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Spy satellites have been with us since the dawn of the Space Age. In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which maintains a database of operational satellites, says that as of March, there were more than 2,000 of the devices in Earth orbit, 176 of which were operated by the U.S. military. (In total, roughly 5,000 satellites are in orbit, most no longer operational.) It’s a good bet that many of those are loaded down with cameras and other sensors used to keep tabs on adversaries....

Over the summer, a 61-year-old swimmer in Cape Cod faced down a shark attack. But William Lytton survived to tell the tale, and shared his shark fighting technique with the Associated Press. Simply put, punch it straight in the gills.Lytton was enjoying a summer vacation in Massachusetts, when he suddenly felt an intense pain run through his left leg. He instantly realized it was a shark attack. ‘‘I initially was terrified, but, really, there was no time to think,’’ he tells the AP....

Sometimes simpler is better, and this piece of storytelling wisdom proves true in the sixth episode of The Mandalorian, titled “The Prisoner.“Fresh from his exploits on Tatooine last week, the Mando is still on the search for money (Yogurt would be so proud). This leads Mando to take on a job with some old “friends,” or at the very least previous (illegal) business associates. From there, things explode into one of the best space adventures ever set in the Star Wars universe....

Three and a half weeks into the job, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine used a public forum to assure his new employees that believes humans contribute to global warming. Speaking to NASA offices across the country, Bridenstine took questions from both the audience in Washington, D.C, as well as from other offices online. An anonymous employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California asked a number of questions about Bridenstine’s beliefs on climate change and how the agency planned on handling its Earth sciences work....

With all the futuristic methods and complicated machines in neuroscience, it’s easy to forget that our understanding of the brain rests in the same logical category as sciences of centuries ago, when seemingly regular people had flashes of insight regarding frog’s legs, apples, and clock towers. That is, until you hear a story like this: How Bartul Mimica found specific groups of neurons that are tuned to the postures of our bodies, a new research advancement published this week in Science....

Researchers have made a bio-mimicking smart material that bends to follow the sun.“Tracking” solar panels gather up to 30 percent more energy than static solar panels.Time will tell if these tiny flowers are practical for solar energy collection.Plants bend toward the sun in a behavior called phototropism, which scientists have mimicked in a light-responsive artificial “sunflower” that can harvest solar energy. New Scientist reports that the design, which is micro-sized at less than one millimeter in diameter, uses materials that expand and contract with heat in order to bend toward the sun’s warm light....

The U.S. Navy is designing a big, powerful attack submarine to fight the wars of the future. The new class will be considerably larger and more capable than the current Virginia class, with an emphasis on undersea combat. The new sub, SSN(X) will be a quiet, deep diving, heavily armed submarine meant to take on all comers in the mid 21st century. Traditionally, the U.S. Navy’s nuclear attack submarine (SSN) fleet was given the mission of chasing down enemy surface fleets and attack submarines....

Researchers have created an artificial nerve that triggers a muscle response in cockroaches. In humans, it might let patients with artificial limbs touch and feel sensation and pressure or someday, maybe even pressure-feeling robots.Scientists used the artificial nerves to successfully detect the motion of a small rod moving in different directions, and to identify Braille characters. When they connected an artificial neuron to a neuron in a cockroach with a leg removed, signals from the artificial neuron made the living cockroach contract and twitch....

Students at the University of California-Santa Barbara managed to pull off a pretty impressive feat: they took a big step toward asteroid capture by de-spinning a tiny asteroid using lasers in a lab. It’s the kind of thing that will eventually be needed to say, capture an asteroid in the Asteroid Redirect Mission or to harness an out of control asteroid on a course for what we hold dear. They’ll just need to scale it way, way up....

The summer is a great time to sit outside with a nice cold drink. And it turns out that’s not just the case for humans. Vice reports wasps also tend to imbibe in late summer—and they get drunk, too.The Daily Mail in the U.K. puts it in a more dramatic way, with a headline reading, “Britain is under attack from ‘drunk and irritable’ wasps who are going on ‘stinging rampages’ after drinking cider in pub gardens because they have run out of food....

