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The incident took place northeast of Tuscon, Arizona.The A-10 launched a smoke/white phosphorus rocket.There were no injuries or damage to property on the ground.A U.S. Air Force A-10C “Thunderbolt II” ground attack jet accidentally launched a rocket during a training flight. The rocket struck an uninhabited area on a military training range. The rocket was identified as a white phosphorus/smoke round and could have caused serious damage if it had landed in an urban area....

The U.S. Air Force has proposed new weapons pylons for the wings of B-52 bombers, allowing them to carry up to 20,000 pounds of ordnance. This would enable the B-52 to carry the so-called Mother of All Bombs—or a lot of smaller bombs—transforming the aging bomber into the Pentagon’s vision of an “Arsenal Plane.”According to FlightGlobal, the Air Force is soliciting industry for ideas in replacing the B-52’s bomb-carrying wing pylons with new, improved versions capable of carrying up to 10 tons of ordnance....

Media Platforms Design TeamTHE VACUUMS1. Eureka AirSpeed ($119.96)2. Dyson DC25 ($382.54)3. Dyson DC28 ($484.54)THE TESTSMedia Platforms Design TeamSUCTION TEST (CARPET)We started with a fixed amount of flour on a carpeted floor, and then used each model to see how much it could suck up in 30 seconds, starting from the upright and off position.Eureka AirSpeed: While the Eureka AirSpeed vacuumed up most of the flour, there were still stubborn remnants left over....

The universe is telling you nothing. Not a goll darn thing. Amy Schumer, Comedy Central’s funniest star right now, has teamed up with the network’s tied-for-second-funniest stars (Ilana Glazer and Abby Jacobson of Broad City) and America’s favorite science educator, Bill Nye, to remind you of that.In this hilarious (and somewhat profane) clip from Inside Amy Schumer shows, the universe is not a chaotic miasma of matter, light and dark, and some black holes eating that matter, but a force that tells well-to-do women that they should go to the other halal cart for lunch or join a new gym or finally buy that iPhone case with the alien smoking two joints on it....

A mix-up at Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif accidentally reduced the price of Bitcoin to zero for 18 minutes last week. During the small window, seven customers were able to get cut-rate Bitcoin in trades that were later voided, according to Reuters. One of them managed a score worth a comical $20 trillion and promptly turned around to try and resell it.Japanese outlet Asahi Shumbun reports that matters were resolved within two hours of the glitch’s correction, but not before one buyer who managed to purchase 2,200-trillion-yen worth of Bitcoin ($20 trillion US) was already attempting to sell off his bounty which exceeded the cryptocurrency’s roughly $180 billion market cap by several trillion dollars....

An ammo box fell from a Black Hawk helicopter and crashed through the roof of Parkland Elementary School in El Paso, Texas on Thrusday, creating a hole in the roof and causing a partial power outage in the building. Public affairs officer Mike Brantley at the nearby Fort Bliss confirmed that the box of ammunition fell from a Black Hawk helicopter, and Fort Bliss officials are planning to take a closer look at flight patterns out of the base as a result of the incident....

Media Platforms Design TeamAh, the college years, a magical time in a young adult’s life. Time to cast off secondhand opinions, explore sociology and philosophy, engage in rambunctious politics … and learn how to remotely pilot a Predator drone.A growing number of American universities now offer classes on operating an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), enrolling students who hope to one day find work for employers such as defense contractors. But will the lucrative jobs be there when they graduate?...

Just about every luxury automaker has a group within the company charged with developing its most exciting high-performance cars. BMW currently has nine vehicles under the M performance banner. Mercedes-Benz has 15 performance machines crafted by its AMG arm. Even Lexus and Cadillac, companies not known for building sporty cars, now have divisions working on hot performance cars—the Cadillac CTS-V is one of the quickest sport sedans you can buy. And then there’s Volvo....

On Thursday, Boston Beer, makers of Sam Adams, and Dogfish Head Craft Brewery shocked the beer world by announcing that the two independent breweries would merge. More specifically, Boston Beer acquired a controlling stake in Dogfish, bought with Boston Beer stock. Founder and longtime craft beer cheerleader Jim Koch, majority owner of Boston Beer became the majority owner of Dogfish. While the Dogfish owners—and craft cheerleaders—Sam and Mariah Calagione, became the second largest owners in both operations....

