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Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan posted her findings on the ongoing spat between Times writer John Broder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk over a now infamous test drive of the Tesla Model S. (In case you missed it: Broder attempted to drive the EV from D.C. to Milford, Conn., using only Tesla’s network of Supercharger stations. It died on the way back. Musk called the test “fake” on Twitter, then wrote a blog post with trip data to support his claims....

Yes, George Washington was pretty great, but this holiday weekend I’m celebrating a different point of national pride: spectacular scientific achievement. I’ve flown to St. Louis, where the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is holding its annual meeting. Though it was 5° outside this morning, here inside the conference center several hundred attendees had the warm glow of PowerPoints to keep us warm. A good chunk of today was devoted to the search for life on other planets....

In 1610, Galileo used a telescope to discover the four largest moons of Jupiter, and for more than two hundred years the only way to get a better look at the night sky was to build a bigger telescope. In the 19th century, astronomers began hauling telescopes up mountains to reduce the amount of atmospheric interference blurring their observations. By 1968, astronomers achieved the ultimate high-altitude telescope by successfully launching the first space telescope into orbit, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 (OAO-2)....

Look to the north this Friday night and you could be in for a treat. The Draconid meteor shower peaks the night of October 7. You won’t even have to get up in the wee hours to see it. Unlike most meteor showers, the best time to view the Draconids is after dusk rather than just before dawn. View full post on YoutubeDraco the Dragon, the constellation that the Draconids radiate from, is highest in the sky just after nightfall, which is why it is actually better to stay up late than get up early to catch these meteors....

The first Xian Y-20 military transport aircraft was delivered to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) on June 15. Developed by Xian Aircraft Corporation, the Y-20 has an empty weight of 110 short tons, making it the largest military aircraft currently in production—larger than Russia’s Ilyushin Il-76. Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III is bigger than the Y-20—the C-17’s empty weight is about 60,000 pounds more than the Y-20 and its payload capacity is 25,000 pounds more—but production stopped in 2015, making the Y-20 the biggest that is currently rolling out of factories....

Two years ago, our solar system received an unexpected visitor from elsewhere in the galaxy. Astronomers spotted the asteroid ‘Oumuamua, which likely originated outside of our solar system, passing through on its way to who knows where. But now researchers claims that it wasn’t the first: Another interstellar asteroid actually crashed into the Earth in 2014.What initially set ‘Oumuamua apart from every other asteroid we’ve ever seen is how quickly it was moving....

Media Platforms Design TeamRedmond, Wash.—Microsoft systematically toured journalists through its Xbox campus after the here yesterday, ushering us from station to station to view its modeling shop, hardware testing lab, consumer research facilities, and even the onsite anechoic chamber. There was no hands-on gameplay (presumably no games are developed enough to demo yet), but there were plenty of interactive demos to show off the native hardware—especially the new controller and Kinect....

Q: One tire on my Yukon has a slow leak. Or so I thought, until I just replaced the tire because I got tired of filling it every week. Now the new tire leaks. The guy at the gas station wants to put some of that green, slimy goo in the tire to fix it, but I want him to replace the new tire with one that doesn’t leak.A: Did either of you two think that maybe the tire isn’t leaking?...

Last night’s episode of Lost, “This Place is Death,” brought us inches away from blowing open the island’s time travel secrets. While it was nice to get answers for a change, the episode didn’t do much except confirm everything we’ve been thinking: Charlotte’s been on the island before, Eliose (Ellie?) Hawking is Faraday’s mom, and Kate really is foolish enough to bring her child to a place where he could see Auntie Sun holding a gun to someone’s head....

Scientists continue to inch closer and closer to medical breakthroughs by tinkering with DNA. At the end of 2016, the CRISPR gene-editing tool was used for the first time on human cancer patients, and now, researchers have succeeded in creating a new kind of life with partially synthetic DNA. The E. coli microbes with synthetic DNA have an additional, lab-created “base pair” of molecules that researchers hope can be programmed so the organism produces new types of proteins that can be made into drugs....

