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Poland has a history of being caught in the crossfire. It happened during the world wars between global powers. It happened again during the decades of the Cold War. And today’s era of continually rising tensions between the United States and Russia is no exception, as new developments point to the skies over Eastern Europe as a new tripwire for WWIII.Bring on the BaseThe biggest news came today, when senior Pentagon leadership revealed progress in a plan to build an American airbase in Poland....

After unveiling the MacBook Air, Apple TV 2.0 and iPhone updates, does Steve Jobs have another trick up his mock turtleneck for 2008? Senior tech editor Glenn Derene joins us live from MacWorld to forecast Apple’s next brilliant design. Plus, PM’s resident geek breaks down the good, bad and the ugly of recent robot news, our Angry Mechanic reports from the Detroit Auto Show on China’s car industry coming to America, and we meet the Army’s top jet-fighter test pilot....

Lance MayerNew York, N.Y.Age: 37Years on Job: 6 When a script calls for an electrifying chase scene, filmmakers dial Lance Mayer. As co-founder of Monster Remotes, Mayer has rigged cameras to boats, motorcycles, ATVs and cars in movies such as The Bourne Identity and I Am Legend. To stabilize the image while enabling a camera to be operated remotely, Mayer relies on a special mount called the Libra head. He’s one of only a handful of Libra technicians in the country....

Against all odds, NASA’s Opportunity rover has continued to transmit information back to Earth through a powerful dust storm.The rover has been on Mars for over a decade, collecting data on the planet since 2004. While mostly calm, the Red Planet has seen a few severe dust storms in that time. In 2007, when a dust storm covered most of the planet, the rover had to be drawn back to minimal operations for two weeks....

Astronomers have announced the discovery of 17 new exoplanets in a star system roughly 1,000 lightyears away from Earth. One of the planets is Earth-sized and within its star’s habitable zone. This isn’t the first time Kunimoto has discovered a bundle of exoplanets. A graduate student in astronomy at the University of British Columbia just made an incredible discovery. Michelle Kunimoto was poring over data collected by NASA’s recently retired Kepler space telescope when she discovered not one, not two, but 17 new exoplanets circling a distant star....

To realistically depict the disemboweling of a Scottish noble, here’s what you do: Make a latex torso for the actor to wear, then you fill it with blood and sausage.At least that’s what they did for Outlaw King, the epic and gory new Netflix movie about Robert the Bruce and his fight for Scotland’s freedom. Directed by David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water), the movie stars Chris Pine as Robert and premieres today on Netflix and in theaters....

Two scientists have released a proof-of-concept paper that reveals designs for a space elevator. Solar-powered vehicles would move along a carbon nanotube cable stretching from the moon down into Earth’s geostationary field.Scientists have long suggested that space elevators could dramatically reduce the cost of sending humans into space.For decades, the idea of riding an elevator to space has intrigued both scientists and sci-fi aficionados. Now, the pipe dream may be inching closer to reality....

Not many companies know how to make parachutes alluring, but most companies aren’t SpaceX. The California-based company has released a compilation video of its latest safety testing for its Crew Dragon parachute recovery system testing. View full post on YoutubeIn a comment along with the video, the California company says that it “is returning human spaceflight capabilities to the United States with one of the safest, most advanced systems ever built....

Turn off the Internet and look at the sky this weekend. It’s time for the annual Leonid meteor shower, which peaks on November 17 and 18. This year there’s no pesky full moon to get in the way of the view. The new moon on the 18th guarantees a little less light in the sky, making more room for what’s expected to be a shower of 10 to 15 meteors per hour at the peak, a few hours before dawn....

Popular MechanicsEditor’s Note: This story appeared in the March 1924 edition of Popular Mechanics. Happy Presidents’ Day.ABRAHAM LINCOLN AN INVENTOR, PATENT RECORDS REVEALWhile every schoolboy is familiar with the life of Abraham Lincoln—a pioneer home, few books, hard labor at all the many trades of the frontiersman and the battle to save the Union and abolish slavery—few know that he was also an inventor. To his genius as a statesman a united nation today bears witness, but only a rude model in the archives of the National Museum at Washington remains to give mute evidence that he possessed an inventive ability that alone, if followed, might have won him enduring fame....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamLast month the South Korean design studio Dutch Lab unveiled Gothicism, a towering $7,300 coffee machine that looks like it could have been built into the side of Notre Dame. Yet this cold-brewing monstrosity was not enough to slake the studio’s thirst for larger-than-life steampunk masterpieces.Its newest creation is called AKMA 3000mL. The machine takes its name from the Korean word for “devil,” and the designers at Dutch Lab say its forbidding design is meant to add “a mysterious and dark aura to the steampunk concept,” giving the mechanism a “fictional and fantastic evil” feeling....

