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Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Todd Marshall/University of Edinburgh)Scottish paleontologists have a ferocious find on their hands: They discovered a 170-million-year-old sea reptile that measures 15 feet long and bears a striking resemblance to a hammerhead shark. It was a fearsome beast, preying on fish and other marine reptiles unfortunate enough to cross its path.Unearthed at the Isle of Skye, the Dearcmhara shawcrossi lived in a narrow sea between what is now North America and Europe, that emerged as the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart....

What appeared to be a sea mine was sighted yesterday in Washington State’s Puget Sound. The mine was taken under control by the U.S. Coast Guard, moved to a safe area, and blown up. The sudden appearance of the mine in a relatively high traffic waterway illustrates the danger that sea mines pose, decades after a war’s end.The incident began yesterday afternoon when according to a local news report the mine was sighted 1,200 yards east of the Brownsville Marina, in Port Orchard strait....

China has been leading the world in construction of solar energy plants, building dozens of new solar farms over the past few years. In addition to building standard solar farms, the country has also been experimenting with more innovative ways to draw energy from the sun. Recently, the city of Jinan built China’s very first solar road, which lasted about a week until someone stole it.The road opened on December 28, and on January 2 an inspection team noticed a piece of the road was missing....

The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon a contract to continue developing a new long range tactical missile system. Known as DeepStrike, the missile will replace the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS. The missile will be able to strike targets up to 309 miles away with precision, including moving targets both on land at sea.Thee DeepStrike missile was originally developed for the U.S. Army’s Long Range Precision Fires program. That program in turn arose from the need to develop a replacement for ATACMS....

Flying saucers have yet to land—at least, not that we’ve confirmed—but alien intelligence is already here. As research into AI grows ever more ambitious and complex, these robot brains will challenge the fundamental assumptions of how we humans do things. And, as ever, the only true law of robotics is that computers will always do literally, exactly what you tell them to. A paper recently published to ArXiv highlights just a handful of incredible and slightly terrifying ways that algorithms think....

Farming, as any farmer will tell you, is a massively complex and involved undertaking. But when you can do it from the comfort of your computer chair with all the arduous physical labor and financial risk removed, the satisfaction of planting and harvesting has made games like Farming Simulator quite popular. The latest iteration, Farming Simulator 19, sold over one million copies in its first ten days. Now, the game is taking the challenge of virtual farming to the next level with a competitive e-sports league....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe all want to know when an important call or text comes in. But we don’t want to be tethered to our devices, either. After, putting your phone on the table during a date or dinner with friends can put you on the fast track to a lonely future.A new gadget called Ditto wants to alleviate this problem. Ditto is a wearable clip-on device that lets you know something important is happening on your phone, even if that phone is stowed away in your briefcase....

With keyless ignition, it’s easy to accidentally forget your key fob. It’s a scenario that has apparently stymied Amie Dansby, a software engineer from Dallas, in the past. So she came up with a radical solution to never lose her keys again: implanting her Tesla Model 3 valet key right into her arm. View full post on YoutubeHow’d Dansby do it? First, she dissolved the key card in a container filled with acetone to remove the chip inside....

The threat of Russian cruise missiles accidentally taking out civilian aircraft has forced the closure of airports in northeastern Iraq. Starting November 23rd, airports in two Iraqi cities will be temporarily closed due to “passenger safety”. The Iraqi government has given notice that the Erbil and Sulaymaniyah will close their airports for a 48-hour period starting November 23. Low flying cruise missiles are cited as the reason. Cruise missiles are also small, travel at high subsonic speeds (roughly 570 miles per hour), and lack navigation lights and transponders....

For those feeling sentimental about SpaceX’s freshly launched Tesla Roadster on its lonely trip into deep space, don’t worry. Professional and amateur astronomers can tell you exactly where Starman will be as its car careens in orbit around the sun.“The closest predicted approach to Mars between now and 2030 is 7 million km on 2020 Oct 8,” tweeted Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “This is still well outside Mars’ gravitational sphere of influence....

