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A U.S. Air Force training jet crashed last night, killing one pilot and injuring a second. The incident is the fifth such crash of the T-38 Talon jet trainer in just one year. It’s a startling crash frequency for the T-38, which was introduced into service in the late 1950s. Over the past several years, the Air Force has been coordinating a competition among defense contractors to build the new T-X trainer, which is scheduled to take over for the T-38 in the early 2020s....

It’s the stuff of nightmares. You have zero flying experience and your pilot suddenly becomes incapacitated. Would you be able to get yourself safely back on the ground? One of the few people who can definitively answer that question is John Wildey, an English retiree who, in the fall of 2013, was riding shotgun in a two-place Cessna when his friend succumbed to a massive coronary. Wildey told me his harrowing story over the phone....

The Claim: “Do you want to peel and slice vegetables in an instant? Then you need the Titan Peeler,” a kitchen peeler with a swiveling pair of serrated blades. Cutting on the push and pull strokes, the “micro-blade technology” shaves prep time when peeling cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, butternut squash and even pineapples. A pitch man with a British accent deftly demonstrates the tool to a rapt audience as he peels, slices and repeats the word, “fantastic....

It is very bad for there to ever be a bomb on an airliner. There are actually several people at any given airport whose entire job is to prevent you from bringing a bomb (and plenty of things that are not bombs) onto an airplane! Despite this, one employee of a drone company allegedly brought a bomb onto a plane anyway somehow, according to Bloomberg, and a coworker who reported it to the DoD was then fired....

SAFE AND SOUND:Stop the Tumble.THE QUICK FIXTall bookshelves can easily become top-heavy without your noticing it; and a fully weighted bookshelf that falls over can cause serious injury–not to mention considerable damage–to the shelves and items stored on them. Secure tall bookshelves to the wall with an eyehook strap (manufacturers often include them with the bookshelf, or you can buy them at large home centers).7:185 || SPINAL TAP:All those ponderous books you love are causing your bookshelves to sag....

So SpaceX is making a huge rocket out of stainless steel. As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s. We know he is doing this because, after weeks of rumors about a tweak to the design, a few days before Christmas Musk revealed that there would be much more than a tweak....

Vapes are a pretty trendy thing these days, and it seems like nowhere is safe from people inhaling flavored nicotine juice. But one place that should be safe is an airplane. After all, smoking is strictly forbidden on flights. But apparently even airplanes aren’t safe from vapes, although in a different way than you might expect: Recently, a vape managed to get an entire flight canceled after it spontaneously burst into flame....

Modern day wireless charging is slightly better than plugging in with a cable. Sure, you get to ditch the wire, but you still have to plug in the charging pad and then keep your phone on that while it juices up. A better version might be on the way: The FCC has just approved wireless charging tech that can work at a distance of feet, so you don’t even have to set your phone down....

“Mad” Mike Hughes wants to go to space, and he’s not waiting around for anyone to help him get there. So he’s going to build his own rocket and get to space on his own. The reason he wants to get into space so he can prove to everybody that the world is actually flat, so of course he’s not asking NASA for help.As the first step on his plan, Hughes will launch himself in a smaller rocket, soaring about a thousand feet into the sky....

A pair of extremely fast stars locked in a shared orbit have let scientists measure naturally occurring frame dragging for the first time.Frame dragging is a consequence of general relativity, and studying it could help scientists understand subatomic particle bonds and more.This special binary system is so fast that it produces measurable results over a much shorter time.A team of astrophysicists from around the world has been following an unusual pair of spinning stars for almost 20 years, and now they say the binary system is persuasive evidence of frame dragging....

A galaxy-mapping satellite could be used to find alien life—maybe. At least that’s the idea behind a pre-print study recently posted on ArXiv.org to spark community dialogue. The paper states that ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, which recently produced the largest map of the galaxy in history, could witness stars dimming due to the presence of alien megastructures.Nothing Gaia has spotted so far (or that researchers have spotted in the data) suggests that aliens are out there building planet-sized structures....

The specter of nuclear annihilation is something to sing about.Doctor Atomic is an opera that follows the tale of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his nucleus of scientists in the 24 hours prior to the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Now, 13 years after its debut, Doctor Atomic is bringing the bomb back home, performing within eye sight of the Los Alamos National Lab, the cradle of the Nuclear Age....

Media Platforms Design Team"You’re not a zombie, are you?" Hurley asked a recently back-from-the-dead Sayid in last night’s episode of Lost, “What Kate Does.” No, Hurley, Sayid’s not a zombie, but he is certainly infected. The temple-dwelling Others determined the former Iraqi guardsman was ill by putting Sayid through a battery of brutal tests: Burning him with a hot poker, blowing gray dust over him and shocking the poor guy—who, let’s not forget, just recovered from being shot—with what appeared to be a handmade electricity generating machine....

A man in Cambridge, England has built what he calls a “megaprocessor” in his living room. It’s 32-feet wide, six and a half feet tall, and so far he uses it to play Tetris. James Newman, the megaproccessor’s creator and owner, explains on his website:Like all modern processors the Megaprocessor is built from transistors. It’s just that instead of using teeny-weeny ones integrated on a silicon chip it uses discrete individual ones like those below....

Certain Netflix subscription tiers will be getting a price hike in the United States, Mashable reports. The basic plan, which supports one stream at a time in SD quality, will remain $8. The “standard” plan with two simultaneous streams and HD quality will go from $10 to $11. The “premium” plan with four simultaneous streams and UHD/4K quality will go from $12 to $14.The increases start in November and customers will be alerted about the hikes on October 19th....

Media Platforms Design TeamAfter three fires within six weeks involving Tesla Model S EVs, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration announced Tuesday that it’s investigating the cases for possible defects in design. At least two of three incidents involved cars driving over metallic objects at high speeds, subsequently puncturing the vehicles’ battery pack and sparking a fire. Although the safety systems performed as designed and no passengers have been injured (with one passenger being thankful he was in a Tesla), the string of incidents have caught the NHTSA’s attention....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) does not rewrite the U.S.’s nuclear posture, and some people ask why having a triad of nuclear weapons is necessary after the Cold War.As airmen, we strongly believe that it is important for the United States to be able to hold at risk any adversary’s target, regardless of where it is, regardless of how far away it is from the coast, regardless of how heavily defended it is, regardless of how deeply buried it may be, regardless of how widely dispersed it may be....

Gravity is a bit of an enigma. We know how it works, but not really what causes it. In 1915, Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity demonstrated that gravitational attraction is due to the warping of space: Large masses like stars and planets actually curve the space around them, pulling other objects in.But exactly how space gets curved is still an open question. One possibility is that the force of gravity is carried by a particle, like how electricity is carried by the electron or how light is carried by the photon....

Back in 2015, Apple released the MacBook, an incredibly thin and light 12-inch laptop with a “butterfly” keyboard mechanism. That key design went into the following MacBook Pros, helping keep every model thin and light. Great! Not so great was that soon after, the design was subject of lawsuits alleging the keyboard was defective: Customers complained that the keys jammed easily, requiring an expensive trip to an Apple Store. Apple also has a formal plan to service affected keyboards....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the joys of fly fishing is the crafting involved—and that isn’t limited to tying flies. “People can’t believe how easy it is to build a rod just the way you want it,” says Russell Parks, owner of the Missoulian Angler Fly Shop in Missoula, Mont. “You want pink wraps? Titanium guides? A cork handle shaped to your hand? Knock yourself out.” For under $100, you can buy a complete freshwater kit....