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Media Platforms Design TeamBase Price: $55,250Simply put, the ZL1 is the quickest Camaro that Chevrolet has ever made. It will run through the quarter-mile in less than 12 seconds and blast all the way up to 184 mph. Power hounds can choose between a six-speed manual and automatic. But the ZL1’s excellence isn’t based solely on its prowess as a sprinter. This Camaro will swallow up bumpy back streets and tackle curvy canyon roads with a deftness usually reserved for a European sports car and rewards every action you take with smoothness, refinement, and ease of use....

Showing how little we know about the body that makes all life on Earth possible, scientists have just learned that the sun’s core rotates four times faster than its surface. Previously, they thought the two moved at similar speeds.“The most likely explanation is that this core rotation is left over from the period when the sun formed, some 4.6 billion years ago,” says Roger Ulrich, a UCLA professor who co-authored the study and has studied the sun for 40 years....

Today, we tend to associate the flying wing design of aircraft with stealthy planes like the B-2 and the upcoming B-21 bomber. But the world’s first jet-powered flying wing emerged 70 years ago, and it was not designed to be stealthy but instead to conquer the problem of drag. The Northrop YB-49 “Flying Wing” bomber prototype flew flight tests with the Air Force for several years before a fatal crash and basic problems with the aircraft led to its cancellation in 1949....

The unearthed sketchbook for Blade Runner is a reminder of just how forward thinking the 1982 film was. The film’s ideas of 2019 even in sketch form are eerily prescient in some ways, goofily anachronistic in others, and sometimes overshoot the technology by a few decades. Which is to say, it was totally a Ridley Scott movie. “Our city is rich, colorful, noisy, gritty, full of textures and teeming with life, much like a major city of today....

Media Platforms Design TeamKnowhere, the fictional outpost located inside the severed head of a celestial being in last summer’s blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, was just as impressive and entertaining to watch as any of the thrilling action or witty dialogue. Yet rarely do we stop to think about how much work actually goes into creating a world so full of detail.Fortunately, Framestore, the British visual effects company tasked with conceiving of and designing Knowhere, has released this mind-blowing video reel displaying just how complicated the four-mile-wide world really is....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe U.S.’s largest automaker will no longer be accountable to the American taxpayer, hopefully, within a year.In a pair of announcements today, both General Motors and the U.S. Treasury Department announced plans to eliminate the government’s stake in the Detroit automaker. First, before the end of the year, GM plans to repurchase 200 million shares of its own stock from the Fed for $5.5 billion at $27.50 a share....

Pfc. Marcus Beedle looks over his shoulder at the robot following him. The machine\’s four legs are eagerly stamping the grass, its sensor-laden head held high. “ls3, follow tight,” beedle says to the robot, and theMedia Platforms Design TeamThe Marines’ robotic mule is no more, according to a report from Military.com. The report says that the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) program will not be continued, partly because the machine is just too loud to work in the real world....

Media Platforms Design Team Rumors are circulating that Obama may fill his last top cabinet post, Secretary of Commerce, with Symantec CEO John Thompson. By our account, Thompson would be the second-geekiest member of Obama’s cabinet, coming in behind only Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu. Chu has a Nobel Prize in physics, so he’s pretty hard to out-geek. Nevertheless, Thompson has a long history in the tech field, before working at the famed computer security software company, he has previously worked 28 years at IBM, chaired a Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security and Technology and was appointed by former president Bush to the National Infrastructure Advisory Committee to help evaluate critical infrastructure in the U....

BUY NOWOn the coast of North Carolina, garages aren’t always garages. By which I mean, depending on the FEMA flood map, a garage might use louvered walls, which allow water to flow through during a flood event. That’s prudent, but louvered walls are the same as no walls at all where weather is concerned. Rain, salt, air, and sand blow through unimpeded, devouring and destroying everything therein. Garage door motors, golf clubs, tools—your typical garage items don’t stand a chance....

It was 20 minutes into the scheduled flight from New York City to Dallas that disaster struck Southwest Flight 1380. The jet suffered an engine failure at 32,500 feet over eastern Pennsylvania. Debris went flying and some of it punched out a window, partially sucking out a passenger. Fellow passengers were able to pull her back inside, but she died of her injuries.Things could have been a lot worse were it not for the plane’s captain, Tammie Jo Shults, a former Navy fighter pilot and one of the first women to fly the F/A-18....

