A giant gas planet orbiting in outskirts of the solar system, 20 times as far as Neptune, meandering its way around the sun every 10,000 or 20,000 years. It’s a tantalizing prospect. Planet Nine, if it exists, would be the first planet discovered orbiting the sun since Uranus in 1846 (RIP Pluto, discovered 1930). Such a discovery would rock the foundations of everything we thought we knew about our little neighborhood in space....
MORE NEW BICYCLE TRENDS* DIY: 5 Wild Bicycle Mods You Can Build This WeekendJoe Breeze built some of the first mountain bikes, helping to invent the sport in the late 1970s, so his peers were baffled when Breeze turned his back on off-road riding in 2003. He retooled his company, Breezer, to produce practical transportation bikes. “People said, ‘Joe, what are you doing?’ They thought I was crazy,” he says. Some predicted he would go bust....
View full post on YoutubeIf you’ve ever thought I’d like to try my hands at bomb disposal but I’m too worried about losing my hands, a new game for the Oculus Rift has you covered. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by Ottawa-based developers Ben Kane, Brian Fetter, and Allen Pestaluky is a collaborative game with only multiplayer mode. There’s no competing against your friends—you’re working together to cut the right wires and defuse a bomb before it goes off and the terrorists win....
When planes are flying at high altitudes far above thunderstorms, the air they cruise through may be full of tiny ice crystals. Normally, it’s pretty hard to tell. The ice crystals, no bigger than grains of flour, just blow through the engines harmlessly. Until they don’t, and by then you could already be in deadly trouble. Often enough, the ice crystals in these areas of High Ice Water Content (HIWC) will bounce off cold surfaces like aircraft wings, but sometimes they partially melt and stick to warm warm ones like the inside of jet engines....
SoftwareOnce you record your video, you’ll need to edit it, either on your computer or your phone.On your computeriMovie (free): All Macs come with iMovie, which offers limited options for transitions and titles, but lets you upload raw video, cut, and export with a relatively intuitive drag-and-drop interface. When you’re ready to share, you can upload directly to YouTube. YouTube Video Editor (free): Extremely basic. The few functions it does have—automatic stabilization, brightness, and contrast correction—work well, but simple edits such as extracting a middle section of a scene are difficult....
Last week, astronauts on the International Space Station performed some routine surgery on an onboard computer by replacing a power inverter. But as is the case with nearly everything in space, there’s a backstory to this mundane activity that tells us something about how hard it is to live off-world.There are two servers in space that are part of something called the Spaceborne Computer, an experiment designed to see how a commercial device can handle the rigors of the space environment....
Media Platforms Design TeamLincoln hasn’t had a home run hit product in quite a few years. And that’s largely because modern Lincolns just aren’t different enough from their Ford counterparts to justify the higher pricetag. That might begin to change with the new MKC. Yes, the MKC does share a chassis with the Ford Escape, along with its base engine, a 240-hp 2.0-liter Ecoboost. But the optional powerplant, a 2.3-liter Ecoboost with 275 hp, doesn’t come in any other Ford vehicle (yet)....
In early October, NASA announced there was a serious problem with the Hubble Telescope. One of the telescope’s gyroscopes had failed, leaving the satellite with only two working gyros for moving and stabilizing. On Monday, however, NASA announced it had fixed the problem, using space-based versions of the same strategies that you might use to fix your computer. That is, giving it a good whack.Hubble’s troublesome gyroscopes are several small spinning cylinders that rotate and stabilize the telescope....
The farthest human-made spacecraft, Voyager 1, is currently over 13 billion miles away from the Earth. At that distance, the spacecraft has passed through the heliosphere—the border between our solar system and interstellar space—which means technically, Voyager 1 has left the solar system completely. Despite having a spacecraft fly through this region, scientists still don’t understand much about the heliosphere, so NASA is launching a new spacecraft specifically to learn more about it....
