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During the decades between the turn of the 20th century up until World War II, battleships ruled the waves. Heavily armored and bristling with powerful 16 to 18-inch guns, battleships were an essential part of a modern navy—that is, until the aircraft carrier came along. The last battleship ever commissioned, HMS Vanguard, entered service in 1946.Battleships were undone by their powerful but relatively short-ranged guns, which ranged up to 20 miles compared to the hundreds of miles that a torpedo or dive bomber based on an aircraft carrier could travel....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs most of the Pentagon development programs wring their hands with budget worries, there is one area of research that is celebrating a banner week/month—Navy lasers. “I think directed-energy weapons will change the dynamic of warfare at sea,” Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, told a crowd at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Conference and Exposition this week.It made international news this week when the Navy’s Chief of Operations, Adm....

Dune: The Sisterhood is a new TV series that will act as a companion piece to 2020’s Dune.The show’s pilot will be directed by Denis Villeneuve, the director of next year’s Dune. The show will release on WarnerMedia’s yet-to-be-released streaming service, though no premiere date has yet been announced.It’s no secret that Star Wars is actually a complex tapestry of influences. Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress essentially created R2-D2 and C-3P0, and we can thank 1950s adventure serials, like Flash Gordon, for the iconic title crawl....

The incident was caused by an airman using the wrong tool repairing a missile silo.A resulting explosion toppled the thermonuclear warhead from the missile.The warhead did not detonate and there was minimum radioactivity at the site.On December 5, 1964, one of the most potentially dangerous incidents involving nuclear weapons in the U.S. took place. A technician working on a missile silo inadvertently triggered an explosion that knocked a nuclear warhead off the top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, sending it plummeting to the bottom of the hardened concrete silo....

The microphone was on, but the presentation hadn’t started. Steven Squyres, NASA’s principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, stood next to the stage as a few hundred audience members shuffled in to watch his presentation at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in 2011.While Squyres fumbled with the transceiver, he saw a white-haired nonagenarian with a shirt pocket stuffed with pens scanning for an open seat in the front row....

Media Platforms Design TeamPerhaps you’ve seen the headlines that a dinosaur from the last decade—the Hummer—is back. According to the Washington Post, used Hummer sales are on the rise thanks to lower pump prices.Yes, fuel around the country is hovering at or below $3 a gallon. And according to experts at the University of Michigan, there’s been a slight dip in the fuel economy of the average vehicle sold (25.3 mpg in September, versus a record high 25....

Astronomers have taken stunning new images of a golf ball-shaped asteroid called Pallas zipping through the asteroid belt. The mottled celestial body has the most cratered surface in the solar system, thanks to its tilted orbit. Pallas also has a cosmic connection to the Geminids meteor shower.Astronomers have sunk a celestial hole-in-one. An international research team has discovered a pock-marked asteroid that it’s dubbed the “golf ball” asteroid. Pallas, as it’s officially called, is currently zipping along its orbit in the asteroid belt....

China is building more nuclear-armed submarines to stay one step ahead of the U.S. and other adversaries. That’s the assessment from an arms control think tank, which believes China’s leaders are leaning toward basing their nuclear weapons at sea to prevent their destruction in a surprise attack. Although China will not likely built more nuclear weapons, it will likely build more submarines to conceal a larger and more effective second strike capability beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean....

Looking for a unique and unconventional way to save on utilities? Don’t mind washing your hands in what is about to be toilet water? YouTubers Mike and Lauren feel you. They built a concrete sink on top of their toilet, and so can you.View full post on YoutubeBy routing the fill tube for the toilet tank into the bottom of the faucet, Mike and Lauren were able to get a direct pour going and have the water that’s ultimately toilet bound come through the sink first....

Daytona Beach, Fla., has been one of the world’s great centers of speed for more than a century. Long before the Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959, racers from around the planet would come to the hard-packed sands of Daytona Beach to find out how fast their machinery could go. NASCAR is, however, the reason Daytona looms so large today in automotive culture. Drivers like Junior Johnson, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Jeff Gordon and, of course, Dale Earnhardt earned their status as all-time greats along the 2....