Why waste time screwing bulbs into lamps when you could just pop them in instead. Arc Light by designer Vedat Ulgen is a slab of solid walnut with portions of said slab sliced away to make room for light bulbs. But oddly, there’s no obvious source at all powering the lamp-slash-wall hanging at a glance.That’s because there’s a Tesla coil hiding behind it.View full post on IframeThe Tesla coil creates an electric field which then lights up the bulbs....

I’m thrilled to share a brand new PopularMechanics.com. Today’s massive overhaul is a huge leap forward for the site, which our tireless development team has been working on for months. We’ve got a fantastic new set of tools that will help us both cover breaking news and tell in-depth stories. It’s now a far more dynamic site built from the ground up: we have tools to highlight the news and coverage that you need to know about now....

A YouTuber dedicated to reviewing soldier rations, past and present, has finally run into one pack of military chow even he can’t eat.Steve1989MREInfo has reviewed rations from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, in conflicts from the American Civil War (believe it) to those feeding troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s reviewed scores of military rations from countries as diverse as the U.S., Russia, Spain, the U.K., South Korea, Belarus, France, New Zealand, Finland, Canada, Japan, Slovenia, and Indonesia....

Media Platforms Design TeamNot so long ago, the iPad seemed shrouded in mystery. Would it have a built-in camera? Multitasking? Flash? Well, just a day before the mega-gadget’s launch, we now know the answers to most of our lingering questions. (No. No. And no.) But one key question still remains: When the heck will it be appropriate to whip one of these babies out? In other words: What will be proper iPad-iquitte?...

Media Platforms Design TeamLexus unveiled an all-new version of its ES 350 model today here in Chicago. In appearance, the new luxury four-door sedan is similar to others in the Lexus line, with the centered grille and flow-back headlight composites. A long hood and short deck highlight the body profile. New technicals include a 272-hp 3.5-liter V6 with six-speed automatic, and a 2-in.-longer wheelbase. Zero to 60 mph times are in the 6....

For decades, it’s been rumored that CNN founder Ted Turner had prepared a “Doomsday Tape”—one meant to play in the final moments of humanity, just before the apocalypse… when people will be glued to their televisions, obviously. Well, it’s true.A former CNN intern, Michael Ballaban, discovered and revealed the urban legend. The video was labelled in the network’s archives as simply “TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO.” The simple coda to humanity shows a military band playing “Nearer My God to Thee,” which was reportedly the song played as the Titanic sunk....

One of the simplest and most cost effective ways to expand your home is by converting your basement into a finished living space. Basements can be transformed for many different uses, including a home office, kid’s playroom, entertainment center, exercise space, artist’s studio, or spare bedroom. Most basements are relatively spacious and some have direct access to the outdoors. And while you could hire a basement-finishing company, such as Owens Corning Basement Systems, to finish your basement, where’s the fun in that?...

In an age for which Detroit found a replacement for displacement, Ford built a mammoth. Engines are shrinking, losing cylinders, and gaining turbochargers and superchargers, even as full-size trucks put on weight and grow, grow, grow. Yet an all-new 7.3-liter overhead valve V8 engine is a surprise, especially from Ford. “As you look inside the engine, most would sum it up as ‘overbuilt’,” says Joel Beltramo, Ford’s manager of large V8 gas engines....

Unless you drive an electric vehicle, on a day-to-day basis there’s a container filled with a highly volatile liquid stashed away somewhere in your car. While the kind of car explosions displayed by Hollywood are quite rare, fuel tanks do pose a hazard. And arguably the most dangerous fuel tank of all time was the rear-mounted vessel installed on the 1971 through 1976 Ford Pinto. It’s possibly the best example of what happens when poor engineering meets corporate negligence....