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While it wasn’t a UFO, the spectacle that played out over the skies in Leiden, Netherlands, sure looked like one. However, the procession of dazzling lights in the sky turned out to be 60 SpaceX Starlink satellites that were launched on May 23.The video was captured by Marco Langbroek, an astronomer and spy satellite tracker, who was able to record the incredible satellite formation by calculating the orbit of the launch of the Falcon 9....

Initially called “the three day fever,” it started like any flu, with a cough and a headache, followed by intense chills and a fever that could quickly hit 104 degrees F. It could take a month before survivors felt completely well, and after they emerged from an energy-sapped stupor many said it felt as though they’d been aggressively hit with a club. But for those 650,000 Americans who actually died from the Spanish flu in 1918, the suffering was much worse....

For years, only the left flipper worked. So for years, Jerry played with only the left flipper. In the basement of his family’s home in rural Connecticut, the flashes of white and yellow reflected off the lenses of his glasses as he stood intently over his Sharpshooter pinball machine, sometimes for hours. More than a decade earlier, with both flippers operational, the entire family—three kids and even his wife, Cynthia, who generally doesn’t have an interest in that sort of thing but is drawn to any kind of familial excitement—would be downstairs with him, peering over the edge to watch or anxiously waiting in line for Jerry’s ball to drop between the flippers, the loud clunk and seemingly endless chiming of the scoreboard signaling the start of their turn....

A wooden aircraft is flying the California skies, but this is no spruce goose. LG-1K, developed by Logistic Gliders Inc under contract with DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, is meant to be a very low-cost drone capable of being released from fixed-wing aircraft or helicopter. The plywood and aluminum drone is 10.4 feet long with a 23=foot wingspan. The LG-1K can carry up to 700 lb.s of supplies....

A space elevator would permanently change mankind’s relationship to leaving the planet. It would be so much easier if we could simply carry payloads into orbit, space travel would become common. Carrying a payload into space on an elevator would be wildly cheaper than using a rocket. But it would also be really hard. Grady Hillouse, a civil engineer out based out of Texas, approaches the problem by breaking the problem down to its most elemental realities in his latest episode of Practical Engineering, which aims to find the relatable aspect of engineering problems both complex and seemingly simple....

Famous sci-fi props, like the flying DeLorean or a scout trooper speeder, are undeniably cool. Unfortunately, their real-world counterparts are often much less so. But with the advent of drones and quadcopters, ambitious engineers are finally building machines that resemble our sci-fi dreams.Like the Scorpion-3. Created by Russian startup Hoversurf, the aerial bike isn’t much more than a giant quadcopter with a seat, but unlike previous prototypes, the Scorpion-3 puts the controls directly in the hands of the pilot....

Astronomers continue to find that black holes, once thought to be rare anomalies in the Universe, can be found just about anywhere. The most recent discovery, detailed in a study published today by the Royal Astronomical Society, provides strong evidence that there are hundreds of black holes hiding in the globular cluster NGC 6101, which sits about 50,000 light years across the galaxy from Earth.A globular cluster is a group of stars gravitationally bound to one another that orbit the center of the galaxy as a single unit....

We asked two of the people most responsible for the action in the seventh installment of the Fast & Furious franchise—second unit director Spiro Razatos and second unit stunt coordinator Andy Gill—to walk us through a particularly tough but amazing shot in which the cars appear to drive out of a C-130, skydive (!), and land on a Colorado highway.Spiro Razatos:“One of the aerial photographers needed to be so close to the ar....

Two researchers from the University of Bristol in the U.K. have developed a process wherein a robotic arm can remotely aid in repair-based tasks.In a new paper from last month, the researchers report that the partially autonomous robot improves task efficiency by 24 percent.This technology can also assist surgeons teaching novice doctors-in-training how to perform invasive surgeries.Two researchers at the University of Bristol have gotten society a step closer a robo-reality, though the experiment is still in its early stages....

The A-10 Warthog has to fight in some dusty, dirty places, and its successor will need to do the same. The U.S. Air Force knows its partial replacement for the A-10 might someday have to operate from dirt airstrips, and so USAF just flew two of them, the A-29 Super Tucano and the AT-6 Wolverine, from a dirt air strip in New Mexico. The test comes in startling contrast to the stealthy, sleek image the Air Force often projects....

