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Media Platforms Design TeamFringe[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/OX_jj-MQ4Ic&hl=en&fs=1&[/youtube]Season Two Premiere: September 17, 9 pm, FoxThe end of Fringe’s first season saw FBI agent Olivia Dunham transported to an alternate dimension to meet with elusive and mysterious Massive Dynamic CEO William Bell–a dimension where JFK lived and the Twin Towers are still standing. Executive producer J.R. Orci says that reality represents “the road not taken.” And from what Anna Torv, who plays Dunham, has to say, it holds startling revelations for our favorite FBI agent....

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is set to fly past Pluto this July 14. The 12-hour flyby will provide the best view humanity has ever gotten of the former ninth planet, and should show us lots of new things about the icy world. Here are a few thins we learned at a NASA event for New Horizons this past weekend that you should keep in mind as the astronomically important even approaches....

When Ryan Zimmerman stands at the plate, there’s no time to analyze physics. “I’m thinking about what the pitcher might throw in that situation,” says the 22-year-old rising star with the Washington Nationals. “I have to eliminate as many options as I can before he releases the ball.” Twenty times last season, Zimmerman pounded a pitch into the seats. Now PM stops the clock to examine ball spin, bat speed and the rest of what Zimmerman instinctively understands about hitting....

It’s the law of the digital-imaging jungle – still cameras take choppy, low-resolution movies, while camcorders produce hazy, low-resolution stills. But a new species of sleek, hybrid devices is prowling the already blurry line between cameras and camcorders. They’re not as pricey as you might expect. Canon’s PowerShot TX1, which captures 7.1-megapixel stills and 720p-resolution movies, costs $500. It records to SD and higher-capacity SDHC memory cards, and at 2.3 in....

Cat Camp Cat Camp Now 18% Off$49 at catcamp.coMy kitties probably aren’t going camping. I’d love it if White Fang and Dorian Gray were Instagram stars who could buddy up with a dog, throw on a Catagonia vest, and take on the great outdoors. But we own one cat who yowls and one who curls up into a frightened furball during a walk down the block to the vet, much less a trip to some woody campground or fire escape....

Media Platforms Design TeamPM west coast editor Ben Stewart drives a brand-new Corvette Z06 from Los Angeles to New York this week, in search of America’s best driving roads.The Waffle Iron has the best breakfast in town. And after a gallon of coffee we’re alert and ready for 89-A. This road is as gorgeous as it is challenging. Yesterday, the Z06 seemed much smaller than the last Vette we tested; it seemed more compact and easy to handle....

Media Platforms Design TeamSevere winds and bad weather delayed NASA’s first Ares 1-X rocket test today. The launch, which will culminate in a 6-minute flight to test the new hardware, will pick up again tomorrow at 8 am.During the 6-minute flight, the Ares 1-X test will go through a mock second stage as well and carry a dummy capsule loaded with ballast to test the weight it will one day carry....

Earthquakes are among the most surprising natural disasters. Unlike, say, hurricanes, the early-warning systems for quakes are still in their earliest stages. But new studies from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Lab are painting a more accurate picture of the stresses within the earth’s crust.“It’s very difficult to unpack what triggers larger earthquakes because they are infrequent, but with this new information about a huge number of small earthquakes, we can see how stress evolves in fault systems,” says Daniel Trugman, a post-doctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in a press statement....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt happens about 100 times a game in the National Football League: a bone-jarring tackle that slams a player to the turf. On the play shown in the photo above, Seattle Seahawks defensive back Marcus Trufant (23) drilled Philadelphia Eagles receiver Greg Lewis (83) with such force that Lewis couldn’t hang on to the ball. (Seattle won the Dec. 5, 2005, game at Philadelphia 42-0 in the most lopsided shutout ever broadcast on Monday Night Football....

Media Platforms Design TeamGoogle has been experimenting with how nanotech can be used to find cancer cells, but the technology isn’t quite ready for human testing yet. So, naturally, the company is making its own synthetic human skin. It’s a pretty ambitious solution to this problem, but it’s one that allows Google to test many different variables on something that responds like human tissue but without endangering a real patient. The system can even account for different skin tones....

