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North Korea successfully tested it Hwasong-12 missile on Sundayon Sunday, just one month after its previous missile test fizzled out seconds after launch. This test saw the missile achieve a height of 1,312 miles and travel nearly 500 miles according to North Korea’s state-owned news agency, which suggests that the missile may have the range necessary to reach a nearby U.S. military base in Guam, though it could not reach the continental United States....

Media Platforms Design TeamBefore getting into your book The Maker Movement Manifesto specifically, can you describe what this movement is? Well, the maker movement started around 2004 when Make magazine essentially resurrected the old format of Popular Mechanics in a very similar, smaller format from the good ole days in the 30s and 40s and targeted the new makers. These were the people who had access to computers and soldering irons and some simple types of tools youd see in a garage and created projects that theyd be able to make at home or on their own....

Renewable energy has taken a few hits over the past year, with the Trump Administration’s recent implementation of a tariff on solar panels, decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, and funding cuts for several clean energy programs. But this barrage of bad news doesn’t seem to have slowed down the industry. A recent report finds that renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro are still growing, and now account for 18 percent of U....

One Russian concept envisioned sending Soyuz spacecraft on a lunar flyby mission with an additional “tourist” module, offering its passengers big windows to admire lunar vistas as close as 90 kilometers away.Anatoly Zak / RussianSpaceWeb.comOn June 28, the new head of the Roscosmos State Corporation Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia could begin human missions to the Moon before completing the development of its next-generation spacecraft Federatsiya (Federation). Instead, Russia will once again rely on its 50-year-old legend....

One of the biggest practical problems keeping renewable energy from overtaking fossil fuels is the question of how to store it. When the sun is shining, or when the wind is blowing extra hard, the energy system siphons off some energy into a battery to use during cloudy days without a breeze and how much it can save is directly related to how good our batteries are. Making better energy storage systems is a priority for many scientists, including those in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, who have developed a concept for what they call a “sun in a box....

The Asteroid Belt may be one of the most plentiful places to find asteroids in our solar system, but it’s far from the only place. This video shows the 5,000 closest asteroids to Earth.In truth, most of these asteroids are dark and small and hard to see; it’s not as if there’s a big Ceres or Vesta floating near Earth, just waiting to be discovered. But the video, from Scott Manley, shows what it would look like if all 5,000 objects were bright and big enough to be seen....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast year PopMech honored your prototype soccer ball. Now, you’re launching one for mass distribution. Whats different in the new version?We have a whole new patent. While the first design was based on the inductive coil mechanism, like a shake-to-charge flashlight, this one is based on a gyroscopic mechanism. So instead of just capturing energy from one dimension of motion, its capturing energy from all possible dimensions of motion....

The U.S. Army has ordered a prototype of a weapon designed in a garage in Colorado Springs. The weapon is electrically fired, has four barrels and can fire all four rounds at once in a single devastating salvo.The weapon was developed by inventor Martin Grier and sports four vertically stacked barrels encased in a single block of steel, an electric actuator firing system, four-round blocks of ammunition, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette....

Made by Austrian watchmaker Franz Pfannl in the early 1910s, the Kolibri pistol is one of the smallest guns in the world.The smallest pistol in the world was made by Carlos Alberto Balbiani in 2002, according to Guinness World Records.Pfannl made even smaller guns, known as watch fob pistols and pinfire guns.The world’s smallest production pistol is the Kolibri (German for “hummingbird”), designed by an Austrian watchmaker by the name of Franz Pfannl....

The U.S. Air Force’s eagerly anticipated flyoff between the A-10 Warthog and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has begun. The eagerly awaited competition, which pits the two planes against one another to determine which is the better close air support platform, began last week and wraps up tomorrow, July 12th. Critics charge that the Air Force is not only hiding the exercises from the public but is also heavily skewing the testing to ensure that the new F-35 is presented in the best possible light....

At long last, the U.S. Marine Corps has picked a replacement for the aging, 1970s-era Amphibious Assault Vehicle. The Marines have awarded BAE Systems a $198 million contract for 30 Amphibious Combat Vehicles and will eventually replace 870 of the older vehicles with the ACV. The new vehicle can take a squad of marines from ship into land combat at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour.Amphibious warfare is a core mission of the Marine Corps, and for nearly 40 years the Marines relied on the Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) to put grunts ashore....

