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View full post on TwitterSouthwest Flight 957 from Chicago’s Midway Airport to Newark, New Jersey had to make an emergency landing in Cleveland today after one of the plane’s windows cracked. Nobody was hurt, and Southwest immediately put all the passengers onto another flight to get them to their final destination. But following the disaster aboard Southwest Flight 1380 that killed a person and injured several, and concerns that the airline needs to do more faster to inspect its fleet of Boeing 737 jets, this is another troubling sign for the airline....

Scientists have found a path to reduce hydrogen energy costs.Hydrogen technology is ready to move forward, but is held back by high cost and scarcity.The new research involves dropping a large number of ingredients into one big computational bucket.Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have teamed up to begin solving one of the big problems facing clean energy hydrogen production. They’ve been studying ways to better catalyze splitting water into energy-ready hydrogen....

Units of the U.S. Army are training to map out, and if necessary fight in, North Korea’s underground complexes. Soldiers from the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division are training in underground tunnels to prepare for the mission of securing North Korean tunnels in the event of war. North Korea is estimated to have thousands of tunnels and underground facilities that would shelter the regime leadership and possibly chemical and nuclear weapons, in the event of war with the United States and South Korea....

Wildfires ravaged Northern California this weekend. The “Valley Fire” in Lake County, northwest of Sacramento started as a 50-acre blaze on Saturday afternoon, growing steadily to a 50,000-acre inferno by Sunday night. A resident of the area—mulletFive on YouTube—recorded his (successful) escape from the hellish flames. The footage is a nightmare. View full post on YoutubeThe video was taken at 8:30 PM on Saturday night on the way out of Anderson Springs, and really speaks for itself....

A number of foreign tanks are equal or nearly equal to the M1 Abrams main battle tank. The U.S. Army admits the Abrams, which reigned supreme on battlefields for decades, no longer has “overmatch” against potential adversaries—particularly Russia.In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, deputy chief of staff for financial management, listed a number of tanks he thought were as good as the M1 Abrams....

Humanity has gone interstellar again. For the second time this decade, NASA has successfully sent a probe past the threshold of the heliopause, establishing humanity as an interstellar presence. The Voyager 2 probe now joins its sibling, Voyager 1, in having crossed the barrier.Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 has covered over 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) on its journey into the void. To leave, Voyager 2 would have to leave what’s known as the heliopause— “where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium,” NASA says in a press release....

The U.S. Air Force temporarily grounded its fleet of B-1B Lancer heavy strategic bombers yesterday over an issue with its ejection seats. The grounding takes place more than a month after a B-1B made an emergency landing at a civilian airport after a fire was detected onboard the aircraft. The B-1Bs were returned to service within hours of the grounding announcement.In a statement issued on June 7, the Air Force Global Strike Command said, “During the safety investigation process following an emergency landing of a B-1B in Midland, Texas, an issue with ejection seat components was discovered that necessitated the stand-down....

For sale: Cold War Albanian fighter jets, gently used.Back in 2016, Albania accounted that a slew of vintage jets dating from the 1960s have were up for sale. Since then, however, legal red tape has prevented would-be buyers from swooping in and taking the air relics home. But now, at least, we’re all getting a cool look at the collection:View full post on YoutubeThe jets, some of which look quite grim, are located at Gjader Air Base in underground storage facilities built during the Cold War....

Media Platforms Design Team Today Apple announced that it will debut its new CarPlay operating system at the Geneva Motor Show later this week. CarPlay is the official name for Apple’s “iOS in the Car” operating system that the company announced at its iOS 7 press conference last year. Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo will be the first carmakers to show off the Apple integration in Geneva, but a slew of other carmakers are also on board, and the first versions of the system are coming in select vehicles this year....

For a fortnight in March 1437, a new star appeared in Scorpius, burning bright. It brightened gradually, then disappeared into the night, seemingly forever. Korean astronomers plotted its position exactly, preserving it in the history books for future astronomers to find.Modern astronomers know now that the object is a classical nova, which occurs when a dead star husk called a white dwarf steals enough gas from a neighboring star to blow up like a stellar atomic bomb before quieting back down....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s common knowledge that manufacturers hold back on tuning every last ounce of performance from their engines. It’s also fact that factory authorized tuners like Volvo’s Polestar offer four-figure software tweaks that not only boost horsepower and torque, but have also been known to increase fuel economy, to boot.Keen to broaden the accessibility of their “M” branded performance division, BMW now offers an M Performance Power Kit software upgrade for 2012 335i sedan and 335i xDrive sedans which the manufacturer says was “developed through consultation by the engineers at BMW M GmbH,” and elevates horsepower from 300 to 320, which improves the 0-60 mph time by ....

