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A small plane emblazoned with the WWII-era German ‘Balkenkreuz’ cross made a fiery crash landing on the northbound 101 west of Los Angeles on Tuesday. The pilot, Robert Sandberg, was able to escape unharmed before the wreckage burst into flames, shutting down traffic for hours. View full post on YoutubeSandberg says that his SNJ-5 suffered an engine failure, leaving him no choice but to make an emergency landing. As he told ABC7 News: “I picked a spot on the freeway, where I knew there was a big section of cars that weren’t there, but the engine completely failed....

We may never know the specifics of how live in the universe began, but scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have gotten a step closer to understanding one of the most important milestones—the creation of complex hydrocarbons in space, a first step down the road to complex organisms. Specifically, why certain chemical compounds, like pyrene, exist in meteorites.Pyrene is desginated as a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, or PAH....

The Falcon Heavy, three Falcon 9 cores bolted together to form a massive heavy-lift rocket, will not launch until at least January 2018, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and COO, told Aviation Week that a static fire test of the Falcon Heavy is scheduled to take place in December at launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the maiden launch will occur a few weeks after that....

Taiwan staged a unique set of wargames on Tuesday designed to ensure it can put fighter jets in the air long after military air bases have been closed by enemy action. The country’s air force closed a major stretch of highway and launched and recovered three types of fighter jets, each armed with weapons. The exercise was designed to show the country’s determination to defend itself from armed attack, particularly from China....

An all-terrain-vehicle safety training course took place May 26 on New York’s Randall’s Island—the closest place to Manhattan that one can legally ride an ATV, according to the event’s coordinators, the ATV Safety Institute. The environment definitely had that gritty urban feel. The RFK/Triborough Bridge thundered over the training course, a dusty field littered with crushed Rheingold cans so old they had pull-tab tops. The course instructor, Steve Pitts, was visiting the city from Hiram, Ga....

Germanium is a great material for semi-conductors, but it’s also an incredibly hard material to extract due to its reactive nature. It’s likely in your phone right now, but probably not in the ground. While it’s not a rare earth metal, it’s almost as scarce and most supplies come from china. But German researchers have found a way to extract the element: plants. And not even specialized, genetically engineered plants, but common garden plants like sunflowers, grass, and corn....

Every country in the world (other than the U.S.) has signed the Paris Climate Agreement, a landmark treaty designed to curtail the effects of global warming. The core of the treaty is the goal to limit total warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Any more warming than that would have catastrophic consequences for the entire planet and every person living there.But a report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gives a grim prognosis about reaching that goal....

The United States and North Korea have gotten into an unusually tough war of words, with U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean news propaganda hurling threats at each another. Now, given the current political volatility in both countries, it’s impossible to say war won’t ever happen. But it’s not as imminent as you may have been led to believe. Right now, it’s business as usual for the Pentagon’s vast, worldwide military machine....

German scientists studying evolutionary algorithms just published a paper describing what happened when one of their projects discovered a novel way to beat the 1982 Atari arcade game Qbert. If you’re unfamiliar, Qbert is a classic game in which your character must jump onto every box in a pyramid to change its color before being killed by enemies. It’s pretty straightforward. But this AI, developed by researchers University of Freiburg, found a completely new, and not entirely fair way to win the game....

Turns out we have a very old fruit fly, luck, and sex to thank for the dairy products, like cheese and yogurt, that we love.We should also thank early farmers who bred certain crops together to create offspring with genes that produced generous yields. You can thank an ancient fruit fly, a stroke of dumb luck, and sex for your favorite cheese. New research published in Current Biology indicates that milk yeast evolved to be able to turn milk into some of our favorite dairy foods thanks to two different species of yeast reproducing some 6,000 years ago....

