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Media Platforms Design Team10:30 am, Jan. 9–The musclecar wars have returned. This Camaro concept is a direct response by Chevy to Dodge’s Challenger concept. Yes, another retro style to whet the appetites of younger buyers–and those old enough to remember what the streets were like back in the day. The Chevy concept sport coupe holds a number of surprises under the new/old sheetmetal. For one, an independent rear suspension, something unheard of in days of yore when a solid axle was the final drive of choice....

What are Doozers?The Doozers are four little super kids known as the Pod Squad. They live at the edge the world right under our noses in this sort of fantastical, modern eco-friendly Doozer Creek. They’re green, short, three inches talland they are full of energy. They have a ton of enthusiasm. Doozers, really, are Do-ers. They’re always building stuff and putting ideas into action. And they have a real team spirit, so they create, design, and innovate together, which is really nice....

Media Platforms Design TeamOver the weekend international diplomats reached a . In exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions, Iran agreed to limit how much it would enrich its uranium (not more than 5 percent over the course of the six-month deal).six-month agreement with IranWith all the nuclear stats flying around, this seems like a good time to talk about how uranium enrichment works (and what those enrichment numbers mean), why heavy water is significant, and even whether or not Iran has the right to enrich uranium as they claim....

When an inaccurate missile alert notification went out to Hawaii earlier this month, initial reporting placed the blame on the abysmal user interface of the program used to send such alerts. Now, a preliminary federal investigation has uncovered a different story. There was no missile inbound, but the worker who sent the alert thought that there was and sent the alert on purpose, according to the FCC.The mistake was a result of several errors, as the report describes in a minute-by-minute breakdown of events....

Before you get anywhere near the actual ride portion of the Fast & Furious: Supercharged attraction at Universal Studios Florida, you enter a building that looks like a warehouse with a hint of detention facility. It is exactly the kind of building frequented by the motley, lovable characters who populate the eight (and counting) installments of the Fast & Furious movie franchise, which launched in 2001 and has grossed $5.1 billion....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow did the idea for the exhibition come about? Right after the first film 10 years ago, people started talking about the idea of seeing some of these costumes, props and creatures on display. At the time, Warner Bros. couldn’t do that because they were going right into production of the second film, the third film, the fourth film and so on. Then, about four years ago, we decided that we should start thinking about doing a Harry Potter exhibition together....

It might not look like much, but this plastic box is a fully functioning engine—and one that does something no other engine has ever done before. Pulling energy seemingly out of thin air, it harvests power from the ambient evaporation of room-temperature water. No kidding.A team of bioengineers led by Ozgur Sahin at Columbia University have just created the world’s first evaporation-driven engine, which they report today in the journal Nature Communications....

Media Platforms Design TeamRussia recently revealed a secret trove of “trillions of carats” of diamonds, . The crater full of diamonds was created, apparently, 35 million years ago when an asteroid crashed into Siberia. An asteroid 3 to 5 miles across made a 63-mile-wide dent in the Earth, with layers of fine-grain diamonds buried under the surface. Despite the diamonds’ incredible purported value, Russia has not extracted them because the area is too remote and inaccessible, instead (at least according to ) choosing to keep the area secret for decades....

Since 2006, North Korea has successfully complete six nuclear tests in its Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility buried deep inside the 7,200-foot Mount Mantap. With each blast comes a siesmic shake so strong that it registers as an earthquake, and these terrible tremors are what let us figure out exactly how big the blasts might be. But after so many blasts, might a mountain start to sag? The answer is yes. Mount Mantap is starting to exhibit “tired mountain syndrome,” according to the Washington Post, which spoke to analysts on the subject....

For most people, a yo-yo is a child’s toy. For a handful of people, it’s a hobby that consumes years of their lives. If you need proof, watch yo-yo competitions. They can get pretty intense.To be the best yo-yo artist, it helps to have the best yo-yo, which is why a pair of students at Georgia Tech used their design skills and high-tech engineering equipment to build the best one they possibly could:View full post on YoutubeMost high-end yo-yos are built of aluminum, and the one by undergrad Darren Tan and Ph....