Wall-E has a pint-sized sibling and its name is Cozmo. Anki, best known so far as the creator of Drive, those excellent smartphone-controlled toy race cars, today announced the launch of this little AI wonder.Judging by the way Anki talks about its new bot, Cozmo isn’t so much a tool as the answer to a question: Can we build robots that have personality, like what we see in the machines promised by sci-fi?...

On Saturday, Iranian Revolutionary Guards conducted a live-fire exercise within 1,500 yards of the U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and two other warship—the U.S. Destroyer Buckley and a French frigate—as they were entering the Persian Gulf through the Hormuz Strait. The Iranian ships gave only 23 seconds warning before firing several unguided rockets near the warships and other merchant vessels that were transiting the strait at the time. “These actions were highly provocative, unsafe, and unprofessional and call into question Iran’s commitment to the security of a waterway vital to international commerce,” Navy Commander Kyle Raines said in an email, according to Reuters....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Space shuttle Endeavour after it landed July 31, 2009 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at the end of a 16-day mission to the International Space Station. (Photograph by Bruce Weaver/AFP/Getty Images)NASA Needs More MoneyALSO SEE* Tom Jones: Six Space Policy Musts for the Obama Administration The commission says the agency “is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resource.” The commission set that increase at $3 billion a year; NASA currently gets about $18 million....

(1) How are planned and unplanned airstrikes different?Not all airstrikes are equal when it comes to civilian casualties. A Human Rights Watch investigation showed that warplanes rarely kill civilians during planned airstrikes on suspected Taliban targets. In a planned mission, commanders use detailed satellite images and intelligence to help determine the size of bomb to drop in order to limit unwanted damage. They also employ modeling software that uses many factors, including building materials and the size of the warhead, to tailor an airstrike....

The U.S. Secretary of Defense will meet with NATO this week to pitch a new plan of minimum force levels designed to guarantee European security. Mattis’s so-called “30-30-30-30” plan involves committing European allies to a bare minimum level of air, land, and sea forces ready to deter—and if necessary, fight—Russia.According to Military Times, the “30-30-30-30” plan calls on NATO to be capable of assembling a fighting force of 30 land battalions, 30 aircraft squadrons, and 30 warships within 30 days....

What do you get the sports fan who wants to bowl 300 without practicing? Try the RC900, a remote-control bowling ball invented by San Antonio, Texas-based 900 Global. The bowler steers the ball by adjusting the position of a weight screwed onto a threaded shaft inside the ball.The product is being marketed to young children and those unable to bowl because of physical limitations. The ball itself is surprisingly nimble, as evidenced by a user-submitted video (see below) in which one of them slaloms smoothly around four chairs set up along the lane before striking the headpin....

Media Platforms Design TeamSmall-car chic is the trend du jour these days, and between buzzworthy B-cars like the Mazda2 and Ford Fiesta, Chevrolet’s current Aveo is starting to look a little, well, dowdy. Unveiled with what GM calls “hints at the next-generation Aveo,” Chevy’s Aveo RS Show Car certainly looks like it could hang with the cool kids. The Euro-style hatchback wears huge brake-cooling inlets, swollen wheel wells, and rally-car-like features including an integrated roof-mounted spoiler and center-mounted exhaust pipes....

The earth’s magnetic field surrounds us all, but for the most part humans cannot feel it. Now, scientists at a German research lab have created an electronic skin (e-skin) with magnetosensitive capabilities. Wearing this e-skin is, according to the researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) lab, a “bionic analog of a compass.” Using only a silver polymer a thousandth of a millimeter thick and the earth’s magnetic fields, researchers were able to control a virtual panda on a screen in a demonstration....

If you’re like us, you were probably enthralled by a hypnotic video that emerged from the depths of the Internet to take charge of Twitter and capture the hearts of millions over the weekend. Just why did these fish flying through tubes resonate so soundly? Better to not look a gift fish in the mouth. View full post on TwitterThough the strange salmon cannon has suddenly caught fire, it turns out the quick process of spitting fish through tubes to hurdle over obstacles in water has been a focus of wildlife experts for years....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/Ov5YUVRcYHA?version=3&hl=en_US[/youtube]Because of their gravity-defying sticky feet and claws, geckos are one of the most often studied creatures by scientists looking to build robots and machines to mimic the clever tricks of nature. Here’s another gecko trick: running off a ledge, swinging around, and hiding on the underside of ledge. Geckos can pull off this disappearing act. Cockroaches can do. Both, it seems developed the maneuver to escape from clumsier pursuers who lack such gymnastic ability....