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The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced this morning by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.The prize will be shared between physical cosmologist James Peebles for his contribution to physical cosmology and the astrophysicists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who discovered the first planet circling a star in another galaxy.Together, their work has reshaped our understanding of what we know about the universe and our place in it. The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three people—physical cosmologist James Peebles, physicist Michel Mayor and astronomer Didier Queloz—for discoveries in physical cosmology and for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star....

Black Friday is finally upon us, but you don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn and wait hours in line in order to find the best deals on awesome gadgets. Here are 20 great Black Friday deals that you can take advantage of from the comfort of your sofa, and when you enter the coupon code BFSAVE20 at checkout you’ll knock an additional 20 percent off the already-discounted price of each item....

Elizabeth Warren’s “Blue New Deal” is a 17-point plan to restock, protect, and harness the world’s oceans.The Democratic presidential candidate highlights human costs like jobs and disaster relocation to emphasize how important these steps will be to protect and employ Americans.This plan joins her many existing plans for climate, industry, and more.Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, has published a comprehensive “Blue New Deal,” which she says is an essential counterpart to any Green New Deal plan....

William Blake (the pre-romantic poet and original multi-media author) disagreed with a millenia of religious and, in the 19th Century, scientific discourse that described the soul as separate from the body. For Blake, the two are one in the same. “For that called Body,” he writes, “is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.” These inlets of Soul—the famous “doors of perception” co-opted by Jim Morrison—are, of course, the senses, and to Blake, they are the “narrow chinks” through which we see the world from self-defined prison....

In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began work on a 132-foot autonomous ship to track and monitor submarines. Now, the 140-ton drone is finally nearing completion. On October 27, at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems international conference, DARPA announced that the vessel, currently under construction at the Vigor Shipyard on the coast of Oregon, is about 90 percent complete and will commence sea trials in January or February of 2016....

At long last it’s the weekend and you’re headed for the mountains–or the desert –or the shore. Anywhere out of town. And for the first time in weeks you can point your hood ornament at the horizon instead of the license plate in front of you and actually achieve the speed limit on the interstate. Your hands shake with glee. Actually, that’s not glee, or even healthy anticipation. Nor is it some unspeakable neurological syndrome....

A gimbal senses how far the camera is tilting from the horizon, in three axes—pitch, roll, and yaw, like on an airplane. It then uses motors to shift the camera equally in the opposite direction, keeping the camera level and steady. The result is Hollywood-level video. (You can find bigger, more expensive gimbals on SpaceX rockets, which guide thrust.)DJI is best known for making drones, which also use gimbals to keep footage smooth, but it also sells the Osmo handheld gimbal that holds a phone steady....

Media Platforms Design TeamTesla Motors wants to change the way we power our cars. But first it wants to change the way we buy them.This year Tesla has faced off against the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), a trade group that represents car retailers, over Tesla’s right to sell cars through its websites and manufacturer-owned stores. Tesla calls them showrooms—a way, we presume, to circumvent existing laws regarding franchises. NADA is having none of it....

Fastskinz MPG-Plus is a vinyl vehicle-wrap system that uses closely spaced shallow dimples with about a 5-mm diameter. Every painted surface on the vehicle is wrapped and, according to the company, it improves aerodynamics and fuel efficiency. The idea sounded promising. We went in optimistically skeptical.Since the early 20th century, golf ball makers have known that small irregularities–dimples–on the surface of balls created longer and truer drives than balls with smooth surfaces....

America’s infrastructure—its highways, bridges, airports—has been in some state of degradation for decades. But there is another “highway” few people talk about that’s vital to our way of life. You likely use it every single day, but you’ve never even seen it.We’re talking about spectrum, the information superhighway that carries voice, video, and data to our smartphones and televisions. It’s a part of the electromagnetic spectrum (hence the name) once dominated by radio communication and broadcast users....

When He Jiankui shocked the world last week by declaring he had successfully altered the genetic code of two babies, he was met with overwhelming skepticism and condemnation from the scientific community. Now, his case has gotten weirder. The South China Morning Post reports that the infamous scientist has gone missing.Officials at He’s now-former university, the Shenzhen-based Southern University of Science and Technology, denied claims that He had been detained by the Chinese government....

