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The first all-electric airplane has made a successful test flight of almost 15 minutes.Short charters are an ideal place to start electrifying planes, with other industries to follow.Harbour Air and MagniX retrofitted a classic, reliable aircraft with a cutting-edge electric powertrain.A completely electric plane has made its longest flight ever at just under 15 minutes. The plane is a collaboration between a Seattle engineering firm named MagniX and a nearby Vancouver air charter company named Harbour Air....

Gas turbine engines on airliners need to handle some serious power outputs. The General Electric CF6 high-bypass turbofan engine, which powers Boeing 747s and Airbus 300s, puts out as much as 41,500 pounds of thrust during takeoff. The part of the engine that contains the combustion—called a combustor, combustion chamber, burner, or flame holder—gets particularly scorched after constant use.A new timelapse video from GE Aviation follows a combustor as it is disassembled, cleaned, repaired and restored to like-new condition....

I love our swimming pool, and so do our kids. But if it hadn’t have come with the house, I’m not sure I would’ve installed one. It’s costly to heat in the winter and a chore to maintain year-round. A more economical and therapeutic option might be a hot tub.Hot tubs are almost synonymous with parties and time travel, but more people are investing in them as a way to relax and unwind, manage muscle soreness, and enjoy some social time with friends and family....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’ve known Hyundai was developing a V8-powered, rear-drive premium sedan for quite some time. And now we have the first official look: Hyundai showed off this Genesis Concept at the New York auto show today.Our guess is that this concept will look a lot like the production car when it arrives in 2008. To our eyes, it looks a lot like the Lexus GS — and that’s certainly not a bad thing....

NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope is the most ambitious space observatory in history. The telescope, about four times the size of Hubble, will be placed into orbit where it will find exoplanets, study the early universe, and possibly find the first hints of extraterrestrial life. That is, if it ever gets off the ground.Today, NASA announced that it has pushed the launch date of the telescope back again, this time to March 2021 at the earliest....

George DodworthCanonsburg, PA.Age: 37Years on Job: 16 The first time George Dodworth saw a laser light show, he was mesmerized. The 11-year-old decided right then to create his own. Twenty-six years later, Dodworth’s company, Lightwave International, is one of the biggest laser-entertainment providers in the world. He has fashioned special effects for Hollywood movies, designed light shows for Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Madonna, and projected Nike’s logo onto a mountain for the Fiesta Bowl....

Media Platforms Design TeamEarth’s celestial sphere is about to get a whole lot brighter. At least twice in 2013, comets bright enough to be seen by the naked eye will appear.These balls of ice and rock abound in our solar system. There are more than 4000 known comets, including 500 that are short-term, meaning they orbit the sun in periods of less than 200 years. The number of unknown comets is immeasurable....

Media Platforms Design TeamEvery car nerd has a Miata story, and the tiny roadster’s 25th anniversary is as good an excuse as any to share mine.Back in the day, my 1993 Limited Edition Miata (one of only 1,500) had it all, at least in my mind: factory lowered suspension, Bilstein shocks, anti-sway bars, and BBS wheels to match its swanky red leather interior. Though it suffered the inevitable slings and arrows of my muscle car fanatic friends (especially because I previously owned a 5....

🛠Number of parts: 508 | Model: MacBook Air (Mid-2011) | Time to Disassemble: 4 hours, 56 minutes iFixit Pro Tech ToolkitiFixit Pro Tech Toolkit$70 at macsales.comOn stage in 2008, Steve Jobs pulled an entire laptop out of a manila envelope. It had a full-size keyboard, a screen, batteries, ports—everything most of us would need from a laptop, all somehow fit into a case that was 0.76 inch at the thickest point....

A volcano with a deadly history continued to erupt Tuesday on Bali, one of the world’s most popular resort islands, spitting ash 4,000 meters (2 ½ miles) high and stranding tens of thousands of tourists for a second day. Lava was welling in its crater, but it remained unclear how bad the eruption might get or how long it could last.Authorities have raised the alert for Mount Agung to the highest level and told 100,000 people to leave an area extending 10 kilometers (6 miles) from its crater as it belches grey and white plumes into the sky....

Over the weekend, residents of far northern Norway got to see the aurora borealis in the skies above their home. But this wasn’t the standard Northern Light they often see. Instead, this weekend’s aurora was created artificially by NASA rockets.NASA’s AZURE mission seeks to understand more about how auroras move in our atmosphere. As part of this research project, scientists decided to create their own auroras to track. NASA launched two sounding rockets on Friday night from the Andøya Space Center in Norway meant to create artificial auroras....

Media Platforms Design TeamSANTA MONICA, Calif. — At a press conference this morning here, Nintendo unveiled three new pieces of hardware for its Wii console: the gun-shaped Wii Zapper, the Wii Wheel steering wheel, and the Wii Balance Board. The Zapper and the Wheel are both essentially controller-holding props. The Zapper houses the console’s standard Wii Remote and Nunchuck, making first-person shooters more immersive. The Wheel is exactly what it sounds like: a steering wheel....

This puzzle is similar to Riddle of the Week #5: A Life-or-Death Question About Hats, but it is slightly harder and requires another layer of deduction. If you haven’t solved the Hats Riddle yet, or if you are having trouble with this one, it might be worth revisiting the prisoners with their black and white headwear to get on the right track.Now on to the riddle. ProblemThree super spies are caught sending sensitive information to an enemy state....

Sharks are known for their jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth, but their skin also contributes to their ferocity. It’s covered with tooth-like scales—structures known as denticles that make shark skin rough like sandpaper. For decades, scientists have suspected these denticles make sharks faster and more maneuverable by disrupting the flow of water over the fish and reducing any drag holding them back.Now, scientists have fabricated the most realistic artificial shark skin yet....

Nature is harsh. But over time, animals can evolve to adapt to that harshness with stunning methods. Scientists have discovered a previously unknown visual system that may allow color vision in deep, dark waters–around 650 to 5,000 feet below sea level, where animals were presumed to be colorblind. The discovery forces a reconsideration of the underwater animals that live without sunlight.“This is the first paper that examines a diverse set of fishes and finds how versatile and variable their visual systems can be,” says Karen Carleton, a biology professor at the University of Maryland and co-author of the paper, published as the cover story in this month’s Science Advances, in a press statement....

Lockheed Martin started building its latest civilian version of the iconic C-130 Hercules in Marietta, Georgia earlier this week. The company’s new LM-100J will bring the advancements of the C-130J Super Hercules to civilian operators such as the United Nations.The C-130 just never dies. Why? Because almost no other aircraft can do what the Herc does best: reliably haul outsized loads into and out of short, rough airstrips in the middle of nowhere....

The one-armed man was just one of 222 bodies found at an ancient cemetery excavation in Italy. But when bio-archaeologists examined the corpse decades later, they found that the body of this Lombard warrior who lived between 600 and 700 A.D. reveals an ancient precursor to a seemingly modern medical trend: repairing injured warriors to return them to battle.The Lombard warrior, according to a paper published this summer, lost an arm from medical amputation....

Media Platforms Design TeamSomewhere around the mile-and-a-half mark of my evening jog (or so my fitness smart watch tells me), I become exceedingly conscious of the fact that satellites are following me around Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.I know, it’s no big deal. Our phones contain GPS components and sats are tracking us all the time now. It’s nothing to inspire a Louis C.K. moment of technological introspection. But while testing the Garmin Forerunner 15, a running and fitness-tracking GPS smart watch, I finally felt like an active participant in becoming a fully quantified human being....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe sun has turned into a pumpkin, and no, this is not a celestial retelling of Cinderella.While we humans typically see the sun as a yellowish ball in the sky, visible light is just a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and our star emits all kinds of light. NASA’s instruments can image the sun in wavelengths our eyes can’t see and detect especially active regions—like those that make the sun look like a jack-o-lantern in these images from October 8....

The BB-8 ball droid is one of the most adorable new additions to the Star Wars universe, taking center stage in December with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There’s been a lot of speculation on how the soccer ball shaped droid works, with the work of Sphero further fueling the fire. The recently released BB-8 toy only compounded the questions, but thankfully, we don’t have to wonder anymore. Someone already took it apart....