Norway will become the first country to switch entirely from FM radio to digital broadcasting, after an unpopular decision from parliament gave the go-ahead. Few are happy about this move: a poll showed that 66 percent of Norwegians opposed the switch, while only 17 percent supported it. They have some good reasons to worry. Though Norway currently broadcasts using both traditional FM and digital methods, many people still listen the old fashioned way....

Today’s flagship phones are more or less identically great, if frequently overpriced for the few new features they offer. They are also tremendously boring. Each has a screen that measures five or six inches diagonally, a ecosystem of nearly identical apps, and a rectangular body that is now little more than pure screen. Meanwhile, a handful of glaring design problems continue to be unsolved. That’s what makes the new Palm phone so intriguing....

Lithium-sulfur batteries could be a reality with a new binding filler arranged as a bridge, not a network.Lithium-sulfur is a holy grail of battery development, with capacity many times more than lithium ion alone.High-capacity electrodes swell in volume up to 78 percent and bust out of traditional network binder architectures.Scientists are exploring ways to make lithium-sulfur batteries that can compete with the lithium-ion batteries that are the current standard. In Science Advances, lead author Mahdokht Shaibani and colleagues in Australia and Europe describe a way to make lithium-sulfur batteries more powerful by building frameworks that can accommodate the sulfur electrodes’ rapidly changing volume without losing energy....

Much like radioactive material, HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries knows no borders. The surprise hit, which recently became the highest-rated show in history on IMDB, is introducing the 1986 disaster to a generation that grew up after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and showing those who lived through the period an in-depth look at a story they may have forgotten. It’s also starting to affect life in the actual Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and Russian TV has announced it will create a counter-series....

If you go to the Summer Olympics in Japan in 2020, you might be recognized by more than just your friends. According to The Japan Times, the organizers of the 2020 Olympics plan to use facial recognition software to track hundreds of thousands of athletes, journalists, and officials during the games, though a source told the paper that this tech won’t be used on spectators.According to The Japan Times, many attendees, including athletes, media representatives, and Olympic officials and staff, will be issued photo IDs, and special cameras will check their faces at entrances to certain facilities....

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Greg NashSeveral dozen A-10 Warthog attack jets were grounded in 2017 after a number of pilots came down with hypoxia symptoms. The root cause of one of three incidents was later successfully diagnosed and fixed but the cause of the other two remain unsolved. The incidents mirror similar mysterious hypoxia incidents across the Navy and Air Force in 2017.Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that 28 A-10s were grounded at Davis-Monathan Air Force Base in November 2017 after three incidents involving hypoxia-like symptoms, two in the air and one on the ground....

Everything in physics is described by an equation. Equations can describe the shape of lines, curves, surfaces, and just about any object you can think of. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to think of anything not described by some equation or another.So this leads us to an interesting question: Is there a mathematical equation that describes itself? The answer, it turns out, is yes. It’s called Tupper’s Self-Referential Formula, and it looks like this:View full post on TwitterThe top part of that image is the equation itself....

If you’re unfamiliar with Polestar, here’s the elevator explanation: It started out as Volvo’s performance sub-brand, your ticket to hot S60s painted in nuclear shades of blue. Now Polestar is its own electric-focused brand, with three models on the way. There’s the $150,000, 600-hp hybrid Polestar 1 coupe, an as-yet-undefined electric SUV (the Polestar 3), and this imminent sedan: the Polestar 2, an openly declared shot at the Tesla Model 3....

It’s hard to get over putting your life’s work in harm’s way. Britney Schmidt hasn’t. The Georgia Tech researcher has tested the limits of underwater robots swimming beneath Antarctic ice shelves, a dry run for looking for life in outer space, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.“Anytime you take your whole program’s work and dangle it off of a fiber optic cable through meters of ice…it’s a little unnerving,” Schmidt tells Popular Mechanics, emailing from the Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe big move by Verizon Wireless to open up its cellphone network to devices not sold by the company came as a shock to many, but given consumer demand, it was probably inevitable. Just as live TV is becoming a thing of the past as audiences shift to online and digitally recorded offerings, mobile users are becoming more agitated over rules that enrich the coffers of carriers while restricting the freedom of customers....