Scientists have developed a new way to calculate a whale’s weight based on drone imagery and complex computer models.The computer model measures the length, width, and height of the whales in order to estimate its mass and model its shape. Weight is an important indicator of health, and this new method could help researchers track vulnerable populations of whale.Weighing a whale is, as you’d expect, pretty tricky. They’re big, they’re bulky, and they don’t stay still....

Media Platforms Design TeamMany of us have often dreamed of traveling the world one way or another. I usually dreamed about it during math class. But say you’re someone who takes the environment and your carbon footprint into consideration. How would you cross the globe without creating a huge footprint from all the flying, staying in hotels, and eating out all the time?You could do what Jay Shapiro and his family are doing: build an “EcoRoamer....

Media Platforms Design TeamElectric motorcycles have been a niche space for California startups building mean, low-volume machines for buyers who want to save the world on two wheels. That is about to change. Today, Harley-Davidson (yes, that Harley-Davidson, the maker of big, snarling, dinosaur-burning, all-American touring bikes) said it is building its first e-motorcycle.The concept is called LiveWire, and it’s just that—a concept. Starting this month, Harley will take 22 of these bikes on a road trip starting in New York, hoping to get feedback from the riders to help them improve the machine....

It’s the proverbial twenty miles of bad road. The potholes are worth it, however, for the great weekend of backwoods hiking and exploring. Then you hit the pavement and the rattling starts. Maybe you couldn’t hear it on the unpaved road, but every expansion strip on the Interstate makes your car sound like a tin can full of bolts. Something’s loose in your suspension.While there’s little chance that your car is going to lose something essential as it goes down the road, chassis and suspension noises definitely have to be checked out for safety’s sake....

(Photograph by Chris Eckert)Drawing, that medium of pencils, pens and paper, would seem to be the last great analog art. Traditional sketching is a tactile experience that doesn’t translate well to a mouse. But take the mouse out of the equation and replace it with a digital pen, and drawing on a computer becomes a surprisingly intuitive experience. Pen-based user interfaces are almost as old as computing itself, but professional graphic artists all swear by one technology–the Wacom tablet and pen....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow urgent is the detection of near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets?Objects larger than about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) that could destroy life on Earth strike every few hundred thousand years. This is on averageat least in principle, a collision could happen much sooner. While we do not know of any particular object that will impact Earth soon, it is entirely possible that smaller objects, which are not fully cataloged, might appear from “nowhere,” as recently happened over Russia....

There are a lot of YouTube videos, and more every second. In 2015, YouTube said people were uploading some 400 new hours of video every minute, and there’s no doubt its only gone up. So how do you make sure that every single video has its own unique link? Base 64. As Tom Scott explains, YouTube’s video ID numbers—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8—pack a lot of data into just a few characters. What you see bolded there is actually a base-64 number....

A good piece of code is a piece of art. It’s personal expression, and a concrete version of your unique expression of problem-solving. That’s why Commits.io is allowing you to commemorate your best work into a poster. A lovely Linux penguin.Commits.ioFramed or unframed, any code in Github can get converted into a lovely poster. You can add your own artwork as well, which is added into a clear white design. While Commits cautions that “it’s not bragging,” it’s okay if it is, a little....

Klein is famous among electricians for its tackle-any-job bad boy side-cutting pliers. In addition to their intended purpose, which is mostly to cut electrical cable and wire, they’ve often employed as a hammer, a small bolt cutter, and an all-purpose grab-twist-bend tool. They’re ferocious.The latest pair, a 1-lb. monster built of proprietary tool steel, is equipped with a pair of wire-stripping holes for 10 and 12-ga. solid or 12 and 14-ga....

First ReportJeep Liberty Sport CRDMedia Platforms Design TeamWhen we tested a Jeep Liberty CRD against a Ford Escape Hybrid a year ago (“Diesel vs. Hybrid,” Feb. 2005, page 60), they were the only two compact SUVs you could buy that weren’t powered solely by gas engines. Since then, the ranks of hybrids have mushroomed. But the little Liberty still stands as the only smallish diesel-powered SUV on the market, though there are several large ones....