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one of the solar system’s great wonders, a centuries-old storm that is larger than the entire Earth. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been studying the Great Red Spot since July 2017, a part of its mission to learn how largest planet in the solar system formed. The spacecraft has shown us that the enormous storm is deeper than expected and that Jupiter’s atmosphere is even more complex than anticipated....

Scientists just discovered an ancient fossil known as the “mother of all lizards,” or: the oldest ancestor of squamates, a category of reptiles that include snakes, lizards and creepy legless worms called amphisbaenians, which make up the largest group of living land vertebrates on Earth. Despite occupying so much of the Earth, scientists have found gaps in its understanding of squamate lineage.MUSE Science MuseumGenetic evidence suggests that squamates evolved in the Permian period, over 250 million years ago....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sunday morning an intense line of storms was moving across the central U.S. on a collision course with warm, moist air moving in from the southeastern U.S. The result: a across the upper Midwest, with 82 tornadoes reported across Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan. The hardest hit town was Washington, Ill., 140 miles southwest of Chicago, where an E4 tornado tore through town and leveled scores of homes and entire residential blocks....

We celebrate U.S. independence with hot dogs. We celebrate it with parades and Old Glory-emblazoned T-shirts. And we celebrate it, in true American fashion, with explosions.Every year are there are more than 14,000 (official) displays around the country, with names like Kaboom Town (Addison, Texas), Freedom Over Texas (Houston), Let Freedom Sing (Nashville, Tennessee), Go 4th on the River (New Orleans), AmericanFest (Pasadena, California). There’s oohing and aahing so in unison it sounds choreographed....

A Dutch astronomer has snapped the first pictures of the X-37B space plane in orbit. The secretive space plane, in orbit since September 2017, had remained undetected in low earth orbit, conducting experiments on behalf of the Air Force Research Lab. The X-37B shuttle, known for remaining in space for months at a time, is nearing its second year in orbit.Ralf Vandebergh is a Netherlands-based independent science journalist and astronomer. Vandebergh photographs satellites in orbit, posting the images on his blog Spaceflight From the Backyard and on social media....

Media Platforms Design TeamCost: $200 with two-year contractCarrier: AT&TIf you’ve somehow convinced yourself that 5.5 inches is the proper size for a smartphone screen, then until now you’ve had one main option: Samsung’s Galaxy Note II. The LG Optimus G Pro is not only another option. In many ways, it’s a better one. Although it still pales in comparison to the OLED screen on the Samsung Galaxy S4, the Optimus G Pro’s huge screen, at 400 ppi, outdoes the Note II considerably and is impressively crisp....

When searching for life on a distant planet, it pays to make sure that any biologically derived molecules you find didn’t catch a ride from Earth on the spaceship. Avoiding “forward contamination” takes elbow grease, and the right mix of chemicals, before a mission even launches. To test NASA’s sterilization protocol, scientists set off for the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard with Cliffbot, a next-generation rover (shown here). There, they perfected a seven-step procedure involving distilled water, hydrogen peroxide and chemical swabs, making sure to scrub every one of Cliffbot’s ­scoopers....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s hard not to love Tony Stark. He’s charismatic, brilliant, powerful and, yes, he gets the ladies. But are superhero movies like sending the wrong messages to young boys? According to Sharon Lamb, a professor of mental health at University of Massachusetts-Boston, Tony Stark is not just a harmless fiction character.Iron ManLamb and her colleagues surveyed 674 boys between the ages of 4 and 18 and analyzed marketing trends for things like action figures and movies....

Balanced MarriageCorbin Dunn and Louise Lovelle; Los Gatos, Calif.Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun)When Corbin Dunn first met his future wife, Louise, he was intrigued by her mountain unicycling; she by his homemade treehouse in a grove of California redwoods. He soon took his tinkering to Apple, where he worked on the first-generation iPhone; she taught aerial silks at the circus. He arrived at their wedding via homemade zipline. “My dad built our house from the foundation up....

A small spacecraft carrying big ambitions deployed from the International Space Station on July 16. The Arkyd 3 Reflight is the first step toward Planetary Resources’ goal of mining the asteroids.The A3R isn’t going to be mining anything. Instead, this probe is meant to test electronics systems and software during its 90 days of operation in low Earth orbit. The Arkyd-6 craft, which will launch later this year, gets a little closer to mining readiness, testing out propulsion, communication, avionic, and power systems....