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Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who performed calculations that help send astronauts into space and inspired the movie Hidden Figures, has died at the age of 101. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted the news this morning.View full post on Twitter"Ms. Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space," Bridenstine said in a statement....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s the ever-present question that nags every remodeling project: What color should we choose?Choosing colors is considered an art by some and a science by others. For the gifted, it’s as easy as pie—just a quick look and the choice is made. For most, however, picking colors can be a challenge, one that’s put its fair share of strain on an otherwise loving marriage. I’ve seen the fallout firsthand....

French scientists studied freezing gases expelled from popped champagne bottles and found patterns in the gases that mirrored exhaust from jet and rocket engines.Freezing carbon dioxide and water vapor gas emitted from these champagne bottles formed a plume of fog called a Mach disk and reached supersonic speeds.Depending on the temperature at which the bottles were kept, the color of the flume of gas changed.Pop some champagne! French scientists studying the physics of the effervescent alcohol have found that gases burst out of a popped bottle at speeds similar to those seen in the exhaust of fighter jets....

Astronomers spotted a previously undiscovered dwarf planet hiding so far away they decided to give it the nickname “Farout.” The new-found tiny world is the most distant object ever found in our solar system. Farout orbits the sun at about 120 astronomical units (AU)—in other words, 120 times as far from the sun as Earth is. By comparison, Pluto is only about 30 to 50 AU, and the previous record holder, Eris, is about 96 AU....

For seven years, the U.S. government pursued a top secret project to build the most lethal—and irresponsible—weapon in history. It had a deceptively mild-sounding name, the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, or SLAM. Had the United States actually built this thing, it would have created the world’s first, and possibly last, nuclear-powered nuclear weapon.The vintage video below lays out the story. The U.S. Air Force wanted a third weapon in addition to its intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers for delivering retaliatory strikes against the Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war....

With the specter of global warming seared into our national consciousness, reducing carbon dioxide emissions has become a priority. Now, researchers have invented a phone-booth-size device that can take back those emissions we can’t prevent–the ones that have already reached the atmosphere. The Atmospheric Carbon CapturE SystemS (ACCESS) Air-Capture System, developed by Global Research Technologies in Tucson, Ariz., holds sheets of material capable of capturing CO2 molecules directly from open air....

For a moment there, it seemed like the golden age of robots had arrived. In late 2013, Google stormed into the field, acquiring eight companies for undisclosed sum, reported to be as high as a half-billion dollars. For a cash-strapped corner of the research world, this financial infusion was a signal to the world—and to venture capitalists and aspiring roboticists—that real money could be made with sophisticated machines.The most notable of Google’s purchases was Boston Dynamics, a veritable rock star among bot firms....

Months ago, Reddit user Analogueboy turned up a rare and strange piece of video game history: the “Nintendo Playstation.” Known as the SNES-CD in its early stage, the system dates back to the late 80s when, briefly, Sony partnered with Nintendo to create a CD-drive peripheral for the SNES. Weird right? You don’t have to know much about games to know that this never happened—the partnership fell apart and Sony went on to create the Playstation for itself—but the surviving prototype was a fascinating and miraculous find....

Climate change threatens pretty much everything, and our military is no exception. According to a recent Pentagon report, over half of all U.S. military bases are at risk from climate change.The report involved surveying all Department of Defense installations around the world, and evaluating which ones were most at risk of climate-related disasters. Primarily, the report found the highest risks were due to flooding, extreme temperatures, drought, and wind.“Changes in climate can potentially shape the environment in which we operate and the missions we are required to do,” the report says....

Researchers at the University of Michigan just created the world’s smallest computer (again). Their previous micro-computer, the Michigan Micro Mote, measured 2x2x4mm. It was a complete, functioning system powered by solar cell batteries. But in March this year, IBM announced a new, smaller computer, which measured 1x1 mm, and was smaller than a grain of salt. It “raised a few eyebrows at the University of Michigan.” After all, it’s unclear if the IBM computer even count as an actual microcomputer....