Lawyers are pretty good at law-related activities. It’s their job, after all. But for at least one of those activities, lawyers are only second-best. A recent document-analyzing competition between lawyers and artificial intelligence ended with the AI as the clear victor.The competition was managed by legal AI platform LawGeex, which trained its AI to read and interpret complex legal documents. LawGeex pitted that AI against law professors from Stanford, Duke, and the University of Southern California in a competition to read and interpret a collection of five non-disclosure agreements....

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board. The following article originally ran in December 2011, months after AF447’s black box recordings surfaced and spurred new revelations. On the 11th anniversary of the crash, we’re looking back at the mysterious tragedy and republishing the article in full.For more than two years, the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic in the early hours of June 1, 2009, remained one of aviation’s great mysteries....

The U.S. Navy has selected Boeing to build the service’s first operational carrier-based drone. The MQ-25 Stingray will be a tanker with some ability to conduct intelligence-gathering missions that will extend the range of the rest of the carrier’s aircraft, allowing them to fly and fight at greater distances than before. The decision follows years of infighting over what sort of aircraft the Navy’s first drone should be, with some arguing a long range bomber would be a better choice....

Media Platforms Design TeamSPORT SEDANS WITH LAMBO POWEROkay, the new Audi S6 and S8 don’t quite have the full 500 hp of corporate cousin Lamborghini Gallardo—but they’re close. Under the hoods of Audi’s two largest and most powerful sedans is a version of Lamborghini’s V10. However, the displacements have been enlarged to 5.2 liters in both Audis to enhance torque. In the S6 the powerplant makes 420 hp, and in the S8 it makes 450 hp....

From the advent of the down jacket you’ve essentially had two options: Baffled or quilted. Baffled jackets, the more common variety, make look like you have rows upon rows of tubes running across your body and arms. It’s the classic Michelin Man look, the Stay Puft, the chubby baby. Quilted jackets look like, well, a quilt, with squares sewn across the torso. Both serve the same function: To keep all of that down from succumbing to gravity and heading to your waist and wrists, leaving your upper body freezing....

In 2013, Y.K. Bae scored funding from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program to study an amazing new kind of propulsion: Thrust that comes not from liquid rockets but from lasers continuously fired at the spacecraft, which would steadily gain momentum in the frictionless vacuum of space. It’s called the Photonic Laser Thrust system, and it could drastically reduce the amount of fuel needed for space missions. And now, Bae has announced that lab tests of the technology were successful....

General Electric has fired up its massive GE9X turbine engines, powering them to takeoff speed during a recent test at the company’s Propulsion Test Platform. Judging by video of the test posted to YouTube, it’s safe to say that the engines generate an ear-splitting wail to match their brawny size. The engine is the biggest commercial jet turbine in the world, according to GE. Take a listen to the whirring, howling turbines: View full post on Youtube The GE9X is set to power Boeing’s new 777X airliner, which will appropriately be the company’s biggest jet ever when it debuts next month....

We’ve put together a list of the perfect movies to watch this Halloween so you can get your Netflix and chills on; we’ve included everything from family-friendly picks that you can watch with the kids to films that’ll give you nightmares for several nights to come. Family FriendlyCoralineView full post on YoutubeWatch NowCoraline is interesting in that it’s one of the creepiest movies we’ve ever seen that was made for kids....

New launch video reveals Russia’s Iskander-M, showing the powerful, short-range missile in action. The missile would have enough range to strike targets across the NATO alliance’s eastern edge, threatening Poland and the Baltic countries. Russia has also sent the missile to Syria.Iskander-M, known as the SS-26 or “Stone” to NATO, is a short-range ballistic missile. That means it launches like a missile and warhead into a ballistic arc, lofting to a reported altitude of 163,000 feet....

It may cost a fortune, but there’s no denying that the iPhone X is jaw-droppingly pretty. Just make sure you don’t also drop the phone because, as CNET found out in a torture test, the iPhone X does not hold up especially well. View full post on YoutubePerhaps Apple is working under the assumption that if you buy a $1,000 phone, you’re also going to have enough money to shell out for a protective case or an Apple Care insurance plane because a single drop is enough to shatter the back....