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Lord of the RingsQ: My son just bought a used car with aftermarket rims. I’m concerned that the centering ring on the hubs is smaller than the corresponding bore on the wheels. This means the wheels may not center correctly, right? Is this safe?WILLIAM STABLER Summerville, SCA: They should be fine. As to whether the rims fit correctly, that’s another Auto Clinic letter in itself. Centering is only one issue. The overall width and offset are also important because they affect handling and steering....

Converting low-energy beams into high-energy emissions is crucial to making laser weapons practical. But it’s currently unmanageable. CBGO crystals promise to make that conversion with unparalleled efficiency. But Chinese scientists face the same struggle their American counterparts do in controlling thermal management.There’s a global race for better laser crystal technology, a race in which China has invested heavily.Laser could become more efficient in the future, thanks to a discovery from Chinese scientists....

Media Platforms Design TeamMany people think bicycle selection is limited to what’s available at their local sporting goods store or bike shop, and they get stuck with bikes that don’t fit properly or meet their needs. It doesn’t have to be that way. Across the country, bike builders are creating custom rides to fit their clients’ preferences and body types. Most custom builders specialize in a specific type of frame material....

We haven’t seen very many spy photos of the upcoming C30, but expect the concept shown here to be very much like the production car to be introduced at the Paris show in September. Hey, recognize that profile? There’s a little bit of P1800 there (although we’ve never seen a P1800 with a lip spoiler). A good 8 in. shorter than the current S40, the C30 will be powered by a 2....

“Cheater,” they scoffed, and why wouldn’t they? The final leg of the Five Boro Bike Tour, a ride of nearly 40 miles through every section of New York City, features the long climb up the Verrazano Bridge from the southern end of Brooklyn to Staten Island. Even under ideal conditions it’s an arduous ascent, a push through the pain and soreness brought on by dodging potholes and other riders across a few dozen miles of the Big Apple....

Star Trek’s Spock comes from the planet Vulcan, which of course doesn’t exist. But new research might give us the next best thing—an exoplanet orbiting the real-life star that Vulcan is said to be orbiting in the Star Trek universe.In 1991, Gene Roddenberry wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope about what kind of star the planet Vulcan was likely to orbit. In that letter, he specifically picks out one such star, 40 Eridani....

A few months ago, the International Astronomical Union opened up a public vote on the name of a handful of exoplanets. Today, those results were announced. World, meet planet Poltergeist. Sorry, maybe you once knew it as PSR B1257+12 C, a hard to remember name around a distant pulsar. It was one of the first planets discovered, but it’s now got a name that rolls off the tongue a little easier than the name announced in 1992....

On Monday, Gen. Alireza Tangsiri, the naval head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Iran had full control of the Persian Gulf. He added that the U.S. Navy, with its mission “to ensure freedom of navigation” worldwide, had no business being there.These are bold, provocative statements made to influence the ongoing negotiations over sanctions and the fate of the 2015 nuclear agreement. But such a threat needs to be backed up with hardware, and Iran feels it has what it takes to except control over this vital waterway....

Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter, was already kind of a hell world. Unlike the icy moons with liquid oceans, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, Io explodes with constant toxic lava spewed hundreds of miles into space. The tug of Jupiter’s intense gravity pulls Io along like taffy, and strong magnetic fields bombard it constantly with radiation. If Europa is the best place to find life in the solar system, few would be worse than Io....

Composite carbon fiber is at the foundation of some of aviation’s most advanced projects, including the F-35 Lightning II airplane. The material, which is lighter and stronger than metal, requires a new class of tools to shape it. When engineers machine parts for a stealth airplane, each piece has to fit perfectly. However, the edges of carbon-composite shapes suffer from delamination when their tightly pressed layers separate after being cut. This star-shaped router bit, built by South Carolina’s AMAMCO Tool, is designed to prevent delamination....