The BBC reports that UN officials will impose an international shipping speed limit.Cargo container shipping propels the world economy, with new technological advancements all the time.The only arguments in the industry are over the best way to meet emissions goals.This week, officials from the UN will meet to hear proposals to cut shipping industry emissions by introducing speed limits, the BBC reports. Container ships and other ocean liners in the industry deal with a lot fewer of the complications that overland vehicles face, and limiting speed could be an easy way to kick off an industry move to reduce emissions by 50 percent in the next three decades....

Out of all the knives you might want in your workshop, a drawknife might not be the most practical, but it’s certainly unique. And if you make it yourself by just bringing a rusty old saw blade back from the brink in the process, why not? John Heisz—a master of the busted-old-thing-into-a-knife art form—pulled off that very trick for his most recent video, using an old diamond blade he had languishing in his backyard....

The reinforced levees held, battle-worn residents evacuated, and Hurricane Gustav faded over the Gulf Coast this Labor Day weekend with just one glaring lesson of Katrina left unfulfilled: Storm survivors need more emergency power.In a stroke of good timing by city planners and bus manufacturers as approximately 1 millions homes and business fought to recover power throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, hybrid-electric bus fleets were beginning plans to retrofit to provide electricity during emergencies....

The goal of a human mission to Mars remains in President Trump’s budget, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX is actively studying potential landing sites on the fourth planet. But until humans get to the Red Planet, Finnish filmmaker Jan Frodjman has stitched together a reasonable look at what they might be seeing during the initial flyovers.View full post on VimeoThese images come from NASA’s HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, which allows scientists to distinguish physical features on Mars down to around three feet tall....

No, it’s not always easy to maneuver your car around 80,000-pound fully loaded 18-wheelers that travel America’s highways. But trucking makes our economy go—and we’ve all got to share the road. So instead of complaining about getting a semi’s wake blown all over your windshield or being stuck behind a truck lumbering up a hill, it’s time to get serious staying safe around these huge machines.I have a commercial driver’s license, considerable experience in big rigs both on test tracks and on the road, and lots of opinionated trucker friends....

IBM is a giant of computing history, having played a crucial role in the advent of the personal computer and designing what is objectively the best keyboard ever made. But as the monolithic company has been throwing its weight behind the Watson project, it may have been doing something much less laudable behind the scenes. According to a joint report by Mother Jones and ProPublica, IBM has been targeting older workers in a series of discriminatory and potentially illegal layoffs....

Imagine swallowing a medical device that, once it hit your gut, could send a wealth of information about your health right to your smartphone. It’s a reality that’s Massachusetts scientists hope to bring about one day, outlined in a new study in Science.Researchers at MIT, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Harvard, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed the ingestible sensor called IMBED (Ingestible Micro-Bio-Electronic Device). In tests on pigs, the sensor could to detect molecules indicative of excess internal bleeding....

If you’ve ever bought a can of compressed air to clean your computer or keyboard, you may have noticed the lengthy list of safety warnings on the back. That alarmist language isn’t for nothing, because apparently if you mix the contents of the can with hot water, the result is some pretty terrifying explosions.In this video from the Backyard Scientist, he films the explosion with his high-speed camera:View full post on YoutubeThe stuff in a compressed air can isn’t actually air—at least not the air we breathe....

The “brains” of the Ares I rocket that will send four astronauts back to the moon sometime in the next 12 years will be built by Boeing, NASA announced today–but the specifications will be open-source and non-proprietary, so that other companies can bid on future contracts. The avionics unit will provide guidance, navigation and control for the launch rocket, which will carry the Orion crew vehicle into Earth orbit.“The combined Ares I and Orion will replace the Space Shuttle and become the workhorse that takes astronauts into space for journeys to the Space Station, the Moon and Mars,” said Doug Cooke, a official with NASA’s Exploration Systems division....