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On the clear, moonless night on May 20, 2012, Wayne Jaeschke recorded a Martian phenomenon that he was sure couldn’t be real: an unexplained cloud moving the Mars atmosphere. And now, two and a half years later, professional scientists who have studied it still aren’t sure what it is, according to their report out in Nature today.“At first I thought: maybe there’s a pixel error in the live feed on my computer, or some dust has collected on a [telescope] sensor,” said Jaeschke, a patent lawyer and amateur astronomer in West Chester, PA, of that initial sighting....

A computer operating system is like a desk. It should be comfortable to work at; sturdy and stable; handsome to look upon, but not distracting; it should be able to store files and tools away when not in use, but keep them accessible when you need them. But above all else, an OS should get out of the way and let you get your work done. Now imagine if your desk were enormous—taking up a significant portion of the room you keep it in....

Media Platforms Design TeamCan you tell me a little about your company?Tulikivi started with one man’s vision that he could take an unused soapstone quarry and turn it into something that could help keep the local economy growing. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the Finnish Soapstone Company (Suomen Vuolukivi Oy) was formed in the village of Nunnanlahti. In 1980 the company was reorganized and began producing stoves using the name Tulikivi, which means fire stone....

Media Platforms Design TeamHere’s something you can’t say about many apps: It will change the way you look at the world. The new Word Lens does just that. Point the phone’s camera at a sign, a book, or any written words in a foreign language, and the text will appear in English on the phone’s screen—in the same font, in the same position, and even on the same background it has in the real world....

A new study from University of Reading indicates that climate change could dramatically increase the levels of turbulence experienced by airplanes. The researchers found that light turbulence would increase by 59 percent, moderate turbulence would go up by 94 percent, and severe turbulence would see a 149 percent increase. The reason for this, according to the study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, is that greater CO2 levels will create stronger vertical wind shears, which destabilize planes flying in the atmosphere....

The U.S. Navy announced that it converted EA-18G Growler electronic attack jets into unmanned vehicles.In a test, a manned Growler controlled two unmanned Growlers.The previously unknown test could mean that unmanned Navy warplanes are coming sooner than experts thought. In a surprise announcement, the U.S. Navy revealed on Tuesday that it had successfully flown tests involving unmanned versions of the EA-18G Growler electronic attack fighter. The tests involved a single manned EA-18G controlling two unmanned versions of the same aircraft, opening up the possibility that the U....

An F-22 Raptor fighter jet was damaged this weekend when it evidently experienced a malfunction during takeoff. The fighter skidded to a stop on the runway, damaging the underside of the aircraft. The pilot was not injured and the incident is under investigation.The F-22 Raptor was in the midst of taking off from Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada when the left engine apparently stalled. The War Zone blog contacted Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where the F-22 was based, the Air Force confirmed the accident took place....

Everyone has the Moon on their mind—but ispace, a Japanese robotics firm, is solidifying plans to go there.The company announced today that it will contract with SpaceX for two flights, one in 2020, the other in 2021. The first mission will see the company insert an orbiter into lunar orbit, sending a lander down shortly after, while the second mission will include a rover deployed by a landing vehicle. ispace previously funded the HAKUTO team, one of the finalists for the Lunar XPRIZE....

Media Platforms Design TeamRepeat after me: I would consider buying a $700, electric-assist, auto-retractable, remote-controlled hose reel.If you just said that with a straight face, allow me to introduce you to Great Stuff’s RoboReel Water Management System, which is surely the most engineering we’ve ever seen thrown at eliminating one of life’s minor irritations. The same company that created the $300 power-retractable electric extension cord and the $280 power-retractable air hose has extended its concept to the backyard garden hose....

Bear and squirrel hibernation offer exciting paths for research into human hibernation.Near-future human travel to Mars is one potentially huge application for findings like these.Induced cold also has more feasible medical applications, like increasing viability of organs.The New York Times reports researchers are exploring ways bear hibernation could change human approaches to healthcare or even space travel. Times fellow Devi Lockwood talked with evolutionary biologists about how bears change most in their fatty tissues—their other tissues like muscle barely change, let alone the level of atrophy or even bedsores that would likely afflict a human who tried it....