Last year, when Popular Mechanics covered the future of cancer treatment, I said that many of James P. Allison’s contemporaries believed that he would win the Nobel Prize. But to be honest, that was an understatement. People were in awe of him. His work was so brilliant that his name opened doors with other scientists. “Oh,” very important people would say when they found out he had agreed to be interviewed for my story....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s 98 F in the Mojave Desert as I cross an old tailings flat toward the waiting Robinson R44 helicopter and its pilot, Jeff Wilson. Every three weeks for the past year Wilson has made a 40-minute flight in the doorless, 1500-pound light helicopter from Las Vegas to the Mountain Pass mine, a 2200-acre site just over the California state line. An aerial photographer rides shotgun. They’re freelancers, employed by the mine’s owner, Molycorp, to document the rebirth and colossal expansion of what was once the largest and most profitable rare-earth mine in the world....

There’s something strange orbiting a dead star 450 light years from Earth. Spotted in a cloud of debris not acting like it should, the likely culprit is improbable—but not impossible. In a paper reported today in Science, a University of Warwick-led team reported the tentative identification of a massive chunk of debris orbiting the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. If their suspicions are correct, it could be a 125-mile round fragment of an Earth-like planetary core, leftover from the death of its original star....

SpaceX is getting ready to go to Mars. Sending humans to the red planet is the company’s ultimate goal, and this week it might be getting one step closer. According to reports, SpaceX might be planning to test their planet-hopping ‘Starship’ rocket very soon.SpaceX’s Starship is a futuristic concept that Elon Musk has claimed could carry 100 people on an interplanetary flight. When it’s completed, it will be one of the largest rockets ever built, and could be the first spacecraft to bring humans to another planet....

A new T. rex cousin has been recently rediscovered by a Ph.D candidate at the University of Calgary.The fossilized specimen used to confirm the new species was actually sitting in a drawer in a museum for nearly a decade before a student at the university identified it.The new dinosaur, Thanatotheristes degrootorum, is also known as the ‘reaper of death’ and goes by the nickname ‘Thanatos,’ Greek for ‘death.’ The dinosaur was absolutely ferocious and had a maw full of razor-sharp teeth....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe FAA’s big announcement on Wednesday night couldn’t have come at a worse time for LOT Polish Airlines. Poland’s flag carrier was flying its first Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight from Warsaw to Chicago when the directive came from Washington: All Boeing 787 aircraft operated by U.S. carriers were to be grounded, and the FAA recommended that its counterparts at aviation authorities overseas do the same.Taxis were already pulling up to O’Hare to drop off travel journalists and industry VIPs for the return trip to Warsaw—a much-publicized, milestone flight that would have marked the first regularly scheduled 787 service from the U....

[Left: A standard county detention facility has towers and windows or bars that separate staff from inmates, small windows that don’t let in much light, and drab institutional colors. Right: a illustration of the new concept jail.]If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, you know that environment can manipulate behavior, encouraging you to stay out later or spend more money without realizing it. It’s the same in prison: Depressing conditions and a draconian culture can encourage poor behavior, which leads to longer punishments—at tax-payers’ expense....

A YouTube channel named Indepth Sound Design has done a service to fans of movies everywhere by uploading what appears to be sound designer Ben Burtt’s DVD commentary on Star Wars: Episode IV. If you’re interested in how big-budget movies were built before the modern era, it’s a long but fascinating watch. View full post on YoutubeBurtt gets into his own personal history, which is fascinating, but here are a few choices that might be of special interest to PopMech readers....

Nations, space companies, and even private citizens have big plans to colonize the Moon. But this reinvigorated focus on our nearest celestial neighbor have some worried that this mad dash could destroy historical lunar landmarks.Yesterday, The White House issued a report calling for ways to protect Apollo-era landing sites, calling them “rich in scientific and historical significance.” Congress mandated the report in the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. Damage from exhaust blasts of nearby spacecraft, biological contamination, and the obliteration of tracks in the regolith are all concerns....

Earth has changed a lot over millions of years, but real estate is forever. That’s the idea behind software engineer Ian Webster’s tool which allows users to find where their home address would have been on the ancient mega-continent Pangea. The tool shows how the Earth has changed over the last 750 million years, after visuals of 540 million years ago, 300 million years, 90 million years ago, and many demarcations in between....