Media Platforms Design TeamMarshal Ri Ul-sol, a long-serving military official in the North Korean People’s Army, died earlier this month. His lavish, flower-adorned state funeral was attended by hundreds of politicians and military officials.Marshal Ri got quite a sendoff. His casket, slow-walked by pallbearers in a procession led by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was rolled to a waiting armored personnel carrier. The procession was accompanied by an honor guard carrying chrome-plated Type 58 assault rifles....

A new invention fools the human nervous system into filtering out the causes of motion sickness, preventing users from needing to reach for the barf bag. The Ototech device causes the brain to ignore the signals that lead to motion sickness, a huge problem for the U.S. military.The Armed Forces have a huge motion sickness problem. Infantrymen sitting in the back of M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, riding perpendicular to the direction of travel and across rough, often bumpy terrain, get carsick (fighting vehicle sick?...

Media Platforms Design TeamChicagosprayfoam at WikipediaInstalling quality insulation is the best thing you can do to improve the energy efficiency of your home. Over time it can save you bundles in heating and cooling costs. The most effective insulation today is generally considered to be spray-foam insulation. There is a healthy debate as to which type of foam—open-cell or closed-cell—is better, but there is one thing everyone can agree on: all spray foam is expensive....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn the past few years, 3D printing has gotten better and better. Now it just needs to get faster. Gizmo 3D claims it can build a 6-inch x 3-inch x 1-inch object in just six minutes with the new GiziMate printer. CEO Kobus Toit calls the process “animated printing,” and says the GiziMate is a regular rig with a few “top secret” solutions he’s in the process of patenting that enable the speed of the printing....

Even if you’re pretty good about keeping your recreational screen time down to a minimum—like, one scroll through Instagram per day, rather than 15—the average office worker still spends about 1,700 hours per year in front of a computer screen. That’s about 1,700 reasons why your eyes might be driving you insane.But imagine having a magical coating on the lenses of your glasses that can reduce eye-strain and actually help you sleep better....

The SB-1 Defiant helicopter, a new rotary-winged aircraft design developed by Sikorsky-Boeing, flew for the first time on Friday, March 21, 2019. The Defiant uses a unique propulsion system, ditching the tail rotor of conventional helicopters and adding a push propeller. The result is an aircraft the manufacturer touts as faster and better handling than other choppers, which could result in faster and more agile U.S. Army helicopter force.View full post on YoutubeThe Defiant is an entrant in the U....

LAS VEGAS — The press events are still going on, but I escaped and wandered around the CES floor, where they’re still frantically getting ready for tomorrow. Walls of big-screen TVs, lots of digital cameras, car audio galore—even a Batmobile (pictured at bottom right) to demonstrate it—and lots of folks feverishly tweaking things to make sure they work. Some of them, no doubt, won’t, and everyone who’s had trouble setting up gadgets at home can feel a moment of schadenfreude by contemplating all these manufacturers’ folks struggling with coils of wires and things that don’t work on the first try....

Few scenes are as haunting as those seen in Haiti this week, with thousands of corpses blocking the streets and others being carted by bulldozers en masse and dumped into huge graves. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) now estimates that at least 200,000 people died in the earthquake that devastated the country on January 12, and the buildup of dead bodies seems practically endless. If there is some good news to be shared, it is that these bodies pose little health risk to Haiti’s surviving residents and to the health workers who are taking care of them....

Media Platforms Design TeamSoftware comes and goes, but hardware is forever. If the change of direction with is any indication, codes are no match for keyboards. At least that’s what AMC is betting on.Halt and Catch FireThe first couple of episodes of Halt have revolved around the theft and cloning of IBM’s BIOS code, and the race by our three heroes to make it look like they built their system. But in Sunday’s episode, “High Plains Hardware”, the coding storyline— and our coding character, Cameron—went to the backburner....

For the first time in 30 years, there’s a new high-temperature nuclear plant material.Tech like the molten salt reactor requires much higher temperature tolerance and special construction.The new material is an advanced alloy with extremely high creep strength.Scientists working at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have announced the approval of a new high-temperature metal after 12 years and a $15 million Department of Energy investment. Alloy 617, a “combination of nickel, chromium, cobalt and molybdenum,” is tolerant and strong at temperatures of more than 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit....