Posts

A new optical illusion discovered by researcher Kohske Takahashi once again challenges the veracity of what we perceive. The new illusion, which Takahashi calls the “curvature blindness illusion”, was just published in the journal i-Perception. In the image below, the grey and black lines all appear to have the same shape in the upper left and bottom right sections, which have white and black backgrounds, respectively. They are all the shape of a basic sine wave....

Fireballs are like super meteors. Specifically, they’re defined as a meteor that is brighter than the planet Venus. It’s rare to see a fireball, but even rarer to see one during the day, when it must be bright enough to show up against the light of the sun. That’s what happened the other day in North Carolina, where over 250 people reported witnessing a daytime fireball and several people captured it on video....

Media Platforms Design Team Browse expert reviews and compare info on the XC70 at the Media Platforms Design Team Volvo’s 1997 Cross Country wagon, like the original 1996 Subaru Outback, helped shape the direction of the current crossover vehicle craze. These earlier versions were rugged, all-wheel-drive wagons with raised suspensions for increased ground clearance and imposing bodywork that looked like the perfect mix of rally car and 4x4. Yet they were essentially tall cars, so they packed all the practicality of a station wagon, too....

Media Platforms Design TeamUnited States, Commerical Payloads in 2012: 3Private companies and state governments are establishing spaceports across the United States that directly or indirectly support the satellite launch industry. For example, SpaceX is looking at building its own launchpad in Texas, Florida is planning a private spaceport near Cape Canaveral, and Indiana hopes companies will arrive to flight-test space-bound hardware. Russia, Commerical Payloads in 2012: 15The leader in commercial space launches, Russia operates several spaceports....

A science YouTuber showed that an anvil easily floats in a tub of mercury. Mercury is cool, but its wild danger level has kept it out of a lot of cool applications.The secret is density, which makes improbable things float on improbable other things all the time.Boing Boing has tracked down a mesmerizing video that shows an anvil floating in a vat of mercury. View full post on YoutubeScience YouTuber CodyDon Reeder has nearly 2 million subscribers to his channel Cody’s Lab....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe golden age of dirtbikes came and went decades ago, and is memorialized by cultural artifacts like On Any Sunday (which, incidentally, is being revived with what appears to be a stunning sequel). Bultaco is a Spanish manufacturer from that bygone era, and established its name on motocross, enduro, and trials bikes built between 1958 and 1983. Like the famed documentary, the brand is relaunching itself. But in a surprising revelation, that reinvention will involve a future-friendly, battery-powered platform....

The U.S. is unique in that we tend to think of towing as the domain of trucks, specifically trucks of the overkill heavy-duty variety. But elsewhere in the world, the citizenry tows its trailers with whatever’s handy, which often means a small front-wheel-drive station wagon. Check out the caravanning scene in Britain—plenty of RVs and nary a Cummins Ram to be found.Here, we predominantly tow with trucks, and if not one of those then an AWD crossover....

There’s always more fish in the sea. But for people living on land, it can be hard to see them. Many of the ocean’s deeper-dwelling fish are hidden from view for all but the most dedicated scuba divers, in part because it’s so difficult to bring those fish out of the deep waters. Now, a new pressurized chamber is helping to bring some of these unfamiliar creatures up to the surface....

A helicopter’s landing gear is usually pretty simple, a pair of parallel struts, or maybe a few wheels now and then. But there’s no reason it has to be that way. In fact there are plenty of good reasons why it shouldn’t be, and DARPA’s new robotic-leg landing gear makes it immediately clear. The premise is simple, so simple that in retrospect it’s hard to believe this doesn’t already exist. Basically, DARPAs “Robotic Landing Gear,” bends at its knees to keep a copter steady, level, and far enough away from the ground even when it comes in for landing on uneven terrain....

Despite how ubiquitous smartphones are to our waking life, they appear surprisingly rarely in dreams. When Twitter user @BrendanCredence tweeted about the phenomenon, over 56,000 users liked the tweet, and over 20,000 retweeted the sentiment. Other mundane details from our waking life does appear often dreams: waiting rooms, schools, dentist offices. Why don’t our phones?According to one theory of dreaming called the “threat simulation hypothesis,” our dreams exist to help us navigate anxieties and fears in a low-risk environment, essentially letting us practice for real life....