A 700,000-year-old butchered rhino carcass in the Philippines is rewriting the history of early human migration around the globe, and telling us more about a tool-using human relative that lived long before Homo sapiens ever existed. Researchers recently unearthed a rhino skeleton on Kalinga, a province within the Philippine island of Luzon. The skeleton showed signs of deliberate butchering by stone tools. But when these cuts were made more than 700,000 years ago, there shouldn’t have been any tool-users around to butcher the animal—at least according to our old understanding....

On April 14, the U.S. and allies attacked chemical weapons plants in Syria, in retaliation for that country using chemical agents against its own citizens.The airstrike was different in one important way: Air Force space experts used satellites in tactical ways to plan and execute the attack, something the military has just started doing.This kind of teamwork makes airstrikes more accurate, resulting in more effective targeting with fewer civilian casualties.It’s early April, and the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow did the ancient ancestors of modern birds survive the cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs? They got small.According to a study in the journal Science last week, the key to how giant dinosaurs evolved into relatively tiny birds is shrinkage. Specifically, a branch of therapod dinosaurs—the group that includes theTyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, and is most closely related to today’s birds—miniaturized starting about 200 million years ago, with their skeletons changing four times faster than other dinosaurs....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’m 30 seconds into my first hovercraft solo when things start to go wrong. Zipping along near a sandbar in the middle of the Wisconsin River, I’m cranking around into my first turn and I find myself gradually losing speed.Soon I’m dead in the water. I gun the throttle. The engine screams, and water sprays up over the gunwales in sheets. It’s like sitting in a car wash, one that’s getting carried away downstream....

Today, I’m going to continue the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) discussion with an optimistic look forward. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I firmly believe that this technology is coming; it’s just a matter of when.But how big can it become? David Rogers, the Department of Energy official I interviewed for the May cover story, makes a salient point: No one (except maybe Toyota, and probably not even them) predicted how popular conventional regenerative hybrids would become....

The Department of Defense advised troops against taking inexpensive genetic testing kits.DoD says the kits could provide inaccurate information.The data could be used by unscrupulous parties against the U.S. military.The U.S. Department of Defense circulated a memo warning troops against using inexpensive home genetic testing kits. The memo cited the possibility of troops getting incorrect information about their genetic medical history but also the possibility that unknown parties could use the information to create “security consequences” that pose a risk to military operations....

Media Platforms Design TeamFord Motor Company just announced that it will stop selling the Mercury in the fourth quarter of this year. There’s nothing unusual about losing automotive brands. In 1915, there were hundreds of makes of cars on sale in this country. We’ve lost some almost every year since. They fade away. You don’t hear too many people complaining that they can’t buy an Apperson Jackrabbit any more. “Whaddaya mean the Jackrabbit’s gone....

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and veterans of the space industry founded Moon Express with the goal of sending a probe to the Moon, mining it for valuable minerals, and bringing them back to Earth. And they’ve just taken a major step toward achieving that goal with Moon Express finally raising enough money to get there.Moon Express is competing in Google’s Lunar XPrize, which awards $20 million to the first team to land a probe on the Moon....

More than a decade after the debut of the Toyota Prius, Porsche is racing a new version of its evergreen 911 that has some potential to shake up the world of hybrid technology. The 911 GT3R hybrid is a racing laboratory that Porsche is using to evaluate a high-performance through-the-road (TTR) hybrid configuration with an electro-mechanical flywheel energy storage system.By now many drivers are at least vaguely aware that hybrid vehicles like the Prius use a chemical battery and an electric motor to provide a mix of low-speed electric driving and electric boost that reduces fuel consumption....

Media Platforms Design TeamPrice: $200-$250 (depending on carrier); $700 off contractOn Sale Date: NowWhen Samsung releases a Galaxy smartphone, the world pays attention. Last year’s Galaxy S4 introduced a bevy of hardware innovations, including eye tracking and finger detection, and continued the tradition of impressive displays. However, Samsung saw stiff competition from the HTC One, Nexus 4 and 5, and the ever-threatening iPhone. As the S5 appears, the smartphone landscape looks similar....