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221. These are the first five elements of a number sequence. Can you figure out what comes next? If you’re trying a bunch of arithmetic operations to make the numbers work, you’re going to be out of luck. There is a pattern here, but the trick of the problem is saying it out loud, and to realize each number isn’t what it seems. When you read them, try saying the digits you see in a very literal sense, rather than the name of the number that appears....

One robot powering another is a small step towards symbiotic, robotic relationships out in the wild. A quadruped robot can’t see very far in front of it, but a quadcopter above could do the job ten times better. That seems to be one future application of the above combo.Though there’s not a whole lot information about the duo, it appears to be the StarlETH quadruped robot from the Legged Robotics Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich....

A startup run by students and entrepreneurs from the United States and South Korea has developed a smartwatch for the blind, and it’s pretty nifty. The smartwatch, called Dot, can display four braille characters at a time. Each character space has six active pins that rise and fall to produce the combinations of the braille alphabet and numerical system. The concept has been around for a few months, but the company recently revamped the watch’s design and functionality....

Miracle-GroHome DepotGardening doesn’t have to be an outdoor hobby, and the Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Seed Pod Kit proves that. But growing your own garden indoors is costly—until today. Home Depot is discounting the AeroGarden Bounty up to 50 percent off. What usually costs $350 is going for only $170, today only. If the Bounty is a little to intense for your gardening chops, Home Depot is also selling the Harvest Elite ($100) and the Sprout ($60) at a discount as well, so there’s not reason to finally get fresh ingredients into your diet....

Media Platforms Design TeamTom Clancy’s expertise was contagious. He knew how sonar could be defeated, how rubber bullets could kill, how the Secret Service could respond to a passenger jet nose-diving into the Capitol building, and myriad other ways the United States government could and likely would respond to threats at home and abroad. He knew all of this with a chilling degree of accuracy. And if you read Clancy’s novels, you knew it, too....

Media Platforms Design Team"People don’t recognize what an incredible piece of equipment and engineering the space shuttle was," says Mae Jemison, an astronaut who flew on Endeavour in 1992. “The magic left after the Challenger disaster. We started thinking it’s dangerous and stopped thinking we could do difficult things.” Atlantis is scheduled to perform the final mission, resupplying the International Space Station (ISS). NASA will then buy seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts into orbit; U....

The W76-2 is a small, tactical nuclear warhead designed to counter enemy tactical nuclear weapons.The warhead is actually derived from the existing W76 warhead, each of which is large enough to flatten a city.Arms control advocates warned that the new nuclear weapon was not needed. Somewhere in depths of the Atlantic Ocean the USS Tennessee is carrying out a mission it’s carried out dozens of times: deter adversaries from launching a surprise attack on the U....

The Navy of the future will have two kinds of drone ships to extend the reach of its manned vessels, making the fleet more capable than ever. A new report lays out this vision and says that at least one of the two types of unmanned ship will be equipped to carry weapons. The report comes as the service’s unmanned test ship, Sea Hunter, has reportedly gone from a public to secret program....

Vladimir Putin is not a man to back down from provocation, especially a direct, lethal provocation like the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 aircraft by Turkey on Tuesday. Such an attack raises the possibility of a direct military confrontation, and makes you wonder just what Russia could do if you rattled its cage. How dangerous are they?Russia’s defense complex may be just a shadow of the old Soviet Union, with defense spending only about 12 percent of the USA’s....

A contender to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk in U.S. military service just achieved first flight. The V-280 Valor tiltrotor lifted off the ground and briefly hovered, the first in a long and rigorous testing schedule. The V-280 uses new tiltrotor technology and will fly farther and faster than conventional helicopters it was designed to replace.The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter is the U.S. Army’s standard medium lift helicopter. The latest version, the UH-60M has a cruising speed of 151 knots, a combat range of 368 miles, and can carry up to twelve troops or a 9,000-pound slung load....