Mark Millar’s seminal superhero comic Red Son offered a tantalizing premise: What if Superman, defender of truth, justice, and the American Way, landed in the Soviet Union instead of the United States when that rocket shot him from Kypton to Earth? A new video game, Homefront: The Revolution, suggests a similar question about the closest thing we had to a tech Superman: Steve Jobs.The game is set in a near-future where North Korea has successfully invaded the United States, and the player, set in an open world Philadelphia, rebels against the occupiers....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe old standby red cup plunger can work great to unclog sinks and bathtubs. But it’s an amateur move to use it on a clogged toilet.Media Platforms Design TeamThe right tool for this unpleasant job is a toilet plunger (shown above), which has a flange on the end that fits snugly into the opening at the bottom of a toilet. A bellow-type plunger is also effective for clearing clogged toilets....

Media Platforms Design TeamA few years ago I watched a half-dozen tire-company engineers, all also skilled test drivers, examine a pair of visually indistinguishable tires that offered radically different wet-track performance. The first of these twin tires offered no more than modest damp-road traction, while the second was spectacular on the wet-handling course. All of us were in for a reminder of why two tires that look the same don’t perform the same—a lesson that all car owners should take to heart....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 2012 Formula One season is just a few weeks from kicking off and all this year’s cars have been revealed at this point, but one thing has been bothering me: Why are they so ugly? With the exception of Mercedes McLaren, the latest crop of normally sleek racers are sporting a jarring bump right in the middle the nose. For vehicles that are the aerodynamic equivalent of airplanes for the ground, it seems like a problem....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom 1972 to 1975 my wife spent every summer in a Winnebago Brave motorhome, parked somewhere in the wilds of Alaska. This was the old 24-foot rig, enormous for its day, with a massive plate-glass window in the back, bike racks in the front, and a 7-mpg fuel rating. Since we’ve been married for almost 25 years, I thought it would be fun to test out the new Winnebago Via, a 25-footer about the same size and shape as the classic Brave....

Undersea WelderMedia Platforms Design TeamWet welders work in offshore oil fields as deep as 400 feet, building and repairing undersea infrastructure. (Sorry, kids, you can’t buy this exclusive PM action figure, devised by Jeremy Madl at Mad Toy Design. It’s ours.)Arc welding underwater with electrodes carrying 185 amps might seem unwise, but deep-diving wet welders do it every day. They build and repair pipelines and oil platforms–in January 2009 there were 313 new bids worth $484 million in the western Gulf of Mexico alone....

Cleaned OutQ: My dashboard Check Engine light came on and a scan tool said Code P0171 was stored on my car’s computer. I checked the O2 sensor, mass airflow sensor (MAF), etc. All voltage and resistances were well within the factory specs. So, I took the car to the dealer, and they replaced the MAF sensor. Since then, the car has been running fine and the light stays off. Why? Is there any secret?...

It’s a crisis for all new parents—the baby wakes up wailing in the middle of the night, forcing sleep-deprived mommy and daddy to go through their daily routines like zombies. Fortunately, the Useless Duck Company has developed an app and accompanying crib that lets parent simply roll over and tap their phones to play soothing music in the child’s room and even rock the crib.The app works by connecting via Wi-Fi to a stereo and a baby crib modified with a piston....

Motor: electric, 15 hp and 32 lb-ft of torque / Weight: 152 pounds / Ride time: About 1 to 3 hours / Battery capacity: 2.5 kWh / Ground clearance: 11.8 inches / Top Speed: 50-plus mph / Price: $13,000With dirt bikes, as with cars, there’s a strong temptation to translate electric stats to an internal combustion frame of reference, something we already understand. Cake, the Swedish company behind the Kalk OR (for “off-road”), knows this, and so the Kalk’s energy regeneration settings are set up to mimic traditional dirt bikes....

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at Saturn just keeps sending us treasures. In this image, taken January 16, we see the moon Daphnis, a 5-mile diameter chunk of rock and ice, orbiting inside a gap at the outer edge of Saturn’s A Ring. The 26-mile-wide Keeler Gap is swept clear of debris by Daphnis as it orbits, and the little moon’s gravity tugs at the edges of the gap to cause waves in Saturn’s ring, hence the moon’s nickname, wavemaker....