Fusion researchers in China will bring their artificial sun up to full speed in 2020. This superpowered tokamak device and the related stellarator device form the bulk of fusion technology research.Tokamaks are touchy and prone to destabilizing, which these scientists hope to study and ameliorate.China has announced advancing plans for its nuclear fusion device known colloquially as an “artificial sun.” They say the device, which will reach temperatures of up to 360 million degrees Fahrenheit, is actually more like 12 artificial suns combined....
The Swiss Air Force was left red-faced after its world famous flight demonstration team—the Patrouille Suisse—accidentally performed their routine over the wrong Swiss town. The team blamed the incident on outdated aircraft navigation systems, tiny maps, and a lack of anyone in the Swiss Air Force with a radio to tell them they were in the wrong place.The team was scheduled to fly Saturday, July 6th between 11 and 11:15am over the town of Langenbruck....
Black lung has plagued coal miners for more than a century, crippling their lungs and killing thousands. Caused by years coal dust that the body can’t get rid of, black lung eventually starts killing lung tissue when it reaches critical mass. Cases of black lung have declined since 1969, when regulations were passed to minimize the risks that miners faced, but according to recent data, the disease is making a comeback....
A plaster sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln’s hand has been missing from the Kankakee County Museum in northeastern Illinois since at least December 11, and there are no witnesses or suspects. A custodian initially noticed that the hand was missing and alerted the museum’s executive director. The police posted a Facebook message on December 14 asking citizens to contact them with any information about the theft. They included photos of the sculpture and described it as “the size of a 8-10 pound ham....
The U.S. Air Force may be planning to build a close-air support aircraft to replace the A-10 Warthog after all. According to Flightglobal, a draft requirement for such an aircraft—known as A-X—exists and will be reviewed by Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh later this spring. The A-10 Warthog was originally developed to destroy tanks and armored vehicles in the event of an invasion of Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact....
The Army is developing a long range cannon with a range in excess of 1,000 miles.The Army wants a prototype by 2023.The cannon, along with Army hypersonic missiles, will allow the service to strike targets far behind enemy lines.The U.S. Army is pushing ahead with plans to field a cannon with an astounding 1,000-mile+ range. The cannon, along with hypersonic weapons, will allow the service to attack long range, strategic-level targets far beyond the reach of existing Army systems....
After a spectacular launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center yesterday, Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster flew out of Earth orbit and the two side boosters of the enormous rocket pulled off propulsive landings on pads at Cape Canaveral. The launch was almost perfect, but the center booster of Falcon Heavy, which descended after launch to attempt a landing on a drone ship at sea, crashed into the ocean....
Never mind all the camera improvements and edge-to-edge screens and face-scanning security systems. There are two main areas where phones could get better, but never really do: repairability and battery life. The new iPhone 8, with its expensive-to-replace glass back, is a great example of the former. But it’s also a perfect example of why battery life does not meaningfully improve. According to reviews and Apple’s own assertions, the iPhone 8’s battery life is just about on par with that of the iPhone 7....
The Raspberry Pi, the original teeny-tiny $35 computer, has a new flavor. Announced today, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ has an unwieldy name and a specific use-case. A smaller, more budget-friendly version of the Pi 3 Model B+, its smaller size, lower $25 price point, and 512 MB of RAM make it fit for DIY home automation, but perhaps, most notably, it’s likely to be the last of its kind and the end of the Raspberry Pi as we’ve come to know it....
Media Platforms Design TeamAnyone who’s heard a Ferrari V-8 at full wail knows perfectly well that engines make music. But today, that is getting harder to hear, thanks in equal parts to turbochargers that muffle the noise, increasingly insulated cabins, and government noise regulations. vroom-vroomAutomakers are well aware that a snarly engine note enhances the behind-the-wheel experience—especially for sporty cars—and all sorts of devices have been used to let in this “good” noise....
It’s hard to believe there’s any place left on Earth with people who are untouched by modernity. But there is one tribe that still lives without agriculture, fire, or any real knowledge of the outside world. The Sentinelese, as they’re known, live on one of the Andaman Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Myanmar (Burma). Their home, North Sentinel Island, is governed by India, but almost no one from outside the tribe has ever set foot there....