Remember the old days, when it took seemingly eons to text one photo or video to your friend’s device? And let’s not even get into how grainy the compressed images ended up looking, if they sent through at all. Thankfully, if you have an iPhone, Apple’s AirDrop feature eradicates all of these sticking points—so well, in fact, that file-sharing can actually feel like magic. Essential Apple How-ToFix Your Cracked iPhone Without Leaving the HouseHow To Recover Deleted Photos on Your iPhoneHow To Back Up Your iPhone to iCloudTo use AirDrop, you’ll need to switch on Bluetooth, but the file-transferring software actually creates its own WiFi network between devices, eliminating any need for an outside internet connection....

Team: Li-Ion MotorsCar: EVI Wave IIClass: Very Light CarDrivetrain: AlternativeEnergy Storage: Lithium-ion batteriesPM Says: A simple design that could be rugged and economical. But developmentally it’s still teething.Odds to Win: 30 to 1The Wave II doesn’t look futuristic; it looks alien. It hails from Nascar country—Mooresville, N.C.—where ex-stock-car fabricators built an uncomplicated machine. “It has to be brought to market at an affordable price,” Li-Ion’s Bill Bratton says. The Lambor­ghini green two-seater’s mild steel-tube frame has Honda Civic front-suspension pieces and rear fabricated swing arms....

The U.S. Air Force is assessing what damage more than a dozen F-22 Raptor fighters suffered when Tyndall Air Force Base sustained a direct hit from Hurricane Michael. Up to $2 billion in fighter jets were trapped on the ground because of maintenance issues and forced to ride out the Category 4 hurricane. Photographs show the hangars where F-22s were parked suffered severe damage. First, the good news: Although Tyndall Air Force Base took a hard hit from the hurricane, all 3,600 military personnel and their families living on the base were successfully evacuated beforehand....

What would life on Mars look like? NASA thinks it’s getting one step closer to figuring it out. The Agency has awarded a combined $700,000 to the first and second-place teams in its 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. Self-described “multi-planetary architectural and technology design agency” AI SpaceFactory, based in New York, took first place with $500,000. A team of professors from Penn State finished in second with $200,000.View full post on TwitterAI SpaceFactory beat over 60 other teams in the finale of an ongoing competition that began in 2015....

Bespoke car maker Rolls-Royce is advancing research on nuclear small modular reactors.Rolls-Royce’s staid reputation as haute luxury belies its legacy of innovation in aerospace and other engineering.Modular reactors are easier to manufacture, making costs both lower and more predictable.Rolls-Royce has taken a sharp right turn, from making million-dollar luxury sedans to researching cutting-edge nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs). Modular reactors are au courant in energy technology, and Rolls-Royce joins startups and governments around the world in trying to shrink the footprint and increase the safety of nuclear energy....

Life on Earth is, at the very least, about 3.5 billion years old. That’s what researchers at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin–Madison have determined through analysis of microscopic fossils found in a rock in Western Australia.“These are a primitive, but diverse group of organisms,” said J. William Schopf, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, in a press release. The resulting study looks at 11 microbial specimens from 5 separate taxa....

Into the NoidMy car won’t start. I can’t figure out why. I think it has spark. The fuel pump is making its customary whirring noise when I turn the key. I pulled out the spark plugs, but they don’t look wet or even smell of gasoline. Is there some way to check to see if the fuel-injection brain is working without buying an expensive scan tool?MICHAEL SHEEHANNEW YORK, NYA quick check to see if the injection system is working at all can be done with-I kid you not-a device called a noid light....

In a space tit-for-tat, Russian government is planning to publish a database of all known satellites—including secret American ones. The move would shed light on classified satellite programs, potentially allowing America’s enemies to evade detection from above.According to Russian state news agency Izvestia, the Russian delegation to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has proposed a United Nations database on space objects. The data would be donated by Russia as a “public service” and catalog all known satellites and “space debris”, which ranges from tools lost by astronauts to retired satellites....

Scientists have a new theory regarding one of the most famous structures in the world, Stonehenge. Based on previous structures, the new study says, Stonehenge has foundational roots in a hunter-gatherer culture that began 7,000 years prior to its construction, based out of the Brittany region of northwestern France.There are many theories concerning who built Stonehenge. A study last year from claimed that the bluestones of the structure, as well as the people who moved the stones, came from Wales....