In the wake of reports that Google+ exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users to the world, the search giant has unceremoniously shuttered the social media network, ending access for the general public. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google+ exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users to third party developers between 2015 and 2018 and that, while there is no evidence this data was abused, there is also no way to know for sure that it was not....

NASA has selected five winners in an ongoing contest it has been running to get smart ideas about how to build a 3d-printed habitat on Mars. The winners have passed level one of the 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge, which required developing about 60 percent of the design. Level Two will require greater complexity with 100 percent completion and an understanding of the hydraulics of each build. The teams will then create virtual structures and, on April 29, build them for real on the campus of Bradley University in Peoria, Ill....

Of the more than 230 planets that have been discovered outside of our solar system since 1992, only one even remotely resembles Earth. Gliese 581c, which was spotted this past April, is 20.5 light-years distant, and appears to have liquid water and an average temperature between 32 F and 104 F. NASA, however, thinks there are many more worlds like ours out there. So the space agency is launching its first-ever planet-hunting mission next year, sending a $500 million spacecraft called Kepler on a four-year quest to find Earth-like planets....

If you think hot-to-trot, high-performance, high-dollar hardware are play toys only of the rich and famous, think again. Thanks to the growing number of time-share car clubs popping up in cities all over the country, even the average Joe can climb behind the wheel of a sleek exotic like the new Ferrari 599 GTB, a drop-top classic like a 1957 Porsche Speedster, or infamous Detroit muscle like the 1969 Chevelle Super Sport without having to mortgage the homestead....

Here’s a notion that will make you rethink your existence for a minute: Studies show that each act of remembering rewires the neural conduits of memory in a way that can alter recall. So every time you remember something—a fact, an event, the way you felt at a certain moment—you’re actually just referencing the last time you thought about that thing. The human memory is basically like a game of telephone....

The search for life on exoplanets is coming closer to home, as NASA is set to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2017. TESS’s goal will be to identify planets orbiting stars just outside our solar system.View full post on YoutubeFor two years, TESS will explore and monitor the brightness of more than half a million stars. It will be looking for temporary drops in brightness caused by a planet passing between the star and Earth....

Astronomers have concluded that asteroid Hygiea is probably a dwarf planet after all. Images of Hygiea showed that the dwarf planet is round, a key requirement of becoming a dwarf planet. At roughly 267 miles across, it will become the smallest of the Solar System’s five dwarf planets. Hygiea was initially thought to be a large asteroid, but new analysis of observations made by Chile’s Very Large Telescope revealed insight into the celestial body....

The 2012 Geneva Motor Show was a smorgasbord of automotive excess. For proof of its kaleidoscopic scope, consider that despite our expansive coverage, we still couldn’t feature every oddity in the show– like this Pininfarina Cambiano concept.Inside, wood repurporsed from the European oak poles used to mark channels in the Venice lagoon (known as briccole) wears the surface scars from mollusks, offering a textural contrast to the ultrasmooth seats. A timepiece by Bovet 1822 can be removed from the dash and worn as a wristwatch…Media Platforms Design Team… beneath the skin, an electric motor at each wheel provides power, peaking at 600 kW, combined....

2007 Automotive Excellence Award RecipientsNew Cars and Trucks-October 2006 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Automakers bombard America’s drivers with new models every year–and the editors of Popular Mechanics test drive just about every one of them. It’s a great job. But while we love getting behind the wheel of a new machine, we drive critically–sometimes more so than car companies would like....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Department of Defense’s 1033 Program began in 1997 with the idea of transferring surplus military equipment to police departments nationwide. Although the program was recently amended to prevent tracked vehicles from being given away, a number still serve with police and sheriffs departments nationwide.Tank & AFV News has a gallery of M113 armored personnel carriers and M557 command and control vehicles in the service of law enforcement....