When we measure the world, we measure it using base units like ‘foot,’ ‘mile,’ ‘meter,’ and ‘second.’ But who decides how big those units of measurement are? In the United States, those units are maintained by an agency called the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and it’s their job to make sure all the yardsticks—both literal and metaphorical—are the same length.Until recently, that was done by defining those units of measurement using physical objects....

The Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey has been quietly surveying the cosmos, honing in on the universe with startling 520 megapixel resolution. While it’s been on the hunt for dark matter and dark energy, the byproduct has been an amazing view of our neighboring stars and our universe’s most distant galaxies.Now, thanks to a browser viewer at Legacy Survey, you can comb through the visual data, and help the Legacy team identify new objects, strange quirks, and previously unknown galaxies from your browser....

Media Platforms Design TeamNext Monday marks the start of Detroit’s 2013 North America International Auto Show, and although the LA Auto Show wrapped up just a month ago, Automakers still have plenty to reveal in the days ahead. Before the inundation of concept vehicle photos and new car announcements, here are five things to look forward to from Detroit.Chevrolet Corvette C7The teaser campaign for Chevy’s next iteration of the Coverette is one of the best examples of a slow burn....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo by Worcflow and VEDp)The current record-holder for the fastest-accelerating electric car will zoom from 0 to 62 mph time in just 2.13 seconds–an insane figure that will dust even the most crazy-fast fossil fuel-burners. More impressive, it was built by engineering students, albeit students from an institution that has produced Tesla employees, and those students have a new extreme EV to show off. The latest creation by the student at Delft University of Technology (DUT) in the Netherlands is the DUT14, an amalgamation of bespoke parts—like the tiny tires made to handle the ultra-light transmission—and scrupulously tested aerodynamics....

The science fiction of Star Trek has been inspiring scientists for generations in ways big and small. As mentioned in the opening credits of both the original series and The Next Generation, one focus for the ships in Star Trek’s Federation is “to seek out new life,” which can be easily done thanks to technology capable of remotely scanning an area for life forms. Scientists have now made steps toward recreating that technology in the form of a specialized camera called a TreePol spectropolarimeter....

A group of engineers in the United Kingdom is trying to build a mid-20th-century room-sized computer in their backyard toolsheds. The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was designed in the 1940s by Sir Maurice Wilkes. Fired up for the first time in May 1949, EDSAC successfully ran programs that calculated a list of prime numbers and a table of squares. While its power paled in comparison to even a graphing calculator, the EDSAC allowed researchers to crunch numbers with more efficiency than ever before and ultimately helped Cambridge scientists win three Nobel Prizes....

Related StoryNew Facebook Data Breach Affects 50 Million UsersFacebook has provided a link for those unsure if their accounts have been hacked in the latest security breach. Anyone concerned can check right here. Between September 14 and 27, the hackers were able to exploit what Facebook calls “a vulnerability caused by the complex interaction of three bugs in our system.” The vulnerability affected a section of Facebook known as “View As....

Quantum radar, for decades merely a concept, was recently demonstrated at science institute in Austria.Quantum radars can provide much more detailed information about their targets without giving away their position.Contrary to claims, quantum radars do not make stealth obsolete.A new high definition radar system that could change the nature of warfare has been demonstrated for the first time. The result, quantum radar, is a high definition detection system that provides a much more detailed image of targets while itself remaining difficult to detect....

For the past three winters, Steve Falk of Aurora, Ontario, has transformed his backyard into an Olympic playground, with a double luge fit for racing and a zigzagged course sure to bring the whiplash. Last year’s glacial masterpiece, a snowy 300-foot circuit, even got some nods from Canadian skeleton racer, Jon Montgomery, who challenged Falk’s 13-year-old daughter, Sally, to go racing down backwards, skeleton-style. Here, the Falks share their tips on how, with some snow, a graded slope, and flying saucers, you can create your own backyard luge....