered the most massive neutron star ever observed. Signals from the pulsar (a type of neutron star) were detected 4,600 light years away from Earth. There have been over 2,000 pulsars found throughout the universe since their discovery more than 50 years ago. Astronomers using the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia have observed the most massive neutron star ever measured. The newly discovered pulsar, J0740+6620, stretches the limits of how massive and compact scientists believe these stars to be, according to a paper published today in Nature Astronomy....

A steak is a steak any way you cut it, but it turns out that it’s significantly more tender if you slice against the grain. And that’s regardless of whether it’s strip loin or flank steak.Cutting against the grain isn’t by any means a new idea, and you’ll find it in almost every cookbook. The idea is that instead of cutting parallel to the long fibers of cooked muscle tissue, you cut against them perpendicularly....

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab built a flying drone that can twist and change its shape in midair. The researchers believe their drone could be used to navigate small spaces and interact with different objects, using its changing shapes to pick up and manipulate all kinds of different things.The drone is called “Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON,” or DRAGON for short....

Media Platforms Design TeamA new brain-like microchip has 1 million electronic neurons and more than 256 million artificial synapses connecting. IBM researchers and their colleagues, with money from DARPA and technology from Samsung, designed the breakthrough device, in the journal .outlined todayScience"This chip represents a completely new architecture for microchips," says study co-author Dharmendra Modha, a computer scientist at IBM Research-Almaden in San Jose, Calif. “It’s a new machine for a new era....

Somewhere in the Indonesian countryside, outside Mangelang, there’s an abandoned church. It’s longer than it is wide or tall. Until 15 years ago, it was equal parts church and outreach services for the poor and indigent. Grafitti covers the walls of what was once a proud church. A church that’s shaped like a chicken. Locals call it “Gereja Ayam,” which literally translates to Chicken Church. Which is accurate because it is, in fact, a church shaped like a giant chicken....

The Raider is a little closer to real.The U.S. Air Force’s next-generation stealth bomber is progressing as planned, the service says. and the next step is to actually fly the plane. That’s the word from an Air Force’s man in charge of acquisitions, Lt. Gen. Arthur Bunch. He told Congress the stealth bomber, which would replace older stealthy bombers, is expected to be operational in the mid-2020s, and could fly as early as 2021....

Media Platforms Design TeamUpdate, 3:25 p.m.: NASA JPL released a statement this afternoon saying, ““The Voyager team is aware of reports today that NASA’s Voyager 1 has left the solar system. It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space.“Several media outlets reported today that Voyager 1, launched by NASA in 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar medium, had left the solar system, a moment space fans have been waiting for....

North and South Korean troops face off at the DMZ five days after the defection incident. AFP photo pool//Getty ImagesVideo released by the United Nations Command in South Korea shows the dramatic moment a North Korean soldier decided to defect. The video shows the soldier heading to the border in a stolen jeep and getting shot by armed guards before he is ultimately dragged to freedom by South Korean soldiers. The soldier, recovering in a hospital after surgery, is expected to live....

Hong Kong University researchers have invented and patented a direct thermal charging cell (DTCC).The DTCC is a recapture device that turns low-grade heat (under 200°C) into electricity.Low-grade heat is a potential energy source around the world, including to desalinate seawater without outside energy.Researchers at Hong Kong University have invented (and filed to patent) a way to convert the world’s plentiful low-grade heat into electricity.Low-grade heat is produced on a massive scale around the world by manufacturing, computing, and many other industries—along with everyday items like air conditioners and household ovens....

Eben Horton slides open the door of his workshop’s furnace. He is greeted with a low roar and a blast of dry heat to his face as he pushes a fifty-four-inch stainless-steel blowpipe into the waiting crucible. Working at a seemingly casual pace that accompanies his familiarity with an ancient trade, he sweeps the pipe through the barrel-deep reservoir and scoops up several ounces of liquefied glass. At just shy of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, this lemon-size dollop of molten glass, known as a gather, emanates orange light....

NASA has narrowed down to four planetary science projects, from which it will choose two missions to explore the distant reaches of our solar system.Two of the missions would visit Venus, another proposes to visit Jupiter’s moon Io, while the final mission would be planned for Neptune’s moon, Triton.In Thursday’s press statement, the agency announced it will select the final two missions next year.The solar system is calling, and we must go....

The scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Measurement have one big job: to measure things as accurately as possible. To do that, they build a lot of big and complicated machines, including precise tape measures and absolutely gigantic scales. For the past few years, NIST has been building the world’s most accurate clock, and new research shows it’s actually too precise. How so? It turns out our understanding of the Earth’s gravity is not good enough to take full advantage of the clock....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today.Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Wikimedia CommonsTwenty years after his death, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has left a peculiar legacy to the area surrounding his former compound: hippopotamuses. According to the BBC, hippos are “wandering into ranches, eating crops and occasionally crushing small cows.” The hippos are breeding faster than usual, creating a “time bomb,” according to experts from the World Wildlife Fund....