View full post on TwitterWhen last we left Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, they were sleeping their way through an average-to-below-average movie called X-Files: I Want to Believe and chasing a modern day Frankenstein’s monster. Here’s hoping that the upcoming miniseries is light years better. But here’s an indication of things to come, as seen in the first photo released from the new production. Mulder doesn’t have the ridiculous beard from the beginning of the last movie....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you’re the kind of person who looks at a common gadget and thinks, “Pssh, I could do better than that,” then listen up: PopMech is partnering with Instructables on the new Gadget Hacking and Accessories Contest, which launched today.Instructables is accepting submissions between now and June 2 for the weirdest, coolest DIY variations on a gadget (see some examples, like a pepper grinder gun and Bluetooth Lego brick, here)....

An army base’s perimeter guard tower might require up to six soldiers who are constantly on the lookout for threats or surprises. But the tower, it seems, is yet another place where it looks like machines are slowly taking the place of soldiers.The unmanned, remote-controlled, gun-toting towers of the new Tower Hawk System are operated by two people sitting inside a remote tactical center. There, watching video screens displaying 360-degree views around the tower, they can do the work of up to 10 soldiers....

Media Platforms Design TeamLong before the Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, which this week prompted President Obama to call for more body cameras to record police activity, departments around the country had been looking at acquiring more of these devices. But with the President’s promise to provide federal funds, the pace of adoption is about to speed up greatly....

Media Platforms Design TeamShould everything be in 3D? Electronics companies sure think so. Over the past three years 3D-capable computers and Blu-ray players and HDTVs with stereoscopic screens have been pitched to consumers. It’s a formula that has proved profitable in theater­s—for many blockbuster films, moviegoers have gladly plunked down a few extra bucks and donned a pair of glasses in exchange for a jaw-dropping spectacle. When it comes to investing in expensive new gear to bring that experience into the living room, however, most viewers have been hesitant....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s a wealth of natural gas trapped underground—but what depths do we have to plumb to extract it? More and more, oil and gas companies are opting for fracking, or hydraulic fracturing: injecting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into dense rock layers and shale, creating cracks that allow natural gas trapped inside to flow to the earth’s surface. Once an also-ran in fossil-fuel prospecting, fracking now figures heavily into the future of U....

Update: Success! On Saturday, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, tweeted that the twin bouncing rovers had survived their trip to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, where they are now moving around in big hops. View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterThe first views from the rovers are simply stunning.View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterOriginal post, Sept. 20, 2018: This week the Japanese space agency’s asteroid-exploring spacecraft, Hayabusa2, will deploy a pair of rovers to explore the surface of an asteroid....

Apple is no stranger to weird bugs that can make its messaging app crash, and now it’s got a new one. Sending a specific character in Telugu, a language spoken primarily in India, can cause Apple’s built in messaging app, or any number of third party apps, to crash and mess up the phone. The bug was first spotted by Italian site MobileWorld. The character doesn’t have to be sent through iMessage or any Apple-related programs—if it is displayed through a third party application like Gmail, Twitter, WhatsApp or Spotify, the app will crash every time....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Umbrella Corporation’s genetic experimentation and viral weaponry came back to bite them—literally—when the zombie-causing T-Virus was released in their underground lab in . The virus could not be contained and eventually seeped out, destroying Raccoon City in the film’s sequel. Within five years (and the series’ third installment), the world as we know it was gone, causing those responsible to take refuge underground—where they still reside in the franchise’s fourth film, , out September 10....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen we got our first glimpse of Handibot at the Bay Area Maker Faire last month, the small roving tool was cruising around a long slab of wood, using its router bit to carve a precise logo and then driving to a different spot to repeat the pattern. The tool’s creators at ShopBot hope that the next time we see it, in about two and a half weeks, it’ll be making a play for crowdfunding on Kickstarter or IndieGogo....