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Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: DecemberPrice: $40,000Competitors: NonePowertrains: 1300-cc BMW inline four; 175 hp. Power split to a limited slip rear differential (land) and a high-performance jet pump with reverse (water).EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): N/AWhat’s New: Gibbs has been working on the concept of high-speed amphibious vehicles for 16 years. It produced a brief run of cars (the Aquada) that had to be aborted because of supplier problems. The Quadski is the first commercially available, practical amphibian that does both land and water brilliantly....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’ve known about the super-Earth called 55 Cancri e since 2004. But now, scientists have finally seen it through a ground-based telescope. This marks the second time a super-Earth has been observed by ground-based instruments, and the first time we’ve seen one around a star that’s like our sun.While it lies just 40 light years from here, don’t expect 55 Cancri e to be a destination for future explorers hunting for life....

• It’s not like it was in the eighties. Car manufacturers can’t get away with building a subpar product. • Don’t go car shopping without already having a price. • Ninety percent of people who come in say that they’re just looking. I’m the same way. I like to be left alone when I shop for a car. I’m looking for certain things, like bolts that have been cranked on. If there is a wrench mark on a bolt, I know that the fender has been replaced....

Washington, D.C.–The definition of luxury is changing before our eyes. Where wealth was once all about flaunting what you’ve got, Lincoln says that the new measure of worth includes phrases like “sustainability” and “guilt-free.” In the brave new world of recession-era consumerism, the luxury lifestyle will be driven by products that operate as symbols of the buyer’s ideals. And with an ever-growing focus on the evils of foreign oil, those ideals are likely to be tied to products like the 2011 Lincoln MKZ–cars and trucks that are supposed to deliver all the refinement of yesteryear without the guilt-tax of knowing your tank was topped off by a couple of foreign wars....

Planes that can take off directly into the air without the need for a runway are, theoretically, an absolute dream for the military. Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) craft require less physical space and infrastructure to get into the air compared to traditional planes. That means more fighters on a single aircraft carrier, or smaller airports in more remote places. The engineering challenge is mammoth, and people have spent decades trying to figure it out....

Few cars define efficient travel like the Toyota Prius. And the Prius has been the mpg leader–a title it has earned yet again with its 2010 model. A low (0.25) coefficient of drag is where the efficiency starts, but the real secret is in the refinements to Toyota’s hybrid system. The 1.5-liter engine has been replaced with a torque-rich 1.8-liter unit that still operates with the late-intake-valveclosing Atkinson cycle. More low-end torque means the engine doesn’t have to work as hard....

TentrrIdeal for new campers, or folks looking for built-in comfort, Tentrr sites include a 10-by-12-foot canvas tent with a queen-size cot, fire pit, drinking water, sun shower, camp toilet, and grill. The 500 campsites are clustered in the Northeast, but Tentrr is expanding to the West Coast this summer. BOOK THIS: Slippery Rock River Retreat in Greene, Maine. Hike the property’s 400 acres and launch canoes from the campsite’s river shore....

Boeing’s 737 Max 8 aircraft has now been involved in two devastating crashes in just five months. In both incidents, the planes crashed minutes after takeoff. November’s Lion Air disaster killed 189 passengers when the aircraft plummeted into the Java Sea, while Sunday’s incident saw at least 150 passengers killed when an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed. Aviation officials around the world are now scrutinizing the safety of the Boeing model, which Southwest, United, and American Airlines all fly....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamMore than a year has passed since the Kulluk oil rig, operated by Royal Dutch Shell, ran aground in the Arctic on New Year’s Eve 2012. This week, the U.S. Coast Guard released its investigation into the accident, pointing the finger at a number of factors that led to the accident.The weather was bad, with large swells rocking the boat, but that’s to be expected when operating north of Alaska....

The private space industry will have a lot to celebrate in 2019. Virgin Galactic will launch its suborbital space tourism business. NASA astronauts will again fly to the International Space Station from U.S. soil, and on hardware owned by private companies. Small satellites will enjoy their own dedicated launches, no longer relegated to being secondary payloads on expensive flights. And NASA has begun to turn to the private sector for its lunar plans....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat made you want to turn these Edgar Rice Burroughs books into a movie?I discovered the book when I was 11 or 12, and it just stuck with me. I spent most of my life as a fan, hoping to see it make it on the big screen. About six years ago, I saw that it was falling through again and I started to feel like maybe it would never make it....