As the agency moves forward with its GPS-based plan for the future of air traffic control, the Federal Aviation Administration is feeling the heat from disgruntled passengers early this month after several recent near collisions in American airspace and on runways. Five such near misses—defined as two aircraft coming closer than 500 ft. mid-air—occurred in the month of May alone in the hectic airspace over New York and New Jersey airports....

The Federal Communications Commission, under Chairman Ajit Pai, is preparing to completely undermine the founding principle that has defined a free and open internet since the foundation of the World Wide Web. The FCC has today released a plan to completely roll back all net neutrality legislation under the guise of “restoring internet freedom.“This is not an enormous surprise. The principle of net neutrality—which ensures internet service providers (ISPs) cannot favor some data over other data—has been contested by large telecom providers and their pro-corporate political allies for years....

Engineers at Penn State University have come up with a new coating that can cut down the amount of water needed to flush a toilet.The researchers say this coating has the potential to create a self-cleaning toilet.Some of the scientists have gotten together on a new startup to sell the two-step coating spray, which they’re already bringing to market under the name spotLESS.Ever see one of those toilets with the dual flush button on top?...

Endoparasitoid wasps sound like the stuff of a horror movie: These parasites are born in and grow inside another animal, killing it as they emerge. It’s a brutal way to live, but evidently an effective one. Now, a new study offers insight into the history of this particularly garish form of parasitism.These wasps lay their eggs inside their host using organs known as ovipositors, which are shaped like tubes. The eggs mature inside their victim, keeping them alive so they can harvest their resources....

The U.S. military’s replacement for the Hellfire anti-tank missile has entered production, capping off years of development. The Joint Air Ground Missile (JAGM) will arm U.S. Army and Marine Corps attack helicopters, providing a weapon capable of destroying the heaviest tanks from miles away. The JAGM replaces the AGM-114 Hellfire missile. First fielded in the early 1980s, Hellfire was designed as a heavy tank-killer to destroy Soviet tanks on the Western European battlefield....

We’ve got a lot of pictures of the sun, but surprisingly none of them are overhead shots. From here on earth, of course, it’s impossible to get any picture of the sun from any angle other than equatorial. But even with several spacecraft launched to study the sun, our only views of the center of our solar system remain the same.A group of scientists at the European Space Agency wanted to change that, but they couldn’t build an entirely new spacecraft to go to the sun’s poles and take pictures....

Hops give amber and pale ales that floral little bite, but two studies show that they may have a higher purpose: in medication.While it’s unlikely that your doctor will soon be prescribing you a bottle of beer for your troubles, a study published in the Journal of Natural Products looks at three anti-inflamattory chemicals in Cascade hops. The chemicals, 4-hydroxycolupulone, humudifucol, and cascadone, may have given rise to hops as a folk remedy for pain....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’m the kind of guy who seems to always lose his phones. Any tips on getting them back? Not so long ago, losing a phone to the clutches of a cab, couch or thief pretty much meant game overyour chances of getting the missing device back were somewhere between nil and zilch. Well, today’s phones aren’t called smart for nothing, and there are now plenty of apps that give us at least a fighting chance of tracking down a wayward phone....

Emily Lakdawalla is senior editor and planetary evangelist at The Planetary Society. Her new book is The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job.Even while tucked away in a testing lab in Colorado, the instrument picks up the sloshing of the oceans thousands of miles away. That’s the kind of sensitive equipment that’s about to go to Mars, where NASA’s next mission will dig into the mysterious history of the Red Planet and find out how active our neighboring world still is....

View full post on TwitterA powerful earthquake struck the Anchorage, Alaska, area Friday morning. Early reports show a 7.0 rating on the Richter scale. No casualties have yet been reported.A tsunami warning was issued in the surrounding areas, including the Cook Islands, but has now been rescinded. “There is NO tsunami danger from this earthquake,” reads the latest message from the U.S. Tsunami Warning System. While a welcome reprieve, early indications show that the earthquake has done substantive damage on its own....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis discovery has big implications for the future of the screen: Making a display out of regular old paper could maximize affordability, decrease environmental impact and also save space, since a paper screen has the potential to roll up and pull out. So is it time to throw out our retro flatscreens and make room for paper television? Not just yet. The future is exciting, but looking at the essential components of a display screen reveals some big roadblocks on the way to shoving a 78-inch screen into your cup holder....