Media Platforms Design TeamJust in time for Back to the Future Part II to come true (well, maybe not the part about the Chicago Cubs), the Smithsonian hosted the first public demonstration of the Hendo hoverboard this weekend. The hoverboard doesn’t require its own specialized track to work. Instead, it works on any conductive surface, meaning a skate park could just put a sheet of copper under a thin surface to make it hoverboard-ready....

They roll in and roll out. They’re one of the Earth’s steadiest forces, moving water from the ocean onto the land and then taking it back. Ocean tides are one of the oldest fields of scientific inquiry, dating back to approximately 330 B.C., when Greek astronomer and explorer Pytheas traveling via boat from his home in Massalia, modern day France, to the British Isles.Tides weren’t noticeable in Massalia, but Pytheas detected them on his voyage....

The last time I saw the aurora borealis, I was sitting at the edge of a lake at midnight on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. As I gaped at the sky, I wondered what kind of unfathomable cosmic ion explosion could create something so eerie and beautiful. That was 10 years ago, right around the time when scientists were beginning to understand the Sun’s role in the technicolor lightshow I got to enjoy that night....

A community of over 138,000 people on Reddit are obsessed with GIFs that may allow them to “hear” motion. According to a study in the journal Cortext, about 20 to 30 percent of people will experience an auditory sensation when viewing these silent, moving GIFs.The phenomenon is called vEAR, or “visually evoked auditory response,” according to psychologist Chris Fassnidge, lead author of the Cortex study. It could be a form of synesthesia, a neurological condition in which different sensory experiences (like being able to hear colors) are interconnected....

Vers 2X iPod Dock/Speaker /// $150Media Platforms Design TeamThis gorgeous compact speaker for iPods and iPhones is made using a handcrafted wood veneer that comes from sustainable plantation sources. But its green roots are more than veneer-deep: The speaker is entirely free of environmentally hazardous materials like lead, cadmium and chemical-based adhesives. The packaging is made entirely out of recycled materials and is 100 percent recyclable in turn. Of course, none of this would matter if it didn’t sound good....

Here, at long last, is the 2020 Toyota GR Supra, a small fleet of them parked in pit lane at the Shenandoah Circuit at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. If it seems like you’ve been hearing about this car for years, you have—in one of Toyota’s sketches of the FT-1 concept, which became the Supra, the year “2013” is scrawled in the corner. And by the way, the “GR” is neither a reference to Axl Rose nor an aborted declaration from Tony the Tiger....

An airline that accidentally priced a luxury flight from Vietnam to New York City at an egregious $15,000 discount has decided to honor the tickets purchased at the fare.Cathay Pacific Airlines is doing the noble thing and owning up to the mistake, which saw tickets for the business class journey priced at $675 rather than its usual $16,000 price. According to The Guardian, the Hong Kong–based airline declined to comment when asked how many passengers claimed the grossly underpriced tickets on New Year’s Day....

Media Platforms Design TeamDave Hubbard makes biodiesel from restaurant grease for $0.50 a gallon.For Dave Hubbard, the process of making biodiesel begins in the gloaming under an old walnut tree in West Virginia, where behind a rural tavern a week’s worth of frying oil sits in a 55-gal drum. I meet my uncle here on a Sunday evening so that I can see how the oil gets from the drum to the tank of his black Jetta–plus those of a motorcycle, bulldozers, and tractors for five local farms and a tree nursery–all for the low cost of 50 cents a gallon....

Chinese researchers from Nankai University have successfully created technology that allows you to control a car with your brain. A headset containing 16 sensors can read the electroencephalography (EEG) signals in your brain and transfer that information to a computer program. The program then identifies the signals associated with a given command and translates that information into a movement command that it sends to the car.Currently, the technology allows you to drive the car forward, reverse, apply the brakes, and lock and unlock the doors....

Name: Artificial world Selected Science Fiction Portrayals: The two Death Stars from the Star Wars films and related media; Shellworlds in Iain M. Banks 2008 novel Matter; custom-made luxury worlds in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. If humans are going to live in an off-world habitat, then it must have the things we’ve evolved to depend on here on Earth: the right temperature range, breathable air, specific gravity, day-night cycles, and plenty more....