Thieves in Dresden, Germany have stolen 1 billion Euros worth of art and jewelry from a museum.The robbery is an opportunity for the museum and others around the world to audit and improve security on priceless collections.Other factors, like easy access to highways, are universal factors with which everyone must contend.A carefully planned and targeted robbery has left a Dresden museum with up to 1 billion Euros in missing jewelry and cultural artifacts, The Guardian reports—the biggest heist of its kind since World War II....

Russian authorities have detained a drunken man who boarded a commercial flight in the Siberian city of Surgut bound for Moscow. The man allegedly threatened passengers and crew, claiming he was armed, according to the Associated Press. According to Flight Radar, which cited an unconfirmed report from Russian state media outlet RT, the man demanded the Aeroflot plane be diverted to Afghanistan. Though the plane was diverted shortly after takeoff, it landed nowhere near the Middle East: The aircraft reportedly landed safely in the Russian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, about 145 miles west of where it departed....

An electric car’s motors are all about magnets. Magnets in the motors turn the wheels by switching rapidly between attracting and repelling forces to spin the hub.But here’s the problem: heat. Just like an internal combustion engine, the electric motor generates a lot of power-sapping heat. That’s why electric motors often have two ratings: peak power and continuous power. The latter number is lower because heat saps power from the magnets during extended use....

A space station about the size of a bus is in a decaying orbit, descending to lower and lower altitudes in the sky. It will keep falling until it hits enough atmosphere to rip apart and burn up. China’s Tiangong-1, meaning “Celestial Palace,” is expected to crash back into Earth sometime between Saturday March 31 and Sunday April 1, according to the latest estimate from ESA. As of this morning, Tiangong-1 was orbiting between 178 and 189 km (117 mi....

France will develop satellites armed with laser weapons, and will use the weapons against enemy satellites that threaten the country’s space forces. The announcement is just part of a gradual shift in acceptance of space-based weaponry as countries reliant on space for military operations in the air, on land, and at sea—as well as for economic purposes, bow to reality and accept space as a future battleground.In remarks earlier today, French Defense Minister Florence Parly said, “If our satellites are threatened, we intend to blind those of our adversaries....

LOS ANGELES – Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO of General Motors, opened the festivities here at the L.A. Auto Show. And he did it with the announcement that GM would be producing and selling a plug-in hybrid version of the new Saturn Vue.Of course, Wagoner pointed out that GM is convinced that our future energy needs will have to be met by a variety of sources and power plants. “We must develop alternate forms of propulsion based on alternate sources of energy,” Wagoner told the assembled press this morning....

Media Platforms Design TeamResearchers have dropped tracking beacons on segments of a monster-size floating ice island calved by northwestern Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in August 2010. The ice has broken into several city-size chunks that are leading a vagabond life in northern waters, gradually wandering southward toward vulnerable oil rigs and shipping lanes. Gaetan Langlois, an analyst and forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service, is one of an international cadre that tracks such hazards....

Media Platforms Design TeamPasadena-based firm GDS Architects’ new building in Incheon, South Korea, is guaranteed not to be an eyesore. Last August the South Korean government granted approval for Tower Infinity, a 1476-foot-tall invisible skyscraper. The Infinity will be built near the Incheon International Airport, but Tower Infinity will be located outside of aviation corridors and will have standard aviation-warning lights. While cities such as Dubai and Shanghai are competing for the status of building the biggest skyscrapers, the Infinity seeks to be the most novel....

Tonight, a rocket will carry a record-breaking 104 satellites into orbit. The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will blast off from Sriharikota, India at approximately 10:58 p.m. Eastern time.Most of the satellites being launched are small cubesats, less than a foot wide, and 88 were built by imaging company Planet. The “Dove” satellites will be used to continually photograph the Earth at high resolutions, similar to Google Earth. These satellites will join 50 already in orbit, where they will photograph all the major landmasses on Earth daily—approximately 58 million square miles....